#the way he belts out that last chorus

[taylorhawkins]

got my head in the clouds, keeps me blind to see

it’s my time I’ve wasted in my space to breathe

I give you everything, you know it’s never enough

I’m on my hands and knees, but it’s never enough

[hazbinwhoree]

OMGGGG pleaseee i need a part 2 to Adam’s sinner 😩😩😩😩 Maybe it’s the next extermination and Adam protects his darling sinner from exterminators 👀👀

Maybe more smut if you’d like 🫣

Adam’s Sinner

Part 2/3 Part 3

A/N: As much as I would love to make it smutty, I have a lot of smut requests and I don’t want it to get repetitive so this piece is just hella fluffy. I hope you enjoy anyway xox

Adam didn’t really come up with a solution to keep his promise, rather he just used his status in Heaven to come and go as he pleased, and would sneak down to Hell once a month.

His mask had demonic features, which worked in his favor staying discrete in Hell. Not that he was out and about for long, he always went straight to (Name)’s house, but still.

A year passed, and their little system was working, and before they knew it, the next extermination was upon them. “Remember,” Adam said during his last visit before the extermination. “Lock down. Stay inside. Hide.” “I know.” He kissed her forehead.

The extermination was brutal, as it always was. Adam had about a hundred and six kills under his belt and was bragging about his last kill to Lute. Then he saw something that made his blood run cold.

(Name), running from one of his exterminators.

Lute noticed Adam’s face drop, looking like he’d seen a ghost. “Are you okay, sir?” Adam didn’t answer, instead rushing towards the alley his exterminator had chased (Name) into.

(Name) was on the ground, his exterminator’s foot on her chest. She raised her spear and (Name) closed her eyes. “HEY!” His exterminator, Danni, jumped, spear faltering. “Sir?”

“This one is mine,” Adam bit back his panic. “She fucked up one of my kills last year.”

“Oh. Sorry, sir, she’s all yours.” Danni flew off, chasing an sinner. Once she was out of sight, Adam rounded on (Name).

“What the FUCK are you doing out here? I told you to stay inside! You were almost fucking killed!”

“Adam-“

“No, you know what, I don’t even want to fucking hear it.” Adam was seething from the scare she’d just given him. “Get your fucking ass home, right now, we will talk about this later.”

They both looked around to make sure no one was watching before they each departed, Adam back to the skies and (Name) back to her apartment. Adam paused his killing spree to make sure she got home safe from afar.

Later that night, when all the exterminators had returned to Heaven, Adam made his way to (Name)’s place.

“You want to tell me why you were out on the fucking streets during the damn extermination?”

(Name) looked embarassed. “My friend–”

“No friend is worth risking YOUR life. You fucking hear me?” (Name) couldn’t look at him, slightly intimidated. Adam sighed. “...Sorry.”

He pulled her into him and closed his wings around her. She wound her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest. For a few minutes they just stood there, Adam reassuring himself that she was there and she was fine.

“Don’t do shit like that, tits, you scared the fuck out of me.” (Name) chuckled, Adam sounding much more like himself now. She took his hands in hers.

“I’m sorry. That was stupid of me.”

Adam scoffed. “Yeah it fuckin’ was. You’re lucky I love your dumbass.”

“You love me?”

Adam’s mind was a chorus of “shit shit shit”, but he owned it. “Yeah, what’s the big fucking deal?”

(Name) smiled and yanked him down to her level by the collar, pressing her lips to his. Adam melted into the kiss, his hands resting on her hips. After a long moment, they pulled apart.

“I love you too.”

[moonstruckme]

hayy!! so tonight i went to a small little show that my friend was doing with his band, and me and the bassist made crazy eye contact while he sang the lyrics “good, i’m proud of you” to me. (i’m dead) ANYWAYY it made me think, this is kinda out there but maybe a james potter band au?? like he’s a drummer or bassist and you keep making crazy eye contact and the tension is THICK.. (maybe even some groupie activity later??) IDKK i’d love to see youre interpretation 😋 or even just to chat about it!!! i love you’re work sm

That sounds so fun babe! Thanks for sharing omg <3

cw: bar

rockstar!James x fem!reader ♡ 1.1k words

As much as you like Marlene, you’d sort of thought her band was going to be shitty. And in your defense, most of the ones who play this venue, where the crowd is typically too drunk to care what sound fills the space and it only costs a few quid to get in, are pretty amateurish. They’ll play their one or two original songs, then fill the rest of their time with covers, trying all the while to figure out how to work the stage and engage the crowd. 

These guys definitely don’t seem like amateurs. 

Marlene had said they were just starting out, but you don’t believe it. She, as you expected, is incredible. She embodies this fierce, uncaring kind of cool, fingers sliding up and down the neck of her electric guitar with skill you didn’t know she had. The guys in the band aren’t half bad either. The singer has a voice that seems always on the edge of a scream, and he and Marlene play off each other’s energy, him occasionally leaning the mic her way to belt something together. The bassist seems a bit aloof, long fingers moving with an almost lazy dexterity, which seems to be driving the people clustered at the edge of the stage even madder than they might be if he paid them any attention. And the drummer…

Perhaps you’re partial to the drummer because he doesn’t seem like he’s trying to be cool at all. There’s something completely uninhibited about him that lights something in your chest and sends a buzz of excitement through the room, like you’re all feeding off his energy. He looks like he’s having the time of his life. Sweat shines brilliantly on his dusky skin and drips off the ends of curly brown hair that’s just long enough to flop into his eyes. Someone threw him a headband earlier in the show seemingly to help prevent this, so now he’s got it pushed back, curls protruding his head and bouncing as he bobs enthusiastically to the beat. A smile splits his face as he launches into a brief solo, and coincidentally your stomach erupts in butterflies at precisely the same time. 

You’re thinking of trying to jostle your way up to the barricade when the drummer’s eyes take another skim of the crowd, and this time they catch on you. Your heart stutters. A tall figure moves in front of you, obscuring your view of the stage, and when they pass the drummer’s still looking at you. And holy shit. This is eye contact. You’re not totally sure how well he can see you what with the lighting in here, but it feels like his eyes are looking right into yours and saying Hello, nice to meet you. 

A few seconds more and he has to tear his attention away as they go back into the chorus, but your eyes keep finding each other’s. It feels more intimate than it probably should, with several meters of distance between you and the crowded, raucous atmosphere, but you can’t help the giddy lightness that accumulates in your chest over the course of the set. 

During what the singer says will be their last song, his gaze flicks to you with something different in it. It’s not something you can place, but in the next second it’s gone, and all his attention is on his drum solo. You cheer with the rest of the audience as drumsticks fly, almost too quick to see, over the drums and cymbals, and you’re so caught up it takes you a second too long to realize one of them actually is flying. 

Your hands flinch up in front of you just in time, protecting your face and fumbling the drumstick nearly to the ground before you catch it. You look back towards the drummer, and his eyes have flared with alarm. 

“Sorry,” he shouts over the screeching of guitars, earning a glare from the singer a second before all sound cuts out. 

Marlene takes the mic, announcing that they’re done performing for the night but will be available to receive free drinks until closing. The band starts to pack up and leave the stage. 

The crowd splits in two, one half migrating towards the bar and the other towards the exits. You’re not quite sure where to go. You want to meet up with Marlene, maybe give her the drumstick to pass along to her bandmate and thank her for inviting you before you head home, but you’re not bold enough to venture backstage. You cast a glance toward the bar, twirling the wooden stick absentmindedly between your fingers. Maybe you can find a seat to wait for her? 

“You’re not bad at that.” 

You turn, and the drummer from the band is standing behind you. 

“Oh.” You glance down at the drumstick in your hand, feeling a bit silly as you hold it out. “Thanks. Here you go.” 

“Thank you.” His eyes are even better close up. He’s put on glasses, magnifying the warm brown of his irises and the thick, dark lashes that nearly brush his lenses when he blinks. “You looked like you’d be a better catcher.” 

You laugh. “Not sure what would make you think that.” 

“Well, you did manage it in the end.” He smiles. It’s charming with a touch of roguishness, and you get the impression he’s someone accustomed to being forgiven. “Sorry for almost hitting you in the face.” 

You shrug, suddenly unsure what you usually do with your hands. “It happens,” you say. “I don’t take it personally when musicians lose their instruments in my direction.” 

“Oh, well I wasn’t trying to lob it at your head, but tossing it your way wasn’t an accident.” 

Something funny happens in your gut. “It wasn’t?” 

His grin spreads and he shakes his head. “I figured it was my best shot at getting a chance to meet you.” 

Your face heats. You hope you’re not smiling as big as it feels like you are. “You could’ve just asked Marlene,” you say. “No need to throw things.” 

He laughs, a warm and hearty sound. “I’ll have to refine my methods,” he replies. “I’m James.” 

You tell him your name in turn, and he gets this look on his face like it’s the best thing he’s heard all night. 

“Do you wanna join us at the bar for free drinks?” he asks, taking out the headband and ruffling his hair so his curls bounce onto his forehead. It’s more than a little distracting. “I’m sure Marls would love for you to stay.” 

“I…” You glance towards the bar. “I’m pretty sure the free drinks are just for people in the band, no?” 

“Oh, don’t worry about that.” He waves you off, taking your hand and leading you towards the bar. “You won’t be paying regardless. Just tell me what you like.”

[piratefishmama]

Angel | Steddie Oneshot

Eddie Munson never believed that he’d go to Heaven. Sure he’d been raised in a catholic household, his uncle was religious, he’d been raised to give thanks for the food they ate, to pray before bed that should he not wake, his soul the lord take an all that jazz.

Wouldn’t believe it to look at him, to hear the songs he sang, the music he played. Wouldn’t believe how he’d been raised if one were to go by covers instead of contents.

But despite his upbringing in the very catholic Munson Trailer of Forest Hills Trailer Park, he never believed he’d go to heaven. Something about queers and submitting to sin and blah blah blah it’d been a long-ass time since his last confession, but Uncle Wayne stopped reminding him a few years back, so he had an excuse to keep ‘forgetting’ to do it.

Turns out, one did not need to go to confession to make it to heaven!

Angels would just. Turn up, apparently.

Maybe he’d done something good that he wasn’t aware of, he did go to that Make A Wish thing a few weeks back, DM’d a whole one shot for the kids, he’d spent hours there, a whole dang day just… hanging out with sick kids.

Maybe that was it. Maybe that was what brought this heavenly creature to his side.

To cut a long story short, he was on stage one minute, belting out the lyrics from the final verse of the last song in their set ‘Into the Underdark’, Jeff was slipping into the ending guitar solo, Eddie was gearing up for an end of gig crowd surf and the next.

The next he was looking into a bright, blinding light that kept moving between his eyes.

He’d always been told not to go to the light. If you see it? Don’t go to it, going to it would make whatever trip you were going on a one way ticket, there was no going back when you reached that light. Just hang back, wait for the resuscitation, it’d happen, someone would breathe life back into you, or whack you with enough voltage to get that heart kickin again, just don’t go into that light.

That light was way too close to his eyes, and he couldn’t swat it away. His arms felt tied down. Rude.

And then the light was gone, had he reached it? Was that it? One way ticket stub punched, sorry Earth, Munson out. “Mr Munson? Can you hear me?” Oh what heavenly chorus, the light had momentarily blinded him but shit… when his sight came back, at least enough to make out the vague shape of a very square jaw, of angular features, of warm hazel eyes, and a luscious head of hair surrounded by a halo of brilliant white light.

Angel. He had an audience with an Angel. It could only be an Angel. Neat.

He’d enjoy the ‘I Told You So’ he got from his uncle whenever the old goat made it up there he hoped it wouldn’t be soon though, he’d prefer a longer wait than a short one, thanks.

“Mnn… I hear you big boy, are you sure I’m in the right place though? I’ve been told Heaven wouldn’t want me” it sounded smooth in his head, but he was pretty sure he slurred half the words.

How could he have a slurred voice in Heaven? That didn’t seem fair.

Oh he’d forgive the slurred speech bit if the angel kept making that wonderful music with his vocal chords, that little giggle of a laugh, so bubbly and sweet, yep. Somehow he’d weaselled his way into Heaven. Suck it soccer moms. “Well, at least you can summon the strength to be charming.”

He was charming? An angel thought he was charming? Hell yeah, he’d rock this heaven shit, he already had an in with the big, winged boys!

“I can summon the strength for other stuff too, worship ain’t ever really been my thing but, baby I think I can learn for a literal Angel” he’d subject himself to an afterlife on his knees gladly if it meant he’d have his hands curled around this creature’s thighs, his mouth on—

“Oh wow…” Eddie couldn’t really see it properly thanks to the lovely blinding spots in his eyes that was no doubt his eyes adjusting to heavenly light, but he was sure his angel was blushing, he sounded a little breathless. Good. “You’re uh… wow”

Eddie hadn’t had much charm before becoming world famous but, he’d gained a little experience. Women and men alike throwing themselves at him, knowing he wasn’t all that fussed, babes were babes. All genders welcome to hop on and take a ride. He knew it was mostly the fame, he was still the same nerd he’d been back in high school, but… if fame got him laid then fame got him laid.

At the very least it gave him the experience to flirt with one of Gods pretty little birds. Maybe even score if the reaction he got was any indication.

So much for lust being a punishable sin, huzzah.

Steve was having a day. Okay no, Steve was having a whole week. The only upside to his overtime riddled ass, was that Robin had been on the majority of his shifts with him, so they could at least talk in the ambulance while they roamed the streets waiting for chaos to drop.

Monday, it’d been a seven car pileup on the highway, a few lost limbs, no fatalities but one hell of a close call on two accounts.

Tuesday, it’d been a tumble at a care home resulting in a popped hip and some heavy flirting from a few old ladies. Poor Robin suffering it from a few old men trying to shoot a shot they didn’t have.

Wednesday it’d been crisis after crisis resulting in him not finishing his shift until six hours after he was meant to finish his shift.

Thursday he had one blessed night off, thankfully his on-call status hadn’t dragged him in, and he got a decent six hour nap in.

Friday, another car wreck, he didn’t want to think about that one.

And now Saturday.

Dispatch sent them to the sold out arena, some idiot had leapt off the stage likely for a crowd surf, his foot tangled in an amp chord, it reduced his air time dramatically and he brained himself on one of the guard rails.

Excellent. At least he wasn’t dead.

Which given how easily one could wind up six feet under from such a whack to the head, he was lucky.

They parked by the side exit, shuffled in by security, and right through into the arena. The patient hadn’t been moved as per dispatchers instructions to the person who’d called. No moving the idiot until the professionals arrived and determined it safe.

Cameras, flashing lights, big beefy security guards standing in front of them blocking the majority of what was happening from view, there was… quite a bit of blood there. It didn’t look pretty in that lighting. “The crowd’s too much, let’s get him to the ambulance.” Robin’s patience didn’t exist when it came to large crowds.

Too many people. Plus she’d been on shift five hours longer than he had.

“Alright, you two, c’mere” Steve singled out two of the big security guys “we’re gonna need you to help us get him onto the gurney, we’ll look him over in the back of the ambulance.” There were no broken bones, nothing stopping them from moving him just enough to get him to the ambulance unscathed.

And then, somewhere between writing out paperwork, checking vitals, and Robin googling who this guy was, said guy… woke up.

Steve, being closer, was quick to check responsiveness, pupils reacted well to light although a concussion did look likely, they’d cleaned up the blood and found the cause to be a cut just above his left eyebrow that’d probably make a kickass scar and oh.

Without the blood. Oh. Oh he was pretty. Pretty plump lips, long lashes, deep brown eyes, faint freckles across his nose. All that hair. He was pretty.

“Mr Munson? Can you hear me?” He’d asked, while shining that little torch into those pretty brown eyes, left to right to check the responsiveness. And then he spoke and Steve— well. Robin was eyeballing him judgementally pretty damn hard given how fast his face flamed red.

Her head in her hands, her fingers plugged into her ears as Munson rattled off promises of worship and good lord— Steve didn’t know what to say, what to do, what does one do when a hot yet slightly delirious rockstar offers to worship your ‘angelic body’?

What does one do with that?

One awkwardly stutters through thanks while bright red and toasty until they can part with the guy at the ER wishing he’d met him under better circumstances cause it’d been a long ass time since anyone even touched him let alone worshipped him but accepting that he’d probably never see the guy again, so it didn’t really matter.

Until a few days later when the official Corroded Coffin account slid into his DM’s on Instagram, apologised profusely, and requested very sweetly to make it up to him with dinner the next time he was free.

Signed Eddie. With a little angel emoji. How on earth could he say no to that?

[moon-lit-petal]

From Chaos to Comfort Pt1

George Weasley x Fem!Hufflepuff!Reader

Summery: George becomes acutely awear that sometimes, people aren't the biggest fans of his and Freds pranks.

Warning: enemies to lovers(?) George fell hard and fast. I tried to do a slow burn but you can tell I gave up lol. Also, Y/N is a little mean to George Ngl

Word count: 2.5k

Notes: I have almost 12k words written already xD But after my 5k Neville fic, I figured I'd take this one a little slower and give myself time to proofread and make adjustments, for now? Chapter One!!also georges face in this Gif omfg

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

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The quiet halls of Hogwarts were where Y/N felt most at ease—especially in the dimly lit corners of the library or the serene grounds at night, where the only sounds were the wind rustling through the trees or the occasional hoot of an owl. As a reserved Hufflepuff, she preferred these moments of tranquility, keeping out of the spotlight and far from the bustling excitement that so often dominated the school.

Unfortunately for her, Fred and George Weasley didn’t share her preference for peace and quiet. In fact, their favorite hobby seemed to be drawing attention to those who tried to hide from it—particularly Y/N.

On this particular evening, Y/N had settled down in the library with a stack of books, hoping to get some quiet reading done before the day ended. The library had a hushed atmosphere, with only the occasional whisper or the soft turning of pages to disturb the stillness.

But that all changed in an instant.

One by one, the books she had carefully chosen began to glow faintly before bursting into song—loud, off-key, and echoing through the entire library. It started with the first book in her stack, a thick volume of Transfiguration spells, which suddenly belted out a shrill tune:

"♬ I’m a magical tome, filled with spells and rhymes, cast a charm on me, and I'll sing for all times! ♬"

The next book joined in, followed by another, until her entire pile of books formed a chorus. Y/N could feel the eyes of everyone in the library turning toward her as the cacophony grew louder and louder. Laughter rippled through the students around her, and even Madam Pince, the strict librarian, seemed too flustered to immediately react.

Y/N's face flushed a deep red as she frantically tried to shut the books, but they wouldn't stop singing no matter how many times she slammed them shut. The laughter and whispers grew louder with each failed attempt. Her humiliation only deepened when she spotted the identical grins of Fred and George Weasley from across the library, clearly enjoying their handiwork.

That was the last straw. Furiously shoving the singing books into her bag, Y/N stormed out of the library, her cheeks burning with embarrassment. She could still hear the faint echoes of the enchanted books singing behind her as she hurried through the corridors, ignoring the amused glances and hushed snickers from passing students.

"I swear, I’m never speaking to either of them again," she muttered to herself, her fists clenched in anger. She couldn't even tell Fred and George apart half the time, which only made it worse. It was easier to avoid them both altogether, and that's exactly what she intended to do.

But deep down, a part of her wondered if it would be that simple. After all, it was Fred and George Weasley—masters of mischief. Avoiding them might prove to be an impossible task.

----------

In the days following the library prank, George couldn’t shake the memory of Y/N’s reaction. While Fred had laughed it off, pleased with how the prank had turned out, George had noticed something different—something that stuck with him more than he expected. He had seen the hurt flash across Y/N’s face, the way her cheeks flushed, not just with anger, but with humiliation.

At first, he tried to brush it off. Pranks were what he and Fred did. They brought laughter, lightened the mood, and sometimes, yes, embarrassed a few people in the process. It was all in good fun, wasn’t it? But George couldn't quite convince himself this time. For some reason, the image of Y/N storming out of the library, her fists clenched in frustration, kept playing in his mind.

Fred, on the other hand, barely gave it another thought, moving on to plotting their next grand joke. George, though, found himself paying more attention to Y/N in the days that followed. It wasn’t something he did consciously at first. He’d catch a glimpse of her in the corridors, her head down, her pace quick, always avoiding eye contact with others. In the Great Hall, she often sat at the very edge of the Hufflepuff table, picking at her food while quietly observing the lively chatter around her, as if she were a part of the scene but always apart from it.

The more George noticed her, the more his curiosity grew. Why did she keep to herself so much? Why did she seem to go out of her way to avoid people—even more so after their prank in the library? And why, of all things, did her quietness intrigue him?

During one particular afternoon in the library, George found himself sitting a few tables away from Y/N. She was engrossed in a thick book, her brows furrowed in concentration. He watched as she absentmindedly twirled a strand of hair around her finger, completely absorbed in whatever she was reading. There was something peaceful about her in those moments—a calmness that contrasted sharply with the chaos of his own life.

Fred, of course, remained blissfully unaware of George's growing fascination. He saw Y/N as just another target for their pranks, and to him, the twins’ antics were a way of livening up the mundane routines of school life. But George found himself torn. The more he observed Y/N, the more he realized that there was something about her that went beyond the surface—something he admired. She didn’t seek attention, didn’t thrive in the spotlight like so many others did. She seemed content in her own little world, even if that world often seemed lonely.

But Y/N, still furious about the library prank, had no interest in any of the Weasleys—least of all George, who she still couldn’t distinguish from Fred. As far as she was concerned, the twins were a package deal of trouble and mischief, and the less time she spent around them, the better. Whenever she caught sight of George, she would quickly turn the other way or disappear down a different corridor, determined to avoid them both at all costs.

George, however, wasn’t ready to give up just yet. The more Y/N distanced herself from him, the more he found himself wanting to understand her, to know what lay beneath that quiet exterior. Maybe it was guilt, maybe it was curiosity, or maybe—just maybe—it was something more.

----------

The days at Hogwarts had grown increasingly tense for Y/N. No matter how hard she tried, it seemed impossible to escape the pranks that followed her like a shadow—pranks she was certain came from both Weasley twins. Whether it was her quill turning into a puff of glitter mid-essay or her robes suddenly sprouting a cascade of flowers, Y/N felt like a constant target. Every laugh that echoed in the hallways after a prank only deepened her frustration.

And George, always nearby—watching her, noticing her—was no exception in her mind. She never saw him without assuming he was plotting alongside Fred. Every time he appeared, she would tense up, bracing for whatever prank they’d cooked up next. To Y/N, they were the same—partners in crime who found amusement in humiliating others, especially her.

Unbeknownst to Y/N, George had slowly started pulling away from the pranks, his growing guilt making it harder to join in on Fred’s antics. He had tried to distance himself, letting Fred take the lead while he hung back, watching Y/N more than participating in the mischief. But to Y/N, it didn’t matter. She saw him as guilty by association, and every time she spotted him, her resentment flared.

The tension between them simmered under the surface, waiting to boil over. That moment came one afternoon when Y/N, in a hurry to get to her next class, rounded a corner and collided with someone—George.

The impact was sudden, and Y/N’s heart leapt into her throat. Her body tensed, and she flinched instinctively, taking a step back as if expecting an explosion of fireworks or an instant prank to follow. Her breath caught in her chest as she braced for whatever humiliation would come next.

But nothing happened.

George, equally surprised by the sudden collision, raised his hands in apology. “I’m sorry, I didn’t see—”

Before he could finish, he saw it—the way Y/N had recoiled at his touch, the way her eyes flickered with distrust, her whole body stiffening as if she were preparing for yet another prank. His stomach dropped at the realization.

“Y/N, I—” George began, but the words faltered. He could see the wariness in her expression, the way she avoided his gaze, the way her shoulders remained rigid, ready for disappointment. His chest tightened with a pang of guilt. She saw him as no different from Fred, no different from the pranks that had made her the center of unwanted attention.

Y/N didn’t give him a chance to explain. Without a word, she brushed past him, her shoulder grazing his as she hurried away, her head down.

George stood there for a moment, frozen in place, watching her retreating figure disappear down the corridor. Her reaction stung more than he’d expected. He hadn’t meant to scare her, hadn’t meant to make her feel like this. But how could he undo all the pranks that had come before, all the times she had flinched at the mere sight of him?

Fred’s voice echoed in his mind—“Come on, George, it’s all in good fun!”—but it no longer felt like fun to George. Not when he saw how deeply it had affected her. He clenched his fists, determined to show Y/N that he was different, that he wasn’t what she thought he was.

But for now, the tension between them lingered, thick and unspoken, a rift caused by misunderstandings and misidentification—one that George desperately wanted to bridge, even if Y/N wasn’t ready to see the difference yet.

----------

It was another dreary Monday morning in Potions, and the last thing Y/N wanted was to be paired with any of the Weasley twins. But, as fate would have it, Professor Snape announced the pairings, and her heart sank when she heard George’s name called alongside hers.

Y/N shot a glance at George, her lips pressed into a thin line. He walked over to her, offering a tentative smile. "Guess we're partners, huh?"

Y/N barely looked at him, focusing on gathering the ingredients from the shelf. "Looks that way."

George rubbed the back of his neck, sensing her reluctance. "Listen, I know you probably think I’m going to mess this up somehow, but I promise I’ll be serious about this. No pranks."

She finally turned to him, raising an eyebrow. “Is that supposed to be reassuring?”

George chuckled, trying to ease the tension. “Well, considering my track record, yes. I really do want to help.”

Y/N sighed and handed him a few ingredients. “Just don’t blow anything up, and we’ll be fine.”

As they started brewing, the conversation remained minimal, but George kept trying to break the silence.

“You know,” he said, stirring the cauldron, “I’m actually pretty good at Potions. Don’t tell Fred, though. He’ll never let me live it down.”

Y/N gave him a sidelong glance, clearly skeptical. “Right.”

“Seriously,” George said, trying to sound casual. “You’d be surprised.”

Y/N couldn’t help the small smirk that tugged at her lips, though she quickly hid it. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

As the potion bubbled away, George continued to sneak glances at her, noticing the small expressions she tried to hide. There was more to her than her quiet demeanor, and it only fueled his curiosity.

“I’m not as bad as you think,” he said after a while, his tone more sincere this time.

Y/N didn’t respond immediately, focusing on measuring the next ingredient. “You still think this is all a game, don’t you? Even now.”

George’s smile faded, and for a moment, he looked unsure. “No,” he said quietly. “I really don’t.”

Y/N paused at his words, glancing at him again, this time with a hint of surprise. But before she could say anything more, the potion bubbled over, and they both scrambled to fix it, their brief moment of connection slipping away in the chaos.

----------

Later that week, Y/N was sitting in the library, trying to concentrate on her studies. The library was her refuge, a place where she could escape the noise and chaos of the school—and, more importantly, avoid the Weasley twins.

But just as she was getting lost in the words on the page, a familiar voice interrupted her thoughts.

“Mind if I sit here?”

She looked up, annoyed to see George standing there with an uncertain smile. “The library’s big enough,” she replied coolly. “I’m sure you can find another seat.”

George hesitated, but instead of leaving, he sat down across from her. “I wasn’t sure if you’d talk to me after Potions.”

Y/N scowled, clearly frustrated. “Did it ever occur to you that I don’t want to talk to you?”

“I figured as much,” George admitted, leaning back in his chair. “But I also figured it wouldn’t hurt to try.”

She huffed, focusing on her book again, though she wasn’t really reading. George’s presence was too distracting. He wasn’t like Fred. There was something quieter about him, something that made her defenses waver ever so slightly, though she hated admitting it.

After a few moments of silence, George spoke again. “I’m sorry for everything. I know Fred and I have caused a lot of trouble for you, and...well, you’re probably sick of hearing it, but I really didn’t mean to make things so awful.”

Y/N’s eyes flickered up to him, and she could tell from his expression that he was being sincere. But she wasn��t ready to forgive so easily.

“You think an apology will fix everything?” she asked, her voice sharp. “You and Fred don’t get it. You don’t care how it affects people, do you?”

George frowned, sitting up straighter. “That’s not true. I do care. Fred… well, he doesn’t think before he acts, but I see what it does to you. And I don’t like it.”

Y/N narrowed her eyes, skeptical but slightly softened by his words. “Then why haven’t you done anything to stop him?”

George hesitated, looking away for a moment. “I guess I didn’t realize how bad it was for you until recently. But I’m trying now. I’m not like that, I dont mean to be. I want to be better.”

Y/N’s expression softened, if only slightly, as she studied him. She could see the sincerity in his eyes, but she wasn’t ready to let her guard down yet.

“Then prove it,” she said, her voice quieter now. “Stop making excuses and prove you’re different.”

George met her gaze, determination flickering in his eyes. “I will.”

They sat there in silence for a few more moments, the tension between them palpable. Y/N finally returned to her book, and George didn’t push the conversation any further. But something had shifted between them—a tiny crack in the wall Y/N had built around herself, and George had noticed it too.

Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

[silentscrying]

🎸 out of my mind ! 💿 track one : the hell happened in shibuya?

guitarist!ino x drummer!reader

summary: it's the annual battle of the bands at the fix, your college campus's iconic live music bar, and this year you're taking the stage as the drummer for indie rock group cursed technique. you know the competition is strong, but no part of you is ready for lead singer and guitarist takuma ino. you lock eyes at the edge of the stage, and something starts—something that might make you feel alive even more than the beat of the drums.

warnings: language, alcohol, he was a skater boi, she did NOT say see you l8r boi, unhinged toge, absurd amount of worldbuilding for what this is, penguins of madagascar. || sfw. 10.1k words.

IT’S A PULSE. That’s the only way you can describe it, the rush of living energy that comes with drumming a live set on the stage of a shitty campus bar, the bass shooting through your blood in time with the adrenaline. Soles of your shoes to the tips of your fingers, the ache in your arms from 120 bpm, amp-deaf ears and stage-blind eyes. You’re alive, and you’re addicted to this feeling. You think you’ll chase it forever.

“Guess it could be a blessing in disguise,” Nobara sings, dropping to one knee at the edge of the stage and gripping the mic in one hand and the wire in the other. She leans out over the crowd, grinning as they match her energy. You switch to a steady buildup on the floor tom, adding snare halfway through your crescendo, and build to a sudden, jarring stop as Nobara belts, “But like hell I’m gonna wait for hindsight!”

You’re back in with a dramatic cymbal stinger, and Nobara whoops and jumps back to her feet, dancing across the stage toward Maki and throwing out her arms to emphasize the bass solo. “One last round for Maki Zenin, everybody!” she shouts.

The crowd obliges, hooting and hollering as Nobara launches back into the final chorus. The lights on the low stage flash, making Toge’s white-blond hair look purple where he stands at the keyboard.

“Give it up for Yuta Okkotsu on guitar!” Yuta does his little riff without looking at the audience—the attention always gets him a little shy. “Toge Inumaki on keys!” Nobara spins around to look at you, winking as the last long, held chord starts rising. “And on kit, you know her, you love her, your drummer, Skip!”

You smirk at the nickname as you hit triplets down the toms and pound the bass, rolling every cymbal in sight to create a barrage of sound as the rest of the band looks to Nobara for the final cue.

“Thank you!” Nobara shouts, throwing a hand up in the air. “I’m Nobara Kugisaki, we’re Cursed Technique, and that’s our set for Friday at The Fix.” She lets the crowd holler for just a moment longer, then throws her hand down.

With a final bass hit, the music comes to a stop. You toss your sticks into the bag hanging from the floor tom and stand, pushing back sweaty hair and waving. The crowd is all indistinguishable shadow with the stage lights in your eyes, but you love it anyway.

This is your favorite place on campus, favorite place in the city—tonight, maybe it’s your favorite place in the world. As you file off the stage, the next band moves out to set up.

Tonight is preliminary performances for the annual Battle of the Bands at The Fix, and Cursed Technique is entering for the first time. You don’t know all the bands (or solo artists, because apparently they’re eligible this year too), but this next one you’re very familiar with. Because—

Maki pauses in front of Mai, taking that stance she only ever takes with her twin sister, cocky and ready to provoke. “Don’t fuck up,” she says.

“Like you did? I heard that bridge. G minor my ass.”

“Aw, you pay attention,” Maki grins. They roll their eyes in tandem and knock shoulders as they pass each other. You genuinely can never tell how serious they’re being. Is it a twin thing, a sister thing? Do they actually hate each other?

Aoi Todo goes after Mai, saying something along the lines of “are you ready to fucking boogie, Zenin?” and Maki snorts as the two of you fall in behind Toge and Yuta, Nobara on your right.

You were the first performance of the night, and there’ll be three more after you and four performances next Friday to wrap up round one. The two lowest-ranked bands or artists will be eliminated. You’re praying that’s not you.

The audience has taken the intermission in stride, the bathroom line curling around the far wall and the bar line even longer. The wait’s not worth it, you figure. Then you turn around and realize Nobara’s disappeared.

“Where did she—”

“Bow down to your savior,” her voice says from your other side, and you spin to see her and Toge holding three drinks.

“You are literally the only two of us who can’t drink,” you say, accepting the drink from Toge and nodding to the stamps on the back of their hands, marking them as underage.

Toge grins. “Yeah, but we’re super trustworthy and shit.”

You blink at them and look back over to the bar. Gojo’s working, his white hair the brightest thing in the dark corner behind the counter. Ah.

“You and your nepo baby privileges,” Maki says, grabbing a drink from Nobara’s hands with a huff of laughter.

“I’m not the nepo baby. I’m just friends with the nepo baby.”

“Oh, hey, c’mon.” Yuta nudges you, turned toward the stage. “They’re starting.”

Sure enough, Kasumi Miwa and her shock of blue hair are standing center stage, electric guitar in hand. Maki rolls her eyes when Mai starts tuning behind her.

“How’re we feelin’ tonight, guys?” Kasumi asks, and the gathered students let out a rampant cheer as half the bathroom line abandons their quest and makes their way back to the crowd. “That’s what we like to hear! Alright.”

She looks back at each of her band members in turn, making sure they’re ready. Todo nods and punctuates his agreement with a double kick hit. “We’re Black Flash, and this one should sound a little familiar.”

Momo kicks off with a jazzy intro on the keyboard, Toge already nodding along beside you, and then they’re off in an upbeat, syncopated number you genuinely can’t help but dance to. Sounds like they won last year for a reason.

“Should I learn sax?” Toge shouts over the music, and you glance up to see that Momo has abandoned the keys for a gleaming golden alto. You shake your head at him, taking a drink of whatever it was he and Nobara brought you—it’s sweet, fruity with a kick of vodka.

“Please don’t!” you shout back. “You’ll just play Careless Whisper all the time!” Toge sticks his tongue out at you, which means you’re right. You cheer as the opening song comes to a close with Kasumi hanging onto a long, high note as Todo goes crazy behind her, and then they segue smoothly into a new chart, the bassist walking a steady line up and down before the drums join back in.

You can’t quite remember his name, but you’re pretty sure he’s Kasumi’s boyfriend. His eyes stay trained on her for the majority of their set, watching as she dances around the stage, does an impromptu riff-off with Mai, throws her blue hair around like a natural born rockstar.

“She’s so fucking cool,” you tell Maki, who nods, pointedly looking at everyone on the stage except Mai.

“Thank you!” Kasumi shouts when the band is finally wrapping up. “We’re Black Flash!” You throw back the rest of your drink and cheer with the rest of the hyped-up students.

You don’t feel great about your chances of beating that, but hey, you’re having a good time.

Panda, the senior from the campus radio station, walks out on stage and does some crowd work while the stage techs move things around. You’re pretty sure you knew his name at some point—you wonder idly if he’d even answer to it. You’ve never heard anyone refer to him by anything other than Panda.

“Alright, your penultimate performance of the night, folks,” he says, drawing another cheer from the rowdy front of the crowd. “Let’s give it up for last year’s runner-ups, Shibuya Incident!”

“Shibuya Incident?” you murmur, and Maki snorts. “The hell happened in Shibuya?”

“They’re like, basement emo or something? I don’t know. Nobara said they’re actually good.”

Right. As the band files onstage, you remember that you know about these guys, at least the two sophomores on stage. The kid on drums with the pink hair is Yuji, and the broody bass player is Megumi. They live down the street. Nobara’s over there sometimes. You’ve been meaning to meet her sophomore friends, but the start of school was so busy you haven’t gotten the chance.

“Isn’t he your cousin?” You nod to the bassist and Maki smirks.

“Yeah, he doesn’t tell me anything. I think Nobara might know him better than I do.”

The band launches into a song with no introduction, and you’re captivated.

You don’t recognize the girl, gripping a sleek black and red electric, her dark hair in a combination of knots and braids, studded belt and piercings catching the stage lights.

And you definitely don’t know the frontman.

He’s got a black beanie tugged crookedly over a mess of brown hair, and something about him is strangely mesmerizing. You’re pretty sure you’ve seen him around campus before, maybe even around The Fix—but you’ve never heard him sing.

You’d remember.

He closes his eyes, lips almost touching the microphone, fingers moving up and down the frets of his electric as he croons, “And my hopes climbed up, tried to tear ‘em down, but they went so fast and it’s too late now.”

And then he opens his eyes, lets the dark-haired girl handle the guitar as he pulls the mic off the stand, still singing. The lights outline his figure in red as he crosses to the front of the stage, the audience surging to meet him. And he looks right at you.

“Dark eyes, the charcoal aftertaste, your mind, you make me wanna waste my life, so promise it’s a lie, a lie, I try, I lie.”And then he circles back to the mic and jams it into the stand, fingers finding the frets of the electric once again. “I guess it’s too late now.”

You chose journalism because you’re a realist—you want the gritty underside of the story, not the fluff piece. Half the time your class readings are about crime and war and all the bad things going on in the world. Love at first sight doesn’t make the front page.

Point being, you’re not a romantic. But when this guy looks at you, you kind of want to be.

What are you thinking right now? You don’t even know him. He’s attractive, yes. He’s talented. You have no way to gauge whether he’s a good person, whether you’re even remotely compatible, whether he’s single, based on listening to a few songs.

But the energy in the room is intoxicating, somehow. The vocals cling to the back end of the beat, relaxed but in a way that demands you hang on. The bass reverb is cranked, creating a kind of wave over the whole of the bar, low and static.

In a high school psych class, you did a project on hypnotism, all the science of it, whether it was effective or even real. You’d tried to do it to yourself, and you’d had a classmate try too, to no avail. Now you think maybe the process of hypnosis isn’t all that complicated after all. It’s just… this.

When the song ends, something in you hollows out, like you need the music to be whole again. But then the lead singer grabs the mic and starts talking. And you think maybe, actually, his voice is just alluring whether he’s singing or not.

“Hey,” he says simply, hanging onto the mic with both hands, letting the guitar hang from its strap. “We’re Shibuya Incident. Hope you’re having a good time tonight.” His eyes scan the crowd, attentive, and you might be delusional, but you think they linger on you for just a second.

“This next one’s new,” he says, glancing back at Megumi with a smile. “It’s called Strike First. Kirara, kick us off.”

The girl on guitar—Kirara—obliges, busting out a descending riff so fast you can’t fathom how her fingers are moving. On the drums, Yuji puts four on the floor and then starts with a laid back hi-hat, and you lose yourself in the music again.

At some point, Yuta waves a hand in front of your face and you realize abruptly that he’s been trying to talk to you. “You good?” he says in your ear, and you nod, grinning. He gives you a strange look but takes you at your word.

After Shibuya Incident walks off stage, you pretty much lose interest. The last performer of the night goes by Angel, and you can’t deny she’s got some lungs on her, but you’ve heard her before. She has a pretty big online following, so her songs are old news to you, recognizable from Reels or TikTok.

“Is her name actually Angel?” Toge asks, and Nobara shakes her head with a dramatic eye-roll.

“Hana,” she says. “It’s a stage name.”

Toge wiggles his brows in a way that means okay, but she’s hot, and Nobara elbows him in the ribs.

When the night is over and the crowd has started to disperse, you find yourself scanning the area beside the stage. It doesn’t take you long to spot Shibuya Incident clustered together near a wall, mostly because of Yuji’s bright pink hair.

Nobara seems to have spotted them as well. She drags you over to the three boys, the girl already disappearing with the blond stage tech—Hakari, you’re pretty sure his name is.

“Oi,” she calls. “Fushiguro, the new song fucked. I’m mad about it.”

“Why—”

“Because we’re supposed to win,” Nobara says with a hand on her hip, and they devolve into arguing, Yuji fruitlessly trying to mediate. You’re left standing awkwardly to the side, and your gaze drifts to the remaining member of their band—the singer, the lead guitarist.

On stage, he’d seemed untouchable, confident and flirty and at ease. Now, he can’t seem to decide whether to stuff his hands in his pockets or wring them in front of him or tug self-consciously at the crooked beanie on his head.

It’s endearing, honestly.

You stick a hand out, suddenly self-conscious. “Hey,” you say. “Uh, I’m not sure we’ve met officially. I’m—well, they usually call me Skip, but—”

“Where are my manners?!” Nobara screeches, turning away from Megumi and Yuji and finally realizing the situation she’s put you in. “Oh my god! Skipper, this is Ino—Ino, Skip. Drummer, singer. Singer, drummer. Blah, blah, blah. You’re both juniors, right? Ino, are you a senior? I dunno anymore. Anyway!” She claps her hands together once, grinning. “Now we’re all friends. And opponents. Go on, converse with the enemy.” She flaps her hands at the both of you and turns back to the boys, apparently not done arguing with Megumi, though it sounds like it’s shifted from any band-related business to something he said about her shopping addiction last weekend.

You know Nobara’s hung out with the entirety of this band before, since she pretty much forcibly adopted Megumi and Yuji in their shared gen. ed. classes, but Ino is apparently nowhere near as used to her chaos as you are. He stares at her back for a second, trying to process the rambling she just threw at you, and then nods slowly.

“She’s—sorry,” you say sheepishly. “Ah. Yeah. She means well.”

“Right. Uh, you’re really—you’re really good,” he says with a nervous smile your way. “Talented, I mean. I haven’t seen someone drum like that in…”

“Hey!” Yuji squawks, and Megumi grabs him by the elbow and pulls him away, Nobara on his other side.

“Thanks,” you say softly, trying to put Ino at ease with a warm smile. “You’re really good, too. I mean it.”

“Thanks,” he says, heat rising to his cheeks.

“D’you write? Those were some good bars.”

“Oh, yeah, uh. I do. Do—do you?”

“Homegirl’s our drummer and our lyricist,” Maki announces, draping herself across your shoulders. You don’t know where she even came from. “She is a woman of many talents.”

“I believe it,” Ino says with a shy smile. “You didn’t compete last year, right? I feel like I’d remember.”

The implications make you flush a little, and you’re grateful for the bar’s bad lighting. “No, yeah, this is our first year. I wasn’t even around for the competition last year. Or I’d probably remember you, too.”

Yuta spent some time abroad last fall, and you were just getting to know Nobara. It was probably a good thing you didn’t enter, because you were so caught up in work for the campus paper that you would’ve been stretched thin. Things this year have settled down with the strangely large wave of younger staffers. So this is your year—your time.

It’s Ino’s turn to be a little sheepish, and he reaches up and scratches the back of his neck, averting his gaze with a small smile. “You live with Fushiguro’s cousin, then?”

You nod. “You live with your bandmates? We’re right down the street.” Now that you think about it, you might’ve seen him skateboarding past your place a time or two.

He nods. “I thought I’d maybe seen you around. So—Skipper? Or Skip?”

“Either,” you laugh. “Uh, freshman year, we gave ourselves penguins of Madagascar names. That was before Nobara. Guess it just stuck.”

Ino laughs, bright. “That’s really good.” He seems to be easing into the conversation now, relaxing. “Which one was Rico? He’s my favorite.”

“Offensive,” you grin. “Toge, over there.” You point to him where he’s animatedly talking to Yuta, who looks about ready to go to sleep.

Ino nods. “Feels right.” He looks at you like he’s searching for something. “You can call me Takuma. If you want.”

“Takuma,” you echo. You like the way it sounds. “Cool.” You glance up at the stage, cleared out now. You’ll have to check on your drums in the back room at some point before you go home.

“Do you guys have music out?” Ino—Takuma—asks, and you turn, surprised.

“Uh, no. We’ve thought about it, but none of us are really the techy types. Do you?”

“Hell yeah!” Yuji blurts, apparently having escaped Megumi and Nobara. “First EP available now on all the usual streaming services.” He grins, then offers you a hand.

You shake it. He even shakes people’s hands like an overly excited dog. It’s infectious. “I think we’ve met in passing? Unofficially. But you sounded great up there. What’s your cymbal brand? Your hat is crisp.”

“Zildjian,” you say, laughing at his enthusiasm. The only right answer, you think, but don’t say. “You sounded great too. You have a brand?”

Yuji wrinkles his nose. “Uh, half of them are Meinl but the other half are Sabian? I kind of need to streamline them at some point. Zildjian seems like the move, honestly.”

Maki waves you over from the door to backstage, and you glance at Yuji and Takuma in turn, offering them a small wave. “I should run. It was good to meet you both. I’ll, uh—see you next Friday? Or around, I guess.”

“Yes, ma’am!” Yuji says with a mock salute, and Takuma chuckles, meeting your eyes.

“Sure thing,” he says. “Or around.”

When you’ve locked up the drums and hitched a ride back to the house with the girls, Maki turns herself around in the passenger seat to look at you.

“What?” You shift under her gaze, unrelenting and knowing.

“So, Shibuya Incident singer.” She raises a brow, and you know you’re blushing, but there’s not much you can do about it. At least it’s dark.

“What… about him?”

Maki just snorts and turns back around, evidently deciding teasing you once was enough. Nobara, though, has no such qualms.

“Oh my god!” she squeals, and Maki gently reminds her to pay attention to the road. “Do you want me to set you up? I can ask Itadori! Or Fushiguro! Or we can—”

You groan loudly, cutting her off as you dramatically flop back in the seat. “Nobara, please, please don’t.”

She sighs, long and drawn-out. “Puh-lease, Skipper, someone in this house has to get some.”

“Drop it and I won’t tell Toge you said that.”

This successfully diverts Nobara’s attention, and she spends the rest of the short drive wondering aloud if Toge actually thinks Hana Kurusu is hot or if he was just trying to annoy her. Nobara has some baseless grudge against Hana that you’re pretty sure is just because Nobara wants to be Hana.

At the house, she immediately starts bugging Toge about it, and eventually he runs into your room and slams the door for cover. Sometimes you’re very grateful your room has a lock. This is not one of those times.

“Toge,” you whine, pressing your forehead against the door. Nobara is crouched beside you, ready to catch him. “I wanna go to bed. Bro. Open the door.”

“Are you conspiring with the enemy?” he shouts from inside.

“No, but I’m about to be!”

He opens the door and Nobara launches herself at him, and amid the accusations of betrayal you manage to herd them out and close the door behind you, beelining for your bed and your headphones. There’s something you’re curious about.

Shibuya Incident, you type into Spotify, and there it is, their first EP. It’s called Over Duress, and on it is the first song they sang tonight plus a few you haven’t heard before.

You don’t intend to listen to the whole thing, really—you just can’t get that song out of your head, and usually listening to an earworm helps. But when you settle in, lights out and headphones on, you can’t stop.

All night his voice is in your ear, eyes boring into yours, singing too late now.

They’re—he’s—good. Really, really good.

You think it might be too late for you, too.

—

You’ve got your headphones on again, listening to Arctic Monkeys as you make your way down the sidewalk. Mondays will be the death of you. Your hour-and-a-half lecture ran late, and you have night class later. You need caffeine.

So caught up in 505, you almost don’t catch the guy in your periphery zooming down the path behind you on a skateboard. You move to the side to let him pass, but he slows down as he nears you, and you look up and realize it’s Takuma. Grinning, you tug your headphones down around your neck. He kicks the skateboard up and catches it in one hand, a messenger bag with a laptop sticking out underneath his other arm.

“Well, hey,” he says. “Look at us. Around.”

It’s odd to see him in this setting, broad daylight and an autumn chill in the air, so different from the dim bar, the artificially-lit stage.

“Hey.” He starts walking alongside you. “Coming from class?”

“Yeah, thank god that’s over. You?”

You hum in agreement. “Composition lecture.”

Takuma makes a tch sound with a click of his tongue. “Ah. Algorithms, for me.” He glances at you, then straight ahead, like you caught him doing something. “Uh, I was gonna grab coffee on the way back. You wanna come? If you’re not busy, I mean.”

You grin. “I was on my way there.”

Your favorite coffee shop is directly across the street from The Fix, and Takuma walks the rest of the way with you, his board in one hand.

“Algorithms,” you say. What a horrible-sounding class. “So are you—what, math? Computer science?”

“Comp sci,” he confirms, “and media production.”

“That’s sick. What do you wanna do?”

Takuma shrugs, but says, “I’m kinda gunning for something in music or audio production, but the comp sci’s more of a safeguard. Easier to get a software dev job than break into the music scene.”

The door to the coffee shop chimes as you push it open. “What about you? What’s your major?”

“Journalism.”

“Oh, that’s cool. You work for the paper or anything?”

“Yessir.”

“Write a story on me.”

If it meant learning more about Takuma, you’d honestly like to.

You pause to order your coffee, and while Takuma orders his you find yourself looking out at the bar across the street.

It looks so different during the day. People call it a shitty campus bar, you included, but honestly, it’s a nice establishment. The grunge is intentional, for the aesthetic appeal.

When you and Takuma both have drinks in your hand, you check the time on your phone and figure you can spare a few minutes. “Wanna sit for a sec?” You nod toward the high-top counter along the wall of windows facing the street.

“My honor,” he says, leading the way. You hop up on the green backed barstool, spinning it a little, and take a sip of your latte as Takuma settles in beside you. “How long you been drumming?”

You hum, tapping your fingers on your knee while you think. “The summer before I started middle school, I think?” That sounds right. You’d started taking lessons so you could join jazz band.

“Damn,” Takuma whistles. “That’s a while. No wonder you’re so good.” You laugh despite yourself, feeling the heat creep up to your cheeks the way it always does when someone compliments you.

“What about you? Been playing guitar for a while?”

He leans forward, wholly engaged in the conversation. “Yeah. My dad played, and I learned on his acoustic, and I spent all of middle school saving up for my own electric.”

“The one you have now?”

“Ah, no, I’ve got two, but I still have that one back at my place. I love that thing.”

Talking about music, it seems the hesitant, bashful side of Takuma slips away, replaced with this sunny boy who just wants to talk about what he loves. You find yourself wanting to feed into it.

“So, I listened to your EP.”

His entire posture seems to brighten, coffee forgotten on the countertop as he stares at you. “For real?”

“It’s really good. Seriously. I’m—when did that come out?”

“Uh, end of last semester. So like May?” He shrugs.

“Do you rent out a place in the city?”

“Actually, I can book out the campus studio spaces because I’m a production major,” he says, making a paper airplane out of his napkin. “We recorded our EP in there.”

“Techy.”

He smiles. “Yeah, comes with the major.” Turned to face you with the light from the window illuminating half of his face, you find yourself really looking at him—his mess of brown hair, deep but somehow bright eyes, the curve of his mouth, the line of his jaw. There’s an energy about him that just draws you in.

His phone lights up and he jumps a little. “Oh, crap! I forgot I was gonna take Itadori to the skate park. He wants me to teach him to kick flip before the snow comes.”

You doubt it’ll take him that long to figure it out—he’s a natural athlete. You’ve had to last-minute cover a track meet before, and his name took up half the damn page with all the records he set.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” you say, downing the rest of your coffee. As much as you don’t want to leave, you’ve got a lot to get done before your night class. You push back your stool and sling your backpack over one shoulder.

Takuma seems to consider something, eyes bouncing from you to his phone to the street outside. “Actually, we’re recording again on Wednesday, for the new single. You should drop by. I can show you the ropes.”

You’re not sure what excites you more: the prospect of watching a live recording or having an excuse to see Takuma again.

“That’d be cool,” you say. “The new song? From Friday?”

“Yeah, Strike First,” he says. “Fushiguro wrote a lot of it—shit, actually, I’m not s’posed to say that.”

You laugh. “What? Why?”

He grins, a little conspiratorial. “Sometimes he shows up in my room and just shoves lyrics at me, and they’re always really good and deep and shit, and he says if I tell anyone he’ll kill me in my sleep. So. Secret poet.”

“Secret’s safe with me,” you promise. “So, Wednesday night.”

“Six thirty,” he nods, standing up and grabbing his skateboard from where he leaned it against the wall. You walk out into the bright mid-afternoon air side by side, starting to drift opposite directions on the sidewalk. You’re going to get some work done in the newsroom before your night class. The skate park is down the block from your place. And his.

You nod at his board. “Don’t die.” You’ve longboarded on campus several times, and the intersections are unforgiving.

He grins, standing on the board and starting to skate backward. “Me? Nah.” You roll your eyes but can’t keep the smile off your face, even as you turn away, his laughter bouncing down the path behind you.

—

That night in class, you get a series of messages from a number you don’t recognize, but you know who it is. They’ve sent you a gif of Skipper from Penguins of Madagascar.

unknown number: hey it’s ino! unknown number: or takuma. or whatever hahah unknown number: fushiguro got your number from maki i hope that’s not weird? i just wanted to send you the recording location in case you want to swing by wednesday unknown number: [Shared 1 Location Pin] unknown number: literally no pressure though unknown number: obviously

You turn down the brightness on your laptop, tucking your messages into the corner while the pitch document for class takes up the rest of your screen. Adding the number to your contacts, you glance surreptitiously up at your professor, who’s still doing something on the computer in the front of the room.

takuma: wait okay fushiguro just said what if maki gave him the wrong number as a joke takuma: idk if she would do that but now i’m paranoid takuma: if this isn’t skipper i’m SO sorry

Toge leans over and reads your messages, wiggling his brows at you when you shove him out of the way. He’s only in this class because you are—he took it as one of his writing electives for his comm major, and he spends most of it bothering you while you’re trying to work.

“Put the guy out of his misery, Jesus,” he whispers.

“Put me out of my misery, Jesus,” you say back. “Get me a new seat partner.” Toge gapes at you, affronted, and you smirk and go to text Takuma back.

you: oh my god no don’t worry it’s me LMAO you: yes i’ll swing by! that sounds so fun

The typing bubble pops up, disappears, pops up again. You try to hold in the laughter as your professor kicks off the next part of class, which he essentially runs like a newsroom in collaboration with the campus paper, since your editor is his TA. You’re in the middle of a features pitch session.

takuma: oh thank god takuma: cool!! takuma: hey thanks for coffee today. it was nice talking to you

Once again, Toge’s got his chin on your shoulder, reading the screen. His eyes widen and he moves so that he’s blocking your line of sight. Coffee? he mouths. You shove him out of the way with a hand on his face.

you: i had a good time :) you: okay i’m in class rn so just know i’m not ignoring you, i’m suffering at the whims of postsecondary education takuma: I’M SO SORRY takuma: thoughts and prayers takuma: ew why do you have class at 7 pm that’s cruel

It is kind of inconvenient. But a lot of your journalism classes wind up being nights, and you actually don’t mind it—you love your prof and the other juniors in your major. And you love your editor. You want to be her.

“Alright,” Kusakabe says. He’s got a doctorate, but he hates going by Dr. Kusakabe. “Back to the board. I want your bestmonth-long project pitches. Fushiguro here will put the best ones in print, so don’t mess around here. You want a spot at the paper next year? Impress her.” He nods at Tsumiki, who’s sitting in the back corner with a pen tucked behind her ear and her laptop and notepad ready.

“There are no horrible ideas,” she says.

Kusakabe points at her. “Not strictly true. She’s nicer than me.”

You already work for the paper, as does half of this advanced journalism class, but you’re gunning for Tsumiki’s job next year. So you need to impress.

“The Fix,” you say. Kusakabe points a whiteboard marker at you, then turns and scribbles it on the board in his horrible handwriting. He doesn’t let you raise your hands in class. Newsrooms work fast, he says. Better get used to it.

“Why?” Kusakabe asks. You’ve got your pitch ready. This isn’t your first rodeo. You hold up a hand, counting off on your fingers as you talk.

“One, it’s the most popular place on campus. Two, it has the lowest crime rate of any bar in the city. It’s run entirely by Jujutsu alumni. It’s time-relevant, because Battle of the Bands is going on right now, which also means good photo ops. We’ve been needing to cover it for years.”

Toge starts typing on his own laptop, and you know he’s not doing anything class-related. Sure enough, you get his message a second later.

freak no. 1: OKAY SHE’S A JOURNALIST freak no. 1: let me be your partner plsplsplsls freak no. 1: PLEASE i don’t wanna do a whole project story by myself i’ll do anything

He stares at your screen and glares at you when you don’t respond.

freak no. 1: why is that still my name. this is bullying. harassment even freak no. 1: freak no. 1 implies the existence of freak no. 2 freak no. 1: who is it freak no. 1: is it yuta freak no. 1: tell me it’s yuta

“Yes,” Kusakabe says. He’s not smiling—he rarely ever does—but you can tell he’s pleased. “That’s what I’m talking about. I want to know why a bunch of qualified alumni decided to dedicate their postgrad careers to running a college bar. Give me the backstory, give me the details. This is the kind of thing I’d put Fushiguro on if it wasn’t a conflict of interest.”

You twist around in your seat, craning to catch Tsumiki’s eye. She’s smiling, typing rapidly without looking at her keyboard.

“Yep,” she affirms. “But I can get you phone numbers. Good stuff, Skip.”

“Conflict of interest if I’m in a band?” you ask. She thinks for a moment, then shakes her head.

“Just don’t make it the story’s central focus and you should be fine. I’ve got some underclassmen covering the battle for event coverage practice, anyway.”

You flash her a thumbs-up and Kusakabe turns back to the board, half-dead marker hovering beneath his scrawled THE FIX: BAR, SAFE, ALUMNI

“Throw it at me,” he calls to the rest of the class. “What else you got?”

You click back into your thread with Takuma and send him another message.

you: freshie reporters are covering battle of the bands you: watch out for the novice press, mr frontman takuma: oh man takuma: i would not be focusing on me if i was them tbh

Toge kicks you under the table.

freak no. 1: cant believe youre getting a boyfriend before me freak no. 1: im leaving the country freak no. 1: god save the queen

—

It’s dead silent down here.

You’ve only been to the comm and media department a few times, mostly for electives or to drag Toge to lunch with you after one of his classes. But you’ve never had reason to venture all the way down, deep into the bowels of the huge building, to the production areas. Most of the studio spaces down here are padded with soundboards, making your trek down the hall an odd, isolated thing.

But then, after you’ve walked a while, you hear laughter, the idle plucking of guitar strings. Ah. You follow the noise to Studio C, where the door is cracked open, and sure enough, the band is there in full force, tuning and talking and warming up. Kirara is sitting in the spinning chair behind the soundboard while the blond from the bar plays with some dials, and the others are behind the window in the recording room.

“Hey,” you say, and Kirara looks up at you, offers you a nod.

“Girl drummer! What’s up?”

“Spying,” you reply. “Thought I’d get behind enemy lines.”

Kirara snorts approvingly and nods toward the man working on the sound dials, and he turns to glance at you. “You guys met?”

He sticks a huge hand out and you shake it. “I know you,” he says. “Or of you. I do stage stuff at The Fix. Name’s Hakari.”

“He does ‘stage stuff’ at the bar ‘cause he wants to follow me around,” Kirara says.

Takuma glances up through the recording space window, and when he sees you he grins and tugs off the headset. “You came!” he says as he drops his guitar into its stand and comes to stand in the open doorway between the two rooms. “Oh, you can shut that, it was open for you.” He nods to the door you came in, and you lean back on it, closing it.

“I’ve never been down here,” you admit. “It’s cool. And empty.”

“Yeah, it’s never busy Wednesdays,” Kirara says, shrugging. “All the sound and screen people are out working megachurch youth groups or whatever.” She kicks her clunky boots up on the table. “Kinji, did the backups sound good last time or should we rerecord them?”

“Skipper!” Yuji shouts. He waves and nearly smacks himself in the face with a drumstick. “Look! Zildjian!” He points to a crash cymbal that must be a new addition and you give him two thumbs-up, beaming.

Beside him, Megumi looks up from his bass and gives you a nod. Sometimes you forget he and Tsumiki are related—they look alike, but they carry themselves so differently. Your editor is all witty questions and chasing the news and juggling a thousand things at once, knowing everyone, always throwing out compliments like candy. Megumi keeps to himself, that quiet, broody bass player in dark colors. Writing secret song lyrics, apparently.

“So we recorded backup vocals last week,” Takuma explains, leading you over to the soundboard. You slide into Kirara’s spot as she hops up and grabs her guitar, plugging in in the next room. “Hakari handles the board while we’re recording, and then I mix it in post.”

“Cool,” you say, lost in all the switches and dials and colored lights.

“It’s less complicated than it looks,” Hakari offers, gesturing to the expanse of controls. “You really only use a third of ‘em.”

Yuji abruptly does a buzz roll, and you look up in time to see Megumi roll his eyes.

“That’s the hey Ino, we’re waiting on you, you fucking slacker drum roll,” Kirara drawls without looking up.

“I feel loved.” Takuma smiles at you and darts into the other room, closing the door behind him, and you lean back in the spinning chair. Hakari hands you an extra headset and you slip it over your ears with a grateful nod.

“Alright,” he says, leaning to speak into a mic that must carry through to the band. “Give me a chorus or somethin’ so I can test these levels out.”

They play part of the first song on the EP, and then Hakari goes through one by one and makes some minor adjustments until he deems them ready to go.

“Okay,” he says, glancing at Kirara. “Strike First, take one, in three, two…” He trails off and presses a button, and Kirara starts riffing like it’s nothing.

“Catch feels real quick,” Ino half-sings, half-says, picking up his own guitar. “And they go real deep. Try to burn ‘em out.” He looks up at you through the window. “But I’m half asleep.” Megumi is laying down a steady, bouncing bassline. “With her face in my head, and her voice in my ear, and her warmth in my bed, but she’s not really here, oh!”

Megumi and Kirara have indeed already recorded the backup vocals, and Hakari scales them up as they play. Intoxicating, in-intoxicating, oh she’s…

Yuji’s crash does sound better, and you find yourself nodding your head along to the beat, watching Hakari run the soundboard, watching the band in their element in the recording space.

The first time they stop just before the bridge, and they talk among themselves and mess around with some adjustments before starting again.

“We’re all cursed, so I, I strike first.” The track finishes with a single, hard kick. You wait until Hakari switches off the recording and clap. Takuma smiles brightly behind the window.

“What’d you think?” he asks, his voice crackling in your ear. “Any tips?”

You hum, leaning into the mic Hakari offers. “You sound great!” you say. “Yuji, save that sick fill for the prechorus leading up to the bridge. The syncopated one. The buildup will pay off.”

Half the art of drumming is knowing when to lay back and when to bring the energy. It’s one thing to go crazy drumming covers for a YouTube channel, which you’re pretty sure Yuji does, but it’s another to play in a band setting, trying to bring out the best in everyone else’s parts. You’ve seen so many drummers get so excited about playing fast and loud that they give too much too soon, and it makes the peak of the song less gratifying. It took you a long time to learn that.

“Oooh,” Yuji says, clicking his sticks together. “You’re right.”

Kirara jumps off her stool, spinning to face him. “What did I say? That exact thing. Three times before.” She points at you, then turns to face you, smiling good-naturedly. “He’s like one of those kids whose parents have been telling them the same thing for years, and then their favorite teacher says it and they act like they’re hearing it for the first time.”

“What? When did you say that? Kirara—”

But everyone’s laughing, and Yuji eventually gives into it too, grinning and tapping out a swing beat on the rims just to do something with his hands.

“Okay, run it again,” Kirara says, settling herself on her stool again. “Kinji?”

Hakari nods, and they launch back into the song. They do three more full runs before they agree they’ve got it. “Cool,” Hakari says. “Ino, you want the drive?”

“Please,” he says, and then takes off the headset and starts putting away the guitar.

“Hey,” Yuji says brightly, after he’s packed up the kit. “You should come over, invite Kugisaki and your bandmates. I need to fight someone who isn’t Ino in Super Smash Bros.”

It sounds fun, and it’s right down the street—Nobara would kill you for saying no. You got most of your class work done while Kusakabe was on another one of his journalism ethics rants that you can quote in your sleep, and your only major project now is The Fix. Not much you can do about that on a Wednesday night.

“Sure,” you say, and Takuma appears beside you, guitar case on his back.

“Sure what?”

Yuji bounces on the balls of his feet. “She’s coming over! And inviting her friends!”

“Like, the whole band?” you clarify. “Is that—”

“YES!” Yuji exclaims. “Pleeease, Skipper? I love new friends. We’re basically neighbors anyway.” You glance at Takuma, trying to gauge his reaction. He looks excited about the idea, so you figure it’ll be fine.

“Okay,” you relent, and Yuji basically tackles you in a hug. “Woah, okay! I’m gonna swing by the house first. I’ll see who’s around and drag them down the street.”

“Tell Kugisaki I have to decimate her in Smash. I want to see her face when she loses.”

“You park in the side lot?” Takuma asks, adjusting the strap of his guitar case. You shake your head, pointing to your longboard in the far corner of the room. You don’t have a car on campus, but it’s usually not an issue since three of your housemates do. “No way. You skate?”

“Just longboard. Never really mastered the skateboarding thing.”

“Oh, I can teach you!” His grin is infectious. You could’ve had one of the girls drop you off tonight, or Yuta, but honestly, you were kind of hoping for a reaction like this. Was it practical to board halfway across campus alone in the dark? Maybe not. Not like you haven’t done it before. But looks like it’s paying off.

“I’ve got the truck out back,” Hakari says. “Anyone want a lift?”

Yuji shakes his head. “Brought my car for the drums. And Fushiguro.” You politely decline, and Takuma holds up his board in answer.

Hakari nods as he shuts down the soundboard. “Sounds good.”

You open the door and Takuma follows you out, the hallway feeling largely different with someone else filling the space.

“So, what’d you think?”

“That was awesome,” you say honestly. “I don’t know how you guys do the technical side of things, but it’s cool.”

Outside, the two of you drop your boards to the ground and push off, careening down the long campus sidewalks.

“I can’t believe I didn’t know you had a longboard,” Takuma says as you round a corner, you shifting your weight to your heels as he charges ahead of you with hands in his pockets like he’s not balancing on a board with a guitar strapped to his back. “How come you’re never at the skate park?”

You shrug, putting a foot to the pavement again to give yourself some more momentum. Truthfully, the skate park has always just felt daunting to you—not because you know about the drugs getting exchanged under the ramps, but because all you can do is board. No tricks, no half-pipes, nothing crazy, and everyone there is always so off the walls you’d feel like an idiot trying to teach yourself.

“You should come with sometime,” he says. “I took Itadori today. He already learned how to kick flip. He’s stupid athletic.”

You grin, theory proven correct, and turn onto the side street your house is on. Takuma slows down when you kick your board up, and you start up the small sidewalk leading to the green front door. “See you in a minute?”

He grins, skating backward again down the street toward his place. “Yes, ma’am.”

The house is small, but you chose it for the basement space with rehearsals in mind. It’s small, but you’ve made it your own. Yuta’s rapidly growing collection of plants sits in a line along the kitchen windowsill. Nobara’s put Polaroids up all over the place, which Toge regularly replaces with printed memes and then times how long it takes her to notice. Your record player sits in the corner of the living room, the stand beneath it overflowing with vinyls the five of you have amassed.

This is all there when you open the door. But unexpectedly, so is Maki, standing in the kitchen with her arms crossed, looking at you expectantly. Nobara shouts, “Is she home? Skipper!”

It takes you a second to clock that Yuta and Toge are also waiting for you, Toge hanging upside down on the couch through the doorway and Yuta leaning against the wall.

“Uh, hi?”

“Howwasyourdate?” Nobara gushes, and you feel your face go flaming.

“Date? Nobara, his whole band—”

“Nooo!” she groans, raking a hand through her hair. She plants a hand on each of your shoulders, staring at you pleadingly. “I am so bored. This is the most exciting thing to happen since Muta asked Miwa out. Have mercy.”

Muta—that’s the Black Flash bassists’s name. You vaguely remember Nobara being over the moon when he got together with Miwa last year.

“How did you even know where I was?”

All four of them answer in unison, “Google calendar.”

You laugh and pry Nobara’s hands off your shoulders, feeling warm all over. God. You forgot having a crush was this fucking embarrassing. Over Nobara’s shoulder, you look helplessly at Maki, who has decided to be of no help.

“Okay, take a breath.” You make your way into the living space, Maki’s gaze following you from the counter and Nobara quite literally following you. “Don’t any of you have homework?”

Toge pulls himself up dizzily, evidently done with the blood rush of hanging upside down. He points at Yuta and says, “That man has never procrastinated anything in his life. You know she has it done.” Here, he points to Maki. “And Nobara and I have priorities. Like your love life.”

You groan, rolling your eyes. Toge already filled them all in on the texts he read in your night class, and they’ve all been teasing you ever since. Well, mostly him and Nobara. But you see the little smirks and glances Maki and Yuta exchange whenever Takuma’s name is brought up.

Nobara, to put it lightly, loves love. She texts your group chat any time she makes eye contact with a potential suitor, and whenever she catches wind of a possible relationship, she wants every detail. You don’t really care to inform the whole house of every interaction you’ve had with Takuma. Not because it doesn’t excite you—part of you just, weirdly, wants this to yourself.

And part of you is trying not to get your hopes up.

“Yeah, I’m gonna need you all to calm down. You’ll scare him off, if you keep up like this.”

“And you definitely don’t want us to scare him off?” Maki confirms, sounding almost bummed. “I am really good at that.” Yuta nods solemnly.

You glance at Nobara, who’s staring at you knowingly. “No,” you admit, sheepish. “I would rather you not.”

Lovers, Nobara mouths, and you push her away.

“Well, if you’re not busy, I’m going to his place,” you say, and put your hand over Nobara’s mouth before she can scream, “and you’re coming with.” You glance around at the rest of your friends. “All of you.” Nobara glares until you pull your hand away from your mouth.

“Yuji wants to beat your ass in Smash,” you tell her, and she smirks.

“Uh-huh. He’d like that, wouldn’t he?” She practically yanks your backpack off your shoulders and pushes you toward the front door.

“Okay, everybody out, let’s go! Operation Get Skipper—”

“I will drag you back into that house.”

“I said nothing,” Nobara smiles sweetly. And the five of you make your way down the street.

—

Yuji’s car is in the driveway, a bright red Hyundai. You can tell it’s his partially because it’s bright red and partially because you can see a few cymbal stands sticking up in the rear windshield. A truck is parked on the curb, and you figure it’s probably Hakari’s.

Nobara leads the way up to the front door, the only one of you who’s been here before. Unless Maki was visiting her cousin for something, but you don’t think so.

“Itadori!” Nobara shouts, and the door swings open to reveal Yuji, tousled hair and eager grin and all. “I’m here to beat your ass. Get on the Wii.”

“Yes!” Yuji shouts triumphantly, two fists pumping the air.

The house the band is renting out is functionally the same as yours, but it couldn’t look more different. There are mismatched string lights everywhere, dark tapestries on the walls that scream Kirara. Old band posters are plastered to half the available wall space, and a JBL speaker is blasting a song you’ve never heard.

“Hey,” Kirara calls from her place on the couch, leaning into Hakari. Yuji and Nobara are already planted on the floor, preparing for Smash Bros, Toge settled in between in an already futile effort to prevent violence.

“Hey, Okkotsu.” Megumi nods. “Maki. You haven’t been here before, right?”

“It’s not a college boy dump,” she responds. “So proud of you.”

“Mostly his doing, honestly,” Kirara says. “He’s a neat freak.”

You wave at her and Hakari. “You both live here?”

“Nah,” Hakari says. “I’m with Panda on the other side of campus.” Kirara’s the sole girl in the house, then. Brave woman.

“Skip!”

You turn to find Takuma leaning in the entryway to the living space. “Hey,” you grin. His gaze moves to where Yuji and Nobara have selected their characters.

“Oh, this’ll be good.” He moves to the open space on the couch and glances at you, and you follow. There’s plenty of room, since Kirara is basically on Hakari’s lap.

There’s a papasan chair in the corner that Yuta tries to insist Maki take, but in the end he winds up sitting in it with his legs tucked up under him and Maki sprawls out on the floor in front of him. You nearly jump out of your skin when Yuji screeches, and you blink and realize Nobara has already decimated him.

“Jesus,” you say.

“How did you—what was that? How did you do that?” Yuji demands. Toge, evidently having decided his mediation effort is fruitless, scoots back. You grin. Nobody can ever beat Nobara in Smash Bros. You would know.

“That’s what you get for picking Sonic, you freak.” Nobara turns up her nose. She picks Link every time.

“Do not slander the good name of Sonic in this house.”

“Okay, give it to me,” Toge says, grabbing the remote from Yuji. He levels Nobara with a serious look, chooses Daisy, and says, “Prepare to die.”

Takuma laughs beside you, and you’re suddenly aware that your thighs are almost touching, his warmth emanating off him. You try to focus on the game as Link proceeds to destroy Daisy within an inch of her life, but it’s hard now that you’re hyper-aware of your proximity.

“I like your place,” you tell him, and he smiles.

“Yeah? I do too. All the tapestries are Kirara’s.”

You fist bump her. “Good taste.”

“I know,” she says.

“What?” Toge shrieks. He groans, dramatically falling forward and burying his face in the carpet. “No. You cheated. Again.”

“You’re an idiot,” Nobara says, and they play again. “You’re not gonna win.”

Toge scoffs. “I would if you’d play Just Dance with me, coward.”

“Hey.” Takuma nudges you with a knee. “You wanna see how I mix the tracks?”

You glance at Nobara, entirely engaged in her game, and figure if you’re going to safely escape the room with Takuma, the time is now. “Sure.” He stands and you follow, ignoring Maki’s knowing gaze boring into your back as you go. The laughter and shouts and music follow you up the narrow stairs, and you hope this can be a new kind of normal, this mishmash of people who seem to get along so well.

Takuma’s room is at the end of the hall, and there’s no doubting how insanely Takuma it is. A skateboard—covered in faded stickers, different from the one he used today—hangs on the wall, there’s an acoustic in the corner, and the lights are all LED and green and red and purple. He leads you over to his monitor setup along the wall, where something is just finishing uploading—the drive Hakari gave him from the recording session.

He pulls over a stool and pats the desk chair for you, and you’d argue but he’s already opening up Logic, throwing in the tracks.

And then you lose time.

It’s already dark out, and you have no measure of the hours passing as Takuma locks in, nodding his head along to the beat, walking you through every setting and adjustment he makes as he mixes the new single, his own voice echoing back at you on the vocal track. You ask questions that are probably stupid and he answers like you’ve asked the smartest thing in the world.

His face is aglow in the colored lights of his room, and he’s animated as he walks you through the process. You point to the backup vocals track and ask a question, and he wraps his hand around yours and guides it to point at the corresponding change he makes, and before you know it the track is done and he’s sliding a pair of headphones over your ears, looking at you hopefully as the song comes through.

It sounds amazing. Something about listening with headphones on is all-consuming, and there’s something intimate about the way you’re sat facing one another, one of your knees between both of his, not breaking eye contact as you listen.

Kirara and Yuji’s backups flow so seamlessly into the rest of the recording, loud enough to hear but quiet enough not to pull away from Takuma’s voice as he sings, “Preemptively intoxicating, I can hear the heartbreak saying, ooh, I’m on my way.”

He smiles at you, soft, excited, his knee bouncing to the beat of the song even though you’re the one with the headphones on. “So you strike first, strike first ‘cause she’s not gonna stay.”

You tug the headphones down around your neck, the melody still bouncing around in your ears. The curtains flutter above the rickety AC unit in the corner, casting flickering shadows over the monitor, over the wall, over Takuma. There’s no more music, but it is far from silent. The sounds of your friends drift up the stairs and through the cracked door, the computer’s kicking up a fuss with its fan, your breathing seems louder than normal.

“Damn,” you say softly, like speaking any louder will break this—whatever this is.

“Yeah?”

Your faces are very close.

“Yeah.”

A scream from downstairs makes you jump, knocking your knees with Takuma’s, and you feel the heat rush to your cheeks.

“Yuta, control your child!” Nobara screeches, and you presume that by that she means Toge. “Maki? Skipper, where did you go? AGH!”

You laugh, pushing to your feet. “We should probably…”

“Yeah,” Takuma says quickly, too quickly, standing and setting the headphones back on the desk. “Yeah, totally.”

The rest of the night passes in a wash of laughter and Smash Bros and half-eaten bags of chips and yes, eventually, Just Dance, which Toge does win by a significant margin. Yuta, Maki, and Megumi spend a lot of time catching up in the corner, and Kirara and Nobara get along great. You realize far too late that putting Toge and Yuji in the same room was a horrible decision. They feed off each other’s chaos, a pair of little speed demons. You fear they’ve just become best friends.

At some point Kirara and Hakari disappear, and when you’re all finally making your way out, dreading your morning classes, you turn to Takuma, hovering in his doorway.

“Thanks,” you say. “For showing me the mixing. And recording. And—yeah.” You flush. God, you’re usually so good at talking to people. When did you become this socially inept?

“Anytime,” he says, and you know he means it. “Hey, if you guys are ever interested in putting some music out… Hakari and I could help.” He scratches the back of his neck a little self-consciously.

“Wait, for real?”

“Yeah! I mean, Hakari goes wherever Kirara goes. And she likes you. You’re really good, I think you’d really take off on streaming services.”

Kirara likes you? That weirdly means more to you than any of the other bandmates’ approval. Something warm blooms in your chest.

“Skip, c’mon,” Maki calls over her shoulder, and you jump and realize the rest of your housemates are already down the drive.

“Ah, yeah! I’ll talk to them about it. Thanks, Takuma.” You beam and turn to catch up to your friends, feeling like a stupid high schooler with a crush.

You’ve been rehearsing at your place every day this week, even though you don’t know where you’ve landed in the battle bracket yet—not until this Friday. You’re trying to nail down the perfect set, and Maki and Yuta have come up with this great instrumental, but you keep coming up short—you’ve been a useless lyricist lately, all up in your own head about pointless, trivial things.

Now, though—you feel like you have some words to get out. Feelings to get out, if you can just figure out how to articulate them.

In your tiny room, you find yourself thinking about him—getting coffee with him, skateboarding, the lighting in his bedroom, the bar—The Fix, you think.

And you pull out your notebook and start to write.

directory | meet shibuya incident | meet cursed technique | meet black flash | meet the rest of the contestants | welcome to the fix

jjk taglist open: just send me a message!

@shutuppeter @mikikkoo @reactwithjan @theclassbookworm @lilactaro @bisforbuse @risararelywrites

a/n: no, these are not real songs. yes, they are from the notes app archives. oops. ANYWAY SORRY IT’S 10K WORDS I’M HYPERFIXATING LMK WHAT YOU THINK

[chosetherose]

The Albatross tells us that Karlie has sacrificed for Taylor during their complicated love story. Now, it’s Taylor’s turn.

I’ve spent weeks working on analysis of this beautifully complex song, slowly sifting through its layers. Part of what is so intriguing to me is that if you listen at the surface level, you might think Taylor is talking about the same “wise men” and “albatross” characters throughout. But I believe she switches around who she is talking about.

In summary, I believe The Albatross begins with pressure on Taylor to continue closeting in order to preserve her career. As the pressure intensifies, Karlie agrees to sacrifice her reputation because for whatever reason this seems like the only way forward. Ultimately, Taylor decides it’s her turn to rescue Karlie, she will swoop in to restore Karlie’s reputation so the devil that you know looks now more like an *angel*.

Here is an overview of what I’ll be exploring in my post.

[Verse 1]

Wise men once said

"Wild winds are death to the candle"

A rose by any other name is a scandal

Cautions issued, he stood

Shooting the messengers

They tried to warn him about her

I picture the “wise men” in this verse as voices that have told her being open about her sexuality would create a media storm that her career could not survive; it would extinguish the fragile flame of her celebrity. More specifically, this could be referencing that the “wise men” felt glass closeting with Karlie was getting too loud since their chemistry is too strong to hide. 

Notably, I think in this verse the “he” Taylor is referring to is herself. So, “cautions issued” acknowledges that Taylor heard the message. But she stood there shooting the messengers because what a bullshit world we live in if being truthful about who you love means taking a hit to your career. 

The last line sums up the verse; the “wise men” tried to warn Taylor about getting too loud with Karlie. But they pissed off Taylor, who let her anger be known. Ultimately, these men failed to put a stop to this relationship that was stirring up attention. 

[I didn’t touch the rose line in this version because @bettyshoweduptotheparty did it so beautifully here.]

[Chorus 1]

Cross your thoughtless heart

Only liquor anoints you

She's the albatross

She is here to destroy you

This first chorus has the least information to go off. I loosely picture this as Taylor sharing with Karlie, perhaps over cheap ass screw top rose, that her team or others in the industry issued cautions about how their relationship could hurt Taylor’s career. This spurred Karlie into protection mode because no one will tear them apart. 

Something to think about is the religious imagery here. Crossing your heart is a religious reference. Anointment is a religious term. Taylor has continuously weaved religious references into her work. That doesn’t make total sense for a heterosexual person but tracks for a gay woman who spent a portion of her adolescence in the Bible Belt around the turn of the century. I also think there could be some PR strategy here too: if she decides to come out one day people will listen back and pick up on the religious references as relating to how Taylor feels about her sexuality. It’s lower hanging fruit compared to some of the layers she’s created but it’s easier to digest.

[Verse 2]

Wise men once said

"One bad seed kills the garden"

"One less temptress, one less dagger to sharpen"

Locked me up in towers

But I'd visit in your dreams

And they tried to warn you about me

This verse reads to me that since issuing cautions didn’t work, the “wise men” moved on to more forceful tactics. 

But first let’s discuss how the garden imagery in this verse (which I love) is an additional metaphor for fame. Think about how much work it takes to cultivate a garden that produces beautiful, showy flowers. It starts with seeds and requires intensive intervention to grow and thrive: soil must be fertilized, growth must be pruned, weeds must be plucked, etc. The reward of all this hard work is gorgeous blooms admired by all. It’s similar to fame. Taylor planted seeds when she was a young musician singing about teardrops on her guitar. Over time she has cultivated a lavish garden. Her team helps her prune it (PR, merch, touring, etc.) and we all cherish the beauty produced. 

The “wise men” are saying one bad seed, like a dandelion that flies into your yard, can spread and choke out the flowers you’ve so carefully grown. It only takes one event to ruin everything. [Don’t forget if these “wise men” are on her team they have financial interest in keeping the garden flourishing.] Because of this, the “wise men” want Taylor’s female love interest out of the picture. If she’s out of the picture, they won’t have to (metaphorically) kill her.

After trying to justify their actions, the “wise men” locked Taylor in towers. They made it feel impossible for Taylor to be with Karlie. This was difficult for Taylor, who feels locked up, and also for Karlie who dreams about being with Taylor.

The last line “and they tried to warn you about me” fits with the ending of the first verse in the theme of - this love cannot be stopped. And affirms my thought that the “wise men” tried to keep Taylor and Karlie apart. First, they tried to issue cautions to Taylor. When that didn’t work, they approached the lover, “It only takes one instance of being too loud to ruin Taylor’s career, why don’t you see yourself out so we can put away these daggers we have at your throats.” But love prevailed and Taylor and Karlie remained together.

[Chorus 2]

Cross your thoughtless heart

Only liquor anoints you

She's the albatross

She is here to destroy you

Devils that you know

Raise worse hell than a stranger

She's the death you chose

You're in terrible danger

I think the Albatross here is Taylor, who ultimately agreed to publicly distance herself from Karlie due to the pressures of the “wise men”. This wasn’t necessarily a decision either Taylor or Karlie were happy about, but it was agreed to.

The albatross (Taylor) is here to destroy you (Karlie’s reputation). The devils that you know raises worse hell than a stranger because even those Taylor’s fans will be sending hate Karlie’s way, that hurt is nothing compared to the pain of knowing that Taylor handed them their pitchforks. 

She (Taylor) is the death you (Karlie) chose. Karlie agreed to stay with Taylor, who consistently paints herself as someone who is dangerous to love. Now the inevitable is coming true and Karlie’s public image will be marred. 

[Bridge]

And when that sky rains fire on you

And you're persona non grata

I'll tell you how I've been there too

And that none of it matters

Taylor and Karlie know their plans require Karlie’s reputation to be destroyed. Taylor feels she can’t stop it from happening and it’s hurting her. All she can do is think about what she will say to comfort Karlie when that day comes. Taylor will say she’s been through this before (think KimYe saga) and knows the public heat doesn’t matter at the end of the day. Taylor and Karlie have each other and that’s what’s important.

Note: the saying “to rain fire and brimstone” is biblically rooted and means “to inflict great suffering or destruction on someone or something.” 

[Verse 3]

Wise men once read fake news

And they believed it

Jackals raised their hackles

You couldn't conceive it

You were sleeping soundly

When they dragged you from your bed

And I tried to warn you about them

This whole third verse, in my opinion, is how Trump winning the 2016 election totally snuck up on Karlie. She didn’t expect it would happen but it did and it made a complicated situation even messier. This happened despite Taylor’s warnings about Karlie’s bearding connection to the Kushner family.

Breaking it down, here we meet a new group of “wise men.” We know “fake news” is synonymous with Trump so let’s explore that angle for this verse. Taylor is saying the Americans who voted Trump into office were fed lies and didn’t question them. They were too blind to see what a poor choice it was for our country and for democracy. Democrats felt like a Trump presidency would never happen; the country would surely vote blue to save the day. (I too felt like like this and was in total shock on election night, wore black on inauguration day, etc. but I digress). 

The line “jackals raised their hackles” switches focus from the electorate to the political wolves coming for power. I’m excluding the definitions of these words to save space but I take it as: jackals are wolf like canines, hackles are hairs on a mammal’s back that can raise when trying to show dominance over subordinate animals. This line is about the political bad guys picking on the American people; especially vulnerable populations such as women, minorities, and the LGTBQIA+ community.

Karlie couldn’t believe these jackals, who she was publicly connected to, could win the election. She was sleeping soundly when she was dragged into it because ignorance is bliss --she thought it would never happen. 

[Chorus 3]

So I crossed my thoughtless heart

Spread my wings like a parachute

I'm the albatross

I swept in at the rescue

The devil that you know

Looks now more like an angel

I'm the life you chose

And all this terrible danger

Now Taylor felt the love of her life needed rescuing from this completely tangled wild public mess. So without a thought, she spread her wings like a parachute to rescue Karlie. I want to emphasize that the meaning of the “thoughtless heart” line here is different than previous mentions. Now, the thoughtlessness comes from not caring about the repercussions of your actions. You care so much about the endgame - rescuing your love - that you don’t give a damn about the scars you’ll pick up on the way.

So Taylor “swept in at the rescue” and the next lines detail what that rescue looks like. She sings “the devil that you know looks now more like an angel”. I can’t scream this loud enough she’s saying Karlie’s reputation will be restored. I’d guess by design, many of Taylor’s fans despise Karlie. We established that was the plan earlier in the song. But after Taylor swoops in at the rescue, in the next stage of Kaylor’s PR plan, everything changes. These fans that despise Karlie will soften to her yet again. The devil looks more like an angel. Specifically, a Victoria’s Secret angel -- that wording is not accidental.

“I’m the life you chose” sounds like talk to a spouse. Karlie knew signing up for a lifetime with Taylor would mean danger. Taylor’s repeated that topic throughout her discography - who could ever jump in the fishbowl with me, who would sign up for this life? Karlie did. Now Taylor is getting her chance to save her love.

[Outro]

So cross your thoughtless heart

She's the albatross

She is here to destroy you

I think this outro could be directed at the fans Taylor would lose if she ever comes out one day. Here, Taylor uses the type of “thoughtless” that means “lacking concern for others”. The fans who would abandon her have cold inconsiderate hearts. So they better watch out because Taylor is the albatross here and she is going to destroy those fans’ attachment to her by living her truth - or some version of it. 

***

I feel like I do a relatively good job at keeping my clowning to a minimum but give me this one. Taylor, if you enjoy reading our lyric analyses around here can you please play The Albatross again sometime before the end of the tour? Bonus points if you wear the pink dress.

[smileypansy]

ask me again when you're sober / j.ww

pairing: wonwoo x gn!reader (ft. bff hoshi)

synopsis: seventeen is away filming ttt when you have a very sweet phone call with your boyfriend, wonwoo. (and hoshi)

word count: 500~

a/n: short and sweet. that's it; ALSO requests are open if you wanna send me something <3

Wonwoo was pleasantly tipsy. Just buzzed enough to feel warm and fuzzy inside, but not drunk. Not drunk like some of his members were (Hoshi). Seventeen were filming the latest installment of their TTT series. They had spent the evening playing drinking games. The cameras had since been turned off and the members were enjoying their well-deserved time off. Some of the members were much drunker than the others. Wonwoo had opted to sip on a beer and just watch the chaos unfold. 

He was listening to BooSeokSoon belting out yet another Twice song on the karaoke machine when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. He pulled it out of his pocket and smiled when he saw who was calling.

“Hey, baby,” He said, low voice growling in your ear.

“Hey, you,” you say, unable to fight back the smile that your boyfriend always managed to put on your face. “I just wanted to call before I head to bed. Just to say good night. And I miss you.”

“I miss you, too,” Wonwoo says, chuckling. It has only been a few hours since he left. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning.”

“I know but I still miss you. Anyways, I’ll let you go. Go have fun.”

“I will. And-“

“WONWOO-YAH!” Hoshi had found Wonwoo’s quiet hideout. “Come sing with us!’

“Wow, I can tell how drunk he is through the phone,” you said, laughing.

“Y/N!” Hoshi finally noticed that Wonwoo was on the phone. And correctly assumed he was talking to you. There was a sound from the other end that sounded suspiciously like Hoshi stealing the phone out of Wonwoo’s hand. “Y/N! I’m having so much fun!”

“Yeah? I can tell,” you were laughing at Hoshi’s antics, like always. He is always so good at putting a smile on anyone’s face.

“You should’ve come. I think you would’ve had fun,” Hoshi said, suddenly somber. Drunk Hoshi and his mood swings.

“That’s sweet, but I wouldn’t want to intrude.”

“You wouldn’t. HEY MEMBERS!”

Oh god, you mumbled under your breath.

“All in favor of y/n coming on our next trip say ‘horanghae’!”

A chorus of 12 ‘horanghae’s came through your phone’s speakers. 

“That is the first and last time I’ll say that,” Woozi said.

“Then it’s settled. You are coming next time.”

You sighed, knowing you wouldn’t get anywhere while Hoshi was drunk out of his mind. But, you still smiled because the gesture was so sweet.

“You know what, invite me when you’re sober and I’ll think about it.”

“Deal!”

There was more shuffling from the other end of the phone.

“Monsta X! Monsta X!” Hoshi was now chanting from a distance.

The phone was finally back in Wonwoo’s hands.

“Sorry about that.” “It’s more than okay. I like being reminded that they actually like me.”

“Of course they do. You’re impossible not to like. Plus I like you and I have excellent taste,” Wonwoo said. That’s how you could tell he was drunker than usual. His flirt level got turned up way higher. You were glad he couldn’t see your blush through the phone.

“Okay, okay. I should go now. You go have fun. You deserve it.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Hey, just for the record, I also would like for you to come along next time.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll think about it. Good night, Wonwoo.”

“Good night, love.”

[ohraicodoll]

Daisies

Joel Miller x fem!reader The Last of Us (Show/Game) 1.3k Words

Summary: Because the women of Jackson have nothing better to do than set their eyes on Joel Miller. 

She wasn’t intentionally eavesdropping. No, she was minding her own business, grabbing supplies to help Joel fix the slightly broken window in Ellie’s room. The teenage girl kept complaining that it made her side of the house five degrees colder despite the fact it was warming up to Spring finally. 

It wasn’t her fault she was stuck in her ways, used to having to be silent as the dead, walking so quietly people had a habit of not noticing or hearing her. It was a survival skill, but one that didn’t suit settlement life where you were supposed to act normal and friendly and not like a ghost.

“Goddamn, it’s heinous how good the apocalypse looks on that man.”

“Right? The rest of us look like shit meanwhile Joel fucking Miller turned into a fine piece of meat.” Her brow furrowed at the women nearby, hands stilling on the small slivers of wood she’d been grabbing. Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at the small group as they very obviously stared across the Jackson plaza at the very man in question. Joel was talking to Tommy, heavy brown jacket stretched tight across his back as he stood in his usual Joel-stance. Hands on his hips, thumbs tucked into his belt, knee cocked out. He’d gone only a bit more gray, settlement life helping to destress him a bit though Ellie’s constant pestering may have canceled that out. Raising a teenage girl all over again was proving challenging, no matter the setting. But he was getting rest, getting food, and the strain had slowly seeped out of his face over time. They weren’t wrong. He did look good. He always looked good. She just didn’t like that they had noticed it as well. Joel and her weren’t necessarily a thing. Yes, they’d both helped Ellie to get there and yes, they all lived in the same house and yes, she knew exactly what that mouth could do but it wasn’t like they were dating. They only…existed together. Took care of each other, in more than a few ways. They didn’t exactly go holding hands down Main Street though. So no, while he wasn’t taken, wasn’t hers, there was an almost animalistic urge in her to stake a claim. To mark him and bare her teeth to get them to avert their eyes. Promise that they couldn’t handle him with their soft hands and dainty sensibilities they’d kept in their stranglehold even decades after that stopped mattering. Joel had always likened her to a feral animal and maybe he wasn’t far off. But maybe he liked that kind of thing. Like girls in dresses, smelling of daisies, cooking and cleaning and letting him do the hard work. A man’s job, whatever the fuck that was. They never talked about that. It certainly wasn’t her.  Gritting her teeth, she tried to block out their voices and focus on the task. It was dumb. This was dumb. It came from complacency and comfort and having too much time on your hands from not having to survive moment to moment. They should be helping be actually productive and not gawking at Joel Miller, talking about his ass- Their voices lowered and became fervent whispers, causing her to look up again. Joel had finished his conversation with Tommy and was headed directly their way. He wasn’t scowling for once, seemed almost relaxed though that furrow between his brow was almost permanent at this point. It was just…Joel. She ducked her eyes back to the wood pieces and quickly picked out the pieces needed, adding them to her pile next to the small bottle of homemade glue, nails, and rationed tape she’d already gathered. He probably didn’t need it all, but the more she grabbed the more it would seem like she was busy. If he was going to talk to them, it wasn’t her business and she certainly wasn’t going to be caught eavesdropping. While they may not have noticed her, Joel had a sixth sense for when she was around no matter how quiet she was trying to be. A chorus of chirpy, “Good morning, Joel!” went up as he reached the group and her teeth went on edge. She could taste the words like overly sweetened cough syrup. Thick and saccharin. But no reply came, no thick accented greeting, only a grunt of half-acknowledgement and that caused her to look up again. He’d sidestepped them, barely giving them even a glance as if they were in his way and were an obstacle, and was instead heading to her. And if his eyes seemed to brighten, lips seemed to lift up in the barest hint of a smile, she tried not to notice it. “You’re takin’ an awfully long time to pick out a few scraps,” Joel commented as he finally reached her side. Shoving what she had grabbed into the sack on her shoulder, she shrugged, “Wanted to give you time to talk to Tommy. Didn’t want to interrupt.” He smirked as if smelling her bullshit and shook his head, “Wasn’t anything important. He wanted to invite us over for dinner after someone ratted to him and Maria about last night’s dinner catastrophe.” Their multiple cans of different soup mixture. They had only had one of each type and one pot. Mixing it had been to save time, but the taste had been…something. “I think Ellie’s getting tired of our experimenting,” she huffed a small laugh, shuffling the toe of her boot along the dirt, “I guess Maria’s cooking is slightly better than ours.” “Well maybe Ellie can take over dinner duties if she’s gonna snitch,” Joel chuckled, “If she wants home cooked meals so bad, she can figure them out herself. I can barbecue, but that’s about it besides heating up a can.” “Yeah, yeah, so you like to say,” smirking, she began to start walking towards the direction of their house, ignoring the whispers and glances the women were giving the two. She could only imagine what they thought of her, standing at his side. Rough, unkept, throwing on whatever shirt she had grabbed off the floor though at this point she wasn’t sure which were hers and which were his. She definitely didn’t smell like daisies no matter how clean she got. Before she could go down that train of thought though, Joel matched his steps to hers and surprised her. It wasn’t holding hands, wasn’t anything particularly romantic, but as they both passed the group he slipped his hand into her back pocket. The move brought her closer to him, had his arm pressed into her back, but the heat of his hand separated from her skin by only threadbare denim set her on fire. He leaned into her and whispered into her ear, “Next time we go hunting, I’ll show you and wipe that sass right off your face.” His fingers clenched, almost gripping her ass, causing her to bite the inside of her cheek. “Now let’s get home before you rip the throats out of those hens clucking behind us.” She tried not to seem surprised that he’d noticed, had thought she masked her irritation well, but this was Joel. Of course he noticed. “What, you don’t want me to hurt your fan group?” raising a brow at him, she looked up and tried to stay joking, teasing. No, she wasn’t jealous. No, she wasn’t looking for him to voice that this was something beyond mutual satisfaction. But the hand in her pocket was new outside of the confines of the house and it had thrown her for a loop. Joel chuckled, muttering the words fan group and stared at her, eyes darkening and pulling her a little tighter into his side, “Darling, I could care less about them. I don’t need someone who can cook and tell me how good looking I am. In case you haven’t noticed, I prefer someone who I trust to have my back. Who has some teeth.” And that was all that needed to be said. She grinned, showing those very same teeth, and didn’t care if it made her look feral. They walked back to their half-hobbled together house, their kid that wasn’t theirs, and their shit cooking. God help anyone that tried to get in their way.

[izzyspussy]

beautiful imaginary scene where mickey is spending all night at whatever that club was called to watch ian dance and then walk home with him, and for whatever reason ian is just feeling extra cheerful/romantic that night, so he asks the dj to queue up "hey mickey" and the dj is like are you sure man i mean we got it cause gays love it but it's kind of hard to dance this way to and ian's like dw i have a Plan.

so the dj queues up "hey mickey" and it comes on and ian starts dancing to it, mostly directly to mickey but he intersperses really good crowd work and hypes up his fellow dancers so everyone's feeling it even though it's a little off the reg.

but then during the second chorus, when toni sings "you take me by the heart when you take me by the hand" ian insistently offers his hand to mickey to come up on the stage with him, and obviously mickey protests but on top of him being pretty fucking whipped right at this particular moment, everyone around him is really in the spirit so they're all nudging him forward and ian is giving him that bossy look and... well what is he gonna do, actually say no? to ian? now? please.

so ian tugs mickey up on stage with him, and he shouts out to the crowd that "this is mickey!" and everybody cheers and mickey like gives an embarrassed middle finger and starts edging off to the side to get back down, but of course ian doesn't let him because obviously he didn't just want to tell these people mickey's name what's the point of that, no, he wants to a) have a good time with his man, b) show off his man, and c) make a Declaration Of Favoritism for his man. who is named mickey.

so for the final third of the song, ian "makes" mickey dance with him, well really i mean ian dances on mickey but he's not doing it to be ornery this time so it's actually pretty sexy even if mickey doesn't love having an audience, and maybe ian even strips mick a little bit - just a little bit! takes his shirt off and tugs his undershirt up to show his belly, unbuckles and slides off his belt, undoes his fly, maybe dips his hand in there a little bit but just to tease, nothing obscene, even though he's getting the impression mickey would let him, and no actual Private Parts showing, those are all for ian, belong to ian - and the crowd, normally pretty entitled and jealous and just overall not a joy to perform for, laps this all up because ian just made it so fun, something everyone can feel like they're part of even though it's really All About Mickey and how obsessed with him ian is, and maybe ian even brings mickey to the edge of the stage, all snug against his back, chin over his shoulder, hands big and warm on his bare waist, so that people can give him ian's tips. tuck bills under the elastic of his boxers and make him squirm, until mickey gets fed up with the fucking audacity and starts grabbing money out of people's hands.

and then of course as soon as the song is over, ian immediately takes his fifteen and spends every last minute of it fucking mickey in the dancers' locker room.

but unfortunately, he has to go back out on the floor when they're done. mickey stays, he always stays. and for the rest of the night he has patrons coming up to him asking how he got that treatment. did he pay special for it? is it his birthday? and he has to(/gets to) say, over and over and over, "i'm his boyfriend." all night long. over and over again. to guy after guy who would fucking kill for that to be him. "i'm his boyfriend."

[delicatebarness]

So I was thinking earlier for the Avengers Bunch

What if…while on a mission and in the middle of the fight reader is listening to music and just starts humming which leads to singing quietly till other young avenger hears and joins and another one and so on

the young avengers just start singing cause someone is anxious or just because they’re bored and when they run into the enemy they are like what is happening

And the song would be “We Didn’t Start The Fire” Fallout boy rendition or you can chose

The Avengers Bunch | Who's Robert Downey Jr Anyway?! #004

Summary: ^^ Requested.

Warning: Violence. Mentions of real-life events from 1989 - 2023 that could be triggering.

Word Count: 567

Series Masterlist | Tips

Tags: @somnorvos |

On the outskirts of an abandoned nuclear power plant, bursts of energy and lights flashing illuminated the night sky. The recruits were in the thick of their mission, each one of them locked in their conflict. Amidst the chaos, you crouched behind a pile of rubble, trying to catch your breath and reload your guns. After a moment, you remembered you packed your AirPods…

“Why do you need them?” you remember Bucky asking you from your doorway.

Slipping them into your ears, you pressed shuffle on your playlist, and the familiar strains of “We Didn’t Start The Fire” by Fall Out Boy filled your senses. As you re-entered the battle, you found yourself humming along to the beat.

Softly, the hums turned into singing, barely audible over the fights. “Captain Planet, Arab Spring, LA riots, Rodney King…”

Nearby, Kate crouched with her bow at the ready, glancing over at you. “Are you singing?” 

You gave her a sheepish grin, still humming. “It’s to help me focus.”

Nodding, Kate smiled at you before she took a deep breath and joined on the next line. “Deepfakes, earthquakes, Iceland volcano…”

Spider-Man swung in from above you, delivering a kick to a robotic enemy. He landed next to you, eyebrows raised beneath his mask. “Cool! Karaoke time!” Without hesitation, he joined in, surprisingly in tune. “Oklahoma City bomb…” 

Suddenly, an amplified voice added a deep resonance as a shadow loomed over you. “I am Groot, I am Groot, I am Groot, I am Groot…” Groot has caught on to what was happening. 

Soon enough, the four of you were all belting out the song, your voices melding together in a harmonious chorus. Your enemies, a group of heavily armed mercenaries even paused in their attacks. Staring in confusion at you all. 

“What the hell?” one of them muttered, lowering their weapon slightly. 

Even the most seasoned in their ranks, looked bewildered. “What is happening?” he growled, becoming distracted for a moment. 

You and your friends never missed a beat. You used the mercenaries’ confusion to your advantage. “Cambridge Analytica!” you sang together, your voices rang out across the battlefield. 

As the last of the mercenaries were knocked out, you regrouped, still singing the lines of the song.

Kate paused and looked confused when you all sang, “Robert Downey Jr, Iron Man.” Picking up her arrows she asked, “Wait, who’s Robert Downey Jr anyway?” 

“No idea,” Peter shrugged, sending one more punch toward a waking mercenary. “Must be some old actor.” 

Groot nodded, “I am Groot.” 

You laughed, shaking your head. “Tony will know.” 

~

Once your enemies were tied up and the area was secure, you made your way back to the Quin Jet. As you and the rest of your team boarded, still humming together, you found the ‘older’ Avengers sitting inside, their heads in their hands.

Bucky looked up first, his face a mix of annoyance and amusement. “Do you realize we have comms? We heard��� everything.” 

Steve sighed, rubbing his temples. “Every. Single. Note.”

With a raised eyebrow, Natasha made her way over to you. “Not the most conventional tactic, but it worked.” 

You blushed slightly. “Sorry, we just got carried away.” Sharing a look with your friends, you all tried to stifle your laughter. Leaning back in your seat, you began to hum softly again as the Quin Jet lifted off.

“For the love of Odin, shut up!”

[theredofoctober]

The Sand Violet: A Fallout Dark Fic

Cooper Howard (The Ghoul) x Mute Female Reader fic

Synopisis: The Ghoul known as Cooper Howard kidnaps Reader in an attempt to sell her for medicine. When she escapes and humiliates him he has his revenge.

The Reader insert is female and mute. Other features not described

TW and CW: noncon/rape, violence, death, cannibalism

Words: 6,899

Read after the cut ✂️

It’s quiet in Filly, or as quiet as it gets, the afternoon so hot as to bake the earth dark and to drive its milling residents back indoors.

Store holders draw their shutters down against the sun and crouch, noiseless with exhaustion, over whatever toil pays their way in the world.

Dogs loll snoring in doorways, and bartenders find themselves elbowing old punters aside to serve the new and many stumbling in to wet their mouths and take refuge from the warm.

You and your husband, Gray, idle in one of several junk shops in town, having little else to do until the heatwave dwindles into night.

A thick-shouldered man sits drowsily at the front desk, squinting as you traipse about his wares for your fourth or fifth rotation of the room.

“Clear out if you ain’t tradin’,” he mutters, but as you loiter with stubborn aversion to the sucking heat beyond his doorstep the man does not rise to chase you out.

Gray lays a gentle hand on the crook of your arm.

“Let’s go pretend to be interested in that thing over there,” he murmurs. “Keep the old guy happy.”

Talking Gray’s elbow, you obey, looking at his turned, freckled cheek with a want to kiss it. You’re as in love as two people can be in such times, and though the days are hard and the nights harder still, with Gray they do not feel so.

You sleep rough in sand dunes together, eat canned fruit with one spoon between you over fires you put out before the radroaches come.

Tonight you’ll find a bar and drink with what stray caps you’ve each left in your satchels, and later lie as one until the sun scrapes the night away, still tasting the rum on one another’s breath.

Or so it would have been, had fate not cracked a backhand blow across your hopeful faces.

The junkshop door bangs open against the wall, setting its bells thrashing in an angry fairy chorus. As a mean silhouette moves into the light like an eye gouged from the face of God Gray steps ahead of you by instinct, his right hand grazing the knife at his belt.

“Ah, shit,” says the shopkeeper, half-rising from his seat. “You ain’t allowed in here.”

“Says who?” drawls the stranger, kicking the door shut behind him. “I know you ain’t about to get your ass up and stop me, Davey, else the taste of lead’s startin’ to sound mighty flavoursome to you.”

Davey sits down slowly, his broad face wincing and resigned.

The newcomer is a hairless man in an ancient cowboy hat and a coat whose tatters trail, wisp-like, at the spurs of his boots. His face is like that of a red moon, sunken and cratered, and without a nose to speak of, his skull gleaming with the scars of some ancient burn.

A ghoul.

You know of such creatures, so changed by radiation that some no longer think them men, though they are human, still, for all their deviance from that race.

The stranger’s dark eyes switch the store with a slow calculation, dismissing its contents before turning at last to Gray and to your shielded figure behind him.

“I heard there was two Vaulties in town,” says the Ghoul. “And lucky me: I just happened upon them.”

“We’re not Vault Dwellers,” Gray says, curtly. “Not anymore.”

Six months ago he’d gotten into a fight with another man he’d perceived to have disrespected you, and had been turned out of the Vault on that account. You had followed, seeing no life there without your husband, though you knew little then of what lay beyond.

Quickly you and Gray had learned the way of the wastes, casting much of what softness you’d had aside but that which you held for one another.

Evidently it is not enough, for the Ghoul looks at your husband with a grin full of sly yellow teeth.

“Hell, look at you,” he says. “Those hands of yours are as tender as a new-born’s. Once a Vaultie, always a Vaultie. You ain’t built to step outside those fish tanks you lock yourselves up in.”

The Ghoul turns to peer at you, his eyes narrowed to earthen slits as Gray pushes you further behind him.

“What do you want with us, anyway?” Gray asks. “We’re just minding our business trying to live up here, same as anybody else.”

Sneering, the Ghoul says, “Yeah, well, let’s see how long that lasts. Now who’s this shrinkin' violet you’re trying so damn hard to hide from me?”

He shunts Gray aside with one rude shoulder and stands over you, eyeing you up and down as he might a saloon whore, his hands resting at his belt.

You’re glad of the cotton dress that covers you from throat to boot top, allowing him nothing of the skin that restless stare likely seeks.

“Now, ain’t you pretty,” says the Ghoul. “What’s your name, sugar?”

Trembling with anger, Gray says, “Leave her alone.”

The Ghoul shifts his jaw in an irritable motion.

“I ain’t talkin’ to you, kid. I’m askin’ her.”

“She can’t talk,” says Gray, and you nod at the Ghoul, who tips his hat back from the crenellation of his brow in mock surprise.

“That so?”

With a trembling hand you sign, yes.

“Sorry, sweetie, I don’t speak your language.”

“She’s mute,” says Gray, quietly. “Has been since she was a baby.”

You echo the statement with cradled arms, and the Ghoul’s head tilts aside like a jackal watching a man die at some lofty distance.

“So you’re tellin’ me this beautiful lady right here can’t make no noise?” he asks, slowly. “Well, ain’t that convenient. See, I’m lookin’ to make some easy money, and as it so happens there’s a whole lot of folks chompin’ at the bit to buy a woman of just that description.”

The Ghoul seizes you by the arms with a motion so sudden that you do not protest, only stumble against him, feeling a sash of bullets like some torn out length of spinal cord upon your own.

“You’re comin’ along with me, darlin’,” says the Ghoul. “Hope you don’t mind.”

His breath is hot against your ear, smelling of cigarettes and some strange chemical.

“You’re not taking her anywhere!” snaps Gray, his lean frame tense with fury. “That’s my wife!”

The Ghoul looks sideways at him, his narrow lips upturned.

“Not no more she ain’t.”

Gray pulls his knife from his belt and lunges forwards, halting only at the raised snout of a gun protruding from the Ghoul’s calm grip.

Davey stands up once more, yelling and waving one arm ineffectually.

“Hey now! Hey now!”

Caught up between two men you find yourself oddly collected, as though by desperation fear has made you the sole point of calm.

Perhaps the Ghoul feels the racket of your heart against your bones; it does not matter. You cannot allow Gray to know it beats so, nor to bound, reckless, into a bullet on your behalf

Looking into the jailhouse madness of your husband’s eyes, you sign, I’ll go with him. I’ll get away. I’ll find you. I love you.

Gray flinches, and sheathing his knife, he says hoarsely, “She says she’ll travel with you. Don’t let her get hurt.”

Davey drops to his seat in palpable relief, a single vein writhing like an albino snake along his forehead.

The Ghoul tucks his gun away with a satisfied ease, his other arm still clamping you to him.

“Oh, I won’t let a soul leave a scratch on her,” he says. “’Cause if they did she wouldn’t be worth shit to me.”

He twists you ahead of him, nudging your ankle with the toe of his boot.

“Come on, Violet,” he says, as you attempt to look back at Gray over your shoulder. “We got places to be.”

As he propels you out of the store you hear Davey half-whisper, “What hell were you thinkin' pullin' a knife on him, kid? That’s Cooper Howard, for fuck’s sake.”

The Ghoul pauses abruptly, as though jerking from the dream of some sunken childhood horror.

“Ain’t gone by that name in years,” he says, gruffly. “Don’t you go raisin’ the dead.”

Then he jostles you onwards, and the sound of his spurs and the closing door become the same funeral song.

*

The Ghoul directs you through the town into a quarter of parched woodland, his gun trained lazily at your back. He speaks little, only snapping occasionally at your unrushed pace, which through dull spite you’ve no interest to change.

The shock of your abduction morphs into a watchful cunning in which you await your moment to revolt, your silence lending greatly to the effect of submission.

Still, you are not trusted to fall behind or even aside of your ruthless captor. The Ghoul has likely walked a hundred cringing hostages to their demise at organ shops or dens of ill repute, and from those journeys knows what tricks he might expect from even so pliant a charge.

In time you’re driven on into desert terrain that goes on unbroken for miles, the afternoon heat crushing strength and moisture from you like the blood of some small animal mercy-killed beneath a stone.

That land, as you have glimpsed before, is wrought of death and casual evil.

You see one man dragging another on a leash, the latter’s knees worn through to the bone from crawling so long in the wastes.

You see ferals beheaded and lashed to sun-bleached fences, only letters marked by stones in the earth denoting what, in life, they’d been.

You see a pack of dogs eating a woman’s entrails in the remains of an old shack, one of which raises its head to watch you pass with one viscous eye like the orb of some addled sorceress.

The Ghoul observes all with the same grim cynicism, smirking occasionally, as though gleaning something blackly comic from this show of ugliness.

He only stops when the sun collides with the skyline, setting up camp in what remains of an old gas station.

You loiter by an old pump, thinking that to run or to attack the Ghoul outright would not end in your favour.

Rising from his work, The Ghoul says, “Come here, darlin’. Let’s see if you have any weapons on you.”

You shake your head, thinking of the knife in your boot and the others in your satchel as the last thread by which you might escape.

Please, you sign. I need them.

The Ghoul strides across the camp and outstretches a leather clad palm.

“Hand ‘em over or I’ll pat you down and take ‘em myself. You’ll be waitin’ for the chance to gut me in my sleep. I ain’t takin' no chances with you, sweetie. “

When you hold back he snatches a handful of your dress and begins a rough search of your body, feeling you all over from breasts to groin with a scowl on his wizened lips.

It’s only when he raises your skirt to retrieve the bowie knife from the back of your boot that something of ordinary male desire crosses his face, his stare crawling the smooth plane of your calf.

He does not touch it, though from the stillness of his observation you perceive that he would like to.

“Gimme that satchel,” says the Ghoul, gruffly. “Let’s see what you got in there.”

He rifles through tinned food and RadAway until he finds the three blades sewn into the lining of your bag.

“That’s one hell of an artillery, Violet. You know how to use all this?”

You nod shortly.

“Well, at least that’s somethin’,” says the Ghoul, and he dumps the open bag into the earth. “Pays to know how to survive in this place.”

Producing a length of rope from somewhere under his coat he takes hold of your wrists and binds them, ignoring your mouthed words of dismay.

“I’ve seen you eyein' that desert,” he says, “tryin’ to figure out if you can slip past me. You might not talk, but your face sure does a lot of yappin’ for you.”

Satisfied with the knot, The Ghoul sits on an upturned barrel and hefts a flask of water to his mouth. Your cracked tongue pushes forth in hopeless want of moisture, watching beads of it run in a careless spill upon his chin.

Catching your eye, the Ghoul says, “Want somethin', Vaultie?”

With knotted hands you gesture to the flask. Sneering, the Ghoul takes another noisy mouthful of water and pours the rest onto a grimy rag with which he wipes his face, a waste of precious contraband.

You turn away, refusing him your despair.

“Here, sweetie,” says The Ghoul, gesturing the sopping fabric. “You want water? Come get what’s left of this.”

Still you do not look at him, attempting not to think of the liquid falling drop by silver drop upon the sand.

The Ghoul scoffs.

“Think you’re too good for it, huh? Well, you ain’t gettin’ anythin’ else all night. Maybe not tomorrow, neither. So come on, Violet. Drink while you can.”

He tugs the rope cuffing your wrists until you’re forced to your knees and holds the cloth to your lips, allowing the water to drip between them. Thirst awakened, you snatch a corner of the scrap in your teeth and suck the fabric dry, aware of the Ghoul’s eyes upon you.

“Now ain’t that a pretty sight,” he says. “Just for that I’ll give you a little more.”

He takes the flask from your own bag and again soaks the filthy cloth. This time you rip it from his hand and squeeze its contents down your throat with knotted hands as though pulping some browned fruit.

“You got spirit, Vaultie,” says the Ghoul, drying his hands on his coat. “I can see you ain’t gonna be easy to tame. But I’ve had dogs before. You ain’t no different.”

Snatching the cloth back, he shoves you into the dirt with a boot squared to your chest.

“See, I told that husband of yours I wouldn’t let you get hurt, but that don’t stop me teachin’ you a lesson, sweetheart. Just as long as I don’t leave a mark on you your value won’t shift a dime.”

You lie on your side, breathless and hateful, watching through half-open eyes as the Ghoul slouches nearby to settle in for the night.

“Get some shut-eye, Violet,” he says. “We got another day or so of walkin' ahead of us.”

You keep sentinel for hours, not trusting his appearance of sleep. Once, when you inch away from the Ghoul across camp, the rope at your wrists is tugged smartly taut as he reels you in across the sand.

“Stay close,” he says, opening one eye to squint at you through the dark. “I ain’t riskin’ somethin’ eatin’ you out here. What the fuck would I sell then?”

*

You awake to the Ghoul’s hand on your shoulder, turning you onto your back as though to identify a cadaver. From the luggage draped on his shoulder you guess he’s keen to leave, compelled by some urgency not yet detailed.

“You hungry?” he asks. “I ain’t openin’ the cans till we need ‘em, but I’ve do have this.”

You glance at the strips of dehydrated meat hung from his bag and shake your head, thinking how easily it might be the flesh of a man, being that the eating of them in the wastes is not uncommon.

“Don’t say I never offered,” says the Ghoul. “I’d wager you’ll be beggin’ for it in a couple of hours.”

As he pulls you to your feet you reach towards him with your wrists, mouthing a plea to be released.

“Now, you know I can’t do that, sunshine,” says the Ghoul, not without humour. “I must have heard that one a hundred times.”

Just one. Please.

The cowboy hums under his breath, thumbing the knot that joins your arms in a display of consideration.

“What do you need a hand for, Violet?”

You shift in discomfort, and to your relief the Ghoul gets the message.

“Alright. You get two minutes to do your business. Then we’re on the road.”

Slipping your dominant hand free of the lasso he turns in the other direction, whistling as you squat in the dirt. You’re coldly surprised that he allows you this dignity.

Once both arms are unified by the rope the Ghoul nudges you before him into the desert again, uncaring of the limp you’ve developed in your fatigue.

On your way you pass a church, repaired after the bomb by some follower of that old religion, or else inherited by the new.

Beyond it lies a boneyard, brittle skeletons set up like headstones across the plane.

There are wandering salesmen naming their wares in croaking shouts as they wheel forth shopping carts before them. There are hardened men and women the Ghoul claims are bandits, firing warning shots before they get close enough to attack.

“They’d eat you up, doll,” he drawls, cleaning off his gun. “Right down to those pretty white bones.”

You cross paths with groups of whores who lift their low-cut dresses and holler at your captor, who tips his hat, but otherwise ignores their attempts to woo him. Families stagger along with children whose faces are like rotting taxidermy, mutated, or else merely warped by whatever horrors they’ve encountered on their endless walk.

At the bottom of a sloping dune you come across the remnants of a massacre, bodies cut down into gelatinous morsels afloat on a lake of blood. When you halt, trembling, at its edges the Ghoul spits at your feet.

“What’s the matter, Vaultie? Don’t you know your Great-Great-Grandpappy and Grandmamma had a hand in making the world the way it is? Your ancestors didn’t give two shits what happened to the rest of us. That blood’s on your hands, darlin’.”

You stare at him without comprehension, thinking how closely his visage resembles the dead.

Suddenly the Ghoul bends over in the throes of a coughing fit, one hand scrabbling in his bag for a vial of liquid he decants into his mouth with a feverish need. He stoops, gasping, for some time, his lashes fluttering helplessly.

As you stare on it occurs to you that you know of this illness, the thing that chars the minds of ghouls away with its dread madness.

It makes Cooper weak, and thus you know what you must watch for in him to slip his hold.

*

That night, camped out beneath a blasted tree, the Ghoul coughs again, a wheeze like that of some punctured machine at work. As he falls sideways, his hands spidering for his pack, you see the precious bottles of elixir skid across the dirt out of his reach.

Starving, half-crazed with tiredness and thirst, you drag yourself up with aid of the tree and approach the Ghoul, watching his face upturn in desolate recognition of what you mean to do.

First you snatch the bags from him, finding a knife to cut your tethers. You spread your hands, gasping at their stiffness as you roll the joints.

Being untrained in the use of firearms you carry his gun to a patch of scrub and throw it amidst the foliage, far from sight. If he turns feral he will not think of it; if he survives the fit it will at least take him time to recover.

The Ghoul’s eyes prod your back with bleak resentment as you work.

Returning to the fallen man, you point your boot at the three glass bottles left of his supply.

You want them? You sign.

The Ghoul nods; you see that he expects nothing, and that lends you a cruel edge of power.

Taking care to look into his browless gaze you raise one boot and smash the vials beneath it, letting their contents leech away into the sand. Still the Ghoul inches forward in an attempt to lick it from the dirt, forgoing his dignity in the face of survival, as is surely his habit.

You draw back a foot and kick sand into his raddled face, burying the last of his medicine in its spray.

Fuck you, you tell him. You son of a bitch.

Then you turn and begin the long walk back to Filly, and to Gray.

*

You march, bow-legged with muscle cramp and blistered ankles, both day and night, pausing only to take your RadAway or drink from the flasks the Ghoul had filled at a well the day before. The dried meat you devour in segments, knowing that you must make your food stock last, or else starve before you reach civilisation.

You no longer care where the strips came from, or tell yourself that you do not. Guilt will inhibit your survival, and you’ve seen enough of the land to acknowledge that all men here are for themselves.

On the second day of solitary travel you are followed by a grinning stranger attracted to your stumbling vulnerability. He whispers as though to a lost love as he shadows you, licking at his mouth with his cracked tongue, one hand in his pocket, upon his cock or a blade, their end all the same to you.

You have not killed before, but from what you’ve known in your six months beyond the Vault you are sure in your knife hand as you turn on him and slit his throat. It is as though some sun burned doppelganger commits the act, so little do you feel as he stills, gargling, in the earth.

Only later, taking rest in a rundown cabin, do you look at your killing arm and wonder that it has taken you so long in the desert to have spilt your first blood. You are not sorry for the stranger, knowing from his mutterings what he would have done with you beneath him.

Still, you feel yourself altered, knighted by death as its champion.

In the morning the man’s body is gone, dragged away from the road by animals, or else by people so like them that their differences are irrelevant.

You begin to ask passers-by if they have seen your husband, all of which shake their heads, or send you on false leads that weary you to the point of sickness in their length.

There is no doubt that Gray would have followed you here; his overzealous sense of morality would not abide the notion of remaining behind. Yet there seems no trace of him in this thankless land, and through your savage tutelage in its ways you doubt that you will find him.

The miles are eaten by your splitting boots, and yet more come, as though in some sequence from nightmare they will never conclude, only expand into a formless frontier. You’re in such pain from walking that you can think of nothing but its grip upon you, raising one foot after the other only through the terror that in resting you may never rise again.

It’s afternoon when you come upon the old church once more, pale as a dead tooth in the gum of the horizon. You lope towards the double doors and knock, hankering after the cool shade within.

An elderly man answers, peering out at you without expression. There is a gun in his hand, aimed in a discreet fashion at your stomach.

Raising your palms, you mouth, Safe. I need shelter.

The old man lowers his gun without apology.

“I see. Come on in, sister. I’ll see about finding you something to drink.”

You are led through a hall in which rows of dirty wooden pews face the carved figure of a martyr nailed to a cross. His carved eyes seem to dog you as you sit and accept a cup of water as though judging you for the sin of taking a life.

You look back at him, dispassionate, untouched by He you do not worship.

The priest asks, “You’re troubled, sister. What is it you’re looking for out here?”

Taking a notepad and the worn-down stub of a pencil out of your bag you write, I’m looking for my husband. His name is Gray Freeland. He’s tall. Blue eyes. Freckles. He’s from a Vault. You’d know him.

The old man reads slowly, following the text with his finger.

“Well,” he says. “I haven’t seen many living folks pass through here in a long time. Mostly I keep my doors locked, since the only people I do see are man eaters. Wildmen.

“Just the other day I chased a few of them off a body they were dragging along, thinking to cut pieces from it whenever they were hungry, I suppose. I brought the poor man into the crypt so as I could give him a decent burial.”

Again you glance at the man on the cross and see that he is weeping. Your own eyes are dry, raw from the sand winds, a travelling cynic’s.

Take me to see the body, you write, and the old priest leads you down a narrow stairway like the coil of a shell into a cool basement of stone.

On a slab there lies a corpse, the ribs opened out and plucked clean of organs, the face half devoured, marks left on the skull from scraping teeth.

The other eye, the sloping cheekbone. These, intact, you know.

“You recognise this man?” asks the old man. “Is he your husband?”

You don’t answer, just look at the body as you did the massacre, stunned beyond grief by the cruelty of the wastes.

In the notebook you write, I want a funeral for him. A burial.

“You weren’t parted from your husband by the hand of God alone,” says the priest. “Someone came between you two.”

Yes, you say. The Ghoul. Cooper Howard. He wanted to sell me for caps, or medicine, I think. I ran away.

A twitch tugs the old man’s eye like a fishing line.

You write, you know this Ghoul.

“Yes. Everyone around these parts has heard of him. He’s a brutal man. He’s killed women, children, anyone to get what he wants. If he has any sort of code at all then it’s not one I know of.”

You stare into the eye of your dead lover and inherit from it his resolve to go on.

I should leave. If the Ghoul survived, then he may come here.

Placing a veined hand on yours, the priest asks, “What did you do to him, sister?”

Not enough.

*

You stay at the church overnight, given a meal of salted meat and hard bread, and a bath in a vast tin tub. You sleep on a palette bed in a back room with clean sheets, and drink cool water that tastes only of minerals, and not the filth of the wastes.

Yours is a slumber like that of the sick, or the long dead.

Then at first daylight you’re back on the road again, forced to leave your husband’s body to rot in its chill crypt.

With no purpose but to live you trundle forth past the grotesque landmarks that distinguish each stretch of earth from the other, walk until your boots are blood soaked and your hips ache like a crone’s.

Only when your knees give out do you resign yourself to set up camp by a defunct railroad, warming a tin of soup over a pitiful fire. You think almost of nothing as you drink, beaten flat as an ancient coin by the afternoon sun and the grinding nature of your suffering.

Slumped on an old box, you look at the fire, like some offshoot of your skyward enemy, and yearn for the cool of the Vault.

Footsteps crunch in the sand at your back, and a soft male voice says, “Now there’s my shrinkin' violet. Sittin’ out here all alone.”

Before you can dart away a weight strikes the middle of your back, pitching you into the dirt in a clumsy sideways roll. Winded, you find yourself peering up into the ravaged features of the Ghoul, and think that Death in his ragged coat could not appear so cruel.

“You’re tougher than I gave you credit for, sweetie,” he says, conversationally. “Meaner, too. Where’d that holier than fuckin’ thou Vault attitude go to?”

He must have hidden some vials amidst his clothes, enough to revive him from his lunacy. You had not thought to check his pockets, absorbed as you were in your revenge.

The Ghoul strips you of your weapons, tutting at the banality of routine. Then he looks down at how you’ve fallen, legs apart, your prairie dress gathered up like a tangled net about your knees, and notices the undergarments cupped with sweat to the cut of your cunt.

You see, then, a stain of thought spread through him like a thirst for blood, his eyes as black as the charred stumps of headless ferals you’d seen roped to fencing on the road.

“Well, now,” says the Ghoul. “Least I’ve figured out a way you can pay me back for all them vials you stomped on.”

His voice is low, a purr of heated malice.

With the nose of his gun he lifts your skirts up to your thighs and nudges the barrel against your cunt, Vault regulation underwear done away with in one taunting motion.

“Get up, doll,” says the Ghoul. “I’m gonna do something that dumbfuck husband of yours probably never did and teach you how to ride.”

He sits down on the wooden crate and gestures with his weapon for you to rise.

“Come on, Violet. Get that old dress off and take a seat.”

He pats his thigh, and you shake your head, signing with frantic hands.

No. No. Not this. I’m married.

He doesn’t yet know of your husband’s death, it seems, for when you gesture to your wedding ring the Ghoul’s expression sours.

“I had a wife like you, once,” he says. “Soft skin, and real beautiful, like a movie star. And just like you she screwed me over, so pardon me if I don’t take the sanctity of marriage too seriously no more.”

He moves the gun again, his fingers approaching the trigger.

“Now do what I said. If you make me shoot you I’ll be sure to hit you some place it’ll hurt. You want that, sweetheart?”

You glance over your shoulder at a universe of sand, contemplating how far you’d get before the Ghoul put a bullet in your back. Perhaps he’d let you run a bit for idle fun before he shot you down.

It’s as you’re thinking this that a weight falls about your neck and the Ghoul yanks you to him by a lead of rope, half throttling you in his malice.

“Damn it, Vaultie, you ain’t runnin’ out on your payment,” he says, coolly. “I ought to whip the skin off your hide for what you did.”

You’d be nose to nose with the Ghoul, if he still had one. In his irises you see your own face, still human, so unlike his. The beauty of it has taunted this man like water the many thirsting in the Wasteland, a mirage made real, and now owed to him through your slight upon his person.

It scares you, that bitter lust. He might kill you through the thing he means to do.

Stilled by one gloved fist on the lasso, you daren’t struggle as the Ghoul peels your dress up over your head, blinkering you with the fabric. His free hand trails from your quivering throat to both breasts, taking his time with the exploration.

He wants the glove off; you feel it in the labour with which he draws a path between your thighs, near awed by the delicacy of you against him.

You wrestle the dress off your head and glare with a spiteful terror into his scarred carapace.

“How’d a pure little Vault dweller like you change so fast?” asks The Ghoul, almost in admiration. “The Wasteland ain’t barely started with you yet. Maybe you loved that boy so much it drove you crazy. Used to be songs about that, as I recall. Songs about men like me, too, and what we do when we’re crossed by snakes like yourself.”

You sign you deserved what I did to you with expressions and hard gestures he understands.

“I admit I played with you a little,” says the Ghoul. “’Cause when I see a green, pretty girl like you I want to screw you into the dirt like a smoke. Just about the only way you’ll learn how things really are when you’re in a tough spot in the Wasteland.”

He spits on his gloved fingers and bars them between your folds, watching with his head inclined as you stiffen up in pain and disgust at his entry.

“Well,” he says. “Now I know what I ought to drink when I’m runnin’ low on water.”

You think to strike him, but the lasso is braided across your windpipe merely at the flash of your eye.

“Don’t be stupid now, Violet. I know you’re a smart girl. I’d hate for you to prove me wrong.”

He takes his gloves off with his teeth and spits them in the sand. With one bare palm he touches you all over, the rasp of his strange skin like grit against your own. The other hand struggles with the opening of his pants, starving to have them open.

“What’s the matter?” asks the Ghoul, as you look down at his cock, which is as coarse as the rest of him. “Ain’t nothing to be scared of.”

He tests your opening with two fingers, and you convulse with a silent agony at their insertion, and the betrayal.

“Aw, now come on now, sweetheart. It ain’t that bad. Still, I’d use that mouth of yours instead, only I know you’d bite like a mare.”

His skull-like features press close to yours. He smells of smoke, of sweat, as most men do in the Wasteland.

“Now open those legs of yours and sit,” says the Ghoul, “before I pick some other hole.”

When you merely stare in sickened mutiny he forces you up onto his lap. You cringe as he punctures your cunt with his length, twice that of your husband’s, breaking you upon him like the bones of an enemy.

The Ghoul looks at you from under half lids, his lashes as lush and beautiful as black reeds, a surprising feature amidst such ruin.

“Hurts, don’t it?” he asks. “That’s what you get for crossin’ a fella in these parts.”

He ducks down and licks the sweat off your tits up to your neck, smacking his lips with a pop.

“Salt and tequila. Makes me miss the good old days.”

You grip his tattered coat for stability as he jounces you on his cock, thinking of the sinewy flesh under his collar, wondering if your blunt little white teeth could prise out a vein. Wondering if he still bleeds like a man, or gives but dust.

“Come on, now, little lady,” says the Ghoul. “Why ain’t you puttin' in no work? Get to it.”

He slaps your flank, but you don’t move, in too much pain from walking and the girth of him to do much but wince as in the rhythm of his arms you fall and fall upon it.

“Hope you ain’t tired already,” says the Ghoul. “We’re just warmin’ up.”

You mouth ‘ugly’ into his face, emphasising the syllables.

Your attacker leers.

“That may be, but you’re still wet for me, ain’t you? Maybe you ain’t so opposed to fuckin’ a ghoul as you let on.”

Enraged, you try to spit at him, cannot rally enough moisture to defile the smirking cheek.

“Don’t waste your water, Violet,” says the Ghoul. “I sure won’t be loanin’ you any.”

He turns you on his lap, one arm across your breasts, another at your hip, squeezing the meat there with lusting appreciation. You struggle in his hold, your joints like troughs of magma, and the Ghoul laughs against your neck.

“Still want to fight, huh? Ain’t no skin off my back.”

The Ghoul shoves you forward into the earth, and you roll there together like men. With ease he could overpower you, yet he allows you your digs and attempts to inch out from under him for the sake of some bastard fairness.

His heat, his heaviness upon you incurs a panicked need to buck him from your back. You almost succeed, except the Ghoul yanks you to him through the dirt and stones like a prisoner drawn and quartered.

Then, turning you under him, he casts a palm full of sand into your face, watching you choke and fight to rub the grains from your eyes with a vindicated pleasure.

“You know, Violet,” he says, “I may not speak your signs, but I can read some. There was a deaf fella out in Truth or Consequences I used to have dealings with, and I picked up plenty from him. I know you’ve been cussin’ and cursin’ me since the day we met. Makes it all the better knowing I can fuck you.”

Again he fills you with the rot of his existence, growling as he does so, a gleeful torturer at work. You kick at him with your boot heels as you might some mad horse, but he keeps at you, unrelenting, his grinning teeth like the cracked plains of soil after drought.

The friction of the Ghoul within you, rough skin to the soft, builds a cave there in which pain shambles out as something else.

He groans as he feels that change around him, wetness in a land so absent of it. Not once in this attack had he intended your desire, had expected only your abjection on the pumice of his want. His hands go back to your body then, to your breasts, your outstretched neck, and he touches you as a husband might, as he did his own bride, long ago.

You bury your fingers into the burning sand and pray to what God, if any, rules the wastes. By now you know Him as a man, not the weeping idol of crucifixion but one of greed and brutal caprice.

Climax—yours and the Ghoul’s—ride together like two prey animals grown to hunt in symbiosis, his just ahead of yours. He fucks you with his half-hard cock until you cease motion around him, and still does not pull loose.

The way he looks at you no man ever has, not even the rough ilk of Filly.

The Ghoul’s eyes are hellfire and tenderness; he had loved a woman like you, and hasn’t forgotten who he’d been when he’d done so. But he can love like that no longer, and though there’s something nearly gentle in the way he moves to cup your face in his hand you are only appalled by the radiance of his desire.

The fight snaps free of you in a bracing instant, and the Ghoul watches it go. Watches your face in all the motions of defeat.

“Those lips of yours,” he croons. “Even cherry pie ain’t sweeter. Now I’ve got to have me a taste.”

Then he kisses you, softly, at first, after the ripping winds of his fucking, and then with a grunt like some rooting boar he sets at you with the aggression of before, consuming you with tongue and borderless mouth until what thought there was of past romance is chipped from the gravestone of him.

The Ghoul’s hat fell off sometime in the scuffle; as he rises again you see that the weird planes of his skull are beautiful, as the rest of him must once have been.

Like some Martian fiend he appears as he crouches over your quivering nakedness, tugging your gown back on over your head as though dressing a stiff little corn doll.

“Now we’re just about even,” says the Ghoul. “And if you put even a foot wrong I’ll keep on evenin' that score.”

He sets about tying the lasso about your neck to a stake of wood in the dirt. That done, he sits back on the box and looks at you again, dusting his hat off absently with one hand.

You stare through him and up at the bile of deities that is the golden afternoon sky.

“Now you’re gettin’ it, Violet,” says the Ghoul. “The Wasteland ain’t no place for a Vaultie housewife like yourself.”

Later, one of your hands outstretches to pen letters in the sand.

I-A-M-A-W-I-D-O-W.

The Ghoul blinks.

“Well, shit. And there I was thinkin’ I’d wrecked a decent home.”

S-H-O-O-T-M-E.

“After all the fussin’ I’ve been through to get you back you ain’t goin’ nowhere. And don’t try to kill yourself, neither. I sleep with one eye open. You’re worth more to me alive, and I ain’t about to forget it.”

The Ghoul lies down beside you, arms folded under his head, content in the desert’s justice.

Only when the night slaps like a dripping cloth over you both does he speak to you again.

“I ain’t gonna sell you, Violet. You better learn to earn your keep.”

[itsjusthockey]

Nights Like These - Jack Hughes

Summer Series Open Now

And another one...enjoy

Send in your requests, I'm super excited

w.c: 1,266

“We’ll be ready in a minute,” you hear Jack yell from the bedroom as you frantically apply a thick layer of mascara. “(Y/N) is just taking forever.”

You can hear his smirk through the last part, and you’re really hoping that he can see you flick him off through the doorway.

“Sorry, I was informed we were going out thirty seconds ago.” You throw on some deodorant as Jack walks into the bathroom shirtless.

“Don’t be annoyed at me,” he moves behind you in the mirror, resting his chin on your shoulder. “I was planning on having an eventful night in. You’re the one who said you’d love to accompany my brothers to the bar.”

You roll your eyes because he’s right, but who could blame you? When Quinn had said it’d been a while since you’d had a drink together, you’d practically run up the stairs to get ready. It isn’t very often that the Hughes brothers express love, and that was Quinn’s way of telling you he’s missed you dearly.

“I know. I’m sorry I wrecked your evening plans; one of these nights, we’ll be alone.”

A smile tugs on Jack's face, and he plants a quick kiss on your shoulder and smacks your ass as he leaves the bathroom, presumably to find some clothing.

A few minutes later, with a final touch of lipgloss and some sprits of perfume, you deem yourself ready to face the Michigan Summer crowd. You step out of the bathroom, and Jack catches your attention and does a little spin.

“This fine?” He gestures to his outfit.

You nod, throwing on your sneakers and grabbing one of Jack's sweatshirts for later. Soon, the two of you make your way downstairs, where Quinn and Luke are sitting on the couch watching something.

Quinn is the first to notice your presence, and his eyes widen in mock surprise. "About time. I’m surprised Jack actually managed to find someone who takes longer than him to get ready.

You scoff at the comment. “Well, Q, not all of us can be as naturally adorable as you are.”

Quinn rolls his eyes at your response, and the banter continues as you all head out to your favorite summer bar. When you get there, it’s pretty busy, but the night is still young. You manage to find a booth in a cozy corner, the perfect vantage point to observe the bar's vibrant energy.

“Everyone wants the usual?” Quinn asks, pulling out his card.

A chorus of yeses is heard, and he makes his way away from the table toward the bar. A few minutes later, he returns, drinks in hand, and you dive into everything you all have missed about each other's lives.

Less than half an hour later, the night takes a busy turn. The decently lively bar has become ridiculously crowded, and you’re overlooking the crowd wondering how the hell you’re going to make it to the bar.

“We need refills,” you shake your empty glass, eyeing the crowd. “but I’m not sure if we can wade through the masses.”

You scoot up a little bit to get a better vantage point, and once you do, you see a small opening in the sea of people leading to the bar.

“I see a path. It’s go time.”

You’re quick to slide out of the booth, Jack following behind. As you navigate through the crowded bar, carefully maneuvering between people, Jack's hand remains securely in your belt loop, ensuring he doesn't lose sight of you. Finally reaching the bar, your favorite waitress spots you and approaches with a warm smile.

“Another round?" she asks, her voice barely audible over the music and the noise.

You nod eagerly, handing her Jack's shiny black card; you playfully remark, "I love paying with your card. Makes me feel not poor."

Jack chuckles, leaning in to give you a quick peck on your pout. "You're not poor. You're just in college. Besides, what's mine is yours."

You playfully jab his ribs in response, savoring the feeling of being with him. The pretty waitress swiftly returns with your drinks, and after signing the bill and leaving a generous tip, you lead Jack back toward your cozy corner booth.

As you return to the table with the freshly replenished drinks, the wild energy of the bar surrounds you once again. The music seems to have gotten louder, and the crowd has grown even more lively. You finally settle back into your booth, Jack's arm wrapped securely around your shoulder, when you suddenly realize you must pee.

You lean towards your boyfriend's ear, “Let me free. I have to pee.”

He drops his arm, but before you can fully move, he interjects.

“I’ll come with.”

You nod, tell the others where you’re off to, and return to navigating through the crowded bar. When you reach the bathrooms, you almost groan when you see the line for the women’s stretches far beyond what you anticipated.

“Fuck, I have to pee so bad.” You complain.

You sigh again, accepting defeat, and get in the line, watching as your boyfriend steps into the men’s bathroom and reappears in front of you a second later.

“Go.”

He nods his head toward the men’s bathroom, standing protectively in front of the door, creating a barrier between you and anyone else. You shoot him a grateful smile and a quick peck on the cheek before slipping inside the bathroom.

You’re done a minute later, and you emerge from the bathroom feeling better than ever. As you exit, you find Jack waiting patiently, a small grin on his face.

“Mission accomplished?" he asks, offering you his arm.

“Mission accomplished," you confirm, linking your arm with his.

Together, you make your way back to the table where Quinn and Luke are both talking about something related to hockey. You’re the first to notice that the night has taken its toll, and everyone is starting to wind down.

After a minute of sitting, you all decide it's time to call it a night, having had your fill of laughter and drinks. The bar has become even more crowded, and the air is thick with a mix of music and voices, and you’re honestly sick of people. So, you bid farewell to the vibrant atmosphere, weaving your way through the crowd, and step out into the cool night.

Arm in arm, you and Jack make your way to the car, the others trailing behind. The drive home is filled with comfortable silence and the soft hum of the radio. As you arrive home, Jack parks the car, and you make your way inside, hand in hand.

Once you step through the door, Jack is quick to snake his arm around your waist.

“How about we ditch these losers and head upstairs.”

A smile tugs at the corners of your lips, and you nod in agreement. You both make your way to the bedroom and have a quick shower, much to Jack's dismay and soon you’re slipping under the bed's covers.

Once you’re in, Jack pulls you into him, and you settle yourself into his warm embrace. You stay that way for a while, and pretty soon, you realize you’re losing the battle to the sleep demons.

Jack, of course, has already lost and is already knocked out. You smile at his serene state, knowing he always sleeps better when you’re with him. You gently peck his nose, watching as it scrunches up a bit, and settle deeper into his hold. It’s been a long day, and now, you’ll sleep.

[ofoceansandtombsanew]

the summer moon was born from the waves to be loved (gojo x reader) pt 2

or, you got pregnant and the ghost of university days past finds out five years later.

tags: 18+, afab!reader (she/her), baby daddy gojou au pt 2: electric boogaloo

AO3 || pt 1

TAGLIST: (bold couldn't be tagged) @cafedanslanuit @ainescribe @chiyoso @wishing--butterfly @hash-slinging-slasher-trash @sweet-evie @korrynn-nadine @strawberrycrash @juzestellium @theabbies @evalynanne @mghostsworld @syynnaaah @cupidezlyia @princessrow12 @lindascosmos @hydraafk @moosey

o. buoy

If Satoru was forced to use some sort of ocean-related terminology to describe you, he’d say you’re a buoy.

You were the marine biology major. (What was the difference between that and oceanography? Satoru had no idea. You explained it to him at least twice though). Because of that, Satoru heard his fair share of marine terminology from you.

Buoys were those floating things at sea, the ones from Finding Nemo that had all the seagulls on it. You said they were guiding posts, gave heads up for reefs or they could be warnings for hazardous zones.

To Satoru, you were like an anchorless buoy that ー no matter how far he sailed ー he could never reach.

i. halocline

You’ve never felt permanent; not to Satoru.

You sooner felt like one of those quickly formed friendships you thought would last forever only for it to dwindle out as fast as it started. Then that person was just a forgotten name in your contacts list until you’re scrolling down and going ‘Who the hell is this? Delete’ without a second thought.

It was strange.

An oxymoron of the highest degree.

How did someone who was such a constant in his life from the moment you set foot in it simultaneously feel as impermanent as foam on the waves? One minute you were there, the next you weren’t. Satoru wasn’t sure when the fear of you disappearing entirely crept in.

When those looks started appearing on your face.

All he knew was that it started long before he started sleeping with you and it started long before you left.

One moment you’re hanging out ー undoubtedly doing something stupid. Singing the wrong lyrics to a song on the radio, putting Suguru’s hair in pigtails, watching María la del Barrio with Utahime who took one Spanish class and made telenovelas her entire personality for a month ー then you’d grow quiet and this far away look would be in your eyes. Satoru never knew where you went in those moments, but it wasn’t there.

So he’d do something to anchor you back to land. It didn’t have to be much.

A poke to the cheek,

a tickle to your side, 

calling out to you,

sometimes he’d even play with your fingers.

It didn’t matter what he did as long as you’d blink and grin and go “what’s up?” and everything would feel right in the world.

It never would feel right long enough though; the look always came back and the feeling would persist.

When you sang songs in the car.

(“I can do it fast or slow, it really doesn't matter, though. 'Cause I'm a pro, what you say? You wanna take me toe to toe? Uh no, dude, I think so,” you’d rap Kel’s verse flawlessly like you’d rehearsed it for hours. “My style is phat and Immature’s got my back on this funky trackー” you pointed at Satoru enthusiastically.

“You want fries with that?” Satoru would point back with way too much passion for a line that went way too hard for what he was actually saying. “Coo coo ca-choo whatcha gonna do?”

Shoko would roll her eyes but she’d still be smiling when Suguru softly brought in the chorus with rhythmic bumps of his head, “watch me do my thing, I like to do my thing, watch me do my thing, everybody sayー”

Your head continued to bump along but you stopped singing along and looked out the window. Satoru remembered he threw his arm around your shoulders loudly belting the rest of the lyrics until you laughed and joined back in.)

When you indulged Utahime’s telenovela personality change.

(“[First], quit zoning out. I’m bored.”

“Hey, unlike you, I’m actually paying attention.”

“Oh yeah, then what’s been going on?”

“Soraya Montenegro is gasping in Spanish right now.”

“Can you both shut u- OH MY GODー”

“IS NO ONE GONNA STOP THIS BITCH?”)

And at parties.

(Satoru always knew you were about to leave when you made that face. Things could start perfectly at the beginning of the night. You’d finally skulk out of your cave like you were Gollum from Lord of the Rings and wave him over. The next moment? You were in deep thought while your friends made joke after joke, rip after rip.

“Sorry gang, but my lips don’t touch anything but Don Equis and Asahi,” you’d say with an air of regality not suited for a party of college students. “Maybe Corona if there’s nothing else. I’m not drinking... whatever this is. So I’m gonna head out, there’s a 24 hour liquor store around here somewhere.”

“You coming back?” Satoru didn’t know why he asked, he already knew what your answer would be.

“Nah, I think I’m done for the night. I’ll catch you guys later though.”

“I’ll walk you back to your place then.”)

He doesn’t know why he looked at your lips that night at the park. 

You were friends, he liked being your friend. That’s all there was to it. It had always annoyed him up until that point when Suguru and Shoko joked the two of you were more like a couple than anything else. That he chased after you like a lovesick puppy, the pathetic but funny kind. He wasn’t sure why it annoyed him so much.

Maybe it was because it felt like it reduced everything about his friendship with you into that shit take that the opposite sex couldn’t just be friends.

Maybe it was something else entirely. He doesn't know.

You weren’t permanent.

Not while you sat beside him in a park at who knows when in the morning and not even when you reassured him his life would work out the way he wanted and you touched him like he was something precious to you.

“Be careful I don’t disappear for months, spirited away by the sea folk on my Children of the Sea shit. I’ll come back to shore occasionally, mysterious as the sea itself.” You already were as mysterious as the sea itself.

“Even if you got spirited away, I’d just go and bring you right back.” Satoru meant it. Even if, more than anything, it felt more like he was making that promise to reassure himself. It didn’t matter how far off to the sea you went as long as Satoru could bring you back to the shore. “You’ve doomed yourself.” More specifically you said that to him. Maybe he should have taken it more of a warning than a light-hearted nudge.

“You said it first, remember?” You did. He remembered it as clear as day. He’d stumbled onto an unstable boat and you were a buoy far off in the distance.

“There’s no ditching me now, not even at sea.” So stay. That’s all Satoru needed you to do.

The sprinklers that decided to join in on the moment must have been a sign that he was in the middle of a prophecy that was going to be fulfilled whether he wanted it to or not. That’s why he kissed you first in the doorway of your bathroom when you just came to ask if he wanted tea.

Buoys are supposed to have anchors, right? 

Maybe he could be yours.

When Satoru woke up the day after the first time you slept together, he woke up alone.

It wasn't until he reached out an arm lazily to your side of the bed and he patted the mattress several times that he realized no one was there. The bed had long since gone cold so you had to have been gone for a while. Yes, you called five minutes later from McDonald’s cheerily going “Yooo, Satoru, I’m at Mickey D’s, what do you want?” Still it cemented your impermanence and that was only the first of many times he woke up by himself.

You could be out the house or in; Satoru preferred when you were in. Sometimes you’d be in the kitchen humming some unknown tune, other times you’d be watching TV on the couch. Either way, he could drape himself over you with a tired ‘morning’ and hold you close.

(“What are you wa- is that the new episode of Love is Blind?”

“Um… I only just started it two minutes ago?”

“[First], what the hell!? While I was asleep?!”)

From then on when Satoru saw those far away looks, he’d kiss you since it was on the table now. Satoru put everything into those kisses and you’d kiss him back just as hard.

Don’t go anywhere. He’d thread one hand into your hair and the other would pull your waist closer to his. Satoru didn’t want or need anything else. Stay.

You kissed him like you would.

It’s crazy how easily you could just slip away from everything like a ghost that hadn’t been there at all. It was shockingly apparent that impromptu trip you took to the beach in the middle of the semester.

Everyone had been together in awe of the bioluminescent dots in the sea and it donned on him you hadn’t said anything in a while. You were gone.

He’d painted his panic in his usual bravadoー nonchalant and grinning, claiming he was gonna go bother you for a bit.

It was a relief when he found you.

It was dreadful when he found you.

Satoru couldn’t see your face clearly but he could tell your look was intent on the sea and how it shined with the glow of a billion bright lights. If there was a ghost ship calling you out to the depths, Satoru knew you’d leave in a heartbeat.

You slowly became more noticeably distant from your group of mutual friends after that trip. It didn’t start immediately, you’d acted the same as usual at first. You still sang songs in the car, Utahime had grown out of her novela phase in favor of all of you losing your shit at the editing of Indian serial dramas and in between those moments Satoru found himself in your bed again.

It was around that time you started kissing his forehead; when the kisses started, that’s when you started drifting away from his orbit. You said it was homework, your profs telepathically communicating to increase your workload.

You alright?

What kind of sadists are your professors if you’re this busy?

Just let me know if you need me to come over some kind of distraction. Sorry for coming over earlier unannounced, I shouldn’t have assumed. Just wanted to make sure you were okay.

“Do you think she thinks I’m being clingy?” Satoru mumbled as he stared at your text that you were fine just dying from homework. You definitely thought he’s being clingy. He’d always been a bit clingy with his friends. He was probably more overbearing than usual though.

“Yes,” Kenjaku replied without missing a beat. “You’re gonna get dumped if you keep this up.”

God what does Suguru see in this guy? He’s like a fucking parasite. “I wasn’t asking you,” Satoru glared. “And she isn’t my girlfriend.”

Suguru snorted, running his hands through his boyfriend’s hair, “play nice both of you,” he said lightly and Satoru rolled his eyes. “But if [First] is saying she’s fine, then just trust that she’s fine. She’ll come back around when her workload decreases.”

Satoru glared with a pout, “you’re worried too, don’t act like it’s just me.”

“I never said it was, it’s just that between the two of us I’m handling it better. I sent her a surprise uber eats delivery yesterday.” Asshole, that was a brilliant idea. Satoru wished he thought of it first. Instead he asked Shoko to check on you; maybe you’d be more receptive if it wasn’t him bothering you for the tenth text in a row.

Shoko went to check on you. Apparently you were fine and Satoru was worrying for nothing. She even said that you would come and hang out with them soon. Some people might say it’s a bit petty to celebrate the failures of others. In another universe, Satoru might even agree with them. But in this universe, Satoru was a hater first and foremost. So if he and his friends wanted to go out to eat to celebrate the fact Zenin Naoya was bitching about a failing grade on an essay, he and his friends were going to go out and eat to celebrate Zenin Naoya failing his essay.

Apparently, you were all haters.

It was also just nice seeing you again. If Satoru was more poetic, he’d probably add a bunch of other things to that statement. It was just nice to have you back.

“Karma is probably gonna come back to clap us in the ass for celebrating someone getting a bad grade,” you snickered.

“Sounds like a problem for future us,” Suguru grinned with a twinkle in his eyes.

“We go to school with the Japanese version of Ben Shapiro,” Satoru choked on his strawberry smoothie when Shoko said that. “I think we’re covered on karma.”

“Y’all are terrible people,” Satoru clicked his tongue, shaking his head in disbelief and shame.

“Hey, good neighbor, this dinner was your idea,” you nudged him with a dry tone and a smile.

Satoru nudged back with a grin of his own.

Dinner was fun, lots of drinks and jokes. It was a non-alcoholic beverage sort of night. Shoko said it was because they’d clearly been drinking too much if Satoru of all people had gotten better with holding his liquor. Her point was fair but rude nonetheless yet when Satoru turned to whine for you to come to his defense, the distant glaze was over your eyes and your smile was smaller than it had been the last time he looked at it.

“[First],” your motion to close your apartment door stopped and you hummed with a raised eyebrow. Satoru felt more dread than usual that night. Something about the air had been different. The face you made felt different than it normally did. It was always distant, you were always far away, but tonight was the worst it had ever been. “We’re good, right?”

You look at him like he grew an extra four eyes. “Why wouldn’t we be?”

Satoru couldn’t meet your eyes as he shrugged wordlessly. You’d probably say he was being ridiculous and clingy if he mentioned anything but he couldn’t find anything else to say to make himself seem unbothered either.

You rolled your eyes with a grin before stretching your arms out wide. “You’re being overdramatic, you big baby. Come here, big guy,” Satoru pulled you in close, burying his nose in the corner of his neck. Despite welcoming your embrace, it did nothing to soothe Satoru’s anxieties.

“I’ll see you later, yeah?” Satoru asked without pulling away from you completely.

The way you smiled at him was warm but it still somehow felt unreadable. Satoru knew all of your smiles. Your happy ones,

the sad ones, 

the one you made when Sora finally got into Smash. 

The ones you made when you were mad that he was successfully charming his way out of you being mad at him. 

Satoru didn’t know this one.

Despite that fact, Satoru let you cup his face in your hands and he let you stand on the tip of your toes to place a kiss on his forehead. “See you, Satoru."

ii. undertow

Sleep didn’t come to Satoru after he laid in bed.

His head was too full as he kept running back through what you told him after he took you home.

You didn’t say you’d see him later.

You’re just being overdramatic, Satoru forced his eyes to close. You’re always overdramatic. It’s my best trait 30% of the time.

No one else said anything that night, it was just him who felt like this, right? It was always just him. If everyone else felt like something was off all night, someone would have mentioned it by now. With that, Satoru forced his eyes closed for all of five minutes before he decided to send, at the very least, a dumb meme. Something that’d make you laugh when you saw it and would make you reply “I’m wheezing” or “that’s so us!”

A quick stroll through his photos was all it took to find something suitable. He can’t remember exactly what it was, only that it was stupid.

It was stupid and didn’t go through to your phone.

A disconnect and reconnect dance to his wifi later and it still didn’t go through.

Satoru’s feet was on the pavement before not even a heartbeat after he calmly made sure his apartment was locked.

He just had to be sure you were okay. It was just him being an overdramatic, big baby. Your phone died or something and that’s why nothing was going through. Or maybe this was like the time you put your phone in airplane mode to narrowly avoid sending Shoko the wrong meme and then forgot to switch it back off.

You don’t answer the door when he knocks and he goes back and forth between knocking and trying to reach you on your other socials.

Twitter? Blocked.

He can’t find you anywhere else.

Instagram.

LINE.

Discord.

It’s like you were never there, gone from all the group chats and servers you once shared.

Satoru stayed outside of your apartment for the better part of an hour before one of your neighbors opened her door tired and annoyed.

“Dude, do you know what time it is?” Your neighbor asked groggily. She’s a nice girl, the reason rent was low enough in the area you could afford an apartment on your own. Apparently she wrecked shit in the neighborhood on the low to keep the rent down. Even better was the fact she was the landlord’s daughter. Not all heroes wore capes. 

“Sorry,” Satoru knew he must look like a maniac with his messy hair and wide eyes. “have you seen [First]? I’m having a hard time reaching her.”

The neighbor gave him a funny look, “she moved out tonight,” she told him like that was the fifth time she told him that her favorite color was orange. “I thought it was weird you didn’t help with moving her stuff out a few days ago. She gave me the key to give it to my dad tomorrow. Didn’t she tell you she was leaving?”

iii. la niña

Satoru didn’t know which was worse sometimesー the fact Shoko kept the fact he had a daughter a secret for five years or how he found out.

It wasn’t like Shoko approached him one gloomy night when memories of the most prominent ghost in his life began bubbling to the surface. She didn’t grimly say that she needed to tell him something and he should sit down for it. She didn’t start off with apologies, saying she felt she had no choice or that if things had gone different she would have told him.

None of that happened.

Satoru found out by accident.

Accident.

All because Shoko didn’t hear him approach her when she was on her phone scrolling through instagram. She was so focused on whatever she was looking at, she didn’t even notice how Satoru quietly snickered to himself and snuck behind her to give her spook. He was just about to say something, ready for swears and ‘you’re so annoying, what are you 12?!’s when he took an instinctual glance at her phone and he saw you.

Thoughts of scaring Shoko went out the window in a matter of milliseconds. He didn’t even feel his body move when he snatched her phone out of her hand.

“Heyー” Shoko started with an offended hiss but when she looked over her shoulder, she looked like she saw an impending storm and her jaw clamped shut.

Satoru took in the photo like it was the last thing he’d ever see. You were dressed in a blue t-shirt and cream colored shorts, some aquarium’s logo stitched into your clothes. You were holding a kid, hugging her tightly and kissing her cheek while the girl was caught mid-giggle. And when Satoru looked at the little girl in your arms, it was his eyes that looked back.

“I- she told me not to say anything,” Shoko murmured, brown eyes looking anywhere but at him. Then the secrets came rolling out one after the other.

“If I didn’t see this picture,” Satoru’s grip tightened on Shoko’s phone to ground himself to the present. “Were you still going to keep this a secret from me?”

Her answer was silence.

iv. el niño

“I have to be honest,” from the corner of your eye, you see Satoru chasing after Itsuki, Nanako and Mimiko. Suguru is watching next to you on the bench, your respective care bags for accidents and playground injuries at the ready between you. “I thought I’d be more surprised you’re a dad now. But it kinda just makes sense. You always had ‘single mom’ energy in school.”

Brown eyes flash with recognition, “you had a dream about me adopting kids once, right?”

“No, I had a dream where you were off a perk and calling people without powers ‘monkeys’,” you correct your old friend petulantly. As if he should have remembered after all these years without contact. “You just happened to adopt children in the process of all that.”

Suguru snorts, “my apologies for getting the details wrong. So you had a dream that I adopted kids once and that I was off a perk."

"Exactly, thank you."

A silence somewhere between comfortable and awkward settles over the two of you, save for the squeals of little girls and Satoru’s manic laughter as the evil sorcerer king.

Suguru looks nice. 

He’s still rocking the man bun but he’s opted to let some of his hair hang loose and he’s a couple hundred pounds down a shitty, parasitic boyfriend. Suguru and Kenjaku broke up halfway through the semester after you transferred. “Before you ask, yes, we had dinner to celebrate,” Suguru told you when you saw him for the first time in years a few days ago.

You’ve had your fair share of private updates on the lives of your old friends you didn’t keep in contact with. Shoko kept you up to date on everything. A surprising number of your old friends had gone into the field of educationー Utahime, Suguru and Satoru. You wonder how Satoru’s parents reacted to that information. You have yet to ask; it seemed like too much of a mood killer when Satoru happily recounted stories about his students a few weeks ago.

When Itsuki almost trips you make to stand but Satoru catches her before you can blink. 

“He’s pretty good with her,” Suguru says like he’s a mind reader. “There was this kid we used to babysit, Riko, when we were younger. He said he hated it but he’s always been pretty good with kids.”

You can believe it. There’s plenty of things you remember Satoru complaining about despite his inherent talents in them. It makes you want to cry sometimes seeing how good he is with Itsuki. Your daughter is smart enough to play neutral when he asks but you’re pretty sure your daughter has a favorite parent. Adorable little traitor, you laugh softly to yourself. You’d think five years would give someone an edge.

Five years.

“Are you… mad?” You look at your old friend from the corner of your eye.

Suguru takes his time answering, mulling over unknown thoughts in his head. Playful as you remember Suguru being, he’s always been introspective. He thinks before he acts, lets things slowly come to a boil before turning off the stovetop. “I was more worried than mad to start,” he finally speaks. “It’s not everyday an entire group of people gets ghosted. I’m a little mad you didn’t open up though.”

Your smile is small and your eyebrows knit apologetically. 

“But at the end of the day, this is nothing compared to what went down between Satoru and me in high school. So I guess I can forgive you.” You never did get the story about Satoru and Suguru’s mysterious high school turning point. The itch to know all the details is minor compared to the way your shoulders relax when Suguru shoots you a familiar smile. I missed you too. “Just don’t do anymore disappearing acts.” Smooth as they come, Suguru raises a closed fist just above your care bags. 

Smile a bit more grand, you bump the side of your fist to his. “I can happily vouch that it won’t be happening again.”

“Good. It’s nice to have you back.”

“It’s nice being back.”

v. sea state

“Did you get an undercut?”

“Yeah, a while ago,” Satoru grins. “I look nice, right?”

“Please accept the compliment normally so your arrogance doesn’t rub off on our daughter,” you shake your head but a good-natured grin is plastered on your face. “Itsuki, make sure Daddy behaves. You’re in charge as the honorary aquarist.”

Itsuki’s eyes fill with delight at the duty bestowed upon her. “I will,” she promises, chest puffed with as much pride as a five year old can produce. It’s a rare day off in the middle of the week for Satoru. Normally he’s confined to his school during these hours, but thanks to some school holiday you scheduled in advance for him to take Itsuki around your aquarium. It isn’t the first time Itsuki’s been, you’d taken her there before she could even walk. It might as well be her first visit though from how she’s beaming. “Daddy, you have to be good so Mommy doesn't get mad.”

“As you command, general,” Satoru salutes playfully, picking Itsuki up in his arms. “Now then, if you excuse us, this father-daughter duo is gonna enjoy the aquarium while you work.” 

“Bup bup bup,” you tut before the man can take off. “At least let me get my goodbye kiss before you run off to have fun without me,” you peck Itsuki’s cheek once, twice before blowing a raspberry and she squeals. “Alright,” you place your hands on your hips. “You two go have fun. Tell Daddy all the names you gave the whale sharks, okay?”

You think that’s that until Itsuki innocently asks, “where’s Daddy’s kiss, Mommy?” You blink once. Maybe you misheard- “You’re supposed to give both of us goodbye kisses, aren’t you?” Apparently you haven’t.

“I think Daddy’s too old for goodbye kisses, Itsuki.”

Itsuki squints, unsatisfied with your answer, “but Grandma always kisses Granny and they’re ancient.”

Why do your parents have to have a long lasting and fulfilling love life?

You and Satoru share an awkward smile as you both wonder what either of you can do to get out of this situation. Kissing Satoru used to be as easy as breathing. He’s always been the more affectionate of the two of you and it rubbed off on you some time during your university days. But you’re not in university anymore and your relationship has most definitely changed since then.

Still with bated breath, you gesture for Satoru to bring his head low enough for you to kiss his forehead, “there. Now both of you go have fun.”

If you think you see Satoru’s expression dim, he’s all smiles the moment you blink. “Try not to be jealous when you see us feeding the stingrays, [First].” He’s gone before you can tease you’re the one of the employees that help with that.

Once a maelstrom, always a maelstrom.

You love your place of work, it always has a familiar noisy sort of peaceful bathed in the light of blue decorated in corals, pinks and purples. Aquariums have a special magic to them. You fell in love with the sea when you were young and never fell out. The magic somehow is renewed every time you clock in, even on the most trying days.

How can you not when you see the dozens of people that stop by with the same love?

How can you not when you see dozens of people that stop by and fall in love with it for the first time?

“Hi, Mommy!” You hear Itsuki call from a distance. You wonder how she can even see you when you look up and see she’s on Satoru’s shoulders. It’s so natural, the two of them together. She’s wearing his sunglasses, if you can really say that. They keep sliding off her face but she holds onto them resolutely and Satoru is smiling widely in front of the tank full of black tip reef sharks, whale sharks and dozens of other fish in between.

You don’t know how your heart can fill with even more affection than you thought possible but it does. “Hi, baby,” you wave back. “I love you!”

“I love you too!” I have to enjoy that before she gets old enough to start thinking she’s too cool to tell her mom I love you. You know Satoru should too when you see her lean over to plant her father an awkward kiss on his head. You can’t hear what she tells him but you can guess she must be saying she loves him. Even from his profile, you can tell Satoru is saying he loves her back from how adoringly he looks up at her.

You see Itsuki giggling and saying something else you can’t hear, looking down at her father in earnest.

Whatever it is she says, Satoru looks over at you with eyes that are wide and somehow reflect all of the blue from tank lights. Despite how it makes your heart twist, you give him another small wave. When he doesn’t wave back, you wonder what it is your daughter could have said that had him in such a stupor.

Whatever he says to Itsuki, his eyes stay on you while he says it.

vi. nearshore

“Do you still like the same brand of honey or no?” You call over your shoulder from the kitchen.

It’s unusually quiet in your apartment since Itsuki is at your parents’ house for the weekend. You only realized you’d forgotten to tell your co-parent when he showed up at your house with sweets in hand. “What Itsuki doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” you told him with a snicker when you invited him inside to eat them. 

“Satoru?” You call out again.

No response.

You turn off the eye your kettle is on and look out into the living room. He’s right where you left him. “Hey,” you sit on the ottoman in front of him. He blinks in surprise when he sees your hand waving in front of face. “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Satoru smiles but it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Let me rephrase that question,” you start anew. “What’s wrong? Come on now,” you grin crookedly. “You’ve always sucked at pretending to be okay in front of me.”

Satoru’s smile falters for a heartbeat, “yeah?”

“Yes, Mr. Bravado,” Satoru might have been an expert at fooling others, but you know him. He was the guy who never took notes but passed every test because he worked his ass off in the background. The type who’d act oblivious but you realize halfway through a meal that the reason he took you is because he noticed you’d been feeling down lately. It’s one of the things you love about him. “So come out with it, fess up.”

One, two, three seconds pass before Satoru finally cracks.

“I’m mad. More at myself than anything.” Before you can reply, Satoru opens his mouth again but it feels more like he's talking to himself. “I shouldn’t be upset anymore, right? We made up.” Satoru runs his fingers through his hair in frustration. “We made up,” he says again. “I shouldn’t still be mad about anything. Things have been going great.”

Satoru finally falls silent and he looks tired. You hate you’re the reason for it. “It’s okay to still be mad about Itsuki. I’m sorry,” you whisper. “I… I’d take it back if I could. I know that doesn’t mean anything after five years but I mean it. Even if I was scared I should have told you. I just- I don’t know, it had gotten into me. I was thinking how you couldn’t commitー”

“You thought I was non-committal?” Satoru raises an eyebrow and he looks hurt by your revelation.

“Satoru, you have never been in a relationship with anyone throughout the time I’ve known you,” you rub your finger and thumb together nervously. Five years later is as good as any time to have a conversation you should have had long ago. “You were scared when I asked what our relationship was, remember?”

“I didn’t know what the right answer was,” Satoru argues with his hands raised. “I thought you were tired of our friends always talking about us being a couple.”

“You were relieved when I said that-” you stammer over your words thoughts going much faster than your mouth could. You remember the tormented days of unrequited affection quite clearly. If there was someone who avoided romantic relationships like the plague, it was Satoru. He was a flirt, relished in the attention he received for his well-known good looks. Regardless, he’d never committed to anyone. “You said fucking someone else was a non-issue! For all I knew you were sleeping with someone else, it wasn’t like we were-”

“It was a non-issue if it meant you weren’t going to take off and start avoiding me!” Satoru snaps like you’ve grown a second head. Maybe you did judging by how he looks at you incredulously. Your mouth closes, unsure what to say next and Satoru looks away with a scoff. “It’s the other way around,” he mutters so soft you almost didn’t catch it. “you were the non-committal one.”

“Excuse me?” It’s your turn to look at Satoru like his body has magically sprung additional body parts. When he doesn’t immediately say anything, you double down. “Satoru, you don’t get to say that and then turn around and not elaborate on it.”

“You know, the first day we met, Suguru told me that I acted like the sun shined out of your ass,” Satoru says much to your confusion. But he went on, lost in his memories, “it might as well have, I thought you were so cool. I wanted you in my life so bad from pretty much the moment you said I doomed myself. I didn’t care what happened next in my life as long as you were there for it.

“But you left me,” Satoru croaks with a smile, crystal blue eyes dark and empty. “You left me.” The way he says it breaks your heart. “I’m so gone for you. I’ve always been gone for you. I just didn’t want to see it. Somehow I always knew you’d leave.” He laughs, cold and humorless and completely lost. “And you did.

“You could be right there with me and then suddenly be so far away. It always felt like you would just up and leave one day. You and Utahime always talked about intuition and trusting it. I guess mine was saying from early on ‘this girl is gonna break your heart one day, don’t fall in love with her.’”

“I knew it when you got those far away looks in your eyes. I knew it when I woke up that first morning alone. I knew it when you didn’t say you’d see me later. And just like that you were gone on that ghost ship. You left and didn’t even tell me you were going. Do you know how much that fucking hurt? I wait outside for hours and your neighbor’s the one who tells me you’re gone. I may have purposely lied to myself about how I felt but I never slept with anyone else. I didn’t want anyone else. I was the one who kept reaching out, you never reached back.

Itsuki’s the second tier on the cake and the rest of the frosting. You’ve been gone on that ghost ship for five years and when I finally catch up, I still feel like I’m drowning.”

“... I didn’t mean to make you feel that way. I didn’t know.”

“I know. That’s almost the worst part. Guess I didn't wear my heart on my sleeve as much as you thought.”

.

.

.

“It was the week after our second year midterms,” you recall when you were six years younger and the biggest problem you had in life was a professor was out to get you. Midterms had finally passed and you were on a victorious emotional high after finishing your last exam. At least until some asshole who should have covered their mouth coughed and you were coughing by the end of the day. “I got a cold and just so I could breathe better when I slept, you let me lay on you on the couch the whole time even though you ended up getting sick afterwards.” 

You’d felt so bad, coughing all the while but Satoru hadn’t let you budge an inch, proudly claiming ‘I don’t get sick, I’m built different so cough away.’ When he got sick days later, he said over coughs, ‘This has nothing to do with when you were sick. This is from Suguru.’ “That was when I realized that I’d been stupidly in love with you ever since I met you.”

Gojou Satoru has been called many things throughout your years of knowing him. But for you, the fall child has always been easy to love. He was made for it. “You were a pain in the ass but you were my pain in the ass. I never wanted it any other way.”

“Stop being mean to me,” Satoru leans forward to rest his head on your shoulder just as you wrap your arms around his back. “Don’t you know who you’re being mean to when you’re being an ass?”

You laugh weakly, “the guy I’m still gone for?” When you hear a sniffle in the corner of your neck, you tighten your grip.

"Don't go away this time," Satoru hugs back.

vii. ocean deep, seafoam soft

Satoru finds himself in your bed again for the first time in years.

“I confess my love to you and you try to kill me, I'm hurt.”

“Oh don’t be such a baby, I didn’t even know it was there,” you chuckle fondly after the two of you stumble into your bed after nearly tripping on a stray toy on your floor. Satoru loves that laugh. He loves how you look up at him with all the adoration in the world. “Remember that time we forgot that textbook was on your bed?”

“Please don’t remind me, my back hurts just remembering it,” Satoru whines but laughter escapes him despite his apparent trauma. It wasn’t one of your best moments during your shared years of sexual escapades in college. You pull him down kiss his lips tenderly and he practically moans, relishing the feeling. No more forehead kisses, he wants to tell you. You did that a lot before you left. 

"I love you," Satoru whispers in awe at the words falling out of his own mouth. In awe at the fact you’re even there with him at that moment. “I love you.”

Your hands cup his face like he's something precious and you thumbs away the tears pooling in his eyes despite the ones in your own, "I love you too.”

Satoru’s had sex with you more times than he can count. 

He memorized everything, refused to forget a single detail. It feels like the first time all over again.

The way one set of your fingernails dig into his back while he envelopes your other hand with one of his own. How your fingers intertwined tightly. How amazing you feel squeezing around him tightly. The speed of your pulse as he peppers your throat with kisses and soft nips. The ache between his legs as he rolls his hips into you gently yet persistently, chasing his high but wanting it to last long beyond the confines of this singular moment. 

It’s not just this one moment anymore though. “[First],” Satoru squeezes your hand tighter. “[First].”

I love you.

I love you.

I love you.

Don’t leave me this time, Satoru gasps like a man starved for air before kissing you again desperately. Stay.

(When Satoru wakes up the next morning to you in his arms and playing with his hair at the base of his neck, he feels like could cry. He nestles into your chest with a tired grin, “morning.”)

viii. anchor

Gojou Itsuki, that’s the name staring back at him.

Satoru loves when it’s his birthday. Until Itsuki was born it was arguably the best day in the universe. The importance of birthdays tends to titter on the rope of priorities, but it’s the one day of the year when the people important to him would pop up to say ‘hi’. Even people from the past. An old teacher he used to drive crazy but always said he thought Satoru had a lot of potential.

His mom still sent him a birthday text even if most of their exchanges are dry the rest of the year.

Even his students will tip in to get him a card and some sort of celebratory gift on December 7th.

December 7th lost a bit of its shine when you exited from his life. With you and Itsuki both in it, it shines tenfold.

It’s just the light is too blinding when Satoru takes out his last present of a plain envelope and he sees Gojou Itsuki written in bold and clear text.

Gojou Itsuki

Father: Gojou Satoru

v. sea state private ver.

"Daddy, do you love Mommy too?"

"Yeah. Daddy loves Mommy."

[rainforestakiie]

ahhhh, something i write while being in a three hour long coach drive. a five nights at Freddie’s AU! hope you enjoy!

five nights at Hazbin Hotel!

Adam stood frozen before the building, his breath catching in his throat. It loomed above him, an ominous silhouette against the darkening sky, mocking the very concept of normality. He blinked rapidly and checked the address one last time, a knot tightening in his stomach. His green eyes, usually so sharp, now clouded with confusion and unease. He absently scratched at his head, muttering to himself, "This can’t be right. This can’t be the place."

He swallowed hard, his throat dry, as he reluctantly stepped toward the cracked stone steps leading up to what could only be described as a hotel conjured straight from the depths of hell. His gaze darted nervously around, trying to make sense of the warped, grotesque surroundings. How could anyone call this place an attraction? The eerie silence was broken only by the soft shuffling of his own feet on the uneven ground.

Desperation had pushed him here. Ever since he lost his security gig at the pizza place across town—a job that, despite its drudgery, had at least paid the bills—he’d been scrambling for something, anything to keep him afloat. Eve, with her charming smile and cryptic words, had mentioned an "exciting opportunity," a new attraction that needed a night guard. It seemed like a gift at the time, a godsend. But now, standing before this twisted, unsettling structure, he was starting to feel like he’d just walked into a trap.

With a frustrated grunt, Adam pulled the swipe card from his back pocket, the thin plastic slick against his sweaty palm. He hesitated, eyeing the door, before finally pressing the card against the reader. A chorus of six unsettling beeps echoed from the device, each tone more jarring than the last, until the door creaked open with a low, guttural moan.

The interior of the Hazbin Hotel was everything he had dreaded. Barely finished, yet disturbingly close to completion, it seemed almost alive, as though it had been waiting for him. The dim lighting cast long shadows that danced across the floor, and an oppressive silence filled the air, thick and suffocating. The lobby was sparse, save for a bizarre, round booth-like counter and two massive archways—one labeled “Heaven” and the other “Hell.” The irony wasn’t lost on him.

Adam snorted, though the sound lacked any real humor. His eyes fell on a grotesque statue in the center of the room—some demonic creature frozen mid-dance with its complete opposite, a fluffy, angelic figure of pink and white. The demon’s red goat-like features, horns spiraling out of its head, twisted in an unsettling way. Its partner, soft and serene, seemed equally unnatural. The two were locked in a macabre waltz, a stark symbol of the hotel’s theme. He rolled his eyes, muttering, "Really leaning into the whole Heaven and Hell thing, huh?" He patted the belt on his waist as though checking for reassurance.

Shrugging off the unnerving vibe, Adam made his way to the booth, swipe card in hand. Inside, he found a simple setup: a bank of camera screens on one side, a control panel with an array of buttons and a microphone on the other. Behind him, a pegboard stood waiting for coats, and a mini-fridge hummed quietly beside a plain white stool. He tossed himself onto the stool, the metal legs screeching against the floor, and kicked off the ground, spinning lazily.

For a brief moment, as he twirled in the dimly lit room, his thoughts drifted. The strange unease gnawing at him softened, replaced by a fleeting sense of calm. But it wasn’t long before the unsettling nature of his surroundings clawed its way back into his mind. The air felt heavy, charged with something unseen, something dark. He stopped spinning, his hands gripping the edge of the counter as his pulse quickened. Something about this place… it wasn’t right. It wasn’t right at all.

“Hello? Hello, hello?”

A sudden voice crackled through the speakers, nearly sending Adam flying off the stool in shock. Heart pounding in his chest, he scrambled to his feet, eyes darting around the eerie, dimly lit room, searching for the source of the voice. But there was no one—just the empty, unsettling quiet of the hotel. Realizing it was a pre-recorded message, Adam let out a shaky breath, cursing under his breath. He leaned closer to the counter, squinting at the microphone as the voice continued.

“Uh, I wanted to record a message for you... to help you get settled in on your first night. Um, I actually worked in that office before you. I’m... finishing up my last week now, as a matter of fact, so... I know it can be a bit overwhelming, but I’m here to tell you: there’s nothing to worry about. Uh, you’ll do fine! So... let’s just focus on getting you through your first week. Okay?”

Adam frowned, a deep, unsettling feeling creeping up his spine. Something about the man’s tone didn’t sit right with him. The voice was too fast, too nervous, like the guy was hiding something. And for a split second, Adam could’ve sworn he heard something strange—faint, ghostly giggles in the background. His eyes darted around again, unease gnawing at his nerves.

"Why does this guy sound so jittery?" Adam muttered under his breath, his pulse quickening.

“Uh, let’s see. First, there’s an introductory greeting from the company that I’m supposed to read. Eh, it’s kind of a legal thing, you know…”

Adam clicked his tongue, annoyed. Legal thing? he thought, raising an eyebrow. They think I’m gonna steal or something?

The voice continued, “Um, ‘Welcome to The Hazbin Hotel: a magical place for kids and grown-ups alike, where fantasy and fun come to life. Hazbin Entertainment is not responsible for damage to property or person. Upon discovery of damage or if death has occurred, a missing person’s report will be filed within ninety days or as soon as property and premises have been thoroughly cleaned and bleached and the carpets have been replaced.' Blah, blah, blah...”

Adam’s heart skipped a beat. “Whoa, whoa there, buddy...” he whispered, his mouth suddenly dry. What the hell was that? Did they just casually slip in a death clause? His head spun with confusion. What exactly are they expecting to happen in this place?

The message pressed on, oblivious to Adam’s growing alarm. “Now, that might sound bad, I know. But there’s really nothing to worry about.”

“Bullshit,” Adam huffed, running a hand through his hair, his fingers trembling slightly. The terrible, sinking feeling in his gut grew stronger with each passing second. This place was wrong. Every instinct screamed at him to turn around, walk out, never look back. But he needed this job. He needed the money. So he stayed rooted to the spot, despite every fiber of his being telling him otherwise.

“Uh, the animatronic characters here do get a bit quirky at night... but do I blame them?” The voice faltered, and there it was again—those eerie giggles, only louder this time. Adam’s eyes widened. The guy’s voice cracked as if speaking to someone else, someone Adam couldn’t see. “No! If I were forced to sing... those same stupid songs for 20 years, and I never got a bath? I’d probably be a bit irritable at night too…”

Adam froze. “Animatronic characters?” he whispered, his heart thudding against his ribs. What characters? Quirky? He’d have to check them out later, he supposed, but nothing about this felt right.

The voice wavered, growing more frantic, “But remember, these characters hold a special place in the hearts of the fans, and you need to show them a little respect. Right? Okay.”

Adam rubbed his chin, baffled. “What the hell kind of place is this?”

Hazbin Hotel wasn’t just an ordinary attraction—there was something far more sinister lurking beneath the surface. Was this a game? A horror show? How popular could this freakshow be?

“So just be aware: the characters do tend to wander a bit. Uhh, they’re left in some kind of ‘free-roaming mode’ at night. Uhh... something about their servos locking up if they get turned off for too long. Uhh... they used to be allowed to walk around during the day too, but then there was The Bite of ’87...”

Adam felt the blood drain from his face. The Bite of ’87? His brain raced to catch up, trying to make sense of the madness unfolding before him. Is this place a rebrand? A reboot? And what the hell does that have to do with these wandering... robots?

The message continued, voice lowering in a hushed, almost conspiratorial tone, “Now concerning your safety: the only real risk to you as a night watchman here, if any, is the fact that these characters, uhh, if they happen to see you after hours, probably won’t recognize you as a person. Th-They’ll most likely see you as a metal endoskeleton without its costume on. Now, since that’s against the rules here at Hazbin Hotel, they’ll probably try to... forcefully stuff you inside a Winner or Sinner suit.”

Adam’s stomach churned. Stuff me into a suit? The voice carried on, describing the horrifying details of what that entailed—crossbeams, wires, animatronic devices—and how his head would be crushed inside the metal shell. His mouth went dry as the message casually mentioned his teeth and eyes likely popping out of the mask.

He felt sick.

The voice chuckled nervously, “...Y-Yeah, they don’t tell you these things when you sign up...”

Adam slumped onto the stool, his head spinning. What the fuck have I gotten myself into? His skin crawled, every instinct screaming at him to get out, to leave before the nightmare became real. The message clicked off, leaving him in suffocating silence.

For a moment, Adam sat frozen, paralyzed by the dawning horror of his situation. He wasn’t just stepping into a creepy attraction—he was stepping into something far, far darker.

For a long, tense moment, Adam did nothing. The weight of his hesitation pressed down on him as seconds slipped away, each one a reminder that he was wasting time. He should be securing the hotel. That was his job. But the oppressive stillness in the air held him captive, the ticking of the distant clock growing louder in his ears. With a sharp, irritated sigh, he forced himself to move, standing up so quickly that his joints popped with the sudden stretch. His skin felt unnaturally cold, the chill seeping into his bones as he stepped out of the booth, leaving the false sense of safety behind.

His gaze flickered between the two looming doorways, one labeled “Heaven” and the other “Hell.” Both beckoned him, each promising something different, but equally unnerving. He had to check both before he could settle in for the night. But which one should he start with? His pulse quickened as he bit his bottom lip, eyes lingering on the entrance to Hell. There was something... sinister about it, the shadows seemed darker there, like they were alive. Goosebumps prickled across his skin as a deep unease settled in the pit of his stomach.

Surely Heaven would be the easier of the two, right? A lighter, more welcoming exhibit. Hell could wait. Hell shouldwait. Groaning, Adam rubbed his face with both hands, trying to shake off the creeping dread. With one final glance at the Hell entrance, he turned toward Heaven and stepped through.

He regretted it the moment he crossed the threshold.

The brightness hit him like a physical force, harsh and almost painful, as though he had stepped into a world entirely made of blinding light. The air was suffused with a shimmering glow that made his head throb. Adam cursed under his breath, squinting hard and raising a hand to shield his eyes. He wished he’d brought sunglasses or anything to dull the intensity. Everything about this place felt artificial, forced. Too perfect. Too clean. Too... wrong.

Sighing heavily, he continued deeper into the so-called Heaven, his footsteps barely audible on the soft, cloud-like floor. It was built to reflect the traditional ideas of paradise—cotton candy pink and white clouds floated lazily overhead, a glowing golden sun hung in the sky like a permanent fixture, and shimmering blue stars blinked in and out, as if winking at him. Soft, lullaby-like music drifted through the air, but rather than soothing, it felt suffocating, a trap disguised as sweetness.

As he walked further, he couldn’t shake the feeling of being watched. His eyes darted around, falling on a series of cherub statues scattered throughout the exhibit. Their large, unblinking blue eyes seemed to follow him, glittering in the overly bright light. Their frozen smiles, once innocent, now appeared sinister in the back of his mind. He swore he saw one twitch in his peripheral vision but when he turned his head, it was still. His heart hammered in his chest.

Finally, he reached the heart of the exhibit.

There, standing like silent sentinels, were three towering figures—animatronics, but so lifelike it made his skin crawl. Adam’s breath hitched in his throat as he stared up at them. Two of the figures were female, or at least modeled after female forms. They had long purple hair and massive, pristine white wings—six of them, lined up in perfect rows on their backs. Their faces were oddly bird-like, angular and adorned with glowing patterns of blue and white, their eyes piercing and cold. Even standing still, they radiated an unsettling presence, as though they were waiting for something... or someone.

Adam craned his neck, his eyes traveling up their massive forms. They were huge, easily towering over him, and at six feet tall, Adam wasn’t used to feeling dwarfed. The tallest of the trio was even more imposing, and his stomach churned as he took a step back, feeling small and insignificant beneath their gaze.

Between the two female-like figures stood a third—a male, or so Adam assumed. This one had golden hair and piercing blue eyes, but his face was oddly cherubic, almost doll-like, with an eerie smile that sent a shiver down Adam’s spine. His wings were even larger than the others, fanning out behind him like some grotesque imitation of an archangel.

Adam’s eyes fell to the plaque beneath them, his pulse quickening as he read the names inscribed there: Archangel Michael and the Seraphim, Sera and Emily.

He took another step back, his mind racing. Something was deeply, horribly wrong with this place, and it wasn’t just the unnerving, too-bright light or the mechanical figures looming over him. It was something darker, something alive behind those dead eyes.

Swallowing hard, Adam tore his gaze away from the towering figures, their cold, lifeless eyes still lingering in his mind as he turned and continued his path through the Heaven exhibit. His footsteps were heavy, dragging along the too-soft floor as the haunting lullaby trailed after him. The unsettling brightness clung to his skin, but at least it was behind him now. By the time he reached the end and found himself back at the entrance, his breath was shallow, his nerves strung tight.

And there it was—the Hell doorway, waiting for him like an open mouth ready to swallow him whole.

He groaned under his breath, staring at the darkened archway with a mix of dread and grim anticipation. What kind of horrors had they concocted for this side of the attraction? His imagination ran wild, picturing grotesque, demonic figures lurking in the shadows. But it couldn’t be that bad... right? This place had an 18+ rating, after all, so they had to be pushing some boundaries. Still, how far would they go?

Adam forced himself to take a deep breath, letting the cold, stale air fill his lungs as he tried to gather what little courage he had left. His heart pounded, each beat an unwelcome reminder of the unknown waiting beyond that threshold. He shouldn’t be afraid. It was just an attraction, a haunted house on steroids. But the unease that coiled in his gut wouldn’t let go.

With a final, shaky breath, he stepped forward, crossing into the dark maw of Hell.

The air seemed to change immediately—heavier, darker, like the weight of the world had suddenly descended upon his shoulders. He could feel it pressing against his skin, making his pulse quicken. It shouldn't be so bad. It shouldn't be so... embarrassing. Just a job, just another room to check. He repeated the words in his head, a mantra to keep the fear at bay, but deep down, something cold and primal gripped his spine.

"I can do this," Adam whispered to himself, though the words sounded hollow in the thickening air. He kept walking, his pulse thrumming louder in his ears as the shadows swallowed him whole.

Stepping into the Hell side of the attraction felt like walking into another world entirely. The air was thick, oppressive, as if it clung to Adam’s skin, while the red glow of the room swallowed him whole. Hell was draped in darkness, lit by the sinister flicker of fake flames in hues of black and white. They danced along the walls, casting warped shadows that seemed to move on their own. The ground beneath him was slick and waxy, a strange texture that made every step feel uncertain. As Adam ventured deeper, he followed what was unmistakably a high road to Hell, leading up to what was an eerie replica of a hotel lobby. Only, this was the kind of hotel that lived in nightmares.

The grand hall of this twisted hotel came into view, and Adam immediately spotted two androids standing motionless in the center, their presence impossible to ignore. They were towering, even more imposing than the angelic figures from Heaven. The first had golden, puffed-up hair tied back in a sleek ponytail, dressed in a sharp, blood-red staff uniform—blazer and pants to match. The second, slightly shorter, had long grey and purple hair that cascaded over her shoulders, almost like moth wings. Her outfit was simple but unnerving: a red ribbon tied in her hair, a crimson shirt, and a black skirt. Their enormous eyes—gold and red—glowed with an unsettling intensity, locked on him in a way that made his skin crawl.

Unlike the angel statues, there was no plaque or sign beneath these two—just a red button on the floor between them. Adam hesitated for a moment, but with a shrug, he reached out and pressed it.

Instantly, a pre-recorded female voice crackled to life, echoing in the hollow hall. "Hello! Welcome to my hotel, the Hazbin Hotel! My name is Charlotte Morningstar, daughter of Lucifer Morningstar and Princess of Hell!"

The voice was sickeningly sweet, yet carried a high-pitched, eerie quality that set his teeth on edge. Adam’s eyes shifted toward the blonde android—Charlotte, no doubt.

"But you can call me Charlie for short! And this," the voice giggled, "is my girlfriend Vaggie! Say hi, Vaggie!"

There was a pause, followed by a deeper, more serious tone.

"Just behave and don’t touch anything. Some of us inside aren’t very..." The voice trailed off ominously. “Nice.”

"Vaggie! Don’t tell them that!" Charlie's voice chimed in with a scolding laugh. "Anyway, I hope you enjoy your stay, despite the... less-than-ideal location!"

The recording fizzled out, leaving an eerie silence in its wake.

Adam frowned, his brow furrowing in confusion. He reached out and pressed the button again, hoping for something more, but the same recording played, word for word. He sighed, frustration mixing with the growing unease in his chest.

“Charlie and Vaggie, huh?” he muttered under his breath, glancing back and forth between the two androids.

Their glassy eyes seemed to follow him, though they remained still as statues. A cold chill slithered down his spine, making the hair on the back of his neck rise. Something about them, something in the way they stood, too lifelike and too unnatural all at once, made him feel... watched.

He shuffled awkwardly past them, moving toward the door that would lead to the next room. Compared to the Heaven exhibit, Hell had so much more—more darkness, more tension, more wrongness. It felt alive in ways that shouldn’t be possible.

Before he could stop himself, he glanced back at Charlie and Vaggie one last time. Their hollow gazes seemed to pierce right through him, and he swallowed hard, his throat dry.

"Wish me luck, then, Charlie and Vaggie," he called over his shoulder, half-joking, half-terrified.

The moment he stepped through the door and out of earshot, the air behind him shifted, and the same voices whispered once more, this time low, almost conspiratorial.

"Good luck, Adam."

“You’re gonna need it."

His heart skipped a beat.

The next room was even more bizarre, unsettling in ways Adam couldn’t quite put into words. It seemed to be a dining room, or at least what was left of one—half of the space looked like it had been violently torn apart and then haphazardly stitched back together, leaving an eerie, disjointed mess of furniture and walls. Against the main wall stood a bar, completely out of sync with the rest of the room. The panels glowed a sickly green and blue, casting strange shadows that danced along the floor. Lining the top of the bar were animal skulls, their hollow eye sockets staring down at him, while bones jutted out in awkward, unnatural angles, as though the room itself was trying to claw its way out of reality.

Adam’s eyes swept over the grotesque details, absorbing the disturbing design. It was like a twisted version of Disney, warped by some nightmarish force. The attention to detail was unnerving, almost too perfect in its imperfection. He approached the bar, noticing two more animatronics frozen in place. One was cat-like, positioned behind the counter with massive red and black wings folded behind its back. The thick brown fur gleamed under the dim lighting, and it wore a top hat tipped jauntily to the side. Its sharp, metallic claws were posed mid-motion, as if it had been cleaning glasses before time had stopped.

The second figure was seated on a stool, tall and lanky with a disturbingly sleek, spider-like form covered in soft pink and white fur. As Adam moved closer, he realized just how unsettlingly human its features were—until you noticed the extra limbs.

Curiosity tingling in his chest, Adam pressed the red button with his foot this time, wary of what might come next.

The speakers crackled to life, glitching before two voices filled the air. The first was rough and grouchy, dripping with irritation as if every word was a burden.

"The name’s Husk," the voice rasped, and Adam immediately connected it to the cat-like animatronic behind the bar. There was no way that tone belonged to the fluffy spider.

"Why do you think I’m here? You think I like cleaning bottles and listening to you idiots whine all night? Nah, I’m only here ‘cause he is forcing me."

Adam’s gaze flickered toward the spider, his brow furrowing in disbelief. That thing was forcing the cat to work? No way.

Then, the second voice chimed in, dripping with sultry arrogance. "Oh, please, baby. This body was made to be exploited. I got the arms, I got the stamina, I got the legs. I got the lung capacity. Oh, and did I mention the legs?"

The voice purred. "The gag reflex, the holes, the chest fluff everyone thinks are tits. You better remember my name—Angel Dust, because you’re gonna be moaning it all night long."

Adam blinked, completely caught off guard. He stepped back instinctively, eyes wide as the words sunk in.

“Oh… okay then," he muttered to himself, trying to process what he just heard. He glanced back and forth between the two animatronics, a strange mix of fascination and discomfort crawling up his spine. "Husk and... Angel Dust."

He could feel the weight of their hollow, unmoving gazes on him as he took a step back, the room growing colder with every passing second. The odd blend of horror and absurdity left him reeling, but he couldn't shake the strange allure of it all.

“Good to know. A porn star and a…bar tender…” Adam muttered. “God. This really is a set up to a movie.”

Adam hesitated, casting one last glance back into the hall before pressing forward into the next area. The shift in atmosphere was immediate—the room ahead was draped in shadow, an eerie darkness swallowing everything in sight. It opened into a vast, foreboding foyer, its space dominated by two grand, spiraling staircases on either side. At the top of the stairs, standing motionless behind a wooden railing, were two more animatronics.

The first was a towering figure cloaked in crimson and black. His shoulder-length hair hung like soft waves of shadow, and from his head sprouted large, deer-like ears that looked far too real for comfort. His long red coat was tattered at the edges, as if time itself had chewed away at it. Next to him, perched casually on one of the wooden rail posts, was a much smaller animatronic, the tiniest one Adam had seen so far. Her ringlets of red hair framed her face in tight, almost unsettling curls, and she wore a frilly pink dress that gave her a doll-like appearance. Yet, her needle-thin arms and legs and sharp grin hinted at something far more sinister.

Both animatronics grinned down at him, their unnervingly wide smiles gleaming in the low light. A strange, oppressive weight settled over Adam as he stared up at them, a feeling of being utterly insignificant worming its way into his bones. He hunched his shoulders, trying to shake it off, but it clung to him like a shadow. They weren’t even switched on, he reminded himself, but the smaller one—Nifty, he assumed—was particularly unsettling. Her single, oversized eye seemed to follow him as he moved across the foyer, always watching, always waiting.

Adam searched the room for a red button to learn more about these two, but found none. His throat tightened, and he swallowed hard, feeling the weight of their eyes as he moved cautiously toward the next doorway. Strange, he thought, but before he could step through, a crackling sound filled the air—a radio-like voice glitching to life from somewhere unseen. The static-laden voice made his skin crawl.

"My name is Alastor, the Radio Demon, and this little thing is named Nifty. Completely harmless... most of the time."

Adam froze. His blood turned to ice as he snapped his head back toward the animatronics. Both of their heads had turned in his direction, their gleaming eyes fixed on him. His heart thudded in his chest, the chill in the air thickening, seeping into his skin, making it clammy. He felt the sweat bead along his forehead as he stood there, every instinct screaming at him to leave.

"And remember, dear," the voice continued with a dark cheerfulness, "you are never fully dressed without a smile! See you soon."

Adam backed toward the doorway, his eyes locked on the two figures as he slipped through, his heart pounding in his throat. His hands shook as he wiped them against his pants, unable to shake the feeling that something was watching him—something more than just those animatronics. He dared a glance back, and for a fleeting moment, he thought he saw something—a shadow, growing and stretching behind the deer-like figure.

Alastor, he reminded himself. He hurried through the door, his pulse quickening, eyes darting as if any second, they would spring to life.

The next room opened into what could only be described as a throne room, vast and glittering like a hall made of shattered glass. The air seemed heavier here, laced with the scent of something dark and sweet, like roses past their bloom. Thick curtains of black and crimson draped the walls, framing the space with an oppressive elegance. A long stretch of red carpet, so rich in color it looked like spilled blood, led to the throne at the far end—a crystalline seat that gleamed under the low, flickering lights.

There, seated in eerie solitude, was another animatronic. Adam felt a strange pang of pity for her, though that pity quickly withered when he caught sight of her face. Her expression was unnerving, almost regal, but with a coldness that made his skin crawl. This figure was a woman, her impossibly long blonde hair cascading down her shoulders in silky waves, pooling around her like a waterfall of gold. Her narrowed, violet eyes, slit like a predator’s, glittered dangerously, reflecting the dim light like shards of diamond. Dark pink shadow highlighted those striking eyes, giving her a haunting, almost seductive allure.

Two enormous red horns jutted from the top of her head, twisting upward in an elegant, devilish arc. Black roses coiled around them, weaving through the horns like a crown of thorns, a cruel mockery of beauty. Her body, slender and statuesque, was wrapped in a flowing black silk dress that clung to her in a way that was both regal and sinister. Adam found himself staring, his feet rooted to the floor, a strange compulsion tugging at him.

He shuffled awkwardly, feeling the urge to bow under her icy gaze. And without thinking, he did—a small dip of the head, a gesture he quickly realized was pointless, yet something in her presence demanded it.

Below her throne was a sign, etched in black and gold: Lilith, Queen of Hell. Adam squinted at the name, his curiosity piqued.

“Lilith?" he murmured under his breath, the pieces starting to come together. "Does that make you Charlie’s mother?"

His voice was barely a whisper as he glanced around, searching for the familiar red button that would trigger the animatronic's pre-recorded lines.

But there was nothing. No button. No sound. Just the cold, suffocating silence that filled the room like a heavy fog. Adam's heart skipped a beat—was she unfinished? A work in progress, perhaps? The thought offered little comfort as he stood there, the eerie stillness pressing in on him. The air in the room seemed to thicken, and for a moment, he wondered if she was watching him, waiting for something—waiting for him to make the wrong move.

He quickly looked away, feeling his pulse quicken. The silence was unbearable, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that, even without a voice, she already knew more than he wanted her to.

Adam was desperate to escape Lilith’s throne room, his heart pounding in his chest as he practically leapt through the next doorway. His nerves were frayed, his breath shaky as he tried to steady himself. He had to be close to the end of Hell’s exhibition now, right? Heaven had been a breeze compared to this, which was strange. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn't Heaven be grander, with countless angels instead of just the three he'd seen? The imbalance gnawed at him. It all felt so... wrong.

As he slipped through the final set of purple curtains, a wave of relief washed over him. He emerged at the start of the exhibit once more, his lungs finally releasing a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. A sigh of pure relief escaped him, and he wiped the sweat from his brow. Glancing back at the path he’d taken, Adam shook his head. Hell had been far more unsettling than he ever could have expected. Every step had felt like he was walking deeper into something he couldn’t quite explain, something that gnawed at the edges of his mind.

Groaning, he rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the tension there as he trudged back toward the booth where he was supposed to be stationed. But just as he was about to settle back in, something caught his eye. A glint of fabric, hidden in the shadows of Hell’s entrance. His brow furrowed in confusion. How had he missed that? Another set of purple curtains, blending seamlessly into the wall. He swore it hadn’t been there before.

Curiosity, or maybe something more insidious, pulled him toward it. Slowly, cautiously, he approached the hidden curtain. His fingers brushed the soft fabric, and with a gentle push, he parted them, revealing a room he hadn’t seen before.

Adam blinked, his mind struggling to process what he was seeing. Rubber ducks. Thousands of them. They were stacked like mountains, spilling across the room in chaotic piles. The space was surreal, almost bedroom-like, with a large four-poster bed at its center. The bed itself was overflowing with more ducks, the small plastic toys dominating every inch of the room. Unlike the fiery reds and blacks of Hell, this room was painted in deep purples and inky blacks, the atmosphere strangely eerie in its oddity.

He stepped inside, careful not to crush any of the ducks beneath his feet. The quiet squeak of rubber under his shoes was the only sound in the room, amplifying the strange tension that hung in the air. His eyes darted around, scanning the peculiar space as an unsettling chill crawled up his spine.

What was this room? And why did it feel like it was waiting for him?

As Adam carefully tiptoed through the strange room, his steps deliberate and measured, he noticed more doors scattered along the walls. But they were all locked, each one adorned with a small sign that read "Work in Progress," teasing at unfinished secrets behind them. His eyes trailed upward, catching sight of several whimsical paintings—images of a younger Charlie, drawn in a more playful, cartoonish style. The sight made him smile, despite the eerie stillness of the room.

Suddenly, his foot caught on something soft beneath him, and he jerked back just in time to avoid crushing it. A startled gasp escaped his lips as he looked down to see... a hat? Not just any hat, but a finely crafted top hat, adorned with a purple ribbon, a golden snake coiled delicately around an apple, and a small crown perched on top. Adam's brow furrowed in curiosity as he bent down to gingerly pick it up. The fabric was soft between his fingers, almost too luxurious for an animatronic. He glanced around the room, searching for its rightful owner, feeling the slight tickle of nervous energy flutter through him.

As he stepped backward, still clutching the hat, his body collided with something solid. A startled yelp escaped his throat, and he nearly dropped the top hat as he spun around. His heart raced, thudding hard in his chest as he came face to face with one of the animatronics. It stood just behind him, its impish grin frozen in place, wide red and gold eyes staring blankly ahead.

Adam gasped sharply, pressing a hand to his chest as he struggled to catch his breath.

"Holy shit! You scared the life out of me!" he stammered, leaning over to steady himself.

"Fuck me kindly." He chuckled nervously, wiping the sweat from his brow as he studied the android more closely.

This one was small—probably the second shortest in the entire Hell exhibit. Dressed in white and red, like a circus ringmaster from some twisted carnival, its face was shaped like a mischievous imp, with cheeks painted a bright cherry red. It had a sharp, yet almost playful look, with its eyes gleaming, though its grin felt a little too wide for comfort. And then Adam realized—the animatronic was missing something. Its hat.

"Guess this is yours," Adam murmured softly, lifting the top hat and carefully placing it atop the android’s head. His fingers brushed the soft brim as he adjusted it just so, his lips quirking into a smirk.

"There. You're dashing!" He added, tilting his head to admire his handiwork, a teasing warmth in his voice.

He snorted at his own joke, the brief moment of levity a balm to his nerves in the otherwise unsettling room. Yet, beneath the humor, there was an undeniable sweetness to the gesture. It felt as if, in this strange, eerie place, he'd made a small connection—however brief—with something that was never meant to be alive.

Adam hummed a low, absent-minded tune as his gaze lingered on the strange, lifeless animatronic before him. Its gleaming, artificial skin seemed almost too perfect, a little too human, yet not quite alive. He couldn’t find any trace of the telltale red button that usually accompanied these machines, but that made sense. This area was still under construction—a “work in progress,” as they called it. Maybe they hadn’t finished wiring the animatronic’s features yet, he reasoned, but something about the stillness unsettled him.

“Well then,” Adam muttered, a playful smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I guess I’ll just have to call you Cutie-pie, huh?”

His fingers brushed the cool, synthetic surface of the animatronic’s cheek, rosy and smooth beneath his touch. “Because, really… you are cute.”

Of course, the android remained motionless, its blank, glassy eyes staring forward. Adam stifled a laugh, feeling a little ridiculous for talking to it in the first place. What was he doing? Here he was, having a one-sided conversation with a bunch of silent, soulless robots. He really needed to get out more. Maybe meet some actual people for once.

With a sigh, Adam ran a hand through his tousled hair, streaks of deep brown and red catching the dim light. He sent a mockingly flirtatious wink toward the nearest animatronic, a blonde one positioned eerily close.

“I’ll see you around, handsome,” he crooned in a singsong voice, leaning closer. “Don’t go wandering off~”

The joke fell flat, hanging in the thick, stagnant air. Chuckling under his breath, Adam turned on his heel and made his way back toward the entrance, completely unaware of the subtle shift behind him. He didn’t notice the way the animatronic’s eyes flickered, darkening ever so slightly, or the faint creak as its head tilted at an unnatural angle, as though watching him leave.

“Don’t go far…” The voice was a whisper—soft, melodic, barely audible as it escaped the machine’s motionless lips. “You’re very… cute too, Adam…”

But Adam had already crossed the threshold, oblivious to the eerie murmur that drifted behind him. Settling back into his booth, he dropped onto the cold stool with a tired sigh, his eyes scanning the grainy black-and-white feed from the security cameras. Each animatronic appeared on the screen, their mechanical forms rigid in the shadows. Except for one.

His heart skipped a beat. Cutie-pie was missing.

Adam’s pulse quickened, his eyes darting toward the curtains leading into the duck room. The empty space seemed to beckon, a dark void beyond the heavy drapery.

“Right…” he whispered, the word barely audible over the sudden pounding of his heart.

[waywardxwords]

Hallelujah

Summary: While cleaning up after dinner one night, you hear the most beautiful sound coming from the oldest Winchester's room. You can't stop yourself from moving towards the sound. Dean doesn't enjoy singing in front of people, but he might just make you the exception. Word Count: ~1.2k Warnings: Fluff - lots of fluff

A/N: I saw this video the other day and I just couldn't help myself. Jensen starts around 3:23 mark.

While it wasn’t the first time you heard Dean Winchester’s voice echo off of the walls of the bunker, it was the first time you heard him sing this folk rock classic. The verse traveled to your ears, just barely peeking through the sound of the running water from the sink faucet as you washed the dishes from dinner. 

“Well, maybe there’s a God above,” he started softly at first. So softly, your hand reached up and turned off the water. You stilled your body so your ears could focus on the sound. “As for me, all I’ve learned from love is how to shoot somebody who outdrew ya.”

Dean would never sing in front of you, besides the random jam out sessions in the Impala on the way to a hunt. But those were mostly songs from the likes of AC/DC, or Zeppelin…and there was that one Survivor song he loved. Never like this; never with such emotion. 

“But it’s not a crime that you’re here tonight, it’s not somebody who’s seen the light,” his voice began to travel as his words became clearer. There was no way he knew you could hear him; he wouldn’t have continued if he knew. While Dean was, well, Dean–he had less confidence about himself than he would lead others to believe, but you saw through that. 

“No, it’s a cold and broken Hallelujah,” he belted. “Hallelujah, Hallelujah.” The sound of his voice sent a shiver through your body to your core. You couldn’t help your feet as they moved towards the sound of his voice. You grabbed at the dish towel that hung on the rack of the oven and dried your hands on your way. You didn’t have to go very far, Dean’s door to his bedroom was open as he gently sang the remainder of the chorus. 

As you stood in his doorway, you saw him through blurry eyes. You hadn’t realized before that moment that you had tears in your eyes, but the conviction of his voice—full of pain, but also peace—was overwhelming. 

“Shit,” he breathed as he saw you. He moved to put the gun down that he was cleaning before you startled him. His brows knitted together in concern when he saw your face. “Hey, you okay? What happened?” In two long strides, he was in front of you. His hands gripped just above your elbows. Through the tears pooled in your eyes, you watched his green gaze study you. 

“I-I’m sorry, I’m fine,” you quickly moved your hands to swipe away any droplets that threatened to fall. “Your voice…”

You watched the reddish pink hue start under his stubble on his neck and climb up to his cheeks. “Oh, uh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize anyone could hear me…” he removed his hands from your arms and you noticed the room suddenly felt cooler without his touch. He brought a hand up to pull at the back of his neck, clearly a little embarrassed. 

“No, Dean,” you reached for his arm before he could turn back from you; your fingers delicately on his forearm. “Your voice is beautiful.” The words fell in a whisper from your lips. His eyes watched you, and that’s when you noticed all of the feelings Dean could sing, but couldn’t say. “Would you…would you sing for me again?” 

“Oh, darlin’,” he chuckled and ducked his head to glance at his boots. “I don’t think I can do that…I don’t sing if I have an audience.” His eyes found yours again. You nodded once, not willing to push it if he wasn’t comfortable. 

“Well, just know,” you started softly. “You have such an incredible voice. It was…comforting.” It took you a moment to find the right word. 

“Thanks,” he chuckled gently again. You turned from your place in his doorway and headed back to the kitchen, hopeful that it wouldn’t be the last time you heard his beautiful voice. 

The darkness was overwhelming. Even in your sleep, you knew you were dreaming but as hard as you tried, you couldn’t wake yourself up. It felt as though the walls were closing in on you as you fell into the darkness. A whimper fell from your lips involuntarily as you tumbled down, down, down…into an abyss of nothingness. You didn’t know what you were running from, but your heart thudded quickly against your rib cage—so quickly that you thought it might break out. 

You couldn’t be sure, but you thought you felt a gentle touch on your bare arm just below the sleeve of your short sleeve cotton t-shirt. And then you heard a low hum—so low you thought you imagined it. 

“Now I’ve heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord,” the words sounded far away at first, but as you came to you realized they were just beside you. “But you don’t really care for music, do ya?” With your eyes still closed, you felt peace fall over you as the voice calmed you. “It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth, the minor falls, the major lifts. The baffled king composing Hallelujah.” 

As the chorus began, you blinked your eyes. As you squinted against the darkness of the room, you saw Dean’s green gaze staring back at you. “Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah…” his whispered singing trailed off as he reached his hand up to brush a dampened strand of hair off of your forehead. 

When he looked back so his eyes found yours once more, a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “Dean?” You asked as you blinked the sleep away and focused in on the way his eyes examined your features. It was then that you realized he had positioned his body just next to yours, his face only a few inches away. 

“Yeah, it’s me, sweetheart,” he said gently. “You had a bad dream.”

A pause of silence fell between you before you realized something. “I thought you said you don’t sing for an audience?” You eyed him conspicuously, which elicited a breathy chuckle from him. 

“Yeah, well, you were thrashin’ and weren’t waking up when I tried talking, so…” his voice trailed again. 

Your eyes darted between his once more. In the glow from the light of the hallway you noticed the way lines crinkled at the corners, and how tiny freckles you had never noticed before dotted around his nose and his cheekbones. It was almost as if you were truly seeing him for the first time.

“Thank you,” was all you knew to breathe. Your eyes fell closed and a gentle hum rumbled from your throat as you felt the pads of Dean’s fingers swipe at your hairline once more. 

Just as you opened them, he made eye contact with you once more–as if asking if this was alright. Your head managed the smallest nod before your eyes closed once more and felt Dean’s lips on yours, soft but purposeful. As he pulled away, all you could manage to say was, “Hallelujah…”, causing the green-eyed man to snort in laughter.