#the tagging system truly will be the death of me

[johnsbleu]

Hold My Hand: John Wick x Reader Chapter 177

warnings: nsfw moment, stalking, mentions of blood hmh masterlist

Since John has some things to get done today, you and Ronan are having a girls' day. He kissed you both goodbye after breakfast, then he left for the day. You took Ronan to the toy store so she could pick something out before you took her with you to the store to pick up some stuff for dinner. She played with her new toy the entire time and said hi and waved at every person who walked past. It’s her thing right now, and it’s probably the cutest thing ever.

After a trip to the grocery store, you ran a few more errands as quickly as possible since you didn’t want her to grow fussy, then you headed back home. It is a pretty warm day, so you definitely want to spend it outside. Ronan has some toys to play with and you have a book you’ve been dying to read since you brought it home from the shop a week ago.

When you pull into the driveway, a smile immediately spreads on your face. John is back and he’s standing by his car talking with Jimmy. You’re sure he just forgot something, so you pull around his car so you don’t block him in the driveway, and when Ronan sees her favorite guy, she screams with excitement. She’ll never tire of seeing him, and that’s also pretty fucking cute.

“Daddy!” she yells from the backseat, and you roll down her window and laugh when John rushes over.

“Hi, bug.” he leans in and kisses her cheek, “Did you get a new toy?”

From the rearview mirror, you see Ronan hold it up to show her daddy, and she smiles when John gasps and asks her questions about it. Jimmy even comes over to check it out too. John moves aside so Jimmy can talk to Ronan, and he opens your door and smiles at you.

“Hi, baby.”

“Hi,” you give him a small bashful wave that makes him laugh, and he reaches out to help you from the car so he can hug you. “What are you doing home?”

John gives you a quick kiss before gesturing to the house, “Forgot something I needed, then I stopped to talk to Jimmy.”

“Oh, so you still have things to do?” you ask, and he nods his head and smiles when you frown. “Okay. Well, I already did all my errands for the day, so hurry up.”

“I’m letting you two have a girls' day.”

You nod, “We’re having one! I bought some nail polish for her. I found this kind that is strictly made for children, so it’s non-toxic, vegan, cruelty-free, and all kinds of other stuff, and I’m totally losing you because your eyes have glazed over and you’re just nodding your head.”

John starts to smile, “I was listening.”

“Then what did I say?” you put your hands on your hips as he stares at you with a stupid grin on his face. “Exactly.”

“You said it was safe for Ronan to use.” he takes your hands off your hips and wraps them around his waist, pulling you close, “I just have a few more things to do, then I’ll be home.”

You look down when you feel Ronan tugging on your shorts, “Okay, well, we’re having a girls' day and we’re going to paint our nails with non-toxic, vegan, and cruelty-free nail polish.”

“Yeah, I was listening,” he teases, and you roll your eyes before leaning up to kiss him. “Say goodbye to daddy, Ro.”

Ronan hugs tight to John’s leg, then reaches up for a hug. He lifts her into his arms and hugs her, then he kisses her plump cheek before putting her down and kissing you again. You wave bye to Jimmy as he heads down the driveway after saying his goodbyes, then you hold Ronan and wave as John backs out.

“Bye, daddy!” Ronan yells, and you laugh as you look over at her. John taps the horn a few times, and she giggles loudly.

You blow a kiss to John and wave at him, then you take Ronan into the house to paint your nails.

__

It’s super warm this afternoon, so you and Ronan got settled on a blanket under the tree in the yard. She’s running around with Bleu and Sadie while you watch her, and you laugh when she trips and tumbles to the ground. You’re only laughing because she immediately gets up and keeps running around as the dogs chase her, giggling non-stop.

One day, she fell, and John immediately made a huge deal about it, which, yeah, is completely understandable, but because his reaction was so intense, so was hers. She sobbed. She didn’t even hurt herself. She just tripped over her feet. John took her into his arms and cuddled her until she felt better, then later she did it again (She’s a toddler, what do you expect?), and you playfully gasped and said "Uh oh!” and had a much more laidback reaction. She didn’t cry. She just got up and said “I okay,” before running off to play. You told John that if his reaction is intense, she’s going to feed off that.

It’s like those videos where the parents use their hand to hit the door, then they say “Oh no, are you okay?” to the baby, who then starts crying. They didn’t even get hurt. They’re just basing their reaction on yours.

Ronan is a Wick through and through, though. That girl will fall seven times and get back up eight. She is so John’s daughter.

You tilt your head back and close your eyes when a light breeze blows past, but you look down when you feel something hit your arm. You furrow your brow and pick up the candy wrapper, then you look around the yard.

Usually, you don’t get much litter in the yard. Mill Neck is very adamant about picking up any and all trash left around. You’ve never even seen a cigarette butt on the sidewalk before. They constantly patrol the neighborhood and the lake behind your house and are always picking up trash.

When another wrapper blows past, you quickly sit up and grab it before standing up and scanning the yard. Maybe a raccoon got into the garbage last night. You walk over to the garbage can to investigate with Ronan and the dogs right on your heels. She’s found a stick that she’s now waving around, so both dogs run off and finally plop down in the yard for some rest. You sure wouldn’t want to be in the way of her and that giant stick.

“Careful, Ro.” you say as you walk around the side of the house, “Uh oh, not near the windows.”

Ronan looks up at you with her big brown eyes--she is so John’s twin--then she nods her head and takes a few steps away before waving it around some more, knocking it against a flower pot and a patio chair. You make your way to the back of the house and keep looking around for any wrappers while Ronan gasps and finds more sticks to play with, you assume.

“What the hell?” you whisper to yourself when you find another wrapper for an energy bar.

“Momma!” Ronan calls out, and you turn around to see her walking over with a plastic bag in one hand and a clear water bottle that is definitely holding something that is not water.

“Put that down! Now!” you yell loudly and completely on impulse, and Ronan drops it and immediately starts to cry. You didn’t think about how your tone would absolutely scare her. You quickly rush over and grab her hands since she always sucks her thumb when she’s tired or sad, and you rush her into the house while she cries. “I’m so sorry, baby.”

You take her into the bathroom and immediately put some soap on her hands, scrubbing them vigorously and lathering the soap up nicely before rinsing it away. She’s still crying, but you’ll console her in a minute.

After drying her hands, you walk out to the living room and set her in your lap as you sit on the couch. You move her wispy brown hair from her eyes and press a kiss to her forehead. Her thumb immediately goes into her mouth. Thank god you washed her hands.

“I am so sorry that I yelled, baby.” you whisper against her warm forehead, “What you were holding was icky, and I didn’t want you to get dirty. I’m sorry. I love you.”

Ronan nuzzles into the crook of your neck and tries to say she loves you back. You give her a big kiss, then you hold her tight in your arms, rocking her gently. It’s almost nap time for her anyway. It doesn’t take long for her to fall asleep, so you carry her up to her room and let her rest for a bit before wandering back outside to check everything out--this time with gloves and a pair of tongs.

You pick up the bottle Ronan had and inspect it. Definitely pee. You search the bag and find more energy bars, protein bars, and an energy drink. There’s a receipt too, and it’s dated for just a few days ago. You try to recall if any work was done on the house around that time, but no one has been here.

From the corner of your eye, you spot a wrapper catching the sunlight, so you walk over and find a few more behind a bush, along with a matted-up blanket. It’s definitely time to call John.

You peel off the gloves and toss them on the ground next to the other wrappers, then you grab your phone, cradling it between your ear and shoulder as you walk back into the house for another pair of gloves and a garbage bag.

“Hey,” John answers after the third ring, “Can I call you right back?”

“Uh, yeah, that’s fine. No biggie. Just call me back when you can.” you say, then you hang up with John. You bring the garbage bag outside and snap a quick picture of what you’ve found, then you send it to John with no context. He’ll want to see a picture of it anyway when you talk to him.

After gathering everything in the garbage bag, you sit down on the side patio and wait for John to call you back. He does after about 5 minutes.

“What the hell was that picture you just sent me?”

“Have we had anyone over in the past week working on the house?”

John is quiet while he thinks, “No. Last time someone came out was for the pool. Why?”

“Well, I just…found that stuff in the bush behind the house.”

“What?”

You shrug, “Yeah, I found some empty wrappers blowing through the yard, so I went to look around, thinking it was a raccoon or something. Ronan found a bottle of something that is definitely not water.”

“Peach, when I asked if I could call you back, you should have said no because it was important. I would have dropped what I was doing.”

“It’s okay. You don’t have to drop everything for me.”

John scoffs, “It’s not okay, and yes, I do. I’m down the street right now.”

You smile as you get up and walk over to the driveway just as John pulls in. You hang up the phone and stuff it into your pocket, then you shrug when John looks at you.

John immediately gets out and rushes to you, “Are you okay?”

You nod as he looks you over, “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“Where is everything?” he asks, and you point over your shoulder. He takes your hand and drags you with him, “Don’t ever say this is nothing, mouse. This is important.”

“I felt like maybe it was nothing. Maybe it is nothing.” You hope anyway. “Maybe it’s Logan’s stuff from when he stayed out here once before he moved in.”

That doesn’t make sense though. The receipt was from a few days ago, and Logan has been staying at the house for a while now.

“Logan has been here for months. It can’t be from him.” John takes a deep breath and kneels down to look at everything, “You have gloves or something?”

You hand John the tongs. He looks up at you and laughs before taking them.

“We’ll need a new pair,” John says, shaking his head, “Definitely not flipping burgers with this anytime soon.”

Taking a deep breath, you kneel down next to him, “What do you think?”

“I think…” he takes a moment and looks at everything before looking at you, “I think someone has been staying in our backyard.”

“Staying?”

John clenches his jaw, “Or worse.”

You swallow hard and nod your head, nervousness and uncertainty settling into your gut, “Like…watching us?”

The thought makes you absolutely sick. Not only could someone be watching you, they could be watching Ronan. It’s a huge violation of privacy. And creepy. So fucking creepy.

“I gotta call Jimmy,” John says as he stands up. He reaches for your hand and helps you up, “Make sure every window and door is locked.”

“I will,” you look up at him and nod, and he quickly leans down to kiss you. “I love you.”

John is sensing that you’re scared, so he smiles softly as he cups your face, “I love you too. Now go inside.”

You hold his gaze as you tear up and watch his demeanor change from the soft, caring man you married to the cold, ruthless Baba Yaga. He immediately cracks when he sees a tear slide down your cheek.

“I’m going to protect you,” he whispers against your temple as you cry, “I’m going to protect you and Ronan both. Please go inside. I need to know you’re locked inside and that you’re safe.”

“What about you?”

John lets out a small laugh, “I’ll be fine. I’ll keep my phone and my keys on me at all times. Set the security system too.”

“Okay,” your chin wobbles as you look down and close your eyes, then you look up at him, “Find whoever this is.”

“Trust me,” John looks into your eyes intensely, “I plan on it.”

You watch John as he walks away, but he abruptly turns around and rushes back to you, reaching for you. He takes your face in his hands and presses a deep and desperate kiss to your lips, then several soft ones, before resting his forehead against yours for a moment.

“I’ll always protect you, Y/N.” he whispers, tears rolling down your cheeks when you look at him. Using his thumb, he wipes them away and kisses your forehead. “Get inside and lock that door.”

__

Unfortunately there’s been no news the past two days. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. There’s been no signs of anyone coming into the backyard since John put up some security cameras. When you went to bed last night, he was looking at the security cameras, and he was still looking at them when you woke up this morning.

As soon as you realized that someone was staying in the backyard, you packed a big bag for Ronan and took her to your parents' house. They understood and even offered their guest bedroom to you and John. He jumped on the opportunity, but only if it was for you to stay there, not him. You’re not going anywhere if he isn’t with. Ronan is safe with your parents, but you’re not leaving John’s side.

Logan was made aware of what was going on too, and you and John felt it would be best if he wasn’t at the house either, so he’s staying with Jimmy and Tess. He wanted to be a little closer so he could get his things for work, plus he gets along really well with Jimmy.

The living room is too open for John’s comfort, so he’s been making you stay in your bedroom. At night, you can close the curtains and lock the door to the balcony and know that no one can see in, but you can’t do the same in the living room.

“I can’t do this.” you say as you turn around to look at John, “I can’t just…live my life in our bedroom. I miss our daughter. I miss our living room. I miss going outside.”

John sits up straight and nods, “I know. It’s not forever.”

“Well, I’m about to rage.” you say, and John smiles a little. “I’m not kidding. I’m about to go in the yard and scream at the top of my lungs. Why does this person get to have this control over us?”

“Because we don’t know why they’re out there watching.”

You pout with your whole body and flop face down onto the bed. John lightly scratches your back and smiles when you look at him, and he sets aside the laptop and opens his arms to hold you. After you get into his arms, he reaches for it again and sets it in his lap.

“This is all you’ve been doing for 24 hours,” you whisper, looking at the different views around your yard, “Aren’t you bored?”

“Yes and no.” he says, and you look up at him, “Yes, because not much is happening, but also no, because Jimmy was taking Sadie for a walk and got tangled in her leash and tripped.”

You start to laugh as you look back at the laptop, but the laughter quickly fades, “I just want to know who this person is.”

“Me too.”

Closing your eyes, you nuzzle closer to him, “Do you think they’ll show up again?”

“I hope so,” he whispers, rubbing your side, “I’ll be waiting for him when he does.”

__

Shooting up in bed, you look over at John as he quickly rushes out of the bedroom. You get up and follow behind him, calling out, but he’s not waiting for you. He flings the door open and runs into the yard, and you stay in the house for a moment. It’s pitch black outside; you can’t see anything. You rush into the kitchen and get a flashlight, then you step outside and shine it around the yard.

“John?” you call out, not stepping foot off the patio, “John?”

After waiting for a few minutes, you go back inside and lock the door, still searching in the darkness for him. You hear footsteps coming up to the house, so you wait a moment before you see John. You quickly unlock the door to let him in, then you lock it behind him as he pants.

“Did you see him?”

You shake your head, “No.”

“He…” he exhales loudly and stands up, taking the flashlight from you and covering the living room in darkness so no one can see the two of you, “He was in the backyard. I was falling asleep, and the motion sensor woke me up. He was back.”

“What do we do?”

John grabs his phone and calls Jimmy. Despite it being almost two in the morning, Jimmy answers on the third ring.

“He was back,” John says, reaching for your hand and leading you upstairs. “Yeah, I just chased him around the yard. He’s fast. No, no, she’s okay. She’s right here with me. She didn’t stay inside like I told her to, but she’s okay.”

You shrug bashfully when he looks at you. He made you promise that you wouldn’t leave the house when he went outside after dark, but it was on impulse. You couldn’t just let him run out there in the dark.

John shuts and locks the bedroom door, “Yeah. I’m gonna keep looking. Hopefully one of the cameras got a good view of him. Yeah, I’ll send it right over if I find something. Sorry for waking you up.”

Since you’re sitting next to John in a silent room, you can hear Jimmy telling John not to apologize and to call if he finds anything else. You smile to yourself. Jimmy really is the best.

John hangs up with Jimmy and looks at you, “I told you to stay in the house.”

“I know you did, but--”

“No!” he says sternly as he looks at you, “I told you to stay in the house. I don’t care what your excuse is.”

You furrow your brow in anger, “You can’t tell me what to do!”

“I don’t tell you what to do, Y/N, you know that. I’m telling you to stay in the house when there’s a fucking stalker on the loose. I’m telling you to stay inside so you don’t get hurt. I don’t know if he’s carrying a gun or a knife with him, and I don’t know what his intentions are. You stay in the damn house next time.” he says, and you both stare each other down. He raises his brows, “Understand?”

“Yes, sir.” you scoff, and he chuckles as he reaches for your hand. You sigh loudly, “Sorry.”

John tugs your arm to get you to move closer, “I can’t lose you, and you know I’m not telling you what to do; I never have told you what to do and I never will.”

“I know,” you frown as you look up at him, “I was just scared when you ran outside. I was only out there for a few minutes.”

“Next time it’s zero minutes, okay?” he presses a kiss to your forehead and helps you lie down. “Are you tired?”

You nod as you look up at him, “Yeah, but I can’t sleep.”

John rests his hand on your hip, “Well, can I distract you?”

“Well, shouldn’t you be watching the cameras?”

He takes a deep breath, “I chased him down. He won’t come back tonight, I promise. He knows we’re watching.”

“Then yes, please distract me,” you reach up to cup his face, then you pull him down to your lips as he slips his hand into your underwear and rubs your clit. He slowly slides his middle finger deep inside of you and lets out a small laugh when he feels how wet you are. You roll your eyes, “Yeah, yeah, so I think you’re hot when you’re assertive. What about it?”

John smiles softly as he looks down at you, then he pulls the blanket over you both as he moves down between your legs.

__

Tess and Jimmy came over first thing this morning, and the guys went outside to scope everything out while you made breakfast. They came back in and ate, still talking about what they should do next. You finished eating and went to the living room with everyone, and now you’re just sitting around trying to wrap your head around everything.

“So, we have a stalker.”

Jimmy nods, “Sounds like it.”

“Why would someone want to stalk us?” you ask, and Jimmy shrugs.

Tess shrugs, “People stalk for all kinds of reasons. Who knows. It could be something like they like your house or…someone is stalking John because they saw him at the mall and thought he was hot. People are fucking weird.”

“Could it be Matt?” you ask, and John shakes his head. “Are you sure?”

“It’s not him,” Jimmy chimes in, glancing at John. “I immediately checked with a buddy at the station. He’s not even in New York anymore. Lives somewhere in southern New Jersey now. We matched the dates from the receipt and he wasn’t in New York. As far as I know, he moved shortly after you got married.”

Tess chuckles, “After John beat his ass.”

“Maybe it’s your ex.” John says, and you look at him, “What was his name? Drake?”

You jerk your head back, “Derek? What? No! And why does it have to be my ex? We ran into him months ago. I haven’t even talked to him in forever, not since I ran into him, and he was cool about everything. You even met him! Why would it be him?”

“I don’t have anyone who would want to watch me.”

“You’re John Wick, of course you do!” you say loudly, then you shake your head, “What about your crazy ex, Rachel? She applied for a job at our shop and wanted to fuck you! She practically admitted it!”

John shakes his head, “It’s not her, but I don’t know about your ex.”

“Oh, so you’re blaming me for this?”

John furrows his brow in anger, “I’m not blaming you. I’m thinking about potential people.”

“Well, you’re really shit at it.” you say as you cross your arms, “Why does it have to be about me? Why is it my fault that this is happening?”

“Hey!” Tess stands between the two of you and puts her hands out, “Stop. Why are you two fighting when you should be leaning on each other for support?”

John closes his eyes for a moment before looking over at you, “I’m sorry. I just…I’m just trying to think of people.”

“Well, it’s not him.” you say, and John nods. “I can call him to prove it. Though…now that I think about it, I don’t have his number--because I don’t talk to him.”

“I believe you,” John says, and you nod your head. “I believe you, peach.”

Tess grimaces when you look at her, “But how do you know?”

“I don’t.” you admit as you shrug, “I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think it’s him.”

Why would it even be Derek? You ran into him a while ago at a restaurant and even introduced him to John and Ronan. It’s not him. He’s moved on and the break-up was completely amicable, and quite literally years ago. It’s not him.

You grab your phone from the coffee table and pull up Instagram. You get to his profile and see he’s just recently added to his stories, so you open it. Relief washes over you when you see that he’s not even in the state. He’s not even in the country.

“He’s in Costa Rica.” you say, turning your phone to show everyone, “From the looks of it, he’s been there for a while. Something for work. He’s been there nearly two months.”

“The receipt was from a few days ago,” John says, holding your gaze, “It’s not him.”

You let out a big breath and shake your head slightly, “I’ll be right back.”

You just need a moment to yourself, so you head up to your room. You sit down on the bed and put your head in your hands, then you rub your tired eyes. You’ve barely gotten any sleep.

“I’m not blaming you, peach,” John says from behind you, and you look over your shoulder as he walks over in the dark room. The curtains have been completely shut all day. He sits down next to you and wraps his arm around your waist, “I’m sorry that it came across like I was accusing you. This isn’t your fault. I don’t want you to think that at all.”

“It wouldn’t be him. He wouldn’t do that.”

John nods, “Maybe I just accused him for personal reasons.”

You furrow your brow when you look at him, but you nod when you see the guilty look on his face and his big puppy-dog eyes.

“I don’t want to be with him, John.” you say as you turn to face him, “I haven’t for years. I just want to be with you.”

“I know,” he nods, sighing loudly, “I know that. I just remember how he looked at you that night that you ran into him, and…I’m just being jealous.”

You smile as you reach over to cup his face, “You don’t have to be jealous of anyone ever. You know how much I want you. You know how much I love you, so please don’t be jealous of someone from my past.”

John looks at you and starts to smile since every now and then you get a little jealous about his relationship with Helen. Hey, you’re human, okay?

“I’ll do the same,” you say as he leans over to kiss your cheek. You smile softly at him before it fades and you begin to worry again, “Are we sure it’s not Matt?”

“It’s not,” John shakes his head. “As soon as we found the stuff in the yard, I asked Jimmy to look into it. It’s not him. Selfishly hoped it was, so I could beat the shit out of him again, but it’s not him. I don’t know who it could be, but if I’m honest, it’s…it’s probably someone from my past, not yours.”

You shake your head, “We don’t know that, John. We can’t jump to conclusions here. All we know is that someone has been staying in the backyard. We don’t know anything else.”

“Whether it’s someone watching us or staying in the backyard, we keep these curtains closed at all times. No more sitting in the living room either.”

“So,” you pause for dramatic effect, “We just…don’t live a life then?”

John sighs, “For now.”

You get up from the bed and exhale loudly, “Okay.”

John stands up and reaches for your hand when you walk past, and he pulls you into his arms and holds you, resting his forehead against yours. He tips your chin up and kisses you softly, leaving his lips there for a few moments before kissing you deeper. He slips his tongue into your mouth as he slides his hand down to your ass, then he grips it and cups your face in his other hand.

You get a little worked up from kissing him, so you pant as you lean back to look into his eyes, “Don’t leave me. I don’t want to be alone.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” he whispers, and you close your eyes, “Ronan is safe with your parents--Dan assured me of that. But I don’t want you leaving my side.”

Closing your eyes, you lean against his chest for a few moments, listening to his heart pounding. He wraps his arms around you tightly and holds you, then he rubs your back and nods his head toward the doorway, so you head back downstairs.

“You know, I was thinking…” Tess turns around and gestures to the floor to ceiling glass walls, “You might wanna get rid of this.”

“We are,” John says, and you scoff and look back at him.

You roll your eyes, “We’re not. I’m not changing my house because someone is being a freak and spying on us. We’re not getting rid of it. Sure, we’ll get some curtains, but the glass walls stay. We’re not ruining the aesthetic of this house.”

“Fuck the aesthetic,” Tess says, and you look at her.

“No. I’m not changing my house because of some person. You can’t even see our living room unless you’re standing in our driveway. The walls stay.” you say firmly as you look at them all, “I’m not changing my life for someone who is violating my privacy. End of discussion.”

Tess puffs out her cheeks and lets out air as she looks at John, “A spitfire, that one.”

“I know,” John smiles as he looks at you, “I love it.”

__

John has been patrolling the yard for the past two nights before bed. He goes out there and stays out until he’s searched every inch of the lawn. He checks the bushes, behind the garbage cans, and the dock on the lake. He checks the backyard nearly five times before you finally call him inside. He comes inside very reluctantly. You both make sure the house is completely locked up, the security system is set, and there are no lights left on inside before you head up to your room for the night and lock yourselves in.

“Should we get a gate at the end of the driveway?”

You look over at him as you both brush your teeth. You quickly spit out the toothpaste and put your toothbrush away before turning to him while he finishes up.

“No,” you shake your head when he looks at you, “I don’t want us to cut ourselves off from people here. Tess comes over too, so what am I supposed to do every time she wants to come over? Tell her that she needs to wait for me to open a fucking gate for her? Or tell her that I’ll meet her down there? I’m not locking us away. Plus Bleu and Sadie run from Tess’ house to ours.”

“I know, but--”

You take a deep breath, “I get it. You’re trying to protect us and I love that, but I don’t want to lock myself away because someone is watching us. I want to know who it is so we can lock them away.”

“And I’m going to find them,” he says, and you nod your head, “They have violated our privacy. They’ve made you feel unsafe in our home. I will find them.”

“I know you will.” you place your hand on his chest as you look up at him, “I believe you.”

John sighs as he looks at you. He’s been beating himself up over this. He can’t catch this person who is making you feel unsafe, and he feels like he’s failing.

“Do you still feel safe with me?”

“Of course I do,” you wrap your arms around his neck, “Why do you think I’ve been stuck to your side?”

John closes his eyes, “I can’t catch him though.”

“But you will.” you reach up and tuck a strand of hair behind his ear, “I know you will, John. We’ll catch him.”

Holding tight to one another, you stand on your tiptoes and bury your face in the crook of his neck, finding safety and comfort in his arms. You try to keep yourself from yawning, but you can’t, so you lean back and yawn as John laughs.

“Let’s go to bed.” he whispers, and you smile softly.

He won’t sleep a wink tonight, knowing that there’s someone out there, but at least he’ll be by your side.

__

Since Ronan has been with your parents at night, you and John have been spending the day with her. You’ve taken her to the museum and, of course, the aquarium--you put that season pass to good use, and thankfully she never tires of the place. You’ve been spending all day with her and John, but his mind is still back at the house. H’es laughing and enjoying the time that you’re all spending together, but his smile will slowly fade as the worries creeps back in. He knows that he can’t just sit there all day since whoever is stalking will show up once you aren’t there.

Ronan clearly misses you and John since she’s clinging to your hands as you walk through the aquarium together. Once she gets to her favorite part--the rainforest area--she lets go and runs over to crawl through the tunnel. Her giggle echoes through the tunnel, and you snap a few pictures of her inside as she points at the snake wrapped around the branch.

“I swear if she could get in there and cuddle with it, she would,” John says, and you look up at him, “She is too sweet.”

You look back at Ronan as she waves at the snake and talks to it, “I want this to be over.”

“What?”

“This…stalker shit. I want to be able to bring our daughter home.” you look at her and smile, “She deserves to be able to come home. She deserves to be able to play in the yard with Bleu and with us.”

John wraps his arm around your shoulder to pull you closer, “And you deserve to feel safe.”

“I don’t care about me.”

“But I do,” he says, hugging you close to his side, “And I’ll make sure that you both are safe.”

Ronan comes running back over to you, pointing at a colorful bird flying overhead, then she squeals with excitement and takes off running up to the next exhibit that is housing a huge lizard or something. Of course, she crawls into that tunnel as well and smiles when the creature crawls past her. John nudges you and points to the tunnel. You break out in a grin when you look at him, then you quickly crawl inside to join Ronan.

__

Men are screaming loudly in the yard as you shake on the couch, clinging to a pillow. There are cops everywhere, and their blue and red lights are flashing brightly through the window. There’s even one parked in the middle of your yard.

Ten minutes ago, you and John were just sitting on the couch watching a movie when you both saw something from the corner of your eye. It was the stalker. He was just standing there, watching you through the window. You saw him but didn’t react. You just quietly whispered to John, but he already knew. He had spotted him a few minutes before you mentioned it. He said he wanted to play it cool and see if he could sneak away. Before John could even do that, the stalker banged on the window, and John immediately jumped up to chase after him while you called the cops.

The door opens, and you instantly tense up until you see that it’s Jimmy.

“Where’s John?”

“I don’t know!” you get up and walk to him, “He ran out.”

Jimmy rubs his hand over his face and looks outside, “We can’t find him or the guy.”

“There!” someone yells, and you see the stalker running across the lawn with John hot on his trail.

Jimmy puts his arm out to protect you and keep you inside, but you push past him and run onto the patio. You hear the splashing of water as if someone is running along the shore, then a gunshot rings out and causes you to freeze for a moment. Your blood runs cold, and everything is silent for a minute, like the entire world went on mute. But another shot rings out, and you immediately take off running. You hear several more gunshots and duck down when one hits a tree next to you, then you keep running to John.

“Wait! No!” Jimmy yells as he chases after you. “Don’t look!”

You have to. You have to look. Because you know who was shot. You know it deep down. John didn’t have a gun when he ran outside.

As soon as you get closer, you see John. He’s holding his side. You run up to him and immediately press your hand over his, searching his eyes.

“I’m okay.” he says, nodding his head as he pants, “I’m okay.”

“No, no, no!” you cry as you help him sit down. You move his hair from his face before looking up, “Help!”

John coughs a little and reaches up to touch your face, “Peach, I’m fine.”

“You’re not fine,” you cry as you lift his shirt to look at his side covered in blood, “Oh, my god! Help!”

Jimmy slides up next to you and immediately applies pressure to John’s side. He yells out something to another cop, but you can’t hear what it was over your cries.

“Please don’t leave me,” you whisper to John as you lean closer, “John…”

John opens his eyes, “I’m okay. Just a graze. Did they catch him?”

You look over your shoulder to see two cops wrestling someone down onto the ground, and you catch a glimpse of the stalker before you look back at John, who is trying to keep his eyes open.

“Mrs. Wick,” an EMT kneels down next to you and looks at your hands that are covered in John’s blood. She smiles softly at you, “Let’s get up so we can get him into an ambulance, okay?”

“I don’t--” you reach for his arm and cling to it, “I don’t want to leave him!”

She smiles sincerely, “You can stay by his side the entire time, I swear.”

“I’m fine!” John says as he tries to get up, but Jimmy pushes him back down. “Get off! I need to find him!”

“They got him, man. He’s in custody.” Jimmy says, and you lightly rub John’s arm to get him to look at you.

You lean down and kiss him, “We have to get you to the hospital.”

“I don’t want to go.” he whispers softly, and you lean closer, “I need to find him.”

“He’s in custody. He’s not going anywhere.” you say, rubbing his cheek softly, “But we need to get you to a hospital.”

John closes his eyes in defeat and nods his head, “Fine. I can walk though.”

The EMT smiles when you look at her, “Nice try, Mr. Wick. You’re going on a stretcher.”

He’ll run otherwise. He’ll chase the car down to get to that guy, you know it. It was personal before, but now with the gunshot wound in his side, it really is.

You stand up while they get John onto the stretcher, and you smile when he reaches for your hand. You walk alongside him as they push the stretcher through the yard to the ambulance, then you get in after they put him inside.

“Mrs. Wick,” an officer says, and you look over at him. “We’ll need you to come to the station to identify the suspect.”

You shake your head, “I’m not leaving John’s side. You hold him there until then.”

“Yes, ma’am.” he nods before walking off.

To be honest, it felt kind of nice to have all that power just then.

You look back at John and smile softly when you see him looking at you, “We’re gonna get this all fixed.”

“Don’t cry,” he whispers as he reaches up to cup your face, “I’m okay.”

Immediately, you start crying harder as you lean down and rest your forehead against his. He wraps his hand around your arm and squeezes lightly as the ambulance pulls onto the street and turns on the lights and sirens. The EMTs in the back are getting something set up for John while you sit back and hold tight to his hand. He’s still trying so hard to keep his eyes open.

“Peach,” he says with his eyes shut, and you lean forward until you’re closer to him, “I love you.”

You smile and let out a small laugh, “I love you too, but you’re scaring me. Don’t start saying goodbye.”

“I’m fine. I’ve been through worse,” he laughs with his eyes closed. He hums when you rub your thumb over his cheek, “Stay with me though, okay? I’ll protect you.”

“I know,” you smile, resting your head on his chest, “I’m staying right here.”

__

taglist:

@spiderfangirl22 @im--blushing @ruby-octo @sunnythebunny7 @livetosing21 @lilithlinen @ladyren33 @multifandombliss @tnu-ree @scream-queen-25 @beingnerdyissupercool @sakurachan-9

[peppermintpegis]

netflix one piece live action feels a little like fanfic in that it makes sure it hits all the important notes but doesnt do all the work to make them hit which works in fic where the reader is supposed to bring all the emotional story investment from the original but doesnt work in a multi million adaptation that is supposed to be able to stand on its own or even serve as an intro to the series. it even does this in service to have more koby and helmeppo gay moments in this essay i w

[sunlitmiracle]

smashes my current interest together with my old interest (aka yet another "what Dungeon Meshi but Gamers?" AU)

Once when I was a child I had a complete crying meltdown over Creatures, because the manual insisted that the complicated AI of the Norns made them truly alive and 10-year-old me was freaked out at the idea of being solely responsible for making sure these real animals wouldn't die. The funny part was that this was the Playstation version of Creatures, which has no biochemistry and very basic AI compared to the PC/Mac games where players actually were debating whether or not it was true artificial life. A PSX manual gave me existential dread and it wasn't even telling the truth.

Anyway, kid!Marcille would also have a meltdown over the Creatures series, especially if she had the computer games and got to see how vastly different some breeds' lifespans are. Like in C2 where you have Norns that live for around 5 hours and Norns that live for 10, both of which are vastly more than Ettins who don't even live for 1.5 hours (and usually less due to radiation or starvation).

Lucky for her, having the computer version means she could download modified genomes made by other players that make creatures live longer or even outright remove certain death triggers. However I think she'd have more fun learning to read and edit the genomes herself, to get a better understanding of how the game works and how to change it to suit her own tastes. And because she could pretend she's one of the mysterious ancient Shee who created the Norns, Grendels, and Ettins and then vanished, leaving behind relics of their old society.

(Speaking of Grendels, she would unfortunately dislike them because they're the Designated Evil Species and she'd hate how they harass and attack her Norns. I think she'd also pity them though, because they get sick a lot and have short lifespans. Likely she'd just end up downloading/creating a genome without the aggression towards Norns. Ettins she'd like except for in C3 when they dismantle her meticulously-placed gadget setups, so she might mod out their hoarding compulsions too. Both of them would of course also live for however long her Norns would live.)

Also. While standard creatures' lifespans are counted in hours, if you modify the half-lives in the genome editor you can increase it to centuries. Or even just over a millennium if you set the half-lives to their max length (assuming you also leave the old age death trigger at its vanilla value).

and I like to think that elven Creatures players would pass around copies of what they consider a template genome that's appropriate to their own lifespans. Something that would make their creatures live for weeks or months of continuous play. I also like to think the Creatures DS Warp is still active in this AU because of the hilarious frustration when these long-lived Norns travel to worlds run by short-lived players whose Norns have vanilla lifespans, and vice versa.

(Most of the time in Creatures, offspring of parents with different lifespans will just have one or the other, but there's a chance the genes cross over right in the middle of the various age triggers and cause unstable aging rates. Like a Norn that goes through the childhood stages in hours but then has a very extended adulthood. Or a days-long childhood followed by suddenly dropping dead of old age once the vanilla adulthood genes kick in. Or, if the child has one parent's half-life decay rate and the other parent's age triggers, all sorts of odd things could happen. I once had hybrid Norns who lived for 20 hours and would die of organ failure before reaching the old age threshold!)

(Now that I think of it, Marcille would absolutely hate fast-agers. The first time she watches a creature hatch, turn old, and die in just one brief minute of life, she would be sobbing for days. One of the first things she'd learn to mod out would be mutations that cause the Ageing/Life chemical to decrease unusually fast.)

On a lighter note, while I don't know what her favorite designs would be I think she'd love choosing cute breeds to use in her world. Once she figured out how to give her creatures the comfortable life she wants them to have I can see her redirecting all her gene-editing efforts into changing color expressions. She might even learn to sprite or model her own custom designs.

[chibishortdeath]

Hmmm I kinda want to make a side blog for RPG Maker game development related things to be able to talk to more experienced people in that community, but at the same time I both don’t really think I’d get much attention and don’t want to accidentally spoil my own game (^^ ; ).

I have a rough story, concept doodles, a tileset, some character sprites, an enemy that walks around but can’t initiate battle yet (if I even decide to have a battle system), a couple rooms with some events, and a functioning run button, but I’m still lost on how to do much else at the moment. Especially since this program has the ability for scripting, meaning I’ll probably have to learn and actually retain another coding language.

So, I’m not very far at all lol. Idk how well that’d go over on the established fandom website, but eh.

[the-acid-pear]

I never tried the option myself bc it'd probably mean skipping the Reason You Suck speech at the end (fire for speedrunners though) but I Love that you can frame your Phoneys in 3, especially so if you've already killed the previous two. Like yeah couldn't send you off to die so i'll let the goverment do it for me 🧸 like its just Peak evil imo.

[pnutbutter-n-j-elyy]

Free VCHA TW: Mentions of Suicide, Eating Disorders, Unconsentual Surveilence and Self-Harm

I don't even know where to start...

My heart absolutely breaks for VCHA right now.

Hearing about everything they’ve been through- the self-harm, the gained ED's, the surveillance, the suicide attempts- it’s devastating.

Especially when those girls minors as well.

No one, especially young girls, should ever have to endure this kind of pain just to chase their dreams.

The fact that KG is filing a lawsuit to terminate her contract says so much about the conditions she’s been facing.

This isn’t just about one group or one company- it’s an industry-wide problem.

And let me preface-

before anyone starts directing all their anger at J.Y. Park, it’s crucial to understand that he isn’t the one pulling the strings- especially in the subsidaries.

Yes, he’s the face of JYP Entertainment and a prominent figure in the industry, but he’s not micromanaging every decision or daily operation involving artists like VCHA. Decisions about trainee management, promotional schedules, or group dynamics are typically made by a network of executives, managers, and staff within the company. J.Y. Park might set the tone as a founder, but the way the system functions extends far beyond him.

Instead of focusing on hating or blaming one person, we should direct our energy toward challenging the larger system. This isn’t just a “JYP problem”- it’s an issue ingrained in the ENTIRE entertainment industry, where idols are often seen as products rather than people.

Real change requires dismantling the exploitative practices and structures that allow mistreatment to happen, no matter which company is involved. Let’s shift the conversation to fight the system that perpetuates this harm, rather than focusing on an individual who is only a visible part of it.

These are kids debuting in hyper-competitive, high-pressure environments, with their lives micromanaged for profit. The secrecy VCHA endured pre-debut only adds to the emotional strain. I hope this lawsuit opens more eyes to the toll this industry takes on these artists.

This year alone has been a disaster for the industry. There have been countless reports of idol abuse, mistreatment, and even deaths linked to the extreme pressures idols face. The tragic situation with VCHA is just another example in a long line of issues that need to be addressed. The exploitation of minors and idols in general in the K-pop industry is a problem that can’t be ignored any longer. It’s beyond time for a widespread reckoning, where the industry shifts its focus from maximizing profits to truly caring for the well-being of its artists.

I hope KG’s lawsuit, along with the attention that this case is receiving, opens more eyes to the toll the industry takes on its artists- especially those who are still so young.

These idols deserve more than just our admiration; they deserve our empathy, our support, and a system that treats them as people, not products. My heart goes out to KG and the rest of VCHA, and I pray they find the healing and support they so desperately need.

They are worth so much more than the system that’s failed them.

#FreeVCHA #ProtectOurIdols

(tags are to spread views quicker)

[slaaverin]

https://x.com/miniekookphoria/status/1866860575533539751

It really hit me today, they chose each other.

This is so loud, and so profound, but it’s not a moment for us as fans, it’s a moment for them. This meant/means something to them. They applied for a system that for once could kind of work in their favour. They had to enlist, there was no choice, but there was a choice for them to apply for a route that would allow them to be together in this, and the fates aligned and they got in. How poetic is that! They have each other, side by side, it’s been a year, with another 6 months to go. There for each other.

I know as jikookers we feel incredibly at peace knowing they have each other in there, I know the rest of the fandom and hateful solos turn a blind eye, but just imagine how they feel. How they felt knowing they had the other with them for this difficult time in their lives. This is the kind of thing that changes you, I don’t think they will come out unaffected by their experience, it’ll make them stronger characters, and resilient I’ve no doubt. They chose each other, not as members of BTS, not as colleagues who had supposedly grown apart in the eyes of the fandom in chapter 2, not as so called just friends, or a ‘complex’ ‘not traditional’ relationship you cannot define, but as Jimin and Jungkook from Busan. Two young men who have grown up with each other and couldn’t be apart for 18 months. Yes only they know their reasons but to me it’s so so profound and beautiful. They chose this for themselves, at an extremely vulnerable moment in their lives, knowing they would have the other there with them. To want to be together like that, in intense and difficult circumstances, them saying they weren’t worried about them fighting, do people realise what that actually says. It says a lot. The first idols to ever do this. In their position, This is not just friends enlisting for fun, I know people use the buddy system with friends, it ain’t for romance in there, but I think them saying that, saying about waking up to the other, that’s the comfort. They knew they would stand out for this, the negativity that came straight after the announcement, them walking through that airport with their heads held high’ . No matter what that’s what mattered to them, having each other. That’s all that matters in this.

I’ve never known anything like it.

Someone said that the songs ‘birds of a feather’ and ‘die with a smile’ are Jikook coded, and given their circumstances they truly are. The fact what the system means is they are each others support, they wear their dog tags in case of death. They literally committed to go to the front lines, a dangerous area, to be together. That’s profound. In fact that’s love.

Such love, and their beautiful bond should be revered.

What wonderfully articulated thoughts anon 🫂 I couldn't agree more! Thank you 💜

One year since they left.

How worried we were before knowing they used the buddy system to be together.

Their country is in shamble right now, and I cannot imagine what kind of challenges they have to face in there.

Thankfully we feel a little bit better knowing they can rely on each other.

I think you are correct, they can't come out from this unscathed. This puts them in a situation they've never been in before, in a different environement with different rules, and they need to adapt to it no matter what is asked of them, even if they disagree, even if they don't want to do it.

Do you know how hard it is to do things you don't want to do? It could be anything. But the mental pressure must be huge.

I think they knew that before entering. They knew how hard it would be.

So the fact that they chose to be with each other, to be the person that would ease their mind, who would soften the blow - it's huge.

It could have been anyone, any other member, but no. It had to be them.

How can people still deny that their relationship is special amongst all others?

You bet that that's love.

I would even consider it devotion.

If we keep it real, since the very beginning, they always chose each other. In actions, in words, in the way they gave attention to each other, in how glued they are, in sublte or not so subtle ways, it's always been obvious.

I think they made their choice a long time ago.

And we knew that.

But it's always something else to have it confirmed over and over, right?

Ahhh this is making me very emotional.

You know, everything we saw from them, it's still just a glimpse, just a bleed through of their true feelings.

I believe the true depth of their feelings goes even deeper than what we know - in private, in quiet times, when they are alone, not Jungkook and Jimin from BTS, but two men from Busan as you beautifully said.

They are soulmates. If it's true that they knew each other in past lives, then their love transcends space and time. It's not a little thing, you know?

So of course they would enlist with each other.

It was the only thing that made any sense.

Us jikookers, we're so cute, because we're always trying to remain level headed, and the reasonable ones. It comes from a good sentiment, we don't want to sound like other questionable parts of the fandom.

But honestly we don't really have to anymore.

I don't think the things we're perceiving with our heart and soul are deceiving us.

I can't be anything but love - a pure one, that would lead them to such a decision.

Enlistment was a statement. AYS was a statement too. A little bit of that devotion.

Yet I agree with you that this is not for anyone else at the same time. I believe their decision to be in MS together was a very personal one. We just happen to know about it.

Military is a personal challenge. A challenge that all the other members chose to face alone. But not Jimin & Jungkook.

My true intuition and feeling tells me that this was absolutely essential for them both.

Their hearts are too intertwined to even entertain the possibility of having to be alone in a trial such as this one. It's very logical when you think about it.

MS isn't for romance but it doesn't need to be, the simple thing of having the person you love next to you, even if as just a comforting presence, it's priceless, it's invaluable.

What they share is so very precious and beautiful. And they are such wonderful humans? (Now I'm typing through the tears)

Of course it needs to be cherished so very much 🥲

How great would that be if everyone had a relationship such as theirs. I sincerely wish it for all of us, in this life or the next.

Ahhh everything is extremely poetic. When you think of all the growth they had to go through, of their crazy lives, of all the challenges they faced, they still get to have a pocket that is just for them, of safety, comfort, true reliance, support, love and tenderness.

If this is some kind of reward for all the good they have done, I think they truly deserve it.

This is making me a little unhinged to think that MS will surely deepen their bond even more 😂😂😂 *nervous laugh*

They will keep choosing each other, I think for as long as they breathe at this rate.

So who knows what might happen in the future? Only 6 month left to find out. It makes my heart very happy. I can't wait to follow their journey into the next phase of their lives.

Their future can only be brighter even.

I also can't wait to share the joy of everything with everybody, the fun and beautiful jikookers 💜

I will have my tissues ready for 2025 lmao

To "celebrate" this 1 year mark I'm preparing a little edit. A very simple one but I hope it will uplift you a bit. The song I chose makes me cry for real lol I hope I will be able to convey my feelings to you. It should come out by the weekend.

Thank you so much for sharing your beautiful thoughts anon (you should have a blog for yourself 😌) and let's keep celebrating their special bond 💜 take care

[felassan]

Some more DA:TV and related snippets from Sylvia Feketekuty, Part 2. rest of post under a cut due to length and spoilers. [Post One, Post Three]

The dev team really wanted to deliver on Emmrich's romance [source]

Sylvia Feketekuty has now left BioWare so there are likely some things she can't answer now "just because I can't look them up with certainty anymore" [source]

When Emmrich is first introduced, he has a skull helmet. Why does it never ever appear for the next 40-100 hours? "The helmet does indeed look wicked! I believe it actually shows up on his shelf in the Lighthouse eventually. (If I had been a smarter writer I would've asked if we could have it appear again, that one's on me.)" [source]

User: "In another post you mentioned shops in Nevarra City near the Necropolis. How far IS Nevarra City itself is from the Necropolis? Do only senior MWs get to go?" / Sylvia: "I'm reluctant to say what the distance is since I never defined it in game so it's Unknown™. But I imagine they can either walk or take a carriage, depending. Also I never imagined junior MWers are forbidden from going into town or such. It could be they have set hours and times where they're allowed. But got to get all those chores done first..." [source, two]

On the DA:I goat scene ([link]) - "The GOAT! God bless them, that was a delight." [source]

Brian J. Audette, on [this thread] - ""Better late than never" addendum to this thread. I just noticed that Isle of the Gods' writer Sylvia is on here now and I'd be remiss not to tag her in this thread. I can't say enough wonderful things about having worked with Sylvia on this mission." [source] / Sylvia: "Thanks Brian! You tackled an absolutely jam-packed mission with aplomb." [source]

Jo Berry: "Thank you for everything and everything else, on both Veilguard and Inquisition. Sunlight on your road, wherever it goes." [source] / Sylvia: "Thank YOU for all your writing Jo. Seriously, you were a godsend on Veilguard and DAI both." [source]

Trick Weekes: "It's been fantastic working with you, Sylvia, and I know you're going to crush it with whatever you do next. Thank you for finally letting me make you "the person who has to do journals so Trick doesn't" on one of our projects." [source] / Sylvia: "Thank you Trick! I'll miss working with you. It was an honour to finally be given the awesome responsibility of the journal system that still haunts my dreams." [source]

John Epler: "sylvia did you see i told the world Emmrich sleeps standing up like a horse" [source] / Sylvia: "It's days later but: yes. Yes I did." [source]

User: "As someone who also has a truly debilitating fear of death, Emmrich is so special to me. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen it represented in such a clear and concise way." / Sylvia: "Thanks, definitely felt that fear myself. I really wanted to express it clearly and was hoping would resonate with others." [source]

User: "Do you have any thoughts or opinions on what nickname Emmrich might have gotten from Varric if he'd ever gotten one?" / Sylvia: "Oh man that's a good question, but ultimately since I didn't write Varric, that must remain a mystery. Nicknames can only be bestowed. ("Bones" like someone suggested below is funny though.)" [source]

User: "If Emmrich's hobby is alchemy/plants, Vorgoth's is art, and Audric's is architecture... what's Myrna's? (Next to Emmrich, she's my favorite Watcher - sorry Vorgoth!)" / Sylvia: "Myrna has a one off line, you may not have heard it yet, where she talks to Vorgoth about getting tickets to the Sword of Drakon.* She enjoys a night out at the theater, whether it's a play or an opera. *(I think that's the play I named, I hope I'm recalling my own line haha.) It's a bit indulgent of me, but I chose Sword of Drakon because it was one of the plays I made up for a series of codices in DAI about Orlesian theater. I had a lot of fun with these and wanted to give them life once more. [link]" [source, two]

User: "During Rook’s disappearance in the prison, how did Emmrich react? Considering their intense romance, did he fall into depression, or did he show a more vulnerable side? Could his fear of death have influenced the situation? In the immortal romance💀, Emmrich promises that nothing will separate them, not in this world or any other. How likely is that? Would he go to great lengths for Rook, even crossing boundaries? Or, at some point, would he accept Rook's death?" / Sylvia: "1) Very strongly! I think it's a bit more interesting if I leave details to your imaginations, but Emmrich feels things deeply and probably had some sleepless nights. 2) So this I can't say much on even though it's a juicy topic. The truth is, I wouldn't even know unless I was actually sitting down to write it. Again, Emmrich feels things very passionately, but this is the kind of scenario where I might want the player's choices to have an effect." [source, two]

User: "Any chance that color scheme [of Emmrich's coat] was based off the corpse flower?" / Sylvia: "I couldn't find anything on the colour scheme and the corpse flower. Afraid this one's a mystery to me." [source]

User: "I'm really curious if there's a Nevarrese language? We have Orlesian, Antivan, Tevene, Qunlat..." / Sylvia: "I wondered that myself, especially given its ancient ties with Tevinter and also Orlais which would certainly have affected the languages of power and influence. Could also have roots with the Planasene. We never talked about one though, as far as I know, so the answer remains...unknown. 💀 (I did introduce tomb-script, the language you see etched into stone in the Necropolis, but I thought of it as more of a specialist's language for occult and magical things specifically.) (If we did define a Nevarran language in some corner of the lore, now I'm going to feel embarrassed, but I don't BELIEVE we did.)" [source, two, three]

User: "I wanted to ask if you have anything you can share about MW grave dowry jewellery - is it the sort of thing they keep on at all times? Also, would Emmrich like jewellery gifts or give them to Rook?" / Sylvia: "I figured it would be something they wear most of the time, or at least in public. You don't want to be without your grave-gold if you pass away! Emmrich would love to get jewellery, especially if it marked a special occasion like his other pieces do! He'd also probably like to gift Rook a piece of grave gold himself, though he knows a non-MW Rook might look at that part askance." [source, two]

User: "Question: how much if anything can you tell us about the circumstances surrounding the emergence of Emmrich's magic and him going to the Mourn Watch? In my mind, his parents' death could certainly be a catalyst for the emergence of mage powers, but I'm so curious why the butcher's boy goes to what seems the equivalent of Nevarran Harvard instead of a regular Circle unless he immediately demonstrated outstanding ability?" / Sylvia: So timeline wise, I think his magic manifested after he was taken in. This part isn't canon, so much as a background thought I had that maybe the spirits of the Necropolis nudged the MW to scoop up this future corpse-whisperer. It seems like a kind of place ripe for that sort of omen. That said, it could've also been a kindhearted Watcher who saw how shattered and alone this young boy was, and thought an upbringing in the Grand Necropolis would be the better place to deal with his grief. It's the kind of thing I want to leave open unless someone goes back one day to fill it out!" [source, two]

User: "what’s the overall Mourn Watch opinion on the whole Weekend at King Markus’s the other Mortalitasi are pulling? I can’t blame Emmrich for not wanting to be involved with that political mess!" / Sylvia: "No clue what you're talking about. King Markus is in the finest of health!!!!! ahahahahaha (To my mind Emmrich's response indicates a tension between the orders, but that they're going along with the polite fiction to avoid a mess. I can't say what the future holds though.)" [source]

User: "Ah, one last note: whoever decided “DA liches are immortal protectors and not always evil?” Chef’s kiss. It’s all I’ve ever wanted!" / Sylvia: "Thanks again! It was in Emmrich's first draft. The other writers and editors gave me good feeback on lichdom and the philosophy behind it especially" [source]

User: "I'm an ICU nurse, and that is imagined to confer a comfort with mortality. Suffice to say Emmrich has been a huge comfort to see." / Sylvia: "Thanks so much. I really wanted him to struggle with it while also engaging with it, because it's something I find hard as well. And I hoped it would find purchase with players." [source]

User: "If you’re willing, can you share a bit about the other orders within the Mortalitasi? Is there a rivalry with the Tevinter Imperium?" / Sylvia: I'm afraid I don't have much, sorry. I left the other Mortalitasi orders a big open canvas in case we wanted to invent more some day. (We've mentioned the palace Mortalitasi are separate from the Mourn Watch, so there's one. As you probably caught, Emmrich's not a fan of theirs.) Is there a rivalry with the Tevinter Imperium? I can't really point to anything in the game talking about that, so I hesitate to call it canon. But to my mind it would be very natural and also very funny. So if that ever manifests, I approve." [source, two]

User: "was any of Emmrich's design or personality modeled on British actor David Niven? I think there is resemblance just wondering if that was intentional." / Sylvia: "Oh I love David Niven. But the more direct actor influence for me was Peter Cushing in a few old Hammer Horror films." [source]

User: "just wanted to say thank you for creating the character of Josephine in Inq!! Helped me learn some stuff about myself when I was younger and meant a lot." / Sylvia: "Thank you so much on all counts! I'm glad the lovely Lady Montilyet was there for you (and enormous credit to her actor, Allegra Clark. She absolutely nailed Josephine, straight away.)" [source]

User, on Emmrich: "He mentions he thought he would marry - is that permitted for Mortalitasi when it wasn't for regular Circle mages? Can they now raise their own children?" / Sylvia: Mortalitasi have a lot of power. I imagine the Nevarran Chantry might grant them permission to marry outside the Circle more regularly than in places where mages are given less respect. (Mages can also marry within Circles, so no permission needed in those cases.) The same might be true for mages raising mage-born children in Nevarra, but I say that with less certainty. I think that's a topic I would've wanted to discuss with the rest of the narrative team." [source, two]

User: "is there a particular reason why emmrich is always wearing a glove on one hand?" / Sylvia: "I like to think it's mostly because he works a lot with his hands. The glove seems useful if he has to, say, grip a rough outcrop of rock when traversing the Necropolis, or deal with a bitey corpse." [source]

User, on Emmrich: "On my 1st run I played a trans Rook and romanced him. It felt incredible how he was so accepting of Rook's identity, and in return she could support him as he did a transition of his own as well. Beautiful mirroring!" / Sylvia: "Thanks very much! If those scenes worked, it's thanks to some people at work who kindly gave feedback that helped get the tone right." [source]

User: "I've been wanting to thank you for writing Luck in the Gardens for 4 years. Hollix was the first time I ever saw a non-binary character given a real voice." / Sylvia: "I loved writing Hollix in that story, they were a treat, and I'm glad they meant a lot to you. (And a shout out to a nb friend who gave me some good feedback on the character, I don't think the story would've been as clear without their help.)" [source]

User: "I was curious about Audric from TN, and if he originally was planned to have an appearance in veilguard, and what he's up to now" / Sylvia: "Love Audric, but I never planned to bring him into VG. I'm not AGAINST it, but I didn't want the short stories to feel like required reading for the game, and I liked where his arc ended in DatDM. That said, I dropped in a few references to Audric to let people know he's around and well. And I imagine he's doing what he loves: being a force of order, in the library. (And reading books during the more quiet hours below.)" [source, two]

User: "As a consumer of (and probably future creator of) so called "erotic" fanficfion, I'm wondering how you feel about the fact that fans make it about a character you created?" / Sylvia: "No issues with it whatsoever. We put sex and romance into the game itself, after all. I think people use fan art and fanfiction to extend their time with a story they've grown fond of, or to figure things out. So it feels like a natural extension of that." [source]

User: "Maybe one day my rook will join the mw!" / Sylvia: "Well, the Grand Necropolis is always eager for more company...🪦👻" [source]

User: "did the flame eternal (short story) come first or the flame eternal (quest)? i’ve been wondering if the quest was named after the story or vice versa" / Sylvia: "I wrote the scene first, the short story came after. But I named the quest AFTER the short story had come out, so I'd say the quest is named for the story because I liked the callback." [source]

User: "1.I know John answered already that Emmrich sleeps like a horse but is there really no bed for this man? 2.How would he react to a bouquet made for him?" / Sylvia: "1. Unknown. Perhaps he brings out pillows and a blanket for the slab in his room (after scrubbing it, of course!) Perhaps he goes home to an elaborate silk-covered bed in his Necropolis apartments. Or the horse thing. (TBH: I never decided myself, so I've leaned into impish mystery). 2. Emmrich would be absolutely delighted and flattered by being presented with a flower bouquet." [source, two]

User: "I hope it's okay to pop here but it might interest you to know a lot of us have been headcanoning that he has a secret bedroom behind one of his bookshelves! It seemed to line up with his sensibilities somewhat." / Sylvia: "That would honestly be great. Pull out the right book and snooze time." [source]

User, on the cemetery date: "This makes me feel like Mourn Watchers include the dead in important personal milestones/events and, if so, I love that so much. Like they want to share these events and the joy/love/excitement/etc. with those who have passed (and perhaps linger.)" / Sylvia: "That's absolutely how I thought of it too." [source]

User: "was there any game/book/show/film that inspired the Mourn Watch and Emmrich? When I saw them in the preview content, I got reminded of the Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir and playing through the game cemented those vibes." / Sylvia: "I hadn't read any Locked Tomb when writing Emmrich, I think we must both just have impeccable taste. (I actually tried to stay away from contemporary stuff on necromancy when writing him, out of a superstitious fear I'd be unduly influenced. I do want to talk about influences later though!)" [source]

User, on Josie: "Do you think she’s open to having kids/adopting with the Inquisitor? Lord Ontranto and Yvette are so ahead!" / Sylvia: "I think that falls firmly within the category of what you imagine she and your Inquisitor's romance looks like, which means: absolutely, if that's where you imagine life would take them." [source]

User: "Emmrich, his story & everything surrounding him absolutely played a huge part in helping to lift me up & connecting me with new friends online" / Sylvia: "Thank you! And I'm very glad to hear Emmrich and his fellow Watchers helped you out when you needed it. He'd be pleased to know so himself." [source]

User: "Was it ever considered for him to appear in the game?" / Sylvia: "(short answer is no, but I wanted to let people know Audric's doing well.)" [source]

User: "I enjoyed your short stories in Tevinter Nights. Emmrich mentioned working out in the morning. What does his morning routine look like, and what kind of exercise does he do?" / Sylvia: "Thanks so much! Those stories have a special place in my heart, so that's especially nice to hear. On exercise: He likes a brisk stroll, and does morning stretches, and for something more strenuous, he likes to go swimming. Why? It's a workout where you don't have to worry about sweating. That just seemed to align with his fastidiousness in a funny way to me. (I also imagine exploring the Necropolis keeps him active, climbing all those stairs and crumbling ledges and the outsized walls of hallowed tombs, etc.)" [source, two]

User: "Harding will turn to a MW Rook who's been talking nerdy necro shop with Emmrich, and goes (paraphrasing), "You're so different when you're talking about this stuff than you are when you hang out with us!" and I loved that" / Sylvia: "Yes indeed! And thanks. I really wanted a beat where you realize MW Rook has learned to swap between being a fancy nerd and talking a bit more like "regular" people in Thedas. It seemed like a fun trait for that background." [source]

Sylvia, on how she came to BioWare: "No formal training. The closest to practice I had was running tabletop RPGs for friends, which actually helped me a lot with understanding the different kind of RPG players out there and what people want out of a story. And honestly: I just kept applying, over and over. That was my main virtue. I was rejected the first couple times I applied to BW. And rightly, I think, I wasn't ready and practicing in between really helped me become a stronger writer." [source, two]

Some more on this topic ^ from Sylvia: "To be honest: mostly luck, some perseverance, and then writing skills, in that order. I was rejected at least twice from BW before I got in, and I think they were right to do so. I wasn't ready yet. The third round someone I knew passed on my sample to a writer there, I did two more rounds of samples while taking feedback and revising over the next month. And then I was lucky enough they liked it enough to interview me. I wish I had better advice than perseverance. I think having a small, completed game, even something text based or a mod, isn't bad either. Even if it's short, it shows you finished it. But: my entry was over 15 years ago now, and to be honest I'm not sure what BW's applicant process are anymore. I don't want to be discouraging though. I would say keep applying, and make friends with like minded people who also want to make games, and best of luck." [source, two, three, four]

User: "I've been wondering something about Mourn Watch Rook's background - their bio says they were found as a baby + raised by the MW, and they reference it in-game, but then they also say they were a street kid and left their old life behind to join the MW to Taash. I'm just curious how one - being raised by the MW - lead to the other - street kid era. I just hc'd it as a euphemism for my Rook's party girl phase lol but it did leave me a little confused." / Sylvia: "This is a case of the background changing slightly over time, and me not squaring it in time with dialogue. In my mind: MW IS found by the Mourn Watch, raised by them, and work for them. But MW Rook also had period(s?) growing up where they explored Nevarra city, to explain why they're more. street savvy and worldly than your typical Watchers who never leave the city. I've seen people noting some discrepancies, and in a perfect world I would've caught those lines in time to smooth them out to encompass the whole story. But perhaps your Rook gives slightly different answers to different people for their own, mysterious reasons! (Or, in reality, it's writer error.)" [source, two, three] "Anyhow, I encourage any head canons that help square these discrepancies" [source]

User: "I romanced him on a Rook that I perceived as about 42ish and my running interpretation of the lines acknowledging her being young were either Emmrich not realizing how old she is, a running bit between them, or some cute form of flattery to not remind her of her own age haha" / Sylvia: "That's adorable, I love it" [source]

User: "1. What would Josie's ideal date be? 2. Could adopted kids be heir of the Montilyet estate or would it go to Yvette? 3. What does Josie think of the Crows?" / Sylvia: "1. I think she'd try to structure something, but the Inquisitor taking her away from her strictly scheduled routine to relax would actually be better for her. A picnic in a garden, a stroll around a lake followed by a meal in a quiet little restaurant. Something with a soft evening. 2. I don't think I ever said so in the game, but to my mind Josephine had some nieces and nephews in line to be heir. If she adopted a child and thought they'd be a better candidate, they could absolutely inherit the estate. (And of course, she could bequeath money or personal effects as she liked.) 3. She thinks of them as a necessity in Antiva, and that it's important to appease them. There's probably highly placed Crows she would get along with. But she'd never be comfortable with them. At the end of the day they're contract killers, and she's no lover of violence. (If I actually DID mention who Josephine had lined up to inherit the estate after her, but just forgot, I will ask for mercy because the game came out over 10 years ago.)" [source, two, three, four]

User: "Would you ever consider making a playlist on spotify of the sort of music you could picture Emmerich listening to? Or perhaps sharing any of the music you listened to while writing Emmrich?" / Sylvia: "I actually have an itunes playlist of what I listened to when writing Emmrich on my old computer. If I dig it out, I'll post a screenshot! (A lot of ambient stuff, probably unsurprisingly)" [source]

User: "I utterly, completely adore the way Josephine was written, she's such a wonderful and complex character. Her history as a bard, her ruthlessness, her kindness and sweet nature and how CUTE her romance is." / Sylvia: "Lady Montilyet herself would be flattered to hear you liked it." [source]

User, on Sylvia's comment about Peter Cushing being a go-to for what Emmrich would be like: "This makes me so unbelievably happy given my love for Peter Cushing 😭 my love for Emmrich was inevitable." / Sylvia: "I want to talk a little more about it later but Cushing was such a wonderful actor. Wish we'd had him around even longer." [source]

User, on death and working in death care: "In the end, it’s always about memory." / Sylvia: "That's so true. We want to be remembered, or to have something that lets people know even a little about who we are. (It's why I'm glad newspapers still print obituaries, you can read about the most amazing lives.)" [source]

User: "I was starting to think the game was reading my mind and tailoring to me once he said his favorite color was lilac, and I was given the option to say darker purple." / Sylvia: "I'm glad you enjoyed Emmrich and his romance. And that the bit about colours worked for you, I was trying to think of what would be something fun there, and purple is one of my favorites too. (Fine taste!)" [source]

User: "“Down Among the Dead Men” is one of my favorite chapters from Tevinter Nights. I loved Audric and I was so happy when Myrna mentioned him in Veilguard! Was there any chance he might’ve appeared in game?" / Sylvia: "basically I didn't plan it, but I wanted to let TN readers know Audric is living well" [source]

User: "If Hezenkoss was also you ALL of that was a sheer stroke of brilliance!" / Sylvia: "Thank you! Hezenkoss was me, so glad you liked her. She was a blast to write. Oh my god, I meant to write Hezenkoss was one of my favorites not "me". (I think I snipped out something and consequentially sound like a maniac in that post above. SORRY. She is not me, I wish I had that kind of confidence.)" [source, two]

User, on behalf of their friend: "Well, spontaneously I'd be interested if she can say any more about Emmrich's past romances. Was there someone really serious among them, or all just fun and casual? I'm also curious how the whole mage training works in Nevarra. Are some trained from the start by the Mourn Watch or does everyone go to the Mortalitasi equivalent of a Circle first?" / Sylvia: "1. I think there was probably a mix of more serious romances and more casual ones over Emmrich's life. The serious ones just never panned out. (Until Rook, if you're romancing him.) 2. I pictured the MW taking in promising members from other circles, but I left their selection criteria vague on purpose, in case we needed to define it later. Of course, there's also exceptions. We've seen they take in some orphans or foundlings (MW Rook and Emmrich, for example) when fate, chance, or pity allows it. (I had an idea spirits might sometimes nudge MWers to take in someone, but that's not in the game, so it remains, I suppose now, my own head canon.)" [source, two, three, four]

User: "Emmrich is every bit the warm and kind academic that I looked up to in my undergrad/postgrad days, and I have taken time in the game just to wander the Grand Necropolis and take everything in." / Sylvia: "My pleasure, and thanks very much for saying so. (Props to all my teammates, it took a lot of people to bring those characters and places to life, and they were all so enthusiastic about our weird gothy corner of Thedas.)" [source]

User, on Emmrich's dream: "One of few cases where writers don't go for "actually immortality is lame" lesson to appease the audience for whom immortality is unattainable. Refreshing to have a character who wants to live forever, can do it, and it isn't treated as a mistake. One of the boldest bits of writing in the game." / Sylvia: "Thanks Mary - that was one of my aims, because so many times in stories, immortality is a fool's errand. I wanted it to have its rules, and its price, but not something disastrous or out of reach." [source]

User: "The MW as a whole was beautifully done and the way they handle life and death was deeply healing and aided tremendously in my own personal journey with grief." / Sylvia: "I'm very glad meeting Emmrich and the Watchers helped even a little, that means a lot to hear." [source]

User: "Amazing work in veilguard and inquisition honestly and the flame eternal was such a fun read! Unless it’s been answered before my query is where do the Mourn watchers live/sleep? Is it a case of they live in the higher parts of the Necropolis or do they live in the city and commute?" / Sylvia: "Flame Eternal was a fun one, hadn't written a story that short before but I enjoyed introducing Johanna and Emmrich's dynamic back in their good old days... As to your question, there's one line of banter between Emmrich and Neve that talks about this (so, very easy to miss.) The Mourn Watchers live and sleep in the upper (safer) levels of the Necropolis." [source, two]

User: "does mortal!Emmrich return to the Necropolis or spend more time in the world first? He plays detective with Neve & camps in Ferelden with Harding feels like he’d want to experience more of the world before returning home." / Sylvia: "Impossible for me to say what the future will hold with certainty, but I think Emmrich's enjoying exploring the world too much to go back to living in the Necropolis full time just yet. He'd certainly want to keep visiting regularly, but there's so much more to see." [source]

Sylvia: "The Watchers have a special place in my heart." [source]

User: "I just wanted to say how much I love Emmrich" / Sylvia: "Thank you very much! I'm so glad to hear you enjoyed getting to know him." [source]

at this point tumblr stopped letting me add to this post !

[aceing-on-the-cake]

Compulsory Heterosexuality Info Dump

So because a friend of mine didn't know what comp het was and their internet history is monitored by their parents so they can't just use google, I'm doing a very quick research dive and giving you guys the results in case there are others out there who are in the same situation. I'll also be tagging blogs bigger than me because again, there might be fellow queers out their who are in the same boat as my friend and I want them to have access to this information.

So what is compulsory heterosexuality (or comp het)?

Comp het is in essence the societal belief and enforcement of being straight.

What does this mean?

In basic form it means that the only options presented to everyone, from the moment of birth, is that of a cis, amatonormative, heterosexual lifestyle.

You are given two gender options, these gender options determine the two roles you're allowed to fulfill, husband and wife, and you are told that these two roles are what will make you happy and are what you are supposed to strive for.

Meaning society, if you are born AFAB, tells you you're going to one day get married, it's going to be a boy, and this is what will make you happy. Almost everything in life is then seen through this lens. How attractive your are, how you are supposed to talk, how you're supposed to behave, etc is all considered through the lens of if a man will be attracted to you.

On the flip side, if you are born AMAB society tells you there are roles you have to fulfill as well. You are told you will one day want a wife, that you have to be able to have a job to provide for her, that you have to behave in a certain emotional way to be strong for her, that if the things you like are too feminine well then you're gay or a girl which is a problem because at the end of the day you're supposed to want the girl-fiance-wife.

This literally just sounds like the patriarchy.

Yes, it does, because it's caused by it. Nowadays people commonly know about compulsory heterosexuality from the Lesbian Masterdoc, but the term actually originated by Adrienne Rich in 1980.

Adrienne Rich in her article Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence put forward three ideas, 1) that heterosexuality and lesbianism were institutions themselves/possible political ideologies, 2) that heterosexuality as a system if not constantly maintained and upheld would eventually crumble and 3) that heterosexuality as a system could be opted out of and actively fought against whether or not you were actually attracted to women/non-women.

This is very different from the way we currently think of and define those terms, I am aware of that, but her point does still stand to some degrees that comp het, cisnormativity and amatonormativity all crumble when we stop rigidly enforcing the structures that uphold them, i.e., the patriarchy, misogyny, classism, and racism.

Ok but like what does that actually look like?

It can look like a lot of things, for a lot of different people. In the Lesbian Masterdoc you see comp het presented from a straightforward lesbian lens (of a 19 year old figuring out and defining their own sexuality guys, I'm not gonna sit here and critique it and rip it to death, go do that somewhere else).

This is therefore presented through things like women/non-women who were raised/socialized as women possibly having crushes on men, but they're always unattainable in some way (celebrities, fictional, someone real but they wouldn't actually ever be able to truly be in a relationship with, etc). It might also show up for lesbians as liking the idea of a man but being uncomfortable when one actually wants to move forward in the process. Or even sometimes it might show up as sexual fantasies with men but they're faceless, they're more an idea, or you're actually viewing another woman sleeping with him.

This presentation of comp het has made a lot of bi/pan/mspec people uncomfortable because they feel they too have experiencing comp het and when reading the Lesbian Masterdoc it's presented as if experiencing this is a straight shot towards being a lesbian.

And they're right that comp het isn't experienced by just lesbians. For mspecs who present feminine/as women this could be in the feeling that they have to dress a certain way to be presentable, but presentable is based on appealing to men. This can mean something as simple as women are expected to wear makeup, always, regardless of if they're looking to seek men's attention or not, because that's the base standard.

For mspecs who present masculine this can look like the inability to express themselves in an overly emotional manner because that doesn't make them "strong" and if they're not "strong" then they won't attract women, and that's what they're supposed to be doing.

For mspecs in general that can look like their queer looking relationships to be seen as a phase even if their mspec-ness is respected because of course they're eventually going to get married to a man/woman.

This can affect polyamorous cishet people in that they're seen as doing heterosexuality wrong because you're supposed to have the one partner and the 2.5 kids.

This can affect aspecs because they're told they'll never truly feel fulfilled if they don't have that boyfriend/girlfriend/partner to love them in a way that's so special nothing else could match up.

This affects all of us guys is my point.

How is this helpful to me?

Well for sapphics and lesbians (or sapphics/mspecs confused on if they are actually lesbians) this can be a helpful concept to consider because it can help you determine what relationships you truly want to pursue, which is the main point I feel is to be gained from the Lesbian Masterdoc. As she's put it "it's way more important to ask yourself if you can be truthfully happy with a man than if you’re attracted to them"

So if you're a sapphic who experiences attraction to men but you honestly can't ever see yourself willingly entering into a relationship with them, consider the idea of comp het.

If you're Achillean the opposite of this can be true, if you've been attracted to women before but honestly can't ever see yourself willingly entering into a relationship with them, consider whether comp het is working on you.

For mspecs this can be a helpful term to throw over the table back at your parents when they ask when you're going to get a "real relationship".

This can be a helpful term to consider when asking "am I forcing myself to wear mascara because I feel this is the only way I look presentable or do I actually like mascara."

Or it can be a helpful concept to look back on when undermining our internalized ideals of misogyny, towards ourselves and others.

This is a helpful term to put in our tool boxes to talk about the harm the systems of patriarchy, classism, and racism impose upon us.

Comp het can help us to understand why so many people look down on polyamory as a legitimate way of life.

It can be a helpful term for aspecs who are trying to figure out if they really want to date/have sex, or if they just believe these are the only things that will make you happy.

In general

Compulsory heterosexuality is just another term to describe a system we are all intimately familiar with. But by giving us the words to describe our experiences, it gives us the power to communicate those experiences more effectively, and to possibly understand why we're experiencing them.

This is just a bare basic knowledge post.

Honestly if you have the ability to, as in your internet history is not monitored in the way my friend's is, I encourage you to go on the deep dive through the sources listed below. Many of them are honestly only 30 pages long, that's a relatively short read, and understanding queer theory like this not only helps you to understand your own identity, but the ways in which you are connected to the rest of the fellow queer community.

Sources

Lesbian Masterdoc

Queer Theory 101: Compulsory Heterosexuality

Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence

Normativities Defined

Taglist

I'm tagging blogs bigger than me so that this has an easier time getting passed around as I mainly talk about aspec issues because I am aspec, but as stated above, I wanted to make sure that queer people who's internet histories are monitored and are only able to find information through tumblr safely could do so.

@our-queer-experience @our-sapphic-experience @our-lesbian-experience @our-aspec-experience @our-polyamorous-experience @our-pansexual-experience @our-unlabelled-experience @our-aroace-experience @our-mspec-experience @our-questioning-experience @our-bisexual-experience

[miraclewoozi]

HIGH FIDELITY, PT 2. -c.hs

getting back on the horse is hard, and failing to hit it off with the cute gamer guy you went for a drink with last night has the potential to be your love life’s last straw. but when up and coming rockstar VERNON unexpectedly canters into your life, you find yourself asking one very important question: do you have it in you to saddle up, one more time?

( PART ONE )

pair ; vernon x fem!reader.  content ; strangers to lovers.  up-and-coming musician!vernon x record store owner!reader.   fluff, angst, smut. (MINORS DNI). warnings ; drinking + alcohol is a big theme pretty much throughout. mentions of past relationship breakdowns. reader experiences a lot of stress, anxiety and feelings of doubt, reflected in self sabotage. mentions of sickness (acute). wc ; 12.2k ( ~38k total. ) disclaimer ; this fic was inspired by rob + liam in the series high fidelity and is therefore pretty influenced by the show. if you’ve watched it, you’ll probably see a lot of similarities! i just felt so drawn to vernon in this kind of role that i really wanted to try and put a spin on it. i do not claim that every idea behind this is original. notes ; been working on this one for a while. hope you enjoy it.<3

smut tags : making out. some groping. some 'first time together' shenanigans. oral (m rec) & ball sucking hehe. he has a big cock because i have an agenda to push. implied f rec oral. implied multiple rounds. PLEASE let me know if i’ve forgotten anything.

The clock on your bedside table reads somewhere between 4:00 and 5:00 in the morning when you resign from trying to fall asleep and force yourself to sit upright, fed up of tossing and turning between your now too-creased sheets, brain stuck in a foggy, hellish limbo. Your mind won’t shut down. Your body won’t rest. Birds are starting to chirp outside and you can hear them clear as whistles through the cheap window that doesn’t quite seal shut to your left. Your eyes squint in preparation as you reach for your lamp and flood the room in yellowish light, drawing your knees up to your chest. 

You’ve spent so much time in your own thoughts that you’ve begun to feel systemically unwell. Your stomach twists and aches, your eyes are so dry it hurts to even blink and there’s an ache behind them that started as an annoying throb, but has grown over the hours into a roaring flame. From the hairs on your head all the way down to your toes, you feel like you could burst. 

You wish you had it in you to cry. To let it out. Keeping this pent up is no doubt making you feel a hundred times worse, and you think it would be nice to feel something other than the endless swooping of the spiral you’re well and truly making your way down. Your alarms are going to go off in a few hours. I can’t let anyone see me like this, you think. I can’t work in this state. 

You throw ideas around in your head for a little while, thumbs tweaking over your phone as messages get typed, edited, deleted, and repeat. Part of you thinks maybe you could manage. Just tough it out and put on a brave face, because actually, what right do you have to be hiding away when you’re the one who ran out one of the nicest guys you’ve ever met? But you just know something will go wrong, even if you tell the boys that you need to camp out in the office for the day. When you need peace and quiet, you can never find it behind that creaky old door. When was the last time you got a full admin day without being called through to help with a problem or deal with a drama? And truly, the idea of facing the world right now makes you feel like you could be sick. 

Sick…

Could you—?

You’ve never enjoyed taking sick days, even on occasions where you’ve really needed them, when you’ve woken up feeling like you’re knocking at death’s door. Sometimes, you swear the guilt that it brings ends up making you feel ten times worse than whatever your ailment is doing to you in the first place. But your exhaustion lets impulse take hold and you’re already sending a message into your group chat with the boys before you can talk yourself out of it, biting the inside of your cheek as the little indicator pops up on your screen. Delivered. 

Well. You’re committed now, whether you like it or not. 

Not feeling so hot. I won’t be in today. Take it easy, I’ll see you guys tomorrow. Sorry. 

You pick your comforter up off the bed and wrap it around your shoulders like an extravagant, well-padded cape, trudging your way through the apartment until you’re stood, barefoot and cold, staring into the bright light of your refrigerator. Somehow in the seconds between pulling the handle and now, you’ve managed to forget what is what that you were hoping to find. More out of spite for how the bulbs are currently bleaching your retinas than because you want it, you pull the milk from its home in the cradle of the door and fix yourself a glass to take with you and put it on the coffee table back in your living room.

Without an ounce of grace, you throw yourself onto your couch: your head rests against the arm of the seat like you’re in the apartment of a sketchy therapist, and you’re wrapped up in your duvet as if it’s a sleeping bag, treating yourself to the luxury of a slightly different ceiling pattern to stare up at. And it could be the change of the room that finally manages to drag you under, or it could be the total fatigue of the emotional rollercoaster that has been your last twenty four hours…

But your glass of milk goes completely untouched as you eventually drift off, either way. 

Of course, it’s not for nearly long enough. Barely an hour after finally managing to fall asleep, your phone starts to vibrate harshly against your chest. You tap at the screen blindly, hoping to shut off what you assume is your alarm; when it’s still buzzing a few seconds later, you reluctantly open your eyes, fighting back a sob. It’s not your alarm – it’s an incoming call. Why would it be anything else?

“Hello?” You grumble, putting the phone on speaker and resting it on the couch cushion next to your head. The energy expenditure of holding the device up to your ear feels mammoth.

“Ohh, you sound terrible.” Seungkwan’s voice sounds more taunting than it does concerned, but you pin that down to a symptom of his over-familiarity. “You’re sick?”

“Yeah,” you sigh. “I’m sorry.”

“I heard there was something going around,” Seungkwan tells you. Great, you think. Good to know. Now go away. “Yeah – one of my cousins… ah, what did she say…”

“Hey, man, I really-...”

“That’s it. She said she was love sick.”

You sigh so hard you think it’s a miracle you don’t pass out.  

“Don’t–”

“You better make sure Vernon gives you plenty of Vitamin D, today,” he harps on. “It’s quite the disease. I heard it can really–”

“Seungkwan!” You snap, finally, grabbing your phone and barking straight into the microphone. He doesn’t need to know that you’re stretching the truth to its absolute limit, but you certainly won’t let him keep believing that you’re calling out just to get laid. “Knock it off, okay? I’ve been awake all night.” 

(You suppose you should be glad that that much really is true.)

He falls silent, and you don’t know if he totally believes you, but a few breaths later, you hear his voice through the speaker again. He’s softer, this time. Quieter.

“I’m sorry,” he starts, hesitating a moment before he goes on. “Try to get some rest, all right? I’ll swing by after work and check in with some food, and… if you need anything, just text me?”

You’re immediately overcome with guilt at the sharp change in his demeanour, and it does nothing to settle the way your insides are writhing inside you. You clear your throat and pull your duvet up to cover your face, squeezing your eyes tightly shut. 

“I will,” you mumble. “I’m sorry – thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” he says. You can hear the front door to his own apartment slam shut and his breaths pick up as he starts to rush down the stairwell of his building. “I’ll see you later.”

“Okay.”

“Hey–” he rushes, before you can hang up the call. “Rest up. Run a bath, drink plenty. Love you.”

You cringe a little, but not enough to stop you from saying it back. Sort of. 

“Yeah. You too.”

Nobody could ever accuse Seungkwan of not being a man of his word. As irritating as he can sometimes be, as determined as he is to get on your every last nerve, you’ve never known him fail to come through on a promise. 

Not long after 6:30pm, you hear a series of knocks at the front door of your apartment. You’ve managed to squeeze in odd shifts of sleep throughout the day and though your head is still in a mess, you feel significantly less irritable than you were this morning. Cleaner, as well. One of your (several) naps took place in the bath, where you laid there and let the hot water draw some of the anxieties clean out of you to float towards the ceiling amongst the lavender-scented steam. 

In the knowledge that Seungkwan’s expectations of you are quite literally zero, you don’t bother to fix the one leg of your sweatpants that’s rolled up before you heave yourself off the couch and go to let him inside. He stands in the doorway with a bag of takeout food in each hand, all wind-flushed cheeks and that brilliant smile, and you feel like your stomach settles almost straight away when you see him.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, toeing off his shoes as he comes inside and lets the door close behind him. He sets the bags down on top of the small table by your front door and cups your face in both of his hands, squeezing your cheeks and frowning down at you. “You look awful.”

“Wow, thanks,” you huff, squirming to get out of his grip. “I was going to say I feel a little better, but…”

“You look exhausted,” Seungkwan clarifies, picking up the bags once more and following you through to your living room as you start to walk away from him. “I’m sorry about earlier, I didn’t realise you were actually… this bad…”

“This is doing wonders for my ego,” you grumble. “Keep it coming. Really.”

“Oh, you know what I mean.”

“No, no. By all means, continue to kick a girl while she’s down. Super classy.”

Your best friend flops down onto your couch with an exaggerated huff at your petulance. You curl up in the armchair instead, bringing your knees up beneath you. 

“Do you think it was something you ate?” He asks, refusing to give into your bickering and changing the subject matter instead. 

You shrug your shoulders at him. “I don’t-... I mean, it was more of a head… thing?” 

He sucks his front teeth. “What, like a migraine?”

“Sort of?” 

“What do you mean, ‘sort of’?” He asks. “You’ve had a migraine before. Was it that or not?”

“Well, it’s difficult to-... It wasn’t exactly…”

“Okay.” 

Seungkwan interrupts you as you hesitate again, swinging his legs off the couch and resting his elbows on his thighs, leaning as far towards you as he can while still remaining seated. He wrings his hands, plays with his fingers, lips drawn forward in a stern-looking pout. 

“I thought something was up this morning on the phone, but I didn’t wanna push it because you sounded mad. Now I know something’s wrong with you. What’s going on?”

You swallow hard and cross your arms over your chest, dropping your gaze away from Seungkwan’s very intense one. 

“Nothing,” you lie. 

“Bullshit.”

“Seungkwan!” 

“I’m sorry,” he sighs, tipping his head forward and running his hands through his hair. He’s never been a coddler, always one to prefer the tough-love approach: it’s no surprise that he doesn’t appear any softer when he looks back at you. “But we both know that’s crap.”

You can feel your pulse starting to quicken the longer he stares you down. It’s as if he’s burning two great big holes into your head, laser-beams where his pupils ought to be. He’s the master of the hard stare, and you know he won’t move until he hears the truth. 

Maybe I should just tell him. Maybe it’ll help…

“Look, I don’t care how famous he thinks he’s gonna be, if Vernon upset you last night, I’ll kick his ass myself.”

And there are the alarm bells. In hindsight, maybe you should’ve seen this coming; it’s not that far of a reach, and given the few facts that he actually knows, you can’t blame Seungkwan for jumping to this conclusion. It’s quite effective in triggering you to speak up, too. (You think that maybe, this was on purpose. Attack where you’re likely to defend. He knows you like the back of his hand.) In an instant you’re sitting upright with your feet firmly on the floor and you’re shaking your head at him like a dog trying to get itself dry. 

“No, no, no, back it up,” you rush. “It’s nothing like that. He hasn’t done anyth-... God, it’s not him.”

“It better not be,” Seungkwan tells you. His voice still has that dark edge to it, and you’re not sure how exactly to stamp it out. “I’m serious. If he’s done anything-...”

“He hasn’t,” you say more firmly. After a couple slow breaths, you clasp your hands together, swallowing your pride. “The food’s gonna go cold. Go grab a couple glasses and-... whatever else from the kitchen—”

“Only if you tell me what’s happening,” he says, slowly pushing himself up to stand. 

You don’t assent with words, but you don’t have to. You look up at him and nod a couple of times and that’s all he needs. Seungkwan strides off through the doorway, leaving you to shakily exhale away the stress that is once again squeezing at your lungs.

Once the containers are laid out on the table, food is divided up, utensils are handed over and he’s poured you each out a glass of soda, Seungkwan sits back on the couch. He doesn’t prod you, or ask you again – he doesn’t need to. You know what he’s waiting for. Even so, he allows you a few mouthfuls of your dinner first: seeing as this is the first substantial thing you’ve eaten all day, you silently thank him for the generosity.

“All right,” you say, gulping down a few mouthfuls of your drink to re-lubricate your throat. “Okay. Fuck – you’re gonna wanna make yourself comfy for this.”

The only way he moves is to pick up one of the food cartons and settle it on his thigh. Oh, how you wish you were joking. But if he really doesn’t want to heed your warning…

“You know I went on that date the other week?” You ask, biting the inside of your cheek. Seungkwan nods at you, lifting a helping of noodles out of the carton.

“With the hitter and quitter,” he confirms. “I remember.”

“Right,” you say. “Well – okay, wait, no. That’s a bad start. He didn’t do anything either.”

“I mean…”

“Not the time.”

He lifts his free hand up in surrender and gestures for you to continue as he slurps his food into his mouth. You clear your throat, bouncing one leg so rapidly that the decorative candle holder on your mantelpiece starts to rattle. 

“So… it was before the date. I was on my way to the bar, walking down past-... that convenient store. You know the one Chan keeps going into ‘cause he’s got the hots for the person who works there on a Friday night? Yeah, I was walking down that way. Actually running on time for once, and-...” 

You falter, sucking a breath deep into your lungs. It causes your next words to come out more strained than they ought to. 

“I ran into Jaehyun...”

Seungkwan swallows just in time to prevent himself from choking on his mouthful of food, but his eyes still shoot wide and you think his chest convulses a little bit anyway. His is a name you haven’t mentioned in a while, but he clearly hasn’t forgotten who it belongs to.

Because, well… how could he ever forget? 

Your ex-partner. Jaehyun.

The ex-love-of-your-life, Jaehyun.

The man who asked you to marry him after three and a half years of dating only to leave you, heartbroken and alone, six months later because he wanted to travel the world and there was too much that you couldn’t bring yourself to leave behind, Jaehyun. 

How could Seungkwan forget when he had been one of the people who helped drag you through what was not only the worst break-up, but one of the worst times of your entire life? 

Aside from the other week, it’s been… nearly eighteen months since you saw him last. Almost a year since you let yourself talk about him. Even sitting in your own apartment with a box full of your favourite food in your hands, a sense of dread chills you from head to toe just going so far as to say his name. But you’ve started, now, so you might as well finish.

“…right outside that stupid fucking store.”

Your voice cracks when you say it and you hurry to set your dinner down on the floor to free up your shaking hands. You cup them over your mouth, closing your eyes and taking a couple of deep breaths. It helps enough for you to be able to continue, even if you still feel a bit like you’re drowning.

“I thought he…” Seungkwan starts, putting his own food down and slipping off the couch. He comes to sit on the arm of your chair and puts a hand around your shoulders, pulling you into his side. “When did-...?”

“Yeah, uh… apparently he moved back a couple weeks ago,” you swallow, leaning into your friend’s embrace. 

Seungkwan looks down at you and you look up at him, all misty-eyed and drained. There’s more. He knows there is, but now he waits for you patiently, giving you all the time in the world to get through this and to let it out and to lean on him. He doesn’t butt in. The quiet feels worse than the talking. 

“He’s with someone now. They, uh— they met in Paris. Just over a year ago.”

Seungkwan finally dares to make a noise and breathes out heavily, so loud that it’s almost a groan. 

“Y/n,” he sighs, tightening his hold around you. “Shit – I’m so sorry,”

You shrug, staring across the room to where your record player sits on top of a low cabinet, lid open, table collecting dust. 

“For months, I sat here feeling… fucking, sorry for myself,” you say, barely above a whisper. You swallow around the lump in your throat and shake your head. “This whole time, refusing to get back on the horse ‘cause I thought maybe-... but he was-…”

The room goes quiet again as you lose the words you want to say and Seungkwan just rubs small circles against your arm. The problem is that you know this doesn’t explain why you called out of work today. It doesn’t explain what happened last night, and you’re not sure where to begin with that either. Especially seeing as the last time your best friends saw you and Vernon, the sparks flying between you were nigh-on visible. 

“I thought I was handling it, you know?” You sigh, leaning harder into Seungkwan’s soft sweatshirt. “Like… yeah — it hurt… but I was okay? I guess. And then Vernon fucking… kissed me last night—“

“He— what?”

“Hang on — no, he… I wanted him to.” You fumble with a thread hanging off the sleeve of your t-shirt as you talk. Why is this all so difficult? At the same time, why does it feel so juvenile to say out loud? “I just… I don’t know…”

Your wall clock tick, tick, ticks away in yet another painful fall of silence. 

“How bad was he?” Seungkwan asks when you struggle to elaborate. 

You assume this is an attempt to shatter the gloomy atmosphere and lighten your mood a tiny bit; it works, you suppose, because despite yourself, you laugh drily. Not without nudging your shoulder into his ribs, though. He deserves it, and you won’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that it does make you feel a little better.

“He wasn’t,” you groan. “Don’t—… you’re such an ass.” 

He pulls himself away from you at the sound of your laughter and moves to sit on the edge of your coffee table instead, careful not to disrupt any of your food while keeping himself close enough to you that he can hold both of your hands in his and soothe his thumbs over your palms.

“You freaked out on him, didn’t you?” 

He sees straight through you and truthfully, no part of you is surprised. No part of you tries to fight it, or reject his assumption, or even question why that’s the first explanation he leapt to. You just nod, looking to where your best friend’s fingers are currently the only things holding you together. 

“Ran out his apartment like the building was gonna burn down,” you sigh, still laughing but harshly now. He squeezes your hands gently, urging you to look up at him. You do, slowly. “It’s ruined everything.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” Seungkwan tries, narrowing his eyes at you when you scoff your obvious disagreement. “No, seriously. Anyone can see the poor guy’s got it bad for you.”

“Even if that’s right, you didn’t see his face,” you say. “God, he isn’t gonna wanna look at me ever again.”

“Have you spoken to him today?”

“Why would I do that?”

“Maybe if you explain what happened–”

“Oh, sure,” you snort. “‘Hey, Vernon. Sorry for running out on you like a lunatic yesterday. I ran into my ex recently and when you kissed me, it reminded me of being with him and I got freaked out and had to dash. Hope you don’t mind.’ God.” 

You try to draw your hands back but Seungkwan just holds onto you tighter. “We’ll workshop it,” he says firmly. “Do you like him, or not?”

“Seungkwan–”

“That wasn’t an option.”

You scowl at him. “It’s not that easy.”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

“Yes,” you stress finally, groaning through it. “Yes – I do.”

Seungkwan’s face lights up for a second, his eyes sparkling, lips lifting. You’re half expecting him to say ‘I knew it’. Half expecting him to try and be all deep and philosophical and a little bit motherly, as he sometimes does, especially when you’re upset. He’s always been a sucker for a happy ending. But this isn’t a happy ending, you remind yourself, squaring your jaw. It’s past that, already. It isn’t going to happen, you just know it. 

“Stop being so fucking hard on yourself,” he tells you, squeezing your hands one last time before he lets go and moves back over to the couch so he can finish eating before his food goes cold. “If anyone can pull this off, it’s you.”

You’re not sure what’s in the air right now, but this has been one of the busiest weekends that you can remember. Both yesterday and today, almost as soon as the store opened, your first handful of customers came through. Apart from about an hour around lunchtime, you don’t think there have been any periods of time where you’ve not had someone milling around the shelves. It makes a nice change, really, from some of your weekend shifts – hours at a time where the dust starts to settle and hardly anyone disturbs the bell above the front door. But this means you’ve been in full customer-service mode basically all day, and you’re starting to feel exhausted from keeping up the persona.

Still. There’s only an hour or so left — you can push through, and when you get home, there’ll be a nice, hot bubble bath with your name written all over it.

The bell chimes again just as you finish serving a group of teenage girls. You watch them scurry away, excitedly giggling about their new albums and you look towards the door with a smile already plastered on, all ready to greet the new customer until your eyes lock with theirs.

A ‘hey, how’s it going?’ stops somewhere midway up your throat, a pathetic little ‘huh?’ sound escaping you in its place. You’re frozen all of a sudden; you and the man who just came in both stand perfectly still, staring at each other like a pair of bunnies in headlights. It takes you forever to register the strap wrapped around his fist, the purse that hangs just below his grip. My bag, you think to yourself, but the voice that narrates your thoughts is hushed for the first time ever, too. Everything in your head gets sucked away into a little vacuum. The only thing left is him.

“I-… thought you might want this back.” Vernon breaks the quiet first. Your throat runs dry. In a flash, the noise in your brain is as loud as it’s ever been and in amongst all the chaos of thoughts and questions and apologies, you can’t pick out the words you actually want to say. 

He slowly unravels the strap from around his hand and takes a few steps closer to you, inching towards the counter. 

“You don’t have to say anything,” he hurries to assure you. Your heart aches for how reserved and nervous he looks. It doesn’t suit him. You hate it. “It’s okay. I’m… really sorry, about the other night. I didn’t mean to—” A deep breath. “I’ll see you around.”

Vernon lays your bag so delicately on the wooden surface that you could be forgiven for thinking he was handling an explosive. Then, he takes one, two, three steps back, before turning and heading to the exit.  

“Wait—” you call out to him, finding your voice at the most critical time, right as his fingers curl around the door handle. “Wait—, please.”

He spins back around to face you as you slip out from behind the desk. His left brow lifts higher than the right but otherwise, he gives nothing away. He doesn’t even say anything as he stands there, pushing his hands deep into his pockets. 

You swallow around the golf ball sized lump taking residence in your throat and clasp your hands together in front of you, wringing and twisting and accidentally popping one of your knuckles in the process. “I shouldn’t have run out on you like that. It wasn’t fair.”

Vernon chews this over in his mind but ultimately just shrugs his shoulders at you. What is there to say? He surely agrees, but he seems so adamant to ensure you don’t feel bad about it happening that he just… says nothing. Again. It’s kind of maddening, even if you fully get why. 

“No, I mean it,” you try again. “It wasn’t you. It’s nothing you did.”

“We really don’t have to do the whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ thing,” Vernon offers, his cardboard-like posture softening. There’s even a little bit of a smile on his face, you think — but it’s not the kind of smile you’ve grown used to seeing on him. It doesn’t reach his eyes; he looks kind of like someone who has read their cards and accepted their fate. “Seriously. It’s okay.” 

“It’s not,” you stress, stepping closer to him again. You sigh deeply. There’s something almost relieving about the position you find yourself in. You suppose this really is crunch time; it’s now or never. “Can we… talk? About everything?”

“What? Here?” Vernon asks. 

You glance around the store, at the few people doing a very poor job of pretending to be minding their own business, and frown. He’s right. This isn’t the time, or the place. The problem is, you have a feeling that if you send him away, he may not decide to come back and listen to you. In his defence, why should he? He’s already done more than the decent thing and brought you back that which you abandoned in his apartment; several of your previous conquests would have shoved the bag and its contents either in the trash or the back of a closet somewhere. This is more than you could have hoped for. 

You hold a finger up to him and ask him to stay where he is, and though he looks a little bewildered at the gesture, he ultimately doesn’t move. You rush off out the back to the storeroom where you banished Chan an hour ago, on account of his raging hangover and your low tolerance for his whining about it; you’re genuinely surprised to find him working, and actually alphabetising the records you got in a few days ago like you asked him to.

“Hey. Can you do me a huge favour?” You ask, not announcing your arrival and subsequently scaring Chan out of his skin. He jolts as he hears your voice and claps a hand to his chest, exhaling hard. You don’t entertain his dramatics, though. There’s no time. “I need you to close today.”

“Huh?” He asks, still acting as if he’s trying to catch his breath. “I thought–”

“Please.” You wave him off, knowing he’s about to ask about the task you gave him. “We can look at this together tomorrow. You did great. It’s just an hour – is that okay?”

He chews the inside of his lip, almost looking disappointed. To be fair to him, he did look like he was in a groove when you appeared, but he doesn’t argue with you as he puts down the record in his hand and picks his phone up off the table to his right, silencing the catchy tune that was playing while he organised. 

“Of course it is,” he says, holding his hand out for your keys and starting to walk towards you. “Everything okay?”

“It-...” you start, faltering as you place the store keys in his waiting palm. Your default response was about to be ‘it’s fine’, but you’re trying harder these days to stop pretending, especially around him. So you swallow, nodding your head, flashing him a tight lipped smile. “I’m about to find out.”

“Oh? Is it…?”

A brief pause later, not before cringing at how predictable you’ve apparently become, you say, “yeah.”

Chan claps you on the shoulder as he skirts his way around you, leaning in to give you a sort of side-along hug on his way. You stretch your arm across his waist and pull him closer for a moment, trying to drive home how much you appreciate this. He doesn’t comment on the uncharacteristic display of affection, and you want to find out why, but Vernon isn’t going to wait around for you forever. 

“Go get him, tiger,” Chan whispers.

“I owe you, big time,” you promise. 

He winks at you before he disappears through the door and you follow him briefly, but as he does a round of checking in with your customers and making sure they don’t need any help, you hurry off to grab your jacket from the office.

Vernon is exactly where you left him when you come back out into the storefront, hands unmoved from where he stuffed them into his pockets earlier, rocking back and forth on his toes and looking around from wall to wall. You think perhaps he took your request slightly too literally and the fact that even his feet are in the same position as before you left is reminiscent of a puppy commanded to stay, but if anyone here is at liberty to start poking fun, you think that it certainly isn’t you. Instead of trying your luck, you lock the office door and walk up to him, returning his polite, yet slightly awkward smile.

“You’re not, like, super busy right now or anything, are you?” You ask him. 

His brows crease and his eyes shift side-to-side before they land back at you. He shakes his head.

“Did you maybe wanna… take a walk?” 

Vernon nods this time, still not moving or even pulling his hands out of his jeans. His elbows are locked out and the length of his arms means his shoulders are raised quite some way. He could not be more uncomfortable looking if he tried, but he doesn’t say no and nothing on his face gives away that he wants to reject your proposition, either, so you’re the one to take that tentative first step towards the door. When you do, he follows. 

You left the store at least ninety seconds ago and still, neither of you have said anything yet. Honestly, it’s taking all you’ve got not to just burst and let it all out; it’s building and building and your stomach feels tight, but it’s less of a knot and more like a tightly-coiled spring. His eyes are dipped to the ground, incredibly aware of every step he takes, in what you realise now are a gorgeous pair of platform boots tucked up beneath his baggy jeans. He’s at least an inch and a half taller than the last time you saw him. 

“Your friend,” Vernon starts finally, pausing before he continues.  “Is he always so… you know?”

“What did he say?” You ask, peeking over to him. Trust Chan to start getting —

He hurries to shake his head. “Nothing. He just… kept looking at me. In a weird way, like…”

“Like he knows something you don’t, and he’s not gonna tell you, but he wants you to know that he knows it anyway?” You supply.

“Yeah— exactly like that.”

“Mm. That’s just… Chan.”

“Huh.”

“It’s worse when they’re together,” you say. He breathes out a chuckle and you feel his elbow bump into your upper arm. The distance he put between you when you fell into step outside the store has reduced, you realise now; you’re not sure when, or if it was on purpose. Did he move closer once you started speaking? Was it just so he could hear you better? Or…

Either way, despite being side-by-side, he still feels a hundred miles away from you. This isn’t enough.

“You get used to them, though,” you add, trying to stay on track. “I swear.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

Jokes aside, he still won’t look at you for longer than a few seconds, which tugs at something deep in your chest. Discomfort clings to you, and even if it does seem like you’re making some progress, you can still feel unease radiating off him. A cheap laugh at the expense of your friends who aren’t here to defend themselves won’t fix that which you took a wrecking ball to a few nights ago. This needs to be heartfelt and genuine, and more importantly it needs to come out right. 

But when you open your mouth to speak, still searching your brain for the right way to explain why you acted the way you did, there’s nothing. 

How wonderful would it be for the perfect explanation to just tumble from your lips calmly and evenly, and for it to make everything okay? But the reality is that your throat runs dry as petrol fumes make their way through your parted lips. You hold your tongue again just a second later, sighing quietly. 

You’re starting to feel like a lost cause when Vernon breaks the silence for you, again. He slows his steps to a halt when he eventually says, “so.”

“So,” you repeat, freezing mid-stride as you go completely tense. It’s like you’re staring into oblivion’s wide open mouth. “I-… don’t really know where to start. I’m sorry.”

“The beginning’s usually pretty good?” He offers.

You nod. “How much did you want to know?”

“Whatever you’re comfortable with telling me.”

If anyone on this Earth deserves a medal for their patience, it’s Vernon. You still haven’t turned to face him yet, your eyes fixated on the traffic signal some fifty yards away from you and you’re pretty sure if someone poked you too hard, you’d shatter into a million tiny pieces. But, as impossible as it seems all the while you try to get your thoughts in a reasonable order, you manage to swallow your nerves. 

It’s crunch time. It’s now or never.

The explanation you give him is messy. Disjointed. But once you start, it becomes difficult to stop: you end up sparing very little detail and circle back on yourself no less than three times. You tell him about how you were engaged and about the breakup, the run-in, your shitty date, gesturing with your hands to emphasise the most important parts. When you start to move again, Vernon makes his steps bigger until he’s walking alongside you. He never interrupts you. He acknowledges every sentence when you pause for breath. Encourages you to keep going when you fall over your words. 

“… and—... I guess I just lost my head. But it wasn’t your fault.” You swallow hard before you continue, “I’m… really sorry.”

He nods slowly, taking his time to digest everything.

“Don’t be,” he says, lightly bumping into your side. It’s a very small reassurance that he’s not going to walk away, but it means much more to you than you’re sure he meant it to. “I get it.”

“I—”

“No, like. I get it.” 

“Yeah?” You ask, only understanding when you catch the very pointed look in his eyes. 

“For sure.”

Of course, it makes sense. Vernon’s young. Attractive. Nice. Talented. He must have been with people before. Hell, you think he surely leaves a trail of broken hearts everywhere he goes. He gets it. 

“We dated for like… five? Years. Her name was Nari,” he tells you. 

A few seconds later, you watch him start to shrug off his jacket on one side and expose one of his toned arms to you. You’re about to tell him he doesn’t need to air his dirty laundry out if he doesn’t want to when he twists at his elbow; you catch sight of a tattoo you remember having seen the night he wore that black singlet on stage. Two lily flowers blooming up the inside of his bicep. 

It’s so pretty. Intricate. The line work is beautiful, the petals shaded with hundreds of little dots. You wanted to ask about it that night, but you never found the right chance, and now—

Lily?

It takes you longer than you’re willing to admit to join the dots, but when the penny finally drops, so does your jaw. Vernon slides back into his sleeve with a big, entertained smile and a little shrug. 

“Mhm.”

“Oh my God?”

“I know.”

It’s not that you’re laughing, per se. This isn’t your baggage to laugh at, no matter how unbothered Vernon seems to be by what he’s just revealed. But you do rub your hand over your face and cover your lips, shaking your head in disbelief as a breath that contains the edges of a bemused chuckle escapes you. Thankfully, he doesn’t seem to mind; if anything, it appears to give him a boost to keep talking.

“I got that on our third anniversary,” he goes on to explain. “A couple years later… She called it quits. Turns out there was another guy. I thought about lasering it, but… apparently that hurts worse than getting the tattoo in the first place, so…”

“That’s…”

“It’s whatever,” Vernon says, shaking his head. “They’re my mom’s favourite flowers too. That’s what almost everyone else thinks it’s for.”

You haven’t looked back up at his face since the unveiling, not until now. When your eyes meet again, Vernon tilts his head in the direction you’re walking and continues down the street, spinning now so he’s walking backwards but still facing you. “I just mean... It’s okay. I get it.”

The moment you’ve caught up to him and you’re back by his side, he turns to face front, just in time to avoid a collision with a streetlamp. The lingering awkwardness starts to fade to nothing; you can see it in the way he holds himself, and you can feel it in the way you do, too. Everything relaxes. Your neck, your shoulders, your fists. It all ebbs away. 

“It really wasn’t anything you did,” you clarify once more. 

“So you keep telling me,” Vernon quips, tips of his ears turning pinker by the moment. “It’s okay, I swear. Do you want me to walk you home?”

You accept his offer and lead him down a side-street, picking up a completely unrelated conversation now to purify the air. Before you really know it (what was that everyone always said about time flying?), you come to a stop outside your building. Vernon’s sentence fades away when you stop moving; instead he stills, glancing sideways, and you nod confirmation at him with a lopsided smile. 

“This is me,” you say, reaching into your back pocket for your keys. “So…”

“So,” Vernon echoes, glancing around again. “Can I like, lay my cards out, real quick?”

You nod. 

“I like you.” He shrugs, now toying with the leather bracelet around his wrist. “Like, a lot. But…”

But. You feel like you should have seen this coming. But. But. Of course there’s a— 

“I’ve got some shows coming up out of town and I need to see some family, I’m not gonna be here from tomorrow for like, three weeks...”

Oh. 

Well. On one hand, it’s not what you thought. It’s not a flat-out rejection. It’s not a shut down. On the other? You bite the inside of your cheek and look at your hands, playing with your keys to keep them busy. Under any other lens, three weeks isn’t really a very long time at all. You’re pretty sure that the milk you bought yesterday is going to last longer than that. But three weeks… this early into things? 

That’s longer than you’ve even known him.  

“… and I thought, if you wanted — I could… take you out. When I get back. For real. Maybe.”

Oh.

“Like…?”

“Like… on a date,” he confirms, rubbing the back of his neck. “One where I’m not like… fresh off stage and all gross and shit.”

Relief replaces anxiety on both his face and yours when you let out a quiet laugh. 

“I’d really like that,” you say, twitching fingers suddenly still. “Yeah.”

“I’m not asking you to like, wait around, or anything,” he says as he pulls his phone out of his pocket, fumbles with it, and just barely manages to soften the fall with the toe of his boot before it lands screen-up on the concrete. “We’ll just see how it goes. And it gives you some time to… deal with things. Whatever you’ve gotta do.”

You nod, crossing your arms over your chest as he bends low to pick his phone back up, smoothing his thumb over the small scuff on the protective case. It seems remarkably undamaged otherwise. 

“And if you’re still interested, then…”

“Interested?” You ask with a small grin. 

“Aren’t you?” Vernon asks.

“I—...” You think about playing coy, but when he’s been so open with you about where his head’s at, it feels so silly and childish to bother pretending. That playful ‘I might be’ gets swallowed back. Instead – “Yeah. I am.”

“Cool. Then we’ll figure it out. At your pace, okay?” 

“Okay.”

He grabs his earphones out of his other pocket, slides one in, and is about to step back away from you when you do something you don’t really expect yourself to. Something you’ve never done to a man you can barely even say you’re ‘seeing’. You close the space between you and, as if to lock in your words, push forward onto your toes to press a kiss to his cheek. 

“Thank you,” you say when you fall back down to your heels. If he wasn’t so dumbstruck, you feel like he’d be about to ask what you were thanking him for; as it stands though, he’s frozen, blushing, and the only reason you can tell he’s still alive is because he can’t stop blinking at you. “For… giving me another chance.”

He still can’t quite find his voice, so Vernon just shakes his head, clearing his throat. (No need, he wants to say.) Alas, his lips just open and close soundlessly.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks,” you supply for him. He takes in a deep, mind-clearing breath and nods his head.

“I’ll see you in a few weeks.”

You see the apples of his cheeks lift as he presses his thumb against his phone screen and restarts whatever song he was listening to when he walked into your store. A brilliant smile consumes his face. It only grows as he turns away from you and walks off down the street. 

For a second, you think it’s all very smooth. Movie-like, even.

Then, he stumbles over a crack in the pavement. When he glances back to pray you didn’t watch it happen, he catches you snickering into your fist. He shakes his head and continues on, leaving you to fumble with your key in the lock before you finally let yourself inside.

You overslept. 

Sort of. You heard your alarm go off straight away but you might have snoozed it, and when you heard it sound for a second time, you turned it off completely, telling yourself that you just needed one more minute. You just wanted to rest your eyes for a few more seconds. There wasn’t any danger of you going back to sleep.

Twenty minutes later, you practically fell off your mattress in a panic when you realised that there had, in fact, been a big fucking danger. 

You were still able to wash up well and make it to work on time, but you had to sacrifice your morning coffee stop after seeing that the queue at the register was going to take too long. For years, you’ve refused to consider yourself to be the kind of person who relies heavily on a caffeine kick first thing in the morning, but today? It’s barely ten thirty and you’re seriously flagging: like you’ve never known what energy is, like you’ll never feel it again. 

(You blame the fact that when you first looked at your phone today before rolling back over, there was no ‘good morning :)’ text to entice you out of bed. But you’re trying really hard not to think about why that is, nor why it was such a deciding factor.)

So, when the bell above your shop door jingles and you’re forced to stand upright (a change your back doesn’t thank you for when it has to readjust from the previous hunched position you had adopted over the countertop), you groan quietly. Nonetheless, your tired eyes crease at the corners as you smile at whoever it is that’s come across the threshold.

After a second, your eyes refocus; when you can finally make out their features, it’s as if someone gives you a shot of adrenaline.

“Oh my God,” You say breathlessly, brushing your hair back and moving to stand up fully unsupported. “I thought you weren’t back until Friday?”

“Change of plans,” Vernon grins, scratching the back of his neck. “We drove through the night. I got home like… an hour ago.”

This is the first time you’ve ever seen him dressed down, and hell, does he look incredible. Gone are the ripped jeans, scuffed boots, the leather jackets and chunky rings. Grey sweatpants and an oversized white hoodie (alternatively: the brightest outfit you’ve witnessed him in thus far) drown him, blurring out his usually so distinct frame. You pin both of these things as the reasons you hardly recognised him when your eyes were refusing to cooperate. Paired with what Seungkwan would call ‘dad-sneakers’ and completed by messy hair and tired, soft eyes?

If you could jump his bones right here, right now… God, you would. 

“But hey, it’s nice to see you, too,” he adds facetiously.

“Quiet down,” you groan, fighting the urge to run over and envelop him in a hug. You’re not sure that he’d mind if you did, but you also don’t quite know if you’re ‘there’, yet. “Obviously it’s good to-...”

His arms, both of which have been stuck behind his back since he arrived, now move around to the front, revealing to you a takeout cup and a little brown box from the coffee shop down the street. 

“Oh, shit. It is so good to see you.”

Vernon laughs, coming closer until he can set them both down on the counter. “If it’s wrong, Seungkwan gave me your order, so.”

You start to wonder how on Earth your employee and your… Vernon managed to have this conversation without you knowing. Does Seungkwan have his number? Did they happen across each other on one of their socials? Did Vernon call into the store while you were out in the bathroom a little while ago and ask? But whatever happened, you quickly stop caring to find out: popping the lid off your cup, the aroma of your favourite coffee immediately fills your senses. It’s so overwhelming that you think you might start to cry.

“Oh my God. You’re the best,” you sigh, wrapping your fingers around the cup and taking a long sip, eyes rolling back into your head. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” Vernon laughs, rolling up his sleeves before folding his toned forearms over his chest. “I got you a-... okay, they only had those gluten free brownies in, and I’ll be honest, I don’t know if they taste the same as the normal ones but… like, he said you hadn’t eaten today and I know you said you liked brownies before, — if you don’t like those ones, it’s okay! I can go back, it’s–”

He trails off, cheeks turning pink when you tilt your head to one side and feel your brow go soft. He asks, “why… are you looking at me like that?”

“You’re so cute,” you say, putting the cup down gently so as not to splash your drink all over the counter. 

“Huh?”

“You really didn’t have to…”

“I wanted to,” Vernon says, shaking his head. 

You almost definitely hear a floorboard creak and quiet shushing sound from just around the corner towards the back room. You don’t call out your eavesdropping friends for trying to listen in on your conversation, though: it barely even crosses your mind. Besides... you can’t take your eyes off Vernon, even if you wanted to. He looks so soft. Like he needs to sleep for a whole twenty four hours, and he must feel like it too, but he came here first. 

“So,” he starts, tapping his right thumb against the inside of his left elbow. (The reason why he came so quickly starts to become evident. He just couldn’t wait to ask.) “You don’t have to commit to anything right now…” The silver of one of his rings glints with every tiny movement. “…but, I was just wondering–”

Smiling at him over the top of your coffee cup, it feels like your heart could burst.

“I was just… wondering… if you’d thought any more about letting me take you out?”

You’ve been texting him almost every day since he left. He’s sent you a hundred and one pictures of statues and cool buildings and nice looking food and the sky, and far more animals than you think you’ve ever actually seen in real life. You’ve spoken to him about your strange customers. What’s going on with your friends. Sent him recommendations for songs that you discovered on obscure albums that you pulled out to play over the speakers. 

One night after one of his shows, he called you. He was a little bit drunk at the time, chilling in his hotel room with a pizza as he informed you that he’d snuck out of an after-party super early but couldn’t get to sleep. With an audible pout, he went on to confess that he was feeling kind of lonely, that he just wanted to hear your voice: one thing led to another and you stayed up talking to him until he passed out at nearly 4 o’clock in the morning.

To put it simply… 

“I’d still really like that,” you say. It’s incredible to you that you can see every one of his features brighten up. 

“Okay,” he breathes, unwinding his arms and pushing his hands into the pockets of his sweatpants now instead. “Okay, cool. I’ll… text you later? We’ll figure something out?”

“All right,” you agree. “Now go rest up, okay?”

He laughs as he swears that he’ll go back home and get some sleep, and with that, Vernon takes his leave. You’re once again alone, but this time you have a drink that could only hope to make you feel as energised as he does, and a treat nowhere near as sweet as him. 

You aren’t complaining, though, and neither are the two men that miraculously reappear the moment the door closes again. 

The smile Vernon leaves on your face doesn’t falter for the rest of your day.

You suppose a big part of the reason you haven’t dated anyone in a while is because you can’t stand the ‘talking stage’. That weird little limbo where you’re never sure if it’s too early to make certain jokes, where you’re checking and second-guessing all your texts, where you can’t figure out if someone’s really into you or if they’re just blowing up your phone to pass the time. The awkward small talk. The ‘getting to know each other’ part. The ‘why haven’t they replied yet — was it something I said?’ anxiety. 

Thankfully, with Vernon, that’s not really something you have to worry about. 

While he was away, you learned that he’s the kind of guy who just spews random facts at you in the middle of his day and then forgets to check his messages for three hours. Sometimes those facts are interesting things about himself. Other times, you’ve known him to shoot you a text just to announce [ just found out tigers have striped skin as well as fur. wild ].

(On one such occasion, Chan caught you giggling at your phone in the middle of a quiet Thursday afternoon, zooming in on a picture of Vernon’s heart shaped birthmark. This put a swift end to checking your messages while you’re at work.)

[ btw, im allergic to peanuts ], he told you one evening. Completely unprompted, just after dinner time. You spilled half of your glass of juice down your front in panic when you put two and two together and scrambled to ask him if he was okay. [ near miss, dw about it! just felt important haha ], he replied, and your response was just a picture of your newly stained t-shirt and a request for him to never do that to you again. 

He can drive — at least, he has his licence — but he doesn’t have a car. He chooses public transport, and he tells you that it’s because he likes not having to worry about fuel prices and it’s ‘healing’ to zone out of reality on the train until he reaches his stop. He tells you that he came up with the melody and two verses of one of his favourite original songs on the bus to his parents house, and one time, he dropped a giant cockroach on a class field trip to the zoo because it tickled when it crawled over his palm and he didn’t like it. 

(You later discovered that this piece of information was triggered by the appearance of a large bug in his shower.)

Last night, as you settled into bed after a whole evening of back and forth, he told you that he has all five of the top scores at the piano game in the arcade downtown, and that he has an approximate 75% success rate on claw machines. When you replied saying you hadn’t been to an arcade in about two years, he was horrified. Enough to send 7 broken heart emojis back to back, as individual messages. [ shakespeare himself couldnt write a tragedy that sad ], he said. 

But, harrowed as he was by your admission, it did give him an idea. 

That idea is exactly how you end up standing side-by-side at a basketball shootout game on Friday night. It’s how he ends up winning one of those cute reversible octopuses — true enough, on a claw machine — which he gives to you immediately. It’s how you watch him hunch over a pinball machine for twenty five minutes before he loses his ball, how you end up tied after four games of air hockey, at which point he calls it quits while citing a ‘cramping hand’.

It’s also how you deliver his ass to him in not one, but two rounds of bowling.

“All right — all right,” Vernon laughs, holding both his hands up in defeat as your final ball takes out all ten pins at the end of the alley. “You made your point. Damn.”

You shrug your shoulders as you walk back in his direction, picking up your glass from the table and sipping your soda through your straw. 

(Though the arcade has an entire menu of cocktails, some of which you’ve never even heard of, the thought of navigating an evening alone with him under the influence of alcohol was totally unappealing after last time. Thankfully, Vernon agreed. You quietly think that being stone cold sober has made tonight even more enjoyable.)

“I told you,” you say when you finally sit down. He puts an arm around your shoulders straight away. Naturally, like it’s instinct. Like it’s a position he’s adopted a few hundred times before. “I’m undefeated.”

“We’ll see,” he says, tapping out a rhythm on the ball of your shoulder. “I still think you just got lucky.”

“So,” Vernon says once your leisurely stroll back lands you outside his place, kicking the toe of his left sneaker into the concrete. “What… are the chances that I get a do-over?”

You blink at him a few times, tilting your head. “What do you mean, a do-over?” 

Does he not think this went well? Gods, it’s probably the best first date you’ve ever had, but what on Earth else could he mean by that? Did you say something earlier, and not realise? Has he not had fun? What does he m–

“I got these new coffee beans,” he says. “While I was away — and I figured something out with the-… the machine? So— ”

Ah. There he is.

You smirk at him, patting the outside of his bicep and rolling your eyes. When you glance down, Vernon is pulling out his key, thumbing over the ridges down the one side. He reaches for the door, happy to take your teasing as confirmation that yes, you’ll come up. Yes, he gets his ‘do-over’...

…but leave it to you to fall for the world’s dorkiest rockstar. 

As he slips the key into his apartment door, there’s a steady pressure against the small of your back: the same one that’s been there ever since he gestured for you to step out of the elevator before him. One of his palms rests over the fabric of your t-shirt and you feel weirdly tingly because of it. He gently guides you inside once the door falls open and doesn’t move away when it’s locked again behind him. 

With an anticipatory shiver, you turn around to face him. You make a point to leave just a matter of inches between your chests. To have your eyes soft, patiently waiting.

Vernon’s hands are - for the first time ever - cold when his fingers hesitantly come up to either side of your face, tilting your head up so that he can see you better, unobstructed by any shadows. You gasp at the contrast between them and your flushed, warm cheeks. He swallows thickly at the sound.

“Is this… okay?” he asks, gaze darting between the space separating your eyes from your lips. “We can slow it down, if you want. I just—...”

Your own hands find home against his chest in response, fingers curling into the muscle beneath them. Not harshly, definitely not so much that it could hurt — just enough that it makes him puff himself up a little bigger. Enough to make him square his shoulders as he drags a thumb over the corner of your mouth. 

“Vernon,” you say quietly, pressing him backwards. Balling his t-shirt into your fists, you send him stumbling over his own feet before his shoulders find the wood of the front door. A quiet grunt escapes him on impact, but he just holds you closer. “Shut up ‘n’ kiss me. Please.”

Clumsiness aside, the moment he obediently ducks his head and presses his smiling mouth to yours, you feel weightless. Even when you tilt forward onto your toes to meet him halfway, it’s as if you’re not even touching the ground anymore: clouds beneath your feet have you floating. Everything about it is so very different from the last time.

It’s so much easier. Not just for you, either – you can feel it from him as well. Your collective baggage has been left out in the hall, barricading the door, shutting out the hesitation and nervousness and leaving you together, wholly alone, to just… be.

Vernon gets increasingly more brave as the seconds tick by. When you separate for air, his head tilts the other way, lips a little parted, hot breaths fanning over your skin as he meets you again, and again, and again. It’s the perfect give and take. Firm one second, waiting for you to chase him the next. The soft sounds he starts to make are amplified as his tongue presses against your bottom lip: he tests the waters, groaning into the heat of your mouth when you so happily invite him into it. He drinks you up for all you’re worth. 

One of your hands uncurls from his chest and moves up to his head instead, threading into his hair at the top of his neck. It feels just as soft as it’s always looked, sliding through your fingers. A gentle pull makes him whine. He draws away from you. His lips are pink and shine with the gloss you touched up in the elevator’s mirror, his lids are heavy, his pupils blown, and looking up at him feels like staring into the sun; you physically can’t keep your eyes open, but it’s so hard to look away. 

You tuck yourself into his neck as a compromise, laying gentle pecks everywhere you can reach. His aftershave leaves a bitter taste on your tongue as you touch the tip to a stretch of skin just beneath the harsh cut of his jawline, but the way he shudders and drops his hold down to your waist makes the sting in the back of your mouth all worth it. You only stop when one of his hands sinks lower still and he squeezes at your ass, making your eyes roll back.

He mistakes your surprise for hesitation, though.

“Is this… okay?” he asks, tipping his head back and pressing his crown into the door. Though he doesn’t withdraw his palm from your backside, he also doesn’t pinch at you again. You press your hips backwards, pushing into his touch to encourage him, with this green light he starts to knead at your cheek over the top of your skirt.

“You have no idea how hard it is to keep my hands to myself around you, do you?” You say, slipping one up the hem of his t-shirt as if to prove your point, splaying your fingers out over his stomach. 

He takes a shallow breath, hovering with it in his lungs, holding back from saying something. You get there before he can.

“I want you,” you say certainly, pulling back from where you’ve been nestled into his shoulder so that you can look him in the eyes again. He releases that breath and his face flushes when his eyes find yours, moving both of his hands back up to your waist, tightly gripping at you as if his life depends on it as he nods. 

“I just… I really don’t wanna mess this up,” he adds quietly. “I—”

When you kiss him again, hoping to further assure that you’re just as into this as he is, he reciprocates, sure. You can tell straight away that there’s a little less bite though — a stiffness to him. He doesn’t relax into you the same way he did a few minutes ago. 

“What’s wrong?” you ask, falling back onto your heels. Is this because of the way things went last time, or are you going too fast for him? Selfishly, you hadn’t considered that could be a barrier. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want, you know that right? It’s okay.”

You make to step away from Vernon, unwinding your arms from around him to give him some space but he refuses to let you go too far. His hold on you is just as firm as ever.

“Trust me, I want to,” he says. “It’s just–...”

You stay silent, waiting for him to finish. He chews at his bottom lip, his blush deepening right in front of your eyes. To try and steady him, you lay one of your palms over each of his biceps, saying, “Whatever it is – it’s all right.”

“I just… haven’t been with anyone since…”

And when you laugh, it’s not at him (at least, not for the reason a fly on the wall might initially assume). You drop your forehead down onto the muscle of his chest, feeling his heart’s erratic rhythm underneath his clothes as you loop one arm back up around his neck.

“I thought you were about to tell me something awful,” you chide him through your giggles, lightly swatting at his shoulder. He starts to loosen up beneath you, his own body beginning to shake with laughter too. Those strong arms pull you flush against him, the gentle shift of his weight from one foot to another rocking you both side-to-side. “Like– like you were secretly married or you realised you didn’t actually like me, or something. Jesus.”

He stays quiet for another few seconds, but even without speaking, you can feel how he shakes his head above you. You look back up at his face and brush his hair out of his eyes, fingers lingering on his brow when you’re done.

“It’s okay,” you tell him for the third time. The last wisps of anxiety start to fade from his eyes, replaced with the same look he’s been wearing since he showed up at your apartment door earlier this evening. “I don’t care — I promise, I’ll go easy on you.”

The kiss that follows lands hard and with it, Vernon succeeds in wiping your brain empty. You can barely remember what you were even giggling about a few seconds later. 

“Don’t want you to go easy,” he insists against your lips. Then, he’s wallowing up your breathy sighs as he licks into your mouth again, pressing your tongue with his own, reminding you that he’s absolutely not incompetent, just rusty. 

When you make it into his bedroom, confessions and various articles of your clothing forgotten out in the hallway, you separate from each other long enough for you to be able to to lay one hand on his bare chest and push him down onto the mattress. He bounces on the foam and pushes up on one elbow, watching as you sink down to your knees and press kisses down his stomach while your hands deftly take care of the button on his jeans. 

“Tell me if you want me to stop, okay?” You say to him as he lifts his hips up and lets you pull both his jeans and his boxers down in one sharp movement. 

“M’not gonna want you to,” he laughs breathlessly, pushing a hand through his hair as he kicks the remainder of his clothes all the way off and nudges them away to the side. “But yeah. Okay.”

He looks so pretty like this and you can’t help but think he’s even prettier when the first time you curl your fingers around his length, his jaw falls slack and his fingers curl into the bedding underneath him. You drink him in and he watches you do it; your mouth is watering, desperate to feel him press down on your tongue, and you feel a pull towards him that you’ve never felt towards anyone before. 

“God,” you whisper, shuffling on your knees to get a little closer. 

“Okay?” Vernon asks. He tilts his head to the side and you nod up at him.

“Just… had a feeling you’d be…” you trail off, tugging a few times to feel its thickness in your fingers. Why are you mesmerised by it, a little? What the hell has gotten into you? “But it’s actually bigger, and—”

He laughs quietly and falls back onto the bed, crossing an arm over his eyes. “Shut up,” he groans. 

“Yes, sir.”

You lean towards him and gather saliva on your tongue, dragging it from base to tip before closing your lips around the head. He gasps softly and holds onto his next breath, angling his head back further; you give a satisfied hum and slide a little further down. 

The glide is made smoother by the spit your tongue left behind and that which mixes with his pre-cum in your mouth. As you start to bob up and down, some dribbles out past your lips so you start to move your hand, too, smearing the mess all over his cock. When it bumps the back of your throat — and on assessment, you realise there’s daylight between your lips and your fist — you squeeze your eyes closed and whimper softly, holding him in place while you adjust before you can take him deeper. 

“Fuck— just like that,” he gasps out in a shattered groan when you start to move a little more fluidly, no longer too intimidated by your gag reflex preventing him from slipping down your throat. Your hand and your mouth work in tandem to get him riled. Every sound he makes feels like someone injects lust straight into your veins. When you look up at him from between your dewy lashes, you ponder that you’d watch him fall apart from this angle a hundred times a night forever and still not get bored. 

Your jaw starts to ache from the thickness of having him in your mouth and the way he’s restraining himself from fucking his hips up to meet you tells you that he’s too polite to ask you for more. You suck harshly one last time before pulling away with a ‘pop’, using only your hand to pump his length as you shift down to gently suck one of his balls into your mouth. 

The sound he makes is so fucking melodic. You think he’s made a similar one before when he lifts into a falsetto, and you’ve never felt more powerful than you do right now. Knowing you have someone with such a commanding presence eating out of your palm could really do something dangerous to your ego. It’s a bit of a miracle, therefore, that you recognise his desperate tapping at your shoulder, but the second you feel it you settle back from him, looking up at his impossibly tense abs and his blissed-out face.

You catch on quickly and feel your features split into a grin at the realisation. When it takes him a second, you know it’s because he’s still trying to remember the mechanisms it takes to breathe. Bless his heart. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, pushing himself to sit upright and running a hand through his hair. “It-… fuck, that was so…”

“What happened to ‘I don’t want you to go easy’ huh?” you tease, resting your chin on the top of his left thigh, grinning up at him. 

“I’m gonna come if you keep going like that,” he chuckles, shaking his head in disbelief at himself. “And trust me — I want to, but…” He swallows hard. “Not yet.”

You nod slowly up at him, starting to get up off the floor. You stop in your tracks when he says, “I’ve gotta taste you first. Please.”

Maybe it speaks too much to the quality of some of your previous lovers, but his desperation takes you a bit by surprise. You blink at him, ignoring how your thighs burn with the position you’ve frozen in. 

“If— that’s okay?” He adds. “I’ve… been thinking about it? A lot. Especially since-”

“Shut up,” you breathe, finally standing all the way up. He shuffles back further onto the bed and you quickly move to straddle across his hips, one hand coming up to hold his jaw in place when you’re in place. “Of course it’s okay.”

You lean in for an impossibly needy kiss, only breaking away when you physically can’t breathe anymore. Vernon’s eyes flutter open at the same time as yours do and as you reach behind yourself with one hand to unclasp your bra, he looks at you like you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to him.  

(He tells you that you are no fewer than three times before you fall asleep a few hours later.)

thank u so much for reading, i hope you enjoyed it! as always, likes, reblogs, comments & feedback are so so appreciated. there's approx a scene and a half left for part 3 and then we're all done with this baby! stay tuned for that, coming soon.<3 p.s. no i will not apologise to jaehyun, this is what he gets for making me feel insane. thanks !

[kennedyalike]

you’re saved

elijah mikaelson x reader drabble

word count : 695

tags: kissing, rain, mentions of violence, mentions of torture, mentions of wounds, fluff

the sound of the pouring rain echoed in your ears, it was like a humming noise that would usually calm you down. this time it was like a bad omen, the water connecting in small rivers, streaming down the drains. the night had settled in and you held out your hands in the rain. letting the water wet your hair, washing the blood from your hands as your breathing struggled to calm down. the wound on your stomach had healed but the adrenaline never left your body.

whole nervous system crashing down as you looked around while panting. not a sound. only the rain falling down on the hard asphalt as the night settled in, slowly getting darker and darker.

debating your choices, you needed to run, but stay hidden or they were going to find you. in your mind, you had already given up, there was no sign of him and the feeling of desperation and fear was consuming you. he wasn’t coming, he left you like everyone else. just this once, you had no hope or survival. how can an immortal creature be afraid of death. your voice broke and a sob escaped your throat. this was the one thing you couldn’t survive. your eternal life would end here.

even with your unnatural hearing, the rain blocked out everything. every human, every car, you couldn’t even hear your own heartbeat. no choice, but the survival instict in you pushed you to move. tired body stumbling forwards, being weakened by torture, vervain and starving. nothing but pure instict. your wet hair was sticking to your forehead, sniffles were heard and your wounds still hurt even after closing up.

only a matter of time when they would find you, then, and truly then…your hope would die with you.

limping across the road, rain still pouring down as fog rose up, making the night even more scarier than it was. no one could even make out the tears between the raindrops hitting your face. between all the sobs and the rain, a crack was heard and then a gust of wind.

someone was here.

panic quickly rose and you closed your eyes, convincing yourself you’re hearing things as your exhausted body tried to make its way forward. your neck turns quickly as you look behind, expecting to find someone following you. quickly you’re pulled out of your trance when a big figure appears in front of you, making you slightly bump into him.

”ah!! no!! i swear i don’t know anything, please!!” you sobbed as the strong hands grabbed you. ”it’s me.” a deep, calm voice called out and you looked up at the man. and at that moment, everything around you, every bit of pain and panic you experienced, dissapeared. because it was him. ”e-elijah..” your tears never stopped flowing but this time they weren’t from fear. he hums and quickly embraces you. he was wearing a suit and his clothes were still warm and dry. you nuzzled your face into his chest as your arms wrapped around his neck.

”i-i thought you left- i-” you sobbed as he patted your wet hair. ”shh, i’d never leave you dear. i’m here.” he reassured, grabbing your shoulders and parting the hug. his face leaned down to yours, looking at you with the softest look ever. his eyes were mesmerazing. the rain only got stronger and you saw his hair sticking to his forehead as water droplets ran down his neck.

”elijah.” you sobbed once again and he shook his head with disapproval. his cold, big hand caressed the side of your face. you closed your eyes and he followed, pulling you into a deep kiss. his soft lips connecting with yours felt like he could erase every worry, every pain and miserable moment you’ve ever felt. it just felt so right. your passionate kiss only deepened second by second when your hand came to caress his jawline, bringing his face closer to yours. head turning to the side, lips fighting for dominance, pressing romantic kisses onto eachother as you both listen to the rain fall.

[angy-grrr]

the worst part about the leaks? The random non bkdks using the tag to say how all bkdks are so delusional/angry/hysterical “just bc bkdk didn’t become canon”. Girl bffr, these “leaks” take away the whole sense of All Might’s legacy -we could try to justify it by saying “well 430 was about that but “431” is about Izuku’s personal life and developing”, but honestly? That makes no sense considering he directly rejects the whole idea of being All Might’s successor without even mentioning him, and using Shigaraki to “find a version of himself he’s not used to” only for personal reasons (telling someone they are special and you want to talk to them from now on). It makes him look selfish, instead of a selfless character trying to learn to take himself into account it’s like he just used a villain’s death to motivate himself into doing something implied to be romantic instead of heroic. So he just would be teacher and partially be a Pro Hero, and wouldn’t try to do anything to reach out to even more people? 430 felt like “this is just the beginning”, and “431” like “I’m actually perfectly okay just like this, and the only significant change I could try to do is more about my dating life than actually discussing heroism, the system or anything else. That must be what Shigaraki was referring to when he told me to do my best, to think about Ochako not in the way of “wow she truly is changing this world” but in a “omg I thought I could just love everyone but I was naive I actually want to talk to you more from now on”. Girl- that’s just bad. It contradicts the whole vibe of the final pages of 430, making us feel betrayed -weren’t you supposed to always fight for others? Why now the only thing you do is being called to stop the robbery of a purse that police already took care of? Why would so many ppl apply to be sidekicks then? Where is that money coming from if there are so many heroes and nothing to do? Why would anyone care about heroism after introducing the idea of ppl thinking is ridiculous to try to be a dead profession?

[licorice-and-rum]

More Snape Slander guys!!!

Lol, I truly, really love having a reason to add to my already 15-pages-long rant of Snape Slander, so let’s go:

Okay, I’m going to be posting this as a different post but this is an answer to some arguments that someone made in this post (I’ll tag them below, I just hate to have repostings on my profile - or, if any kind soul could tag them I'd appreciate, this is their post, read at your own discretion [it's terrible, though], I really need to get some sleep rn). If you’re interested in reading more about my not really favorable view of Snape, there’s also my character analysis here.

So let’s begin, shall we (oh, and by the way, I am as educated as you were with me)?

Interesting that you think that my post is bullshit, love, because I think your arguments are ludicrous, to say the least. I wasn’t going to bother with a response but I think it’s only right I add some critical skills and point out that many of your points are already taken care of in my original post – something you’d know if you had read it and understood it.

Anyway, your whole argument is based on the fact that no legal system would consider Snape guilty which… okay?

Because the judiciary system is completely fair and absolves only people who should be absolved. It is not at all used as a political tool to advance the very corrupted system we all live in, as noted by the contrast between the speed with which the ICJ issued Putin’s prison mandate but delayed Netanyahu’s prison mandate for months. It’s not like most of the people locked up in jails in America are black and poor despite the criminality rates showing white men as more likely to commit crimes such as rape, child abuse, kidnapping, and feminicide.

It’s not like every and each judiciary system serves a capitalist political agenda. A very white, patriarchal, European political agenda.

And about that, which judiciary system are we talking about? Mine? Yours? The UK’s? The International Court of Law? The wizarding world's? Because of course, there’s a difference between all of them and even if you’re right, what does it proves? What does it prove that a white, fascist man with connections to the most privileged in the society (rich purebloods and Dumbledore at the same time btw) would be absolved of his crimes in a system that also privileges him?

Because it does privilege him of course: we’re talking about a system of oppression that is ingrained in the wizarding world, why would it be any different from the real world? Snape was fighting for the maintenance of a system that is corrupted (and this also includes the judiciary btw) and to keep on the status quo, especially when he was a Death Eater but also when he was on Dumbledore’s side.

He might not have been targeting muggleborns as he once was when he was young but changing his choice of victims doesn’t change the fact that he’s using his societal privilege to continue the oppressive system and cycles of abuse he upholds so perfectly since he was a kid. A fucking role model, to be honest.

I mean, using his teacher position to condone bullying and terrorize children, who are a social minority and are in a position of vulnerability in relation to his place as a professor? Ring any bells?

And don’t come with me with the “but he saved them all the time” argument. He took on that role because he wanted to, he did it because he chose to, and as a professor, it was his responsibility to care for his students’ wellbeing (not that he does much besides keeping them alive for enough time to traumatize them on his way out). I imagine what a role like that would entangle in a magical school where children have potential guns in their hands all the time – sounds a bit like a security hazard to me even without the whole genocidal maniac persecuting one of them, to be honest. It’s like a parent wanting laurels for actually doing their responsibility, it’s shameful.

Or, I don’t know, using his higher position in the social hierarchy to expel the only competent teacher of the children he was supposed to look out for because of his lower societal status as a werewolf and continuously using that to make them feel bad in Order reunions, over and over again using his privilege as a non-werewolf as a tool to express his well-placed resentment?

The legal point of view is the real bullshit.

“He paid his debt to society” and now he’s free to do whatever the hell he wants because he chose to take vengeance on his ex-best friend’s murder (that he also had a hand in) even if it means that he gets to use his privilege against others exactly like he did in the past – just not on muggleborns because last time he did it, his feelings got hurt. But *these new marginalized people* he can beat up because that’s not the same thing at all.

You say that “redemption within society isn’t about changing your ideology” but forget to question why. Is it perhaps because the people who are actually let go always seem to be the fascist one who upholds what capitalism needs them to uphold? In contrast, of course, with the people who actually do the right thing regardless of legality and are persecuted their whole lives because of it.

Plus, you don’t take into account what is the effect of it, right? Why should we ever worry about someone’s ideology if they paid their time? It’s not like their ideology reflects on what they think and how they act in and affect society. It’s not like it can do any harm by perpetuating and encouraging these beliefs by, I don’t know, taking a racist education and using it to argue in favor of colonization and occupation of non-white countries because your group has been victimized by the same people that think you and those non-white communities are garbage, or taking on a job that involves children and condones bullying and slurs being thrown at the marginalized kids of his school.

Of course not.

And you say that “the system Rowling portrays isn’t fascist because it lacks the economic and social foundations to support that definition” but forgets also that it doesn’t really matter whether is a bad or good representation because it’s still a representation of it. You can’t smell smoke, feel your eyes burning, suffocate on it, and say there isn’t a fire because you technically weren’t burned.

It's like denying there was a State coup in Brazil in 2016 because the impeachment had “legal ground” (which it didn’t by the way): it’s a lazy attempt to grasp at technicalities to escape the very obvious truth that, regardless of the argument (or, in this case, the literary representation) being good or bad, the facts remain the same.

And the fact is that Rowling wrote the Death Eaters as an analogy to fascism (nazism, actually, but let’s use the general term), and as such, most of the fandom interprets it and internalizes it that way. Thus, her negligence of the societal and economic portrayal (although I would question the need for an economic portrayal in a children’s book) does nothing to further any argument at all, not when the truth is that it doesn’t matter that the portrayal is lacking: it’s enough to be understood as such by the masses and thus it becomes a moot point to make.

Severus and every single Death Eater is a fascist because they propagate, believe in, and are violent in the name of fascist ideology. That their group is not represented as a populist movement or that the wizarding world is not on the brink of its economic collapse to sustain that populist background is of little consequence to the average reader and their interpretation of the problem.

Plus, fascism is a concept that should apply to any social variation of the same movement. You sound like my college professor saying my class should call Bolsonaro a fascist because fascism is a concept used in a very tight set of rules – which is bullshit.

Although I had already taken all that into consideration in my previous post. You’d know that if you knew my arguments.

Now, you said that “redemption is about regretting what has happened and paying for it” and that’s interesting because, you see, that’s not what it is at all, not in every legal system, nor when we’re talking about narratives and writing.

In Brazil’s legal system, for example, our judiciary system is about social revitalization. Prison is not a place we send someone as a punishment, it’s not about paying a debt to society or being punished for what they’ve done. It’s about giving them the tools to not repeat their crimes once they come back to society, and that’s not a test Snape would be passing anytime soon because redemption from being a fascist would be to let go of fascist views.

In writing, on the other hand, an author has certain control over their character, which means that their portrayal is the author’s responsibility. A Redemption Arc is not about judging someone’s actions and applying a penalty, it’s about allowing your character to develop substantially throughout the narrative. They need to go from what they are in the beginning to a better version of themselves throughout the rest of the story and that’s certainly not what happens to Snape.

Again, refocusing your bullying to fit other vulnerable groups does not equal betterment in any way, shape of form.

Oh, I really love this one: “His ‘sentence’ was 17 years of self-imposed prison and life-threatening service, which is far more than any collaborator with a terrorist group would face in any real-world court.”

Seventeen years of which exactly 14 of those he spent being a professor in the most important schools of magic in the UK, being respected by his community, well-fed, having a probably copious amount of galleons in his bank account to do whatever the hell he wanted to, and still wallowing in his own misery and self-imposed (as you kindly pointed out) emotional torture living in his childhood home to go back to a castle and bully children at his leisure instead of bettering himself as a human being and actually putting some work towards self-improvement as to not, I don’t know, perpetuate cycles of abuse that ultimately led him towards that mess of a life he got for himself.

You’ll excuse me if I don’t find his journey that impressive from where I’m standing. He made his bed, he can sleep in it or try to do something about it. And, to be honest, I have little to no respect for people who do nothing about their own misery.

Then, he used three and something of those doing something useful but ultimately a sorry attempt at a Redemption Arc. Snape’s big, bold actions in the name of his love for Lily are not something I see as useless, they’re pretty heroic but it doesn’t matter because that’s not what my character analysis is about.

What I try to bring to light (and what you sincerely lost in the reading) is that there is no Redemption Arc for a fascist unless they are no longer fascist at all, and even so, there is some degree of immorality in portraying them as redeemable at all. But if you’re gonna attempt it, you need to be responsible and actually redeem them, ideology and all.

We’re talking about a book, a narrative that will be read by thousands of people, that will be example and insidiously have an effect on how people see the world. Condoning fascist ideology because they don’t persecute *this specific vulnerable minority* anymore (ignore that they do persecute others btw) and did some heroic things for the “good side” because they felt wronged by the “bad side” and not really for basic human decency is not impressive. Or worthy of praise.

Or basis for admiration.

And as for your account on “In any real-world war, he would not only have been honored and considered a national hero—he’d have a hundred movies and documentaries made about him. He’d be an icon.” – so do countless others who are not even remotely deserving of any kind of admiration or having their memories preserved in that sense.

I should know, the number of novellas and documentaries and songs and History lesson materials and street names in my city alone that are homages to “national heroes” that “helped” the poor people or some other minority while massacring indigenous peoples, selling out our land to big corporations and the agribusiness, censored and persecuted artists and journalists in their time, and so on are actually crazy in Brazil.

National heroes are only national heroes because they serve the political narrative our system needs them to serve, darling, otherwise, they are forgotten and even villainized, make no mistake of that.

“Politically, I’m sorry, but I’m not going to call a working-class boy a fascist when he ends up in a nest of far-right extremists simply because they’re the only ones who treat him well”

Interesting that you should mention Snape as a working-class boy – like class traitors don’t exist? Granted, the expression is mostly used to define cops but that’s no different, although I would call it a bit hypocritical of you to use Snape’s class to defend him when you accuse (rightfully so, of course) Rowling of not portraying well the economical part of fascism.

And “the only ones who treat him well”? Really? Lily apparently doesn’t exist in your reality. Or better yet, you’ll tell me she’s not a good friend and didn’t treat him well enough and all the misogynistic gross and stupid points snape apologists make when you’re scrambling to save your fave? Please, if that is it, spare me.

Oh, and by the way, the part you didn’t read at all on my very thorough analysis:

“The truth is, even with all the undeniable good Snape did as he worked as a spy, he was a Death Eater for his conviction, and at the end of the day it doesn’t matter why he chose to become one.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter that he was neglected and abused by his parents, or that he was bullied in school, or that his crush didn’t reciprocate his feelings: he still became a Death Eater, he chose to become one. And that is unforgivable. It is unforgivable because it means he supported and actively worked for a system of thinking that ridiculed, persecuted, tortured, and murdered hundreds, if not thousands, of innocent people. He advocated for a political view that has no regard for human life, that perpetuates the abuse he suffered firsthand — just in a slightly different direction. He didn’t just not break his cycle of abuse, he actively perpetuated it. Advocated for it.

And don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying here that the abuse Snape went through isn’t important at all: there is definitely something to be said about the preying of supremacist groups for young isolated men who feel left out and emasculated. But that doesn’t mean Snape gets to be absolved for his own choices because that’s what they were: his choices. He chose to become a Death Eater, he chose to uphold the cycles of abuse he had been a victim to not long before, he chose to protect it even in the face of people — good people — telling him that it wasn’t a good thing.

That’s my point, actually: Snape may have been preyed upon by the blood supremacy ideology as a teen but at some point, he chose to be influenced by it more than by millions of other influences around him. He wasn’t completely isolated or ignorant of the world to the point that the only influence he could possibly choose was the blood supremacy one, no: he had people telling him the contrary and still chose to follow blood supremacy. So, no, it’s not forgivable that he chose to become a Death Eater because he did know better than that, his very friendship with Lily proved it.”

Oh, and let’s be very real here: “the rich, left-leaning aristocratic kids bully him for not meeting their social standards”

First of all, I brought the Marauders into my analysis as little as I could because I could destroy Snape’s character without even needing them. Now, if bullies like James and Sirius are actually better in their “social standards” (human decency is more like it, actually) as you so nicely put it, then I have no idea why you bother to defend Snape at all. I don’t have time, nor patience to explain that believing people are equal and deserve equal respect is the most basic thing you can do as a human being and if Severus doesn’t even manage that, his class or trauma has little to do with it, his character on the other hand...

Many people have trauma, as I already pointed out, and many people were lulled by fascist ideology but not all of them chose to give in to it. His choice is his responsibility, don’t ever deny that or fool yourself into thinking it’s some kind of forced brainwashing. It isn’t, and even if it is, it doesn’t matter as much as the fact that he’s an adult who should know better than to condemn people to die or think less of them because of things they cannot control.

And even entertaining you're crazy notion that Snape's not actually a fascist (he is) it doesn't really matter if he believes it if he joins a group that advocates for it.

Plus, you should really start thinking about what kind of idiotic ideology you tolerate just because of “trauma”. Fuck him and his trauma, I couldn’t care less if Snape was bullied because he lacks human decency because the truth, so eloquently put by my fellow countryman, is that “a fascist’s hat is a hammer; all suffering is not enough; and the swastika has to be hit until it turns into a pinwheel.” And by lovely miss Lyudmila Pavlichenk: “Not men, fascists.”

And yes, I think anyone left-leaning is better than anyone in the far-right any time of the day, not really sorry if I actually understand politics and how important it is to preserve the lives of people in a system that is designed to leave them in an indecent condition. A system that Snape fought to preserve ideologically and politically for the earlier years of his life without so much of a written recognition of the real garbage it all is.

Plus, let’s be very clear again, I wasn’t talking at all about the Marauders when I criticized Snape. You brought them into the discussion, not me. I could very well cite other characters who are not as terrible as Snape or bullies like teenager James and Sirius (and I’m gonna ignore that you included Peter and Remus into the ‘aristocratic’ and ‘rich’ context because I don’t think even a Snape apologist would be that idiotic although your hashtags beg for me to think otherwise), and still manage some fucking human decency despite their traumas.

Garbage is that you think, at fucking 28 years old, that fascist ideology is somehow tolerable, or that the legalities of some situation actually account for something other than the political structure of the system, or that admiration equals the deserving of it. Bullshit is you thinking that you can actually beat me on technicalities and that you believe advocating for tolerance over the intolerable is somehow admirable, is to be naïve enough to think the legal system doesn’t obey a political agenda and therefore benefits whoever is on the winning side, which to Snape was both during the two times he was a spy.

He was the one who had nothing to lose, darling. He had no family, no one that he cared about, no one who could even stand him, no one who would mourn him - all through his own merit by the way. And to be honest, no one to pity him either. It's pathetic that that is the truth because he chose so, that the only thing that "saves" him are a few memories of an abusive friendship.

He was nothing to be admired and never evolved as a human being. He gave himself to a cause that kept him commode most of the time and acted only out of the fact that he was wronged by the other side. The fact that if it had been Neville who was chosen he would never have turned is shameful as a human being, the fact that he only kept his students alive but never really took into account their wellbeing is shameful as a professor, the fact that he hated Harry because of all of it is childish and unbecoming for an adult, the fact that he bullied children is shameful as an adult.

And none of that was redeemed because he was a spy. He could be a spy and a fucking decent person. But he wasn’t, and he wasn’t by choice, so fuck him.

And, to end with this tiresome and, honestly, easy as fuck to refute, tirade of useless arguments, “What I’m saying is that I don’t give a damn about moral niceties.” – Clearly. Just as clear as your ignorance of what “moral niceties” really mean in this context.

PS: look, 22 pages now! I’m expecting more to be added…

PS2: Tbh, you'd think this person thinks the only people to ever fight Voldemort were the Marauders for all they seem to argue

PS3: This person really confirms everything I know about the relativism of European people for dangerous and prejudiced political views.

[mtsyik]

The babysitter and the babysittee♡

Chapter 4: younger kid?

Chapter three!

Tags: 18+ satoru gojo x reader, babysitter!reader, babysittee!gojo, friends to lovers, one-sided pining, age-gap relationship, a whole lot of flirting, smut, mentions of drugs, angst, mentions of death, lovesick!gojo, engineering student!gojo, architecture student!reader

a/n: aaa!! Isn't it awful how I didn't write for like a week because I got my nails done? All the laptop writers will feel me on this I fear. 😵‍💫😵‍💫 I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and an even better new year!! See ya ♡

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

Deja vu hits you swiftly as you maneuver through the crowd. Only this time, you are also drunk and horny; matching the majority of the public here. You are not too shocked by the number of people the frat had managed to gather. Your expectations were raised to barely walkable hallways and crammed living room, alcohol smelling couch, and weed stinking walls.

You sip on your red cup filled with rum and Coca-Cola, eyeing some dudes in the back. You recognize them from the school's hockey team, and a small grin appears on your face as you walk past them. The mini dress you had put on served in your favor, your eye catching the heads that turned in your presence. You walk into the kitchen with a confident stride as you await for ... well, something.

You sigh as you lean on the kitchen counter, the cold marble grazing softly your exposed back. You slightly shiver at the touch and mourn your fresh packet of cigarettes that you forgot in your car. You gulp down the last bit of your drink and throw the cup away in the nearest bin, crossing your arms over your chest. The alcohol in your system is making you woozy, being the true lightweight you are. You close your eyes in the feeling, and you mentally picture the most handsome blue eyes you have ever seen-

You shake your head violently. You then glance in the kitchen's entryway for any welcome intruders and find none. Instead Maki comes stumbling in, her hands reaching to grab the doorway to steady herself.

She calls out your name as she leans in close to you, whisper shouting at you.

"I tttthhhink! She likes me!!" The grin on her face makes you chuckle, and with a reassuring rub on her shoulder from you and your specific words being ,go get her Maki, the woman straightens her back and nods her head, heading off and presumably into the embrace of a specific red haired girl you have yet to meet. Although your friend was surprised you had agreed to come, she seemed to be a lot socially calmer than usual with you being here. You wait for somebody to hit on you, too.

As desperate as you are to get the picture of Gojo Satoru out of your mind, you are not going to make the first move on any guy. Call it pride or stubbornness if you will, but you refuse to hit on a guy first. Yuna would roll her eyes at the statement.

As if reading your mind, one of the hockey players from before makes his way to the kitchen, eyeing you down. He is cute, you think. With ragged brown hair and a charming smile, he makes his way towards you and leans on the counter. He hits on you with possibly one of the corniest lines you've heard, but the alcohol in your belly and the wet patch in your panties make you giggle cutely at him. Not bad, you think. Maybe you will end up getting laid tonight after all.

You try not to let your thoughts get to you as you start actually kissing him. His lips are a little chapped, but his skillful tongue more than makes up for it as he lightly traces the inside of your bottom lip. Your own tongue locks with his, and you sigh blissfully at the feeling. You truly missed this.

Your hands find the back of his neck as you bring him impossibly closer to you. His body heat vibrating off of him as your chests touch - and wowww you never knew hockey could make someone so ripped. His hands are on your hips, and he moves to press his erection on your front -

When someone pulls him off of you.

"Whoa there fellas there is a crowd near you!"

You're panting, lipstick bleeding outside of the outline of your lips as you try desperately to wipe it away despite the buzz in your head. You smooth down your dress and attempt to make it seem like you weren't being fondled just seconds ago.

"W- what?" The guy that you were making out with just moments ago was being pulled away from you by a strong hand on his shoulder. He stammers a little bit, clearly taken aback at the sudden interruption. The slightest irritation is evident in your gaze as you take in Geto, leaning smuggly in the guy's personal space.

"Why don't you go take a walk, hm? Cigarettes on me." Geto pulls out a packet of cigarettes and hands it to the guy. He tries to protest but is shut down by Getos' intense gaze and firm squeeze on his shoulder.

You click your tongue in the roof of your mouth as you were left alone in the kitchen with Suguru.

"Em? What the hell?"

He grins. "Well, hello to you too, sweetie. "

Your hands raise past your shoulders, a sign of your evident aggravation. Why, why, for the love of God, can't you get a sliver of peace?

"Mind explaining what the actual fuck-"

"I didn't take you for the kind of girl to make out with randoms at parties." Suguru leans on the counter, his arms crossed as he turns his head to look at you. The fitted white shirt he has on hugs his toned arms and makes him look huge in comparison to you. You sigh heavily, almost dragging your hand over your face but stopping at the last second, remembering that you had put on makeup for the party. You instead grip your scalp to steady yourself and place your elbows on the table in front of you, unintentionally leaning forward in your short dress.

"Since when do you have an opinion on what I do? And with who?"

"With whom."

At that, you drop your hands on the table loudly and turn to look at him. Geto has a wolfy grin plastered on his face, his gaze dropping momentarily to the chair he pulls for you.

"You're drunk. Why don't you sit?"

You, instead, opt to stand up straight faster than you should and decline. The black spots you see in your vision make you stop in your tracks just for a moment before you make your way to the living room where the mass of people were.

"Fuck off. " With a flick of your middle finger, you emerge back in the party. You spot Maki, making out with that girl from engineering (Nobara, you think), and you're pretty sure that Yuna is flirting with the flustered business major she has been eyeing for quite some time. You grab a red cup and fill it with vodka this time, praying that it's not too late to keep your fainting buzz going as you make your way upstairs.

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The moment Satoru enters the party and sees you flirting with some hockey - team, nobody, his heart stops. Shoulders dropped and vision blurry from the pre - game Todo invited him to, he cannot tear off his gaze from your stupidly pretty lip glossed - lips forming a smile from a -probably- atrocious pick up line. The idiotic sunglasses in the shapes of hearts that hung on his hairline fall dramatically on the bridge of his nose; his hair disheveled.

His mind wavers over to today, the way you looked so pretty up close, the way he was going to lean in and kiss you.

The way you jumped up and scurried off before he had the chance to.

After today, Satoru was 100% sure you were attracted to him. May the sky fall, swear to God hope to die, kind of sure. He had practically raced back to the court, shaking Geto off of his own bones, yelling, "You were right!" . The rest of the evening he had spent rammaging through his entire apartment, looking for the 'perfect thing to wear' at tonight's party. Choso and Yuji teasing him throughout the entire process, saying he looked like he had slept with a hanger in his mouth with how wide his smile was. He had ignored them, instead praying to whatever deity he thought of that Yuna would succeed in her efforts to get you to come to tonight's frat.

And you did! His prayers were answered. And you are invredibly attracted to him, so why aren't you doing anything? Why are you flirting with a random guy at a stupid frat instead of being with him? Why aren't you flirting with him? Because of some stupid moral thing you promised yourself when you were 15?

He downs his cup full of - shit, even he didn't know what the fuck he just drank- and made his way over to you. Well, tried to make his way over to you.

"What are you doing, man?"

Satoru glared at his raven haired friend. Why is he stopping him?

"You're gonna what? Stop her from having a good time?"

"I'll-"

"Confess your everlasting love for her?"

"Well-"

"Admit that she's the only one you've ever loved?'

"Well, yes!-"

"NO! Because you don't say that kind of crap to a girl you met for the first time in what- a decade?"

Satoru puffed his cheeks and pouted. His cheeks were an adorable shade of red (thanks to the shots his coach provided him), and his eyes were slightly glossy.

"Well- what am I meant to do?"

"Nothing! Dont worry, man, I've got you. "

With that, Satoru finds himself frowning, even pouting at the teasing wink Suguru throws his way. His last words to the white-haired man consisted of him trying to convince Gojo not to make a move. At least not tonight. Something about finding out your true feelings towards him and whatnot. Satoru couldn't really listen over the music, plus Todo was already tugging on him because he found some girls. The led lights that were slung around the entire house lit up everyone in a mix of blue, red, purple, and green tones. Gojo couldn't help but sigh, not even having to request another drink from Todo, who made sure to keep his friend's cup filled.

As Satoru walked away with Todo, Geto turned his attention towards you. Shamelessly making out against the polished kitchen counter. Shaking his head to himself, he sighed. He couldn't really just let his friend's heart be broken this way now, could he? So, with a heavy heart and a reassuring smile to the girl that hit on him that he will be back, he marches to the kitchen. Grabbing the idiot that was making out with you by the shoulder. You seem clearly startled by this, and Geto feels bad for only a second. After ushering the guy to head out, he takes you in. Tight dark blue dress hugging your curves just right, with black heels. A cropped black cardigan protecting your arms from the freezing cold of the season. Geto sighs. He isn't an idiot. He has seen the gazes that you give Satoru, the way your cheeks heat up at the proximity when he is near, the way your eyes dart when he hits on you suggestively. The way you are so clearly attracted to Gojo, but brush it off with a snide comment on how you could never date a younger guy, much less the cute little boy you used to babysit.

He also isn't oblivious to the idiocy that curses his best friend, eating up every excuse in the book that you provide him. Because he isn't used to reading signs. Satoru Gojo never had to read signs. If a girl liked him, she would show it (with many ways indeed), not giving the poor white-haired freak any doubts about how desired he was.

Geto groans at your retreaval, no doubt looking for some kind of entertainment that didn't include him correcting your speech. He drinks some kind of alcohol that he found on the edge of the table, not caring about whom it belonged to.

Satoru Gojo had to find out about your feelings tonight.

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Finding solace in one of the upstairs rooms seems useless; every single one of them being used for hook up spots (you still haven't confronted Yuna about your closets...). Until you find a door at the end of the hallway, unlocked, and with no potential herpes inside.

You forget to lock the door behind you, the easiness of the quiet engulfing you whole. What were you thinking? You were never good at this hookup stuff to begin with. Christ, you lost your virginity five years ago, and yet you've slept with - what? Three guys over the course of five years? What possibly made you think you could just waltz in one of the most sex demanding frat parties of campus and get laid? Well, that doesn't sound right. If you can't have sex here, then where?

Your thoughts occupied so much of your mind, together with the definitely not light buzz in your head, that you didn't notice the door unlocking.

With your ass on the soft bed and your neck craned upwards to massage the back of it, you barely miss the crack of lights emitting from the open door. There, the one person you didn't want to see standing in all his glory, eyeing you down. Then, to your demise, he closes the door and marches your way.

"W-wh-what are you... doing?" Your words fumbling out of you in a stutter you didn't even know you were capable of, you attempt to get up. Forgetting you had heels on, you stumble, strong hands catching you in a haze.

"You really are drunk." He smirks, his tone full of amusement as he drinks you in. Only slightly tipsy, Satoru is having the time of his life. Upon hearing that you would probably be heading upstairs by Geto, he marched his pretty ass on these stairs to get to you. And if there was one thing he understood that Suguru meant, is that tonight he would be getting answers.

His big, beefy arms are around your waist now, your own arms pressing on his shoulders to keep yourself steady. His legs are positioned between your own, and your mind is spiraling at the feeling of his heat emitting from his body to yours. Your pussy clenches around nothing, your panties gaining a wet patch from Satoru's breath on your face.

"This dress for me, pretty?"

"Sa- Toru.... " Your eyes catch his. Satoru thinks he can just faint at the sight of your glossy eyes peering up at him, mascara elongated lashes fluttering cutesy, lips forming a pout. At least now, he is reassured that his dick can, in fact, work properly, considering he was having doubts about how emotionless he was with the blonde chick hitting on him downstairs. You sigh, carefully plucked eyebrows scrunching in a way that makes Satoru's dick throb. Your hands wrap around his neck, your forehead leaning on his. Gojo is sure you can feel his heartbeat (and penis) underneath his clothing.

"Toru....why- Why are you doing this?" You almost whisper, catching him off guard.

"You're - you're driving me..... crazy...." Your hand reaching down his chest to trace invisible circles on his velvety shirt. You really don't have the slightest idea what you're doing to him. Your fresh set of manicured nails scratching his overgrown undercut sends him spiraling. His breath is uneven, his lips parted, and his pupils dilated as he gulps.

"I drive you c-crazy pretty girl?"

You hum in response, your brain too foggy to come up with an actual response.

"Soo' young too...what- *hic* ar'they feeding you these' days..."

Satoru's breath hitches as your arm drops lower and curls around his bicep. You whistle lowly at the absolute density of it, your hand far too small to actually curl around it whole. Gojo had already established how tiny you looked compared to him; his daydreaming about you worsening as the days pass by. Thoughts about bending you over that ridiculous crammed desk you keep at the university's workshop filling his head anytime you would appear with a skirt in front of him; bending over just slightly so you can explain the changes in your designs. Inappropriate thoughts entering his mind when he sees you taking drags off of your cigarettes, your lipstick staining the base of the filter of it; making him wonder what else that pretty lipstick of yours can stain.

"It matters that much that I'm younger than you?"

"*hic* Well, s' not just that..."

"Well what is it then? That you used to watch over me?"

"You..."

"What?"

Satoru can't help himself as he leans down to peck your cheek. Your reaction is priceless as he holds you close; left arm strong around your waist and right caressing your face. He holds your chin with the crevice between his thumb and index finger, his long fingers curling around your cheek.

You huff out as your face warms up, your eyes fluttering. For the first time, Satoru notices.

"What is stopping you?"

He murmurs against your skin, causing goosebumps to rise along your entire body. You're about to answer; admit that you have no idea what is actually stopping you. Admit that you are both adults now, and while three years seemed like a major difference back when you were in high school, it basically means nothing now. Gojo has proved how he is more than mature, so what is stopping you from being with an incredibly attractive man who was also attracted to you? And you really are about to respond to him-

But no worries! The alcohol in your system decided for you, making you black out before you even got a word in. The last thing you hear is curse words, no doubt coming from Satoru.

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The next morning, you wake up with a pounding headache. Groaning into your hand at the natural light emitting from the windows, you pull the lavender smelling covers over your head. Your eyebrows scrunching at the pain, you smack your hand on your bedside table in an attempt to find your morning glasses. Instead of your glasses, though, you find a glass of water with some kind of pills right next to it; aspirin you assume. You make a mental note to thank Yuna for-

Wait.

Yuna has no idea where you keep the medicine. You recall all the times the poor helpless woman was in pain but couldn't find the ibuprofen tabs you kept right on the shelf. But Maki does.

You let your head fall back completely and almost laugh at your stupidity. Maki probably put those out for you. Maki, who the last time you saw her was.... making out. Huh? If she did end up getting laid, wouldn't she go back to her apartment?

You sit up suddenly, with a pop! From your joints as you slowly take off the lavender smelling (aka: not from your washing machine) blanket off of you. You gasp as you glance around the foreign room. Big window on your right that lets the sun in, colors all coming from the same blue pallet keeping the space around you minimal. Posters hand on the walls, most of them from parties that you don't recognize happening around here, and oh!

A bunch of engineering stuff on a marble desk on the corner. Calculators, wrenches, bolts, sketchbooks, and rulers decorate the pretty marble. You keep looking around, trying to find some clue as to who this room belongs to.

Whom.

Your head is ringing at the silent correction, your hand going to clutch at your temple as you try to remember anything from last night. Instead of remembering, though, you are suddenly incredibly aware of the soft cotton that embraces your torso. With a soft gasp, you lift and then drop the blanket off of you and then on you. Apparently, whatever you were doing last night led to your dress being discarded off your body and replaced with a soft (probably pure cotton, my God who can even afford pure cotton these days) white shirt and a cute pair of red pyjama pants. The socks that you were apparently being given were on the floor, and you nod your head at the fact that even piss drunk, you can't sleep with socks on. You groan and rub your hand over your face, getting up finally.

You try to ignore how your makeup from yesterday was wiped off, apparently. What kind of gentleman did you find at a frat party?

You crack open the wooden door, carefully peaking at the outside of the comfy room you were just in. Not having heard anything (or anyone) suspicious moving around, you step outside unto the living room. It's cutesy, you think; the inside of the room you wer3 just in and the outside of it completely contrast. It's painted a variety of nude colors, beige being a consistent base for the living room/ kitchen. The apartment is very comfortable in general; splashes of warm brown here and there and soft red tidying everything up. You walk closer to what appears to be a photograph on the wall, your eyes widening upon seeing a pair of dashing blue eyes smiling in the photo.

Oh no, you did not!!

Panic shoots through you as you look through more photographs. Maybe this guy you apparently spent the night with was a... uh...fan? Of uh... the uh... basketball team! That had to be it! The next photo contains the entire basketball team, obviously a bit younger than now but still as handsome as ever. Maybe you were in the apartment of a uh... guy from the school's newspaper! Maybe somebody from the photographer club, who just wanted a good picture that he obviously would hang up in his... living room? Your thoughts overtaking you cause you to be oblivious to the coffee table behind you, and you trip and fall with a thud!

With your ass on the ground and your hands on your head to somehow make your brain stop hurting, your own groan concealed the sound of the door opening. Still, the vibrations on the floor by the tall and muscular man before you cause your eyes to snap towards him. Satoru comes in with an amused grin on his face, and what you could only assume is breakfast in the plastic bags in his hands. He makes his way towards you, placing the food delicately on the coffee table and discarding his shoes by the entryway (did he throw your dress in the same manner when he was undressing you?) he bends down to you.

"You really are clumsy, huh?"

His fingers gently tug your hand away from your face and interlock his hand with yours. He lifts you off the ground, eyes bright and grin sitting prettily on his face as he takes in your disheveled appearance.

"I brought you some breakfast. I-I didn't know what you liked so-"

"This was a mistake."

You avert your eyes from his as you take in his hurt expression, pulling your hand from his. You can not believe that would be this reckless and actually sleep with Satoru Gojo. I mean my God, what were you thinking? What about morals? What about ethics? What would your fifth grade teacher say if he found out you abandoned your previously set-in-stone morals for a one night stand that couldn't even lead anywhere?

"Um. Wow. I definitely didn't expect that."

Satoru scratches the back of his neck, an awkward chuckle escaping his throat.

"Although, I am not sure what you're referring to-"

"Listen. Satoru. I-"

You huff and puff, trying to make sense of what's happening. Your hands are now on your hips, on your face, in your hair. Anywhere really where you could be given some stability as you pace around.

"Whatever happened last night - it - it can not happen again."

His head tilts to the side as he eye's you in curiosity.

"What? You vomiting on me?"

"WHAT?! OH my God!! You've got to be - No! I don't even!!"

At this point, Satoru is trying to get a hold of you, but you get out of his grasp at the last second. You now seem to be playing a game of tag, with you behind the couch and Satoru leaning in to stop you from panicking.

"Look, it was fine! I mean, we made it back in the house with you only vomiting once! Well, my house, but hey, aren't you glad you get to spend your morning with me?"

You leap towards the center of the living room, with Satoru rounding the couch.

"We- I- we, what we did! Oh- it- it- can't happen again! You hear me!"

"What? What did we even do?"

You pause, Satoru across from you on the other end of the coffee table.

"W-w-well, well we uh, well we, had s-s-sex? Didn't we?"

Satorus eyes go wide, his grin widening as your cheeks turned red.

"And if we did?"

You shriek at the almost 2 meter tall man walking across the table and unto you, but not for the very last second in which you managed to get away and into the kitchen. You grab the first pan you find and point at him with it. Your breath ragged and uneven while Satoru just leaned with his arms crossed on the cabinet. Smirking down at you.

"The idea of you and I potentially having sex makes you this flustered? I mean, I know how hot you think I am -"

"What?!"

"But this? *whistle* whole new level."

You don't back down from his gaze. Instead, you bring the pan up to your eye level, threatingly.

"I'm not flustered. I am - disgusted. My the mere thought."

Satoru grabs the pan from you, and you dart towards the couch once more. His eyes are wide.

"You- disgusted?"

"Uh-huh. And... icky."

"Icky?!"

"And-oh!"

You don't even manage to finish your sentence because the absolute mountain of a man in front of you managed to tackle you unto the couch. You squirm and try to get away, but he pins your wrists above your head. Inappropriate thoughts start swimming your mind, and you need to remind yourself to behave.

"Disgusting, huh?" He whispers in your ear, and the sudden proximity makes you gulp. Satoru could barely keep it together with the sight of you, in his clothes, all comfy and disheveled, coming out from his bed. Wide eyes and red cheeks adoring your features. It was enough to drive a man mad.

He looks angelic as always, you think. Wearing not nearly enough proper attire for the cold of the season, wearing a tight shirt, and some sweats. He had a bandana on his head that pushed his gorgeous locks out of his face. It made you nervous. He made you nervous. Maybe it's about time you acknowledge the small crush-

Nope! Not happening! Instead you decide kneeing him in the nuts was the best way to go.

Satoru groans, his grip on you lightening. You get up hurriedly and watch his movements as he doubles over.

"You! Listen to me, mister!"

Satoru glances at the accusatory finger that is being thrown his way. Your hands exaggerate every word coming out of your mouth in a panicked attempt to make yourself clear.

"I, babysat you! Alright! So, you could grow up to three meters tall for all I care, gain all the muscle in the world, and gain all the knowledge available!"

You huff. Your breath is uneven as you try to sound intimidating.

"Are- Are those, compliments?"

"And I'd still see you as a younger kid!"

Well, that seems to have done some damage. By the way Satoru's expression turns from confused to agitated, you assume.

"I'm not-"

"To me, you are!"

Ready to fight you in that logic, the door opening and revealing Geto stops him. Having picked up dry cleaning (that looks like your dress from last night) He barely is able to walk through the door with that stupid grin on his face.

"Whoa, there, lovebirds. The entire building can hear you - whoa!"

You decide running for the door, grabbing the dry cleaning from Geto's hands and yelling something about paying him back later, is the best call to save your ass.

Gojo groans loudly, standing up and sighing loudly at the mess the entire apartment is in from your little game of tag, and contemplates chasing after you; but decides against it. He raises a hand as to shush Geto, who is about to ask what happened.

"I need to figure out a plan".

You need to see proof that Satoru is grown? Fine. There are other ways.

♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡♡

a/n: phewww this took a while. I wanted to upload a longer chapter considering midterms are starting in a month, and I haven't even begun studying 😭😭. I hope this didn't seem rushed and that this was an enjoyable read!! Thanks to everyone who seems to like the story!! Happy New Year to everyone ♡

Taglist:

@trishiepo0

[sugar-plum-writer]

"Jujutsu Lover~ OTOME GAME"

System: 002 [Part - 01]

Loading 99%----> 100%!

Loading Route! Character?

System Administrator!Gojo Satoru

Love interest for Player- 3%

[Be aware not to cross above 100% for your safety~] Best of Luck!

[Player Death Rate- 80%]

Difficulty- SSR**

[Failing to clear will result in immediate death!]

Warnings/Tags?

[Slight!Violence; A System Administrator!Gojo Satoru x Fem!Otome Game Player Reader; Isekai]

Route Name?

[Do you love me Mr. Gojo?]

Good Luck player Y/n

The situation you were in now was unexpected, sure you might have hallucinated about it but hallucinations do not come to life correct? correct. If so was the case why are you stuck in this situation?

"Yo~ Y/n welcome to the afterlife!!!" pulling you by the wrist the man smirked smugly

"Congratulations on living the dream everyone has wanted to live, applause please!!!!" he clapped his hands loudly, setting off a party popper wearing a birthday hat

The man was a giant, 190 cm tall, with broad shoulders, white hair, and his eyes a blue embodying the entire sky- Looking into them felt like a freefall through an endless vast expanse of never ending Azure.

"W…Wait what!? I am dead…like dead dead? or a demon is trying to take possession of me?" confused you looked at him a bit freaked out at the situation

"Ah… possession well that's a first I have heard as a system administrator, oh well it's interesting" Smirking he offered you a party hat too

You looked at the party hat, then looked at him doubting and wondering if he was serious, as silence filled the heaven-like white room, with no beginning or end a span of endless white

"......."

"Ah you are no fun~" With a pout he threw the party hat away

"Believe it or not you are dead its not a dream, this is 100% real, you died in a car crash, a drunk driver slammed into you"

"So…I am dead?" you felt a pang in your chest, sweat dripped down your neck as the heart pumped itself to oblivion

"Yes, you are dead" The playful demeanor was gone as he looked at you, the gold threads embroidered into the royal blue and white suit glistened- something straight out of a French couture. The print was abstract-outwardly but fit him perfectly as if it was made for him.

"I…Is there no way to go back?"

"Hmmm…Well, you are going to be a player to test out the new world" sneering he leaned in, "If you win and survive, you can go back to your world"

"Really!? What do I need to do?"

"Well first of all~ you will need to make one of the characters fall in love with you, clear the route, and get a happily ever after, it's like a dating sim!" with a snap of his fingers a hologram appeared in front of you of a game like system

The Hologram had all kinds of stats missions, routes, shop, etc as you clicked around seeing different options

"And winning is assured because- I yours truly Mr. Gojo Satoru will accompany you through this! see!" he pointed at a small chibi icon of him in the corner of the hologram smirking.

"I see…but how are you so sure about winning? It's not like you are a god" you looked at him and chuckled finding it funny.

Without batting an eyes he gazed at you, looking into the depts of your soul every nook and cranny, and stated the obvious calmly as if it was obvious beyond doubt. For a moment he looked like a man above all, as if the world was nothing- not even worthy enough to be under his feet for it could never bear his divinity

"Darling", He chuckled , "Why would I need to be a God when my existence is higher than any position a God could want? As, throughout heavens and Earth, I alone am the honored one"

[System message!]

"Player Y/n do you wish to change route to other characters of jjk?"

Yes/ No

Link to my Masterlist

[If you wanna be tagged for other parts ect! comment below I will tag you~ and heart the post to let me know if you want more~]

@hinakazino it's out! Sorry for the late tag love ❤

@nissatamz it's out!!!

[neverchecking]

Day 13: Olfactophilia- With Sage

Man it's crazy this this was always day 13 and i never changed it bc it was already written and someone (bailey) told me there were craving Sage. Nah, that's crazyyyy.

Smut so Minors Do Not Interact. If I find out a minor has interacted with my blog, I will block you.. Thank you!

Smut CW: Sage. (He has a thing with how you smell), thigh fucking bc MAN is that HNNNNG, also he bites.

This is Day thirteen of My Kinktober so be sure to come back and check out the other days! Friendly Reminder that all of my smut is tagged 'Cindersins' including this, but this will also be tagged as 'Cinder's happy halloween' along with the run of the mill smut tags.

Kinktober Masterlist <<< Day 12 >>>Day 14

He knew he experienced the world…differently.

 Ever since his death however many odd years ago, he’s witnessed it first hand. His eyesight was sharper, catching the smallest movements as they brushed against blades of grass. Pinpointing the exact moment a club was swung in his direction, easily dodging past it for a counterblow. Catching the smallest reflection of light against ores that otherwise would’ve been lost in the depths. 

His hearing was exponential as well. He could hear the soft pads of paws behind him in an effort to sneak past him. Hear the delicate crushing of weeds as a cave dweller moves about. Catch the smallest rumbles of pebbles falling from a hill as a beast tries to sneak up behind him. 

His taste could pick out any spice used, he could feel the smallest changes in texture, but truly, his sense of smell had been his saving grace. When the wind shifted, he could smell different prey from miles away. When he really focused, he could smell which direction the nearest stable was, where the nearest monster camp was. 

He could smell you. 

You were his favorite smell, by far. Something tinged by the smell of skin and sweat, but nothing could hide your natural musk. Something laced with the natural undertone of the earth and whatever soap you had bought off a merchant that month. It was indescribably comforting. It grounded him because if there was something Ganon could never replicate, it was the way you smelt. His puppets could look just like whoever they wanted, they could feel as Hylian as they come, but they would never carry the smell of life. 

It’s why he took every chance given to him to stuff his nose into your heavenly hair or the junction of your neck and shoulder, just to smell you. 

It’s why his teeth stayed clamp right under your jaw as he dragged his cock between your thighs, feeling the muscles twitch as you clung to him, marking up his back in your own delicate handwriting. It was sensation overload, but something so deliciously overstimulating he couldn’t help but indulge. From his nerves shocking his entire system with each drag against your plush flesh, to the tantalizing taste of your sweat remaining tart on his tongue to the pure essence that clouded around him. It was smothering, choking him with a cloud of something that was utterly you he couldn’t help the urge to drown in it. 

Golden Goddess above and her three servants, he prayed this is the one thing in his life he’d never lose. He’d burn the world to keep you with him, ignoring the smell of ash that followed after him.