#this is already making out to be a fun thread im sorry life got in the way from continuing

[gyuswhore]

Grease (the tragedy)

“Careful, those marks on the floor aren’t just oil and paint.”

jeon wonwoo x reader

word count: 5.8k

warnings: smut [minors DNI], fluff, angst, mechanic!wonu, annoyances to lovers, blind date gone wrong but then gone right, kissing, clit stuff, oral (f. rec), thigh fucking (oop), this all happens at a desk LMAO, title is a what I thought was a funny spin on how people say "grease (the musical)"....has nothing to do with the musical though but lots to do with actual grease!!!

synopsis: In which you have to sit through one of the worst dates of your life, followed by the insistent tug of fate and compulsion that lead you straight back to where you'd sworn you'd never go.

[a/n]: HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY WIFE CAMOTHY @highvern everyone go say happy birthday to cam or ill appear in your room at night 🔫 anygays HAVE FUN READING THIS I hope this is all the sexy wonu content you wanted, I cant wait for your reaction hehehhehe

and also bigbigbigbig thank you to jessifer @the-boy-meets-evil for proofing this for me!!! ily heh

and and to everyone reading this who is not cam, I hope you enjoy reading mechanic!wonu as much as I liked writing him heheh PLS REMEMBER TO REBLOG AND TELL ME UR THOTS it could be in the tags, replies, an ask literally anything!!!! id love to hear what you guys think!!!!

masterlist

 [You]: do you think he died on the way [Liv]: hes still not there??? [You]: what do you think????? [Liv]: let me ask Amelia [You]: dont bother [You]: he can show up whenever he wants im leaving in 5 [Liv]: you promised you’d sit thru this!! [You]: sit thru what? an empty seat across from me???

Liv doesn’t respond immediately, and you immediately know she’s buggered off to ask her cousin why your date still wasn’t here. 

It’s not like you couldn’t have asked him yourself, the sparse textbox sitting just under Liv’s contact. You open it to inspect the contents. 

[liv’s cousin’s something]: Amelia gave me your number [liv’s cousin’s something]: friday night at the sage&salt at 7  [liv’s cousin’s something]: is that okay [You]: uh hey [You]: yeah that’s fine

Today 7:20 PM

[You]: im here?

The first thread of texts were enough to make you feel like this was some cold business meeting instead of a date, knowing wherever this would lead would be either the city dump or off a cliff. Liv was hearing none of it, taking the guilt tripping route, saying she’d already committed and her cousin was irritating enough even without a scuffle.

So when Friday evening came around you’d pulled on the first dress your fingers could find, took all of ten minutes fighting with your makeup to make it look like you did something and left the house with zero expectations. 

Despite that, as you see a man walk into the establishment dressed like he’d gotten into a fight with a squid and a paper shredder, you feel the stone in your chest tank into the abyss. Zero expectations, and he’s somehow managed to strike out anyway. 

The jacket looks like he’s put it on as a weak cover for the grime stains on his shirt and trousers, a couple jet black splatters across the outfit to really pull the whole thing together. It’s not like he looked homeless or anything, his face surprisingly handsome with his hair pushed away from his forehead. Although he remains looking like he’d been playing football in some neighbourhood parking lot before remembering he had an adult appointment too. 

You’d never seen the man in your life, but your gut told you this was the shit texter who’d kept you waiting for nearly an hour. He seems to notice too, eyes locking from across the restaurant as the waitress leads him to your table. 

“Wonwoo,” you greet with a difficult smile, half sure it came out as a grimace. “Right?”

“Yeah,” he huffs as he practically slams back down on the chair, and you wonder for a moment how the legs didn’t give out. He says your name and you nod. “Sorry I’m late, I got a call in the parking lot.”

He’s been in the parking lot this entire time?!

It’s like you’ve been doused in gasoline and lit on fire, yet somehow needing to give him a shaky reply anyway. 

“O–oh, I see.”

The waitress saves you from spitting in his face when she asks if you were ready to order. 

Dinner was off the table, as you discussed with Liv who forwarded it to her cousin to her–whoever it was that set up this god awful date–and agreed on dessert and perhaps a drink. 

“I’ll have the chocolate cake,” you request in an attempt to make this somewhat better. You consider for a moment before asking for a drink as well, “And a dry gin martini, please.”

“Um,” he staggers as he barely skims the menu, ultimately flipping it closed. “I’ll have the same, I guess.”

Deep voice. You might’ve liked that if you weren’t already so peeved. 

The waitress disappears with the menus, leaving you two alone for the first time. 

“So,” you start with an exhale. “How do you know Amelia?”

“Her husband.”

“I see.”

Silence. 

“How do you know her husband?”

He sighs like this is all inconveniencing him, and it irks you to an irrespective degree. Like you wanted to be here either. 

“He brings his car to the workshop alot, became friends somewhere along the line.”

“Workshop?”

He looks a little startled, cocking his head to the side. “I’m a mechanic? Did Olivia–was it–not tell you?”

“No, she didn’t.”

It’s silent yet again as the man across from you refuses to elaborate. You curse as you ask him a follow up question. If there was anything you hated more than shouldering a dead conversation, it was sitting through an awkward silence. 

One hour. You’d sit through this for one more hour and then you’d leave. 

“What kind of cars do you work on?”

“Expensive ones,” he answers. You might’ve kicked yourself if he’d ended it at that, but he continues with a purse of his lips. “Ones that rich people abuse to an inch of the machine’s life and wonder why the dealership gives up on it. Vintage pieces too.”

“Have I heard of it?”

“The cars?”

“No, I mean,” you let out a breath. “Your workshop.”

“Jeon Motors, just a couple streets down actually.”

You did know what he was talking about, not expecting to recognise it through the empty question, passing by it on multiple occasions in this part of the city.

“Oh, I’ve seen it a few times.”

“Yeah, we’ve been there for a while.”

“Family business?”

“Uh–sort of.” 

“Okay,” you sigh in an irritated laugh. This was going to be a very difficult hour. “Keep that to yourself too.”

“Is there a problem?”

Just as you lift your eyes to lock with his, a ready yes, there is actually a problem on your tongue, there’s an intrusion. 

“Here are your chocolate cakes,” the waitress places the cakes down, and then the drinks. “And your dry gin martinis. Do you guys need anything else?” By the time the waitress is gone you’ve somewhat forced yourself to put that sudden surge of flames out, to a degree at least. 

“Okay,” he sighs, grabbing his glass and downing nearly half the contents. He emerges, wiping a bit of a spill from the corner of his mouth. “Let’s get this out of the way.”

“Hm?” He’s speaking to you with a very weird surge of intensity, and it confuses you.

“Neither of us wanna be here. You’re clearly trying to be hospitable but I’d really rather you not, especially when we’re both doing this to get our respective ticks off our hides.”

There isn’t much you can do but stare at him. 

“Have I misjudged your advances?” he asks over his glass, sharp eyes piercing. 

“No!” you yelp, reaching for your drink yourself, taking big sips only to emerge sputtering and heaving. 

Your date looks like he’s rising out of his chair when you raise a hand to stop him. 

“No,” you repeat, less jumpy this time. “I guess we could’ve cleared that out from before.”

Did he…snort?

“Sorry.” Dropping his chin to his chest, he composes himself. 

“What?” you ask, remaining annoyed as ever. 

“Nothing.”

That does it. You slam your now empty glass down on the table, slipping your fork out of the napkin a little forcefully, the metal glinting in the light of the restaurant. You dig into a corner of the cake and shove it in your mouth. 

If he was gonna be rude, you could be too. 

“I don’t know about hospitable.” You swallow. “But I assumed not being an ass was kind of an unwritten rule for any situation really. Including the ones you’d rather not be in.”

Wonwoo stares at you with a blank face, his cake untouched. “I’m being an ass. My laugh couldn’t have offended you that much.”

“So you did pick that up,” you comment. “With the way this conversation’s going I would’ve thought it flew right over your engine.”

“I’d argue your laugh was the least offensive thing you’ve done tonight.” You plunge your fork into your cake again. “But clearly we’re in different realms of etiquette.”

Your eyes meet the rough stains on his attire, and then his own that bore into yours like a challenge. The cake isn’t too sweet, rich just the right amount and texturally sound. Maybe something good did come out of this fiasco. 

“Okay fine,” he announces, sitting up straighter. “I apologise.”

“For laughing?”

“And for being obscenely late.”

“And?”

“And…” he genuinely looks like he’s struggling to figure it out, but catches your eyes flickering to his tattered and stained outfit. “And for my entirely inappropriate dressing sense. You’ll have to forgive me for that one, oil and grime are my spoils of war.”

“Wear it like a badge, mister mechanic, but perhaps somewhere it’s appreciated.” 

Wonwoo has already finished his drink, his cake remaining untouched. “You’re quite adamant on disliking me.”

“And you’re quite adamant on being a horrid conversationalist.”

The corners of his mouth lift the slightest bit. Opening his mouth to respond, you cut him off. “Cars don’t talk? Or perhaps, machines are easier to understand?”

“More like I don’t care to be personable.”

“That can’t be good for business.”

“The cars speak for themselves.”

He’s a weird one. Even more so when he offers to pay the entire bill, promising you he wasn’t lying when he said he was good at what he does, and to “make up for lost personality points.” You manage to pay your half anyway, considering the circumstances. 

“Can you at least let me drive you home?” Wonwoo asks as you both step out of the establishment soon after. 

“Depends.” You fix the strap of your bag. “Will it fall apart on the highway?”

The blaring white of the restaurant's outdoor lights backlight Wonwoo to make him look like some sad angel. He turns to you, the same slight smirk that seems to be plastered on his face. “Why don’t you find out?”

“What do you mean sell it? I got this thing a year ago!” 

There isn’t much you can do but sigh loudly as you listen to Olivia talk about the state of her car, the one that cost too much to justify but she seemed to use and abuse like a very replaceable toy truck. 

Leaning against the hood of the darn thing, you talk to her. “The dealership is giving you a shit deal to take it off your hands, you might as well try your luck.”

The look on her face is easy to read as she silences. Not convinced in the slightest, waiting for the conversation to end just so she could figure it out on her own. Sighing loudly, you look back to the dark beauty with a crate of issues that make it spit and sputter to a stop every few weeks. 

“How much did you say the repairs cost again?”

“Enough to put me on food stamps,” she whines through her frustration, tears pricking against her eyes as they glisten under the neighbourhood streetlights. “Why are you smirking like that?!”

“It’s just,” you pause as you consider your next words, pressing your lips together. “This is a little bit your fault.”

Lies, it was entirely her fault. 

Liv stares like you’ve just offended her, which you’re sure you have.

“Care to share how this possible bankruptcy could be my fault?"

“Because you drive the thing like you have a secret reserve buried somewhere in Tenerife.”

“My apologies for making a habit of not being a public nuisance and going forty on a national highway.”

“Your speed-o-metre is not the issue here.”

“Yes, of course, everything’s my fault.”

“Liv, please!” You groan loudly. “Just…let’s try putting up a listing tomorrow. Consider the prospects and you can decide from there.”

Sagging her shoulders and stretching her neck, Liv decides to simply trudge back indoors in silence. You take it as a begrudging yes, and follow her inside. 

That very night, when you were at the very cusp of falling into the dark space of sleep, your brain re-awakens before your eyes do. A jolt as the memory comes back to you of the many months ago, sitting in that restaurant across from a man who was too handsome for the personality he seemed to sire. 

“Expensive ones,” he had said. “Ones that rich people abuse to an inch of the machine’s life and wonder why the dealership gives up on it.”

How fitting. 

“Are you going to explain or should I explode instead?” 

You’d mentally prepared for the bombardment of accusations from Liv, her questioning perfectly right as you yourself cringed at the thought of showing your face here of all places. The one last one that’d officially banned her from ever setting you up with an individual of her choosing ever again. 

Hearing only silence as her answer, she appeals; “I thought he was the worst date of your life.”

“Nothing to do with his skills as a mechanic,” you mumble, refusing to make eye contact. 

“And everything to do with this being a horrible idea anyway!” Liv stares up at the sign on top of the garage. Jeon Motors. “What makes you think this guy can fix my car?”

What did make you think he could fix Liv’s car? If you’d known you might have given her an answer, but as you stare at the giant signboard that you’ve driven past for longer than you can remember, you can’t help but feel this place has been haunting you. Just a little. 

You can’t help but feel the tingle of goosebumps rise on your skin, the hairs across the expanse standing up at the thought of walking inside. There was no way you could differentiate the reaction from plain nerves or from the cringing drills that sound all the way outside the establishment. Regardless, you make an attempt to look confident as you make your strides into the pungent of the workshop. 

The first thing you note is how…clean everything is. Cleaner than any other workshop you’ve walked into anyway. 

The interior is bigger than it looks from the outside, the ginormous hall hosting about a dozen cars within your eyeshot alone. One side of the great hall holds an array of parked cars in different stages of dismantled and deconstructed, while the other side is lined with contraptions that look like stripped and enlarged elevators. 

Once you’ve inhaled a beyond recommended amount of smoke fumes and listened past all of the clanging, banging and sparks, you register the people that are elbow deep in the hoods of the vehicle they’re working on, enough to leave you and Liv standing at the entrance of an establishment that you can barely make sense of. 

“Can I help you?” A man in stained beige overalls approaches your wide eyed pair, face half covered in his baseball hat and hands occupied with a rag. 

To your slightest dismay, it isn’t the man you’re looking for.

“Uh– is Wonwoo here?” you ask. 

“He’s in a meeting right now. Are you a friend?” 

No, just a failed love interest.

“He,” you falter. If you weren’t a friend…then what were you? “He gave me his card.”

“Do you need help with your car?”

“Mine, actually,” Liv pipes. “It’s outside if you wanna take a look first.”

With one sweeping look across the warehouse, your eyes land on one of the few doors on the left. You register the plain look of it for barely a moment before joining Liv outside. 

By the time her car has been rolled and parked inside for a more thorough inspection, it’s taken you every last grain of your willpower to not stalk back out and wait in your car. For whatever reason, you can’t help but feel a very familiar spasm of irritation spark through you. Here you are, left anxiously waiting for the same man for a second time, merely feet away but remaining occupied with more important things. 

At the very least, the multiple hands prodding around the car’s engine were being somewhat of use, attempting to survey the same issues that had been looked at about a dozen times before. You silently promise to be a better person if this trip wouldn’t be for vain.  

“Am I late for something again?” 

Your throat is suddenly clogged as you open your mouth and no sound graces your presence. The face that meets you has his eyebrows raised as he stares at you in expectation, a ghost of a smile on his face. 

“W–Wonwoo, hi, um.” You clear your throat loudly, heat cursing your cheeks. “No, of course not.”

“To what do I owe the pleasure after…four months?” he asks, hands on his hips and his back straightened.

“I…my friend’s car needed to be looked at so…”

“Ah, of course!” He turns to where you’ve motioned, looking at the popped hood of the car his employees are working on. “I’ll take a look at it myself, don’t worry about it.”

He’s already walking away, towards the car and leaving you a ways away from the action. You stare at his back; the overalls tied at the waist and the stained white T-shirt that clings to his form from the humidity.

Wonwoo remains a man of a few words, and you remain at wits end about it all. 

A loud honk gives you something to do as you jump at the sound so up close, scrambling to move away from the smack centre as another car pulls into the garage. 

“Careful, those marks on the floor aren’t just oil and paint.” Wonwoo snickers from his place hunched over the hood as he cranes his neck to look at you. 

You walk over to where he is to get out of the way. “Was that meant to sound like an innuendo?”

“I was talking about the occasional running over someone’s foot,” he answers. “Not sure what you were thinking.” 

Ignoring the jab, you note that it was now only you and him crowding the car, “Where’s Olivia?”

“Went to look at spare parts.” You watch him as his gloved hands reach further into the enclave and yank at something hard. 

“So you can fix it?” 

“The car? It’ll take a couple days but it’s not really an issue.”

Furrowing your brows, you press on, “But the dealership—”

“Dealerships are the spawn of the devil,” he grunts as he finally wrenches out a spare nut or bolt or something that’s covered in oil. “Let me guess, they wanted her to sell it back to them?”

It’s your turn to raise your brows. “Yes. They tried fixing it, but it'd just stop again.”

“Because they’ve been fixing the symptoms.” He raises his eyes to meet yours, hands occupied with rubbing the part in his hands relatively clean with a rag. “They haven’t bothered to do anything about the actual problem.” 

“Because that’s gonna cost…?”

“Couple hundred, give or take,” he announces nonchalantly, turning his focus back to the engine. 

“But—” That’s it?

“Fifty extra for every question I have to answer after this.” You briefly wonder if Wonwoo’s eyes were always this piercing, boring into your soul like he didn’t need words to know what was going on with you. 

“Fine,” you huff, moving to drag a chair over, mostly just so you could have reason to break eye contact, and plop down as you watch him work. 

The more you think about it, the more you can find yourself unbothered by his strange behaviour. He wasn’t bleak, but nowhere near one of the more interesting people you’ve met. Taking the opportunity to really scan the man head to toe, you can’t say you find anything truly concrete to be this put off by him. 

Not much of a talker, but with the times you’ve prayed for a man that knew when to shut up sometimes, you wonder how much you can actually complain about this boon in particular. 

Besides, he was a looker, and you were completely content shutting your trap if it meant you got to shamelessly ogle at him from this close. 

“You know, this place looks bigger than it does from the outside.”

Wonwoo stares pointedly. 

You raise a shoulder in nonchalance, “Wasn’t a question!”

He simply huffs as he mumbles, “More length than breadth I suppose.”

“What are those things called?” you ask as you watch a sedan get lifted into the on some platform on the other end of the row. 

Glancing back, he answers, “Post lift, car lift, whatever you wanna call it.”

“What does it do?”

“Take a wild guess.”

“Touché.” 

Glancing back at him, you catch sight of his stained shirt once again. “Is that the same thing you wore to our date?”

Chin to chest, he registers what he’s wearing, hands still working on pulling bolts and boxes out of the hood. “Have about twenty of the same shirt, I can never be too sure.”

“You’re impossible.”

He smirks, “Touché.” 

You questioned if this was a mistake. 

Olivia could pick up her car herself, so why did you insist to be the one that did it? As you pay the taxi driver, you feel your ankles lock for a moment as you move to slip out of the cab. Frozen, you hear the driver ask you if everything was alright, to which your legs seem to work again, finally foot to gravel in front of the dreaded workshop.

The Jeon Motors sign blares the same as it always has in the afternoon light, glinting as it encourages you to walk in and do one of the stupider things you’ve done in life. Other than the ridiculous outfit you’ve put on, of course. 

But alas, as you hand over your slip to one of the many mechanics in the workshop, you find yourself praying he wasn’t here after all, that perhaps you could miss him as you leave and never have to see him again. 

Somebody yells out his name, and the dream drifts away like smoke. 

Finding the courage, you look up to where the man shouted for him, and immediately wish you hadn’t. 

Wonwoo remains in his overalls, the same ones that he had tied to his waist the last time you saw him. His undershirt however…

The tank top is revealing too much for you to pretend you don’t care, his hair remaining pushed back and away from his forehead as he walks over to you in what feels like slow motion. He takes the slip that he does not need, smiling at you as he says his hellos. 

“Car’s all fixed up, just need some papers that need signing and you’re all set.”

“Oh, but Liv isn’t here today.”

“That’s alright, you can sign them too,” he reassures, motioning for you to walk with him towards the car. “The car was alright in the test drives, revving hasn’t caused any problems either.”

He halts in front of the now (supposedly) fixed black sedan and pats the hood lightly, “If anything happens tell her to bring it straight here, although it shouldn’t have any more problems.”

“What’s your rate of return on customers?” you ask, a slight smirk on your face.

He thinks for a moment, “Pretty crap. But I guess that means I’m doing something right.”

You consider yourself something of a helicopter parent when it comes to your own car, but perhaps you’d change that if it meant you’d get to come here a little more often. 

Goodness, what’s gotten into you.

Wonwoo’s smiling too, and for a brief moment the silence is nearly awkward. A pause before he proposes leaving. 

“Shall we go to the office then?” 

Nodding eagerly, you trail behind him as he leads you towards the other end of the workshop, passing by even more cars in all their stripped or constructed glory. Glancing in front, you catch sight of Wonwoo’s back, ensnared for a moment before you snap your head away, reciting every curse word you know like a mantra. 

“It’s less hot in here too, keep the air on all the time.” Wonwoo stands in front of the plain doors, hands on the handle to wrench it open. You recognise it as the same door you had noted a few days ago. “Would you like anything? Coffee, tea?”

“Um, just water is fine, thanks.”

It’s quite plain, beige and leather against cream walls and unfittingly white lights. There’s a desk on one corner that’s beyond cluttered with more papers than you can register, pens and other office supplies mixed into the disorganised chaos of the large tabletop.

“Sorry about the mess, I can never find time to sort through it.” To your surprise, the light tinge of his cheeks suggest he might actually feel a little embarrassed. 

Cute. 

There’s cabinets that line on one of the far walls, and you watch him take his gloves off to open it and reach for a cup. The white porcelain emerges stained with an ashy grey as his fingers betray him. He looks flustered, glancing at his hands and back up to the cabinet. 

You can’t help but laugh a little, moving forward to help. “It’s alright, let me.”

“Sorry,” he apologised again, with a sheepish look on his face. “I’ll, um, wash this off.”

“Go on, I’m here,” you reassure as you move towards the water dispenser in the corner to fill your clean cup. 

He returns with significantly cleaner hands and apologises one last time. “Seems all I do around you is apologise.”

You have the good humour to chuckle, “So I’ve noticed.”

He does well to clear out most of the clutter that’s on his desk, leaving enough room to set down a few pieces of paper as you take a seat on the opposite side. 

As you scan through the papers, he attempts to make sober conversation. “You should…bring your car around for inspections if you want.”

“Oh? Even if I ask a million questions?”

“I can make an exception or two,” he grins. 

“And if you charge me double?”

“Might not charge you at all.”

“Might?” you question as you lift the pen he’d given you to sign the first space. 

“Might.”

“And what’re the conditions for that?” 

He doesn’t answer as he ponders and you fill in the second blank. “I’ll have to think about that.”

You snort before you can help it, your last signature coming out a little wonky as your hands shake. Turning the papers over to him, you continue, “Well then, let me know when you figure it out.”

He stares pointedly as he accepts the papers before dropping his eyes again, “Can I?”

“Hm?”

“Can I? Let you know?” 

It’s like you’ve been frozen over, the typewriter in your mind jamming as it punches out the implications of what he’s saying. 

“It seems, at least to me, that we may have gotten off on the wrong foot,” he continues. 

You hesitate. “I think so too.”

“I…I don’t want to put anything like pressure on you but–” 

“Would you like to try the new gelato place downtown this week?” you ask finally as you save him from his misery. “If…you’d like.”

He looks stunned for a moment before he’s scrambling, “Oh–of course! Yes, anytime is fine with me.”

“Great,” you smile, lifting from your seat. “It’s a date.”

“I’ll promise to wash my hands this time…and my shirt. And I won’t be late.” 

“Let’s not make promises we can’t keep,” you tease. 

You’re nearing the door as he follows behind, and just as you’re about to pull down on the handle, you hear him say your name. 

Turning around, almost too eagerly, you look up at him in expectation. He’s close, almost right behind you as he looks like he’s debating whether opening his mouth is a good idea. 

“Are you doing anything else today?” 

“Um,” you stutter for a moment. “I don’t have to drop off the car till later tonight, that’s all really.”

He swallows. “Do you wanna stay? Just a little while. We can stay in here, nobody comes in anyway.”

You aren’t entirely sure why you said yes, because you did actually have dinner plans with Liv later tonight, but the teeny tiny voice in your mind egged you on anyway. Besides, Liv wouldn’t mind, not if you were cancelling for this.

This entailed the very friendly contact of Wonwoo’s tongue in your mouth, and the extremely cordial way it seemed to caress your insides. If somebody asked you how it led to this, you don’t think you’d have an answer. Not that you care, especially when his hands are grabbing your waist and hips like that.

He’s already locked the door, reassuring you that nobody would find their boss and client in the smack dab middle of the devil’s tango. You take his word for it, relishing in the way his hot breath hits your skin below your ears, his mouth sucking under your earlobes as you whimper ever so quietly. 

Your hands are on his exposed biceps, feeling him up all to your heart's content. “Do you–Do you always wear stuff like this?”

He emerges, wet lipped and eyes trained. “So I wasn’t imagining it.”

“Imagining what?” you ask as you let him unbuckle your trousers.

“Please. Like you weren’t stripping me with your eyes.”

If you were warm before you, you're boiling up now. Were you being so obvious?

“It’s alright,” he reassures as you feel his fingers make contact with the crotch of your panties, pushing in to put pressure on your clit. “Wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t picked up on it.”

You feel his fingers push the dampening fabric away as his fingers make contact with your hole, coating his fingers in the arousal that’s made itself known. It’s hard to not hiss at the way he begins to circle it, thanking the universe that the loud noises of the workshop outside were masking whatever evidence of the heinous crime you were committing inside. 

Back against the couch in his office, you settle into the cushions once you feel him rub at your clit, one hand spreading your lips apart as he continues to massage your own wetness onto your throbbing cunt. 

When he retreats you almost cry out, but are smothered when he plunges two fingers into your hole instead, curling them almost immediately inside you. The consistent brush of the tips of his fingers on your walls are making it difficult to keep your eyes open, and absolutely impossible to keep your moans at bay. 

“Wonwoo, that’s so good, fuck.”

Through your closed eyes, you don’t note when Wonwoo gets on his knees. But you do feel him yank your trousers off entirely, and you definitely feel him place his wet mouth flush on your lower lips, sucking at your clit as he continues to pump his fingers in and out of you mercilessly. 

That’s all it takes for your noises to become increasingly high pitched, hands buried in his beautiful hair as he continues to pleasure you beyond imagination. 

“I’m so close, keep going, please, it feels so–”

He somehow buries his face in deeper, sucking harder, licking faster, and it’s enough for you to finally feel yourself collapsing on the inside, your composure dissolving as you moan so loud you’re sure they can hear it outside, even through all the clanging and revs of cars. 

There’s no way for you to know how long you lay there slumped against the couch cushions, but when you hear Wonwoo speak to you in your ear, you answer. 

“Was that okay?”

“More than okay,” you say as you grab his face and pull his lips to yours, tasting the tang in his mouth from your arousal. “Do you have a condom?”

“I–fuck,” he thinks for a moment. “I don’t think I do.”

You try not to feel too disappointed, but you sigh into his mouth anyway. 

“Can I fuck your thighs?” you hear him ask, and you might have just orgasmed again, untouched. 

“Fuck, yes you can.” 

With a yelp, you feel yourself lifted off the couch as you wrap your arms around Wonwoo’s neck, letting him guide you to his desk. “Wonwoo!”

You hear a loud crash of the desk being stripped of all its inhabitants, and your back hitting the cool of the table top. 

Wonwoo unties the arms of his overalls around his waist, letting the legs pool to the floor before slipping his hard cock out of his boxers. 

You don’t see it as you feel him lock your knees together and lift both your calves to rest on one of his shoulders. But you do feel it as he pushes the head into the seam of your thighs, watching the indent as the pink of his dick appears before you through the skin of your thighs. 

Wonwoo’s face is contorted as he pulls back and pushes back through again, this time brushing against your still sensitive clit. You gasp at contact, and immediately feel him thrusting faster. 

“Wonwoo,” you grunt. “Lower.”

He obliges, pushing his dick lower so it can rub flush against your clit as he begins to roughen up his pace. 

You moan as you feel his free hand that isn’t holding your legs trail to the ends of your shirt, caressing over your stomach to pull it up and reveal your bra clad tits. He pushes his hands under the nearest cup and begins to grope you so wonderfully with his big, warm hands. Rolling the bud between his fingers, you can only grasp onto his wrists as a handheld to keep you down on earth. 

The desk beneath you is rattling with noise, the full drawers making themselves known as Wonwoo pounds into your thighs like he would die if he stopped, mouth coming in contact with whatever skin of your legs he could reach, his breath fanning the side of your knees. 

You’re close again, and you know he is too with the way his thrusts are beginning to grow sloppy. 

“There,” he pants. “Almost.”

You orgasm for the second time, the throb your clit beyond comprehension as the rough of his dick slides across your clit mercilessly. 

“Cum like this, Wonwoo please I need to see you cum.”

And he does, shooting the heft of his load to cover your already wet cunt and thighs, landing on your stomach as he continues to ride out his high between your legs. 

The back of your head hits the table as you take in gulps of air through the aftermath of it all. Wonwoo is putting his weight on the back of your thighs, holding onto the table for support. 

“Oh, Liv is never gonna let me live this down,” you pant, lolling your head to one side as you register him. 

He peers up at you through his hair, the stupid smirk on his face, “Do you care?”

You’re smiling a little too when you answer, “Not really.”

And then your legs are off his shoulders as he nestles between them instead, diving in to lift your head and kiss you. 

And you let him, although you wouldn’t really call it too much of a kiss—not when the both of you were smiling like idiots through the clash. 

[xxsacrificiumxx]

" Corkus, hm? " She repeats the name, tongues at her cheek and wills herself to start storing names to faces in anticipation that she may be among this lot for a while. Rosie smiles, though her eyes follow his movements with a keen awareness of someone hypervigilant. She laughs even more at his chest puffing bravado and licks her lip to respond, " Well, my brave Captain of the Hawks, most people just call me Rosie. Sometimes Sphinx, if you want to want to keep in theme of quirky names. Whatever suits your favor." Her coy behavior seems to lighten up as he stands beside her, easing into the conversation after judging his intent was not harmful to her. Emerging from his pile of scraps, the red eyed raptor raised his grime covered feathered head with half a fish in his serrated beak. Amongst humans the demon familiar had felt very little worry for his safety or that of his mistress -- that much was certain in reflection of Rosie's feelings. Laxed, besides her worry for Guts in the recovery tent. Orpheus stood at Just barely thigh level of corkus and seemed to judge the man with a burning once-over before returning back to gulping down piles of unattended goods.

Rosie glanced back at her familair, initially worried of his squaking, then relieved he was too preoccupied to care about the company they keep. She focuses back on the question at hand : Are you a mercenary by chance? Her hand raises absently to her mouth, gently fingering at her scarred lip and grazing the pink marring along her cheek as she thought of her response. His focus on her armor made her glance at the rusted forearm brace and chuckle sheepishly,

" Not a mercenary, no.. But a girl needs protection, right? I would probably have worse than this messed up face of mine if I didnt.. But i'm glad to know im not the only girl in armor. "

The other girl in armor, A commander, she gathers from his commentary. That peaks her attention. The very same woman she had seen ordered into the tent with Guts before she lost sight of them behind the flaps and dim lighting of the tent. The angel tries to keep her emotions in check, to keep her distracting tail from wagging beneath her cloak and startling the man, but she feels that telling tingle drifting down her spine. Rosie maneuvered herself quickly atop the barrel, flicking the cape behind her and keeping her white tail out of sight as she faces corkus completely. Her hands balance her weight on the edge of the barrel rim and looks up to the mercenary with lashes still fluttering. Her expression playful and inviting, she beams at him,

" So honey, is it normal that your snow white leader tries to kill every person before he recruits them? Or are we just that special? Did you end up bedridden with a lady companion to help you heal too? "

xxsacrificiumxx​:

He will be fine. Just resting within the tents.. when he is awake, we will straighten this out. 

    But being within a camp of mercenaries in the middle ages wasn’t exactly an ideal circumstance to be lying low in. Especially when your natural appearance, and the fact that you are a woman, was a natural call to attention. Nonetheless, the affairs on the hilltop which took her young struggler captive led Rosie to follow close behind.. not that the mercenaries had much of a say in whether she followed or not. She may not have wielded an intimidating blade, but her willingness to stand her ground and the threat to fight otherwise was enough to persuade the group, obviously recovering from a battle loss at a fortress, to not pick another fight. They likely thought of her to be his mother or caretaker of some sort – for now, she would not clarify. 

    Still, Rosie bears scavenged mismatching armor beneath her heavy red cloak, a chimera of poor quality as a not so great testament to her standing in all this. She wandered, she stood, then settled upon a barrel she thought would give her the best view in scouting her surroundings as her back pressed to a tent where Guts rest in the meantime. Even Orpheus, the dog sized bird of prey, hopped around and dug into unattended rations laying behind the barrel. When Rosie looked down at him, she inwardly sighed and rubbed her eyes. Yet another complaint she would likely hear… another reason for her to be disliked and distrusted, probably accused of stealing, or maybe haggled into working to repay the debt of her voracious familiar  The woman is keenly aware of the curious eyes that pass her, her own face hidden well within the shadow of cloth but she studies each on-looker cautiously to take em into account. Most were harmless.. well kept, kind natured albeit in desperate need of a shower. And battle-worn. Beyond that, they seemingly functioned as a reasonable group of hardworking people, rather then money hungry heathens. There were worse groups she could be stuck with.. The matter at hand remains, though; She needs to find a way home. And make sense of the red string that seems lead her back to Guts.

Many may have walked past her, but the last thing she anticipated was someone brave enough to actually approach her without animosity. Rosie almost jumped slightly when Corkus’ voice broke her trail of thoughts, her shoulders squaring and her back straightening as her head whipped towards him with a look of surprise. Without her sunken eyes being obvious, her complexion was considerably youthful, paired with dark pink lips and noticeable smile lines when they tilted into a crooked, timid grin. Prominent fangs poked out of the corners, a jagged pink scar trailed up her cheek, and down the left side of her lip. Rosie debates the tone to take.. then decides to play along. She giggles like a maiden and acts coy, tugging her cloak closer for security,

Rosie chose her voice carefully, speaking higher in her throat than the usual deep maternal sound that came in her more relaxed state. She squirms bashfully upon to barrel, then works her way to face the man. Pulling her hood back just enough to expose her golden eyes into the light, her lips part just a little more to reveal those teeth in her act. Her lashes flutter as she looks the man from head to toe– he was probably similar to her own age. Closer than most, the ever arrogant warrior that used stature to woo the hearts of delicate young girls. Standing at 5′3 had its pros and cons when you forever looked small and cute. The feline pupils dilate and widen with wonder,

“ You look like a very strong man.. You could probably lift me and push me around with ease.. do you have a name, Mr.Warrior ?  You must have been fighting for so long here with this group.. probably very knowledgeable.. could you tell me more about where I am? Who you all are? ” 

The woman was visibly startled by him approaching, but not scared, which he took as good sign. Indeed, she seemed to not mind conversation, giggling like a bashful village girl. Closer look at her, however, made him realize that despite this demeanor she was most likely not a local. Her face, while undeniably cute in features, bore a visible scar. That alone could mean she was a victim of war sometime in her past, like plenty at these difficult times, but a look at mismatched armour poking from under the cloak told a different tale. A woman warrior? The concept could probably make most people gape with astonishment. But not anybody in the Hawks. Corkus merely tilted his head intrigued; it seemed their Casca was less of a rarity than anyone thought.

However, the woman’s attitude was opposite of Casca’s stern seriousness. She sat there fluttering her lashes and smiling to show glinting… fangs? He blinked; must be a light trick, he decided, better not to think about it too much. The mercenary straightened and puffed his chest, pleased with the compliments and wanting to keep the impression .

“Well, you’re certainly not wrong about that, miss. The name’s Corkus, captain in the Band of the Hawk, the best mercenary band in whole of Midland, and you’re currently in our camp.” he boasted, showing around with a sweeping gesture. “A pretty lass is always a welcome guest, an’ if you need anythin’, well, you’ve found a right man. Ask away about anythin’ you want, while we wait for that friend of yours, wonder if I know him. Anyway, I don’t think I know you yet, so, what’s your name, pretty?” he asked as moved to lean his back on the tent next to her and crossed his arms in a casual pose, gotta keep the image going, and it was easier to chat that way.

“Say, you’re not a mercenary by chance, are you? Not everyday you see a woman in armour… well, I mean other than one of our commanders, but that’s beside the point, haha.” he ended with a small laugh, noticing he probably trailed off with that one. 

[gayrob0t]

"#but the wrist has gotta do so much crazy mechanical bullshit in the hand that it cant just#risk snapping something by doing what the neck does"

sorry i feel like i must be misreading this: our wrists can't risk snapping but our necks can???

Lol i may have phrased it poorly because I cant edit tags, but essentially the reason your head can turn is because of two specific vertebrae that sit on top of eachother called the atlas and the axis, they're right at the base of your skull

I believe this is the only place in the human body where a joint actually rotates transversely and it's because the spine is basically a bunch of socket joints sitting gently within eachother with the spinal cord threaded through and a fucktonne of ligament systems to keep it in place. Theres a lot of limitations to this system as you picked up, the main one being if you turn too far you uh, break something and get internally decapitated, which is game over immediately in 70% of cases and not fun in the remaining 30%. They also can sometimes dislocate from eachother and the ligaments that hold them in place and some people even have to have the two bones fused together. The point being that this is the only example we have of what seems the 'obvious' way to make a rotating joint in the human body and it already has so many problems. This brings us to the wrist

Imagine you're evolution, and you've got to figure out how to give an animal rotation of the limb. So why not put this kind of joint in the arm? You could probably already imagine how it'd work with the hand sitting in some neat saddle sitting within the radius or something. Why not? Well because you'd break something! We just finished talking about how the neck joint isnt the most structurally stable or safest thing to have (dont panic it's been there your whole life it's probably fine) and you twist your wrist so often! Much more often than you turn your head Im willing to bet! And your wrist has to sit in that turned position for extended periods of time! You may have noticed in that diagram of the atlas the label for the vertebral artery. Thats because it's not just your nerves in your spine, but you got blood delivery there too! Rotation can pinch these arteries, which is why owls actually have a flexible balloon-like bloodvessel in their heads to store blood when they do their 270⁰ rotation of the neck. So you'd have to put one of those in the hand I guess. And where are we putting all the tendons and muscles for the hand? Do we squeeze them all through that saddle now? How are we sure they won't pinch each other when rotating? Are we going to use ligaments to restrict movement so the bones dont guillotine everything off if they turn too far? And what about that extra bone just in the arm, is it going the way of the tibia?

An important thing to keep in mind is that evolution is a lot like a teenager doing their project the night before it's due, it's using what it has and by god if it works it works, final grade be damned. So it doesnt bother with the labor and material intensive task that is fabricating a whole new joint and troubleshooting the problems that come with it. It just takes the two bones already there

And twist

[myrfing]

6.2 MSQ spoiler thread [estinien voice] kumbhira ribeye baby [varshahn voice] did he drop it in dirt

YOUR...BABY HEAD? THE... NO BEARD SCALES?

howling screaming best himalayan salt lamp ever

this is so. LMFAOOOOOOOOOOOO

this party comp is nice...yshtola is my forever gamer and estiniens a funny guy. and big varshahn is um. big varshahn. also first time i think they've ever left the autofill as healer for the pc lol

ohhh i looove the twisted surrounds. and god making varshahn pull more in his newly minted freshman meatsuit sorry for the evil

watching his ass use shield lob 5 times in a row for an enemy right next to him. Yea you need to be a dragon

*taking pics of everything* I have to show cylva does she know this lady.

yshtola asking if voidsent appreciate flowers too...man they kind of screwed themselves over by making the void already in CT when their aesthetic sense was erm worse but they really are making the best of it. it looks cool even if halloweeny

common tongue between norvrandt and the 13th...is that the weenis woonis or was there a different babel event. ohh thinking about the golden dhyata now

oh man she's cool.

also people were mad about this line weren't they? i dont get it that's pretty par for the course for the bodyjacker guy

her voice is so nice lol

"are you his friend" "im gourd I dont know anything about that" most ic response laughed like hell. also people said these choices were mean they arent even half as mean as I want them to be sorry to the lovers

YSHTOLA NOT YOUR AETHER LMFAOOO LET GOURD GIVE HIS GIRL YOUA RE FUCKINGGGG PUTTING GAS ON THE PEDAL 24/7

oh so she's like vaulthry

her little hat tilt...moe

why doesnt...like...why dont we just kill the guy or. gourd absorbs the aether. i know suspended disbelief needed here just man

yshtola being the one to give zero her name...the way they. Well.

also she's still cool but she's also very lame. win

...sorry fray

statue of a guy who died doing passage of arms

im lookin for thos deepeyes...

man these little guys can have a little aether. it's fine gourd has a lot and he never fucking uses it except all at once I guess

zero's little sad house of nobodies. love it. yes the house and heart yshtola

SHE'S SUCH A BORN IN A WET CARDBOARD BOX ALL ALONE LMFAOOO HER HIDEOUT...NO NAME...ONLY KNOWS TRANSACTIONAL BONDS...so real. the oc of desolate 12 year olds everywhere

girl you got snot fountain in your mind palace

ok I know barbariccia is naked lady boss #43461 but hi. you're green as hell like pea soup

wtf she killed those little dudes. they were just hanging out

host says they cant seat us until everyones here wol sighs and takes out their azem crystal

snot hair lady a little fun

NO deepeyes in the void :(

aw ciriatto is relieved and says farfarello quieted down after we slonked her shit

SO FUNNY MAKING ESTINIEN CARRY HER? SO FUNNY ALSO PRETENDING THE WOL DOESNT HAVE MASSIVE AETHER RESERVES YET AGAIN

yesss lets feed zero zero feast zero eat

miss hydaelyn bringing me the cool kids wide and far

varshahn (politely) She is a pain in the ass. But that's ok

LFMAOAOAOAOOA YOU CAN BE LIKE I'm going to my island.

aww..zero feeling warmth and light for the first time in ever

nidhana is so reliable she is just everywhere I guess

DO NOTTTT INSULT NIDHANA ZERO >:[_____]

SHE SUCKED THAT APPLE DRYYYYY HELPPPP

also varshahn. Grow up

[jp writers] human connection and belonging is The Apple (Fruit)

...i bet shes going to die when taken outside of her pond and thats why shes okay with it after all that. Zero U Are So

varshahn's customer service voice with her AHAHAHA

fuck thee aethernet we are walking so you get to see PLANTS and SKIES and COLOR and ARCHITECTURE and PEOPLE

im so glad that the first place she sees as herself in the first is thavnair cus it's such a gorgeous and lively place

lmaoaoooaoaao you just got unlucky zero you got a pretty weird guy

WOO YEAH YSHTOLA the 13th as the life will fill the universe again weaping crying whatever

omg let the eyeball goop enjoy thavnair too

Golbez Grip

there's the Promises We Dont Know About again

i like the void's goofy asses. next is the x.3 patch so someone is going to have to eat it raw

[spinster-sisters]

Crush. PSH, JYN

TW: dom! Seonghwa, sub! Yunho, sub! Reader,threesome, exhibitionism, degradation (use of the words slut and whore), bondage (male receiving), Sir kink, overstim (kinda, idk how much counts as overstim but im putting it here anyway), excessive use of the word wet, panty kink, buldging, k so heres the deal, in this thing yunho has a crush on both the reader and seonghwa and seongwha is probably also attracted to men based on the way i wrote this but there is no actually mxm interaction PHYSICALLY, also fun fact at no point anywhere in this is there the letters Y/N cuz i have decided i hate that shit and istead u get excessive pet names.

WC: 4k

AN: this is 4k words of pure smut, like plot if you SQUINT right at the begnining but even that is pretty smutty. ngl its prettyy shit. im sorry lol. also this isnt specifically idolverse or nah, it could kinda go either way so thats that i guess.

Yunho had always had a crush on you, that much everyone knew, but when you and seonghwa began dating Yunho had decided to put his own feelings aside out of respect for both you and seonghwa. Maybe it worked for a while, a few months of being genuinely happy for his two friends finding love. Yeah, it was hard seeing one of his best friends get to touch you and talk to you in the way he wanted to, but the smiles that never left either of your faces were well worth it.

But then that night came.

He hadn't meant to see it. All of your friends had gone out to a crowded club, there was dancing and a lot of drinking. But with all the chaos of the night, nobody noticed when you and seonghwa slipped into the bathroom. A while later Yunho found himself needing to pee and made his way to the back of the club as well, but when he pushed open the door all thoughts of his original plans had left. There you were, spread out on the counter, chest heaving, tiny drops of sweat making their way down your neck. And there was seonghwa, standing between your legs slamming his hips into yours and a brutal pace, absolutely RUINING you. His back was to the door and your eyes were screwed shut, Yunho had only opened the door just far enough to see in so neither of the two of you had noticed him yet.

Yunho's first reaction was to close the door and pretend he hadn't seen anything, but he couldn't move, not once he heard the filth spewing seonghwas lips.

"My baby girl got so needy she needed me to fuck her with all of her friends around? What a little slut"

That was the first thing Yunho heard, and then whine that the words pulled out of you was damn near-pornographic, and it went straight to his dick. He only stood there for a few more moments before closing the door, but the damage had been done.

Did you guys fuck like this all the time? It felt so wrong, the perfect lovey-dovey couple Yunho had come to know were hiding such a dirty side to themselves.

Ever since that night, nothing has been the same. Yunho's thoughts of you turned more and more sinful than they had ever been, but there was something else. At first, Yunho thought it had just been the embarrassment of seeing such a private moment, but Yunho was now having the same amount of trouble meeting Seonghwas eyes as yours. Every time Yunho's mind drifted back to that moment Seonghwas figure was just as clear as yours, and although he didn't want to admit it, it was seonghwas words in the bathroom that made Yunho hard.

And that is how Yunho had come to discover that he had a crush and not one, but both of you. And almost every time Yunho took time to relive himself all he could image was seonghwas sharp and defined features manipulating your soft and supple ones into increasingly compromising positions, his calm voice eliciting those same desperate whines from you.

He knew this was fucked.

Yunho doesn't know at what point seonghwa became aware of his infatuation with himself and his girlfriend, maybe he had noticed him in the bathroom and chosen not to say anything, maybe mingi had told him one night in a slip of the tongue, maybe Yunho had told seonghwa himself while drunk. Either way, it all lead him to this moment. He was sitting in your bedroom with his back pressed into a wooden chair with seonghwa standing behind him binding his wrist together with a soft scarf you had lying around.

You sat on your bed observing the scene. This had all been seonghwa's idea, but you were more than willing. That being said watching your perfectly composed boyfriend secure the taller boy who had been stripped down to his boxers to a chair facing your bed was enough to have your face burning in the chilly room.

Seonghwa finished with the restraint and made his way in front of Yunho, who was already damn near star-eyed. Seonghwa reached out and clenched the man's jaw, forcing his eyes up to meet his own.

"Remember Yunho, you are here to watch. Not to touch. No matter how much you want to," seonghwa spoke in that calm domineering voice he reserved for moments like these. Yunho nodded eagerly as well as he could while his face was still in seonghwas grasp, his cheeks puffing out a little at the pressure.

Seonghwa let go of his face and ran his hand once through the younger boys' hair approvingly before both of their gazes fell on you.

You had been waiting patiently in the sweetest little lingerie set you could find. Seonghwa was still fully clothed, but he had a thing about having you look as pretty as possible before fucking you so hard you cried. With both of their attention now firmly on you, the cold of the room couldn't seem any further away, and with every step, seonghwa made twords you, you couldn't help but clench your thighs together in anticipation.

Finally, he stood before you, looking so beautiful it was unfair, close enough you could reach out and touch him. But you didn't, you knew better.

Seonghwa gave a wicked smirk at your sweet expectant face. The stage was finally set, and it was time for the show. He looked contemplative for a moment, before deciding on his first move.

"Lay back for me, baby"

You did exactly that, allowing your head to hit the soft blankets. Never breaking eye contact, however hard it was as your boyfriend looked ready to absolutely devour you. Careful not to block anything from Yunho's view seonghwa slowly climbed onto the bed on top of you using his hips to keep your legs in place and his arms coming down to cage your top half. He moved his head to your ear and spoke in his smoothest softest voice.

"Remember to be good sweetheart, we have a guest and I don't want to waste time punishing you tonight."

You whimper out a quiet "ok" before seonghwa placed a soft kiss on your temple. And he didn't stop there, your boyfriend only pulled back for a brief moment to observe your flushed face before diving back in.

Seonghwa was organized and neat in most aspects of life, but kissing was not one of them. His kisses are hard and wet. His exceptionally plump lips forced yours to follow his lead, prying your mouth open, nipping, and sucking at anything he could. Wet was the perfect word to describe it. Wet and amazing. Normally you would have waited for permission to touch him before swinging your arms around his neck pulling him closer but when his tongue found its way into your mouth toying with your own you needed someone to ground yourself.

To your surprise seonghwa had no objection to this instead threading his left hand through your hair pulling your head close as well, letting out a deep grunt in the process. His lips began to travel down to your neck and jaw, and now the sloppiness turned a little rougher. Seonghwa took a small break to speak, barely lifting his lips off your body but his voice still carried loud and clear.

" Don't hold back your sweet little cries, I'm sure Yunho would love to hear them"

Your mouth now free to cry out little by little at the way the cold air made contact with your now burning skin every time he moved. He was covering your skin in small red patches that would surely turn dark purple by tomorrow. You braced yourself on his shoulders when his lips came to rest of the swell of your chest. Seonghwas right had found its way under your knee lifting it a bit and caressing the underside of your thigh. You had finally become used to the sensation of his mouth on your body when he bit down. Hard.

You damn near choked. You threw your head back as a deep whine spilled sinfully out of you much louder than you intended. But it wasn't just you that was making noises, a deep guttural groan could be heard in harmony with your own from across the room. It was only then did you finally dare to turn your head to where Yunho sat. And you almost wished you didn't. The tall boy sat as hunched over as he could be, positively panting with desire his eyes staring, unblinking, and where you and your boyfriend were tangled together. Your eyes locked, Yunho was staring at you with so much hunger your heat throbbed, and your thighs clenched together. Seonghwas words cut through the tension bringing your attention back to him.

"My baby is so eager, looking so pretty as wrapped up for me. Just waiting for me to pull her apart."

You instinctively nodded.

"Yes, please. I'll be good I promise" you pleaded vacantly, still gripping your boyfriend for support. Seonghwas's right hand began to slide its way up the underside of your leg before moving around till he was palming the inside your leg.

"I know darling, I know you will"

A knowing smile graced his lips before he unhooked the clasp on your pretty bra, sliding it down your shoulders. You held your breath as he pulled himself back to sit on his heels still caressing your leg dangerously close to where you were currently making a mess of your nicest panties.

Seonghwa would never admit that he had a panty kink, but seeing you laid out for him in nothing but the thin little soaked scrap of fabric was scratching an itch that he didn't even know he had. He just had to take a moment to appreciate it.

Seonghwa turned his head twords Yunho. And speaking in that same clear strong voice.

"Yunho"

The boys eyed shaped up to meet seonghwas. Yunho, aside for the occasional moan or groan and been relatively silent up until that point. He looks at seonghwa expectantly. Your boyfriend sighed. Shaking his head for a moment.

"Yunho, when I talk to you I expect words." As he spoke seonghwa tightened his grip on your thigh, you let out a tiny moan. Yunho's eyes flashed to your thigh for a moment before realizing his distraction then flying back to seonghwas face. It was like he couldn't get the word out fast enough.

"Yes?" The word tumbled from his lips haphazardly.

"Yes, what?" Your boyfriend responded, clearly unamused, a scowl making its way onto his face.

Yunho visibly panicked, eyes darting around the room quickly. He didn't know what he missed. He looked at you for help. You knew what he missed, but you had no way of telling him.

"Umm," he began, still searching for the answer. Just when seonghwa looked like he was about to cut in a look of realization hit Yunho. He remembered the night not too long ago that he had come home from dinner, expecting the house to be quiet only to hear a specific word scream from your lips as he passed seonghwas room.

"Yes, sir?" Yunho asked, his eyes wide and pleading.

Seonghwa couldn't help his look of satisfaction.

"Good boy,"

The words made Yunho's face light up.

"Now Yunho, what would you like to see?" Your boyfriend asked. This question clearly took Yunho by surprise.

"Come on, I know you have been imagining me and my doll doing all kinds of things," as he spoke his hand finally slipped inside your panties. Two cold fingers sliding between your folds. You shudder out a gasp. You were wet, unbelievably so. It took so little for his fingers to slip through your slick, toying with you like he had done so many times before.

Yunho momentarily lost his focus on seonghwa instead looking at the imprint of his hand through the fabric. He looked starved. But his eyes returned to seonghwa once again.

"So, what is it. What was your favorite thing to imagine when you touch yourself." As he spoke his fingers began to make slow tight circles to your clit. You moaned out again and grasped wildly for a moment to ground yourself against the blankets.

Yunho once again looked at a loss for words, this time unable to peel his eyes away from the dark stain in your panties and the forearm connected to the hand in them.

Yunho licked his lips slowly before tearing his eyes away to look at seonghwa. He spoke slowly, his words were shaky but certain.

"Please, just fuck her. Hard, like you, always do." He looks embarrassed by his choice, but your heart leaped at the idea, you wanted seonghwa inside you right at that very moment. He was slowly working you into an orgasm and he had barely even done anything yet.

"Really? Is that all you want?" Your boyfriend asked. "No special requests?" The circles on your bud speed slightly as he spoke. Your legs began twitching with every stroke. You had been so wound up this whole time that along with every jerk a small whine was seeping past your lips.

"Please, just," Yunho took a moment to gather his thoughts " please, I just want to see what you both look like when you ruin her."

Seonghwa looked at the boy pensively for a moment.

"Ruin her?" Your boyfriends intense gazed finally made its way back to you "that I can do" and almost exactly as his sentence finished your first wave of orgasm crashed over you. You were now spilling whines freely and rocking your hips into your boyfriend's large hands. You closed your eyes tight for a few moments. Before thinking about the exchange that just took place. Ruin you? Seonghwa was a serious man when he wanted to be, and if he promised to ruin you, you knew he would. And honestly, it was a little scary.

Finally, you opened your eyes. Your boyfriend had been watching you through your high, not stopping his hand and now that you were coming down a dull pain replaced began to radiate up from your core. You reached down to grab his wrist

"Wait. Please-" you began to plead, looking into your boyfriend's eyes, but your words were cut off.

"Well, Yunho. If I'm going to ruin her I'm going to have to prepare her. Wouldn't want her to break" you whined at his words as his hand began to speed up once again over your extra sensitive nub. He then glanced over at the boy who seemed just as transfixed by your pleasure-filled face as seonghwa. "unless you want that"

"Please," was all Yunho could force out "I just want to see"

Seonghwa finally pulled his hand out from the ruined fabric. Despite the numbing pain that came from his handy work you were already missing the sensation and your hand on his wrist tightened again.

Seonghwa let out a sigh.

"Sweetheart, how am I supposed to let Yunho see what I can do to you if you still have these panties on," he asked in a disappointed tone. You reluctantly released his wrist.

Seonghwa finally found the time to pull his sweater over his head, tousling his hair in the process. Now it was both you and Yunho gawked. It was something both you and Yunho had seen a thousand times, but there was still something awe-inspiring about the way he looked kneeling over you with his bare golden honey skin on display.

If seonghwa noticed the stares he didn't address them as he moved to pull your ruined panties down your legs. The anticipation was clear on Yunho's face as the wet fabric slowly made its way down your legs. Finally, he pulled them off the tip of your toes. Because of you and seonghwas position, Yunho still couldn't see your heat. To your surprise, seonghwa stood up quickly from the bed. Your panties still between his fingers. He looked at Yunho.

"You want them?" He asked letting them dangle from his hand that was still glistening with your juices. Yunho choked out a "yes, sir"

Satisfied with his answer seonghwa walked over to the man, leaned over him, and slipped the fabric into his bound hands.

Your boyfriend then returned to you on the bed, but instead of climbing on top of you, he sat down beside you.

"Open up baby"

It may be a bit late in the game, but you were finally coming to terms with what is happening. Yunho, one of your closest friends is about to watch you get fucked by your boyfriend, you had to look away from the man at the sudden realization. Slowly, you opened your legs and you heard the sharp intake of breath that could only be from Yunho.

"What do you think?" Your boyfriend asked pulling your legs apart even more. You shut your eyes tight, feeling embarrassed.

"It's pretty" was all Yunho could Say. You flushed even deeper.

"I know, isn't it? My baby has such a pretty pussy" you choked.

"Open your eyes sweetheart, I want to look at you"

Slowly you opened them, still keeping your gaze firmly on your boyfriend's face.

"No need to be embarrassed sweetheart. You look so cute" seonghwa said in a coo.

Seonghwas hand slipped further between your legs, spreading you open for Yunho to see. You couldn't help but sneak a glance at the man. He was almost drooling, as he licked his lips.

"She tastes amazing," seonghwa says dipping a finger into your still sensitive heat. You felt yourself twitch.

"Normally I would spend hours eating her sweet little cunt, but that wasn't what you wanted to see" seonghwa spoke with false regret. Honestly, Yunho looked right now like there was nothing else in the world he would rather witness but everyone knew he had already made his choice.

Your boyfriend finally decided to push 2 fingers into you all at once. You whined out at the sudden intrusion.

"I have to get her ready first, I hope you don't mind" seonghwa spoke with a chuckle. Because no, with a view like that how could Yunho mind watching your boyfriend's two long fingers push in and out of you over and over again each time bringing a little more wetness out of you.

At this point you were gone, the pleasant stretched of the familiar fingers moving inside of you was like a mantra pulling small noises from you like a song. Seonghwa was brushing the inside of your walls oh so perfect if was unfair.

"She is always so wet, pulsing around my finger with so little work. What a little slut." Your eyes shot open with a moan at his words. His pace quickened. With your still heightened sensitivity, you already felt your stomach tighten.

"Oh. Do you like that? Like it when I call you my slut?"

"Yes, sir"

"Do you like being a little whore for me?"

"Yes, sir"

"Do you want me to fuck you in front of our friend, just so he can see how much of a slut you are?" At that, you locked eyes with Yunho across the room.

"Yes please sir, please show him how much of a slut I am for you" Yunho lurched forward for the first time, his dick straining so hard against his boxers it must be painful.

Seonghwa leaned down to give you a quick kiss on the forehead,

"Good girl"

Finally, seonghwa focused all his energy on bringing on your next orgasm. Pressing deliciously against that special spot inside you while his thumb returned to your pulsing clit. You were already so far gone that it only took a few more direct strokes for you to come tumbling down once again.

This one lasted much longer than the first. And once again seonghwa prolonged it as long as possible by not stopping his hand once throughout the whole time. The pleasure came on waves, washing over you with so much intensity it was all you could do to keep moaning so loud the neighbors could hear you.

Finally, when he pulled his fingers out you took a moment to catch your breath. But it wasn't long before it was stolen again by seonghwa sticking each finger in his mouth one at a time a sucking them clean, never once breaking eye contact with the boy in the chair.

"Hmm, sweet" was all he said, before standing from the bed once again and undoing his belt. Seonghwa pushed his hair back before undoing his jeans and pulling them down his legs. At last, he stood in nothing but his black boxers. If you weren't struggling so hard to keep your eyes open after your climax you would have ogled but Yunho's hungry eyes were wide and fixed on the impressive size of the tent in your boyfriend boxers. Seonghwa spared him a glace before chuckling.

Your boyfriend turned completely to Yunho and pulled down the boxers as well. You knew what was there, so you understand the feeling Yunho was having to lick his lips like that. Yunho's arms once again lurched forward.

"Remember, no touching" was all seonghwa said before turning back to you. He says down on the bed beside you once again

"Come sit on my lap baby,"

You almost groaned. You felt like you could barely move and you would much rather he take you just as you are, but you know better than to fight him.

Seonghwa positioned you both facing Yunho, so he could have the perfect view of you both.

You tried to keep your self as steady as possible as lined himself up under you. Your muscles protested as you held yourself up. Finally, seonghwa took hold of your hips and pushed you down onto him all at once. The two of you both let out a satisfied groan. Your pussy felt used and abused but at that moment all you could think about was how nice it felt to be full. Your head fell back onto your boyfriend's shoulder almost immediately.

"Awe, do I make you feel that good, baby? You like it when I fill you up that much?"

"Yes, sir, I love being full. Love it when you fill me up." Your words were slurred together but loud. Seonghwa, using his grip on your hips. Helped you lift yourself only to be pulled back down again.

"Holy fuck" Yunho spoke in a quiet tone, watching where your boyfriend's dick was now disappearing inside of you.

"Don't use that kind of language" seonghwa spat out while staring to set a fast and deliberate pace, his focus instead on fucking you to tears.

"I'm sorry sir, it's just-" he seemed to be at a loss for words. " I can see you in her tummy"

At that seonghwa chuckled again. He took your hand and lead it to the spot on your stomach you could feel him inside you.

"I know, my baby is such a slut she isn't satisfied until I fill her up this much."

All of these words were filtering in and out of your ears but all you could focus on was the feeling of seonghwas dick moving inside of you. You were so sensitive after two orgasms not so long ago that your body felt utterly spent but every single time seonghwa trusted up into you felt like you could cry at how good it felt. It hurt, yes it hurt, seonghwa was big, that's why he spent so much time working you up, but even with that, you could still feel him stretching out your wall in the most delicious way. Every time he pushed all the way into you could almost cry at the sensation, not to mention how he rubbed against every spot inside of you in the perfect way. You were a mess of whines and cries and tears.

"She's crying" Yunho spoke in a shaking voice.

Seonghwa brushed your hair away from your face, looking at the tears streaming on your face. Your boyfriend placed feather-light kisses against your cheeks where the tears streamed down. A stark contrast to the brutal pace he was drilling his hips into your cunt.

You were clenching madly against him and he couldn't help but chuckles, though it was now somewhat airy as he was nearing his own climax.

"You gonna come, baby?" He asked.

"Mmhmm" you whined, head still rolled back as he fucked into your relentlessly. You were so close, every time he pushed back into you you cried out wanting him to make you come so fucking bad.

Seonghwa took told of your chin with one hand and forced your head forward making you lock eyes with Yunho. He looks almost as fucked out as you probably did. Forehead sweating, chest heaving, dick twitching. The sight made you clenched down hard.

"Who knew my sweet little baby, want people to watch her get fucked like a whore." you clenching tears streaming down faster than ever. The hand not holding your chin found your clit and once again began rubbing slow but rough circles onto the bud. You were so full and so close, and knowing that Yunho was seeing you like this, looking him in the eye while seonghwa fucked you almost made you come.

"What do you think Yunho? Should I let my little slut come?" He asked pinching your bud and delivering a particularly hard thrust. You gagged on the drool spilling from your mouth.

" yes, please sir, please make her cum!: Yunho almost shouted, looking crazed.

"You heard him slut. Cum."

And that was all it took. You were shaking and writhing on top of your boyfriend, head and eyes rolled back and your eyes saw stars. Waves don't even being to describe the way pleasure was moving through your body.

"Sir, it feels so good" was all you could say between the cries, and yes you were crying for real now. Short of losing consciousness, you were gone to the world. Lost in the feeling.

It took you several minutes to realize that seonghwa was still fucking you. But once you did you jerked painfully.

"No, no please" fell past your dry lips. As you moved to sit up. But seonghwas had kept you in place.

"You're not going anywhere baby, I still haven't cum yet and I am going to right in your little pussy."

It hurt, and you were crying, but all you wanted to do was be a good girl for seonghwa so you stayed put, letting him use you. You looked up at Yunho, your eyes glossy, mouth hanging open, probably covered in bruises as you always were when seonghwa fucks you.

Yunho moaned out, straining against the fabric keeping him tied to the chair.

At that moment seonghwa finally came. You could hear his groan through his chest and feel the cum spilling into you. Nice and full.

With a few more thrust seonghwa finally stopped. Allowing you to rest a moment before pulling you off him. You collapsed into your blankets. Feeling moments away from sleep, but you kept your eyes open. Seonghwa took a moment before standing pulling up his own boxers before moving over to where Yunho sat panting. He looked down at the boy and laughed.

"You came untouched?"

"Yes sir"

[wtfevenismypage]

Tiny

request: request ! (spencer reid obvs) y/n is really small (short and skinny) and the team always teases her for it and she’s tried to explain “ that kinda hurts my feelings” but they don’t pick up on that, so one day she just explodes and shouts “ STOP IM NOT AN ART MUSEUM” and they just laugh so she starts BAWLING and they’re like oh shit she was serious

Warnings: The team being assholes, sad reader, angry Spencer (and Penelope), and cursing

A/N: yo i don’t know how to write like I’m tiny and skinny, I am super short though, standing at a solid 5′1 for the rest of my life with a slim chance of growing an inch or two. However I stand in the middle ground when it comes to “Width” Size, leaning a little more towards fat instead of skinny. but i tried for you my dear.

“Hey Tinkerbell. You comin’ to the roundtable anytime soon?”

You groaned at his nickname, and to think, you were actually feeling cute this morning, but then Morgan had to pull out that old nickname. You had tried to tell the team countless times before that you didn’t like your size being pointed out, but they never seem to listen.

“Morgan, how many times do I have to tell you to stop calling me that?” 

He only chuckles as the two of you begin walking to the conference room, sitting down with everyone else. You sat next to Spencer. who was, along with Penelope,  the only person not to pick on your size.

“Morning Spence.”

“Good morning Y/N.”

He replies, smiling gently to you while Hotch enters. 

“Alright team we have five dead ten year old girls. M.O is strangulation. Bruises show with hands but no prints.”

“So he used gloves.”

“Actually it’s more than likely a she, look at the size of the marks. Women hands are significantly smaller than a males and this looks to be done with a lot of emotion. Women serial killers tend to kill with emotion rather than their opposite sex counterpart which kill with lust or a sexual craving.”

“He’s right.”

“Hey why don’t we send Y/N in as bait. She could honestly pull it off easily.”

You send Emily a glare, hating having to listen to the laughs of the others. Spencer remains silent, eyes boring into Hotch’s who is stifling a laugh to continue on.

“Emily there are five little girls who are dead. Is right now really the right time for you to make fun of my size?”

You snap unexpectedly. Usually you were gentle, calm, but you were already put on edge today. You weren’t taking their shit anymore.

Emily stared at you confused,obviously not expecting you to snap like that.

“Hey, what-”

“I’m sorry I just don’t know how many times I have to tell you all I’m not a fucking art museum or some shit like that!”

You yell. A hand lands on yours, Gently squeezing it to attempt to calm you down.

But what they do next just flat out hurts. There’s no words for the pain.

They laugh. They break out in laughter at your pain. At your insecurities. At your worries.

You can’t stop the tears that drip out of your eyes, leaving a salty taste in your mouth. This is your family, your home, the people you trust with your life. And they laugh at you? You stand up, hands clenching by your side which draws all of their attention to you.

“Since you guys are going to be assholes, I’ll stay here and help Garcia out. Brief me when you stop being insensitive.”

You say, voice breaking as you storm out of the room. You couldn’t handle the pain that was in your heart, it was heavy, It was aching. Meanwhile Spencer and Penelope were furious. 

“What the hell guys? Did you seriously just laugh at her? When will you guys pay attention to the fact that she doesn’t like your joking.”

“For a team of profilers you guys are ignorant as hell!”

They shout. Spencer watches through the glass as you storm into the gender neutral bathroom,  tears trailing down your scrunched up face.

“Go after her Reid. I’ve got them.”

As soon as Penelope says that he’s hot on your trail, storming into the bathroom and stopping as soon as he sees you, standing in front of a shattered mirror, your bloody fists threaded in your hair.

Your tears were leaving wet trails down your cheeks and neck, soft and quiet sobs breaking out off your throat. It hurt his heart to look at. He honestly thought you were beautiful, no matter how tiny you were, you were beautiful. 

“Hey, Why’d you do that, now you can’t see your pretty self.”

He whined, walking closer to you as you chuckled sadly, turning to him and smiling genuinely. Spencer always tried to lift up your spirits and boost your confidence any chance he had.

“You don’t gotta do that Spencer, I’m used to their jokes, you don’t have to try and make me feel better.”

You said, watching as he scoots closer and  pulls you in front of another mirror, turning you to look into it. He stood at his normal height, knowing that leaning down to yours would only annoy you.

“Look at you, even crying you’re still pretty. I don’t understand how you do it bubba.”

He noticed your eyebrows scrunching together, eyes travelling your body. You were only taking in your (nonexistent) flaws of yourself. He spun you around so you were facing him, taking your tiny hands into his large ones and kissing the cuts.

“Hmmm. I think you’re beautiful. So do the others, they just don’t know when to stop joking around. Penelope’s telling them off as we speak.”

He smiles, watching as you giggle at the image of Penelope yelling at the team. 

“I’d hate to be them.”

You say, leaning your head against his lower chest. Spencer was always more comfortable touching you than with the others. His phobia just seemed to disappear when he was with you.

“I’m too small. You look like a giant next to me.”

“I look like a giant next to everyone. Now come on. Let’s clean these cuts, we have a case to do.”

You let out a laugh, letting Spencer wipe away your tears as you stare deep into his shimmering brown eyes. He was worried, you could tell by a single glance. He was always protective of you, never stopped you from field jobs that seemed dangerous, but he made sure to go with and stay nearby.

“I missed your smile. Haven’t seen it all day bubba.”

He holds a hand to your cheek, letting you nuzzle into its warmth. He stroked your cheek with his thumb, pressing a kiss to your forehead. He wouldn’t reveal his feelings yet, not now. Right now you had a job to do and a long list of apologies to listen to.

And boy were they sorry.

PERMANENT TAGLIST(OPEN) @pinkdiamond1016 @spencer-reids-snow-white @sheepfather @eusuntgroot @libradolan @dr-reid-ismyspiritanimal

[sillyguyhotline]

17. “How is any of this ok?” with Joe and Sara maybe?

dude im gonna be completely honest i havent written anything in like a month so i think the quality isnt gonna be great but here goes nothing

God, Sara missed the feeling of home.

Every semblance of familiarity and comfort she’d once found in the town she’d grown up in, the house she’d spent her childhood running through, now felt chillingly foreign.

Perhaps it was the heavy burden of knowledge weighing fresh upon her shoulders: ASUNARO’s corruption seemed now to peer slyly around every corner, no matter where she went. She still didn’t know how much of the town had rotted away under its grasp, how much of the town its poison had pervaded… but she was probably better off not knowing.

Whatever was left of Midori, that miserable mix of pulsing blood and electronic emotion, had been ground to bits inside that coffin… but Sara couldn’t ignore the creeping fear that his burning, ever-present gaze would appear out of nowhere and terrorize her again.

But he wouldn’t. The death game was over, and they’d promised they would never hurt her or any of her loved ones again.

Most of the loved ones she still encountered day-to-day, gruesomely blood splattered and sitting like corpses propped up hastily in a corner, would be safe no matter if ASUNARO was fresh on her tail or a thousand miles away. What a cruel price to pay for safety, to never be hurt again.

They still lived on if Sara closed her eyes tight enough, if she listened to the twisting words of the hallucinations and let them convince her she was monstrous. But the second she dared to open her eyes, she knew they’d be dead again. Life worked in terrible ways, and that was all there was to it.

Joe’s house had always been a second home to her, ever since the two of them became friends. Joe was the farthest cry from Sara in terms of social interactions- it had taken at least 3 months for Sara to trust Joe enough to invite him over, but Joe had insisted she hang out at his house the very same day they became friendly enough to exchange more than a sentence with each other.

There was a certain sort of comfort to the warmth of his house, the constant scent of cooking food pervading the air and the little trinkets scattered in every corner. No surface of his house went without decoration, in its silly little way. It was full of pictures, too, some carefully framed and some dangling from the wall by pushpins, but Sara got the sense that none of the photos went unloved. Most of them were occupied by an orange-haired man, often carrying a younger Joe (back when he was still sporting that atrocious crew cut). Sara always assumed it was his dad, but thought it would be impolite to ask… particularly when the weeks stretched on and Sara had yet to meet that mysterious orange-haired man.

Eventually, pictures of Sara began to join the collage on the wall- pictures taken as she butchered yet another pop song during karaoke, or when they went out to get food, or when she mistakenly sat down on a traffic cone during gym (after many protests from Sara, he took that one down). As silly as the pictures were, and as obvious as it was that Joe had waited for the most embarrassing moments to take them, it was sort of sweet in a way.

Joe’s mother was always kind to her, though there was a constant weariness in her eyes that Sara always felt a bit uneasy about questioning. Sometimes she’d let the two of them cook things in the kitchen, but more often than not they’d go up to Joe’s room and screw around in there, with video games or music or the 50 times Joe tried to persuade Sara to climb out the window and sit on the roof with him before she finally agreed.

As rare as it was for Sara to agree to sit on the roof, it was even rarer for Joe to agree to study with her, much to Sara’s chagrin. Joe had always walked a fine line between passing and failing, but Sara had to admit he walked it well. When she did manage to convince him to study, though (usually the day before final exams), they’d sit on the cushy couch in his living room and somehow manage to bother each other as much as possible while feigning concentration.

The couch hadn’t changed after several years- Sara could tell that much the minute she sat down on it and avoided the urge to break eye contact with Joe’s mother. It was still well-worn, a couch that likely should have been replaced at least a decade ago but had never really been disposed of. Loose threads were protruding from the cover, drawn out from years of visitors fidgeting with them.

Sara shifted uncomfortably in her seat, the slight motion making her sink deeper into the couch’s soft cushioning. She’d only spent one minute in the house and was already sweating, whether from the heat of the home or the thousand-yard stare of the woman sitting across from her.

Ryoko was there, too, sitting to Sara’s left and gazing listlessly at the well-trodden carpet beneath her feet. …Ryoko.

Sara cast a hesitant glance around the room, duly noting the photos covering the walls. Not a single one of hers had been taken down, but several more photos had appeared with Joe’s beaming face featuring prominently in them. Joe’s presence was always enough to fill a room even when he wasn’t speaking; it took a lot to fill in the gaps left by his absence.

God, she missed him.

The wind whistled against the window-screen; Sara had memorized the familiar creak of the wooden window frame being lifted up to welcome in the mild autumn air. Sara had always thought of autumn as a beginning- she loved summer as much as any other kid, but as the haze of the weather began to wind down she was quick to grow impatient and look forward to the school year, to being productive again. Joe had always disagreed with her.

“Fall is the literal death of fun,” he’d complained once, walking home with Sara after finishing the first week of school. “Couldn’t they have pushed back the first day of school by, like, another week? You think if we got enough people to sign a petition, they’d give us an extra week of summer?”

“Oh, come on, we both know even if you had an extra week of summer you’d just be complaining a week later,” Sara had teased back.

The death of fun. It certainly felt like that, Sara decided. She’d never feared the looming darkness of fall and winter quite so much before. But now, she supposed, there was no sunshine who’d weather it with her.

“Well… Sara?” Joe’s mother spoke up, voice hoarse with the sound of repressed tears in her throat. Sara recognized the sound all too well.

There was no resentment in the woman’s eyes when Sara made eye contact with her. No anger, no frustration, nor had there been any in her measured motions when she welcomed Sara into the home. It didn’t take any words for Sara to tell that there was no blame to be foisted upon her.

She was still Joe’s best friend.

“I’m sorry to have dragged you out here on such short notice.” The woman’s voice was weak. “I don’t know all the details of what happened, of course. Haven’t heard anything, aside from the little tidbits the police told me when I dropped by the station.”

Sara’s shoulders stiffened at the mention of the police, at the idea of them pleasantly answering her questions as though they weren’t just as complicit in that tragedy as ASUNARO had been.

“And…” the woman glanced down at her hands, toughened from a lifetime of working. “I know something terrible happened to you. The circles under your eyes are darker than midnight, I know it’s so selfish of me to be dragging you out here, but… I haven’t slept a wink for weeks. Been so worried about Joe, and about you too.”

She nodded in the direction of the black-haired girl who hadn’t spoken a word the entire time. “Ryoko’s been worried about the both of you, too. Your parents weren’t answering the door, so she went to me. I hope you’ll forgive the two of us for disturbing you, Sara, but… you have the answers the police won’t give us, don’t you?”

God, her gaze was piercing.

“...Yeah. Yeah, I do.”

It was taking everything in Sara’s power not to look at the vacant seat to her right. If Joe was there, he would have been laughing and lightening the mood, completing the circle that had been left so jarringly empty.

But they wouldn’t have been having this conversation if Joe was there.

Ms. Tazuna nodded slowly. “This means the world to me, Sara. Don’t forget that.”

Sara did her best to muster a smile. “Don’t worry. I won’t.”

The woman gave another nod, eyes defocusing as though even now, she wasn’t quite sure why she was there. “Alright. Alright. Well, then…” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “Guess I should get right to the point, yeah? Is he… is… how is he…?”

So she still hadn’t quite let go of that little thread of hope, even after seeing Sara return home safe and alive with no best friend in tow. Who was Sara to judge? When hope was the only thing to cling to, it only made sense to cling to it like a lifeline.

Sara twisted her hands, the same old nervous habit she’d had for years, and wondered briefly if she’d picked it up from Ms. Tazuna. How terrible it was, to carry the news that nobody, much less any mother, ever wanted to hear.

“I… I’m sorry, Ms. Tazuna. He didn’t make it out alive.”

Sara hadn’t expected the hush that immediately fell over the room. She’d expected immediate tears, the grieving cry of a mother in pain. Instead, the room became muffled, still as a painting captured in time.

Slowly, Ryoko looked up from her bitten-down fingers, eyes rimmed red already. Ryoko had always been an emotional person, the only person Sara knew who could fluctuate from full-on sobs to cheerful giggles in less than a minute. Sara was so unused to the look that was now filling her eyes- cold, solid misery. As though there were no tears in her eyes left to cry, no more tragedies to bemoan. Just a deep and horrified comprehension of just how many things in her life had gone wrong.

And, slowly, Ms. Tazuna began to cry.

Tears had become so uncomfortable for Sara to bear witness to. Was it selfish of her to look away? It couldn’t be, not when every raw sob reminded her of the art student seeing her first (and certainly not last) death, of the broken sibling openly weeping over apologies gone unspoken, of the unknowing siblings screaming their throats out with pleas for death so the other could survive.

Especially not now. Not when every tear rang in her mind as a reminder of cold tubes piercing her best friend’s chest, of his corpse slumping and falling in a pool of blood, because oh god he wasn’t supposed to have lost so much blood, how was he supposed to live without it, of the clickclickclickclickclicking rising in volume while her attempts to save him grew feebler and feebler.

Her hands were bloodstained, no matter how many times she tried to scrub them clean. Those dreadful hands of hers had failed her, failed Joe, failed the women sobbing openly in front of her.

She swallowed back the apologies that always rose in her throat as Ms. Tazuna rushed to sniffle back her tears.

“I… god, I… he’s really gone?”

Sara couldn’t bear to look her in the eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

“Please… please tell me it was a peaceful death. He didn’t… suffer too much, did he?”

The resounding wave of clicks flooded her mind. “It was as peaceful as I could make it. I… he smiled at me, right before he died. I’d… very much like to think that means he was happy when he died.”

“What happened?” Ryoko’s voice came out rough, the first of it Sara had heard in weeks. “Joe told me, after our date, that he was going to walk you home, and then neither of you showed up at school the next day. And now… it’s been three weeks? And Joe… Joe’s dead? What the hell happened, Sara?”

“God,” Sara mumbled, mesmerizing herself with the twisting motions of her own hands. “I’m not sure if you’d even believe me if I told you. I don’t even know if I believe what happened myself.”

“I’d believe anything.” The sentence was firm. “I just want to know what happened.”

Sara nodded wearily. The familiar weight of her bright orange ponytail was notably missing- the day after she’d escaped, she’d demanded the hairdresser cut her hair short and crisp. She shuddered every time she thought about the ponytail brushing against her neck as she spent each argument screaming and protesting for her life. Even worse was the memory of how carefully Joe had styled her hair, forsaking his usual clumsiness to braid every strand with a remarkable tenderness. She didn’t want to remember any of it- even though, as the locks went cascading to the floor, she was reminded starkly of Keiji’s bleach-stained trauma response.

“For some reason, something to do with the mafia, we were kidnapped. And pulled into a death game. There were twenty of us, including me and Joe. I- I’m not going to get into all the specifics. It’s going to make me sick to my stomach if I do. But… they made us play this sadistic fucking game to narrow down the competition. Based on cards. Joe drew a bad card, and… they executed him.” Something in Sara’s throat tightened as she finished speaking, and she fell silent.

“Just like that?” His mother’s voice came out as a hoarse whisper. “How… how’d they kill him?”

“I’d rather not say.” There came the gushing sound of blood pulsing through the tubes. “He didn’t suffer too long” - she hoped - “but it was a gruesome way to die. I don’t want to think about it, please understand.”

It took a moment for his mother to register the words and nod, face still painted with horror.

“Why… how did the two of you even end up there in the first place?” Ryoko spoke up again. “You said something about the mafia? How the hell are you two connected with the mafia?”

“I don’t know how I am,” Sara responded immediately. “It must be something with my family. I couldn’t control any of this, I swear, but… Joe wasn’t meant to end up there at all.”

Ryoko paused. “He… he wasn’t meant to end up there?”

Sara swallowed back the lump in her throat. “The game… it was something that was being prepared for ages. There weren’t just a few ragtag kidnappers behind it, there was an entire organization. Even the police were involved. They ran AI tests, hundreds if not thousands of them, trying to calculate who’d be the most likely to win. And… when all the numbers came back, the person most likely to win… was me.”

She spread her arms wide, baring her sins and her cruelties to the world, and in that moment felt distinctly like the angel of death Keiji had branded her to be.

“They needed something to drag me down, I guess. Make the odds more balanced. So they dragged Joe into this fucking mess. I guess they thought that him being there would keep me steady enough to make everything fair.” A cold hand, dripping with tendrils of phantom blood, caressed her chin with a lethal grip. “...They were right.”

Ryoko’s gaze had gone cold again. “So Joe died just because you cared about him? What the fuck kind of death sentence is that?”

Sara shook her head numbly.

“Why did it have to be him?” The heartbreak in Ryoko’s voice was clearer than day. “So many people love you, Sara, why did it have to be him? Hell, I’m your best friend too, aren’t I? Why couldn’t it have been me? I’m a much worse person than Joe ever was, I deserved to be in his place way more. Couldn’t they have killed me instead?”

Sara winced at the growing desperation in her best friend’s voice, the raw crack she knew all too well. It should have been me, it should have been me, it should have been me. Sara could have almost fooled herself into seeing a crisp aquamarine when Ryoko’s hair flashed into the light.

“Ryoko… it could have been.”

The girl fell silent.

“They had files on you too. They knew how close we were, they knew how much you meant to me… but Joe was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And they fucking killed him for it.”

Oh, how she wished she could go back to that balmy early-autumn night, see the smile on Joe’s face and listen to his lighthearted laughter again. The desire to keep one’s friend safe had become a crime deserving of a death sentence.

Ryoko’s eyes remained locked to Sara’s, devoid of any dullness. In the look they exchanged was a deep, sinking understanding, one that had nauseated Sara to the core the first time the realization struck her.

It was by no crafty strategy that Joe had died instead of Ryoko, no favoritism biased against the kindest person either of them would ever know. It was a simple, terrible twist of fate. Ryoko could have taken his place had she done something as inconsequential as offering to walk Sara home instead.

But she hadn’t.

It took everything in Sara’s power to avoid wondering what would’ve changed if she had.

“How is any of this okay?” Ryoko broke the silence weakly. “They killed him- they could have killed me, too. He was seventeen. Seventeen. How did anybody let this happen? How did this happen, Sara?”

“I- I don’t know.” Ryoko’s wrath was simmering; even though Sara knew truly that she wasn’t the subject of the anger, she still felt scalded. “I miss him so much, Ryoko. I watched him die, and nothing in my power let me save him. I miss him, Ryoko, I miss him every waking minute of every day. We were supposed to escape together and get out safe and pretend this never happened, but…” the tears were beginning to well up again. She couldn’t bear the thought of breaking down in front of anyone, especially not over him.

“I’m going to go make some coffee,” his mother interrupted suddenly. She’d been noticeably quiet, but the still-fresh streaks of tears painted down her cheeks told the story she didn’t need to vocalize. “Some coffee, and some snacks. And we’ll keep talking from there, alright? Do you guys have your phones?”

The two girls nodded uneasily.

“Please… find any pictures you have of him. I want to make this wall as bright as possible.”

Without any other words, she hurried out of the room, and it fell to silence once more. Outside the window, the cool autumn breeze began to stir the leaves in the air, gusting forward to brush against Sara’s cheek just as the hallucination had done mere minutes ago.

And the Tazuna household began to feel more like home again.

[krappykawa]

I read your s/o who likes to read hcs and was wondering if you could do the same request format or whatever it is you'd call it but with terishima,akaashi, iwa, Oikawa,and Daichi? Sorry if that's a lot! -anon

with a s/o that likes to read (part 2)

— iwaizumi, oikawa, terushima, daichi, and akaashi

word count. 1.4k

genre. fluff

note. i made these ones shorter than the ones in part two because anon requested a lot of characters and i didn’t wanna run out of headcanons to write,,, i hope you still like this though!

part one here

IWAIZUMI.

- will read the books that you’re reading just because he likes the feeling of being able to bond with you over something you love since you’re so supportive of him already (literally the perfect man. perfect bf. give me a kiss rn RN!!)

- maybe not all of them, but if you get him hooked on the description, then he will probably finish the book faster than you

- if he doesn’t like a book very much he’ll take ages to finish it though

- if you ask him about how he’s doing with reading it he’ll be like “oh i’m almost done” when in reality he’s only 20 pages in

- he’ll send you texts about the books you recommend but they’ll be super blunt like “this character just died” or “oh they kissed”

- you sit at your phone for 20 minutes debating on how to respond to those because HOW??

- he loves cuddles,,,, would literally die for cuddles

- so when you climb into his lap with a book in hand and bury your head in his neck as you read his heart literally malfunctions

- his cute s/o with their reading obsession that he secretly finds so endearing climbing into his lap for cuddle time,,,,,, his heart goes &2:$84!;💞💖💘💖💓💖💞/):&38,

- iwaizumi.exe has stopped working

- but he’s also not afraid to pull you into his lap if he sees you reading on the couch

- he’ll probably put on a monster movie and just hold you as you read and he watches

- probably also buried his nose in your hair and revels in your scent (also kisses your head every so often because he can’t help it and AHHHH HES SO CUTE)

- when you start sending him messages about your books, he will attempt to respond to every single text or he will just wait until you’re done and text back with “u done?” (not in a mean way though) there’s no inbetween

- he’s smiling every time you send him those texts though

- aoba johsai’s volleyball team (ESPECIALLY OIKAWA) teases him mercilessly if they ever catch him smiling at his phone in the locker room or during class or during lunch (basically u text him a lot lol)

- sometimes when you slam your book shut and scream into your pillow, he will just watch you with amused eyes and probably make an offhand comment that’s similar to “remember to breathe while you’re at it.”

- you end up throwing the pillow at him (which he catches and then proceeds to walk to where you are and swing you over his shoulder)

- get your mind out of the gutter on the “over his shoulder” part i swear he’s just teasing you for throwing a pillow at him (I CAN FEEL YOUR MIND WANDERING STOP IT)

OIKAWA.

- he makes an effort to read your books, really he does

- he’s just really busy, so most of the books he promises he will read stay only half way read through and never picked up ever again

- if you give him a sci-fi book though, this man will literally finish it at an insane pace

- literally he would be the one to text you at some ungodly hour (usually 3AM in the morning) because he just finished the book in one sitting and he’s literally brimming with reactions

- will text things like “WHAT THE FUCK HE JUST DIED”, “YN SEND HELP I THINK THEY’RE ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING STUPID”, “OH MY GODDDD I HATE THIS BITCH CAN THEY STOP TALKING” (always in all caps whenever he’s reacting to a book)

- you better pray that he doesn’t end up hating a character because he will text you every single time they show up on a page and complain about them

- “this character reminds me of ushijima why would you put me through this 🤕🤕”

- or “THEYRE TALKING AGAIN?? WHEN WILL THEY GET THE MEMO THAT I WANT THEM TO . ST F U ‼️😻”

- anyways, if it’s not sci-fi, it’s probably sitting on his nightstand and never touched again until you steal the book back

- CLAIMS he tried reading them (he got 2 pages in and then put it down)

- he is also a huge cuddler

- but you will not be able to read in his lap because he’s so fucking whiny

- “y/n-channn pay attention to meeee. you can read about that insanely hot dude in your book when you’re not already sitting in an insanely hot dude’s lap”

- big pouty face

- it works every single time and you hate him for it

- once you put your book down he will not let you go for a good ten minutes

- he also has tons of pictures of you reading on his phone because he thinks you’re so cute and feels like he has to snap a picture so he can remember how cute you looked at that very moment

- a lot like iwaizumi, oikawa will attempt to reply to every single one of your book related texts (except oikawa succeeds at replying to every single one)

- like you could literally send him fifty text messages in a row and you will get fifty replies back

TERUSHIMA.

- i am so sorry to say this but i genuinely cannot see terushima being interested in your books whatsoever

- he thinks that it’s boring and always questions how you can just sit down for hours on end and just read

- this changes when you give him one of those insane, mind-boggling, really dark, murder-mystery books

- he’ll scoff at it but after a lot of begging on your part, he’ll give it a try

- he loves it

- he told you that he never got bored and that feeling like that while reading a book is so weird to him

- that is the only book you’ll ever get him to read though (okay maybe he’ll read a few more if you beg him for it with that cute pouty face of yours that he cannot resist)

- like he’ll treat that murder mystery book as a holy grail and insist that nothing will ever top it

- i’m sorry again but he probably texts you “what u doing rn?” and if you say something about reading he’ll try to get you to do literally anything else (most likely will send a horny text to try and steal you away from your reading, let’s be honest here)

- “come over baby you can experience all that you’re reading in that book first hand 😏😏😏”

- if you send him text reactions of your book he will most likely reply with “awe babe ur so cute” but not say anything about the books in itself (IM SORRY HE’S NOT MEAN ABOUT IT THOUGH)

- cuddling with him while reading will never happen

- seriously

- he will do everything in his power to get you to put the book down

- like start peppering you with kisses or tickling you

- he just can’t stand sitting down in silence for so long lol

- he doesn’t put you down for reading though

- like yeah he might not understand it and thinks it’s boring, but he admires that you care so much about it and also admires your commitment

DAICHI.

- admires you for reading honestly

- like i feel like he’s the type to get really good grades but will not look at a book that he hasn’t been assigned to read for his life

- that being said, he probably has never read any of the books you ask him to read with you

- he’s told you he’s read one or two which is a lie (you know it’s a lie but you don’t tell him that because you know he feels bad about not reading them)

- he isn’t on his phone often so most of the time your texts don’t get answered for hours

- it’s kinda fun that way though because after a while you just start sending him long text threads and it’s like talking to yourself

- when he does respond it’s with something like “you look like you had fun there” (after that he’ll apologize for not seeing it and then ask if you had anything else about the book that you wanted to tell him about AWEHISHFNF)

- very good listener!! he’ll try and have a genuine conversation about the book even if he hasn’t read it (like if you want to talk about how you think the plot doesn’t work, he will either support you or give you valid reasons that sparks constructive conversation)

- will absolutely never see the texts you send at 1AM (until the morning) because he always passes out before 11PM

- will see them in the morning and will text back “well good morning to me”

- he has absolutely no clue what you’re talking about in the texts but tries his hardest to be supportive

- cuddling while you’re reading happens nearly every single time you’re together

- is very stressed from dealing with his volleyball children so he’ll more than happily sit on the couch and cuddle with you as you read

- sometimes he falls asleep while you cuddle and you just snuggle into him and it’s so cute

AKAASHI.

- THIS LITTLE SHIT

- man oh man he loves acting like a smart ass whenever you text him about your books

- you’ll be like “my favorite character just died!!” and he’ll be like “well tell them to not die then wtf”

- will stay up late texting you about your book though because he’s most likely reading it with you so you two can bounce ideas off of each other

- if you like a character that he hates he will not hesitate to start a debate about why you shouldn’t like that character (full one page of reasons. this man takes his opinions very seriously)

- if you’re together at his house or something and you start yelling at your book he’ll be like “y/n don’t hurt its feelings.”

- you momentarily pause your yelling to deadpan him

- he stares right back

- “just be nice.” (you’re like BWAH???)

- HE ALSO YELLS AT HIS BOOKS THOUGH

- it’s uncommon but it does happen

- if you’re both reading or you’re doing homework and he’s reading, he’ll slam the book shut and yell about how stupid this character is (and when i mean yell, i mean yell)

- and if he doesn’t like the ending of something he will rant for days and you’ll have to remind him to take a breath

- he gets so hyped up from reading books it’s so cute

- will read with you when you cuddle read (does that make sense??? like when you cuddle with him while reading)

- will mumble things under his breath while you’re both reading but you’re on his lap so you can hear everything and you just laugh

- one time he mumbled “stupid bitch just fucking die already” to this character he hated

- you had to put down the book because you were laughing so hard

[euphoricsunflowers]

happy without you — im changkyun/i.m

a/n: the summary is purposefully misleading darlings don’t you worry.

a/n: based off of happy without me on the best album this year: all about luv.

word count: 1.3k

content: sub!changkyun, dom!fem!reader, this ones for the tall bitches such as myself, oral (reader’s recieving), we’re a lil rough w him but he’s okay w it, angst!!

summary: you and changkyun broke up months ago, and while you’ve been doing well, he hasn’t… but now that you’re both at a party, he makes it his life’s mission to wreck you.

do you think about me sometimes? ‘cause i think about you sometimes…

it hurts more than he wants it to. it hurts more than he’ll admit. he doesn’t want to think about all the times you’ve smiled and laughed and joked and lived without him, and he surely doesn’t want to think about just how little you need him. because you don’t need him, and that’s not something he wants to accept.

what was her name? the name of that new friend that introduced you to all the people who’s parties you attend what feels like all the time? it feels like you’re trying to fill a void, but he knows you’re not. you’re genuinely happy, and he doesn’t get that. you used to hate going out, or was that just him? did you not want to go out because of him? was your relationship that toxic?

so he sits here, at the island in the kitchen of a friend who invited him to their party, as if they didn’t know the irony of him being present. he’s miserable. he hates parties just as much as you seem to love them. he drinks water because he can’t fathom being drunk right now, with the mood he’s in he’s really not wanting to be vomiting on himself, thank you very much.

and some stupid part of his brain, in the very deep recesses of his mind, wonder if you’ll be at this party. surely his friend wouldn’t be stupid enough or cruel enough to put him through that right?...right?

well, sure enough, he hears the familiar cacophony of laughter that rings in his head just like yours does. he sees the familiar smile, even if it’s not aimed at him, when you greet the very same friend who invited him. splendid.

enough time passes to where he’s sure you haven’t noticed him, which for the most part, even if it somewhat hurts him, is good, but now that stupid part of his brain is back to thinking about you. what if he approached you? what if he just tried to talk? you’re still friends, you didn’t end on bad terms, in fact he was the one that broke up with you, saying he needed space, but the idea of trying to talk to you felt stupid now.

until he was already doing it.

“changkyun?” you mutter in shock, before smiling. he can’t tell if it’s fake or not, but he can tell there’s no love in the way you look at him anymore and it stings, “it’s so nice to see you! oh, it’s been too long, how have you been?”

he fakes a smile, taking a sip of his water, “i’ve been alright. i see you’re going to parties a lot now. enjoying yourself?”

“yeah!” you smile excitedly, “i’m meeting a lot of new people and making friends and connections and having a lot of good times! i could take you along sometimes if you want, they’re really fun if you let go and loosen up a bit!”

“maybe i’ll take you up on that,” he murmurs, but he won’t. he absolutely never wants to go to another godforsaken party and he especially doesn’t want to go if he can’t be all up on you like he’s dying to be right now, “can i tell you a secret?”

“sure, changs, what is it?” you ask, but all he can think about is that name. god, not that nickname, because it just sparked a small flame called hope in his chest and he needs to remember what he’s doing here.

because… there’s no getting you back and going back to the way things were. and if the only way he can have you in his arms is by lust instead of love, then fine, you got him, “i miss you, mommy.”

your demeanor changes instantly, and he can’t tell if you liked the comment or not, but it definitely made an impact, “do you now, kitten?”

he wants to sigh in relief and hold his breath in excitement simultaneously, but resting his head on your shoulder and leaving soft kisses on your neck will suffice, “y-yeah. no one makes me feel like you do.”

“then maybe you shouldn’t have broken up with me,” you mutter, much colder now, and he whimpers at your harsh tone. you’re not wrong, obviously, but it still hurts, “and instead of, i don’t know, trying to make it up to me, you choose to just say ‘mommy, i miss you’ and think you’ll have me wrapped around your finger?”

despite the loud chatter around you, changkyun can’t stand the silence enveloping the both of you. he wants to mutter an apology, even just a quick “sorry” is better than just sitting here, but you stand up from your seat, pulling him against you before he even has the chance, “god you’re so fucking lucky, kitten, you’re so lucky i’m feeling nice tonight.”

as you pull him into an empty bedroom and lock the door, you all but throw him on the bed, crawling on top of him and eyeing him like a predator would its prey. you’ve always been taller, but god he really feels just how small he is.

“tell me, my darling kitten,” you muse, “do you regret it?”

“yes,” he whispers, in a heartbeat. no lies, no hesitation, no nothing. he’s sure of the fact that if he could go back, he wouldn’t do what he did, “i shouldn’t have hurt you like that. so please, use me.”

“oh? you want me to use you? elaborate, will you?”

“w-well, i hurt you a lot emotionally, right? so take it out on my body. all that anger and pain, take it out on me. leave every permanent mark on me that you want, slap me, hit me, make me bleed, i don’t care,” he looks into your eyes, seeing the first sliver of genuine emotion he can’t quite pin, but he knows it’s real, “just use me for all your desires, i’ll be your toy to play with.”

you groan at his words, because god they were really turning you on. you move off of him, pulling him towards you and pushing his head lower. he gets the idea immediately, moving any clothing out of the way quickly before immediately devouring you. he groans and makes a lot of lewd sounds as he tongue fucks you, stimulating your clit with both his nose and sucking on it every now and then.

no words are exchanged at this point, which is odd. you’re usually sweet talking to him or degrading him or something, and your fingers are usually threading through his hair or pulling at it but they’re still, and you’re just quietly watching him, moaning whenever it feels really good. he tries to keep eye contact, watching you even as you hold his head down, but you don’t really let him. he gives up, just trying to get you off at this point. he can tell you’re getting close because you’re holding him tighter, to the point where it’s hard to breathe (not like he really cares). you moan out one last time, surprising changkyun with the volume. he continues to eat you out, trying to help you through the orgasm as you grind against his face, until you let go and he’s finally able to breathe.

you spend the next few minutes just breathing while he sits on the floor in front of you, until you motion for him to come closer. you spread your arms out and he honestly wants to cry at how comforting your hold is. the question burns in his mind, but you answer it before he even tries to ask, “i’m not sure what’s gonna happen now, kyun. i don’t know what we are or what i want us to be, but if you don’t give up on us, i won’t give up on you.”

maybe there was considerable making up to do that was more than just eating you out, but at least the hope that burned in his chest felt worth having.

i don’t think about you sometimes... ‘cause i think about you all the time.

—

taglist: @lovingonrepeat @neosincity @sub-hoshi-enthusiast @staranonthoughts @maknaeronix @multidreams-and-desires @mellowriting @baa-nana @foenixs @sunflowerkeen @vanillaknj

[angeldormante]

Hi!! Im the Leo-withdrawal anon! I didnt ask anything prior to the one you just answered, but I'm so happy you responded! I'd honestly listen to anything you write--I think you have a wonderful way of expressing yourself, and the way you write is just... *chef's kiss* I guess, a question I'd have for you is this: What sort of hobbies do you headcanon our fearless leader to have? Quirks? Both endearing and... less so? I think that'd be a fun start!

hokay.... finally getting around to this!! sorry for the wait and thank you for bearing with me, anon! (ty for the compliment, too -- i'm very flattered jfjflk i just like talking about turtles ok (•̥ ̫ •̥) )

now... lemme talk blue to ya.

if we're talking about hobbies, well. stop me if you think you've heard this before -- leo loves training. for all of the guys, ninjutsu is a way of life; it's how they survive the world, how they connect with themselves and one another; it's their entire culture that the foundations of their family is built upon. and that's super neat. but watch 2k3 for like, one episode, and you'll very quickly see that the only one that fully leans into it is leo. mikey and don have their own interests that they often can't get to quickly enough once the day's training session ends. i think raph actually enjoys training recreationally as well -- but he's more interested in the physical aspect, spending his energy, bulking up, not necessarily focusing on skill or technique. i like to imagine that growing up, leo and raph spent a lot of time in the dojo together doing their own thing, kind of "separate but together"; before casey came along and raph got into hanging out topside with him.

leo, though, he throws himself fully into training. he's incredibly dedicated to it not only because of his sense of responsibility, but because he genuinely enjoys it -- he enjoys improving his technique, his skill. he enjoys the repetition of learning, which helps to calm and center him. he enjoys meditation, which helps him focus and clear his mind. as an introvert, and precisely because his family doesn't hang around the dojo as often as he does, leo's solo training time is his time -- it's his chance to relax and decompress. i think it's exactly why he spiraled harder and harder in season 4 no matter how much training he did: at that point, it was no longer a hobby, but an obsession. leonardo normally uses training as a healthy outlet, but when he channeled his exodus trauma into it, he removed his main method of decompression and replaced it with the intent to fuel that exact trauma. (sidebar, though i've talked about it before: i also feel like this is why fast forward is so excellent at showing leo's character growth. he is extremely zen and such a huge advocate of healthy self-reflection in the way he coaches cody and his clone. my sweet boy, so proud of him in that season.)

now i know what you may be thinking. and you're right. there's more to leo than his life in the dojo... so let's talk about some other hobbies i like to think he has!

so here's the thing, and i think it's something else i've touched on before... but i think leo actually has a very strong bond with donnie. their temperaments are very similar, they feel similar burdens when it comes to protecting the family, etc... and to be honest, i think they bond a lot over the same nerdy hobbies too! i think leo is a huge freaking nerd.

i legit think that donatello has probably absorbed his brother into more than one of his hobbies, both unwillingly and not. some things click for leo, and some things don't. some things he has a hard time getting into until he discovers a certain aspect of it or views it from a different perspective. but he is very often willing to try anything.

for example, i imagine that growing up, leo and don played a lot of chess together. don used to overwhelmingly win, until they got older and older leo got deeper and deeper into the tactical aspect, and soon he was beating don quite soundly more often than he wasn't. don started getting into engineering manuals and physics books, while leo started getting into history texts and military treatises, but both shared a love for novels and would swap their favorites regularly. and they still play chess, of course.

don got into nerdy sci-fi shows. like, really into them. and leo couldn't quite pick up the thread on that one, but he was content to endure every fourth movie night when it was don's turn to pick. and slowly he began getting drawn into it, the same way anyone does -- he enjoyed the campiness of the plot, how absolutely ludicrous the fight choreography was, how sometimes there were actually deep and thoughtful moments. it was both a welcome respite from the intensity of his reality and something he could put to practical use if he had to, like, steal a spaceship one day, though the odds of that happening seemed pretty low⁽ˡᵒˡ⁾. he was never able to quote any of the episodes verbatim like donnie, but it was something they could discuss and lightly bicker about during the times when leo is mindlessly helping out around don's lab. (more on that in a sec.)

also? i can absolutely. totally. easily see leo as a tabletop game enthusiast. i think i'll refrain from getting lost in the weeds on that once, since this is already starting to run long, but i just want to put that in your mind. tmnt dnd gaming nights. let that sit for a second.

okay moving on.

i genuinely think that leo just likes existing in the general vicinity of his family and extended family. not necessarily doing anything; just being there, doing something with his hands. if don is working on a project, leo may drift in, and don will ask him to hand him certain tools or read aloud certain notes on the screen, because he knows the deal. if raph is lifting weights and leo wanders over from his own training session, raph may ask him to spot, or set up the next pair of weights, because he knows how it is. if mikey is sitting in the living room playing video games and leo appears on the couch next to him, he might toss him a controller, or he may just start blabbering about what game he's playing and what level he's on, because he's got it. if april and casey are tidying up her shop for a new shipment of merchandise and leo just randomly appears in the window, feathered duster in hand, april smiles and puts on water for tea and casey teases him and throws him a broom instead without blinking. because that's just how leo is.

the thing is, leo is one of those people who have such a strong presence that -- as long as he's not trying to hide it, of course -- you know he's there because he carries such an atmosphere with him. on the other hand, leonardo is the type of person who is genuinely content to just be in the background. which may sound totally at odds with the whole leader schtick, but i think it's just kind of this duality he has: he can be both at the forefront and in the background, depending on the situation and what is needed from him. does this mean he doesn't have his own hobbies or interests? of course not! but even canonically, throughout the series leo is shown to be just as happy with his hands off the reins so long as there's not a mission in front of him. and i think it's precisely this lack of that constant need for control that shows just how whole and rich leo's inner life is, how he feels full and complete without his leadership/big brother role completely defining him, and how season 4 rips that carpet from under his feet to show the unhealthy side of that particular coin.

so as much as a cop-out answer it may sound like -- i think that leo just enjoys doing things with his brothers. he likes rooftop runs with them. he likes pizza and cards with them. he likes movies, sports, and games with them. but he's also his own person, and he enjoys being in his head, and he has hobbies that help him make his head a healthy place to be; his family absolutely respects that quality, and leonardo is a much more well adjusted person for it.

er.... i didn't really get into quirks or bad habits, but this has run really long already and it's getting late, lmao. so i think i will stop here for now. =w= thank you for letting me ramble again about my blue boy, anon; i know i'm slow, but hopefully i rambled enough to make up for it!

[lollytea]

Fearless (part 1/3)

(Ty/Louie fairytale au fic. i am simply a bitch writing about my au and my oc so it is all very catered to me personally and im aware not a lot of ppl will read it. but if you DO read it, i love u so much. i guess tw for blood/serious injuries relating to teen characters. nothing too graphic but be warned. Also if you’re curious, info on the au here, here and here.)

_________________________

[OCTOBER 22ND, 6:19PM] The sky was bleeding pink and orange and Louie tried to focus on it. Didn't take much brainpower to appreciate a sunset. He clung to the sight with desperation, muttering the simplest thoughts under his breath like a mantra.

It was pretty. He liked sunsets. He liked pink. He liked orange. The distraction wasn't working. The unpleasantness that was already writhing in his stomach churned. His finger was on his temple, idly tracing delicate circles against the tightly wrapped bandage. His head hurt. The point where his shoulder met his upper arm was also dressed. The stitching still had to heal up. That hurt too. Louie was pretty stupid. Which was not something he usually thought. But it was a real kick in the confidence when someone sharp-witted did something stupid. And it was a real kick in the heart when someone who didn't wanna hurt anybody ended up hurting somebody. This was stupid. He had already tried reading as a means of distraction. Too hard. Too many words. Way too much of a strain on his mild concussion. This was so, so stupid. Sitting by his windowsill, he hoped this dumb bandage would be gone soon. His forehead felt sticky and damp with sweat. He was stupid. He wished Webby were here. If she were, she'd be in the courtyard below his window sparring with Dewey. At least then, Louie could watch and keep his mind occupied. No. No, that wasn't right. If Webby were here, she would've attached herself to Louie by now, hugging him tight until his injury healed. If it had been any other incident, Louie would let her, crumbling into her arms and whimpering about the pain as his amazing, magical sister made it all ebb away. But this wasn't any other incident. If Webby were here, he wouldn't be able to accept her hugs. The very idea rubbed him the wrong way. If anyone was entitled to healing hugs, it wasn't Louie, it was--.... His face twisted up. Webby wasn't here. She was off on some quest with Lena. Probably wouldn't be back for days. So there was no point in dwelling over hypotheticals. Louie would heal on his own. They were both gonna have to heal on their own. The sunset was fading.

It was pretty. Pink... Orange.... He couldn't do this. 

Why was he doing this?! Louie always knew himself to be a coward but this was to a pathetic extent. Depraved even. He felt sick. 

He couldn't. He just couldn't. Every additional second he spent hiding in his room was weighing him down. It was suffocating. But he couldn't leave. He was too scared.

Freezing up just like always. Just stop being so fucking scared! He would have to confront what he did eventually. There was no way around it. So, why couldn't he just go now? Louie had far worse things in his life to be dreading. Far worse. A ticking clock of trepidation was seated deep inside him. A predestined future he couldn't rewrite which, on all accounts, should render him paralyzed. But he wasn't. This was the sort of thing to demolish him. Apparently. Stupid. This shouldn't be overdriving his other senses. This shouldn't be flooding his mind. He shouldn't be drowning right now. This shouldn't have his hands shaking. This shouldn't have him pacing the length of his room. This shouldn't be stealing the oxygen from his lungs. His brain was pounding against his skull, protesting his rapid back-and-forth movement. He was dizzy. He shouldn't be crying. Fuck it! He was always crying, who cares about that?! Just stop panicking, just stop crying, just stop being so selfish for once and just own up. Louie's back crashed against his door, gasping for breath. Stars were blotting his vision and he couldn't breathe and it was the end of the world. Okay. Okay. He was spiraling again. That was all it was, it would be okay. It would be okay. The prince's bed chambers, alive with the choking sound of contained distress, subsided to complete silence for just a moment. Inhale. Exhale. And then all to be heard was a small, crackling voice straining to sing himself a quiet little lullaby. ___________ [OCTOBER 22ND, 10:07AM] "Your highness, don't be an idiot. You can't just---Hey! Wait up!" "H'oh boy..." Louie's eyes flicked to the high heavens. Right now he felt like he was tasked with personally escorting this goddamn boy across this goddamn forest by the goddamn ankles. He whirled around impatiently, crossing his arms with a flourish. "Pick up the pace, Tiberius. We don't have all day." "Can you maybe not be a huge pain for like... I dunno, five minutes?" Snapped Ty, his dearly devoted retainer and most notorious pain-in-the-tail. "Can you maybe loosen up? Y'know it's a real mood killer when there's a paranoid guy on my case all the time, insisting that the whole world is out to get me. Being constantly reminded of my fragile mortality? Woo, talk about fun times." Scowling, Ty stumbled his way over a protruding tree root. "You've got a bad habit of attracting danger, you know that, right? I'm pretty sure it's a Duck thing." The remark slapped the annoyed expression right off Louie's face. Ty quirked an eyebrow. "What's that look for?" Before he could further analyse, Louie sharply turned on his heel and strode on. "It's a Duck thing." He said, keeping his tone even. Both of them knew it was a Duck thing. Ty just didn't know the half of it. "Your highness," He heard Ty gripe. "You know this is a bad idea. A prince shouldn't be out in the open like this without proper protection. And I'm unprepared right now. I can't--" If Ty weren't yakking so much, Louie wouldn't know if he was still there. He wasn't wearing his armor for once so the familiar clank and clatter of metal was nonexistent. "You got your sword, right? You can do a lot of damage with that thing." "Yeah but no juice. And I need juice. See, 'cause what if we get in a tight spot and you--?" "What do you think is gonna happen, Ty?! For the love of all that is gold, It's just a party." "It's never just anything." He grumbled. Ty jogged ahead a little, matching his pace to Louie's. His footsteps alongside him were purposefully heavy So, he was stomping now. Real mature. Louie rolled his eyes. He was fully aware Ty was pissed, he didn't have to go above and beyond to make his anger known. "You really think I'm an idiot who doesn't take safety precautions? I'll have you know keeping Prince Louie alive isn't just your problem. Prince Louie is pretty serious about that too." He gestured to himself. "If you haven't noticed, I'm incognito today. I've got no crown, no mantle, no status whatsoever. And look at these ugly peasant threads," Louie pointed out, tugging at the hem of his dull green tunic. "It's actually kinda depressing how drab I look. I'm never gonna do this again actually. But! See how committed I am right now? Who's gonna recognize me? As we're all aware, I'm pretty well known for my pizzazz." "Just 'cause you stop being a prince doesn't mean danger stops existing." "No but it makes you way less of a target. Now, are you really gonna spend your whole day off bitching at me?" 

The glare Ty shot him was petulant at best. "Well, I didn't wanna. But I got dragged along on this little adventure so guess I gotta." Louie pursed his beak, irritated. He did not drag Ty along anywhere. 

"Come to think of it, I don't remember saying you had to follow me." Well, that came out as harsher than intended. Ty didn't seem hurt. At least, there was no sign that he was. No expression cracked his stone mask. "I've got a duty." Louie scoffed. Ty and his stupid duty. It was really starting to wear on his nerves. But not today, absolutely not today. On this fine, glorious day, Louie was intent on having fun. He would show up at this little forest shindig and he would drink and dance and schmooze and whatever else any carefree person at a party would do. He would forget about everything that was eating at him. He wasn't gonna let it consume him, he wasn't. He was gonna live. While he still could. His sixteenth birthday loomed closer. Six months left. "Sorry." Said Ty, unprompted. The shadows festering in Louie's head cleared out as he snapped back to the present. Ty had his eyes firmly downcast, a noticeable slump to his posture. "It's not like I wanna be running around killing the fun all the time. I really don't. But I gotta." Louie said nothing. His eyebrows rose in quiet astonishment as he studied Ty's side profile. He remembered when Ty first came into his life. Twelve years old, brandishing a sword too big for his body and grinning lopsidedly in an unmistakably trouble seeking sorta way. A real firecracker of a boy, loud and bright. Hungry for adventure and excited to throw himself head first into the action. He remembered one of Ty's earliest and most confident statements. When he lowered himself to bow to Louie in his uncle's throne room and declared that the prince would never fear for his life again. Because Ty would protect him and Ty was fearless. Louie believed him. Make no mistake, Ty had plenty of bite back then too. He had disliked Louie and the feeling had been mutual. But he never doubted that Ty had spoken the truth with his entire heart. Ty was fearless. When Louie was with Ty, he was safe. He believed that and he always had. Despite how they clicked as well as a dagger and a keyhole. Despite Ty being annoying. So annoying. He was still annoying. But it was different now. Louie couldn't pinpoint when that permanent glowing smile of his had dwindled and a thin frown had become Ty's default expression. His sword, something he always used to proudly haul around over his shoulder, now unceremoniously sheathed against his belt. Although Louie had noticed that his right hand never strayed too far from the hilt.   Protecting royalty with your entire being was an all-consuming duty and it seemed, at some point, the reality of such an allegiance had slapped Ty across the face. He had this distinct way of holding himself now. Always stood straight and rigid, coiled up with agitation. He was prepared to fight at a moment's notice but it was clear the thrill of doing so had been long since drained out of him. He still smiled. He still laughed. But only sometimes. Ty was annoying because he was paranoid. Because he was snarky. Because he was too stiff, too protective. And man, what Louie wouldn't give to have Ty's former brand of annoying back. At least never made him feel sorry for the guy. "Can I ask you a favor?" Louie finally spoke, pushing back a drooping tree branch so they could walk below it "You can try." Ty shrugged, his gaze still fixed ahead. "What if we just turn off this whole 'Prince and Retainer' thing today. Whadd'ya think?" He turned to him blankly, complete with a slight tilt of the head that made Louie a tiny bit weak. "Wha....?" Ty was simply not computing. He looked as though Louie was throwing out algebra equations and he was supposed to solve them right on the spot. And he was not a math guy by any means. The cute clueless expression was making it a little hard to focus. Louie swallowed. "Listen." He began, his thumb dragging itself across his sweaty palm as he struggled with how to phrase this. Louie had a way with words, always had. But he had a tendency to trip over his own tongue when Ty was involved. Especially when Ty was staring at him with his soft cande-light eyes and doing that stupid adorable head tilting thing and-- "You need a break." Louie blurted out. "You're stressed like constantly and it's getting kinda insufferable and I think your Dad would sick a dragon on me if his barely fifteen year old son suddenly kicked it 'cause of a paranoia overload so I think you should just forget about being my big strong hero for today and come hang out with me at this stupid peasant party and we can just be two regular kids instead of a royal and his bodyguard do you think you could give me that Tiberius?" It was only in the following beat of silence that Louie realized how fast he spat that all out. He struggled to catch his breath. One second. Ty blinked. Two seconds. A flicker of vacant eyes and then a rush of realization. And then disbelief. And then-- Three seconds. His brow scrunched together and a snarl crinkled his muzzle. His eyes flared. Oh, he was mad.... "Are you crazy?!" Ty shouted. He was beside himself with a malfunctioning mix of fury and incredulity that had him stammering his words. "You-You can't just--.....D-do you even-- you don't...do you realize how disrespectful that is? For you to say it? For-For me to do it?! I was given this duty by the King! The fucking King! To just suddenly "turn it off" would be--....I can't--!" Maybe "mad" was an understatement. "Ty--" Louie tried. He was cutting across Louie, treading back and forth on their forest path,. Not going further, not going back. Just walking to nowhere for the sake of being too scandalized to possibly stand still. Louie was attempting to get Ty's attention by grabbing his tunic but he kept shaking him off. "I'd be a disgrace! An embarrassment! I'm trusted by the royal family to keep--...to keep you safe! I-I can't just walk around with my liege like I'm on vacation and not be on guard! You don't even get it, you--" "Ty!" Louie said loudly."You wanna maybe listen for a sec?!" Frankly, he was surprised Ty halted his tirade. His eyes were blown wide, stunned and Louie wasn't quite sure why until he followed Ty's look, snapping down. Seems in his effort to get a hold of the guy, he had instinctively reached out and snatched Ty's wrist. They stood frozen for a moment, each set of eyes boring into the touch that tied them together. Louie's fingers began to uncurl. Then he decided no. His grip on Ty tightened with a purposeful squeeze. Ty met his gaze, looking....panicked? Confused? Didn't matter. He could besottedly dissect his unreadable facial expressions later. Louie inhaled, deciding to shoulder his dignity for just a second. No safety rails of snark this time. Ty might make fun of him for being sincere later but this was important. "Don't you miss being a kid with nothing to worry about?" Louie implored. "Because if we're being real, I don't think we're ever gonna get to live like that again." Ty muttered something to himself, shaking his head a little. "But listen," Louie continued, taking a step into Ty's personal bubble. Ty took an automatic step back. But since he was still holding his hand, Louie was led a step forward. It was difficult to tell with the pink fur but he could've sworn Ty reddened. "Look I know it's weird for me to be asking but....can't we just take a risk today? It's just a party in the woods. Literally the least likely place to find any danger in the whole kingdom." "We shouldn't--" "Ty, please." Honestly, Louie was a little surprised at himself. He hadn't even planned for Ty to accompany him anyway. But in the heat of the moment, everything had shifted upside-down. Turns out there was something inside him willing to beg. Something that wanted more than anything, for Ty come along. He just wanted a simple memory of just killing time with Ty. Separated from the castle and everything that reminded him of his fate. He would like to smile without a hint of dread for once this year. So, he said just that. "I'm not just trying to make you come along 'cause I'm stuck with you. That's not it." He swallowed. "You're--....you're cool. You're fun. I wanna have you around. You know, when you're not so worked up and you're just being yourself, I like hanging out with you." He tugged Ty's hand a little. Further from his sword and closer to Louie. "I want you to come with me. And I want you to try having fun too." He may as well just tell the idiot he thought about him every time he saw a sunset. The hand he was grasping flexed its fingers. Ty abruptly broke eye contact and glanced to the side, his tongue poking out to pierce the tip of his jagged tooth. His indecisive face. "I just--.....I dunno...." He muttered. "If something happened to you--" "Nothing's gonna happen to me." Said Louie immediately. "I've got a good feeling about this. And c'mon Ty, that coming from a coward?" "You're not a coward." He said, barely a whisper. He was now staring at the ground. "I promise." "Huh?" Louie smiled tightly as Ty looked to him questionably. "I promise nothing is gonna happen. I'm gonna be fine. You're gonna be fine. Now, can you do me this favor and maybe, I dunno, trust me?" The look Ty gave him was a little sad, but it was soft. And then with only a tiny twitch, it shifted into something else entirely. It was trust. Blind trust. Maybe stupid trust. A minuscule pang of guilt jabbed at Louie. Of course he wanted Ty to trust him. He needed him to if there was any hope of achieving his goal here. But objectively, he really shouldn't. Louie was hiding way too much from him. It wasn't fair. Then Ty broke the world, shattered orbit and played around with reality itself by cracking a smile and Louie forgot every coherent thought he ever possessed. He would never put on record just how long he spent pre-preparing jokes, gunning to get the corner of Ty's lips to flick upwards. Made him seem kinda desperate. Which he was not. Ty had that oh, so stereotypical "cute boy" smile. It was crooked, cocky, it was utterly obnoxious. Louie hated it. And worst of all, it was like a little spell to kick Louie's heart into high speed. Sometimes it dazed and confused him like a blinding light flash. But other times, it was warm and if he stared long enough, he'd fall asleep. Louie loved Ty's smile. Every time he tried to convince himself he didn't, he ended up dwelling on it too much and the way his mouth would quirk up would play in his mind on a maddening loop and then it would be too much to handle and the truth that he loved it would always overpower him. So, whenever that happened (like right this second.) he gave up and admitted it. To himself, anyway. He loved Ty's smile. He loved Ty. ......Wait. That last part was new, hold up. Rewind. But he didn't get the chance because Ty was talking now. Still a little dazzled, Louie didn't catch what he said but he figured it was good since he was still smiling. And then that smile broke into a huge grin, his eyes flashed with trouble and his hands were on Louie's shoulders and-- "Race ya!" Ty cried. With a light push, Louie was stumbling backwards and Ty kicked off into a sprint. For a brief moment, Louie could only gaze after him, stupefied. Love, huh? Like the real deal? That was crazy. But then he snapped out of as he recalled the audacity of this bastard. "You just pushed your liege!" He shrieked, receiving a loud "WOO!" from Ty as a response. And then Louie was grinning. He was giddy. He didn't quite know if he forgot about love in that instance or if it was the force powering him but he was tearing off after Ty, yelling about the latter's totally unfair head start. In hindsight, he should've figured it was love a long time ago. Who else would get him to run for no reason?

[drivingsideways]

k-drama rec list

Prior to 2020 I’d maybe watched 2 k-dramas in my entire life, but this year I got sucked in, thanks to some great recs, and y’know, *gestures * everything.  

I think I’d held off watching kdramas because my impression of them was limited to romances that I didn’t enjoy at all. But this was the year I discovered the equivalent of “gen fic” kdrama- dramas that had wonderful ensemble casts, strong story lines that weren’t entirely romance focused and also a variety in terms of themes and styles. A big plus was that I found so many of these dramas had women leading the writers’ room, and seeing the effect of that in the story telling. (Notable exceptions: a certain “star” writer who should please stop inflicting her badly written, formulaic crap on the world, yes Kim Eun-Sook, I mean you, and whoever wrote that trashfire Flower of Evil)

So here I am with my own rec list! Caveat- these are mostly not the dramas released in 2020, I’m still playing catch up! :)

Under the cut for length

My Mister/ My Ahjussi  (2018, Written by Park Hae-Young, Directed by Kim Won-Seok, starring Lee Sun-kyun and Lee Ji-eun aka IU) 

This was definitely my absolute favourite of the shows I watched this year across western/ asian media. It’s a story about the thread that binds us all and the ineffability of human connection. It’s also a story that deconstructs ideas of masculinity and honour and shame in a non-western context, but with an extremely compassionate touch.  It’s a story that doesn’t shy away from showing the consequences of material and spiritual poverty; and how one can so easily feed into the other. It’s a love story that isn’t a romance, except that it’s a Romance. It’s about finding salvation in one another and in the kindness of strangers.  It’s about choosing life, and picking yourself up off the floor to take that one last step and then the next and then the next. The one quibble I have with the series is that it could have been better paced, it does get extremely slow after the half way mark. But god, do they land the ending. Both Lee Sun-kyun and IU turn in absolutely heartbreaking performances, and fair warning, be prepared to go through an entire box of tissues watching this series. 

Life  (2018,  written by Lee Soo-yeon  and directed by Hong Jong-chan, starring Lee Dong-wook, Cho Seung-woo, Won Jin-ah, Lee Kyu-hyung, Yoo Jae-myung and Moon So-ri.)

Medical dramas are very much not my thing, and I wouldn’t have taken a chance on it except that @michyeosseo said I should, and she was right! It’s a medical drama in the sense that it’s set in a hospital, but rather than a “case-fic” format, this is actually a sharp commentary on the corporatization of health care, and the business of mixing, well, money and what should be a fundamental human right. Writer Lee Soo-yeon was coming off the global success of Stranger/Secret Forest S1 when this aired, so I understand that expectations were probably sky-high, and people were disappointed when this show didn’t give them the adrenaline rush that they wanted. On the other hand, I thought that this outing was really much more nuanced in terms of the politics and also how the ending doesn’t allow you the luxury of easy-fixes. This show has a great ensemble cast, and while it took me a while to get used to Lee Dong-wook’s woodenness (i ended up calling him mr.cadaver after watching this and was surprised to learn that he’s very popular?), in the end I was quite sold on his version of angry angst-bucket elder-sibling Dr.Ye Jin-woo. His best scenes were with Lee Kyu-hyung who turns in a lovely, achy performance as the paraplegic Dr. Ye Seon-woo who just wants to live a normal life. The love story between the two brothers is actually the emotional backbone of the story, and I think they landed that perfectly. 

My one quibble with writer-nim is that she ended up writing in a forgettable and somewhat (for me at least) uncomfortable romance between the characters played by Won Jin-ah and Cho Seung-Woo. I think part of my uncomfortable-feeling was that I got the strong sense that the writer herself didn’t want to write this romance, it was as if she was being made to shoe-horn it in for Studio Reasons, and she basically grit her teeth and did the worst possible job of it.  I do wish we could have absolutely had the OT3 of my dreams: Moon So-ri/Cho Seung-woo/Yoo Jae-myung like, c’mon TV gods MAKE IT HAPPEN, just...look at them!!!! 

Anyway, that apart, I think this was a very engaging series, and by engaging, I also mean thirst-enabling, see below. 

 Stranger (aka Secret Forest  or Forest of Secrets) S1 & 2 : (2017-, Written by Lee Soo-yeon, directed by 

2017′s smash hit aired a much anticipated second season in 2020, and I managed to catch up just in time to watch that live, so that was thrilling :D . Writer Lee Soo-yeon  mixes up thriller/office comedy/political commentary in an ambitious series. I think S1 is more “exciting” than S2 in terms of the mystery and pacing,  but S2 is far more dense and interesting in terms of political commentary because it takes a long hard look at institutional corruption and in true writer-nim fashion doesn’t prescribe any easy solutions. Anyway, please enjoy public prosecutor Cho Seung-woo and police officer Bae Doona as partners/soulmates kicking ass and taking names in pursuit of Truth, Justice and just a goddamn peaceful meal, along with a stunningly competent ensemble cast. Also yes, Han Yeo Jin is a lesbian, sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

Search: WWW  (2019, Written by Kwon Do-Eun, directed by Jung Ji-hyun & Kwon Young-il, starring  Im Soo-jung, Lee Da-hee, Jeon Hye-jin)

GOD. Where do I start? +1000 for writer Kwon Do-Eun saying “fuck the patriarchy” in the most grandiose way possible, i.e. absolutely refusing to acknowledge that it exists. Yes, this is that power fantasy, and it’s also a fun, slice-of-life  tale about three women navigating their way through work, romance, national politics and everything in between. It’s true that I wasn’t entirely sold on the amount of time spent on the romance, and I really wish they’d actually had a textual wlw romance, though the subtext through the entire series is PRACTICALLY TEXT. But still, it maintains that veneer of plausible deniability and I think queer fans who are sick of that kind of treatment in media have a very valid grouse against the show. On the other hand, personally I felt that the queer-platonic vibe of the show is very wonderful and true to real life, and it was only reinforced by the ending. This is a show written by a woman for women (like me), and it shows. 

Hyena  (2020, Written by Kim Roo-Ri, directed by Jang Tae-yoo & Lee Chang Woo, starring  Kim Hye-soo and Ju Ji-hoon )

Those of you who’ve been watching hit zombie epic Kingdom are probably familiar with Ju Ji-hoon’s brand of sexiness already. I had not watched Kingdom and got hit in the face by Mr.Sexy McSexyPants’ turn as a brash, privileged-by-birth, up and coming lawyer who gets completely runover by the smoking hot and incredibly dangerous fellow lawyer/competitor from the other side of the tracks in the person of Kim Hye-Soo. When I say they set the room on fire, I mean it, ok. Every single scene between these two is an actual bonfire of sexual attraction and emotional hand grenades, and they’re both absolutely riveting to watch. “Flower of Evil” wishes they had what this show has- an actual grown up romance as opposed to a thirteen year old twilight fan’s idea of an adult romance. 

The “lawyer” shenanigans and the “cases” are hit or miss, and I think the occasional comedy fell flat for me. But that’s not why I mainlined like 6 episodes of this series overnight like a coke addict, and that’s not why you’re going to do it either. It’s so RARE, even in these enlightened days to find a female character like Jung Geum-ja: hard as nails, unapologetic about it, and not punished by the narrative for it. The best part for me is that she feels like a woman’s woman, not a man’s idea of what a Strong Female Character should be. Anyways, when I grow up I want to have what Kim Hye-soo has ok?

Other dramas that I watched this year, quickly rated:

The King: Eternal Monarch (3/10 and those 3 points are only for the combined goodness of second leads who deserved better- Jung Eun Chae, Woo Do Hwan and Kim Kyung Nam. Please head over to my AO3 and read my attempts to fix this garbage fire and rescue their characters from canon)

Flower of Evil (-10/100, dont @ me)

Tale of the Nine Tailed (5/10, I think it succeeds at what it set out to do, which is a light hearted, sweet fantasy-romance-melodrama, plus “second lead” Kim Beom will make you cry as the hot mess of a half human/ half fox spirit ALL TEARS character. I think if you’re into kdrama romances as a genre, this is probably a good bet?)

Signal  (7/10,  This was the first full kdrama I watched this year and would definitely recommend. It’s a police procedural with time travel shenanigans and has an engaging plot, good pacing, texture and compelling performances. My one disappointment with it was the way they wrote Kim Hye-soo’s character. As literally the only female character to survive in any way, she was given short shrift, and toward the end it really began to grate on me.)

Six Flying Dragons - (7/10, also would recommend if you’re interested in Korean historicals. It definitely already feels a bit dated in terms of styling and production values, and even scripting and acting choices. But it has a good balance of fantasy and history and political commentary. I was not a fan of Yoo In-Ah’s performance in this series, but it’s not anything that would make you want to nope out of the series. It’s GoT , if GoT was thoughtful about politics and characters and not the misogynist, racist trashfire that it became.)

My Country: The New Age - (3.5/10, and that’s 3 points to Jang Hyuk’s fan and 0.5.points to Woo Do Hwan’s heaving bosom. If you like your historical drama/fantasy with very pretty men, very gay subtext -seriously RIP to show makers who thought they could hetero it but didn’t account for Woo Do Hwan’s Tragic Face- lots of blood and tears and very nonsense plot, this is right up your alley. I probably would have enjoyed it more in other circumstances, I think? But this one just annoyed me too much at the time! 

I have a couple of more dramas to watch on my list, that’ll probably carry me over into 2021, so see ya on the other side! :D

[angelbaugh-writes]

Game Night {Steve Rogers x Reader}

Request: could you uhm 😳😳 do dialogue prompt 10 with steve tysm ily

Warnings: maybe a few curse words, implications of sexy times

Author’s Note: I hope you guys like this! It ended up a little longer than anticipated. Please show it some love. Thank you so so much for reading. I love you all! Xox Angel Baugh

     Your life purpose was to fluster Steve Rogers until he broke. Flirting with Captain America started by accident, but it quickly became your favorite thing to do. Between the cheesy pick-up lines and suggestive comments, Steve’s face would turn bright red. What got to him most was the less-than-holy touches you started doing. It’s not that you did anything risque, the farthest you’ve gone was scoot past him in a very tight place, but he knew that your lingering touches had a deeper meaning behind them.

     But Steve Rogers still couldn’t get the hint that you were interested. It frustrated you to no end. You couldn’t just sit him down and tell him you were madly in love with him. How well would that go? Sure, the worst that could happen would be that Steve rejects you. You would know that it was time to get over him, but that would also end in humiliation. He would tell Bucky or Sam. Sam would spread the embarrassing let down to the whole team and then some. That man could not keep a secret to save his life. The only option was to not tell Steve until you were sure of his feelings. You just had to hope that you wouldn’t out yourself before that.

***

     The sun was just rising when you woke up. It was the start to a -hopefully mission free- weekend. Although there was no reason you should be waking up so early on a Saturday, it had become a habit to spend the quiet time talking with whoever else was awake. 

     ”Good morning, Sweet Cheeks,” you greeted Steve as you entered the kitchen. You made sure to say hello to Sam and Bucky as well.

     “Morning, Y/N. I poured you a cup of coffee just like you like it.” You smiled at the blond, thanking him before picking up the mug that sat next to his. 

     Sam feigned hurt, “Buck, why doesn’t Stevie make our coffee? When I asked him to he said no.”

     “Yeah, that’s a dick move. Maybe if we seduce ‘im like Y/N does, we’ll be able to convince him to do whatever we want!”

     You jumped up to sit on the counter next to where Steve was standing. You watched as the grown men in front of you dramatically told each other what they would make the man next to you do.

     “Do you think they’ll notice if we sneak off,” you whispered. He let out a small chuckle.

     “I think we could start kissing and they wouldn’t even look our way.”

     You smirked, “Want to try out that theory?” Steve shook his head, a small smile adorning his lips as he took a sip of his coffee. “Fine, then. You can make it up to me by being my partner at tonight’s game night.”

     “I was going to be your partner either way. Neither of these goons are helpful. Unlike them, we’re a force to be reckoned with.” He lifted his mug towards yours, offering a cheers. You obliged.

     A buzz from your phone pulled you from your conversation. Natasha had sent you a text requesting your company in the training room. You sighed.

     “I’m sorry, my love, but I must go. Until tonight?” you spoke dramatically. “I’ll think about you every moment until I see you again.”

    “Okay, Y/N. I’ll see you later,” Steve chuckled.

***

     You rummaged through your desk. You could not find the damn thing you were looking for. The game night was starting in ten minutes, and Tony hated it when anybody was late. There was no time for this. A gasp left your mouth as you finally felt the familiar thread. It took you three minutes to run to the living room. After tripping more times than you’d like to admit, you finally slid into the already crowded room. 

     “I’m here! Suck it, Tony!” you spoke excitedly. 

     “It took you long enough.” Shaking your head, you made your way to sit on the arm of the chair Steve was sitting in.

     Natasha rolled her eyes, “No need to get angry already. So what’s the game for the night?”

     “I am glad you asked.” Tony stood up as he spoke. “I came to the conclusion that Monopoly and Poker can only be so fun for some of us. So I took it upon myself to get a new card game for the team game nights.”

     “Get on with it already,” Sam interrupted.

     “I’m getting there. After scouring the web, I found a game perfect enough to get the old men more acquainted to today’s culture. Ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to introduce Cards Against Humanity to the team.” Tony held up the box proudly. You shook your head at his dramatic antics. “Like usual game night, You can be in pairs or by yourself. I’m pretending that somebody other than Steve and Y/N is going to want to work together. The first to ten points wins. Let’s play ball!”

     You turned to Steve as the cards were dealt and everyone got situated, “I brought us good luck charms.” The friendship bracelets were black. A small, four-leaf clover charm was positioned in the middle of each. Steve couldn’t stop from smiling.

     “You are such a dork,” he spoke, allowing you to tie the bracelet on his wrist.

     “You love it. Besides, you’d be losing every game night if it wasn’t for me.”

     “I can’t say you’re wrong.”

     The game was full of laughter and disgusted faces from Steve, who would occasionally have to ask you what one of your cards meant. His face would turn a cherry red when you whispered the licentious answer in his ear, mumbling a timid ‘oh’ in response. Natasha was winning so far, with you and Steve close behind. 

     “I vote we take an intermission,” Bruce said, “I need a break for snacks.”

     “I second that. I’ve needed to pee since four rounds in,” Sam exclaimed before rushing out of the room.

     The room dispersed as everyone went their own ways for the time being. You stood up and stretched. Turning, you reached your hand out to Steve to help him out of the chair.

     “This game is...fun?” he laughed. Your heart fluttered at the sound.

     “I could think of a few other fun things we could do. We’d just have to go to my room to do it,” you flirted with ease. “I’m sure Sam would love to take our point for us while we sneak off.”

     “Oh, really? Care to elaborate?” So he was going to play along now?

     You leaned in closer to him, your lips barely grazing his ear, “I think you know exactly what I’m talking about, Captain. I’ve told you plenty of information tonight that we could work with.”

     “Which on do you plan to start with?” With that, your facade broke. Steve never flirted back like this. He smirked down at you, “Cat got your tongue, doll?”

     “Date me, coward,” you couldn’t stop the words spilling out of your mouth. “I’ve been flirting with you for months, and I don’t think you quite understand that I’m in love with you. Just fucking ask me out already before I implode. Please don’t talk to me like that if you don’t mean it.” 

     Now the secret’s out. Your face heats up as the realization dawns on you. 

    “Are you free tomorrow night, then?”

    “Pardon?” your brows furrowed in confusion.

     “I’d like to take you on a date. Is that okay, love?”

    You smiled, “That’s more than okay.”

     “Game time!” Tony yelled as he walked into the room.

     You frowned, “I never got a snack, though.”

     “You should’ve thought about that before you and Cap decided to smooch while everyone was out of the room.” You rolled your eyes at him, flipping him off in the process.

     Everyone returned to their spots quickly. You took your seat on the arm of the chair, but Steve pulled you down onto his lap. A gasp fell from your lips. His arm wrapped around your waist as you lean into him. Game night became a little bit better.

[professorspork]

i know I always say this, but, last night REALLY WAS the BUSIEST OF DAYS in the Reaper War

before I get into yesterday’s gameplay, I realized I forgot to react to the fact that Jacob got Brynn pregnant, which -- again, I suppose that wraps up everything about his backstory in a nice little bow, lad of the bad dad gets to be good dad, but like... it still gives like they gave his character incredibly short shrift. so. humbug to that.

but I have bigger fish to fry (ha ha, literally, see what I did there?) because ALL OF THIS HAS HAPPENED BEFORE, AND ALL OF THIS WILL HAPPEN AGAIN. I rescued Ann Bryson, and learned that -- shocker -- she had a bad relationship with her dad. I uh may have condoned her getting a bit of a nasty nose bleed in order to track the Leviathan to Despoina, where as ever I got to read a bunch of people’s weirdly specific sad diaries. my jump into the depths was very cool and scary (does no one get the bends in the future???) and I enjoyed my The First-style body swapping conversation with the Leviathan in which I tried to prove I’m ~special and this time is ~different. on the one hand, I don’t know why I expected the origin of the Reapers to be anything other than yet another story of AI gone wrong, but this whole cinematic parallels thing is starting to edge out of “everything matches up and is of a piece” territory and into the murkier waters of “we kind of only had one idea, actually.” to reveal that the Reapers’ plan is just stray AI code to ‘preserve life’ is at once very chilling and a bit of a let down; when I think back to when I talked to Sovereign for the first time and I had my initial “GOD IS A MACHINE THAT WANTS TO KILL US” freak out, I was in fact very on board for an evil plan too broad and complex for a human mind to fathom. for it to be this feels kind of predictable and pedestrian.

that said, watching the Leviathan take down a huge-ass Reaper capital ship with its pulse signal was very satisfying.

oh no this is going to get very long, now that you’ve had this fun teaser i’m gonna put the rest under a cut

then we kicked it on over to Thessia and I highkey traumatized my girlfriend. I feel like I should have seen the reveal that the asari were more advanced because they were hoarding prothean tech coming, but I didn’t. hearing and seeing all the asari commandos helping me get wiped out was a real gut punch, but didn’t hold a candle to my frustration at the confrontation with Kai Leng. I’m not mad that the game wouldn’t let me beat him, per se (though I still think it’s ridiculous that I’ve taken down a Reaper by myself and I’m supposed to be afraid of a dude with a knife), but I am pissed that it all happened with combat cut scene magic. this game has given me difficult combat before! if, in fighting Kai Leng, I’d genuinely felt outmatched, I think I would have tolerated it better -- or if the combat had been me fighting the Harvesters and then Kai Leng sneaked around me because that’s what he does, he sneaks. but to have such a relatively easy combat sequence with him that felt very much like winning just to have it snatched away from me... maddening. WHY CAN’T I BEAT THIS ONE GUY AND HIS KNIFE? I don’t want to be all “Kai Leng is a Mary Sue” but like... he got to murder Thane and then beat me in overtime, and his entire vibe is I exist to sell action figures even though that’s not, as far as I know, any part of Mass Effect’s profit model. so it’s just frustrating. and for them to then rub salt in the wound and have him EMAIL ME to be like “lol snowflake r u triggered” was just. MY PATIENCE IS THIN, ME3. DON’T PUSH ME.

seeing Shepard have to admit to failure was a gutting scene, though, and a necessary one. and watching Liara fight with Javik was highkey satisfying, too. 

so anyway, because i was BIG MAD at Cerberus I tracked them first to that one N7 communications mission-- 

(Sample dialogue: Helen: Why aren’t you using cover? You’re going to die! Use cover! Me, jumping out of cover and rushing Cerberus goons trying to melee them to death: BECAUSE I’M MAD)

-- and then to Sanctuary, and HOO BOY WAS THAT A LOT OR WHAT. from the second I heard Oriana’s voice I had a pretty good idea of what was going on here, but seeing in in practice was still creepy af. and like. i’m just gonna go out on a limb and say INDOCTRINATION BAD. I AM NOT A FAN. shout out to that one capitalist volus on the Citadel who was like “lol sanctuary is a scam don’t waste your money” i guess

additionally, last night was significant because I picked not one but TWO ENTIRE renegade convince options, because I saw no reason to be nice to terrorist daddy the illusive man or actual terrorist daddy Mr. Lawson. after I got through all that, Helen explained to me how difficult it apparently is to keep Miranda alive by the end of that confrontation, so I got to do some WHAT LIKE IT’S HARD? preening at how Nice Sheps Finish First sometimes. 

but as usual, the real highlight is getting to know my crew better and talking with them. I finally got some prime flirting in with Liara during Leviathan. it was VERY cute when she was like “man what’s with you rescuing damsels from dig sites? if you end up teaming up with her to save the world and bring down the shadow broker i’ll be very jealous. ... and concerned” and WEIRDLY CUTER when she was like “hey the only tentacled alien who gets to mess with your brain is ME” because Liara is like 115 by now considering how slowly i’m getting through these missions and she still does not know what romance is. 

[no but seriously, Liara does not know what romance is. half the time I’m still going WE’RE STILL DATING, RIGHT? every time she refuses to talk to me. and even after Thessia, when everyone was like “go talk to Liara, she needs you” and even JAVIK of all people was like “you’re dating Liara, right? it’s so obvious” our interactions did not feel particularly... romantic? it’s a tricky needle to thread, obviously, I’m not looking for sloppy makeouts right after millions of her people died, but it still reads as very odd to me. anyway.]

Javik’s story about how he once had a ship like the Normandy and a crew of friends like mine and they all ended up indoctrinated and he had to personally slit their throats went way harder than I ever expected it to. even just the IDEA of having to do that as my Shep upsets me. i’m legit enjoying getting to know Javik, even though i’m still GuessWhoJustGotYelledAt.jpg every time I leave his room. I HAD ENOUGH OF THAT FROM KREIA, JAVIK, YOU’LL NEVER PUSH ME AWAY.

I was surprised by how hard Tali took Miranda’s successful challenge of Mr. Lawson, though in hindsight it makes sense -- with the geth war still happening on top of everything else, I don’t think Tali ever did get the chance to process her anger at her dad being a war criminal and all. and her whole “emergency induction port” bit about the straw was cute as hell tbh. her friendship with Garrus over the comms continues to give me life. 

(in other quarian news, I AM SAD ABOUT KAL’REEGER.)

and jeff. JEFF. after Thessia i literally ran to the bridge and said aloud “Jeff, make me feel better” as I clicked interact with him, and then he made that dig about asari dancers, and i was like NO NOT LIKE THAT. (I mean, what Shep literally said was “now’s not the time for jokes” which is ironic considering she, unlike me, still calls him JOKER) but then he was all DAD ANDERSON SAID I’M SOLELY RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH, I’M SORRY, I’M DOING MY BEST and like. what a fucked up little family we are. he feels guilty that I died saving him, still! apparently he asks EDI about my stress levels and they are BAD and he feels BAD! im crey. OH AND ALSO THE FACT THAT PTSD ASARI LAURA BAILEY WAS TALKING ABOUT HIS FAMILY ON TIPTREE AND I CAN NEVER TELL HIM BECAUSE THE GAME DOESN’T LET ME DO THAT???? V UPSETTING.

and then of course EDI had to TRIPLE DOWN on all these feelings i was already having by telling me about human resistance and selflessness on Earth and how she wants to turn off her self-preservation code because she’s not about that. I’M SUCH A TOASTER FUCKER HALP.

Garrus being all “well sometimes your best friend gives you a pep talk” speech was cute as hell, and I was strangely charmed when Kaidan was like YOU CAN TELL I’M EXTRA MAD BECAUSE MY VOICE HAS GOTTEN SO DEEP grumbling.

next up: shore leave, and then going after Cerberus will trigger act 3! i may one day finish mass effect after all!

[ngame989]

“Brew” - TGG SVTFOE Fanfic Collection Ch. 6

Writing: @ngame989​

Art: @toxicpsychox​

Editing: @toxicpsychox​, @seddm​, an IRL friend

Alternate fic links - FFnet, AO3

Summary: After close to a year on Earthni, Tom's been dragged back into the princely life, and it's a lot less exciting than he'd expected. With Star and Marco away on urgent business, can Janna help him turn a boring errand into a fun adventure?

Comic Page

Masterpost

This one’s a nice change of pace from the last two chapters, I think. TGG’s still a Starco-focused work, expect these to be the exception not the norm, but I think it’s important to strike a balance. See below for the text, hope you enjoy!

“No results.” Huh? Three eyes narrowed at the screen in frustration. Maybe a different search term? “No results.” Alright Tom, no big deal, man. Maybe you just spelled something wrong. Annnnnd… there. “No results.” How could there be nothing?

Tom leaned back in the chair and sighed, exercising restraint over the little anger demons inside him as he’d trained himself to do. In the past he’d needed a physical bunny to pet if he wanted even a hope of keeping his cool, but at this point suppressing the urge was such reflex that most would think he just had a regular Mewman quick temper and nothing more in all but the most extreme of conditions, but he was getting pretty close to that point now. Grandpa Relicor’s study had everything, or so he thought, but this was the first time he could ever remember being here where it come up short. He’d checked every shelf, everything he could think in the computer, had even fireblasted a few of the shelves just to see if there were any hidden switches or anything. Even Relicor had been at a loss and had been screeching in distress on the floor for long enough that Tom’s brain had graciously tuned it out. What could be so important about this book his mom needed? He hadn’t even had time to change his casual graphic tee from a cartoon he liked, simply tossing his maroon jacket over it before heading out at his mother’s behest. He wasn’t one to say no to her, but it had been hours since he’d shown up here and he was no closer to figuring this out than he had been this morning.

Suddenly his phone buzzed, displaying the familiar beaming face of his ex-girlfriend close up to the camera. A toothy grin erupted as he picked it up, holding the phone up for a video feed. “Heya, Starship.”

“Hey, Tom!” Star beamed into the camera. “How’s it hanging? Long time no see. So,” she rambled out in one breath, “I may have a teensie weensie wittle problem.” She backed up to reveal her hair in complete disarray, sans horns, and black marks all over her light blue dress. Before Tom could even ask the question, her other hand held up charred fragments of her headband. “Someone still hasn’t learned how to use an Earth oven properly!” she forced out through gritted teeth.

“Look, gurl, I said I was like, so sorry! All the Cloud Kingdom kitchens are powered by glitter and horn blasts, like that’s just how ovens are supposed to be, that is all I am saying here,” Ponyhead’s indignant voice chimed in from behind, punctuated by a snort.

“Anyway, we just finished putting out the fires and I need a new headband and their website says they’re almost out of stock and I’ve wanted to show Marco around the Underworld for a while and- wait, is that screeching in the background? Where are you?”

Tom shuffled away from the elder demon still writhing on the floor and cleared his throat. “Just in Grandpa’s study trying to find something for my mom, she really wants it today. I don’t know if I can go- but I can still send the carriage for you guys, if you want.”

“Do you need help with that?” Marco inquired as he peeked his head into the frame, casually wrapping an arm around Star.

“Naaaah, no big deal,” Tom shrugged. “You two should go, though! I can just fly over whenever I finish this.”

Star and Marco looked at each other hesitantly. “Alright,” she said. “Carriage to our house in maybe five minutes?” A fire alarm went off behind her followed by a scream from Ponyhead and an even girlier one from Marco. “Maybe ten,” Star sighed, burying her face in her free hand.

“You got it,” Tom chuckled.

“OK, bye!” Star said with relief before hanging up. He rolled his shoulders from inside his jacket and ran his hands through his hair before stepping into the main foyer, taking advantage of the space to summon the carriage and its horses, the incantations coming effortlessly to him. Demons had been fortunate enough to retain their powers on Earthni, but the location underground and the relative lack of portaling methods available left them even more isolated than previously. While most of the other kingdoms had dissolved or integrated into a loose coalition of government covering all of the Echo Creek area, the Underworld had been content to stay completely under the banner of Lord and Lady Lucitor, and Tom found himself pitching in more and more in his role as Prince. In truth, he would have appreciated the company his friends were offering, but he knew how much it had meant to Star to be able to give this life up, and he didn’t want to drag her - either of them, really, considering Marco had earned an official title on Mewni himself - back into the boring thick of regal errands. Was Prince Thomas Draconius Lucitor really going to let some stuffy old book collection get the best of him? Hah, as if.

With a flick of his wrist, the half-demon shuttled the carriage to the surface in a pillar of flame, barely looking and instead pulling out his new phone. He was still getting the hang of the new and improved Reflectacorp’s Earth tech integration, but he’d at least learned how to open yesterday’s text conversation thread from its new message notification.

Janna: anti-gravity potion attempt 4 failed. affected bottle glass itself and launched into sky. note to self: work under roof. star and marco’s suggestions didnt work either. not all bad though, it went towards cloud kingdom lol

Tom: careful, don’t hit pony’s ego and make it fly even higher ·;) btw pony + starco are going shopping in underworld soon. im stuck working for mom though.

Janna: stores r lame. even in underworld. and srsly dude u gotta stop using starfans dumb name for them. otoh it bugs them so actually nvm go 4 it

Tom: it was mine first >·:( it saves letters when they’re together!

Janna: which is always

Tom: exactly. speaking of which, they’re here ttyl

Star stepped out of the carriage in a nice white polka dotted green dress, quickly followed by Marco, the pair’s fingers remaining intertwined until they gave him a hello hug, and Tom honestly wasn’t sure they’d stopped holding hands even then. Ponyhead burst out a moment later with her phone floating in front of her pointed at herself, and she was in the middle of a monologue to no one in particular.

“-so yeah anyway as you all can see we have now arrived in the Underwoooorld. So yeah this is, like, basically the best place on all of Earthni to go shopping as I’ll be showing you today. Oh yeah, I guess some demon boys live here too. Oh my goodness, say hello you guuuys,” she rolled her eyes as she butted in between Star and Tom, side-eyeing him for a split second before grinning back into the camera. After all this time Pony still hadn’t dropped the passive aggression over his and Star’s messy history; Tom had to admit it was a bit understandable, but did she really have to keep it up in such an annoying way? He rolled his eyes - it was Ponyhead he was thinking about here. “OK, the Ponyhead Experience will be taking a short break. Tune back in soon! Love y’all, buhbye!” She snapped the phone shut and caught it with her tongue. “Ugh, why do all of my vlogs with you dorks get like ten times as many viewers? Tom, you were in the shot for like three seconds and do you know what happened? 2000 more people tuned in! What the heck! It’s like, just because I have one less horn and one less eye I’m not exciting to you? But I can’t stay mad at my adooooring fans.”

“Must be the Lucitor charm.” He flashed a toothy smile and a pair of finger guns at her, accidentally flinging his phone across the room in the process. “Totally planned,” he blurted out with a much less authentic grin. Marco chuckled and picked it up, handing it back and patting him mock-sympathetically on the shoulder while holding back a smirk.

Star giggled but tapped her foot impatiently, looking around the room nervously. “OK, great catching up, but on the way here I checked the website and the headband shop is almost out of stock! We have to go, now! Let’s move it, people! Tom, can we borrow the carriage for the day?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Fine by me.”

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou, you’re the best!”

“You sure you don’t need anything?” Marco inquired again.

“You heard the girl, Marco, my audience wants to see us get our shop on!”

Tom blew a raspberry, pushing them towards the carriage. “Relax, it’s nothing. I’m practically done already! Tooootally almost done!”

Marco finally relented, nodding his assent. Star was bouncing up and down so much that she looked ready to launch around the room. He giggled as she wrapped both her arms around his middle and kissed his cheek before hauling him the rest of the way into the carriage. “C’mon boo, mama needs a new pair of horns. Plus we can get whatever you need, too! I saw a few things in the catalog that would look preeeetty good on you,” she sing-songed, walking two fingers up his chest to boop his nose after they plopped down onto the seat together. Ponyhead mimed vomiting at Tom, who silently laughed in response; they were so engrossed with each other that Tom was fairly certain they wouldn’t have noticed even if he’d shouted his laughter, though. He blankly stared at the spot the carriage had been for a few seconds after it exited in a blaze.

“Pretty gross, right?” Tom started and launched a fireball in the direction of the voice, hovering away from the intruder. A split second after, his vision caught up with his instincts and saw Janna in her usual green shirt and beanie and yellow skirt, sans jacket, nonchalantly sidestep the flame. “You do the same thing every time, you really need to work on that,” she chided with her arms crossed and a devious smirk on her face.

He rubbed his temple and gestured at her in sullen disbelief. “How did you-”

“Roof of the carriage.”

“Huh.” An eyebrow up in surprise, studying her expression. “You never usually, you know, answer that.”

She shrugged, kicking a boot into the hard stone floor. “Whatever, guess I’m just bored. Besides, half the reason I do that is to get a rise out of Marco,” she slyly snickered, and Tom couldn’t help but join in. “Alright, demon boy, what adventure are we going on today?”

Tom crossed his arms apprehensively. “Just trying to find a book for my mom, not really much of an adventure.”

“Like I said, dude, I’m bored and shopping is dumb. I don’t mind hanging out here for a study session or whatever, your family’s got great taste in decor.” She picked a skull off the ground and tossed it back and forth between her hands. He grinned back at her, grateful for the company. “So what kind of creepy curses are in this book?”

The pair started walking back into the study as their conversation continued. “Don’t think there are any. It’s called ‘Historia Homewnum’, according to my mom, so it’s probably a history book but that’s all I know.”

“Darn. Demon history’s bound to be pretty cool, though.”

“You’d be surprised how little actually happens down here, it’s just a lot of maintenance. Last month the most important thing I did was a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new boba cornshake shop, it’s really caught on here since the Cleaving. But man is it good! Marco was right, the little pearls are just so tasty, I like the creamed corn version best.”

“What is it with you and corn, seriously...” Janna shuddered.

“Don’t knock it ‘till you try it.” He knew he’d gotten distracted thinking about the delicious creamy beverage, but that didn’t seem like an adequate reason to look so horrified, especially coming from Janna. Not able to figure out any other reason she might be disgusted by his comments, he got his thoughts back on track. “Really don’t know why she wants this thing so much. Anyway, I already checked the entire study for it, and the search archives don’t have anything either. Oh well, what can you do, might as well just give up and-”

“Found something,” Janna piped up, somehow already in the computer chair with her feet on the desk.

“Really? How?” he asked incredulously, throwing his hands in the air for emphasis.

“OK, I didn’t actually find the book, but maybe we should check this place out.” He leaned into the screen to see a Mewgle search for ‘how to find weird book in underworld’ on the screen.

“I already tried that, Janna!”

“Yeah, but your antivirus was blocking this link to some place called the ‘Librarinth’.”

Tom slammed his palm into his forehead. “Of course, the Librarinth! How could I not think to look there, that’s where all the oldest books are. Why was it getting blocked?”

She clicked on the link and both recoiled at the sight: an abhorrent patterned background with almost unreadable randomly colored text and low quality cartoon images scattered all around the page. “Yeah, it’s awful,” she said in response to his obvious horror. “Seriously, whoever must made this website must be, like, a thousand years old.”

“Probably , yeah, but why does that have anything to do with-” His eyes widened in realization as he clapped his hands together in contemplation. “Right, humans and their lifespans. Go on.”

“Look.”

She scrolled past the despondent, blurry faces of demons of all shapes and sizes in the staff section until she arrived at the catalog, folding her arms triumphantly. Tom excitedly butted in, typing into the search box and being greeted with a loading wheel. “Uh, Janna? It’s not working.”

“Pfft, yeah, I might actually be dead by the time the search finishes. But that doesn’t matter because they have our book. It’s the header image for the whole catalog.” He squinted and brought his face closer to the monitor, and to his surprise the title was clear as day on the cover of the book, although all the other information was too difficult to make out. “Alright, let’s go. Main page says the Librarinth is on Floor 216.”

With a snap of his fingers, the demon elevator was summoned into a bookshelf much as it had been the day they had dealt with the Blood Moon. Relicor’s shrieking, which had slowed to a whimper since they’d left, resumed in full; fortunately they began descending, which quickly put them out of earshot. Tom awkwardly stretched his arms, unsure what exactly to say. She was his friend, yes, but he was never the best at small talk, and Janna being Janna didn’t make that any easier. After long, messy years of broken hearts and misguided feelings, he finally felt comfortable forging friendships, but even though they got along quite well there was something about Janna that made that vibe a lot less effortless than with Marco or even Star. Thoughts of his other friends reminded him of something. “Uh, by the way… how did you even know about the carriage earlier?”

“A girl’s gotta keep some secrets.”

“Pony was posting about it every 15 seconds,” he guessed, calling Janna’s bluff.

“Touché. Every 10, though,” she coolly responded. “Ha, now she’s just flipping out because Star and Marco have way more likes than her selfies.”

“Figured you’d have him bugged or something,” Tom chuckled as he scooted over to get a look at Janna’s screen, and sure enough there was a picture collage of Star sitting in Marco’s lap with tens of thousands of likes and comments already. They were laughing their butts off at themselves in a mirror in front of them with novelty sunglasses, fake mustaches, goofy props, and even a few absurd full-body costumes; Ponyhead joined the fun for a few but just as often butt in trying to take over the mirror by herself.

“Ew, no, I disabled it all months ago. Boyfriend Tom was already too cutesy for me, and you two just had a little flirty fling. Do you think I’d really want to see or hear whatever Star and Marco have going on? They’re, like, deeply in love, or whatever, and it’s gotten even worse in the last few weeks.”

He murmured in tacit agreement. Now that he thought about it, they had seemed even more affectionate than usual, but he wasn’t too keen on uncovering why that might be. The ding of the elevator saved him from any further speculation, and he and Janna stepped out of the elevator into the lobby, which was empty with cobwebs coating most of the weathered stone walls. Janna looked at him with a quizzical expression. “Anyway, so the Librarinth is basically a combination of a library and a labyrinth-”

“Right, I got that,” she curtly retorted.

“The legends say that some ancient librarian demons wanted to challenge any who sought knowledge, so they hid all the books in a giant maze that only the worthy could navigate. But everyone who made it still decided to organize it thoroughly for some reason, and you still had to check out the books and bring them back and all that.”

She ran a finger over the dust on the front counter, and the surface of the desk sizzled in response, causing her to pull her hand back before poking the bubbles that formed with a curious smile. “So why is it completely empty?”

Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “Weeeeeeell, after a few people went missing or insane, everyone realized it really wasn’t a great way to, you know, run a library. Grandpa actually started collecting books to try and get them away from this place. No one really knows what goes on in there, but as far as I know it’s still maintained even though no one uses it. The kingdom stopped staffing the lobby but they could never just shut it down because anyone who tried, well-”

“Went missing or insane. Sounds cool, I’m in.”

“You sure?”

“Dude, you brought me to a wicked hell maze filled with psychotic demon nerds. Maybe there’ll be bottomless pits or a wicked dungeon boss. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re flirting with me, Mr. Lucitor,” she purred, running a finger up his chest and flicking his nose.

“Haha, very funny. And it’s Prince Lucitor,” he sarcastically chided, poking her arm in response before crossing the room with her following, but he couldn’t help but hide that he was flustered. Seeing Star and Marco’s relationship in the past year had reinforced his already-firm convictions about romance: he wanted someone with whom he could be life partners in all ways, not just handholding and rooftop picnics. Otherwise, what would be the point? He’d made that mistake enough times, and even just a light jab at the notion of him casually flirting struck made him feel self-conscious about that past. Finally his reflection was halted when he found what he sought: a large wrought iron door furnished with ornate demonic symbols and various carvings of mythological creatures dwarfed them both. With a soft, steady flame for light, he brought his hand up and ran it over the rusty engravings. He jumped back with a gasp as the fire spread into the lines of the door, lighting up the patterns on it and causing it to creak as it slowly opened.

“Nice,” Janna muttered in awe before strolling inside, with Tom hesitantly following. She was the most eager of their little group to dive headfirst into the unknown, even more than Star most of the time, but he trusted her gut.

They started walking down the long, cramped hallways, hearing only the sound of their own footsteps on the cold floor. Janna peeked her head into a small doorway that appeared to their left, earning herself an explosive blast to the face and getting knocked onto her butt. Tom slammed the door shut and leaned in to read an inscription next to it. “Incinerator for any books too damaged or damaging for further use. Probably not the right place.”

Janna huffed, brushing herself off and finding scraps of paper among the char. “I can see that. Seriously, what kind of labyrinth labels its doors?”

“Maybe one run by book nerds,” Tom offered, gripping her hand to help her up.

“So it’s just as bad at being a labyrinth as it is a library. Neat. Great adventure.”

Tom pressed on, keeping his focus ahead of them. “Hey, I’m just here to help my mom. You’re the one that said you were fine with anything.”

“Fine, fine. Just saying, I could be working on my potions or something.” She pulled a glass bottle full of purple liquid from her skirt pocket and casually tossed it at a wall. Janna snickered at Tom’s yelp when it shattered, but found herself joining him in backing away when a chunk of stone quickly deteriorated and slammed into the ground at incredible speed. She went over and carefully kicked a pebble, finding it impossible to even budge. “See, this was just a stupid pro-gravity potion. Worthless.”

He leaned against the stable wall opposite the hole, sighing. “I’m sure there has to be something interesting here. What if we, I dunno, make it a competition or something?” His frustration with both the situation and Janna were there, yes, but he still wanted to try and get something fun out of the day.

“Go on,” Janna said, eyes flickering up from the bottle that she was tossing between her hands nonchalantly.

OK, maybe he should have thought further ahead. His arms flailed as he scrambled to come up with an idea. “OK, so, uh, whoever finds the weirdest thing in this place in the next hour wins. Just call them out if you think you found something. Or whoever finds the book, whichever comes first, yeah. Mom still needs it.”

“Momma’s boy. I respect that. You’re on, Tom.” Janna cocked an eyebrow, staring at him for a second before pushing off the wall into a sprint, opening the first door she could find. “Empty. Another empty. Three empties, dammit.”

Tom used his flight to travel more smoothly from door to door on his side of the corridor, but still found himself losing ground as he took the time to read the sign posted by each threshold. The ‘Demonic Studies’ room had a very ornately ghoulish aesthetic, with macabre skeletal models throughout. Definitely something to show Janna on the way out just for the aesthetic, and it’d have been weird for most humans, but it wasn’t any more abnormal than what the two of them were used to as a daily routine. Another room for astronomy had an exquisite planetarium dome, but it turned out to be rather useless as the Underworld did not, in fact, contain any stars since it was underground. There was, however, a plentiful selection of guides to stalactites stocked on the shelves. The next four whole sections were devoted to anger management self-help books, which only made him waste precious seconds cringing at old memories.

His pace picked up as he kept going from door to door finding nothing but normal library fare, although he had to admit it was certainly well-maintained. On any other day he might actually enjoy some of the things here, but today he was on a mission to get out of here so they could actually have fun elsewhere.

‘Bookworms’... now that had potential. What sorts of hybrid creatures could lurk behind the inches of wood? “I think I might have found something!” he shouted, throwing open the door only to receive a harsh shushing. Within were only elderly demons in cozy sweaters reading by candlelight, all now glaring at him with an intensity that reminded him of his mom’s own rare reprimands. “Never mind,” he loud-whispered back out into the hall as he gently closed the door and found Janna in a nearby corridor. “Ugh, why is there nothing interesting here?” Sparks trailed behind him from his mounting anger as he paced.

“Tell me about it, even ‘Wormbooks’ was just a bunch of regular novels, somehow,” she sighed. “I was hoping for a big long chain of open books slithering around on the ground, now there’s a party.” She slumped down against the wall next to the streak of flame he’d left on the ground, idly stamping it out with her boot until Tom sat down beside her.

“Wouldn’t a wormbook be the opposite? A big fat worm in the shape of a book?”

“Nah, it’d totally be a book made of a bunch of little flatworms all working together, duh. Still pretty lame.”

OK, now he knew something was up with her. “Janna, is- is something wrong?”

Her body slouched further down until she was almost horizontal on the cold floor, staring ahead of her like a zombie. “Being weird has just felt so pointless lately. Everything’s weird now, all the time! I’m wasting all my time trying to brew potions when there’s a shop that sells them on every corner. I got so bored that I even passed that same dumb test Marco did and now I’m done with high school, like, for real this time.”

“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself, that’s pretty impressive.”

“It’s easy if you know who to blackmail.” Tom blinked a few times, not sure why he’d expected anything different. “Everyone else is moving on with their lives, but I’m still feeding the same old possums and picking up the same old tennis balls. The whole point of my routine is that it’s different, it’s me, it’s my Jannanigans or whatever Star calls it, but it’s just not the same. I’m still into all that stuff, and Earthni’s actually really cool, but… ugh.” With that, her head fully sunk to the ground.

Tom brought his palms together over her head, opening and shutting his hands while wiggling his fingers around. “It’s a wormbook,” he said hesitantly, not really sure what he was doing. It was silly amusement, but perhaps that was just what she needed right now. Janna frowned and rolled her eyes, so he snapped at her arm with his hand puppet wormbook a few times.

“Alright, I get it,” she barked out, but her sullen demeanor slowly cracked under the onslaught of frivolity as she sat back up with an unusually ponderous look at him.

“Remember that time you took me bootsledding?” She nodded. “You told me that I needed to find a life outside of Star, and- and it was really great advice. Didn’t mean I still couldn’t like spending time with Star or anything, heck, I still do! But I just needed to get out of that rut of depending on it. Maybe you just need to do that, too. If doing your weirdness by yourself is normal, then adding something normal might be kinda weird.”

“That’s it.” Janna leapt to her feet, looking very suddenly invigorated. “That’s it!”

“Well, uh, glad you liked it. It was nothing, really, just trying to be a good pal-”

“Yeah, yeah, that too,” she waved dismissively, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit scorned. “If weird is normal then normal is weird. We were looking for the craziest things we could find here, but everything that should have been weird was normal, so we should be looking for the most painfully boring room here!” All three of Tom’s eyes blinked a few times as her words sunk in. Could it be…? “Tom, over here!” He hustled over to a particularly plain wooden door. Janna pointed at the plaque on the wall, which was far more faded than the others had been. “Look. ‘Government Records’.”

A burst of energy coursed through Tom’s blood, sparking life in him once more, and he could see the same reflected in Janna’s determined brown eyes. “And the book Mom wanted has something to do with history. Maybe it’s political history! Janna, you might be a genius!”

“Pfft, ‘might’. Now we just gotta…” She grabbed his arm, aiming it at the door, and he looked at her incredulously. “C’mon, dude, who knows what’s behind there. We’re gonna bust in with a demon blast, duh. Pew-pew!”

He rolled his eyes, but the corner of his lip turning up in a begrudging smile gave away his agreement. The pair aimed at the door and blew it off its hinges before charging in through the smoke.

“I see you two have finally solved the grand riddle of the Librarinth!” A deep, booming voice greeted them from the smoke. “Janna Ordonia, Thomas Lucitor, you certainly took your time. I expected you to book it here much more quickly. No matter, for this room shall be your tome!”

“How do you know my-” Janna stammered.

“Uh, don’t you mean tomb-” Tom started at the same time before realizing the wordplay and groaning in misery. Wait a second… Epic threats, an obvious personality quirk…

“Dungeon boss!” the teens cheered together, glancing back and forth between each other and the remainder of the room in front of them obscured by shadow.

“It is I, the bookkeeper of this place. I guard the most sacred treasure of all… knowledge!” Paper rustled loudly, echoed throughout the cavernous space, far taller and wider than Tom had noticed when they first entered with a massive array of bookshelves many times taller than him in a single row near the back wall. The ground beneath them began to shake and Tom tossed a puff of light in front of him, exposing the wide chasm that had just opened up in the ground, swallowing all the shelving in the room. Neither were prepared for the sight that greeted them: a coiled mass unfurled from the abyss and slithering with purpose along the ground, finally raising itself up to stand at fifteen feet tall, swaying back and forth with enough force to create an artificial wind within the space. A closer look showed that the body was made of some peculiar segments of… books, of all shapes and sizes. The volume at the top of the chain was much larger and far more ornately embossed than the others, and on the blood red surface of the cover Tom could make out a set of eyes. As the picture became more and more clear, he could finally see what they were up against. Now THIS is a bookworm.

“Aren’t libraries supposed to be, like, public and free?” Janna blithely inquired.

“You are correct, child, but perhaps try reporting that to your friend there! The Lucitor family is the sworn enemy of this great Librarinth! That fiend Relicor pilfered our collection for his own use for millennia, and the rest tried to shut this place down for good. But worst of all, in the most egregious display of contempt I have witnessed since the dawn of writing itself… Prince Lucitor and his ilk have amassed twenty-six dollars in unpaid fees!”

The tension in the room nearly evaporated in a heartbeat as Tom and Janna paused momentarily before bursting out into raucous laughter.

“Seriously, dude? I could just, like, repay it.” He fumbled in his pockets for his wallet for a moment before being interrupted once more.

“Do not condescend to me, children! It is far too late to make up for these sins with mere currency. Revenge is my fee most overdue, now prepare to meet… Overdoom! I shall harness the power of the written word to spell your demise!”

Books were hurled from the depths of the crevice en masse. Tom stepped in front of Janna to blast them away, but they had taken on a life of their own and homed in on him, covers flapping in the air like wings. Behind Tom, Janna snatched one out of the air to thwart a flank attack. She grabbed his left arm and pointed it up, tapping his elbow frantically. He spared a glance and saw the paper tornado coalescing, and understood her intention. Demon flames surged out of both hands with Janna calling the shots for the left side and Tom focusing on his right. They used the opportunity to back up to a wall, letting them cover every attack vector but creating a stalemate they were sure to lose in time as the seemingly endless offense droned on. Overdoom for the time being simply floated out of the abyss, glaring harshly at them as more and more papers kept emerging.

“Wait, Tom, look…” Still using his hand, she pointed to a shelf that had fallen at an odd angle and hadn’t collapsed into the abyss. There was a large, torn-up poster on which he could barely make out the word “Historia”.

“That might be it,” he breathed out, starting to feel the burn from minutes of nonstop vigilant defensive demon blasts. Oddly, none of the books in that corner were joining the assault. Almost as if...

“It’s making them magical in the chasm.” Tom’s heart leapt up in his chest at the revelation, hope and adrenaline mixing in his veins to keep him fully alert. But charging in was a suicide mission and they clearly couldn’t win on raw firepower.

“Have you had enough? Are you children yet ready to come scrawling on your hands and knees to a-tome for the sins of your forefathers?” the imposing figure growled, bristling impatiently.

“Did it seriously just use the tome pun again?” Janna griped, running her hands past her eyes and down her cheeks in disgust. “For a word nerd, that’s just awful.”

“Yeah…” Tom absent-mindedly responded. He knew she was right, though. Book, tome, scrawl… even if the creature’s summoning powers were off the charts, and it wielded them with calculated ease, its cocky wordplay taunts left something to be desired. It struck him then: what if they’d been approaching this all wrong? If the battle couldn’t be won by blows, then they had to find another option, and Tom was ready to put his plan into action.

He quickly shook off Janna’s rather tight grip on his arm and stepped forward, mustering up a confident expression masking any fears he still had left. “Nice try, Overdoom. Your words aren’t scaring us. Learn to read the room!”

Its “body” immediately began wiggling violently in the air as it crawled a bit forward towards them. Tom paid careful attention to its back end, which had climbed a few feet out of the ground in the move. “How dare you! Petulant brats!” Literary fire and brimstone rained down upon them with more fury than ever, and the two backed up into a corner which was the best they could do in a room largely devoid of any cover.

“What the hell-” Janna whispered through gritted teeth. Tom wriggled his tail out and waved it in front of Janna’s face momentarily. “Now is not the time to-” She was cut off when a barrage of index cards launched at them with enough force to somehow chip the stone behind them on impact. Tom forcefully nodded his head towards the worm’s tail, waggling his own once again. Her eyes lit up much like his had and she nodded in understanding.

“Come on, is that the best you got? I’ve heard them all before, at least give us something novel!”

Janna stood beside him, and her grimace even managed to spook Tom a bit. “I’d alphabet you couldn’t do better even if you tried!” Not what he would’ve gone with, but hey, if it helped tick Overdoom off then who was he to say no?

“You can talk up a storm all you want, but no matter what volume of air you blow, all I feel is a not-so-rough draft!”

“ENOUGH!” Overdoom’s tail launched out of the chasm faster than either could follow, crossing the room in a heartbeat. Tom shoved Janna out of the way before it wrapped itself around him, dragging him much more slowly towards the abyss. His jacket and jeans mercifully protected the paper edges pressing into him, but it was still a painfully tight squeeze that left him gasping for air. His arms were uselessly pinned inside the embrace as he was dragged headfirst, but their hypothesis had been proven correct as all the books around them had dropped to the ground lifeless.

“Tom!” Janna called out. He strained his head to see she’d removed her beanie and had something purple in her hand that she lobbed at that moment. Through the haze of pain he recognized it as another of her potions. The arc was due to miss until he summoned his energy reserves and redirected it with a weak burst of flame from his boot. Though the glass was durable enough to not melt or shatter, the demonic heat changed the potion into a bubbling olive green milliseconds before it contacted a random segment of the behemoth they were fighting. All at once, its hold on Tom and the rest of its body went limp as it began floating lazily into the air before bouncing off the ceiling a few times like a balloon. Janna ran over and helped Tom up as Overdoom screamed inarticulately from many feet above. They traversed the chaotic mess towards the pile they’d spotted previous. After some digging around, he found ‘Historia Homewnum’ miraculously unscathed and protected by a large, sturdy slab of mahogany that had fallen flat on top of it. “I got it!”

“Cool, potion is wearing off. We need to go.” Janna calmly stated. Twin jets of fire erupted from his feet as he swiftly passed the book to Janna and scooped her up in his arms, carrying them across the room towards the door. After setting Janna down, he hesitated for a moment as she stood in the doorway.

“Do you think I should still pay the late fee? I feel kinda bad and-”

“TODAY MAY HAVE BEEN YOUR VICTORY, BUT TOME-ORROW WILL-”

Tom sighed in resignation with a very unimpressed expression. “OK, yeah, never mind.” And with a quick slam of the door, they were both out scot-free. They didn’t stop running until they arrived back at the elevator. Once inside, they slumped down onto the ground as they began the journey back up to the main surface of the Underworld.

“Woo!” Tom was caught off guard by Janna expressing visible joy, and it was immediately infectious. “Now that’s an adventure. Of course, demon fire is what makes the potions work. Makes a lot more sense. Stupid ink smudge, I burned all those lemons for nothing.” He belly laughed, falling over to the floor and clutching his gut as Janna kicked him in the arm.

“Sorry, sorry, couldn’t help it.”

Her foot backed off after one last good hit. “So now you just have to give that book to your mom?”

“Yeah, should only take a minute. Want to come with?”

“Dude, she’s half a story tall and cries lava. I’d be honored. Oh crud, Pony’s current stream title is ‘WHY Y’ALL CARE MORE ABOUT EARTH TURD AND B-FLY THAN ME?!?!’” Janna showed him the notification on her phone. “That can’t be good.”

Tom pulled out his phone and called to see what was up. Pony picked up after only one ring and didn’t even bother with a greeting as she screamed so loudly that he lost hearing for a moment in his right ear. Her voice carried through the elevator car even without being put on speakerphone. “Yo Tom, why do all my Pony Pals just want to watch those two idiots kiss and cuddle? What is up with that? I even gave my fanbase a stupid nickname, they eat that stuff up, so why won’t they looooove meeeeee?” Business as usual with Pony, it seemed. “An-y-way, this whole shopping spree was amaaaazing, I am all kinds of extra fabulous now. B-Fly and Earth Turd took over the stream cuz the viewers, like, wanted a Q&A sesh but I’m only giving them twenty minutes! Hmph!”

“Might as well just make a whole show about them,” Janna chimed in, rolling her eyes a few times for good measure.

“Wait, demon boy, is Janna there? What the heck have you two been getting up to? Don’t tell me you too are getting your freak on too, I could not handle that T.M.I.-”

Yeah, there was nothing more to gain from that conversation. Tom flipped his compact shut, disconnecting the call. Wait, ‘too’? Did she mean- he shuddered involuntarily. You know what, nope, just not going to think about that one.

“So glad I turned off the cameras,” Janna mumbled, curling up into a ball on the floor, clearly not wanting to touch that whole situation either.

He opted to make contact with the other group via Marco instead - why he hadn’t just done that in the first place, he’d never know - and sent a quick text. “Marco wants to get dinner at the Waterfolk Kingdom in, like, an hour and a half. Apparently Star found some earrings she wanted at the last minute, and Pony got arrested for shoplifting three seconds after I hung up.”

Janna cackled in response. “Let’s just meet them there. My jacket got ripped to shreds by the possums last week, might as well get a new one while I’m down here. Been thinking about changing it up. I kinda like that style.” She lifted up his arm and poked at a button on the sleeve of his own.

“Uh, yeah, sure, I can show you where I got it.” He stumbled over his words, still caught off guard by this new normal-person-Janna. The elevator dinged and the teens began their trek through the Lucitor castle in search of the queen. “So, the Librarinth... we’re definitely going back there at some point, right?”

“Totally, bet’s still not over. We should do this more often, you’re not so bad a friend.”

“You too, and yeah, we should.” Looking back on the day, it had honestly been one some of the most fun he’d had in a while, despite almost dying at least once. Tom still wasn’t sure what to make of this friendship brewing between them, but if it meant more days like this to look forward to? Maybe he could get used to that.

[tartareus]

Do you condone/ship incest? I was reading your rules and got confused about your sentence where you said if people are uncomfortable with fictional consensual incest this isn’t the blog for you. Except Incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction

hi there, friend, how do you do?

while i'm not particularly fond of anons (nex time you'd like to discuss something regarding my rules and/or character portrayal, i strongly encourage you to do so via ims - i don't bite, and if our points of view don't quite match? that's alright, i promise i'll leave you in peace :) ) for various reasons, i'm so glad you've read my rules (that probably makes you one of the few who follow me - at least i presume you do, idk - who has done so, so thank you so much!), i cannot stress enough how important they are to me. if i happen to follow you, rest assured that i have read yours (unless, ofc, i couldn't find one in your blog - in any case, if i happen to accidentally break one of yours, just hmu or gimme a nudge).

considering that you've asked more than one question, i'll answer to you in separate sections - needless to say that while i break it down your questions, the answer might become a little longer than usual (again, i'm sorry). i'll keep this tagged, in case any of my followers don't feel like reading about this. without further ado, let’s dive in.´

“do you condone/ship incest?”

short answer? nope. but that is not a black or white question i’m afraid. no, i – nox, the human behind this blog of fictional characters – personally do not condone incest , never have and never will, and  don’t ship it. i do, however, ship consanguinamory on rare occasions, and when i do happen to write it i never do it in a good light.

for those who are not familiar with the term, here’s a little bit of info about it x && x. in short, the key difference between them is: incest is usually linked abuse (a fictional example that can be used, taking in consideration one of my very own muses, in this case is margot verger – who was sadly abused by her brother in the hannibal books) while consanguinamory (the lannisters, for example, or even the sharpe siblings from crimson peak are examples of consanguineous relationships) is the consensual romantic and/or sexual relationship between members of the same family who are of consenting age.

[ personally, i find both of them gross as fuuck irl but when it comes to fictional works i may get over this first disgust and ponder more on that && take in consideration the characters arch, plot, thoughts and the whole world they are set in. ]

i suppose the turning point here is the consent. i never, never, condone any sort of abuse – not in fiction and neither in real life – and while it’s a subject that bothers me to no end in real life, when it comes to fiction i am less inclined to project into them. i may write dark and toxic relationships, but i obviously do not condone them. that’s the point here – people on this hellsite usually mix the two together (condoning something and shipping/writing it, that is) when in fact they shouldn’t even be in the same box to begin with.

let’s say you write a fictional serial killer – norman bates, tate langdon, hannibal lecter, catherine tramell (that chick from basic instinct), patrick bateman, mrs lovett and sweeney todd, kai anderson, bellatrix, grindelwald and voldemort (the list of plausible examples could go on forever…) – here and ship with them; does it mean that you, the writer, condone every single action and choice your muse does? if writing something purely fictional equals to condoning it in real life, well… the world is even more fucked up than i first thought.

you see, in this little exercise in imagination, you could’ve easily picked a good guy or gal to write, the hero; the goody two shoes. why didn’t you? well, it’s complicated to pin point why some are drawn to darker works of fiction and characters while others are not, i suppose each individual has their own reasons && i can only speak for myself when i say that i am drawn to these sort of fictional works because they the safest way to explore dark topics that pertain to human society. on my side, it’s nothing but raw curiosity.

there’s also the issue of how different cultures see these relationships. in case you haven’t noticed, i am not from the states but actually from brazil. especially in the rural area, it’s not uncommon for second cousins to date or even marry (ew, i know, pretty gross). that’s something that is luckily falling out of practice, but you can easily find it, more so in the poor rural areas that are really far from the cities.

you may have noticed that most of the sources for the terms come from a blog that advocates real life consanguinamory – but make no mistake, i don’t support it. these were the only places i’ve found as sources in a quick look online. i don’t support it irl, but whatever consenting adults are doing amongst themselves is no concern of mine – i have no say on the matter and all in all, i don’t give a damn. i just don’t like it. everything i’ve discussed here is related to fiction, consent and is only ever related to people of consenting age.

“i was reading your rules and got confused about your sentence where you said if people are uncomfortable with fictional consensual incest this isn’t the blog for you. except incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction”

to be honest with you, anon, i couldn’t possibly see how you’ve got confused with this. i thought i was pretty clear with that, but perhaps not. sorry, my english is not perfect. however, with the risk of sounding like a meme, i said what i said. if you personally feel uncomfortable or even triggered with fictional consensual incest otherwise known as consanguinamory, maybe my blog isn’t for you. not because i – as the mun –  condone it, but because i might mention it or even allude to it when i write certain characters. again, consent is the main thing here – you won’t ever see me writing that awful part of margot’s past, but i might mention it on some threads as it is part of her trauma but i will write jaime’s feelings regarding cersei and joanna’s love for tywin – and that should not be overlooked.

“except incest is incest regardless of if it’s fiction” 

so far so good, am i to assume that you also believe that “murder is murder, regardless of if it is fiction or not”? should we call the police on, idk, george rr martin for killing....hell knows how many characters...at this point i’m sure not even he knows. leaving my petty comment aside (it’s the arthritis, i’m always annoyed when in pain), i see where you’re coming from; fair enough.  but you missed a big point here – consensual. i do not write abuse, even to the muses who – in the canon source material – have done so    ( like jaime lannister himself – who’s in a consanguinamorous [therefore, falling under the category of fictional consensual incest] relationship with cersei – who abused his sister next to their son’s dead body [ yeah, jaime apologists, i’m out to get y’all...jokes aside, i do not acknowledge people claiming that cersei manipulated him into going to bed with her, while they are both shitty and toxic as fuck people, their relationship is mutually messed up – gag if you must but jaime lannister is far from innocent angel ] )     in the past. i. don’t. write. it. but i do write jaime’s feelings for cersei because they are canon and are also a big part of the character he became.

all of that, of course, has to do with my own position on the “war” between the people who believe fiction has a great power and influence over reality vs the ones who do not believe in that. personally, i find it hard to believe that fiction is a brainwashing tool rewiring people’s brains  - i find the idea itself ludicrous, the ones who strongly stand for that aren’t that different from flat-earthers and people who believe in reverse racism tbh – but i do acknowledge the influence media has on society. its not nearly enough to turn someone to the “dark side” alone by itself – those who claim that videogames, for example, made them violent most likely already had something different and perhaps wrong with them before the games triggered something. i don’t believe that media creates things on people, but brings buried things (fears, feelings, emotions, hopes) back to the surface. it’s all about the stimulus.

if you wanna be scared, watch an horror movie; if you wanna be happy, a comedy video.  wanna feel warm inside and live unrealistic romantic expectations vicariously through fictional characters? read a 50.000 words slow burn fluffy happy fanfic of your otp at 3 am even though you gotta wake up early in the following morning....

point is, they are not creating things, they are bringing forth responses from you that were already there in your brain (everybody has laughed before and felt fear, it’s part of human development). and how you react to certain content is entirely to you and your past. say, if you drowned as a kid on the sea - and had trauma from that - the idea of watching titanic is not so fun, is it?

it’s not my place to decide what you should do, that is entirely your own choice to make, just be aware that, as i’ve stated before countless times, i may write dark topics that may or may not be triggering to some.  i do so because it is my blog, and i don’t react so harshly to this content (in fact, i love horror, thriller and dark fictional stuff – meanwhile i dread the thought of rom coms, hell knows why??) for i am lucky to be able to separate fiction from reality. basically, whilst writing a villain, i myself do not become one in real life – that part remains in fiction only and doesn’t affect me.

that is not a constant, sure. i don’t just write dark shady stuff – there’s plenty of fluffy shit on my blog, but i like to warn people beforehand to make sure we are all on the same page. it’s for your own comfort, i suppose, because i may not understand certain points of view on fiction but i will always defend your right to be comfortable and safe.

so yes, if you aren’t feeling well at that notion, please unfollow and block me if you must – i never wish to cause any discomfort to anyone – however, before you do so (that is, if you do so) i beg you to just send me an im warning me beforehand, please? that way i can block you – and your other blogs as well – so the chances of me running into you again and causing you discomfort will be minimal. that way we’ll both be on own respective lanes and happy about it. i mass follow very often and don’t usually know which blogs belong to whom (uh, did that make sense? my latina ass is not used to using whom in a sentence....), i may follow another blog (or the revamped blog) of someone who has blocked me and never even realise it – that’s not me following you around and stalking like a total creep, that’s probably me not even remembering who you are. again, sorry – i don’t mean for this to come off rude or anything but???? its the truth? you know the drill, big following list, big followers list (well, big for me tbh, i cannot remember the name or alias of 600 people for the life of me, excuse me if my memory doesn’t serve me right), hard to keep track. there will be no witch hunts, at least on my part, because i deem them to be childish and way too dramatic for my taste. if you’d like to speak in private, adult to adult, i’m always game – i dread vague posting, i personally see it as a pathetic and weak trait. 

as long as you’re civil, so am i.

either way, do whatever makes you feel comfortable and safe on your blog – your  mental health is far more important (to me, and hopefully to you as well) than a hobby, than tumblr, rp or whatever fictional stuff someone’s writing or reading; you are responsible for your own online experience, and i am responsible for mine. that’s an empowering thing that should be reminded more often.

i truly hope i’ve managed to answer whatever doubts or questions you had in mind, if not my ims are always open and so is my discord. once again, thank you for reading my rules and stay safe!

edit; my dumb ass forgot to drop my disco handle, since i change often. it currently is   DOCTOR BITCHCRAFT !!! | 𝒏𝒐𝒙#1398