#that's what he told her when she asked him why he did these things after the hallway bloodbath and now she is saying it

[seungcheorry]

Ot13 reaction on how many kids SVT would have?

how many kids svt would have:

seungcheol probably wants to have two at least. i can picture him having a baby girl and then getting too excited once his partner is free from the whole post partum thing and getting them pregnant again right afterwards. he would really wish for a baby boy then.

jeonghan would love to have two as well, and i can see him having twins - i don't know why, something in him just screams FATHER OF TWINS to me. probably two girls? it's a lot of work though, he'll be done with having kids, would probably even do the surgery so he can't have any anymore.

joshua is very similar to seungcheol to me, would probably have a boy and then get too excited and have a girl because his dna is just good like that. the prettiest kids to ever exist actually, and he's so in love with them that it can be quite easy to talk him into having another one after a few years.

junhui screams boy dad to me, so yeah. i can see him having only one child, a really savage boy just like minghao was back in the day? weird but in a good, chomical way. he would be really good friends with his kid, like a partners in crime type of relationship.

soonyoung... oh, soonyoung. he says he wants to have lots and lots of kids because he loves having his house full but after the first one - a baby boy -, he gets so tired that he actually apologizes to his mom. might slip or be talked into having another one (he just wants his kid to have a relationship like the one he has with his sister); would really hope for a girl then, would probably get another boy though.

wonwoo is a definitely a girl dad too. he would really hope for a boy (i don't know why, i just feel like he would) but then it comes a baby girl and he turns into mush for her. such a goner, i can't even begin to describe - she can tell him to stay put for 20 whole minutes while she pretends to make tea and he won't move a muscle, just stay there and watch her because she told him to. would probably just want one.

jihoon is a girl dad and i will die on this hill. he's also a goner for his girl, he's very strict with things but also he doesn't like to be rough to her so he's just, i don't know, the perfect balance? most likely to be the favorite parent and learn about his daughter secrets before his partner because she just trusts him like that. would also just want one.

seokmin would love three - the first one (a boy) is probably planned; the second one (a girl) is probably an expected accident as he doesn't mind having sex without protection even though he knows the risks; the third one (another boy) is probably an unexpected accident that he cries in joy when he sees for the first time. he would definitely tell his partner "i'm so glad we got drunk that night" while seeing his two oldest children ganging up to change the new baby's diaper.

mingyu definitely wants two kids, he loves his sister too much and knows how a sibling relationship can literally save someone. most likely to have two girls, and his partner might ask him if he isn't sad that they didn't have a boy but he's too busy to answer as he's teaching the girls how to make ramyeon :(

minghao already said himself, he's not the one who gets to decide how many kids he and his partner will have, but he wants two - and can be bend into having a third one. i can see him having a boy and then a girl, and if he and his partner decides for another one, then it would be another girl, probably.

seungkwan would have two girls and his dramatic ass would say it's karma because what do you mean he grew up with his older sisters and now he has to take care of yet other two girls who will bicker and gang up on him just like his sisters did? behind that facade though he would love to take care of them and to see them grow together. most emotional dad, for sure.

vernon is a boy dad to me and he would say he only wants one kid but then he sees him growing up on his own and don't get me wrong, the kid is totally fine with it, but vernon can't stop thinking about how sofia changed his life and he would go "yeah, we might need another one" to his partner. makes a whole deal about it when he finds out his second child is gonna be a girl. "REALLY, WHAT ARE THE ODDS?"... but it's not that hard, vernon. i'm glad you're happy though, i know you love your kids.

chan is also a boy dad and he would probably want another kid but once he realizes how much work and effort it takes, he's sticking to just one. if his partner ever wants another one they would have to really talk him into it, might even need to ask seokmin for help, because chan would stand his ground and say no. but honestly? he's a loverboy, at the end he might just say yes and then meet his cute little daughter and be like "oh my god, why didn't we make her sooner?"

[thedeadtalker]

-my grandfather was 8 when he and his family were rounded up on the Oregon coast, kept in a livestock pen for 3 very rainy days, then put into a cattle car to be carried out to the reservations in the east.

-my grandmother had two brothers and sister who were sent to mission school and never returned. They said they ran away. They lied.

-My mom remembers when Indians got enough citizenship to vote in Oregon. She describes her parents and their friends discussing if the should do it -vote -or if it was trick to register them.

-My friend took his grandmother out for her 100th birthday. He asked her what she thought were the most important things to happen during her lifetime. She told him: free wifi and the legal end of segregation.

-I remember those fucking nuns in mission school. I only went 1 year when the laws changed and we could go to other schools. We could live with our parents and ride a bus to school and back again and sleep that night in our own home. I remember that, you fuckers.

-I remember that my mom and two of her sisters gave birth in a hospital connected to the mission, and they didnt know for years that they'd gotten botched steralizations against their wishes and without their knowledge. I remember my parents desperatly trying to have more children. Theyd always wanted a bunch of kids. The house my dad built had many empty guestrooms. Eventually they sold it. I remember my mom having to have a hysterectomy 2 years ago because of all the health problems caused by the fucked up surgery. I remember sitting in a meeting and one of the nurses there having to put me through a fainting protocol because i got a text from my stepfather that during the hysterectomy they discovered one of mom's damned ovaries was just fucking gone. I wonder sometimes if some sick fuck retired doctor kept a genuine Indian ovary in a jar in his office. I wonder if his nazi kids and grandkids pull it out to show to guests as a conversation point. I think about how whites were paid piecework for Indian scalps amd seeing one dried out and leathery in an antique store in a small town in Idaho. There is evil in the Americas. The nazis were here long before they were ever in Europe.

- I remember my highschool history teacher showing us the number tattooed on his wrist. I remember him showing us all these recordings of ordinary German citizens talking about how they didn't see anything wrong happening. How there must have been some sort of perfecrly mundane reason for the endless smoke pouring from the ovens in the camp up in the hill. How it was all just politics. How they were reassured that all the people who were taken had just moved in the night, or were much happier wherever they'd gone to. "But you saw them all: the Jews, the other prisoners going into the camp. But you never saw them leave. Didn't you think that was odd?" "We just figured they'd moved from the camp in the night while we were sleeping." "Where?" "What do you mean?" "Where did you all think they went -in the middle of the night?" "Oh. We didn't know." "Didn't you wonder?" "Why would we?"

- I remember that same teacher explaining how the nazis had gotten a lot of their ideas from the US government's Native American policy. The death camps were modelled after our reservations. The dehumanizing and the stories of savages/gremlins that ate white babies and were less than human were based on the clever marketing campaign set up to not just enable the settler take over, but used to unite the fragmented people of newly forming colonial nation. He fucking showed us. There is publically available documentation of all of this.

-I remember getting put on the no fly list. I remember finding out about it because when we tried to buy tickets for the whole family to travel down to New Mexico for my granduncle's funeral the whole purchase was bounced. We were told why that might be the case so we tried seperate purchases for everyone. Me. It was me. Several years later my roommate's family friend -an old white guy with some pull, found out why. I was teaching K-3 and moonlighting as a computer programmer back then. And I'd printed some photos of holidays around the world to share with my students on the same computer I wrote code from. My own computer, in my own office, in my own home. He said it also didn't help that I wasn't white.

-I remember that fucker's first time in office: I remember seeing my coworker snatched from the elevator by ice agents and shoved into an unmarked van. He was a 3rd generation American.

-I remember having to warn the non-white, non-abled, non anything a nazi would want to gas you for residents of the dvsat shelter we worked with to not go out at night, not go out alone, not walk on these specific streets or go into these specific shops. I remember the time a native Hawaiian chick on my caseload didn't come back when expected and everyone was out of their mind with worry. She came back, tear-streaked and shaking, and told us about how she'd gotten lost (not in Hawaii any more, Dorothy) and ended up in one of the neighborhoods she was supposed to avoid, and being chased by some of the proud boys that patrolled our city streets in their ridiculous be-flagged pickups, and how some nearby restuarant diners had rushed her into the restuarant, and the staff there had hid her in the pantry, and all the diners lied and said they hadn't seen her. My teacher read Anne Frank to us in 6th grade. Do they still read that in schools?

-I think about that time I went into a DMV and the woman behind the counter told me to "sit over there," next to two men, and well away from the other patrons. Then a highway patrol officer came over and told us to go with him. In the parking lot he explained that he'd been called to take us to an immigration detention center. But instead he directed us to a "safe" DMV 40 miles away and walked away muttering about having had it up to here with those idiots in there. The two American Samoan men started laughing. Honestly, I didn't feel like laughing. I didn't feel like anything. I was thinking about the mission school and wondering if the detention center looked like it had.

-I've spent the last couple of weeks handing out flyers in different languages. I don't use an interpreter. I have no way of knowing if I can trust them. But somehow I manage to convey to the people I visit in field hand huts and steamy laundries that they are in a sanctuary state and what that means. That no one in our offices will turn them away or turn them in. At least I hope Im conveying that. Then I tell them, using paper language dictionaries if needed (librarians are superheros) how to get away, who to talk to, how to find the big dipper. I think a lot of my high school history teacher and those faded numbers on his wrist.

Oh I know they're coming for me first. Im your canary.

[halfmoonaria]

change of plans

pairing: tara carpenter & female reader

summary: tara was going to take care of it—end things for good—but nothing went the way she planned.

word count: 9.6k

warnings: dark themes, murder intent, violence, strong language, intrusive thoughts, implied stalking.

Tara didn't think she was a jealous person.

She was sure of it, actually.

Jealousy wasn't something she dealt with, at least not in the same way other people did. She told herself she wasn't the type to stew over what someone else had or waste time feeling resentful.

But looking back, there were moments—small, fleeting ones—that didn't quite fit the version of herself she liked to believe in.

When she was little, the first spark of that unfamiliar emotion would hit when someone snatched a toy out of her hands. It wasn't sadness or disappointment—it was sharper, hotter, and before she even realized what she was doing, she'd yank the toy back, sometimes with enough force to send the other kid stumbling.

She didn't mean to hurt them, not really, but the instinct to make things fair—or at least fair by her standards—was too strong to ignore.

Her teachers called it "trouble controlling her temper." Her mom called it a "phase." But it kept happening.

There was the time in first grade when another girl in her class got to play the fairy princess during dress-up. Tara had been stuck with the frog costume.

She'd sulked in the corner, watching the other girl twirl around in sparkly wings, until something inside her snapped. The girl didn't see it coming when Tara stomped up, grabbed the glittery wand, and broke it clean in two.

She didn't even regret it until she was sitting in the principal's office with her mom glaring at her from across the room.

By the time she was nine, Tara had lost count of how many times she'd been dragged to the teacher's office. Sometimes it was for yanking a classmate's hair after they showed off a new toy she didn't have. Other times, it was for shoving someone too hard during recess when she thought they were bragging about something they shouldn't have.

Her teachers always asked the same question: "Why did you do it, Tara?"

She never had a good answer.

Her mom tried everything—calming techniques, time-outs, grounding her from TV or playdates—but none of it worked.

The truth was, Tara didn't know why it bothered her so much when someone else got what she wanted. All she knew was that the feeling burned in her chest, hot and heavy, until she had to do something to let it out.

She couldn't pinpoint what the feeling was, not even as she got older—when she was supposed to be able to handle her emotions better, to control the bursts of anger and the bubbling rage that seemed to come out of nowhere.

It wasn't jealousy though. She was sure of that.

Jealousy felt petty, childish, like something people dealt with in middle school when they saw someone else wearing the same pair of shoes but in a better color. Tara wasn't petty, and she definitely wasn't childish. At least, that's what she told herself every time the heat rose to her face, her fists clenched so tight her nails dug into her palms, and her vision blurred with that same fiery haze she'd felt since kindergarten.

It didn't make sense to call it jealousy. Jealousy implied weakness, didn't it? Like you couldn't be happy for someone else because you wanted what they had. Tara didn't think she wanted what anyone else had—she just hated the idea that they had it at all.

She didn't think it was anywhere close to jealousy—not until Chad broke up with her.

At first, all she felt was heartbreak, raw and overwhelming, the kind of sadness that made her chest feel hollow and heavy all at once. There was anger too, bubbling beneath the surface, but she pushed it down, unwilling to let him see that part of her. Tara told herself that staying calm was the only way to keep control of the situation, even as she listened to him try to explain himself.

He had said he didn't feel the same anymore, that something between them had changed. He wasn't sure when it had happened, but he no longer felt the love they once had. His voice had been quiet, hesitant, as if he didn't want to hurt her more than he already was. He told her it wasn't her fault, that she'd been a great girlfriend and that he still cared about her.

The words sounded like they should've been comforting, but they weren't. They only made her feel worse. Love didn't just disappear, did it? And if it did, what did that say about her? She couldn't wrap her head around how everything could change so quickly, how something that had seemed so solid could slip through her fingers without warning.

For days after the breakup, she replayed his words in her mind, searching for some clue, some sign she might have missed. The sadness lingered, a constant ache she couldn't shake, and when the anger flared, she shoved it back down where it belonged. It wouldn't change anything, and it wouldn't bring him back.

At first, she thought heartbreak was all she'd have to contend with. But then, as the days stretched into weeks, another feeling began to creep in—something darker, sharper, and impossible to ignore.

That dark, sharper, and impossible-to-ignore feeling had only grown worse. In fact, it had become unbearable when she saw Chad a few weeks later.

With you.

She hadn't been prepared for it. In hindsight, maybe she should've been. They had gone to the same school—it had only been a matter of time before she ran into him again. But Tara hadn't expected him to look so... fine. Like nothing had happened. Like breaking up with her hadn't fazed him in the slightest. And she especially hadn't expected to see him with someone else.

You had been standing next to him near the lockers, your body slightly turned toward his as you spoke. She hadn't been able to hear what you were saying, but whatever it had been, it had made him laugh. That same, familiar laugh that had once been hers to hear.

Her chest had tightened, the weight of it pressing down on her like a physical force. It had been the first time she had seen him since the breakup, and heartbreak hadn't been what she had felt then. No, it had been something else entirely. It had been hot and all-consuming, curling its way through her like wildfire.

Her gaze had locked on the way you had reached out, your fingers briefly brushing his arm as you spoke. It had been such a casual, effortless gesture, but to Tara, it had felt deliberate. She had clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms as she had struggled to steady her breathing.

She hadn't wanted to look at you. She hadn't wanted to acknowledge the way your presence, your closeness to Chad, had made her feel. But she hadn't been able to tear her eyes away.

It hadn't been fair. Chad wasn't supposed to move on so quickly. He wasn't supposed to look this happy, not when she had still been trying to piece herself back together. And you—God, you hadn't been supposed to be so... perfect. So at ease, standing there with him like you had belonged.

Tara's stomach had churned, a bitter taste rising in her throat. The feeling bubbling inside her had been almost painfully familiar, a twisted echo of the jealousy she had felt as a child.

She could still remember the heat of it, the way it had burned through her tiny body when someone had gotten the last cookie in class or taken the swing she had wanted on the playground.

Back then, her jealousy had been wild and unrestrained, often spilling out as anger—pushing, hitting, shouting until someone had intervened.

But this hadn't been the same. She wasn't a kid anymore, and she had known better than to lash out. And yet, the anger had simmered beneath the surface, waiting for her to slip, to let it spill over.

Her jaw had tightened as she had forced herself to look away, her fists clenching at her sides. Chad hadn't been hers anymore, she had reminded herself, no matter how much she had wanted him to be.

She hadn't had the right to feel this way, to be so consumed by jealousy over someone who had clearly moved on.

But knowing that hadn't made it stop. The jealousy had still been there, sharp and unrelenting, twisting inside her like a knife.

It had dug in deeper with every passing day, lodging itself in a part of her she didn't know how to reach, let alone remove.

It didn't help that Tara knew exactly who you were. Of course she did—everyone in Woodsboro seemed to know everyone.

The town was too small for anyone to go unnoticed, their business too easily whispered about or pieced together.

She had known who you were since kindergarten, though, in moments like these, it felt like a cruel twist of fate that you hadn't been one of the kids she'd shoved in a fit of childish rage.

Maybe if you had been, she wouldn't feel so powerless now. She could have at least claimed to have gotten her frustration out once, a long time ago. But no. You had been one of the few to escape her younger wrath, and somehow that made this worse.

It wasn't just that, though. Tara couldn't think about you without hearing her mother's voice in the back of her mind, muttering something about how she wished Tara were "more like you."

Her mother said things like that about plenty of kids, especially when Tara landed herself in trouble at school. But the way she spoke about you had always felt different—like she meant it.

You were polite, diligent, the kind of kid parents liked to hold up as an example. Tara had hated it back then, hearing those comparisons tossed her way whenever she acted out. Now, remembering it made her blood boil.

You weren't a stranger to her. Not really. How could you be when Wes had spent all of middle school hopelessly infatuated with you? His crush had been embarrassingly obvious, even to people who weren't paying attention.

Tara remembered the way he'd stumble through his sentences whenever you so much as glanced in his direction. How he'd linger near your locker as though working up the courage to say something, only to turn red and scurry off when Amber caught him at it.

Amber had loved teasing him for it. She'd nudge his arm and whisper loud enough for everyone to hear, calling him love-struck and pitiful. And Tara? She'd roll her eyes and laugh right along with her.

She hadn't understood the appeal back then. Sure, you were nice. Polite, from what people said. But to Tara, you'd just been another person in the hallways, someone she could name but not care much about. Wes's hopeless pining had been little more than background noise to her.

But now... now that memory left a bitter taste in her mouth.

Not that she'd ever had a real problem with you. If anything, she'd been indifferent toward you all these years. You were nice, she supposed. Everyone said so, and it wasn't hard to believe.

You dressed well enough to stand out without trying too hard, cared enough about your grades to keep them respectable, and generally managed to avoid any kind of trouble. There wasn't much about you that people could complain about.

Tara hadn't spoken to you much. Maybe a couple of times, when group projects forced you together or when politeness demanded it. But it had never gone beyond that, never lingered in a way that mattered. You were a passing presence, just one of the many faces she'd seen over the years, easily forgotten once you were out of sight.

At least, that was how it used to be.

Now, it felt like you were everywhere. And worse, you weren't just a face in the crowd anymore. You were always laughing, always smiling, always looking so damn perfect. And you weren't alone. You were with Chad. His arm slung around your shoulders like you were his.

And that, Tara couldn't ignore.

You were with her Chad. Her boyfriend.

Or at least, that's what her mind insisted on calling him, despite the breakup. Despite everything. He was still hers. He had to be. There was no way he wasn't, not when she could still feel the ghost of his hand in hers, not when her chest tightened every time she thought about him laughing at something you said. It wasn't right. It didn't feel right.

You didn't belong under his arm like that. You didn't belong anywhere near him.

Tara's jaw clenched as the image burned itself deeper into her memory: the way his arm had draped over your shoulders so effortlessly, like it was the most natural thing in the world. It wasn't. It couldn't be. That spot was hers—had been hers for so long that seeing anyone else there made her stomach twist with something jagged and unbearable.

And it didn't help that you didn't even look good there. Not to her, anyway. You didn't fit the way she did. You didn't mold into his side like you belonged there, not like she had. Chad was tall, broad-shouldered, and Tara had always thought they looked balanced together. She'd fit neatly under his arm, a perfect complement to his size and presence. You? You just looked... wrong.

At least, that's what she told herself as her eyes lingered on you for too long, darting between the way you smiled at him and the way he smiled back at you.

Her chest tightened further, the edges of her jealousy sharpening with every second.

She tried to tell herself not to care. Really, she did. She told herself that it didn't matter anymore, that Chad wasn't hers, that this—whatever this was—wasn't her business. He had every right to move on. She even tried repeating it in her head, like some kind of mantra: It’s over, it’s over, it’s over.

But it didn't work. It never worked.

It wasn't just the jealousy, though that was certainly the loudest emotion screaming in her chest. It was the helplessness that came with it. The same helplessness she'd felt back in kindergarten, when that dark, fiery feeling had bubbled up inside her and she hadn't known what to do with it. Back then, she'd pushed people, shoved them, let her rage and frustration spill out in any way it could.

Now? Now she was older. Supposedly more mature. She was supposed to be able to handle her emotions, wasn't she? But standing there, watching Chad lean into you, laugh at something you said like it was the funniest thing in the world, Tara felt that same fiery frustration rise in her chest.

She didn't shove people anymore—didn't let that dark feeling spill out like she used to—but that didn't mean it wasn't still there, simmering just below the surface. And now, as she stood frozen in the hallway, all of it—every last ounce of it—was directed at you.

Because you didn't belong there.

You didn't belong with Chad.

You didn't belong in the picture she still couldn't stop replaying in her head: you laughing at something he said, him pulling you closer, the two of you looking... happy.

Tara bit the inside of her cheek, hard enough to taste blood. She told herself to turn away, to stop looking, to let it go. But it was impossible. Just like it had been when she was five years old, that feeling burned too brightly, clawed at her too viciously to ignore.

And now, as she stared at you from across the hallway, she realized she didn't know how to make it stop.

She couldn't stop seeing it—couldn't stop feeling it. You and him. It was burned into her mind, an image so vivid it felt like it had been seared there with a branding iron. Every time she closed her eyes, it was there. You and Chad. Laughing together. Holding hands. Kissing.

Tara's hands clenched into fists at her sides. She hated it. She hated you.

She hated the way you were always smiling, like you didn't have a care in the world. She hated the way you stood so close to him every day, the way his arm so casually rested on your shoulders. She hated the way you looked at him, and the way he looked at you. Like you were the only person in the room. Like you were perfect.

You weren't even that cute. That's what she tried to tell herself, over and over again. You weren't anything special. There were plenty of other girls in Woodsboro prettier than you, smarter than you, more interesting than you.

But it was a lie.

Because you were beautiful.

You were effortlessly beautiful in a way that made Tara's stomach churn. She hated the fact that she couldn't use your looks as an excuse. She hated how good you looked with Chad, how perfect you seemed together, how easy it was to see why he'd chosen you.

And that made her hatred burn even brighter.

Most nights, she couldn't sleep. The second her head hit the pillow, her mind would start spinning, and the thoughts would creep in—dark, ugly thoughts that wrapped around her like a vice. She could see it so clearly, almost like it was happening right in front of her.

You touching him in places she was supposed to touch. You undressing him, his hands roaming over your body instead of hers. You kissing him, making him moan, sitting on top of him—doing all the things she was supposed to do.

It made her blood boil. It made her want to scream.

The images were relentless, vivid and visceral, and every one of them felt like a knife twisting deeper into her chest. Sometimes, the anger was so sharp it made her want to claw at her own skin, like she could rip the feeling out of herself if she just tried hard enough.

But no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried to push the thoughts away, they always came back. They stayed with her, haunting her like a ghost she couldn't escape.

And every time, the hatred burned hotter.

It wasn't fair. You weren't supposed to have him. You weren't supposed to be in his arms, weren't supposed to hear his laugh up close, weren't supposed to know what his lips felt like. You didn't deserve any of it. You didn't deserve him.

He was hers. He'd always been hers.

But now, he wasn't.

And it was all because of you.

And this wasn't like any other time. Not even close.

Tara had always known her temper was a problem. She'd been told that enough times growing up—by her teachers, by her mom, by anyone who'd had the misfortune of crossing her when she was angry. But this? This was different.

She'd never felt this way before.

She'd tried everything to stop it, to keep herself from unraveling. Everything her mom had suggested back when she'd first started noticing how intense Tara's outbursts could be. Taking deep breaths, counting to ten, picturing a happy place—none of it worked. It never had.

And when her mom's suggestions fell flat, Tara had turned to the internet, searching desperately for anything that might help. Techniques to control anger, ways to keep herself calm, tips to avoid losing her temper. She'd read every article she could find, watched every video, tried every trick. Not because she cared about managing her emotions—no, she just wanted to avoid her mom forcing her into some anger management program or therapy session she'd be stuck in for months.

But now? Now, she couldn't even pretend to have control. Nothing worked. Nothing.

Her heart pounded in her chest, her skin prickled with heat, and the jealousy burned so hot and sharp that she felt like she was coming apart at the seams. It wasn't just anger anymore. It was something else entirely, something darker and more consuming.

Tara felt insane.

Because no matter what she did, no matter how hard she tried to push it down or ignore it, the feeling wouldn't go away. It wrapped around her like a second skin, suffocating and unbearable, until there was only one thought left in her mind:

She had to get rid of you.

It wasn't even a question anymore. It was a fact, plain and simple. There was no other way to fix this, no other way to make the feelings stop. You had to go.

At first, Tara thought about spreading a rumor or two. Nothing big, just enough to make you and Chad fight. Enough to plant a seed of doubt, to tear apart whatever connection you had with him. It sounded perfect at first—until she realized how easily it could blow up in her face.

Chad would figure it out eventually. He'd find out Tara was behind it, and then she'd lose any chance of getting him back.

She thought about telling you to leave, to move away, to go anywhere but here. But that was ridiculous. You'd never listen.

She thought about kidnapping you.

The thought came and went so quickly it almost startled her. For a split second, her mind flickered to the idea of forcing you out of the picture entirely, taking control in a way that left no room for argument.

But no. That was insane.

...Wasn't it?

Tara clenched her fists, her nails digging into her palms hard enough to hurt. She was spiraling. She knew it. But she couldn't stop.

Nothing else would work. Nothing except you being gone.

She didn't know how, she didn't know when, but Tara knew one thing with absolute certainty:

You couldn't stay.

You didn't belong here. You didn't belong with Chad. You didn't belong anywhere near him, near her, near this town.

You didn't belong anywhere.

And Tara? Tara was going to make sure of it.

She toyed with possibilities. But none of them seemed right.

Kidnapping you crossed her mind more than once though. Briefly.

But it was stupid, insane.

Because what would she do when she had you?

Just keep you there?

It seemed suiting, but it wouldn't work out.

But she couldn't help thinking it—if only because she was running out of options.

And then, the thought hit her. It came out of nowhere, sharp and sudden, like a knife to the gut.

She could kill you.

At first, the thought had hit her like a slap to the face, sharp and jarring in its absurdity. It had seemed insane. Because it was insane. What kind of person even thought something like that, let alone seriously considered it?

But as the days dragged on, the idea didn't fade. If anything, it took root. The more Tara thought about it, the less insane it seemed. Her anger, that relentless, boiling rage, started to simmer. It didn't disappear entirely—not even close—but it

lessened.

For the first time in weeks, she could breathe.

The idea itself was enough at first. She didn't need to act on it. Just thinking about it was enough to bring her some semblance of peace. She let the fantasy play out in her mind like a sick little movie: you, out of the picture, gone forever. It didn't matter how or when—just that it happened.

And for a few days, she was happy with just that. She let herself exist in that space, in the calm that came with imagining a world where you didn't exist. A weekend of relative peace, of daydreams that made her anger feel manageable.

But then Monday came.

And Tara saw you again.

You were standing in the hallway, smiling up at Chad like he was the only person in the world. His arm was slung casually around your shoulders, his head tilted toward yours in that stupid, familiar way that made Tara's stomach twist.

It was like being set on fire all over again.

Her chest burned, her vision blurred, and that fleeting peace she'd found over the weekend vanished in an instant. The rage came roaring back, hotter and more vicious than ever, tearing through her like a wildfire.

Because the thought of you being gone wasn't enough anymore. Not when you were right there, so close, so perfect, so fucking smug without even trying.

Tara's fists clenched at her sides, her nails digging into her palms until they left crescent-shaped indents. Her jaw tightened, her teeth grinding as she stared at you, as she watched you.

You didn't belong there. You didn't belong under his arm. You didn't belong anywhere near him.

And now? Now, Tara knew what she had to do.

It wasn't a matter of if anymore. It was a matter of when.

Because just thinking about it wasn't enough. Not anymore.

She was going to kill you.

And she was going to feel better for it.

___

Tara had everything prepared.

The thought of it had consumed her, growing like a rock inside her chest, feeding off her every waking moment until it was impossible to ignore.

And now, it was time.

She had spent days balancing on the edge of dread and longing, torn between the weight of what she was about to do and the twisted satisfaction she knew it would bring. It wasn't something she wanted—not really. But it was something she had to do. The only way to end the torment that had been eating away at her since the moment she saw you with him.

So Tara had done her research, gathering every scrap of information she could. She watched you closely—closer than ever. She had listened, observed, bided her time until the perfect opportunity revealed itself.

And it had.

It had been math class on Monday afternoon, and Tara had been lucky enough to snag a seat directly behind you and your friends. Normally, she would've tuned out your conversation entirely, drowning it in her thoughts. But this time, she had leaned in, careful to catch every word.

You'd been talking about the upcoming math test, about how you'd be studying for it Wednesday afternoon. Alone.

Your parents were going to be at some lame work conference, and they'd decided to take your younger brother along to make a trip out of it. You'd rolled your eyes as you explained how stupid it all sounded, but Tara hadn't cared about your opinion.

All she cared about was the opening.

You'd be home. Alone.

It was perfect.

Tara's pencil had hovered over her notebook as she pretended to take notes, but her mind wasn't on algebra. It was spinning with possibilities, with plans, with the kind of clarity that had eluded her for weeks.

When the bell rang and you left the room with your friends, Tara sat frozen in her seat for a moment, her fists clenched around the edge of her desk. The pounding in her chest felt louder than the shuffle of students leaving the classroom, louder than the voices in the hallway.

Because now, it wasn't just an idea.

It was a plan.

Wednesday. After school. It would be done.

And finally, finally, she would feel better.

Wednesday came, and Tara felt something she hadn't in weeks. Happiness.

It wasn't the fleeting, muted kind that came and went without leaving a trace. No, this was sharp, visceral, alive. She could feel it buzzing beneath her skin, coiling around her chest like a warm, electric current.

She didn't remember the last time she'd woken up this excited. It was like every nerve in her body had been lit aflame, pushing her through the motions of her morning routine with a sense of purpose she hadn't felt in so long.

Because today was the day.

Every second that ticked by brought her closer to it. To you. To the end of the endless cycle of rage and jealousy that had consumed her. She could picture it already—vivid, perfect, satisfying.

You'd be scared, of course. How could you not be? She imagined the way your eyes would widen, the way you'd stammer out a pathetic plea. You'd try to push her off, scramble for an escape, but it wouldn't work.

It wouldn't work because you were weak. You weren't like her. You didn't know what it meant to fight, to claw your way through something until you got what you wanted. You'd crumble like paper.

And then you'd be gone.

She could see the aftermath so clearly it almost felt real. Chad, walking through the school corridors alone, his shoulders slumped with the weight of grief. His face twisted in pain as he thought about you.

And then—then he'd come back to her. He had to. It was inevitable, wasn't it? He'd remember how good things were with her, how much better they could be now that you were out of the picture. He'd pull himself to her, broken but needing her to put him back together.

It was all Tara could think about.

The entire day felt like a blur, her mind too preoccupied to focus on anything else. Teachers droned on and on about tests and essays, classmates chatted about meaningless things, but none of it mattered. Nothing mattered except what was waiting for her after school.

And yet, the anger was still there.

It simmered beneath the surface, coiled tight in her chest, a constant reminder that nothing was done yet. You were still there, still laughing and smiling and making her blood boil with every second that passed.

In English class, she caught sight of you leaning over Chad's desk, your voice low as you explained something to him. Grammar, maybe. Whatever it was, Tara didn't care.

What she cared about was the way he was looking at you. That stupid, soft smile, the same one he used to give her.

It made her stomach turn.

You didn’t even know what you were doing, she thought bitterly, her fists clenching beneath her desk. You didn't know him. You didn't know how to help him, not like she did. You weren't supposed to be there, leaning over his shoulder, pointing at his textbook like you had any idea what you were doing.

Tara's jaw tightened, her teeth grinding together as she stared at the two of you.

But it was fine. It wouldn't matter soon enough.

By the time the final bell rang, she was practically buzzing with anticipation, her hands trembling as she shoved her books into her bag.

Because today was the day.

And by the time it was over, you'd be gone. Forever.

By the time last period rolled around, Tara could barely contain herself. She was bouncing her leg under the desk, the rapid up-and-down movement making the surface wobble slightly. It wasn't stress, though. Not even close.

It was excitement.

Because in just a few hours, everything would be different. You'd be gone.

She'd spent the entire day anticipating this moment, and now that it was so close, she could hardly breathe. Her chest felt tight, but not in the way it used to when the anger consumed her. This was something else—something electric, like a firework waiting to explode.

When the bell finally rang for the last time that day, Tara practically shot out of her seat. Her heart was pounding, her pulse thrumming in her ears as she sprinted to her locker, dodging through the crowded hallway like her life depended on it.

She grabbed her things in a flurry, barely paying attention to what she was stuffing into her bag. The details didn't matter. Nothing mattered except getting out of there as quickly as possible.

The walk home was a blur. She couldn't even remember the route she took, but she knew it was fast because she'd gotten there in record time. She practically burst through the door of the apartment, slamming it shut behind her with a force that rattled the frame.

The space was empty, just as she'd hoped. Sam wasn't home, probably still at the café down the street where she worked long shifts most afternoons.

Tara didn't waste any time. She stormed into her room, yanking her bag off her shoulder and dumping its contents onto the bed. Books, hair ties, pens, and random scraps of paper spilled out in a messy heap. She didn't bother organizing any of it, her focus locked on what came next.

She started packing what she'd need instead.

First came the basics: a pair of gloves she'd swiped from the closet, a small hand towel, and a few cleaning supplies she'd found under the sink. Just in case.

Then there was the book. She'd borrowed it from the library earlier that day, an afterthought at the time, but now it served a purpose. If anyone asked what she'd been doing when you turned up dead, she'd have an alibi.

And then there was the knife.

Tara headed to the kitchen, her hands trembling slightly as she opened the drawer where Sam kept the cutlery. She stared at the knives for a moment, her breathing shallow as she considered her options.

Finally, she picked one.

It wasn't the largest or the sharpest, but it felt solid in her grip. Familiar, almost.

She held it for a moment, staring down at the blade as it caught the light. Her reflection stared back at her, warped and fragmented in the metal, but she didn't flinch.

She took a deep breath, steadying herself before tucking the knife into her bag.

This was it.

She was ready.

Tara zipped her bag shut and slung it over her shoulder, not even sparing a second thought for the knife or the other incriminating items inside. Evidence of what was about to happen was tucked away in plain sight, but the thought didn't concern her. Why would it? She wasn't going to get caught.

She paused in the doorway of the apartment, pulling out her phone to double-check the address one last time. It was burned into her memory by now, but a quick glance wouldn't hurt. She'd found it easily enough a week ago, scouring the school directory that had been left out in the counselor's office during one of her "mandatory check-ins." Your address had been listed next to your emergency contacts, all neatly typed out.

Perfect.

Satisfied, she slipped her phone back into her pocket and stepped out into the hallway. The stairwell echoed with her footsteps as she made her way down, each step slow and deliberate. She wasn't in a rush. Not yet.

The walk to your house wasn't short, but it wasn't unbearably long either. Just far enough to give her plenty of time to think, to imagine, to savor the anticipation building in her chest like a drug.

Tara was thrilled.

Not just because of what she was about to do, but because of how clever she'd been about it. The idea had struck her like lightning, and the more she thought about it, the more genius it seemed. She wasn't just solving a problem—she was removing it, erasing it entirely.

As she walked, her thoughts grew darker, more vivid. She pictured you in front of her, on your knees, crying and begging her to stop. But she wouldn't stop. She'd pin you down with a strength you couldn't fight against, her hands steady, her resolve unshakable.

Her gaze flicked down to her white Converse, and she pictured them splattered with red. Blood staining the canvas, dripping onto the pavement, marking every step she took.

She imagined your blood on her hands, warm and slick, streaked across her fingers like war paint. She pictured your face as she hovered over you, the way your eyes would widen with fear, the way your mouth would open to scream—only to be silenced.

The image sent a thrill through her, a jolt of satisfaction that made her grin.

To anyone else, these thoughts would be horrifying. Disturbing. Insane.

But to Tara, they were... liberating.

She couldn't wait.

Tara had dreamt about this moment. Every detail had been mapped out in her mind, as vivid and meticulous as if it had already happened. She hadn't missed a single thing while planning it.

She knew exactly how it would go.

You'd answer the door, your steps light as they always seemed to be. When the door swung open, you'd greet her with that confused little smile, the one that would tug at the corner of your lips as you tried to figure out what she was doing there.

She could already imagine the polite mask you'd pull on, hiding the confusion behind your soft smile as you asked—probably in that gentle, saccharine voice Chad loved so much—what she was doing at your house.

And Tara would match your politeness, feigning a warm, almost apologetic smile as she began to speak. She'd tell you that you'd left the classroom before the teacher had a chance to hand you a paper—a makeup assignment for the math test you were apparently struggling with. She'd tell you how she'd volunteered to bring it to you, mentioning offhandedly that your house was "on the way" to hers.

It wasn't.

But you were probably stupid enough to believe it.

Tara could almost see the way you'd nod, your suspicion melting away as you stepped aside to let her in. And that's when she'd set her plan into motion.

She'd unzip her bag slowly, her movements deliberate, casual, as if she really were pulling out a sheet of paper. She'd even keep talking, her voice calm, explaining how the assignment wasn't that difficult, just a review of material you should already know.

But when her hand came out of the bag, it wouldn't be holding any paper.

It would be holding the knife.

The image was so clear in her mind, so vivid that it felt real. She could see the shock on your face, the way your smile would drop, the way your eyes would widen. She'd let you stand there, frozen and clueless, for just a moment before she lunged.

The first stab would be quick, precise. She'd aim for your stomach, the blade plunging in before you had a chance to react. And as you stumbled back, clutching at the wound, she'd step inside, closing the door behind her with her free hand.

It wouldn't stop there. It couldn't.

She'd keep going, stabbing again and again, her movements frenzied but deliberate, each strike fueled by the rage that had been festering inside her for weeks.

By the time you hit the floor, Tara would already be kneeling over you, her knife rising and falling with a terrifying rhythm.

She'd finish it. Completely.

Tara found herself smirking at the thought, her steps quickening as she neared your street. The plan played out in her head like a movie she'd already watched a hundred times, each scene perfectly clear, perfectly executed.

The thought of it all—the fear in your eyes, the blood on her hands, the peace that would finally follow—was almost enough to make her laugh.

By the time she reached your street, her smirk had settled into something more fixed, more certain. The weight of the knife in her bag wasn't something she second-guessed. There was no hesitation in her steps, no flicker of doubt in her mind. She had played this moment over so many times that it felt inevitable, like she was simply walking through a prewritten script.

And then she saw your house.

That perfect, suburban home—one of those places that looked like it had been plucked from a family sitcom. The kind of house where nothing bad was ever supposed to happen. The driveway was empty, just like it was supposed to be. No parents home. No witnesses. But that didn't matter.

What mattered was that you had all of this.

Tara felt her stomach twist in something that wasn't quite anger, wasn't quite jealousy, but a poisonous mix of both. The house itself was nice—not a mansion, but big enough that she knew you had space that was yours. No sharing. No constantly moving from one place to another. You had stability. The porch light was already on despite the sun still clinging to the sky, because you had parents who actually cared if you got home in the dark.

Parents who were probably normal.

Not like hers.

And it wasn't just the house. It was everything. The car parked on the curb—the one that she knew was yours and not some shared family vehicle. The way your front yard was neatly kept, the way there was a welcome mat in front of the door, the way it all screamed a life she never had.

It made her hate you even more.

But that hate only made her more certain. Because soon, none of it would matter. Your perfect house, your caring parents, your stupid little car—they would all be meaningless.

Soon, the only thing you'd have was a gravestone with your name carved into it.

And that made her happy.

Tara forced herself to relax as she walked up the front steps, adjusting her bag on her shoulder. She let out a slow breath, schooling her expression into something neutral. She wasn't just about to commit murder—no, she was just a classmate doing a favor, dropping off an assignment.

The thought almost made her laugh.

She reached the front door, lifting a fist and knocking twice against the wood.

The house was quiet. Peaceful.

But soon, Tara imagined, it would be fuller.

Fuller with screams.

And then—she heard it.

A soft, thoughtless hum from the other side of the door. Light, airy, clueless.

Her hands twitched at her sides, damp with sweat before she even realized it. A sick, twisted heat pooled in her stomach, curling around her ribs like a vice, because for the first time all day, something foreign crawled up her spine.

Nerves.

Real, undeniable, nerves.

She clenched her fists, nails digging into her palms.

No. No. That wasn't right. She had waited for this.

She had planned, dreamed, prepared for this exact moment. She was supposed to feel good. Excited.

Not like this.

Not like her body had turned against her.

Tara's jaw tightened, anger sparking white-hot beneath her skin, because that was your fault, too.

Of course, it was.

You were the one who made her feel this way. You were the reason her mind had been tangled in knots for weeks, the reason she couldn't breathe without choking on the thought of you, the reason everything felt so wrong.

And that was why she was here.

She sucked in a sharp breath, planting her feet firmly on the doorstep, pushing the shaking from her hands, the sweat from her palms.

Because it didn't matter.

It didn't matter that her heart was hammering against her ribs. It didn't matter that her mind was racing.

All that mattered was that you were coming.

And then—

A quiet shuffle of footsteps.

Closer.

Tara's stomach twisted.

Another step.

And another.

The shadow of movement from behind the glass.

And then—

The door clicked as the lock turned.

The handle shifted.

And Tara stopped breathing.

The door swung open.

And there you were.

Tara didn't know what she had expected. She had run through this moment in her head too many times to count, had pictured every detail—the way you'd react, the way she'd feel, the way it would finally happen. But none of those versions had prepared her for the real thing.

Because the real thing was you—standing there, so normal, so alive in a way that made something tighten in her chest.

You hadn't even looked to see who it was before your lips curled into a soft, polite smile, like answering the door and finding someone waiting for you was just another part of your evening. Like she was just another part of your evening.

And Tara—

Tara froze.

Her grip tightened around the strap of her bag, fingers stiff, nails pressing into her palm. The weight of it suddenly felt too heavy, dragging her down, pinning her in place.

You weren't looking at her yet, not fully, but she could see the moment it registered. The way your eyes flickered, widening just a little before settling, before you adjusted.

Tara swallowed hard, throat dry.

She hadn't planned for this—for the way time seemed to slow, for the way her pulse slammed against her ribs, not in anger but in something else, something unreadable. She had prepared for every possible scenario, had thought through every single step. She knew exactly what she had to do.

So why the fuck wasn't she doing it?

Why was she standing there, frozen, when this was exactly what she had been waiting for?

Her stomach twisted, a sick, sudden nausea creeping in.

She had to say something.

She had to move.

But she just stood there, staring.

It was like her body had short-circuited, her mind blanking out in a way it never did. She had pictured this moment a hundred times, had mapped it out in her head with a precision so sharp it felt real—but now? Now, standing in front of you, with your stupid soft smile and your wide, expectant eyes, everything felt wrong.

She was supposed to have control.

She was supposed to speak first.

But before she could force a single word out of her mouth—

"Oh my God, Tara!"

Your voice hit her like a slap to the face.

Not just because of the voice—bright, warm, too friendly for what this moment was meant to be—but because of how you said her name.

Wrong.

You stretched out the A like it belonged there, like you had never even considered the right way to say it.

Tara's stomach twisted, her nose scrunching slightly before she could stop it.

She hated when people did that.

It wasn't even complicated. It wasn't hard.

Tara. Short. Sharp. Simple.

Why the fuck would it be anything else?

But then—before she could even say anything, before she could snap at you the way she wanted to—you noticed.

Not in the way most people did.

You didn't fumble over yourself, didn't look nervous, didn't react like someone who had just made a mistake in front of the wrong person.

No.

You just... realized.

"Oh—sorry. It's Tara, right?"

And this time, you said it right.

Tara felt something hot crawl up her spine.

You didn't wait for her to correct you.

You didn’t need her to tell you you were wrong.

You figured it out on your own.

And yet, you still smiled.

"I'm sorry, I totally suck at names," you added, your voice easy, a small, amused sigh slipping through a quiet giggle.

A giggle.

Like this was nothing.

Like you weren't standing in your doorway, staring at someone who had come here to kill you.

Tara's grip on her bag tightened.

You weren't nervous.

Not even a little.

Why weren't you nervous?

You were supposed to be. Yet she was the one that was.

Tara didn't know what the fuck was happening to her.

This wasn't right.

She was supposed to be in control. She was supposed to be sharp, precise, already halfway inside your house by now, setting her plan into motion.

But instead, she stood there.

Frozen.

Silent.

She couldn't speak.

Her body acted before her mind caught up, lips pressing together in something barely resembling a smile. Thin. Tense. Fake.

"It's fine," she mumbled, her voice lower than she intended.

It wasn't fine.

Nothing about this was fine.

And yet, you still didn't ask her what she was doing here.

You didn't look suspicious. You didn't hesitate. You didn't ask.

Tara could feel something bubbling in her chest, frustration twisting in with something else, something hotter, sharper.

Why weren't you asking?

Why weren't you wary?

Why weren't you treating her like a stranger who had no reason to be on your doorstep?

But before she could dwell on it for too long, your face lit up even more—

And you started talking.

"I've actually been wanting to speak to you for a while."

Your voice was too warm. Too light.

Tara's jaw clenched.

"This whole thing with Chad..."

You trailed off, tucking a bit of hair behind your ear, tilting your head ever so slightly as your eyes flicked to her face—

Waiting.

Waiting to see if she reacted to his name.

And fuck, she did.

She hated that she did.

But you didn't seem to notice.

Or maybe you did, but you didn't care.

You just continued, words spilling out like you had been holding them in for too long.

"I wanted to ask if you guys were fine before... yeah, you know."

Tara didn't need you to finish that sentence.

She knew exactly what you meant.

Before you.

Before Chad moved on.

Before you ruined everything.

Her nails dug into the strap of her bag.

And still, you didn't stop talking.

"I know we're not friends and barely know each other," you admitted, still looking at her with that same softness. That genuine fucking softness that made her stomach twist in ways it shouldn't.

"But you're really nice," you went on.

Tara almost laughed at that.

Nice.

You thought she was nice.

And then—

"I just didn't want to make you uncomfortable or, you know... secretly hate me."

The way you said it was almost casual, like it was just a thought, something light, something small—

But Tara felt her heartbeat slam against her ribs.

You didn't know.

You had no idea.

And for the first time since she got here, she felt a flicker of something close to panic.

You didn't hate her.

You weren't afraid of her.

You thought she was nice.

What the fuck was she supposed to do with that?

Tara tried to reason with herself.

If she just did it now, everything would be fine.

If she just said what she planned to say, if she reached for her bag, if she pulled out the knife instead—

It would be over.

It would be done.

You would be nothing but a mess on the floor, and Chad would be devastated, and he would come crawling back, and everything would go back to how it was supposed to be.

So why wasn't she moving?

Her fingers twitched against the strap of her bag, but her body stayed rooted to the spot.

She wanted to.

Oh, how she wanted to.

She had dreamed about this moment.

Had imagined the way you'd look at her—terrified, confused, realizing too late what was about to happen.

She had longed for it.

And yet—

She couldn't.

For some stupid, inexplicable reason, she couldn't.

Something in her wouldn't let her.

What the fuck was she even thinking earlier?

Why did she think this would be easy?

Why did she think she could just walk up here and do it like it was nothing?

Her head felt too full, a war raging behind her eyes, pushing, pulling, twisting.

She wasn't supposed to hesitate.

She wasn't supposed to second-guess herself.

She was supposed to kill you.

So why was it suddenly feeling impossible?

You studied her face as she stood there, silent.

To you, it probably looked like she was still hurt over Chad.

Like she was standing here, struggling to find the right words, caught up in old feelings she hadn't moved past yet.

And when she didn't answer, you didn't take it the way you should have.

You didn't question why she was just standing there.

You didn't wonder why she was looking at you like that, like something wasn't clicking in her head.

Instead—you invited her in.

You stepped back, opening the door a little wider, glancing at her with the same warm expression you had greeted her with.

"Do you want to come inside?"

Tara blinked.

For a second, she thought she misheard you.

But you weren't kidding.

You were actually letting her in.

You, the person she had been planning to kill, were offering to welcome her into your home.

You didn't even know her.

And when she didn't immediately respond, you just smiled a little and added, "Only if you want to."

That was it.

No hesitation. No suspicion. No fear.

Why weren't you scared of her?

Why weren't you acting like someone who was about to die?

Her fingers clenched tighter around the strap of her bag.

She should leave.

She should end this.

She should do what she came here to do.

And yet—

Almost without thinking, she found herself nodding.

Slowly, stiffly.

And then she was stepping inside.

Her body was acting on its own, ignoring the part of her mind still screaming at her to just fucking do it already.

She heard you close the door behind her.

She stood there, fists tightening at her sides, eyes flickering around your house—your nice, warm, safe house that made her sick.

And then you were talking again, so casually, so easily.

"I'm trying to study for the math test, but it's not going really well."

You let out a small, light laugh, like this was nothing.

Like she was just a friend stopping by instead of a fucking killer in your home.

Tara didn't know why she followed you.

Why her feet carried her further inside instead of turning around and doing what she was supposed to do.

She barely processed the way you walked ahead of her, leading her through the house like she belonged there.

Like she wasn't holding a knife in her bag.

Like she wasn't planning to use it.

Her fingers curled tighter around the strap, knuckles aching from the pressure, but she still didn't stop.

She stepped past the entryway, eyes flickering over everything she could see—the framed artwork on the walls, the coat rack near the door, the way the house smelled warm, lived in. There was something painfully normal about all of it. Too normal. It made her stomach turn.

And then her gaze landed on it.

The photo sitting neatly on the shelf above the couch.

She didn't mean to stop. Didn't mean to let her focus linger. But she did.

It was you.

Your family.

Your mom, your dad, your little brother.

All of you smiling, arms wrapped around each other like you had never known anything but happiness.

Her throat burned.

Her chest felt tight, like someone had wrapped their hands around her ribs and squeezed.

She didn't know why.

She didn't fucking know why.

All she knew was that she hated that picture.

Hated the way you had that.

Hated the way she couldn't even imagine a photo like that of her own family.

Most definitely not framed in the living room.

Her mouth pressed into a hard line, her grip tightening around the strap of her bag.

The weight of the knife sat heavy inside, like it was taunting her.

She should reach for it.

She should pull it out and remind herself why she was here.

But her body still wouldn't move.

And that made her furious.

Why the fuck was she just standing here?

Why wasn't she doing anything?

It would be so easy.

A few steps. A flick of her wrist.

Blood against the perfect little life you had.

A stain.

A reminder that nothing was ever really safe.

So why couldn't she do it?

Her fingers twitched at her sides.

Her pulse pounded in her ears, drowning out everything else—until your voice cut through the haze.

"Tara?"

She blinked.

Snapped back to the moment.

You were looking at her now, head slightly tilted, waiting for her to follow you further inside.

She forced her jaw to unclench, tearing her eyes away from the photo and moving again.

She followed you into the living room.

And that was when she saw the mess of notes and open notebooks spread out across the coffee table.

Pens scattered. Pages half-filled with numbers and formulas. Homework left abandoned mid-thought.

She stared.

She didn't even know why.

Maybe it was because it was so normal.

Like you had no idea what was standing right in front of you.

Like she wasn't supposed to be anything other than some classmate stopping by with an assignment.

Her fingers twitched against the strap of her bag.

Maybe if she just—

Your voice cut through the silence again, still light, still unbothered.

"You can sit down if you want."

You motioned toward the couch, as if this was just normal.

As if she wasn't standing in your house, her heart hammering, her mind completely unraveling.

Tara swallowed hard, forcing her feet forward.

One step.

Then another.

She made it halfway across the room before stopping again, her breath catching somewhere in her throat.

She shouldn't be here.

She shouldn't be doing this.

She should just grab the knife, should just do what she fucking came here to do.

But she couldn't.

And she didn’t know why.

[fkinkindagauche]

Somebody Has to Arrange the Matches

This is a prompt fill for @steddiebingo Round One, prompt "Dustin Henderson". Full fic on AO3.

Rating: Explicit | WC: 5,398 | CW: None | Tags: Dustin Henderson parent trap, gay Eddie Munson, Steve Harrington speed runs his sexuality crisis, first kiss, mutual pining, friends to lovers, frottage

Summary: Dustin is adamant that Eddie Munson deserves to find love, after all he's been through. Once Dustin figures out some things about Eddie, he gets to work making it happen.

divider by @steddiecameraroll-graphics

Eddie was being cagey again.

It had become Dustin's personal mission now that Eddie was out of the hospital to get the man a girlfriend. As far as Dustin could tell from his probing questions to the Corroded Coffin guys, Eddie had never had a girlfriend, which was honestly shocking to Dustin. Sure, Eddie could be pretty over the top, but everyone liked him. And it wasn't like he was ugly. So he must just be too shy or something. Dustin wanted to help.

Dustin currently had him cornered in Gareth's garage, away from the rest of the group. They'd just finished a D&D session at Gareth's house, with a Corroded Coffin practice scheduled after. Dustin, Lucas, Mike, and Will were waiting for Steve to pick them up before the practice started. Dustin was doing his utmost to get Eddie to go out with one of Robin's band geek friends, but Eddie was resisting all of his attempts.

"Henderson, no." Eddie sounded exactly like Steve did after Dustin had asked for a ride about ten times, trying to get a no to magically change to a yes. "I'm not going to ask Veronica out."

"Why not?" Dustin asked, voice raised. "She's a huge nerd, she flirts with you, like, non-stop, and she's hot."

Eddie sighed. "I'm just not into her."

Dustin groaned, tugging his hands through his hair in frustration. "Are you into anyone? Every time I bring someone up, you shoot the option down."

"Well, I don't like your options, bud. They're not good options."

"That's objectively false!" Dustin yelled. "Most guys would kill for some of the options I've presented!" Why did Eddie have to be like this?

"How can it be objectively false?" Eddie shot back. "It's literally my opinion. The definition of subjective."

Dustin glared at him. He hated when Eddie tried to outsmart him. He hated how often it worked. Steve drove up just as Dustin was opening his mouth for a rebuttal.

"Thank the fucking Lord," Eddie muttered. "Please take this young whippersnapper off of my hands before I kill him," Eddie yelled to Steve when he got out of his car.

"Oh, great," Steve said. "Can't wait to spend the next 15 minutes with a feisty Henderson in my car."

God, they were both such turds sometimes. Dustin sighed loudly and stomped over to Steve's car. "This isn't over, Munson!" he called over his shoulder. Eddie flipped him off in response.

He grabbed the passenger seat before Mike, Lucas, or Will even made it to the car, much to their chagrin. Steve chatted with Eddie for a few moments, Eddie leaning into his space as per usual, slinging an arm over Steve's shoulder.

Dustin leaned over and honked the horn.

"Really, Dustin?" Steve yelled, hands on his hips.

"Some of us have places to be!" Dustin yelled back.

"Where do you have to be?" Lucas asked from the backseat.

Dustin shrugged. "It's the principle of the thing."

Steve spent a few more moments talking to Eddie, probably just to piss Dustin off, then came back to the car.

Dustin gave Steve 30 seconds to adjust, watching the time tick by on his watch. He'd been told off one too many times for immediately starting an interrogation, so this was his compromise with the world. As soon as his watch hit the 30 second mark, he started in.

"So why doesn't Eddie ever date anyone?" Dustin asked, talking over whatever conversation Mike and Will had been having in the back.

Steve glanced at Dustin with a confused expression on his face. "What?"

"From the intel I've gathered, Eddie's never had a girlfriend," Dustin said. "He turns down all of my suggestions for potential dates. But if anyone deserves a girlfriend, it's him. He's, like, a hero. I want to help him find his Suzie."

"Excuse me, what am I? Chopped liver?" Steve interjected. "Why aren't you trying to find me a girlfriend?"

Dustin rolled his eyes. "You've had a million girlfriends, Steve. Give some of the other poor dudes a chance."

"Yeah, Steve. You're kind of hogging the eligible young women of Hawkins," Mike piped up from the back seat.

"I haven't had a girlfriend since Nancy," Steve protested.

"But you do still get around," Dustin insisted.

"Whatever, man." Steve shook his head. "Why don't you let Eddie do his own thing? Maybe he's just picky."

Dustin crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back, not responding. Steve was wrong. Eddie deserved his own Suzie. And Dustin wasn't going to give up on helping him find her.

"So I saw this girl the other day at the arcade," Dustin started. He and Eddie were at the trailer, painting some miniatures. It was his mom's night working late, and Dustin had started spending it with either Eddie or Steve on alternating weeks.

Eddie groaned. "Not again, Henderson. Can't we go, like, one day without this shit?"

"But Eddie! I think you'd really like her. She had a mohawk. Dyed pink. And her nose was pierced."

Eddie dropped his head into his hands, smearing some red paint on his cheek. He stayed that way for a few moments, quieter for much longer than usual. Dustin worried for a moment that he might have broken him. When Eddie finally looked up, his face was serious in a way it almost never was. He reached out for Dustin's hand.

"Dustin. I'm about to tell you something, and you cannot freak out about it. And you can't tell anyone else about it, either. Am I clear?" Usually, Dustin would have thought a joke was coming after an intro like that from Eddie. But he seemed completely earnest this time, so Dustin actually considered what he'd asked.

"What about Suzie?" Dustin asked. "Can I tell Suzie?"

Eddie sighed. "Yeah, you can tell Suzie."

"Alright," Dustin said. "I agree to your terms. No freak out, no telling anyone other than Suzie."

Eddie nodded. "Okay." He took a deep breath and looked away. "I'm gay, Dustin."

It took Dustin a second for his brain to parse what he'd just heard. Eddie. Heavy metal band member, dungeon master Eddie.

"I'm sorry, you're what?" Dustin squeaked. He must have misheard.

"I'm gay," Eddie repeated. "Queer, fruity, a homo, a friend of Dorothy, a fairy. I like men. That's why none of your options have sounded remotely appealing to me. That's why I've never had a girlfriend."

Dustin sat back in his chair, stunned. A lot of things were making sense now.

"Oooookay," Dustin said, nodding. So now he had to find Eddie a boyfriend. More difficult, but he liked a challenge. "So what's your type? We can find you a boyfriend."

Eddie barked out a laugh, throwing his head back. He looked relieved. "Are you serious? That's your only question, what's my type?"

"Of course that's not my only question, who do you think I am?" Dustin was a little offended. "That's just my most pressing question."

"I think this is the best response I've gotten so far to coming out," Eddie said, crossing his arms over his chest and leaning back in his chair.

Dustin felt pretty good about that. "Well? Are you gonna answer?"

Eddie chuckled. "I should've known this wouldn't make you give up your weird crusade." He pulled a few strands of hair in front of his mouth, chewing on the ends while he thought. "My type? I'm not totally sure, honestly, haven't had much of a chance to find out, living in Hawkins. I guess probably my height or maybe shorter, but not much taller. On the masculine side of things, almost the jock physique. Hairy. Brunette."

Dustin nodded after each characteristic, mentally taking note. "Those are all physical things. What about personality?"

Eddie had to think a little harder about that one, looking into the distance. "Um. Kinda goofy, I guess? Not too macho. Sense of humor." Eddie trailed off and looked at Dustin sharply. "Henderson, if you go around asking the men of Hawkins if they're queer so you can try to find a date for me, you're gonna get beat to shit."

Dustin held up his hands. "You really think I'm that stupid? Give me some credit here, Eddie."

"You have a track record of failing to read the room, man," Eddie pointed out.

That absolutely wasn't true. Dustin was very tactful. He could be quite subtle when he wanted to be. Eddie just never got to see that side of him.

"I'll be careful," Dustin insisted. "I'm not gonna ask anyone if they're gay."

"Alright," Eddie said, but he didn't look convinced. Dustin would show him.

The idea hit Dustin the next week, when he was spending his mom's late work night with Steve. They were out by the pool, and Steve's hairy chest was on full display, with all of its muscles. Dustin had Suzie, and she didn't want him to be muscular, but sometimes when he saw Steve's chest he couldn't deny the twinge of jealously.

Hairy. Muscular jock physique. Something was tickling at the back of Dustin's mind. Brunette. What was that? About as tall as Eddie.

Oh shit. Dustin dropped his Dr. Pepper as Steve yelled "COWABUNGA" and did a cannonball into the water. Kinda goofy.

It was Steve. Eddie had basically been describing Steve. Did Eddie even know? Had he been secretly pining after Steve this whole time? Or was it still subconscious?

Holy shit. But Steve liked girls. How was Dustin gonna make this work? Did he need to find a Steve doppelganger somewhere who was gay?

Steve popped out of the water, shaking his hair. He looked up at Dustin and the Dr. Pepper spilled all over the patio. "Everything alright there?" Steve asked. "You look like you saw a ghost."

Dustin nodded. "I- I'm good. Everything's fine!"

Steve shrugged and dove back under the water.

Dustin did some research over the next few days. If he was going to find a gay Steve doppelganger for Eddie, he needed to understand the culture - where he could find other queer people, the types of phrases they used to identify each other without being too blatant, that kind of stuff.

He tried finding books at the library, but came up empty-handed and probably on some sort of list the librarian kept of degenerates. So he had to resort to asking Eddie where he got all his information.

"Why do you wanna know?" Eddie asked with a suspicious glare.

"I just wanna understand you, man!" Dustin insisted, putting on his most innocent expression. "You're my friend, I wanna know what's going on with you."

Eddie reluctantly handed Dustin some zines he'd picked up in Indianapolis. "None of the raunchy stuff," Eddie said. "I'm not getting arrested for dealing gay pornography to minors."

Dustin made a disgusted face. "You could have just… not told me you even had raunchy stuff."

Eddie shrugged. "Where's the fun in that?"

Dustin spent hours that night poring over the zines, learning the lingo. He discovered an incredibly interesting fact in one of the zines - the existence of bisexuality. You could like both men and women. You didn't have to be either gay or straight.

This fact blew Dustin's mind, and the seeds of a different plan took root. What if Steve was bisexual, and he didn't even know it? That would be the easiest, most logical solution to the Eddie problem. Steve was Eddie's type; so what if Eddie was also Steve's type?

He talked about it with Suzie the following evening. She'd been shocked to learn that Eddie was gay. Mormons weren't exactly accepting of homosexuality. But she'd always played a little fast and loose with certain aspects of Mormonism, so Dustin was able to bring her around to the idea eventually.

"I don't know, Dusty Buns," she said as they were discussing his idea about Steve. "I don't think you can just make someone be bisexual."

"I'm not gonna make him be bisexual," Dustin insisted. "I'm just gonna try to show him that he already is."

"But what if he isn't?" she shot back.

"Then I'll go back to the doppelganger plan," he said with a sigh. "But I have to try. This is the simplest solution. Occam's razor."

"Dusty Buns, you know you're not using that correctly right now," Suzie scolded.

Dustin sighed. She never let him get away with anything.

Dustin paid a lot more attention to Steve and Eddie's interactions over the next few weeks. Now that he knew Eddie was gay, he couldn't believe he'd missed the signs pointing to his crush on Steve.

Eddie gravitated to Steve like a moth to a flame. It was like he had some sort of Steve-related sixth sense, his head immediately turning toward Steve whenever the man walked into a room.

He was a tactile guy with everyone, but whenever Steve was around, it was always Steve that Eddie was touching. Every time Dustin looked at the two of them, Eddie had a hand somewhere on Steve - slung around his shoulders, resting on one of his arms, brushing against one of his legs to get his attention.

Steve didn't seem to mind at all. He leaned into the physical contact, touching Eddie back almost as often as he was touched. They smiled at each other all the time. They got each other drinks and snacks and just in general acted like a goddamn couple. How had Dustin missed this?

He was gonna need to accelerate his timeline. These idiots needed to get together ASAP.

Read the rest of the fic on AO3.

[isaspsp]

I think my parents did pretty similar things. I'm feeling sensitive right now so, story sharing time.

I did misbehave every now and then, as all kids do. I don't remember this incident, but my mom does. I was doing whatever naughty thing, and she hit me to make me stop and discipline me. I stopped, started crying, and went away. My mom never hit me after that. She says it's one of her biggest regrets.

I remember when we got our big TV. I was maybe 8-9 and we had been at the store all day. I wasn't particularly interested in picking out a TV cus that seemed like adult business, and children have no right to poke their nose of that. But then, my dad crouches next to me, points to the final two tvs they were deciding between, and asked me which one I thought was best. And I do remember asking, "Why are you asking me this? I am a child." He laughed and said something among the lines of, "Children are always honest." And that gave me all the confidence and reassurance to choose what would be our TV for the next 10+ years.

They took the effort to see my side aswell. I grew up with my cousins. We were 6 kids in total, and with two of them being older, we 4 youngsters played together a lot. Of these four, the oldest used to bully me a lot (I bit him really hard once as revenge, but that is another story) and I had two younger cousins, the youngest of which, was the one I saw most often. He would come with us to trips and such. But he was the younger child, so he had preferences over me. If I had anything he wanted, I HAD to share. If he wanted to sit where I was, I had to move, lest he makes a fuss. But, if he had something that I wanted? He was under no obligation to share. It was Easter time, I was about 13 (?), and we had gotten ourselves fancy chocolate eggs. My aunt had gone along with us to shop. I'd done my research at the site of the store we were going to, so I knew exactly what I wanted. My aunt didn't know what to get my cousin, so she followed my lead and got him the same two eggs. My aunt used to be paid to clean our house once in a while and just so happened that that week my little cousin had come along. I was going to travel that weekend, and my eggs would be left behind, I'd only have them when we came back. So, having been thinking and fantasizing about the chocolate eggs for weeks, I sneaked around, opened one of the boxes, grabbed a piece, ate some, and put the rest in the refrigerator My aunt saw me do this. Later, my parents confronted me about it; my aunt had told them what happened, that I tried to hide just so I wouldn't have to share. I started crying about how if I didn't sneak around I would've had to share with my cousin, who had the exact same egg at his home, who wouldn't have to wait to come back from a trip, and that I would never get the same kindness back, the piece he would've taken from me, the egg that I so researched to get, that I beheaved and did well in school to get, I would have to give away, even if it was a small piece, and tgat, even if I asked nicely, my cousin wouldve said no, and nothing would be done anout it. And the damn was broken, so I mentioned also all the other times I had to give in because I was older, he was younger and I was bigger and could hurt him more. They looked at each other... and agreed with me. I was forced to share less after that. I still shared, of course, but now... I wasn't forced as much. (At least by my parents, we couldn't control everyone or course u_u)

I genuinely remember very VERY few times of my parents taking away my stuff or banning m3 from activities. If I remember at all, because all I have are "vague feelings" that it happened. And honestly, I think I turned out better for it.

I am exceptionally lucky in that my parents never hit me, grounded me, confiscated my things, banned me from my hobbies or threatened any of these actions to make me behave as a kid. as an adult it has made me realise how very very long a road most people have to traverse before they can take a statement like 'no rule that must be enforced by threat is legitimate' seriously.

[bettys-redwinesupernova]

BLOCK ME OUT

rafe cameron x fem!reader

SUMMARY: haunted by her ex’s cruel words, y/n wishes she could block herself out. but rafe sees her differently—like she hung the stars in the sky.

based on this ask !! thank you for this anon, apologies that it’s taken so long, but i hope it’s what you asked for and you enjoy it :) <3

(check out my other rafe cameron & drew starkey works here !!)

WARNINGS: appearance insecurities, angsty with a soft ending, soft!rafe, rafe thinking violent thoughts (nothing unusual😝), past emotionally/verbally abusive relationship (reader’s ex), crying, cursing, allusions to sex. (lmk if i missed anything !!)

WORD COUNT: 2k

THIRD PERSON +

Y/N stared at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, eyes tracing the features she had long since memorised yet never quite accepted. The fluorescent light above cast harsh shadows, making every perceived flaw stand out even more—the uneven texture of her skin, the way her cheeks seemed too full in certain angles but too hollow in others, the faint blemishes she could never quite cover no matter how much makeup she wore. Her fingers ghosted over her jawline, then moved to her lips, hesitating as if debating whether they were too thin or too full.

She sighed, dropping her hand and looking away. It didn’t matter. It never did.

“Y/N?”

Rafe’s voice echoed from the hallway, warm and familiar. He must have noticed how long she had been in here. She took a breath and composed herself before stepping out, her lips pulling into a small, forced smile.

“Hey,” she said casually.

He was sitting on the edge of the bed, watching her with that soft yet unreadable expression he sometimes had when he thought she wasn’t looking. His blue eyes flickered over her face, taking in every detail as if memorising it. She knew he was about to say something—probably a compliment, because he always did. And just like always, she prepared to ignore it.

“You look beautiful,” Rafe murmured, almost absentmindedly, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world.

Y/N scoffed quietly, shaking her head as she crossed the room. “No, I don’t.”

Rafe frowned slightly, his brows drawing together in concern, but he didn’t argue. He never did. Instead, he just watched as she climbed into bed beside him, her body curling up instinctively, as if trying to take up less space. He noticed that too.

It had started small, the little deflections. The way she would dismiss any compliment he gave her with a wave of her hand or a disbelieving laugh. At first, he assumed she was just being humble, but the more time he spent with her, the more he realized it was something else.

Something deeper.

A wound that hadn’t healed.

Rafe didn’t push. He didn’t ask. But he noticed.

Like the way her smile always faltered for just a second when someone called her pretty, as if the word physically pained her. Or how she always changed the subject when he told her she was beautiful, shifting the conversation so quickly it was almost seamless. If he wasn’t paying such close attention, he might’ve missed it.

But he was always paying attention.

Y/N knew she should appreciate Rafe’s compliments, knew that he wasn’t just saying them to be nice. But she couldn’t make herself believe them. Not after everything.

Not after him.

Her ex’s voice still lingered in the back of her mind like a ghost, whispering cruel words she could never quite erase.

“You really think you’re all that? God, Y/N, you’re so damn insecure it’s pathetic.”

“I don’t know why you even bother with makeup—it doesn’t help.”

“No one’s looking at you the way you think they are. You’re just… average.”

She had spent so much time believing those words, internalising them, letting them take root deep inside her until they became an unshakable truth. And now, even though he was gone, even though she had someone like Rafe in her life—someone who looked at her like she was the most breathtaking thing he’d ever seen—she still couldn’t silence that voice.

Rafe had never once made her feel anything less than wanted. He never criticised, never made offhanded comments that chipped away at her self-worth. But that didn’t mean she knew how to accept kindness when it was given to her.

She felt his fingers brush lightly against her arm, snapping her out of her thoughts.

“You tired?” he asked, voice low and gentle.

She nodded, grateful for the easy out. “Yeah. Just a long day.”

Rafe didn’t question it. He just reached over and pulled the blanket up over her, as if shielding her from whatever weight she was carrying. And maybe in his own way, he was.

She turned onto her side, facing away from him, but she could still feel his gaze on her, feel the warmth of his presence beside her.

For a moment, she let herself pretend that it was enough.

—

The night had started out perfectly.

Dinner was casual, nothing extravagant—just the two of them at his place, sitting across from each other, laughing between bites of food. It had been easy. Light. Y/N had almost felt normal, like the weight of her insecurities wasn’t pressing so hard against her ribs.

Rafe had been extra touchy that evening—his fingers brushing hers when he handed her a glass of wine, his palm resting at the small of her back as they moved through the house. Small touches, each one sending a shiver down her spine.

And now, here they were.

Y/N lay beneath him, the world shrinking to just the two of them, just the warmth of his body and the way his lips moved against hers like he couldn’t get enough. His hands skimmed her sides, slow and teasing, as if memorising every inch of her.

The air in the room had thickened, charged with something electric.

She should’ve been lost in it.

But she wasn’t.

Because the moment his fingers hooked under the hem of her shirt, inching it up over her ribs, that voice came creeping back.

“You think he really wants to see you?”

“You think he won’t notice how bad you look from this angle?”

“God, Y/N, you’re so damn insecure, it’s pathetic.”

She tensed.

Rafe noticed immediately.

His lips paused against her neck, and she felt his breath, felt the slight hesitation in his movements. “You okay?” he murmured, voice laced with concern.

Y/N forced a nod, forcing herself to push through it. Don’t ruin this. Don’t overthink it. Just let him love you.

But then his hands moved again, slipping beneath the fabric, and panic surged through her like a tidal wave.

Suddenly, she wasn’t here anymore. She was back in that old apartment, standing under fluorescent lighting as her ex tilted his head and examined her with a critical gaze.

“Your stomach isn’t as flat as you think.”

“I mean, yeah, you look good from the right angle, but not always.”

“Don’t get mad. I’m just being honest.”

Her breath hitched. The room felt smaller. Her chest ached.

She didn’t even realise she was shaking until Rafe pulled back, brows furrowed in confusion.

“Y/N?” His voice was softer now, laced with something she couldn’t place. “Talk to me, baby.”

But she couldn’t.

Because she was already spiralling.

She shoved at his chest lightly, needing space, needing air. And Rafe—sweet, perceptive Rafe—moved immediately, sitting back on his heels, giving her exactly what she needed. But even with the distance, she couldn’t breathe right.

“I—I can’t do this,” she choked out, her throat tightening. “I just—I don’t—”

Tears burned at the corners of her eyes, blurring her vision. She felt pathetic, completely unravelling in front of him over something so stupid.

But Rafe didn’t move, didn’t rush her. He just watched her, eyes scanning her face like he was trying to piece together what had broken.

She ran a shaky hand through her hair, her breaths coming faster. “I just—” Her voice cracked, and she squeezed her eyes shut. “I don’t feel good enough for you.”

The confession slipped out before she could stop it, and suddenly, the dam broke.

Tears spilled down her cheeks, and she covered her face with her hands, ashamed of how easily she was falling apart.

“Y/N…”

She felt the mattress dip as Rafe moved closer, but he didn’t touch her. He just waited.

Waited for her to speak.

Waited for her to let him in.

She sniffled, wiping at her tears, but more came. “I—I don’t get how you could look at me like you do,” she whispered. “I don’t get how you could actually—” She sucked in a shaky breath. “How you could actually want this.”

Rafe’s brows furrowed, confusion and pain flashing across his face. “What are you talking about?”

She let out a wet, bitter laugh. “I see myself, Rafe. I see what I look like from different angles. I know what people see.”

Rafe was shaking his head before she even finished speaking. “You don’t know what I see.”

She swallowed hard. “I just—” Her voice trembled. “I worry that… that you’re not actually attracted to me. That you just think you are.”

The silence stretched between them, heavy and thick.

And then, softly, carefully, Rafe asked, “Why do you think that?”

She exhaled shakily, dropping her gaze.

She didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want to open that box. But he deserved to know.

“My ex,” she finally whispered. “He… he made sure I knew what was wrong with me. All the time.”

Rafe went rigid.

She saw it—the way his jaw clenched, the way his hands curled into fists at his sides. He inhaled sharply through his nose, forcing himself to stay calm, but she could see the fire behind his eyes.

“Y/N,” he said, voice low and steady, like he was trying to keep himself from falling apart. “Tell me what he said to you.”

Her throat felt tight, but she forced the words out. “He told me I wasn’t as pretty as I thought. That my body wasn’t as nice as I thought. That I only looked good from certain angles.” Her voice cracked. “And I believed him.”

Rafe exhaled sharply, looking away, his hands gripping the sheets like he was barely holding himself together. She could see the anger simmering beneath his skin, the way he wanted to break something, to scream, to hurt the person who had done this to her.

But he didn’t.

Instead, he turned back to her, and when he spoke again, his voice was full of something even stronger than rage.

Love.

“Y/N,” he said, his tone soft but firm. “I need you to listen to me.”

She swallowed hard, nodding weakly.

He cupped her face gently, his thumbs brushing away her tears. “You are the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. And not just from certain angles. Always.”

She tried to look away, but he didn’t let her.

“You think I don’t notice the way you brush off my compliments? The way you never believe me when I tell you how fucking perfect you are?” His voice wavered slightly, but he kept going. “It kills me, Y/N. It kills me that someone made you feel like this. That someone convinced you that you weren’t enough.”

More tears welled in her eyes. “Rafe…”

“No.” His voice was raw now, his emotions spilling over. “You are everything to me. Everything. And I don’t just want you—I crave you. Every part of you. Every inch of you. I don’t care what angle, what lighting, what bullshit insecurity you think you have—I love all of it. Because it’s you.”

Her lip trembled. “But what if—”

“No what-ifs,” he interrupted, shaking his head. “You are enough. You are more than enough.”

She broke.

Sobs wracked her body, and Rafe pulled her into his arms, holding her like he would never let go. He whispered into her hair, his voice soothing and warm, telling her over and over again how perfect she was, how much he loved her, how much she meant to him.

And for the first time in a long time, she wanted to believe him.

Because when Rafe Cameron looked at her, he didn’t see flaws. He didn’t see imperfections.

He saw the stars.

And maybe, just maybe, she could learn to see them too.

(divider by @kodaswrld !!)

betty’s notes ౨ৎ ⋆｡˚

this was such a cute and emotional one :’) i had this written up before i went away but finally got to editing it, just spending eh next couple days editing and posting the requests in my drafts !!

i hope this is what you asked for anon !! and as always, likes, comments and reblogs are always appreciated :) don’t hesitate to request <3

[sandwitchstories]

Not-So Malevolent Shrine

Welcome back to more adventures in Mouse's Mini-verse! I just can't get enough of these two together!

For more adventures with Mouse and Dad!Sukuna, check out my Daddy Duty Series on my AO3 - Here! )

If you prefer to read this story on AO3 click here !

Author's Note: For anyone new to my Dad!Sukuna Series, Mouse is Sukuna's, currently, 2 year old daughter with reader.

Summary: Upon hearing Mouse yelling something in the backyard Sukuna heads out there to investigate. As per usual when this father and daughter combo are left unsupervised, hijinks commence.

WC: 1101

CW: reader is referred to as 'Mama' but not described, toddler dad Sukuna, girl dad!sukuna, true form Sukuna (4 arms), it's pretty much just plain Dilf Sukuna fluff and crack, SFW in every way, just family fluff, father and daughter fluff, I love them together, baby's first attempt at curse techniques

“Ma-leb-pu-tent Shine!!! I said Ma-leb-pu-tent SHIIIINE!!!.... Shine please and Thank you?”

Sukuna headed outside, curious just what his daughter was doing and even more curious about who she was talking to. He found her standing in the yard, doing what looked to be the toddler version of his palm sign for Malevolent Shrine. Ah, so that’s what she was trying to say.

“Mouse. What are you doing?” he asked, startling her and watching her whip around to face him.

“I tryin’ to do shine like Papa does but it no want to come for me. I even said please and thank you,” she told him with a frustrated look on her face.

“It is shrine not shine.” He stopped in front of her, towering over the toddler with his arms crossed. 

“I says that.”

“Why do you have a need of Malevolent Shrine, brat?” he asked, lips pursed as he waited for an explanation.

“That,” she turned and pointed behind her.

Sukuna saw the decent sized watermelon sitting in the grass a short distance away. He glanced down at her and asked why she had not done what should obviously have been her first choice before trying to unleash shrine. “Why didn’t you just ask Uraume or your mother?”

“No! Papa! Uhm… they no know…” she scratched her little pink head as she looked up at him.

His daughter may be a thief but at least she did not lie. He smirked down at her, “They told you to wait until after dinner, didn’t they?”

“Yes… but  starving Papa. I no have a tummy mouth but my tummy is empty and hungry, Papa!” She looked up at him with big huge pleading eyes.

Sukuna sighed before kneeling down on one knee. He reached out a hand and gripped her arm, pulling her closer with a gentle but firm tug. He tapped the tip of her little turned up nose when she looked up at him. Time to set her straight. Better do it while she was still young.

He kissed her forehead and turned her around so she was in front of him facing the watermelon. “Since the watermelon is only 1 thing and it has a small circumference-”

“Whats a cir-cub-prince?”

“Circumference. Its how big a circle needs to be. Notice how the watermelon is not very big?” she nodded. “That means it would be better to use a single slashing attack. Now, Do you want slices or chunks?”

“Chunks, please and thank you, Papa!” she said in a tone of victory, cheering her little hands up.

“Alright. Then this is what you want to use. Dismantle!” he moved his hand and the watermelon fell apart into perfect cubes.

“Thank you, Papa!!” Mouse bolted from his arms towards the juicy pile of green and pink contraband. She jumped up and down, squealing with delight before leaning down to grab a piece in either hand and come running towards him. She held up a piece to him. “You have some too, Papa!”

And wouldn’t luck have it that the moment he sunk his teeth in he heard your voice from behind. He didn’t have to look to know your hands were on your hips and your face was pinched in frustration. “What do you two think you are doing? You’re going to ruin your appetites!”

“Uh-oh, Papa!” Mouse said in a loud whisper to him. “She got her stink face on. We in big trouble.”

If you had heard her words or seen his face when she said it, he knew they would both be did. Even if not a single word she spoke was a lie. It was the perfect description for it. “Go get a piece for Mama. I’ll try to smooth it over.”

“Okay, Papa!” she nodded and took off running while he stood to face you. “I came outside to find her trying to use Malevolent Shrine to cut the watermelon she admittedly stole. But don’t worry precious one, I have corrected the error of her ways.”

“Here, mama!” Mouse said as she came running back, holding up a piece for you and eating a fresh new piece in her other hand.

“Oh you did?” You asked him, taking the watermelon from Mouse. You looked down at her and brushed bach hair from her eyes with your fingers. “So Papa already talked to you about how stealing is bad?”

“Nope! Papa taught me that to make little chunks you need to use dibanedele not Ma-leb-pu-tent shine. Because of the cir-cub-prince of a watermelon,” she explained as she held onto your robes with her sticky free hand.

You glared at Sukuna who just shrugged his shoulders. “I told you I corrected her on the error of her ways.”

“Papa is the best Papa!” Mouse laughed happily, blissfully unaware that you were conjuring the image of squashing her father’s head over and over and over again in your mind. She ran off to get more melon. 

“That’s your version of correcting the error of her ways?” you grumbled as he smirked. You shook your head, a small smile tugging at one corner of your lips. “I should have known before I even asked.”

“Mama, Papa! Come have more with me, please and thank you!” Mouse called, gesturing with her hands for you to join her.

You once again found yourself adopting the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ mentality with a sigh. You grabbed one of his hands and gave it a tug,  “Come on, we better go help her. There’s too much evidence there for her to eat all of it by herself and Uraume will be looking for that watermelon soon.”

“You want to teach her to eat the evidence of her crimes but I got the stink face merely for correcting which technique she needed for that situation?” he arched an eyebrow at you. 

Your eyes narrowed on his face. “Excuse me? Stink face?”

“Don’t be mad, precious one, it describes it accurately.”

You laughed and let him pull you in for a kiss. You cupped his face with your hands, letting him kiss you softly several times before you pulled back. “I supposed my having a stink face pairs well with your being a stinky head.”

“Ouch,” he said, screwing up his face and letting you go.

“Ouch in deed, ouch indeed. Now come, my beloved, we must go assist our little delinquent in covering her tracks.” It was a  life full of craziness that you led, but there was nowhere else you would rather be and you wouldn’t have it any other way.

[cranberry-queen]

@vanlydmarso Sure! So here's a chapter of a book I'm working on. In it:

Voice-of-Reason: Mark

The Wild Card: Andre

The Observer: Tina

The Instigator: Lily

The Driver: Sam

Mark pushed his way into the house, the weight of a plastic bag dangling from his wrist. He barely had time to shut the door before Tina’s voice—sharp and fast—rang through the house. Spanish. Heated.

In the kitchen, between the fridge and the island, Tina stood with her arms crossed, her foot tapping in that deadly, rhythmic way she did when her patience ran thin. Andre stood opposite her, rubbing the back of his neck, his shoulders hunched like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Mark didn’t need to understand the words to know the fight’s cause: Andre’s latest bout of unemployment.

Mark swiftly averted his gaze. Tina was the only person in the house who had no problem dishing out scoldings when necessary, and he had no intention of getting dragged into the crossfire. He made a beeline for the counter, dropped Andre’s change into the battered “Council Jar,” and set the Coke beside it before hopping the two steps down into the sunken living area. Without a word, he dropped onto the couch beside Lily and extended his bag of Sparkles toward her.

She beamed at him, plucked a yellow one from the bag, and popped it into her mouth after unwrapping it. Her thumb scrolled idly through a social media feed on her phone screen, but her ears were tuned to the kitchen. Lily was the only one of the other housemates who understood any Spanish—badly, but enough.

“Andre lost his job again?” Mark asked, voice low.

“Yup,” Lily said, still chewing. “His bartending gig was supposed to make up for the fact that Tina switched to part-time at Woolworths.”

Mark frowned. He remembered when Tina had cut her hours at the clothing store, relieved to finally focus on finishing her degree. They’d even celebrated.

“What’s worse,” Lily added, her voice dropping, “is that her contract’s locked until the next hiring cycle.”

Mark exhaled sharply through his nose. That explained why Tina’s voice had taken on that sharp, clipped edge. He watched as Lily reached for another sweet but paused, her gaze unfocused.

“Tina…” she tilted her head, listening, “She’s giving him a week to find a new job or she’s renting his half of the basement to someone else. He’s trying to guilt-trip her, but she’s not having it.”

Mark rubbed the back of his head. He could spot them the rent, had done it before. But Tina would shut him down before he even finished the offer. She’d told him once, in that firm, no-nonsense way of hers: If you make allowances for one person, you have to do it for everyone. If Andre knew there was a safety net, he’d never get a job. Pride thing, maybe. But Mark cared too much about both of them to undermine that.

A familiar jingle at the front door made them both glance up. Sam.

Even though the door was always left unlocked during the day, she always used her key. Habit, she claimed. Six months wasn’t enough to break it.

The door swung open, and Sam waltzed in, a brightly colored box in her arms. She kicked the door shut behind her, her usual energy undeterred by the shouting match in the kitchen. Tina and Andre, caught mid-argument, paused long enough for Tina to sigh and give Sam an apologetic look.

“Sorry, guys. Give us a minute.” She grabbed Andre’s forearm and dragged him toward the basement door.

Once they were out of sight, Sam dropped the box onto the kitchen island with a grin.

Mark and Lily pushed off the couch, leaving the half-eaten bag of sweets and instant noodles behind. Sam saluted the faded photo of Mark’s parents on the fridge before popping the lid open.

“Since when is your manager this nice?” Lily asked as they settled onto the barstools.

“New manager,” Sam replied, filling the kettle. “Layla. She lets the closing staff take leftovers before they get tossed. Hates waste but doesn’t want upper management to sniff around.”

“She’s not worried someone will rat her out?” Mark snagged a chicken mayo sandwich.

Sam tossed a few crumpled receipts into the bin and dumped her spare change into the “Council Jar.” “And lose free food? Not a chance.”

“I’m not complaining,” Lily hummed around a chocolate jam doughnut.

Mark chuckled at her choice before nodding at Sam. “You actually make it to the lab on time this morning, or did you sweet-talk your way out of being late again?”

Sam rolled her eyes, stuffing a cinnamon bite into her mouth. “Made it. Barely. Professor Lennox would’ve lost it if I strolled in late again.”

“What are you even working on now? Thought you said it was some kinda cube?” Mark asked.

“An energy cube,” Sam corrected, setting their coffees in front of them. She took a seat. “It’s a self-sustaining generator. The casing works like a Faraday cage but channels electromagnetic energy into the core instead of just blocking it.”

“So it absorbs power?” Lily squinted, bracing for the answer to be wrong.

“Exactly. The core’s a supercapacitor, paired with what we call a ‘quantum resonance matrix.’ It stabilizes the absorbed energy, making it constant. Once powered, it emits a localized field that wirelessly powers electronics. Like Wi-Fi, but for electricity.”

“So, my phone would charge just by being near it?” Mark folded his arms, intrigued.

“Yup.” Sam’s face lit up. “No wires, no batteries. Just this little cube in the corner of the room.”

Lily arched a brow. “That sounds terrifying. What’s stopping it from frying everything?”

“That’s what we’re figuring out.” Sam shrugged. “We gotta break a few devices to get it right.”

Mark smirked. “So it’s either a game-changer or a phone-melter.”

“Exactly.”

“Yeah, I’m good,” Lily muttered, sipping her coffee.

Sam grinned and reached into her bag, pulling out a cube the size of a coffee mug. “This one’s defective. Too small for the prototype, so I gotta toss it tomorrow.”

Lily reached out but yelped the second her fingers brushed it, dropping it straight into her coffee.

Mark swore and fished it out with a dish towel, his whole body jolting from the shock. Every cell in his body felt awake.

Sam frowned, brushing off Lily’s frantic apologies. “Weird. It shouldn’t have done that—”

Before she could finish, Andre and Tina reappeared.

“What’s that?” Andre snatched the cube before Sam could stop him. He held it up, studying it—then winced, hand jerking back. “Ow—what the hell?”

“Give it back.” Sam reached for it.

Andre smirked and pulled it just out of her reach. “Relax, Doc, I’m just—ow! Damn thing shocked me.”

Tina sighed, smacked him upside the head, and took the cube. The second it touched her palm, she yelped and dropped it.

Sam caught it mid-air and stuffed it back into her bag. “Right. No one touch the shiny, defective, probably-shouldn’t-be-here cube.”

Tina gave her a long look before grabbing her coffee and sitting down. Andre followed suit, still shaking out his hand.

Sam grinned at them. “So, dinner’s on me?”

Tips from a Beta Reading Writer

This one's for the scenes with multiple characters, and you're not sure how to keep everyone involved.

Writing group scenes is chaos. Someone’s talking, someone’s interrupting, someone’s zoning out thinking about breadsticks. And if you’re not careful, half your cast fades into the background like NPCs in a video game. I used to struggle with this so much—my characters would just exist in the scene without actually affecting it. But here’s what I've learned and have started implementing:

✨ Give everyone a job in the scene ✨

Not their literal job—like, not everyone needs to be solving a crime or casting spells. I mean: Why are they in this moment? What’s their role in the conversation?

My favourite examples are:

The Driver: Moves the convo forward. They have an agenda, they’re pushing the action.

The Instigator: Pokes the bear. Asks the messy questions. Stirring the pot like a chef on a mission.

The Voice of Reason: "Guys, maybe we don’t commit arson today?"

The Distracted One: Completely in their own world. Tuning out, doodling on a napkin, thinking about their ex.

The Observer: Not saying much, but noticing everything. (Quiet characters still have presence!)

The Wild Card: Who knows what they’ll do? Certainly not them. Probably about to make things worse.

If a character has no function, they’ll disappear. Give them something—even if it’s just a side comment, a reaction, or stealing fries off someone’s plate. Keep them interesting, and your readers will stay interested too.

[mrslaflour]

ᙏ̤̫ GRAPE PARTY — ROUND TWO! kai says it’s the last round, but we know that’s a lie.

pairing — huening kai x reader

warnings — noncon, dark overall, continuation of the first grape party, overall fucked up you know that, height different, tbh maybe it’s because i’m judging my own shit but this to me looks bad because i never planned on making a part 2 but everybody wanted one and my blogs been being weird idfk i hope it fits your standards though

summary — you wake up in that bedroom. a bedroom that carried a lot of fucked up memories not just from you, but probably at least ten other girls. you wished you hadn’t woke up. they all seem to be gone except one. he was the nicest, so whatever. you ask to go home now, they got what they wanted after all. but poor you, he wasn’t finished just yet :(

it felt surreal to be laying here. surreal to even be breathing. hours of literal hell and you still lay in this sweaty, cum stained bed. how many times have they cleaned these sheets? the worst part is that you were still in this room, his room, and not home. not laid out in the middle of the school naked for a janitor to find you and not laid out in the middle of the street ready for some stranger to use you the same way they did. how did they get the others before you home? just push them out the house? you’d run home naked if it meant you’d get out of this place. but you still feel hands on you. a thumb rubbing circles into your hip, a hand on your stomach, and a head just barley in the crook of your neck.

“i had a lot of fun last night.”

kai. kai was still here laying right beside you. his voice vibrates your neck. if you were going to get stuck with any of them, you were glad it was him. but you didn’t particularly want to be stuck with him either. he treated all of this too normal and it was scary.

“i told the others i’d be the one to get you home so we could get more time together.”

you feel his smile against your neck.

“i, ah, we, wanted to keep you here longer. but the cheer team saw us go up after you when you went to the bathroom and…it’s just a whole thing.”

he pauses.

“if we got caught we’d probably never get a chance to feel you again. but if we send you on your way we’ll see each other in school, the streets, you know.”

“why are you still talking to me..?”

the circling in your hip pauses. as if he’s thinking of what to say.

“why wouldn’t i want to speak to you?”

“because i don’t want to speak,”

“i could help with that.”

after all the dirty talk and things they’ve done tonight, you knew damn well what he meant and immediately shook your head no. you don’t have the strength to cry anymore but oh do you want to. all you wanna do is go home and fall face first in your bed and sob your eyes out. you hear your phone ringing and lift your head to see it on the night stand next to you. it’s your friends caller ID. you frown and reach an arm out to grab the phone but he pulls your hand to his chest.

“do you feel my heartbeat? you’re the best i’ve ever had.”

you just stare at the phone as the ringing goes off for the last few times before it’s hangs up automatically. you immediately get spammed with a million text notifications (which you can only assume are from her). you hear kai sigh before he drops your hand and gets up, you finally felt like you could breathe a little.

“you know she’s been calling you non-stop this whole morning? i don’t know how you’re just now noticing.”

he grabs the phone before opening the bathroom door and throwing it in there.

“we probably have limited time together before she drives over here or whatever and i don’t have yeonjuns charm to cover me…”

he frowns at that. you didn’t know what his other teammates were doing. you didn’t have school today so they probably went out to fuck some other girl on the street.

you’re sitting up now. you lean over the side of the bed and see your clothing littered everywhere. a cut up shirt and pants tossed across the room. panties poking out from under the bed and your bra laying right in front of your face. you pick it up while he’s not looking and quickly clasp it on so you can at least get a little bit of coverage. when he turns back around he just looks down at your boobs and gives you a light smile before sitting on the bed criss cross right in front of you.

“i loved how they felt you know? pushed up against my chest as i took my time with you. they were so soft.”

you look around before looking him in the eyes trying to signal to him that you were uncomfortable, but he just looked like a lovesick puppy.

“i want this not to just be a one time thing, yknow. i wanna wake up to you in my arms everyday. i want you to be mine..”

he sort of mumbled the last part but you heard him loud and clear, and hell no. not in a million years. maybe before all of this. he was tall, hot, but also cute! easy and fun to talk to, a football player, rich even! the absolute package. but uhm, nowhere in that package did it mention that he was a rapist…? and no you’re not gonna just — no!

“i don’t want anything to do with you.”

his face drops a little. as if you actually had hurt him. he looks down at his lap before you can see his face lift up a little and it looks like he has a thought.

“were they mean to you?”

what? he was there, he would know. and although kai was probably as nice as a rapist could be, he was just as disgusting. you just stare at him like he’s crazy.

“you liked me the most, right? i made you feel good. i know you didn’t want me to stop. you didn’t want soobin to take his turn, just wanted me to stay inside of you.”

it’s quiet and uncomfortably silent before he places his hand on your shoulder, causing you to flinch. he then forcefully, but gently pushes you onto the bed.

“please don’t — you all said i was going home today…”

he just strokes your cheek with one hand before he starts kissing you all over your face and moving down to your neck. sucking slowly, taking his time, thus leaving deep purple hickeys. you had just realized he never took the bra off again. you just feel his finger trace the outline of the bra before he lifts his face from your neck.

“i think the bra makes them look cuter,”

he pauses with a smile.

“your turn.”

he leans forward and puts his neck near your mouth. you know what he wants you to do but you don’t want to give into his sick fantasy. you shake your head no.

“please? if you do i promise i won’t make your mouth do other things despite how much i want you to…”

you quickly suck the air through your teeth and take a deep breath before you start going as slow as possible sucking on his neck. you didn’t know weather to go super fast or super slow. super fast would make you seem as if you were happy to be getting him off, so happy that you were just rushing through, but going slow would make it seem like you wanted to be sensual and loving to him, but ultimately you went with going slow. your eyes closed trying to imagine time was going by faster and faster and you were driving closer and closer to your house. kais hand is stroking through your hair and his finger is running through your collarbone.

“the others are gonna wonder how i got you to do this. how i got you to mark me up all over my neck. it’s because you just love me so much, right?”

you shook your head no. you didn’t want to satisfy his sick fantasy. he just did a light click with his tongue and moved lower down your body, running his hands on your stomach before rubbing his thumbs in circles on your hips. your hips were all purple from the hard grips they had made on you the night before. you flinched slightly, they hurt badly. kai looked up and gave a pouty lip to you. you couldn’t tell if it was sincere or mocking. it may not have been mocking, but it certainly was not sincere. he leaned in and kissed the bruises that marked your hips before his lips got lower, and lower, and lower, and lower, and—

you quickly push his head away, clearly catching him off guard as he went back far pretty significantly. you push yourself back up and crawl to the other side of the bed before attempting to run to the door. obviously that was going to do nothing, but it didn’t hurt to try. he quickly stops you before you even get close to the door and he pulls your back into his stomach. the sweat on both his stomach and your back making you both become one. he wraps his arms around yours, glueing your arms to your side. he places his head into the crook of your neck, having to lean down quite a bit due to the scary height difference.

“why would you try to run knowing that i’d get you?”

you feel his lips pout against your neck. but you quickly realize, ‘i have a mouth’. you should have been screamed by now. there’s no loud music to distract the neigbors, they would hear you loud and clear by now. so you scream. loud. you get about two seconds of screaming out before he slams his palm over your mouth.

“why must you be so difficult?”

he shakes his head.

“i just want to show you how well i can treat you, is that so much to ask? it’s not even bad for you, it’s not like i’m hurting you, i’m just making you feel good..”

he sounds genuinely disappointed and upset. he easily lifts you up and puts you back onto the bed before holding your right hand and letting the other hand just lay there trying to push him away unsuccessfully.

“i can make you feel great baby, you know that. but maybe soobin made you forget. that’s okay, i’ll show you again hun.”

he brings your left hand to a halt by holding it with the hand that was once on your mouth, leaving you perfectly capable of screaming again, which you took full advantage of. he was going to stop you but he quickly realized that it was fine. you’d tire yourself out and most people were at work anyways. yeah, he’d still get his time with you. he moves his head down low once again and starts marking up the inside of your thighs and kissing all over you pussy and moving himself lower down to start fucking you with his tongue. you quickly try to lift yourself up to push him away, but you realize it’s quite hard to lift your chest up while your arms are pinned straight down to your sides. he squeezes your hands tighter and rubs circles into the palms of your hands while he continues to kiss and suck on your clit. you start to cry and beg him to stop and he just lifts his head back up to kiss your forehead before he moves back down to your pussy.

“shhh, just relax and let me take care of you. let’s focus all on you right now, let me make you feel good.”

what was so terrible about kai compared to the others was that he was loving. he had both yours and his pleasure in mind. he cared about weather you were in pain or not. with the others, it was easier to ignore it all and not give them any satisfaction and to piss them off by being dry but with kai? it was impossible. deep down you wished this wasn’t the situation that you two were in because had it been different circumstances, maybe you’d enjoy this and maybe you’d actually be with kai. you’re knocked out of your thoughts however by the continuous feeling of his tongue flicking your clit, determined to make you cum. you didn’t want to. you couldn’t. but you’d already been so abused and so much more sensitive from the events that took place only a couple of hours ago that you just couldn’t help it when you came. and when he kept going despite that, you start to squirm more in his grip, completely afraid.

“you can give me one more, right? just one more pretty girl, ‘promise.”

he was a liar. one more became two more and three more became four more. you hadn’t even noticed that he stopped as you’d just decided to block everything out. it wasn’t until he lets go of your wrists and towers himself over you, pulling down his pants that you snap your head back up to face him. you try to plead using your eyes, whispering small pleases and sorrys, but he just strokes your cheek and frowns at you.

“i’m sorry.”

you still. he’s sorry? you didn’t expect that. but was he really? he just dropped his pants down to his knees and was messing with his dick still, about to line it up with your entrance. he wasn’t fucking sorry.

“no you’re not. if you were sorry you’d stop now.”

your voice comes out all cracked out and hoarse from the screaming you had just done and the screaming you’d done that night before. you expected your voice would go completely missing soon. he just stares down at your entrance, as if contemplating continuing but he finally speaks.

“that’s not true. i just know how good i can make you feel. how good that we are for each other. and now that we’re alone, i can really show you.”

he presses himself inside of you and you just lay there. you couldn’t fight back anymore, you didn’t wanna try to. he couldn’t keep you here forever, he’d have to let you leave soon, so you weren’t worried about that. but as his thrusts continue for longer and longer and you start feeling yourself clenching around him tighter and tighter and you can see his smile growing, you have to look the other way and throw a hand over your mouth as you cry. you’d cried a lot the night before and a little this morning, but you were sobbing now. you couldn’t help it. he doesn’t stop though besides slowing down his movements a little, but he just moves your hand away from your mouth as he presses a kiss into you and holds you there while he finishes. he had finished first, but he was willing to overstimulate himself so that you could cum too, and when you knew that’s what he was waiting for, you just stopped fighting how your body felt and let your orgasm wash over you as your legs shake. he pulls out of you before pulling his boxers up. his pants were still down to his knees but he just laid next to you and pulled you against his chest.

“just ten more minutes of us just laying here, okay? and then we can go back to your house.”

you almost let that fly over your head. we. we. we? wait, we? no no no. he wasn’t going home with you! no, you couldn’t be trapped in this hell, you couldn’t be trapped next to him. you have to bite your lip back and scrunch your eyes shut and just nod. you didn’t wanna know what would happen if you disagreed, and you didn’t want to know what would happen once you went back to school, and you really didn’t wanna know what would happen when you’d go back home with him.

@blessedbymoon @straykidsviolet @lxsunshine @midnightathenaeum @beebrightness @hanhani29 @cassieaestheticsstuff @jastheepic @lickingan0rchid @alm0ndr4 @lailols @barbara-228

[bellarkeselection]

My Forever Wrangler

Requested by @hayvenleave Reader and Tyler are high school sweethearts and got married, but reader feels a little off when Tyler starts getting closer with Kate

My first ever Tyler request ( hope I did a good job 😊 )

Some people say don’t marry your high school sweetheart because you’ll always be living in the past. Others say it’s the greatest thing in the world. I chose to believe it’s the best thing I ever did, at least until I saw my husband getting close to our newest team member Kate.

“You know uh - EF1 or EF5 tornado rating. It’s not based on size or wind speed. The power we ascribe is based on damage. It’s only really after the fact we can really define it. What it destroys, takes from us.” My husband crossed the room towards Kate, gently raising a hand to her cheek brushing falling tears from her face. “I’m sorry for what happened. But how much more are you going to let this thing take from you?”

“Tyler.” Kate leans forward up on her toes looking like she was about to kiss him before I sharply gasped altering my presence in the doorway of the barn.

The pair turned their heads in my direction separating from how close they were to one another before I had said something. “Y/n, I didn’t - it’s not what it looks like.” My husband attempted to say but I spun on my heels and stomped out of the barn they were in making our way back to the main house that we were staying at.

“Y/n, Y/n wait. Hey, wait, wait.” I heard Tyler calling my name but I ignored him and just kept walking away from him.

Suddenly something wrapped around my waist and yanked me backwards where I screamed hitting whatever or more so whoever had done that. “Ahhh! Tyler, what the hell - how did you do that with a garden hose?” Lifting my head up I met his gaze seeing that he had made a nearby hose a makeshift lasso.

“I used to do rodeo, remember.” He reminded me.

Dropping my gaze weakly I made a noise. “Oh right. Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t know another way for to stop and listen to me when I tell you that nothing happened between me and Kate back there.” He began explaining to me while I pushed the garden hose down my legs and get it off of me. Tossing the hose into the nearby bushes I didn’t want him to get another chance to use his charming rodeo skills on me for a second time.

“It didn’t look that way to me, Owens.”

Tyler gave me a sad look hearing me call him Owens rather than by his first name. I usually only called him by his last name when I was really pissed at him for something and he that because we were best friends. “Y/n, I know that you’re angry with me. But I swear nothing has been going on between me and Kate-“

“Then why did it look like you were going to kiss here when you guys were talking in the barn huh?” Crossing my arms over my chest I scowled at my husband.

He gently touched my shoulders locking his gaze with mine. “She went to kiss me, not the other way around. I would never do anything to lose you.”

“That’s awfully similar to what you told me when Penny Brooke wanted to kiss you at Junior prom.” I glared at him bringing up the night he had asked me to with him and another girl at our high school was all over him.

He slightly rolled his eyes at the memory. “Yes, she had her hands all over me. But again she tried to kiss me. And I think you’re forgetting that night I left with you and that’s when I asked you to be my girlfriend.”

“I guess so.” Looking at my muddy boots I tucked some hair behind my ear. He has always been by my side and the night we started dating he was only about me and no other girl in our school. “Can you forgive me for overacting?”

Tyler nodded extending a hand out to me. “I can never stay mad at you, darling. Now will you let me up for my mistake of not spending enough time with my girl.”

“What do you have in mind, cowboy?” I tilted my head to the side waiting for his answer.

He smirked leading me to his truck helping me inside the passenger seat of the vehicle. “Go back to the good old days, just you and me. Me driving a truck and you filming our adventures on your YouTube channel.” He sits a small iPad in my lap that he had taken out of his glove box.

Tyler was the one who had went to college and got a degree. Yet he trusted me to manage his YouTube channel just like I did when we would mess around chasing storms on our dates before we tied the knot. “I can’t believe you kept my old YouTube account active after all these years. We were making videos when we were so young and reckless.” Scrolling through the old video lists I chuckled looking at the profile picture of me and Tyler. The picture was me hanging off Tyler’s back with a tornado forming behind us in the sky.

“You were my first tornado chasing partner.”

Waving my index finger in his face I teased. “That’s favorite tornado wrangler partner to you.”

“Now and always, baby.” Tyler removed his cowboy hat from his head placing it on mine. I chuckled pushing it up since it fell down in my face from the fact that it too big on me. “Sorry bout that. I’ll buy you your own hat.”

Leaning across the console I kissed him gently on the lips. “Nah. What’s mine is yours and what’s yours is mine.”

“Sounds like a good feeling to chase, Ms. Owens.” Tyler cupped the side of my face kissing me before we sat back in our seats and kicked up dust leaving the driveway in search of a nearby storm we could chase just the two of us like the good old days.

Comments really and appreciated along with reblogs ❤️

[sturniololuvz]

may seem kinda weird but i would absolutely love if you did something where baby sister discovers matt/chris acting on sh and goes to tell nick what she saw, she doesn’t understand ofc but as she got older she realizes what happened

okayyy! hope you like !!☺️🩷

“The Things We Don’t Understand”

Sturniolos x sister

Warnings : sh,

(Y/N) was only six when she saw something she didn’t quite understand. She had woken up in the middle of the night, her stuffed bunny clutched in her small hands, as she padded down the hall in search of her big brothers. She always felt safe with them—Matt, Chris, and Nick. They were her whole world.

That night, she found Matt in the bathroom, the door slightly ajar. The dim glow of the overhead light cast long shadows on the tiled floor. She tilted her head, confused, as she watched him sitting on the closed toilet lid, sleeves rolled up, something sharp glinting in his hand. There was red on his skin, thin lines that stood out starkly against his pale arm.

She didn’t understand.

“Matty?” she asked, her small voice cutting through the silence.

Matt jolted, quickly pulling his sleeve down and forcing a smile onto his face. “Hey, squirt. What are you doing up?” His voice was calm, but she could see the way his hands shook as he wiped them on his pants.

(Y/N) blinked, gripping her bunny tighter. “What are you doing?”

Matt hesitated before ruffling her hair. “Nothing, kiddo. Just go back to bed, okay?”

But (Y/N) wasn’t convinced. Something about the way he smiled felt… wrong. Like when their mom smiled after a long day, but her eyes looked sad. So, she did what she always did when she had a question—she went to find Nick.

Nick was in his room, half-asleep when she climbed onto his bed. He groaned, rolling over. “What is it, munchkin?”

“Matt is hurting himself.”

Nick immediately sat up, his tiredness gone. “What?”

“He had something sharp, and there was red on his arm.” She frowned. “I don’t think he meant to, but I think he’s hurt.”

Nick stared at her for a moment before sighing and rubbing his face. “Go back to bed, (Y/N). I’ll take care of it, okay?”

She nodded, trusting him, and curled up under his blanket while he got up and left the room. She didn’t understand why Nick looked so worried, why he left so fast. She just knew that something wasn’t right.

Years Later

It wasn’t until she was older—maybe fourteen or fifteen—that she finally understood what she had seen that night.

She remembered the way Matt had flinched, the way Nick had paled at her words. She remembered how, after that night, Nick had always paid a little more attention to Matt, always watching him closely. She remembered how Matt wore long sleeves even in the summer, how Chris cracked more jokes than usual when the air felt too heavy.

And suddenly, it all made sense.

The realization made her heart ache.

She had been too young to understand then, but now, the weight of it settled in her chest. She wished she had held onto Matt a little longer that night, told him she loved him a little louder. But even now, as she sat next to him on the couch, she leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder.

Matt looked down at her, raising an eyebrow. “What’s up with you?”

“Nothing,” she said softly. “Just love you, is all.”

Matt blinked, startled, before chuckling and wrapping an arm around her. “Love you too, squirt.”

She couldn’t change the past, but she could be there now. And maybe, just maybe, that was enough.

[berrybore]

I 100% agree that canon Sally made choices against Percy’s best interest at times but I don’t necessarily think Gabe was one of them.

Let me explain, we do know that Sally knew about Poseidon and camp, there’s a very really possibility that she also knew about the prophecy to an extent. As in, she must have known her son would be in a crazy amount of danger just for being born. We know from the text that Poseidon waited until the last moment he could before claiming Percy, until his powers essentially revealed to the whole camp who he was. That’s how dangerous it was for him to be found out.

I really don’t think Percy should have been raised at camp, that fact that he had a well-meaning, loving mother is one of the biggest things that set him apart from Luke.

I do think she should have sent him to camp earlier than she did but not years earlier like maybe you were suggesting. I also agree that it was an inherently selfish decision to keep him close. She certainly didn’t do him any favors by sending him away to boarding school after boarding school where he was always the new kid, always harassed, and even physically punished by the teachers in one of them (staff of Hermes).

She was in an impossible situation and she made choices purely out of survival not stability or safety cause they had neither. But this way he wouldn’t be outright killed. But Percy is a child and he needs both, so he grows up with low self esteem, neglected, abused emotionally and physically, and without a single friend in the world with how often he changes schools. He can’t talk to his mother either because she’s a little in denial and when Percy asks hard questions she gets emotional, and he feels guilty when he upsets his mom so he stops asking altogether.

(I do believe that she went into the relationship with Gabe with her eyes open and maybe that made it harder for her to admit to herself that she was stuck, that the man she was sure she could face down near damn swallowed her whole, because she chose this, of course in her mind she was still in control but I digress. )

I think as soon as Grover and Chiron were in the picture she should have told him. Instead she told Grover not to do anything. There was a fury at the school, he was found out and attacked, why was he still there for an entire semester after the incident?

We know they didn’t tell her about the fury because we know she didn’t know. Chiron mishandled that big time because it was at that point that it became evident that whatever scent Gabe was hiding wasn’t working. Him following her wishes to the point of keeping Percy at school after an attack from a kindly one without even informing his mother of what happened is actually crazy. Hades found him and sent him a fury to his school. Right under chirons nose. Percy was serving detention with her late into the night sometimes. They should have called Sally and taken Percy to camp together. Instead he was gaslit by everyone to the point of questioning his sanity. Ran away form Grover when they met the fates and Grover still refused to say a word. Didn’t say anything to his mom because why would he at this point, who would even believe him?. Not to mention the very traumatic introduction to the demigod life by watching his mother die right in front of him.

I just think about all the individual choices that Sally, Grover, and Chiron made that led to that night on half blood hill and I think how much it didn’t need to happen.

All three of them failed him.

Sally Jackson choice safety over stability in terms of how she'd take care of her child. Both her and Percy faced years abuse by the hands of one man. Does this make her a good mother who was in over her head or an unprepared one making an impulsive decision?

You found the one hot take even I haven’t dared say aloud yet, because I think it may just be my most unpopular opinion in this fandom. One thing everyone in this fandom seems to agree on is the “universal truth” that Sally Jackson is the best mother in the history of fictional mothers. So, here’s my hot take:

Sally Jackson is not that perfect mother the fandom pretends she is.

Sally during the series? Presented as a loving and good mother. But to get to that point? Pre-series Sally is not written as a good mom; she’s written as a plot-device with the things the author needs to happen in mind and not the motivation of a good mother who prioritizes her child’s happiness and safety in mind.

And I’ll back that claim up with three ways in which Sally has failed Percy as a mother. Not just once, but repeatedly, for years.

But before we get into that, I’d like to switch what you said first. Sally Jackson chose stability over safety. Sally chose the stability of keeping her child at her side over said child’s safety. She made an inherently selfish decision that was not with her child’s best interest and overall safety in mind.

Now, the first - and most obvious one - is Smelly Gabe.

And before I can elaborate on that, I need to clarify one very important thing here, before anyone goes “don’t blame the victim!” on me: Sally Jackson is not a victim; she’s a fictional character. Fictional characters can be written as victims, but they are not autonomous people who make their own choices; their choices are very deliberately made by their author for them. And I want to look at the choices that went into writing her this way, writing her story this way.

Real abuse victims get stuck in abusive relationships for a variety of reasons and they don’t get out of them for equally various reasons. Most of the time, it’s something like “he was so sweet and kind at first, but by the time he showed his real face, it was too late” (and, as a note to that; Percy describes Gabe as having been nice to them for a total of thirty seconds before showing his real face. Now while that is, of course, and exaggeration, it still goes to say that Gabe was pretty much upfront about what kind of person he was).

I’ve never heard one start with “he was the most disgusting, grossest man I could possibly find”. Sally Jackson chose this man. Not just in the way one picks a partner. She went out there and chose the stinkiest, grossest man.

It was a deliberate choice on Riordan’s part to have Sally choose an abusive relationship over sending her son away for his own safety. And this decision did not keep Percy safe; Percy Jackson was abused in his own home, by a horribly stinking man, for six years of his life. That’s not keeping your child safe.

The choice was not made to keep Percy safe; the choice was made to keep Percy with Sally. It was inherently selfishly motivated; she didn’t want to send him away, she wanted to keep him with her.

Sally loves Percy, she loves him dearly and fiercely, I’m not arguing that. But that love led to her not wanting to let go of him. And sometimes, parenting means making tough choices, sometimes loving someone means you have to make a tough decision.

In this case, the “tough decision” is presented as Sally bravely putting up with six years of abuse at Gabe’s hand. That’s the narrative chosen by the author.

But the actual “tough decision” would have been to send Percy to Camp Half-Blood, where he would have been safe. That’s the tough choice a mother would have had to make to keep her child safe.

That’s the tough choice the parents of most of the year-rounders have made. Mister Beauregard sent his daughter all the way from Paris to New York to give her this safety. The distance alone guaranteeing he wouldn’t see her for years potentially - because flying between New York and Paris is not necessarily easily affordable for everyone. Sally’s option was to send Percy to a camp that’s literally one and a half hours away. She could have still seen him, he could have easily visited her.

But her solution was to mask Percy’s scent by marrying a stinking, gross, abusive man.

Let me just stretch once more: Sally’s choice did not keep Percy safe. Sally’s choice made their home unsafe. It brought the danger and pain into their home. It may have moderately protected Percy from monsters - until The Lightning Thief kicked in - but it did not keep Percy actually safe, because it put him into a different kind of danger and through a different kind of pain.

For six years. And, this is where the “not a real person but a fictional character” thing comes up again, because this isn’t a woman where one choice leads to a date with a man which leads to a relationship which leads to abuse that she doesn’t know how to get out of anymore. She is a fictional character whose journey was set out to end with her being in an abusive relationship.

And we also don’t know why she didn’t get out of it. She’s not a real person, we don’t know if she was so scared of Gabe that she didn’t know how to leave, if her lack of a support system is what led to her not leaving him, or if it was the motivation of not giving up Percy. The real, actual reason is that Riordan wanted to keep her in there and keep Percy out of the loop until he was twelve and The Lightning Thief could happen. Because she was able of getting rid of him as soon as the truth unravelled and Percy met camp.

And I’d like to use the way she did that to drive back home just how bad Gabe was, just how bad the situation Sally and Percy were in for six years, really was.

She murders him. She flat-out murders him. Both, her and Percy, together. This twelve-year old child who we meet and get to know as kind and not... not a murder-child, is ready to kill a man. That’s how badly Gabe abused them; both of these kind people chose murder to get rid of him.

And it’s just something I’ve never gotten over. Riordan really made the decision that his protagonist’s mom would rather get them both into an abusive home than give Percy up to camp. That was his decision; there could have been other ways. One thing that would have made this seem less like a deliberate choice would have, for example, been Sally not knowing about camp.

If she was a desperate mother, who saw no other options? That’d have made the situation different too. But we know Sally knew about camp. She knew there was a place she could send her son where he would be safe from the monsters, but she decided against that, she decided that she wanted to keep him close, at any costs - and the cost was six years of abuse.

I do not think that this decision should be framed as a heroic sacrifice, because the fact that she knew of an actually safe solution and decided against it was inherently selfish. She did not put up with six years of abuse for selfless reasons because there was “no other way”; there was, she knew that, but the author didn’t want her to take that.

Sometimes, the sacrifice is letting go of your child. And, as mentioned before, she wouldn’t have let go of him for good - camp is in the same bloody city as she is living. Literally one and a half hours away from her.

Now on to the other two ways in which I think Sally Jackson failed Percy.

For one, the lies about his father. Now, real people who are left by their partner with a baby, they can pick whatever to tell their kids whenever. But, again, this is a fictional character and the author makes the decision for her. And this, again, was a decision made solely based on the end result; Riordan needed Percy to not be in the know by the time The Lightning Thief came around, even though from a character-perspective, telling Percy the truth earlier would have been the logical and right decision.

If your kid is a demigod who is attracting real actual monsters with his scent alone? Percy started really attracting monsters when he was six years old and for the next six years, Sally didn’t disclose the truth to him; not about monsters, not about his father, not about the fact that Percy may have powers.

Percy attracted so many monsters that it led to Sally getting married to Gabe. That’s how badly he attracted monsters. Which also implies that Percy must have seen monsters. We get to see in The Lightning Thief just how much Percy thinks he’s going crazy with the things he sees. And that’s  been going on for six years too - six years and in those, his scent only got stronger.

This, again, isn’t just one decision she made. This is a decision she made every single day over and over again. The decision not to tell Percy about his father, the powers, the simple reassurance that he’s not going insane, that monsters are real. This was Percy’s reality and it would obviously only become more and more of an issue the older Percy got, but every single day, she chose not to tell him, to let him believe not just a lie but also steadily that he was going crazy.

And it’d have gone a long way if he had just known. Even with Gabe in their life, even if she hadn’t made the choice to send him to camp at age six, it’d have helped him so much to know the truth and be prepared for this life.

Because this wasn’t just an issue of “the guy left me, I don’t want to talk about it with my kid”, this was inherently about, once more, Percy’s safety. Knowing what to watch out for, knowing the thing you should watch out for is actually real, are huge factors in Percy’s safety. Having him as well-prepared as possible.

She knew his father was Poseidon. It’s not even that she had sex with some dude, not knowing who he was. She knew he was Poseidon. She knew what Percy’s parentage was, she must have observed the slow development of Percy’s powers over the years.

But again, she chose to leave him in the dark about it. He could have been well-prepared by age twelve. Read up everything on Poseidon, experimented with potential powers he may have, understanding why the fishes in the aquarium are talking to him and that he is not actually hearing voices, learning.

But that’s not useful for the author; Riordan wants an unprepared Percy who can be used to introduce this world to the reader.

The choice to not tell Percy the truth about his father and about being a demigod was made deliberately and, again, not in Percy’s best interest. And in this case, there really is no other interpretation left aside from “the author needs it to happen this way” - with Gabe, there is the legitimate argument that she may have been at one point just an abused woman stuck in a relationship with no out because we don’t know enough to know what her motivation and situation were exactly - but there is... no benefit at all in lying to Percy about this, no reason for it.

The moment he first started being in actual life-threatening danger because monsters came after him, it became a pressing matter to tell him what monsters are, that they are real and why they are after him and to prepare him for it.

Which brings me to the third instance.

She never prepared him - even just in a mortal manner. Even if we let the first two - the marriage to Gabe and the lies about his father - stand as they are, Sally could have done something very simple to prepare Percy for his life and to help keeping him safe.

Self-defense classes. Judo. Martial arts. Sword-fighting classes. Whatever.

Many parents teach their kids these kind of things from a young age. Parents whose kids aren’t in constant danger of being attacked by monsters. One of your first parental instincts should be to teach your kid to be safe; to protect themselves. Give him the means to fight back.

So, that’s it. That’s the three very vital and important instances in which I think Sally failed Percy as a mother; not just once, but repeatedly, for years.

Instead of sending him to a safe place where he could learn about his heritage and learn control of his powers as well as learning how to fight the monsters after his life, she chose to marry an abusive, smelly man whose scent would mask Percy’s. Probably. Hopefully. But it didn’t really, not all the time. As shown by The Lightning Thief and monsters coming after Percy. And Percy starts to think he’s crazy, because at no point did she tell him about the monsters, and at no point does he really know how to fight for his life, because at no point did she put the means to defend himself into his hands.

No. No, I do not think that those are the decisions a good mother would make. Those are decisions the author made because he knew the starting point of his story and he knew where Percy’s character needed to be for that.

The thing that’s glossed over are the choices Riordan implicitly made Sally make. To get to this point for Percy, at age 12, he had to make Sally repeatedly act against Percy’s best interests and deliberately not tell Percy the truth or teach him way to stay safe. So he masks those choices by putting on a framework that’s meant to make you only look at her suffering and the outcome, not the choices that led to it. That was Riordan’s choice and he framed it in a way that the fandom ate up and celebrates, when... neither Sally, nor Riordan, had do to that. There was another option on the table and, if Riordan had sat down and thought hard, I’m pretty sure there would have been more options.

The bottom line, what Sally’s parenting comes down to in the end, is that she and Percy got stuck with an abusive man for six years, because she didn’t want to send him to an actual safe place, she spent six years essentially gaslighting Percy about the things he hears/sees by not telling him the monsters are actually real and she repeatedly left him in unnecessary danger by not giving him the means to defend himself in any way whatsoever. And those are not signs of good parenting, not in my book.

But it’s just so much easier to ignore all of that and pretend that blue candy and trips to Montauk are the end all be all and that Sally’s fierce love for her son is the most defining trait of parenting. I know that. Most of the time, I’m right there with you - I love fanon!Sally, I love to pretend she’s the best mom ever and never did anything wrong, because I know the decisions are inherently made by Riordan and are a by-product; I know he wants her to be a good mother, I know throughout the series, he writes her as a good and loving mother.

But if I have to be honest and if I look at the whole text, including the implications of their past, canon!Sally isn’t that good of a mother.

[on-wine-dark-seas]

The Invitation

Dedicated to the little Black girl who wanted to be all things when the world told her she was nothing. You are everything. 🍯

🪧 Summary: 1050 AD, Heian Era. One full moon, Sukuna meets a dancing storyteller at the Hida Harvest Festival. But after a tragically violent evening robs her of everything, she winds up in a strange alliance with the King of Curses as his guest. 📚 Series: Sonder 🔞 Rating: Explicit ⚠️️ Warning[s]: Rape/Non-Con [not from Sukuna don't worry], blood, gore, description of wounds and dead bodies, cannibalism, recreational drug use [ganja, psilocybin, opium], slow-ish burn, hurt/comfort, PTSD, revenge, catharsis, eventual romance, eventual smut, Ryōmen Sukuna is his own warning. 💋 Pairing[s]: Sukuna x The Writer [⛩️🍯] 🎧 Playlist: [ the invitation ]

⛩️ AO3 𑁍 Parallax OCs 𑁍 Sonder OCs ⛩️

🍯 III. 無夢 Without Dreams

     “Smell that, Uraume?” Sukuna asks. “Winter is soon. And look, we’re damn near finished, just as I said we would be.” He glares down the line of one of his arms, weltered with blood and gore. The corpse attached to his massive fist is slumped in death, the face—what’s left of it—slacked in horror and shock. With one sharp jerk, he flings the body away and heaves a long, satisfied sigh. Behind him, ice crackles as Uraume’s footsteps carry them across the ruin of the battlefield.

     “It is as you say, my lord,” they affirm. “Still, we cut it rather close. Did you really need to indulge those performers the other night?”

     Sukuna laughs and stretches, opening all four of his arms toward the cold, muted light of the sun hidden in cloud cover.

     “Ah, are you still miffed about that, Ume? They were entertaining! Aside, there was the girl to consider. You saw what I saw, did you not?”

     “I did,” Uraume agrees. “Still, do you think it wise to invite them to the shrine? If she’s—”

     Sukuna waves his hand. “You worry too much. There is no one in this land who can contend with me, save Sugawara himself, and he’s hiding behind the capital’s forces like the pampered palace brat he is.”

     Sukuna glances over his shoulder down at his companion.

     “It’s going to be a bitter winter, Ume, and our meat stores are low. If they displease me, I’ll just eat them. Will that please you?”

     Uraume huffs an annoyed sigh and shrugs.

     “As always, you will do as you see fit, and I trust your judgement. Perhaps we should head out, now, if we are to meet them at the shrine tonight.”

     Sukuna scratches one of his ears idly, groaning in relief as the itch subsides.

     “You’re right, of course,” he says. “Where’s my horse? Damn beast’s probably wandered off to graze somewhere…though I can’t imagine where.”

     They find his steed, a massive warhorse bred to steel itself in the face of the atrocities Sukuna commits almost daily. Unlike every other living thing, it is happy to see him.

     “Akechi,” Sukuna croons. “Always at the ready, eh?”

     He swings into the saddle with the ease of one born to it. Akechi is a valuable steed, being one of the largest he’s ever seen, and thus able to accommodate him. He pulls Uraume up to sit in front of him. Unfortunately, their own horse was slain in the initial fighting by some lucky bastard with a naginata. Uraume froze the man’s head in a block of ice and tore it off in retaliation.

     Still, they’d liked that horse.

     Leaving a smoldering battlefield in his wake, Sukuna rides south, toward home as if he himself is a war hero, and not the scourge of the Fujiwara in the north. They beat a quick path, his cursed energy spilling over the land like a cloud of sickness. Lesser curses scatter into the shadows, and those not dead shiver in their homes and know not why, only that it is safer to be inside when Ryōmen Sukuna is on the loose.

     The mountains of the north gentle into the hills of the south as they ride, and the moon creeps into the sky by the time the familiar path to his shrine comes into the distance, marked by the thickening crowds of trees and the cawing of ever-present crows, knowing that Sukuna will keep them fed on true carrion. He is a creature of meat, and so too are they. They watch him as he rides through the forest.

     Sukuna sniffs the air, frowning.

     “Something’s burning,” he mutters, and feels the prick of what could only be anticipation in his blood. A potential scrap before home? Ah, he may not have to hunt after all.

     They make their way into the forest path and come upon a shocking discovery.

     “My lord…!” Uraume gasps. Sukuna’s mouth opens and then shuts. He recognizes the wagon, which is now set ablaze. He also recognizes the bodies strewn on the ground. He’s out of the saddle before he realizes it, cursed energy gathering around him like a storm cloud. With a swipe of his hand, he guides the flames of the wagon, starving them of oxygen and snuffing them out. The wagon is a blackened, smoking husk, and Sukuna can tell this fire is recent. He can smell the coppery stench of blood, recently spilled. He can also see residuals of cursed technique usage.

     Their assailants had been sorcerers.

     “My lord!” Uraume calls. “Look!”

     Sukuna is by their side immediately, inspecting what they’ve discovered. His eyes go wide when he sees her, curled in the dirt like some beaten, half-dead creature; a crown of kings bloodied by overthrow. He reaches down, brushes aside the dirt and leaves in her braided hair, barely touching the ugly, swollen bruise on her cheek. He takes in her torn and bloodied clothing, sees the blood and seed slick between her thighs, and knows what has happened here.

     Her throat was cut, he can see the wound, but he can also barely make out her breath. She’s still alive. Barely holding on, but her soul is there.

     “Will you not heal her, my lord?” Uraume asks. Sukuna does not answer. Instead, he keeps his eyes on her, his face as impassive as a god’s. He waits.

     Come on. He thinks, wondering why he feels so desperate. Do it. I know you can. I saw it the night I watched you dance.

A pulse. Faint but deep.

     Sukuna tries not to hold his breath.

     Another pulse, and her fingers move in an imperceptible twitch.

     Sukuna dares to take a deep, steadying breath.

     Šetû’s body convulses and jerks in a pained, desperate gasp. Her cursed energy folds in on itself again and again, doubling over until it shifts. The wound on her throat closes, flesh knitting anew. Her eyes flutter open.

     And she screams once before collapsing, unconscious from the exertion.

     I knew it.

     But Sukuna is pleased with what he’s seen, and Uraume understands now why he chose not to heal her.

     “Salvage what you can,” he tells them, then looks at the other corpses. Her brother, her twin cousins. Sukuna’s eyes narrow. Where is the other? The one with the sour face and terrible beard? He snorts. Like as not he too is dead in the forest somewhere. If the sorcerers who did this didn’t kill him, the curses that linger in these woods certainly will.

     “What of the bodies, my lord?” Uraume asks. Sukuna looks down at Šetû, scooping her into his lower arms. He could take the corpses and butcher them for later. She didn’t have to know, and it would be a damn sight less cumbersome than trying to burn them all and go through the ceremony of a funeral. Hm.

     “Bring them as well,” he says at last. “We’ll store them in the icehouse and figure out what to do with them later.”

     Uraume looks slightly nonplussed at the decision. Normally, Sukuna is so decisive about what to do with a human body. It’s free meat, and it’s his favorite kind of meat. He doesn’t usually waver on decisions concerning food.

     “As you wish, Lord Sukuna,” they affirm and set out to do his bidding. It is not their place to question, although they do prod from time to time. Sukuna sets Šetû atop his horse, lashing her to the saddle. He lashes the corpses of her family as well. Akechi does naught but flick his tail in annoyance at the combined weight but sets into an easy walk as Sukuna leads him by the reins, Uraume joining his side as always.

     The shrine’s massive torii looms like an ill omen as the master returns past its threshold. A pair of hitodama blaze atop the torii like twin lanterns, casting a sickly, violet glow over the entrance. They pass by in silence, and Sukuna’s cursed energy settles over the area, scattering curses that dared creep too close in his absence. The lanterns of the shrine are lit, and attendants are there to greet him. Only a few: a stable hand, and two older priestesses that chose to serve rather than die like their brethren. Sukuna keeps them only because they are useful.

     “Welcome home, Lord Sukuna,” they greet, bowing low. Sukuna tosses the reins to his stable hand, and gestures to Šetû, once more gathered in his arms.

     “Attend to this one,” he says curtly, and they startle when they see her, mindful not to draw his ire. Years of working for him and neither will risk triggering his capricious temperament. They obey with alacrity, taking the girl in their strong arms and heading inside to tend to her. Sukuna watches them go, something agitating his spirit again. Uraume directs the stable hand to assist them in storing the additional bodies in the icehouse. Sukuna catches a glimpse of Amadou’s corpse in his lower eyes. A pity. The boy had been kind and noble hearted.

     He thinks about the residuals he saw at the site, and the bridge of his nose wrinkles like a tiger’s muzzle.

     Not agitation, then. Anger.

     Someone had dared come close to his home and had spilled blood of those he had invited as guests. It is a direct insult, he surmises, it can be naught else. There would have been no reason to harm these foreigners otherwise. That means, it was someone at the harvest festival; someone who had seen them perform, and someone who had seen Sukuna in their camp hours later.

     He exhales through his nose, the heat of his own curses in his belly building.

     They had humiliated and violated Asiri, murdered her family, and burned up their lives all for the crime of showing him idle kindness. They had welcomed him where others would have shunned out of fear and superstition, and their kindness had been repaid like this. Even Sukuna had to admit this was particularly heinous.

     And cowardly. That was what really got under his skin. Someone was too afraid to face him directly, and so they would try to punish him by denying him even the barest crumb of amicable human interaction.

     “Uraume,” Sukuna says as they head inside. Uraume is at their side in an instant.

     “Yes, my lord?”

     “Let me know as soon as the girl wakes up. I would speak with her and get to the truth of who has done this thing.”

     Uraume nods firmly, divining their master’s will as the shrine doors shut behind them.

     The next few days are spent unwinding. Sukuna takes tribute from those seeking his aid and favor, and usually that provides the meat he craves when any who dare cross his threshold displease him, but his mind is distracted.

     He’s thinking of her.

     She’s been in that room since he brought her to the shrine, attended by Okoi and Oboro, who are gifted in the healing arts and medicine pertaining to womenfolk. Sukuna does not ask for the details, but they report to him that Asiri was given a medicinal contraceptive to prevent any seed from taking root and was being kept sedated with a steady supply of opium pellets and valerian root tea. She slept mostly, but the valerian was to keep down the screaming.

     Sukuna is puzzled at this. Screaming?

     He hears it one night, the forlorn and anguished moans of a woman plagued by true nightmares. And then the screams. Twice, he is startled to wakefulness, only to find her in her bed, thrashing, swiping at ghosts that aren’t cold enough to be buried in her psyche yet. Fresh and feeding from her terror and grief.

     Okoi and Oboro do their best to keep her quiet, and Sukuna threatens to eat their fingers if they don’t keep the girl calm.

     The screams stop after a few days, but Sukuna knows it will be some time before her nightmares are well and truly behind her.

     She sleeps.

     And when the first snow of winter begins to fall, she wakes.

     For a stretch of time that feels unending, she is curled in on herself. The darkness around her is amniotic in its warmth and consistency, and she feels buoyed by the viscous shadows around her. She keeps her eyes closed tightly, hugs her knees to her chest, and remains still.

     Something is pulling at her, however, trying to nudge her back to the light.

     Leave me alone. Comes her tired protest, husk-hollow and bone-weary. She flinches when the thing tugs on her again. Had she wings this thing would have pulled them off by now to prevent her escape.

     She wishes she had wings. She would never touch the ground again.

     The darkness begins to recede like a great wave, and she hugs herself tighter, trying not to weep. No more, please. No more.

     And all at once she is shoved into the light, eyes opening wide as she gasps into wakefulness, immediately squinting against the brightness in the room she’s in.

     She blinks, her eyes squinting to adjust to the light. She breathes in, catches a whiff of something earthy and musk-like.

     Sandalwood.

     She sits up, pushing her upper body upright on trembling arms. She feels weaker than a newborn kitten, and there’s a lingering soreness in her face. She reaches up with a trembling hand to touch her cheek. Tender, bruised, almost as if—

     Her stomach roils and she clamps her hand over her mouth to force the bile back down.

     The door to the room she’s in slides open and she startles at the sight of an older woman with graying hair bearing a tray. She’s wearing the robes of a shrine priestess, and Šetû makes the connection that she must in Sukuna’s residence.

     “Oh,” the older woman says, smiling at her with kind and sympathetic eyes. “You’re finally awake and lucid. This is good news. Lord Sukuna will be pleased to hear it.”

     Šetû says nothing, uncertain of what words she can possibly say at this moment. Silence feels safer, and so she remains reticent as the older woman sweeps in on silent footsteps to set the tray on the low bedside table. There is an assortment of food items Šetû recognizes from her travels, and there is hot tea, still steaming in the little tea pot. She pours herself a cup. Her tongue feels dry and swollen in her mouth, her throat feels raw and sore, like she’s been screaming.

     Or weeping.

     She freezes before the cup touches her lips as her memories jerk and flicker before her mind’s eye, reminding her that what happened to her was no nightmare, but real.

     She sets the cup down as her heart races, her hands tremble, and tears blur her vision. The older woman, who is tidying up the modest room, looks over and her brows knit in concern.

     “Please, lady, you must eat,” she says, her voice gentle but insistent. “It is the only way to regain your strength, and Lord Sukuna will not abide weakness in his home.”

     Lord Sukuna. Of course. Šetû stares at the tray. She cannot shun the man’s hospitality. She would have died out there had he not taken her in.

     She wishes she had.

     Šetû regards the thought with subtle horror.

     She forces herself to eat, but the food might as well be ashes in her mouth. Still, it is sustenance, and little by little, in slow drips, she feels her body’s weakness ease into a tired species of despair and exhaustion. She drinks the tea, lets it warm her belly, but she can’t taste that either. She doesn’t care. The older woman waits until she clears her plates before collecting the tray, nodding in approval. Šetû opens her mouth to speak, then closes it. She does not see the point in speaking…or much of anything, really.

     The woman leaves, the door sliding shut behind her, and Šetû is alone.

     Quietly, carefully, she lets herself get out of bed, climbing to her feet. She notices she’s dressed in a plain robe, likely by the older woman charged with her care. She glances around the room, seeking anything familiar. She sees a trunk at the far corner of the room, albeit burned, but she recognizes it. She goes to open it, and sees all of her clothing and jewelry inside, untouched by the flames of her assailants in the wake of her—

     She shuts the trunk abruptly.

     Sunlight pours through the lattice window, and she slides open the door to find a small engawa affording her a view of what should have been a lush, green garden. Right now, it is blanketed in a thick, unblemished carpet of snow. Her breath fogs in front of her face, and the cold nips at her toes. She slides the door shut and turns instead to the other door; the one leading into the shrine itself.

     She glances at her burnt trunk, and then she leaves the room.

     Out in the halls, the shrine is silent, almost serene. There is a contemplative silence about the place that makes her feel as if it is abandoned, and she pads silently on bare feet toward wherever her curiosity draws her.

     All over the shrine are signs of a familiar religion: Buddhism. Šetû remembers the motifs and iconography from her travels on the continent proper. She and her brother had spent a great deal of time in India. It had been warm—

     She whips around when she hears whispers and looks around frantically for somewhere to hide. She finds a door, slides it open, and slips inside. On the other side, the voices pass by, whispering and chattering too fast for her to understand, but they do not notice her. Šetû breathes a sigh of relief.

     The smell of sandalwood is stronger in this room; fresher. She turns, sees an elegantly appointed bedchamber. On a raised dais, a bed much larger than any bed she has ever seen in her life, heaped with pillows and down-stuffed blankets. A large brazier burns in the room, keeping it pleasantly warm. In the far corner there’s a desk, heaped with parchments, scrolls, and bound books. She hesitates, then ventures further in.

     Like her own modest room, there is a sliding door leading to a much larger engawa, only instead of a garden is a sequestered hot spring. Steam curls from the natural spring, surrounded by a picturesque view of the snowy landscape. She wonders if Lord Sukuna would mind if she took a dip. Some springs are said to have healing properties, and her body needs it. The cold nips at her again, and she decides against it, sliding the door shut. If this is his private bedchamber then she should leave before he comes back.

     Back in the hall, she wanders again, seeking other rooms. She follows the scent of cooking, instead, her body—now fully awake—seeking greater sustenance. Something more nourishing and fulfilling than broth.

     She finds the kitchen, of course, and it’s already occupied by Uraume. She remembers them from the night of the festival. Their back is to her, but occasionally they bark out orders to the kitchen staff, strange, masked creatures that leap to do their bidding. Uraume brandishes a large knife, stained with blood.

     Chop!

The heavy thud of steel meeting flesh, shearing through bone to hit the butcher block beneath makes Šetû leap in her own skin, and she suddenly has no appetite, backing away from the kitchens to explore elsewhere.

     Out in the main hall, she finds a large set of double doors, firmly shut. She presses her ear against it, straining to hear any sound from the other side, but the iron-banded wood is thick, and there’s no way she can open these doors in her current state. She sighs and decides she will return to her rooms.

     She realizes after several moments and turns, that she is lost.

     “Fuck,” she croaks out, her first word in what feels like ages.

     Frustration and fear settle in, making her scalp prickle. She’s not sure if she’s allowed to be out of her room, and she isn’t sure what will happen when someone finds her. She can’t linger in the hallway like some dazed, madwoman.

     Are you not a dazed madwoman, though? A voice whispers, and she almost laughs at herself, knifing her hands through her braids and taking a deep, hissing breath in an attempt to calm her suddenly frayed nerves.

     Yes. Yes, she is. A madwoman. Dazed. Lost.

     Wounded beyond what she thought possible.

     Her mind shies from the memories of that night, but she sees them all the same.

     It’s only fair.

Bile rises in her throat, and she claps a hand over her mouth, leaning against the wall as her breathing comes labored, her forehead and temples damp with sweat.

     “Lady Asiri?” Šetû startles at the voice, whirling around to find the older woman from earlier. Her dark eyes are soft with concern, a wrinkle in her straight and proud brows. She calms immediately.

     “You shouldn’t be out and about so soon,” the woman says. “Lord Sukuna would not like you getting sick in his halls. Come with me.”

     Šetû nods, and the woman turns smoothly setting off down the hall at a smooth glide. She follows.

     “What is your name?” She asks, padding after the older woman.

     “Oboro,” the woman replies. “And the other is my sister, Okoi. We are the priestesses of this temple.”

     Šetû’s brows go up. “So, Lord Sukuna really is a deity? I thought…”

     Oboro’s shoulders stiffen slightly at the words, imperceptible, but Šetû sees it. No, not a god then. That is the reaction of resentment.

     “He is a powerful sorcerer of great renown,” Oboro replies and Šetû knows a rehearsed line when she hears it. She is afraid of Lord Sukuna, she resents him, and likely this temple was not his originally. It does not take much to deduce. “It is my pleasure to serve him.”

     Tch. Šetû doubts that, but she nods.

     “I see,” she says. “Thank you, Oboro-san. I think…I would like to speak with Lord Sukuna myself and thank him for his hospitality.”

     Oboro’s shoulders grow tense again, as if she can’t believe anyone would want to thank Sukuna for anything or associate him with hospitality at all. Šetû reserves her judgement. She will speak with Sukuna herself, with no pretense between them.

     They reach her room, and Oboro slides the door open, standing aside as Šetû entered. For some reason, being in the room she woke up in brings her a measure of comfort. She returns to the bed to sit down. She’s about to open her mouth to ask more questions when every fine hair on her body immediately stands on end.

     Oboro folds into an obeisant kneel.

     “My lord,” she greets with reverence that makes Šetû wonder at this woman’s motives for lingering here. Sukuna’s voice is deep and resonant.

     “You are dismissed, Oboro,” he says, his massive frame filling up the doorway. “I would have words with our guest.”

     Šetû pulls her robe tighter and steels her courage as Sukuna steps into the room, ducking to avoid the top of the doorframe as he fills up the space not only physically, but spiritually. Šetû folds herself into a kneel, forehead pressed to the floor. Sukuna gestures for her to rise, seemingly annoyed with the honorifics and frippery. Here, in this private room, he does not care for it.

     The door slides shut behind him.

     Šetû sits back on her heels, trying to keep her breaths even. Sukuna is so much larger than she remembers him being. Seeing him in the cold light of day is different. He is massive and there’s an energy about him that makes her shiver down to the marrow. He can see this, and he does not seem to care. As if it is a common occurrence.

     “Why didn’t you mention you are a sorcerer?” Sukuna asks bluntly.

     She blinks several times, brows raising.

     “I—” She hesitates but Sukuna’s expression is impassive and unyielding. He wants an answer, and he wants the truth.

     “I’m not a sorcerer,” she says. “And quite frankly, I don’t even know what that means! I’m just a…”

     “A what?” Sukuna asks, lip curling. “A dancer? An entertainer? I saw you that night you danced, your cursed energy bloomed like a flower of fire to rival a storm. Everyone felt it. When I sat by the fire with you, it licked at mine like—”

     She stares at him, uncomprehending. Sukuna stares back and for a while there is only silence. Then, the tension in him eases and he shuts his main eyes, chuckling darkly. His lower eyes never leave hers, though.

     “I see,” he says, opening his eyes again. “You didn’t know. Of course.”

     Šetû’s brows furrow. “What…what do you mean I am a sorcerer? The ones who—” She hesitates. “Those men said I was a sorcerer in allegiance with you. As if…”

     Sukuna’s lips curl into a cruel smirk.

     “They thought you were mine, did they? How foolish. You may not be aware of your power, but you are not strong enough to contend with the likes of me.”

     Šetû rises to her feet, her expression hard and indignant.

     “I am not weak,” she says fiercely and doesn’t know why his smug smirk galls her. “I just…I don’t know what all this is about. We were on our way to you before…”

     Sukuna’s eyes narrow. Every time she seems poised to tell him what happened, something stops her. He sees the visible recoil in her, her mind shying away from what was doubtless the worst night of her life. He should be cruel to her, he thinks; cauterize the wound before she lets it fester. But wounds of the soul are not so easily mended, and hers is fresh…and unfathomably deep.

     “Thank you,” she says instead. Sukuna raises a brow. “For healing me.”

     “I didn’t heal you.” He says curtly and then turns to leave. Šetû is even more confused than before. If he hadn’t healed her, who had?

     “Was it Oboro-san?” She asks. “Or her sister? Perhaps I should thank them instead.”

     Sukuna glances over his shoulder, says nothing, and leaves the room. Šetû frowns. What is his problem? Has she offended him somehow? Or was he always like this and she just caught him on a good night? She huffs out a heavy sigh. At least…at least she is safe.

     Until she sleeps.

@queenmimis @thehereticmoon @razrogue

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[bitchinbarzal]

Misunderstood | B Faber

summary: you guys haven’t made it official and it comes back to bite brock when he is pictured out at dinner with a friend.

-

The cold Minnesota air nipped at your skin as you wrapped yourself tighter in your blanket, sitting on your couch with a cup of coffee in hand. The warmth of your apartment contrasted the harsh chill outside, the streets dusted in fresh snow. The quiet morning should have been comforting, but instead, you found yourself scrolling aimlessly through Instagram, the flickering glow of your phone screen somehow amplifying the restlessness gnawing at your mind.

Then, you saw it.

Your thumb froze on the screen as you stared at the image before you. Brock. Your boyfriend—or at least, that’s what you thought he was.

He stood at a table, smiling like he always did, the one you adored and couldn’t get enough of. But this time, it wasn’t just his grin that caught your attention. Standing next to him was a woman—blonde, beautiful, and clearly too comfortable with him. She had her hand resting on his arm, a look of fondness that made your stomach twist. The caption read: “Dinner date with my favorite guy.”

The words blurred in your vision as you stared at the picture, trying to make sense of it. You blinked, trying to calm the rising panic inside you. Your fingers swiped quickly to refresh the feed, hoping this was some kind of mistake, some social media glitch. But no, there were more photos—more pictures of Brock and this girl, the two of them enjoying dinners, laughing at something only they seemed to understand, posing close in a way you hadn’t even been able to get Brock to do with you.

And suddenly, all the confidence you had in the relationship seemed to disappear. Why hadn’t he told you about her? You scrolled through the rest of the posts, each one more intimate than the last. It hit you in waves—the jealousy, the confusion, the bitter taste of betrayal. You had always kept things casual with Brock, no pressure, no expectations. But these pictures… They didn’t look casual. Did he think you were just another option?

A pang of hurt ran through you. Had you been nothing more than a placeholder while he figured out what he really wanted?

You set your phone down, hands shaking slightly. You tried to calm yourself. It could be nothing, right? But then the doubts crept in, taking over your thoughts like an uncontrollable storm. Maybe this wasn’t a casual thing for him after all. Maybe he was just too scared to tell you. You were only ever a backup plan, an afterthought. That’s how it felt. You had no idea where you stood in his life, and that was the worst feeling of all.

The next few days were nothing short of torturous.

You couldn’t bring yourself to respond to his texts. He’d sent a few asking how you were, if you were okay, but each time you read his messages, all you could feel was the knot of jealousy and confusion tightening in your chest. You told yourself it wasn’t a big deal, that you had no right to be angry. You had never set any official boundaries, and he had never made any promises to you.

But it didn’t stop the gnawing feeling inside.

When he called you on the second night of the silence, you debated not answering. But you couldn’t bring yourself to let it ring out. “Hello?” you said, your voice more clipped than you intended.

“Hey, it’s me. You’ve been quiet. Is everything okay?” Brock’s voice came through the phone, sounding concerned but also confused.

You squeezed your eyes shut, the tears you’d been holding back threatening to spill. “Yeah, everything’s fine.” You could feel your chest tightening as the words felt like lies in your mouth.

“Are you sure? You’ve been distant. I just want to know if something’s wrong.”

The frustration hit you suddenly, and it slipped out before you could stop it. “What, you want me to just pretend everything’s fine? Pretend like I don’t see all those photos of you and her?” The words were out before you could catch them, and the silence that followed was deafening.

“Wait, what?” Brock’s voice cracked slightly “What are you talking about?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” you spat. “I’ve seen it, Brock. All the pictures. All the dates. Why didn’t you tell me about her?” Your voice trembled now, the anger laced with hurt.

There was a long pause, and you could almost hear him processing what you were saying. Then, a sigh. “Listen, I didn’t think it was a big deal. She’s just a friend. She’s one of my teammate’s sisters. We’ve hung out a few times with the team, but there’s nothing going on. I swear.”

But the doubt lingered in your mind. “You didn’t think it was a big deal? You didn’t think it was a big deal to mention that you were hanging out with another girl? That’s what you’re telling me?” You could feel your heartbeat pounding in your ears now. The more he explained, the more it sounded like an excuse. And the more it hurt.

“I didn’t think it would bother you” Brock added quietly. “I thought we were just…having fun, you know? I didn’t think it would cause any issues.”

“Well, it’s causing issues now,” you snapped, cutting the conversation short. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Brock. I just need space.”

And with that, you hung up, not giving him the chance to say anything more. The silence after you ended the call was suffocating. You hated that you had let your emotions spiral like this, but the damage felt done. Your heart was heavy with bitterness, and no amount of reasoning could make it feel right again.

Days passed, and the tension only grew. Brock tried to reach out—texts, calls—but you ignored them all. You felt justified in your anger, but the truth was, the silence was killing you both. Each time you saw his name pop up on your phone, your heart wavered, but you couldn’t bring yourself to open the messages. You had decided that if he cared, he’d come to you. He’d fix this.

But it didn’t happen. Not the way you expected, at least.

Instead, you found yourself standing in your apartment on the fourth day, staring at the door as if it might be a dream.

The sound of soft knocks broke through your thoughts. You slowly opened the door, almost dreading what you might find on the other side. But when you looked up, it was Brock—holding a bouquet of wildflowers, his face a mix of anxiety and determination.

You stared at him for a moment before the anger bubbled up again. “What are you doing here?” you asked, trying to hide the pain in your voice.

“Can we talk?” His voice was quiet, almost pleading. “I know I messed up. I should’ve told you about her, but I never meant for any of this to happen. I care about you. I don’t want this to end because of a misunderstanding.”

Your breath hitched, emotions swirling inside you like a tornado. “You should’ve told me” you whispered, the hurt creeping into your voice. “I saw those pictures, Brock. I felt like you were hiding something from me. And I—” You broke off, looking away, your face flushing with embarrassment.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” Brock said, stepping closer, his voice full of regret “I never wanted to make you feel like you weren’t important to me. She’s just a friend—nothing more. You mean everything to me.”

You shook your head, trying to hold back the tears. “I shouldn’t have ignored you. I should’ve trusted you, but I didn’t know where I stood.”

Brock reached out for you, taking your hands gently in his. “I should’ve explained sooner. I’m sorry. I don’t want you to feel second to anyone, especially not because of some misunderstanding.”

His apology, the sincerity in his eyes, hit you harder than you expected. Your walls started to crumble, and with them, the weight that had been pressing on your chest.

“I’m sorry, too,” you said softly, your voice barely above a whisper. “I just… I didn’t know how to deal with it.”

Brock’s smile was hesitant but warm. He pulled you into an embrace, holding you tight. “Let’s promise no more misunderstandings, okay? I want this,us,to be real.”

You nodded, feeling the tension dissolve. “No more misunderstandings,” you repeated.

[itsnesss]

𝐚 𝐰𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐚𝐛𝐢𝐧 | minho (xo,kitty) × fem!reader

OO1. OO2. OO3.

summary | after the intense moments between you and minho, you try to keep your emotions under control but are pulled back into a complicated situation when Kitty shows you a video involving stella. as you struggle to manage your feelings, you're forced to confront the complexities of your relationship with minho while dealing with new tensions that arise

warnings | emotional angst, jealousy, misunderstandings, deceptive behavior

word count | 3.0 k

author's note | it would help me a lot if you liked, commented and reposted so that more people read what I write and don't forget to follow me, thanks ᡣ𐭩

The days since that conversation with Min Ho passed slowly. You forced yourself to maintain an indifferent façade, as if what had happened between you two was nothing more than a mere slip-up. But it wasn't. Every time you saw him, whether in the group of friends or in class, you felt a tightness in your chest. You ignored it, tried not to look at him, but you knew he felt it. Min Ho wasn’t stupid.

It was hard to move on, you knew he was there, but now more than ever, you felt the need to distance yourself. Somehow, you had broken something that you didn’t even fully understand, and you didn’t want to fall back into the temptation of thinking that things could be different. Not when you had already lost him.

One day, as you sat in the living room with Kitty, she wouldn’t stop looking at you, as if waiting for you to say something. Finally, after an uncomfortable silence, she approached.

" I know you too well," she said in a low but firm voice. " What's going on with Min Ho?"

You sighed. You didn’t know how to explain it. Kitty always noticed. Always.

" Nothing, Kitty," you lied, unable to look her in the eyes.

But she didn’t seem convinced. She paused, then pulled out her phone and placed it in front of you. On the screen was a video that looked familiar. The title read: Esther from Ohio sings on Sr. Moon's program.

You stared at it, confused.

" What is this?" you asked, not wanting to see what you already suspected.

" What you think it is," Kitty said, taking a sip of her drink. " It's a video of Stella. And I know the page where things were leaked... probably belongs to her too."

Your heart stopped for a second, and a wave of disbelief washed over you.

" Stella?"

Kitty looked at you with a smile that wasn’t exactly one of joy.

" The page where they posted the gossip about Min Ho's dad. I’ve been investigating, and something smells fishy. And that video…" she asked, furrowing her brow. " It looks like her, singing on that show."

You watched the video, unable to avoid it. The woman on the screen was Stella, though you would have never guessed it. Her tone of voice, her presence, everything matched what you knew about her, except her appearance. In the background, a sense of distrust began to cloud your thoughts.

" I don't know what this means," you whispered, barely believable, " but I don’t like it."

Kitty leaned back on the couch, crossing her arms.

" Why don't you tell Min Ho? He needs to know what's going on."

You stayed silent, biting your lip. Did you really want to get involved in something like this? After everything you had told him… But at the same time, something told you that you couldn’t just sit back and do nothing.

That same day, you went to the city. Maybe, somehow, something in all of this would give you clarity. You walked the streets, between the bright lights of the buildings, until you reached a store where, among other things, you could buy some clothes you needed. But before you entered the store, something caught your attention.

There she was.

Stella, coming out of an internet café, her phone in her hands. Her hair blew in the wind, but there was something about her expression that unsettled you. You stood still for a few seconds, watching her from a distance, before making a decision.

You knew you needed to talk to Min Ho. But should you show him what Kitty had shown you? Should you tell him what you had seen, what you suspected? Maybe he would deny it. Maybe, in his mind, it would make everything more complicated. But the worst part was that you didn’t know whether to trust her, or if Stella was really behind all of this.

You decided to return to the school, with the weight of uncertainty on your shoulders, and an hour later, you went to find him.

His gaze, although still warm, seemed to have a new hardness to it. He looked at you in silence, as if waiting for you to speak first.

" What's going on?" he asked, a slight irritation in his voice.

With trembling hands, you took out your phone and showed him the video of Stella, the same one Kitty had shown you. Min Ho stared at it intently, without showing any emotion.

" What's this?" he asked, his voice cold.

" This... is Stella," you said, trying to stay calm.

Min Ho sighed and ran a hand through his hair, clearly frustrated.

" I can't believe you're showing me this, seriously?"

" How can you not believe it?" you responded, feeling frustrated. " Why would I be lying to you? This is important!"

" Do you really want to talk about this?" he said, his voice harsh. " After everything that happened between us, everything you said? Now you’re bringing me this, telling me Stella is a liar... what, so I’ll come back to you?"

His words hit you hard, and although you knew you couldn’t do anything to make him understand your position, you couldn’t help but feel like your heart was breaking a little more.

" It’s not that, Min Ho. I just want you to know the truth. I’m not trying to separate you from her. I just want to take care of you."

Min Ho looked at you intently, his face now completely serious. There was a heavy silence between you both, as his eyes searched yours. Something you couldn’t find.

" I can’t believe it," he said finally, disappointment evident in his voice. " You told me that what happened between us didn’t mean anything, that you didn’t want to keep going... and now you bring me lies about Stella just because you don’t want to let me go."

Before you could reply, he stepped back, his face tense.

" This is too much. It’s not fair."

And, without saying another word, he turned and walked away, disappearing from your view, leaving you there, empty and with a sense of defeat in your stomach.

You felt empty, as if everything you had tried to build with Min Ho had crumbled in an instant. After everything that happened, you couldn’t help but feel guilty. Maybe you shouldn’t have shown him the video. Maybe, just maybe, you should have waited for more evidence before speaking. But the damage was already done.

Min Ho ignored you completely for days. He didn’t answer your messages, and every time you crossed paths in the hallways, his gaze immediately averted. That indifference, that coldness… it hurt more than you imagined.

Kitty looked at you with pity, knowing what you had done and how you were feeling. One afternoon, as you sat together in the dorm room, Kitty sighed, the air heavy with guilt.

" I’m sorry," she said, biting her lip. " Seriously, I’m sorry. This is all my fault."

You shook your head, surprised by her apology.

" It’s not your fault, Kitty," you quickly responded, without looking at her. " I was the one who decided to follow that video, my suspicions. If only I had waited… Maybe I wouldn’t have ruined everything. Maybe… maybe Min Ho would still trust me."

Kitty watched you for a moment, then sighed and shrugged.

" It’s just that… I know how hard it is for you to see all of this with him."

You couldn’t look at her, you couldn’t face what you had caused. You wished you could turn back time, tell Min Ho that you were wrong, that it wasn’t that serious. But, for some reason, something inside you told you that you couldn’t go back.

The next day at school, as you walked down the hallways, an odd sense of nervousness ran through you. Something made you stop in your tracks. There he was: Min Ho, standing in one of the Kiss hallways, dressed in a perfectly fitted pink suit, holding a bouquet of roses, standing in front of a decorated wall as if waiting for someone.

You couldn’t stop staring at him. Every detail seemed straight out of a romantic movie, and the mere sight of him there, with a serious but hopeful expression, made your stomach twist. Everything in you wanted to approach him, but you stayed still, watching from a distance.

In that moment, Stella appeared beside you, walking quickly past your shoulder. You couldn’t help but notice her, how she walked with a confident and assured smile. When she reached Min Ho, he looked up, and with pure determination, he extended the bouquet of roses to her.

"Stella, do you want to go to the dance with me?" he asked, and the way his voice sounded so sincere made you twist inside.

You felt a wave of jealousy invade you, but what hurt the most was how easy it seemed for him to be so open, so honest. You hated yourself for telling him that you couldn't be anything more after the kiss in the cabin, for pulling away from him so quickly, without giving him the chance to explore what you both truly wanted.

With a sigh, you turned away, unable to watch any longer. You walked with your head down, the weight of confusion and insecurity heavy on your shoulders.

That night, in the dorm, Kitty looked at you with a concerned expression.

"Are you really not going to the dance?" she asked softly.

You shook your head without hesitation.

"No, I don't want to go. I don't have a date, and I don't want to see Min Ho being happy with Stella. I couldn’t handle it. I don't want him to see me suffering from my own embarrassment."

Kitty looked at you silently, then sighed.

You knew that Stella wasn’t all bad. Kitty told you that she only went to the cyber café to talk to her ex-colleagues from Ohio. She didn't have bad intentions, really.

You shrugged, the pain in your chest almost unbearable.

"It doesn’t matter. I don’t get it, Kitty. I can't handle it. I feel stupid for all of this. Maybe it’s best to just step away from everything and let him be happy with someone else. After all, that's what I asked for from the start."

Kitty didn’t say anything more, but you could see the concern in her gaze. She knew how you felt. She knew it was harder for you than you could express.

Finally, you lay down in bed, turning your back on everything you had experienced with Min Ho, trying to forget it, even though you knew it wouldn’t be that easy. The decisions had already been made, and all that was left was to watch everything fall apart in front of you.

...

Min Ho no longer showed up to the meetings with Q, Dae, Yuri, Kitty, and you. No one knew exactly why, but everyone noticed. At first, you thought maybe it was your fault. You had seen Stella's behavior, and Min Ho's distance seemed related to everything that had happened, but maybe you had misinterpreted it.

One afternoon, while you were all in Q and Dae's dorm, the topic inevitably came up: Min Ho.

"Have you noticed how strange he's been lately?" Dae asked, crossing his arms.

Q nodded.

"Yeah, I’ve noticed too. And not just that... it’s like he's avoiding us, like he doesn’t want to be around us."

Dae furrowed his brow.

"I don’t think it’s about us. Something’s going on. Sorry, but it does seem a little strange."

Just as they were finishing their conversation about him, the door opened suddenly, and there was Min Ho, with Stella by his side. They walked in together, without making much noise, but what caught everyone’s attention was that Stella didn’t take off her shoes upon entering, which, in local culture, was considered a very inappropriate gesture. Min Ho, on the other hand, didn’t say a word, something he normally would have commented on, as he was meticulous about such details. And that was what surprised you the most.

Q looked at Dae, then at Kitty and you, with a knowing look.

"See? Definitely something’s going on. Stella didn’t take off her shoes, and he ignores her collagen water, just like one of Q’s energy drinks. This isn’t right."

Dae furrowed his brow and nudged Kitty.

"I don’t want to make things worse, but... her skin looks like Edward Cullen’s, but not in a sexy way, you know? It’s... weird. Really weird."

"Do you think it’s because of the suspicions about her?" Kitty asked, lowering her gaze to the phone she had left on the table.

Q sighed.

"I don’t know, but what I do know is that something’s happening. Stella isn’t right. I don’t want to judge her without proof, but something doesn’t add up."

Kitty nodded, a little worried.

"I know. But I was wrong before. Maybe I’m just seeing it from the wrong perspective."

You decided to ignore it all until the day of the singing competition. Things didn’t make sense, but you needed to focus on what was right in front of you. On the day of the competition, Dae called you and Kitty and, without hesitation, delivered the news.

"Stella’s going to compete in the contest, and Min Ho is going to support her," he said, with a serious tone.

Kitty couldn’t help but let out a nervous laugh.

"That’s impossible. How can that be? There’s no way he’s helping her."

Dae nodded, but his expression was grave.

"Mr. Moon introduced her as his great story of resilience. She... she’s involved in something bigger than we thought."

Kitty fell silent for a moment, processing the information.

"That... explains a lot about Min Ho’s behavior," she murmured, her face tense. "But why didn’t he tell us?"

What hurt the most was that, once again, Min Ho had chosen not to trust you, not even when the most important thing was for both of you to face the truth together.

You felt a renewed determination. You couldn’t just sit still. You had to do something. You needed to know the truth. So, while Kitty and Dae were preparing for the concert, you decided to go find Min Ho.

You headed to the stage where they were rehearsing, and once there, you found him alone, distancing himself from the crowd. You walked towards him without thinking, your heart in your throat.

"Min Ho," you called, with a mix of doubt and bravery. "I need to know what's going on. What's going on with Stella? Does she have you trapped or is that not true?"

Min Ho looked up, and in his eyes, there was a deep sadness. His shoulders slumped, as if the weight of the situation were crushing him.

"You're right," he replied with a sigh. "Stella is a psychopath. I don’t know how she found out my brother got his dancer pregnant, and now she’s threatening to tell the press unless she wins this contest."

Your heart raced, and you quickly stepped closer to him.

"We have to do something," you said, desperate. "We can’t let this go on. We have to stop her."

Min Ho nodded, but before you could say anything more, he slowly approached you and looked you in the eyes.

"I’m sorry... I’m so sorry," he said, his voice breaking, almost as if the pain he felt in his chest was as real as yours. "I should’ve never pushed you away, I should’ve never made you feel like I didn’t trust you. I don’t know what happened, I just... I got carried away. I failed you."

His words hit you in the heart, and for a moment, you felt completely vulnerable. You had been so focused on your suspicions, on what Stella represented in the equation, that you had forgotten the most important thing: Min Ho was also going through all of this in his own way. And, no matter how much you hated him for pulling away, you also knew that the situation wasn’t that simple. The world you both moved in was complicated, and decisions weren’t always easy.

You slowly moved closer, trying to find a way to comfort him, to let him know that it wasn’t all lost, that there was still time to set things right.

"Min Ho..." you said softly, taking his face in your hands. "I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have pushed you away, but I didn’t want to ruin what you had with Stella, well, before I found out she was a bitch."

He closed his eyes for a moment, as if he were absorbing every word you said.

"I know I messed up, and I feel horrible for not believing you when you needed me most. But when I found out what Stella was doing, everything changed. I realized how blind I was, how easy it was for her to manipulate me. What hurts the most is that you were there, trying to warn me, and I ignored you."

You couldn’t help but feel that his regret was genuine.

Without saying anything more, he hugged you, and in an instant, his lips found yours, in a kiss filled with everything that hadn’t been said before. A mix of regret, desire, and love that overflowed between the two of you.

You pulled away, feeling your heart pounding.

"We need to fix all of this first," you said, knowing that what mattered now was stopping Stella and putting things right before it was too late.

And as you prepared for what was to come, you realized that maybe things between you and Min Ho weren’t lost after all.

tags | @msromanreigns2023 @imagineme2you @yuwaimo @cassiewritessalot @lavnderluv

[umi-adxhira]

ᝰ.ᐟ SERENITY | 022

FANDOM: TWTPTFLOB

WARNINGS: Kidnapping, sort of Stockholm syndome

AUTHOR'S NOTES: I've been waiting for this chapter ngl

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You wake up in an unfamiliar room.

Your breath comes in short, panicked gasps before your mind even fully registers where you are. The last thing you remember is speaking to Jeremy. But now-

The air is still, thick with the scent of fresh linen and polished wood. A chandelier hangs above you, casting soft golden light over the intricate carpets that cover the floor. The room is pristine, elegant even, but utterly devoid of personality - like a blank canvas waiting to be filled.

You try to move, but something tugs at your ankle, halting your movement. A heavy weight. Your gaze drops, and your breath catches in your throat. A chain, thick and unforgiving, links your ankle to the foot of the bed.

Your heartbeat pounds against your ribs as your hands fly to your neck. Another presence makes itself known - a collar. It doesn’t hurt, doesn’t squeeze, but it’s there. A foreign weight pressing against your skin, a reminder that someone put this on you.

Your stomach twists violently, panic rising in your throat. You were attacked just a week ago - bruises still linger beneath your sleeves, painful and fresh. Memories rush in, jagged and incomplete. Jeremy leaving. Dion stepping in. His gaze sharp, unreadable. Dion did this.

The fear still lingers, a phantom clinging to your ribs, but the moment you recognize him, it starts to fade, little by little. Your pulse slows, though the unease remains. Why did he do this?

You turn your head, and there he is. Seated on the right side of the bed, dressed in something softer than his usual structured attire. The sight of him like this - relaxed, at ease - clashes with the circumstances. You open your mouth, demanding an explanation, but before the words can fully form, Dion moves. His grip is firm but unhurried as he pulls you against him, settling you onto his lap.

The warmth of his body seeps into you, and his fingers draw slow circles on your back. The pads of his fingertips graze your skin, a ghost of a touch that sends a shiver up your spine.

This shouldn’t be comforting.

Your hands hover between pushing him away and giving in. Eventually, begrudgingly, you let them rest against him, pressing your face closer to his chest. His scent, clean with a hint of something dark underneath, surrounds you. The steady rhythm of his breathing is almost hypnotic.

“It’s to keep you safe,” he finally says.

You scoff. “Since when do you care about keeping me safe?”

His hand stills. “I saved you from Fontaine.”

“That was the first time,” you counter. “And he still got to me in the end.” His fingers twitch against you before his fist clenches, pressing lightly against your back. You feel the tension, the restrained force in the movement. He could hurt you if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. You choose not to acknowledge it. “How long am I staying here?”

He doesn’t hesitate. “As long as you’re alive in this world.”

Your heart pounds, but your voice remains steady. “That can’t happen. I have to change the manhwa, and I can’t do that if I’m locked away.”

Dion’s gaze sharpens. “I’ll change it for you.”

You blink. “What?”

“Tell me what to do,” he says simply. “I’ll do it.”

This is what I wanted, isn’t it? Can’t believe I forgot to ask him when I saw him at Yggdrasil. There was a lot on my mind. Now he’s offering. Willingly. You nod, carefully choosing your words.

“Before Cassis gets kidnapped, Roxana tries to hatch illusion butterflies, disguised as poison butterflies, to trick Lante into thinking Cassis is dead. I told her that every time she tried, something thwarted her progress, forcing her to start over. That was a lie.” Dion listens, unmoving. “In the original manhwa, she hatches them successfully after a few attempts. I told her that someone was sabotaging her and that it would be revealed three years later. But I never read that far. I don’t know who it was.” Dion tilts his head slightly. “She asked me if she ever succeeds,” you continue. “I told her yes. Eventually. But if she fails too many times, she might start suspecting I lied. And if that happens, she might kill me.”

Dion interrupts, stroking your hair. “She’ll never lay a finger on you.”

You exhale, a mixture of relief and unease curling in your stomach. His touch lingers at the nape of your neck, his fingers tracing absentminded patterns against your skin. The warmth spreads, settling in your chest.

“Am I doing too much?” The question slips out before you can stop it. “Is it even worth it?”

For a while, he says nothing. You think he won’t answer at all. But then-

“I don’t know.” His grip on you tightens just a little. “But I’ll cut down as many enemies as it takes.”

Silence stretches between you. A weighty, wordless understanding.

You rest your forehead against his shoulder. The soft fabric of his shirt is warm, and you feel the slow rise and fall of his chest against yours. His fingers brush against your jaw, his thumb grazing your cheekbone before pulling back, subtle but deliberate.

“Thank you,” you whisper.

No more words are needed as the day passes in the quiet comfort of his embrace. The steady thrum of his heartbeat beneath your ear, the slow way his hands move against your back, the way your fingers idly trace the fabric of his sleeve - it’s all unspoken, yet understood. There is a softness here, buried beneath steel, and for now, you let yourself sink into it. Damn… I’m falling for him. A character from a novel.

As time passes, his grip on you never falters. His fingers skim lightly over your shoulder, down your spine, a slow and deliberate motion that soothes the lingering anxiety in your chest. He is surprisingly warm, solid, unyielding - yet there is an unspoken gentleness in the way he holds you, a quiet sort of possession that makes your heart beat faster.

Your fingers tighten slightly where they rest on his sleeve. A question lingers in the air, unspoken yet heavy with meaning. You wonder if he can hear the unsteadiness in your breathing, feel the way your pulse flutters against his chest. He doesn’t comment on it, merely tilts his head, allowing his chin to rest lightly against your temple. The action is subtle, but the weight of it settles deep within you.

You let your eyes close, just for a moment, listening to the steady cadence of his breath. The world outside this room feels distant, inconsequential. For now, there is only this - only the warmth of his touch, the quiet assurance of his presence, and the strange, undeniable pull between you.

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