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ausetkmt · 1 year ago

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YourTango: 15 Phrases Manipulative People Use To Make You Trust Them

Master manipulators have a way of drawing you in so that you feel obligated to stick by their sides, no matter what they’ve done to you. This is because they have become acquainted with what exactly they should say when you attempt to call them out on their toxic behavior.

If anyone has ever said one of the following phrases to you, you may be a victim of their manipulation tactics.

1. 'You don’t trust me?'

Manipulative people usually only say this when they have something to hide. It is often used to back their victims into a corner.

If you feel pressured and respond with, “Yes, I trust you,” then the manipulator has permission to keep doing whatever is causing you to feel wary of them in the first place. Responding with, “No, I don’t trust you,” puts your entire relationship in jeopardy even though you were truthful.

When someone says, “Don’t you trust me?” what they are actually saying is, “I’m going to guilt you by asking for your reassurance to do something that I know will disrespect your boundaries.”

RELATED: 11 Signs You’re A Highly Perceptive Person — And See The World Differently From Everyone Else

2. 'Everyone hates you, but I defend you and always have your back.'

Unless the manipulator has actually asked all 7.8 billion people in the world, there is no confirmation that everyone hates you. When people are attempting to manipulate you, they may often say this phrase to turn you against everyone so that they can have you all to themselves.

They are also portraying themselves as your only option to turn to for help by claiming that everyone else hates you. This is known as “The White Knight Method.” This method ensures that the manipulator will be the savior in their victims’ eyes, although they are anything but.

“What you do is pretty much create a problem for somebody and then solve it,” TikTok user Vanessa Irene (@thevanessairene) says in a video.

“An extreme example of this is if you pay some girls to beat someone up, but they have to pretend to lose once you come in and start defending her.”

Irene explains that when the manipulator makes it appear that they will always come to your rescue, even though they planned the entire situation to play out this way, they gain their victims’ trust instantly.

“Immediately they’re like, ‘this person is on my side because she saved me,’” she says. “You don’t know that they created the problem, but you do know that they saved you.”

3. 'No one understands you like I do.'

You know that this isn’t true because the reality is nobody understands you better than you understand yourself, regardless of how close you may be to someone. Nobody, not even a master manipulator, is a mind reader.

However, they may like to claim this as a fact in order to make you feel as though you have no one else to turn to except them.

RELATED: If You Notice These 5 Early Signs, Leave — He's Too Controlling

4. 'You’re paranoid.'

Telling someone that they are paranoid in response to concerns about your behavior falls under the manipulation tactic of gaslighting. Gaslighting makes one question the reality of the emotional abuse they are facing from the manipulator and doubt their valid worries.

"If your partner says or does something to intentionally hurt you and you confront them at a later time, gaslighting would be if they said, 'That never happened' or 'Oh my goodness, you're crazy!'” Janika Veasley, the founder of Amavi Therapy Center told Insider. “The response is intended to not only deny, but also make you question if the scenario in fact happened.”

5. 'Let me tell you a secret.'

This phrase may seem like an honor if someone says it to you because it makes you believe that they are trusting you with sensitive information. However, manipulators often use this phrase to reel in their victims.

When the manipulator tells their victim a secret, the victim will feel or be prompted to start revealing their own secrets in exchange. The most unsettling part is that the manipulator will often tell a secret that is not even true.

6. 'I have never felt connected to anyone else the way I do with you.'

While this may seem like a heartwarming phrase to hear from someone, it is usually a sign to set off the alarm bells.

People may say this to manipulate another person's emotions or actions, such as to gain their trust, attention, or favor, even when they don't genuinely feel this way. They could also be using the phrase to play with the person’s emotions, keeping them emotionally attached while not being fully committed or sincere themself.

RELATED: 4 Signs You Should Let Go Of A Pointless Relationship... Not Hold On Tighter

7. 'People who say bad things about me to you are just trying to tear us apart.'

Not everyone is going to like you and that’s okay. However, if you hurt them emotionally or physically, their reasons are valid. They may warn people who are currently in your life and tell them about their experiences with you as a common courtesy to them.

This does not necessarily mean that they are attempting to tear you apart from them. However, manipulative people may believe so.

By framing the negative comments as solely the result of others' actions, the manipulator deflects attention from their own behavior.

This phrase can also be a form of emotional manipulation since it instills a sense of distrust toward anyone who has negative opinions about the manipulator, therefore isolating the victim from other perspectives and support networks. It also invalidates the potentially real concerns being shared by others.

8. 'I am genuinely so sorry [about whatever issue is outside of their control].'

If a person apologizes for things that are completely out of their control, like the weather or bad traffic, it is actually a form of manipulation.

By doing this, they are giving the false impression that they are understanding of things that are uncontrollable, which gets their victims to trust them more.

RELATED: 5 Subtle Ways Controlling Partners Disguise Their True Selves

9. 'I’ve always been there for you.'

This phrase is often said by a manipulator when they want to trap their victims in the relationship. Even if they have always been by their victims’ side, it doesn’t mean they asked them to be. They certainly should not feel obligated to stick around because of a choice their manipulator made.

Still, this phrase can instill a sense of guilt into some people, believing that they must reciprocate the actions their manipulator demonstrated to them.

10. 'You’re the only person I am telling this to.'

In healthy and transparent communication, people should feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings without resorting to manipulative tactics.

Manipulative people use this phrase to create a sense of false exclusivity and emotionally pressure their victims. It aims to make the victim feel special and unique as if they are the only ones to be trusted with such a thing, even if they have already told others.

By emphasizing that the information is exclusive, the manipulator can apply emotional pressure on their victim, implying that they must react or respond in a specific way because they are the chosen confidant.

11. 'You misunderstood what I said.'

Everyone is entitled to their own feelings and interpretations of the things that are said to them, whether they were intended to hurt them or not.

When someone is hurt by something that a manipulative person said to them, the manipulative person will do anything to justify their actions, rather than reassuring them and comforting their victims. This phrase makes the victim feel as if they were in the wrong for simply having an opinion.

RELATED: 5 Rare Signs You're A True Change Maker

12. 'I’m just trying to help you.'

This phrase only makes the manipulator — not you — feel better about themselves.

The statement is used to guilt or pressure someone into accepting help they may not want or need, all while the manipulator can convince themselves that they are doing a good thing.

For instance, if someone says that they need space or time alone to process their feelings, and you respond with, "I'm just trying to help you," while continuing to push your assistance, that is manipulative.

You may not know exactly how to help people in certain situations, and that’s okay. Admitting that you are unsure of how to help and asking what you can do for them is the best thing you could possibly do.

13. 'You’re overthinking this — trust what I am saying.'

How can you trust someone who has time and time again crossed your boundaries by saying phrases like this? If you are feeling particularly overwhelmed by a situation, it is not uncommon to overthink. Your mind will likely jump to places that seem irrational and that other people may not understand.

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When this happens, people deserve reassurance and guidance, not someone insisting that they are overreacting. It manipulates them into thinking that they must trust their manipulator.

14. 'I feel the exact same way you do!'

This phrase may be comforting, however, you should be wary of anyone who immediately agrees with you without question.

“If you want to gain someone’s trust and control over them, make sure that they are seeing themselves inside you,” TikTok user @mr.salvatore_offical explains in a video. “You need to copy their way of thinking, acting, and how they behave, which will lead them into believing everything you do and building trust towards you.”

This causes a person to not only trust you but to subconsciously fall in love with you.

Mr. Salvatore points out that if you truly want to manipulate someone into trusting you, nod your head as they are sharing their thoughts and feelings, acting as if you agree with everything they are saying. “It is like putting someone into a cage and closing it because, from that moment on, the person belongs to you.”

15. 'I had a hard life, that’s why I behave the way I do.'

If you want to manipulate someone into immediately feeling sorry for you, this is the phrase that will do it.

When people want to manipulate you into trusting them, they will give you a sob story about their upbringing, making you feel sorry for them and exploiting your good heart.

They are also attempting to avoid responsibility for their actions by deflecting blame onto everyone but themselves and claiming to act the way they do entirely because of other people. They may imply that others owe them because of their difficult life, which is also a manipulative tactic.

In more extreme cases, people may use their life challenges to emotionally manipulate others into providing support, financial assistance or other favors. They might claim that others should help them due to their difficult past.

While some of these phrases may not have malicious intent, manipulative tactics can be noticed over time, depending on how well you know the person. It is essential to look out for yourself by avoiding manipulative people and protecting your well-being.

RELATED: 4 Biggest Signs You're In Love With A Clinical Narcissist

#narcissists #narcissism #manipulation #games #head games #psychology #self preservation #trust #lies #controlling behavior

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joehomebuyer · 2 months ago

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Sell My House Fast in Bakersfield with Cash Buyers

When you’re thinking, "How can I sell my house fast in Bakersfield with cash buyers?", the process can seem overwhelming. Whether you’re facing foreclosure, relocating for work, or simply want to avoid the hassle of traditional selling, working with cash buyers in Bakersfield offers a fast, hassle-free alternative. Below, we’ll walk through the key steps and questions you need to consider to make this process smooth and efficient.

Why Choose Cash Buyers to Sell My House Fast in Bakersfield?

One of the most common concerns for homeowners is time. Traditional sales can take months, with many rounds of negotiations, inspections, and waiting on financing approvals. Cash buyers, on the other hand, provide a direct and quick solution. Here are the main benefits of selling to cash buyers in Bakersfield:

Faster Closing: Cash buyers can close deals in as little as seven days. There are no lengthy mortgage approvals or delays that often come with traditional buyers.

No Repairs Needed: Cash buyers purchase homes "as-is." You don’t need to spend extra money or time on repairs or upgrades to make your property market-ready.

No Agent Commissions: When selling to cash buyers, you avoid paying agent fees or commissions, allowing you to keep more of the money from the sale.

Guaranteed Sale: With cash buyers, the deal won’t fall through due to financing issues. You have a guaranteed sale without worrying about buyers backing out at the last minute.

How to Sell My House Fast in Bakersfield with Cash Buyers

If you’ve decided to sell your house fast in Bakersfield with cash buyers, follow these steps to ensure a smooth and successful transaction:

Find a Reputable Cash Buyer Look for companies or investors with strong reputations in Bakersfield. Research reviews, check their business credentials, and ensure they have a proven track record of successful transactions.

Get a Property Evaluation Most cash buyers offer a free property evaluation. This allows them to assess your home's value and make a fair, no-obligation offer.

Receive a Cash Offer After evaluating your home, the cash buyer will present an offer. Because they’re purchasing the home as-is, this offer may be below market value, but it reflects the convenience and speed of the sale.

Review and Accept the Offer If you’re satisfied with the offer, accept it and start the closing process. Be sure to read the terms carefully and ask questions if anything is unclear.

Close the Sale The closing process is fast when working with cash buyers. You’ll avoid waiting on financing approvals, inspections, and other traditional roadblocks. In most cases, you’ll receive your money within a week.

Common Questions About Selling to Cash Buyers

Many homeowners have questions before deciding to sell my house fast in Bakersfield with cash buyers. Below are answers to some of the most common concerns:

Will I get full market value for my house? Cash offers are usually slightly lower than what you might get through a traditional sale. However, the trade-off is a faster, simpler transaction without any additional costs for repairs or real estate commissions.

Do I have to make repairs before selling? No. Cash buyers purchase homes in their current condition. You won’t need to fix anything before the sale, making it a great option for those who don’t want to invest in costly repairs.

How fast can I close? The entire process can take as little as seven days. If you need to move quickly due to personal or financial reasons, selling to cash buyers is one of the fastest ways to offload your property.

Are there any hidden fees? Legitimate cash buyers will be upfront about any fees. Be sure to work with a reputable buyer who provides a clear, transparent contract.

Is Selling My House to Cash Buyers Right for Me?

If you’re considering whether to sell my house fast in Bakersfield with cash buyers, it depends on your personal circumstances. This option is ideal if you:

Need to relocate quickly.

Are facing foreclosure or financial difficulties.

Don’t want to deal with costly repairs or upgrades.

Want to avoid paying real estate commissions.

Ultimately, working with cash buyers provides a fast and easy way to sell your home, especially when time and convenience are your top priorities.

Final Thoughts

If you’re looking for a way to Sell my house fast in bakersfield with cash buyers provide a reliable and quick solution. Whether you’re in a rush due to personal reasons or simply want to avoid the complexities of the traditional real estate market, selling to cash buyers offers a fast, guaranteed option. Ensure that you work with reputable buyers and fully understand the terms before moving forward.

#we buy houses for cash Bakersfield #sell my house fast Bakersfield #how to sell my house fast Bakersfield #Sell my house fast in bakersfield with cash buyers

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norwegianpornfaerie · 1 year ago

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Dear Yuletide Writer Letter - 2023

Dear Yuletide Writer

Thanks so much for checking my letter! Most of what's here is also in my sign-up, but I've added some extra bits, including my preferences for stories in general. Have a very happy Yuletide - it's my favorite time of year!

First things first: With absolute honesty, I would much rather you write something you are comfortable with and that interests and inspires you, rather than trying to bed over backwards and struggle to make your fic conform to prompts and suggestions you’re not feeling. I’m assuming you signed up to write my fandoms and characters because you have a genuine love for and interest in them, and that’s what makes for the best stories. So let the optional details be optional, and take the below as a guideline for those who prefer it.

However, if you WOULD like more details, I would be delighted if you would consider the below:

Things I really enjoy:

Humor! The perfect story, to me, has a curated balance of comedy and drama. Humor is life, and stories that are entirely without it often seem lifeless, to me. I am not, of course, suggesting that everything should be a comedy, but that humor complements tragedy and vice versa. Make me laugh at some point in your story, and I will be very happy indeed.

First time stories! I absolutely prefer this to anything else, in relationship-focused stories. As I tend to say, I’m secretly an 18th century romantic poet. Slow burn, UST, all that good stuff. I realize you’ve got limited time and limited words here, but whatever you can give, I will happily accept.

Casefic! I love detective stories, especially the classics, so anything in that vein will make me very happy indeed.

Plot. Plooooot! Plot is delicious. I don’t mind character studies, but a good plot will make me happier than anything.

Explicit sex. I’m pretty vanilla, but I don’t mind reading kink. If you enjoy writing that sort of thing, I am a sucker for a well-written explicit sex scene, no matter the flavor!

World-building. In science fiction or fantasy canons in particular, I can never get enough of this. Let me know what people have for breakfast, how their clothes are made, where they shop, where they go on vacation and how - tell me about the three seashells! (#ObscureDemolitionManReference) In short: Details!

Various preferences: If I’ve specified a ship and you don’t like it, please don’t feel obligated to write it. However, I would really rather you did not write those characters into other ships in the story (unless it’s canonical, or mentions of past relationships). Likewise, please don’t erase canonical love interests. AUs are OK, but I would really rather read about the canon universe.

Now, author, if you’ve read the above and think “but I only write gen” or “but I hate plotty stories” or “I couldn’t write casefic to save my life” - really, really don’t worry. You matched with me because you like one or more of the same fandoms and characters as me, and that’s more than enough. I trust you to write the best story you can, and that means writing it the way YOU want to. I’m obviously very happy if you chose to include some of my likes, but don’t feel forced to do so.

If you’ve read all the above, and you’re still not sure about something, maybe my fics on AO3 might be helpful? I generally like to read the same type of stuff I write.

Jeeves & Wooster

Reginald Jeeves

Bertram "Bertie" Wooster

This is one of my comfort fandoms. I take such joy in the language - Wodehouse was a magician when it comes to words - and the characters and the masterful plots... but mostly in Jeeves. I have great affinity for Bertie and identify with him to a great extent, and so it's no wonder that I, too, am deeply fond of Jeeves. I see Jeeves as a deeply feeling person, who only appears cold and unflinching on the surface due to superhuman discipline. He is a man of scintillating intelligence, who also can be petty and jealous when the mood strikes. It is the character interaction and interpersonal relationship I adore the most, as well as the clever, intelligent humor.

Wants: I do ship these two, and I would absolutely adore some UST ending in, erm, resolved tension. If you don't care to write that, I'd love a story based on their mutual admiration and friendship. Ideally, I would prefer a story written in first person. Bertie, of course, narrates most of the stories in canon, but if you are more of a Jeeves, or would rather write in his voice, nothing would please me more. I believe Bertie is genuinely intelligent and clever, and I love when this is shown in writing. Particularly if Jeeves comes to realize it/comes to Bertie's defense if someone belittles him.

Do Not Wants: Jeeves or Bertie paired with other characters. Jeeves or Bertie dying. No PWP, please, I prefer my porn with added plot. No hurt without comfort. No mention of bodily fluids other than blood, semen or saliva in a sexual context. No body horror/permanent disfigurement.

Oxventure: Blades in the Dark

Barnaby Fortescue III

Edvard Lumière

While I am not at all disappointed with the ending, I hate the idea of never knowing what happens next! I love both the setting and the characters, and particularly how the tone walks such a perfect line between horror, humor and realism. Can there be three sides to a line? There can now; Edvard will make it work, somehow. I've picked my two favorite characters - I enjoy Edvard for his delightful and wild innoventions, and his eclectic personality. He's an interesting mix of cynical and blindly optimistic, with just a hint of madness. That being said, Barnaby is my absolute favorite. The idea of a man who takes to a life of crime because he thinks it might be "a bit of fun", and then ends up being accidentally really good at it is absolutely brilliant. He also seems to have some unexpected character growth, particularly toward the end. I do not peresonally ship these two, but I don't mind if you do and would like to write them that way. (Genuinely. I know I'd worry if I saw that in a prompt, so let me assure you: It is more than fine to write Edvard/Barnaby slash.).

Exception to both characters being featured: As I mentioned, Barnaby is my absolute favorite. So long as he is featured, it's okay to not feature Edvard. That doesn't mean I don't want to see Edvard, just that it's okay if you'd prefer not to write about him.

Wants: I really just want to see what happens next. That said, if you haven't finished the series yet - don't worry! I'm more than happy to read a story from earlier in the series. I'm a sucker for casefic, particularly detective fiction, so if you'd like to try your hand at that, I'd be a very happy recipient! I'd also love to read more about Barnaby in general, and perhaps something more about Edvard's past? And of course, there's worldbuilding - what is the world like, now? (Or what was it like, if you're writing from before the ending.) Oh, and references to other Oxventure stuff would be wonderful; I would love to see more than the few glimpses we got in canon.

Do Not Wants: Alternate Universes. So much of what I enjoy about this series is the setting. Explicit sex is fine, but no PWP, please, I prefer my porn with added plot. No mention of bodily fluids other than blood, semen or saliva in a sexual context. No body horror/permanent disfigurment. No permanent character deaths.

Robot Series - Isaac Asimov

R. Daneel Olivaw

Elijah Baley

Caves of Steel is probably my favorite novel of all time, but I adore all of these books. I am very fond of Daneel and Elijah. I find the world they inhabit fascinating, both the future society of Earth, and that of the Outer Worlds. As I love detective fiction, science fiction and especially robots, these stories may as well have been written specifically for me. Part of the appeal, for me, is how they manage to deliver both an entertaining mystery and heart-felt interpersonal drama in a world that feels real. Daneel is one of my favorite fictional characters; the way his empathy and personality shines through his programming and limitations. And Lije is the ultimate cynical, world-weary everyman - together, they are a pair of detectives that deserve to be up there with Holmes and Poirot.

Wants: Casefic. Seriously, if you can write me casefic for this fandom, I will be delighted. A murder mystery would be fantastic. I do ship Daneel and Elijah, and I would love to read about the unresolved tension between them. Explicit sex would be great! World-building and exploring whichever location they are at, be itsomewhere on Earth or one of the Outer Worlds, or on a space ship or station, etc. Exploration of Daneel's character; Lije stuggling to come to terms with his feelings for him - preferably romantic feelings, but if you don't want to write that, feelings of deep friendship. Bickering and banter and held-back affection!

Do Not Wants: Daneel or Elijah paired with other characters. Canonical relationships are okay to mention or feature, so long as they are not the main focus of the story. Daneel or Elijah explicitly written to be straight. No mention of Elijah's death, please, and no mention of Daneel's ultimate fate - though a story reuniting them after Elijah's death would be more than welcome. No PWP, please, I prefer my porn with added plot. No hurt without comfort. No mention of bodily fluids other than blood, semen or saliva in a sexual context. No body horror/permanent disfigurment.

#yuletide #Yuletide 2023

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lost-in-sokovia · 2 years ago

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auggie mine

PLEASE READ THE NOTE!!!

folks, i am about to break the heart of auggienation and for that i am truly sorry. i want to make it clear that this is an au situation, i do not plan on killing off my child anytime soon. this is a decently dark fic, considering a child is going to be killed, so please do not feel obligated to read just because you’re a fan of auggienation. i promise i love august with my whole heart, this was just something that came to my head for whatever reason because im feeling depressed

warnings: angst, death, cursing, blood, knives, sadness

“edward, e-eddie baby, come out… it was t-too much for him… he’s not doing well… i don’t know how long he’s going to l-last…”

edward had never run so fast in his life, risking being caught by authorities all for his son.

—

it had been a year since edward had been to arkham and flooded the entire city. managing to break out not long after when gotham had somewhat reconstructed itself back together, he remained in hiding for a long time. he visited you and august often, usually at night to avoid being caught. august missed his father terribly. it was rough growing up only seeing him sometimes when he was so close and august just didn’t know where. it was hard on edward too; not being able to see his little boy grow up day by day, not being able to talk to him and play with him, not being able to hum him lullabies before he was asleep. the worst was missing auggie’s sixth birthday, only being able to slip in right before midnight to sing his sleepy boy “happy birthday” and give him a big hug and kiss, rocking him in his arms gently as he fell asleep once more.

as of late, there was a new vigilante out for edward. of course everyone knew about the riddler’s escape from arkham, that was no surprise. however, someone new was on the rise and he was out for blood. he wasn’t on the side of the batman, no, but he had something major against eddie and was determined to kill him.

you and edward spent many nights on the couch together, hugging, crying, kissing, and talking. this new situation was hard on all of you. it was crazy how much life could change in a simple year. the talks used to be sad, reminiscent, and loving — you’d talk about how much you missed each other, how empty life seemed, trying to be strong for august, things like that. recently after the new situation, they were more hushed and serious. you used to let august sleep in edward’s arms some nights as you talked, but august was not to come out of his room during these new talks. you were worried for edward’s safety. you were worried for august’s safety. it wasn’t like it was difficult to either tell they were related or find the information needed to prove it.

you remember when, through tears, you urged eddie not to come out of hiding for a while. tears brimmed his big green eyes that shined in the moonlight as both of you silently cried, you going on and on about safety. he had cradled your cheeks, pressing wet kisses all over your face as you cried and he nodded.

“anything for you and august,” he whispered earnestly.

eddie was given a flip phone by you to use only in an emergency. flip phones couldn’t be tracked, and if something were to ever happen you needed a way to reach him quickly and safely.

you had been hesitant to let august out either. it wasn’t hard to trace him back to edward with his last name being “nashton” and all. you had pulled him out of first grade and were homeschooling him. august was struggling mentally after that. not only could he no longer see his father from what was scarce meeting to begin with, but now he was stuck in a tiny little apartment and was getting no human interaction. often at night when you held august in you and eddie’s bed, he’d cry himself to sleep and you would wait until he was asleep to cry as well.

one day when you were basically entirely out of food, you’d decided to face your fears and go outside. it wasn’t like you had much of an option, you and august needed food. you couldn’t leave auggie alone in the apartment and you really didn’t have any neighbors you knew that well. auggie was ecstatic to find out he was going outside, even if it was just for a little while. you’d dressed him in all black, putting him in a little black hoodie with the hood up, trying to tuck all of his soft little hair into it. you put sunglasses over his pretty green eyes and sighed; this was about as good as it was going to get.

dressed similarly to auggie with a switchblade concealed in one of your pockets, the two of you hesitantly walked out into the city of gotham. you held auggie on your hip tightly, walking as fast as you could to the little grocery store on the corner. auggie looked around happily, smiling at people and gasping every time he saw a dog or even just a pigeon. your heart was in your throat the entire time, focused on completing the task at hand so you could get home.

you were quick in the grocery store, august whining slightly that you went so fast and didn’t let him look through everything in the aisles. you’d kissed his pouty little lips and apologized, genuinely regretful.

you walked just as fast home as you had there, holding auggie’s hand and letting him carry one of the lighter grocery bags as you held heavier ones on your other arms. you were on high alert as you dragged august along a little too fast, him complaining slightly for you to slow down.

and that’s when it happened.

you had made it all the way to your complex and you were just beginning to finally breathe. as you walked past the alleyway right next to the building, three men suddenly surrounded you and august, making you stop. august immediately latched onto your leg and whimpered nervously, his little sunglasses beginning to fall off his face. you were breathing harshly, looking around at these men with narrowed eyes despite the fear that bloomed in your chest. you could’ve taken down one man, sure. but three while trying to protect auggie was too much. your eyes darted around as the men stood there, knives and blades in hand.

“leave my son and i alone,” you had stated as harshly and confidently as possible. the men looked at each other and chuckled.

“see, our boss says we can’t let that happen.”

that’s how you and august were jumped and attacked, assumingely by people working for whoever the vigilante was that was out for edward. you had been able to give a few bad cuts and punches to the two men beating you, but there was not much you could do about august.

you heard his screams, his calls for you, every little moan and cry that escaped his lips as he was beaten. you’d begged for them to leave him alone and do whatever it was to you instead.

“HE’S A CHILD!” you screamed through tears, groaning as you were punched in the stomach.

after a few solid minutes of harsh beating the men decided their jobs were done, leaving you and august a helpless mess on the ground among your ripped grocery bags, your blade several feet away from you. your vision was slightly blurred and you laid on the ground for a moment until you had the strength to crawl over to august. your groaned as you moved your bruised arms and legs on the concrete as fast as you could, auggie laying helplessly a few feet away from you.

“august,” you breathed, finally reaching him. your little boy was not okay; he had a black eye, a few cuts on his cheeks and arms, a few bruises, blood and dirt on his jacket and hair, and cheeks still flushed tear stained. your eyes widened as you gently shook him, your breathing increasing. “auggie, auggie baby it’s mommy,” you tried a bit more frantically. you grabbed his little cut up arm and checked his pulse. there wasn’t much relief as you had hoped when you felt the incredibly slow thumping of his heartbeat.

sirens were going off inside your head and panic rose in your chest as you reached into your pocket to grab your phone. the screen had been slightly cracked but the phone itself was still completely fine. you hurriedly dialed 911 with shaky fingers, pulling august off the ground and into your arms as you tried to hold the tears back long enough to speak to an operator.

after you’d given your location and it was confirmed an ambulance was on its way, you’d hung up the phone and began to cry heavily, kissing auggie’s little head as you tried your best to wake him up. you could hear the sirens in the distance and you looked up, knowing they’d be there soon. you’d picked up the phone one more time, knowing what other call you had to make.

—

edward was pushing through doctors and nurses as he sprinted through the hospital, his heart in his throat. this was the same hospital august was born in. this time, however, he was on a different floor for a much different situation.

“august nashton! where can i find august nashton?” he yelled desperately, looking at the people around him as he began to slow down. everyone simply looked at him as though he was crazy, and anger and impatience boiled inside of him.

“I AM HIS FATHER, NOW TELL ME WHERE I CAN FIND HIM!” he bellowed gravelly, breathing heavily. a frightened nurse pointed down the hallway to a door and edward took off once more.

once eddie opened the door, his heart stopped and he gasped at what he saw in front of him. august was laying in a bed, cords of all sorts connected to his little body as his chest rose and lowered beneath the hospital gown. his little face was bruised and cut up, his black eye beginning turn a shade of purple. a heart monitor sat near the bed, a steady beeping noise the only thing that could be heard in the bleak room. you were sitting on the bed next to him, bruised and bloodied like him. you held an arm around your middle from where you had been punched and your hair was disheveled and dirty. tears flooded your eyes and flowed down your cheeks as you looked desperately at your boyfriend in the doorway.

eddie took a slow step forward, his mouth agape as he tried to process what he was seeing. the door shut behind him and when you sniffled he took a few giant steps to capture you in a hug. he stared at his limp son laying on the bed from over your shoulder, his eyes watering as his open mouth frowned. you sobbed into his shoulder, grasping onto him tightly.

“are you okay? are you sure you’re alright?” eddie asked breathlessly. you had given him a rundown of the situation while in the ambulance, but he still felt the need to ask.

“i tried, eddie…” you sobbed, your words choppy as you avoided his question. edward couldn’t respond. who did this? why would they do this? august is a child, he didn’t deserve whatever had happened, especially on edward’s behalf. eddie gave you a squeeze and pulled back to look at you and wipe your tears.

“shh, shh,” he hushed, adjusting his glasses before cradling your cheeks. your bottom lip trembled and you shook your head.

“e-eddie i don’t know how long he’s g-gonna last,” you whispered, voice breaking at the end as your hands flew to your face. edward pulled you against his chest and sighed shakily, teary eyes looking up at the ceiling. he had to be strong for you. it was obvious that august was not doing too well, nor was he super stable. eddie squeezed his eyes shut and bit his lips harshly as he held back tears of his own. after you had stopped crying for a moment you pulled away to look back to your little boy, gently running a hand through his dirty and bloody hair.

edward watched as you wiped your tears and took a shaky inhale, continuing to gently stroke the top of your son’s head. edward couldn’t even begin to fathom that his son’s stability was currently on a steep downhill slope. he was still in complete shock. never had this vigilante done any action towards edward himself, but decided to threaten him by attacking his partner and son. as much as eddie wanted to be, there was no room for anger in his heart in that moment. fear and sadness was taking up all the space possible, his chest threatening to explode with it.

“i-i keep trying to talk to him…” you choke out quietly, turning your head to look sadly up at edward. “try to see if he wakes up or responds…”

edward slowly walked over to the other side of the bed, sitting across from you. the two of you locked eyes for a moment, his green eyes staring intently and nervously into your teary and bloodshot ones. he pushed his glasses up to rub a few tears away and ran a hand through his brown hair before sniffling.

“auggie… august edward,” eddie whispered as lightly as possible, just like he would if he was waking him up from a nap. he leaned down and pressed the gentlest kiss he could to auggie’s chubby cheek, not wanting to hurt him. he heard auggie’s shallow little breaths between beeps of the heart monitor and he exhaled shakily. auggie wouldn’t like this room. it was cold and bleak and plain white and quiet and the atmosphere was uncomfortable. august deserved to be home in his colorful room, stuffed animals all over the place and the sound of laughter bouncing off the walls.

eddie didn’t realize he was crying until he felt you kiss his hand, looking at him sadly. he returned the glance to you, still no words between the two of you.

“august edward, your daddy is here,” you tried again. edward was hoping that would do the trick, but his son still laid still on the bed. edward painfully swallowed a lump down his throat and you let out a small sob. “auggie, please wake up,” your voice broke. edward’s hand rested on auggie’s stomach and yours on auggie’s shoulder as you waited for a sign of consciousness. suddenly you heard auggie’s breath hitch and his little body shake ever so slightly. edward’s and your eyes opened and you simultaneously leaned in as auggie’s eyes fluttered open, the blackened one only slightly.

“hi baby,” you greeted gently, rubbing his shoulder lightly. “your daddy is here to see you,” you said, looking to edward who was staring at his son with a sad smile. august let out a weak hum in response, his pink lips barely curving into a smile.

“…daddy,” was all the little boy could muster, and eddie nodded as a tear fell down his cheek.

“hello my precious boy,” eddie whispered in response. auggie shut his eyes and scrunched them up, taking a deep breath.

“i wanna go home,” he whined weakly, eyes still closed as he exhaled. you nodded.

“i know baby boy, but the doctors and nurses have to make you feel better first, okay?” you replied, pushing hair out of his eyes. auggie simply began to breathe slowly again, no response from him. you heard a sudden decrease in the speed of the heart monitor, both you and eddie’s gaze darting towards it. bile rose in the back of your throat as you shook your head and eddie’s chest tightened.

not yet, please.

“auggie? august edward?” edward asked gently. august hummed and eddie watched your scrunched up face hold back a sob, your free hand pushed firmly against your mouth. he cleared his throat and looked back down to his son. “you know your mommy and i love you so much?” he asked. the edge of auggie’s lip pulled upward for a slight moment and more tears flowed down edward’s cheeks, beginning to wet his glasses.

“we love you auggie… m-mommy and daddy love you more than a-anything in the whole w-wide w-world,” you blubbered, trying to keep it together. august shifted his head and inhaled.

“mommy… daddy…” he breathed. edward squeezed his eyes shut and flew his head in the other direction, hearing his son say his name pushing him over the edge. you let out a small sob against your will as you leaned in closer to august.

“yes baby?” you asked. no response. you grabbed edward’s shoulder and forced him to turn back around, august’s little chest rising and lowering slower and slower.

“eddie,” you whispered desperately. eddie opened his teary eyes, crying silently as he watched the little life before him slowly go out. his son. his little baby boy. the thing he loved the most in the world and promised he would take care of forever and ever dying because someone wanted to take eddie’s life. the sounds of auggie’s laughs, the way his green eyes that looked just like eddie’s opened in the mornings as he woke him up, his smile, the sound he made when he gave kisses, the way his little arms tried their best to wrap all the way around any part of edward when he hugged him, the way his little hands felt when they played with eddie’s hair, how he looked just like when he was a baby when he napped in your arms, how peaceful he looked when he slept, how lively he was during the day, his big heart, his love for animals, and his wonder for the world all flooded through edward’s mind as the breathing slowed.

eddie swallowed and cuddles up next to august, careful of any cords near him as he placed a hand on his son’s chest to feel it rise and fall. you followed suit, laying your head against auggie’s shoulder and holding his little hand.

edward used to hum and occasionally even sing lullabies to auggie when he was a baby, and sometimes before he went to arkham too. eddie felt there was no better send off for his son, the inevitable was happening no matter what doctor or nurse rushed in.

“baby mine, don’t you cry…” edward began weakly. you let out a sob, knowing exactly what he was doing. “b-baby mine… dry your eyes…” eddie inhaled sharply as more tears fell, feeling auggie’s breath pause for a moment too long before continuing. edward let out a soft cry. “rest y-your head close to my heart… n-“ he cried. “never to part…”

eddie felt the breathing stopped, you felt auggie’s pulse stop. the heart monitor began to produce one prolonged beep. you let out a loud sob, eddie nuzzling further into august.

“baby of mine.”

i cannot bullshit you when i tell you i started crying while writing this. if you made it this far, you are a trooper and im so sorry i put you through that. nothing will ever be as dark as that and i’d like to clarify that this is an ALTERNATE UNIVERSE and i do not plan on killing off auggie in reality. i promise to publish some hardcore fluff before publishing for the future

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clareguilty · 3 years ago

Text

The Naked Thing

Hello! I was dying without air conditioning a few weeks ago and decided to make it Mando Smut Mandalorian/f!reader Rating: Explicit | No Warnings Word Count: ~2900

The Crest falls out of hyperspace too soon, and you go flying. Curling around Grogu in your arms, you twist in midair so that your back hits the console to avoid crushing him. A lever digs into your spine, and you curse loudly. That’s going to bruise. Oh well. What’s another?

“What the kriff, Mando?” you snarl. Grogu seems unbothered, blinking at you and probably learning way too many swear words for a child of his size.

Mando pulls himself off the control grid with a pained groan, helmet swiveling as he takes in the damage.

“The good news,” he begins after a moment, “is that we lost them.”

That is good news, you agree. You were lucky that the army of bounty hunters and ex-imps hadn’t kept track of you. If you had shaken them off your trail, then that would earn you a head start to a safer system.

“The bad news is that they shot out our hyperdrive.”

“Dank Farrik,” you curse again, then glance at Grogu. Maybe you should watch your mouth more?

“...And our temperature regulator and our heat shields.”

You decide that it is an appropriate time for as much foul language as you please.

“What does that mean?” you ask. You hadn’t grown up around ships -- spent the last dozen years on the same dead-end planet until Mando picked you up. The most you were good for was turning a knob or flipping a switch here and there. Usually you just kept an eye on Grogu while Mando did all the piloting and bounty hunting and whatnot.

“We’ll have to travel sublight, but we can’t land planet side because without the heat shields any atmosphere worth a damn would burn us up. Our only option is a New Republic Outpost. We’ll be able to land there, and we’ll be safe while they repair the Crest. I’ll chart us a course and let you know how long it should be.”

“You know,” you snap, “we wouldn’t be in this mess if you weren’t so scared of droids. If we had an astromech on board, then we could get the hyperdrive repaired without having to crawl our asses through deep space in the hopes that whoever picks us up doesn’t want us dead.”

Mando doesn’t say anything. You don’t know if your words meant anything at all to him because you can’t see shit behind his helmet. Huffing, you take Grogu down to the hold. Not long after, the engines fire up again.

It takes a few minutes to set in, but its quick enough to be noticeable. The ship is getting hotter. Like… unbearably warm.

You fill a canteen with water and make sure that you and Grogu are both hydrated. After a little bit of digging, you manage to find a portable air circulator. You and Grogu sit directly in front of the current, doing your best to keep cool.

Mando comes down after a little while, he cocks his helmet when he sees you.

“It’s hot,” you whine.

“The temperature regulator is shot too. We don’t have a way too cool the ship down or shield the heat of the engines.”

You sigh. “How long until we can get repairs?”

“34 hours. Will the kid be okay for that long?”

Grogu hasn’t outwardly complained about the heat, mostly just sitting in front of the circulator with his eyes closed and ears flapping, but you’ve been worried as well. “He’s kind of… amphibious,” you frown. “I’ll get him a basin of water to sit in and put him in the fresher with the circulator. That should keep him cooled off.”

Mando nods. “Thank you. Will you be okay?”

You shrug. There’s not much you can do. As long as you stay hydrated then you should be able to last 34 hours.

“Thank you,” he says again.

“For what?” All you’ve done is curse at him and berate him for not having an astromech droid.

“For looking out for him back there. You saved all of us with that droid popper. And the move with the cannon was impressive.”

You aren’t expecting genuine praise from Mando. It always felt as though you were dead weight to him. Through all the planets you’ve been on -- and been chased off of -- you’ve always felt useless.You can’t fly, you’re not the best shot, you can barely take care of his kid. It means a lot that he doesn’t actually hate you.

“I’m starting to get the hang of this,” you grin. You had never considered yourself a hero or adventurer, but you had commandeered a cannon and shot down three imperial fighters.

“I’ll be up in the cockpit if you need anything. Just knock.” And he’s gone.

‘Knock’ means that Mando is probably going to take his helmet and armor off, which means you also get a few hours of total privacy. You set Grogu up in the fresher with a basin of water and the circulator -- though it pains you to give up the weak, artificial breeze.

It’s only gotten hotter, and your already filthy clothes are starting to became unbearable. You had gotten splashed with gore and grime and who knows what in your escape, and it wasn’t pairing well with the heat onboard.

Stripping out of your clothes, you sprawl naked on the metal floor. It’s dusty, but slightly cool, and you plaster as much of your skin to the durasteel as you can manage.

Time passes with you systematically rolling across the floor of the hold to try and keep from baking. It’s bearable only because you know there will be an end. As long as the ship keeps chugging along towards the space outpost, then you will be saved.

The hatch to the cockpit opens, and you leap to your feet. Mando clambers down, jumping when he sees you.

“You’re naked,” he raises his hands -- his bare hands -- and backs against the ladder.

“You’re naked.” you point.

“I have a helmet and pants on,” he says. But that’s all he has on. His chest and arms are bare, and it’s more skin than you’ve ever seen before on the man.

“I’ve never seen you out of your armor. That has got to be more scandalous than me being naked.”

You must have made a point, because Mando doesn’t respond. Instead, you both just kind of… stand there. You can’t tear your eyes away from his chest and from the angle his helmet is pointed it seems he’s having a similar issue.

“Did you, uh, need anything?” you finally manage to ask. Your mouth is dry, and you take another uncoordinated drink from the canteen, shivering as some of the water spills down your chest.

Mando coughs. “I just wanted to make sure the kid is okay.”

“Oh,” you turn to open the fresher door just a crack. You had checked on him just a few minutes ago, and he still seems fine. After a moment of pause, Mando comes up behind you and you can feel the heat of his skin against your back.

Grogu is asleep, curled up just in front of the circulator and the basin of water so that the cool air blows over him. The fresher is several degrees cooler than the rest of the ship, and while it feels amazing, you don’t want to let the heat in.

“I’m going to go back up now,” Mando says quickly, and then he’s gone through the hatch once again.

You resume your circuit of laying on the floor, but it feels like the ship is only getting hotter.

That’s when you take to banging on the hatch to the cockpit. “Mando, I’m going to kick your ass! You had better get us to that outpost or find a way too cool this ship down! I spent years on Tatooine, and this is the hottest I have ever been in my entire life!”

“I can cut the engines to stop generating any heat, but then we’ll just be coasting through empty space and we’ll never make it to the outpost.”

You huff. “At this point you should just freeze me in carbonite.”

Mando does not freeze you in carbonite, but you do eventually make it to the New Republic outpost. They give the three of you a small dorm and Mando arranges for the Razor Crest to be repaired. You don’t have any credits between you, so you wonder what he offers in exchange.

You toss your gear into the room and head out to get food for everyone. You always enjoy being in New Republic space. No one is out to murder you or imprison you. The officers are usually nicer. Everyone likes the Skywalkers.

A friendly droid loads you up with several plates of food, and you stop to check out the holonet broadcasts on your way back. Things in this corner of the galaxy are a little hectic -- something you just witnessed firsthand -- but its less gloomy than it used to be.

Mando is sitting on the lower bunk when you get back. He’s back in his full armor, but you can read his posture pretty well. Grogu is playing in the corner, levitating some rocks you had found for him a few planets back. You set the tray down, fully intending to take your portion and eat out in the hall or in one of the communal sitting rooms. Before you can even turn away, Mando has already grabbed a plate of food and tugged his helmet off.

“WOAH,” you raise your hands in front of your face, ducking your head before you can see too much. Curly hair. Tan skin. Moustache. If there is one thing you’ve learned, it’s that Mando doesn’t let anyone see him without his helmet. It’s a cultural thing, and you respect that. “What is with you being naked today?”

Your eyes are open, but very pointedly looking at a wall nowhere near him. He shifts for a moment, and you wait for some kind of explanation.

“Look,” he finally begins, “we’ve been through a lot together at this point. I’ve traveled with you longer than anyone since I was a foundling with the watch. You’ve saved my life as well as Grogu’s many times, and we just survived one hell of a fight. Not to mention, I saw, um, all of you today. I figure it’s only fair.”

You’re touched. It’s an honor that Mando trusts you enough to remove his helmet. For as long as you have been travelling together, you’ve assumed that you care for him far more than he cares for you. “You don’t have to,” you say. “I don’t want you to feel obligated.”

“I trust you,” he repeats.

You turn to face him. His eyes are so soft. Tired and kind and the warmest brown. He stares at you, taking you in for the first time with his own eyes and not the visor in his helmet. It’s unreasonably intimate considering he was staring at you naked with the helmet on just 16 hours before.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re kind of cute?” you laugh and look away, smoothing your hands over your pants. There’s food in front of you, and you use that as a welcome distraction.

“I’ve never trusted anyone enough before now to see me.”

How can he just say things like that? You try to drown the rapid beating of your heart behind some kind of bitter vegetable.

Mando begins to eat as well, slowly and unsurely. He picks at a few different dishes before finally speaking again. “You’ve, uh- I mean… you’re beautiful as well.”

You laugh loudly at that. It’s so shy. This man had seen you overheated and completely naked lying on the floor of his ship. You roll your eyes and shoot him a wink. “Something you like in particular?”

Mando chokes, coughing for a minute before chugging down half a glass of green jelly juice. He finally regains his composure, but his voice is rough when he speaks again. “I’d say the best view was from behind.”

It’s the last thing you expect from him. He’s so shy and reserved and has always backed down from your defensive teasing. It’s a moment before you can pull yourself together. Still, you aren’t sure what to say. Instead, you cram some shredded raw crustacean in your mouth and hope you aren’t too flushed.

Mando offers to take the trays back. The dorm bathroom has a shower with running water and you intend to take full advantage. Grogu rolls a rock at your feet as you head into the bathroom, and you lightly kick it back to him. “Are you tired of putting up with us yet? You’ve been a baby longer than I’ve been alive. I bet we seem like idiots to you.”

Grogu, predictably, says nothing. He makes a raspberry noise with his lips and plops down into a sit.

The shower is one of the greatest gifts you’ve ever enjoyed in life. Hot water, high pressure, steam and soap. You take your time washing up and letting the jets work out all of the kinks in your muscles.

When you slide the stall door aside, Mando is standing at the sink. Helmetless. Shirtless.

He jumps slightly, staring at the floor as you step out of the shower.

“We have got to stop doing this naked thing,” you say. It doesn’t actually bother you. You like that Mando trusts you, and you’ve never been shy about being naked around others, but he’s too attractive and it drives you nuts.

“I rather enjoy it,” he manages to pull his gaze from the floor to shoot you a wink. Your pulse speeds up.

“Don’t start something you can’t finish, Mando,” you step forward. You’re still steaming from the shower and dripping wet. He’s never been this cheeky before, and you kind of enjoy it.

His gaze darkens, eyebrows rasing. He reaches out to grab your waist, pulling you in and pinning you against the sink. You gasp at the feeling of his skin on yours, leaning back as he crowds you against the basin.

“Grogu is napping,” he whispers.

“I think the shower will fit both of us,” you breathe.

He’s already working at the buckle of his pants, toeing out of his boots. You drag him back into the shower with you. The jets hit his back, and he melts a little. You wrap your hand around his cock, and he looks like he may collapse. His eyes flutter shut, one of his hands slamming against the wall by your head.

You lean in to brush your lips over his skin as you stroke his cock. You’d never even seen this man’s face before today, and now you’re kissing your way over his jaw and down his neck. His other hand grabs your ass, kneading the flesh and pulling you closer so your hips brush his.

Your thumb swipes over the tip of his cock, and he shudders. It happens so fast, you didn’t know he had spun you around until your cheek is against the shower wall. His hands are glue to your hips, digging into your ass and pulling you to him so he can grind his cock against your slick skin.

“Please,” you whine. You haven’t had sex with anyone since you began travelling with Mando, and opportunities to get yourself off come few and far between with three of you on the Crest. You’re desperately horny, and you’ve wanted to fuck this man since you found him in that godforsaken desert.

He lines himself up and drives his hips forward, sinking into you with one solid thrust. You bite your forearm to muffle your moans, panting as you try to get used to the sudden stretch.

“You good?” he asks, leaning forward to kiss your cheek.

“Move,” you say, demanding but desperate.

It takes a moment to find leverage in the tiny -- smaller than you first assumed -- shower stall, but Mando begins to fuck you at a steady pace. You reach down to rub your clit, clenching around him. You’re going to finish quicker than you’re used to -- probably because you’ve been turned on since you saw Mando shirtless on the crest.

From the way Mando’s hips twitch and his rhythm falters, you guess that he’s close to coming as well.

His hands are everywhere. Your hips, your ass, trailing over your stomach and and reaching up to squeeze your breasts. His fingers brush your throat and you nearly come from the touch alone. He feels the way you tighten around his cock and places a hand on your neck, squeezing your jaw between his thumb and forefinger.

You come so hard your knees give out and your vision goes white. Mando keeps you from collapsing in a bruised heap on the shower floor by simply continuing to fuck you until he comes as well.

It’s not a lot of space, so you’re slumped together under the spray of the water. You manage to wipe yourself clean in a few swipes and stagger back out so Mando can actually wash up. He’s much quicker than you were, and he’s out of the shower by the time you’ve finished rubbing scented moisturizer over your skin. The New Republic sure knew how to treat their guests.

“I think we should definitely keep doing the naked thing,” he grins.

#the mandalorian #Mandalorian/reader #the mandalorian/reader #mandalorian x reader #mandalorian #din djarin #din djarin x reader #din djarin/reader #grogu #smut #lemons

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1kook · 4 years ago

Text

card swiped (4)

→ jeon jungkook x (f) reader

→ “I’ve known Jungkook was a virgin since he first tried to tell me he wasn’t,” you tell him, arms crossed over your chest. “I’m pretty sure everyone knows.” GENRE romance (romcom?), eventual smut, teensy angst WARNING mentions of a hand job, talk of virginity OTHER college crushes, volleyball player!jk, student council president!oc, idiots to lovers, besties to lovers, childhood friends au RATING m (18+) bc brief sex ment WC 1.6k

NOTES (!) sorry for taking so long to update </3 school be kicking my ass. anyway here they are! an idiot couple. lmk what u think!!

[ masterlist ]

In the past, whenever something had bothered you, the first person you ran to was Jungkook. Low grades, fights with your parents, boy drama— as your best friend and number one confidant, Jungkook was always your first choice. He was always willing to lend you a shoulder to cry on, even if that meant staining his white t-shirts with streaks of your mascara. He was always ready to go beat up a mean boy who had hurt your feelings during lunch, even if he’d miss his favorite special. And he was always down for some good old fashion i hate my parents ranting, even if he adored your parents. He was a great listener, an even better best friend, and had rightfully won you over from a very young age.

That being said, how were you supposed to talk to Jungkook about something that bothered you when that something was him?

You could easily tell any of your numerous girl friends, those of which would probably understand your predicament better than Jungkook or any man ever could. But after years of vehemently denying any notion of a romantic relationship between the two of you, you get the feeling your call for help will be met with more unimpressed glares than actual assistance. Besides, as much as you bring up Jungkook, none of them really know Jungkook to truly offer you any worthwhile advice.

Your next option: Kim Taehyung. Now, Kim Taehyung held a similar background as Jungkook (translation: he also went to the same high school as you). He knows both you and Jungkook—frankly, more than you’d like him to—so he would be able to dissect the issue easily and offer trustworthy advice. The problem with Kim Taehyung, however, is that aside from knowing you at your embarrassingly dorky teenage prime, he doesn’t know how to keep a secret. Anything he knows, Jungkook knows. So if you were to, hypothetically, ask Taehyung for advice on Jungkook, well. Chances are, you’d probably get a rather confused text from Jungkook two minutes later.

Which leaves you with one option— Park Jimin. There’s a reason Park Jimin isn’t your first option, and that reason presents itself now as you glare at him from across the empty room. For as long as you’ve been in university, Jimin has always lingered around the student council meetings, giving everyone he sees the prettiest, meanest stink-eye. You suspect it’s because he waits around for Min Yoongi, your Vice President (which isn’t an issue; Jungkook also frequents student council meetings while waiting for you), and doesn’t really care for anyone else. Your problem with Jimin doesn’t lie there but rather with the fact he’s adamant on taking up space and not lending so much as a finger to help.

Today he is sitting with his feet on the table, dirty volleyball bag tossed on the floor. He’s watched you for the last fifteen minutes wrestle with the broken copy machine and hasn’t said a word since. He pretends he doesn’t see you struggling, because if he does, he’d be obligated to help you.

To summarize, Park Jimin may be the fastest libero your university’s volleyball team has seen in years, but he’s a good-for-nothing bum everywhere else.

And despite all that, he’s your best choice. There’s no one quite as blunt and honest as Park Jimin. There’s no one in this world who truly doesn’t care enough about anyone’s problems to gossip about them as Park Jimin. You plop down beside him, rumpled papers in hand. Without warning, you jump straight into it. “Jungkook is going to take my virginity,” you announce, like it’s the most casual thing in the world. If any of your fellow student council members heard you, you’re certain you’d shrivel up and die.

Jimin hums. “That’s nice.” His eyes don’t leave his phone, thumb hovering over his screen. It’s a testament to how much he truly does not care. His extended silence plants a seed of doubt in you— was this the right person to tell? you begin to worry. But after a beat, Jimin’s thumb taps against his screen and he says, “Jungkook is a virgin.”

You clench your jaw. “I know.”

The thing about Jimin is, with the right wording, you can get him interested in something. Not interested enough to genuinely care, but interested enough to at least listen and offer his own piece of straightforward advice. His thumb comes to a standstill over his phone, eyes momentarily going blank. It’s a minute gesture, one that’s taken you four years of paying attention to catch. Just as quickly as it appears, it’s gone. “Really,” Jimin sighs, back to, you now realize, playing CandyCrush on his phone. “You’re gonna let a virgin take your virginity.”

Not a question, but you nod anyway. “Yup.”

There’s sweat building on the back of your neck, nerves at an all time high, but you’re trying to play it off. Just a little bit more and you know you’ll have caught him. Beside you, Jimin’s jaw twitches.

Finally, after what seems like an eternity of trying to act calm, Jimin clicks his phone off and turns to you. He’s as intimidating as ever, ash blonde hair pushed back today to reveal his forehead and dark eyes. “You’ve known Jungkook was a virgin this whole time?” he asks, has this calculating look in his eyes that makes you feel like you’re being questioned by an officer of the law and not the shortest person on the volleyball team.

With a practiced air of nonchalance, you shrug. “I have,” you confess, and it’s the truth.

While you may have been initially fooled that night two years ago, you weren’t that oblivious. Oh, you knew clear as day that Jeon Jungkook was still a virgin, just as well as you knew that he religiously washed his sheets every weekend or that he had a specific color coded system for his underwear drawer. Jungkook was a fool to try and lie to you, not only because you had found out, but because you had found out that very next morning.

It had been subtle. The night at the party, you had watched on with a throbbing heartache as some pretty girl led Jungkook up a set of stairs, had barely fought off a wave of emotion when he returned twenty minutes later, his hair a rumpled mess. “Did you… ?” you had mumbled, pressed closely against him by the back door. Your eyes had been glassy, from your emotions and from the drunken stupor you had gotten yourself into while he was away, wondering what he was doing. A sense of jealousy you would never admit to had curled around your heart. His hand had landed on your hip then. He smelled like flowers and vanilla, a smell unlike his own. Your heart clenched, hand mindlessly reaching up to cup his jaw, so drunk and heartbroken, you couldn’t stop yourself from trailing your fingers along his pretty cheekbones.

Jungkook had graced you with a simple nod, and then, “do you wanna leave now?”

You’d left, stumbling down Greek road on your way back to his dorm. Jungkook had held your hand the whole way, tucked you into his twin bed, and then promptly knocked out on the floor between his and Taehyung’s beds. The latter was nowhere to be found, wouldn’t appear until the next morning when he’d accidentally step on Jungkook’s ankle and wake both of you up.

Jungkook had yelped, and your eyes had fluttered open. You remember debating rolling over, checking on him like you wanted to, but Taehyung was already there doing just that. So you had laid still instead, listened as the two boys clattered around the room. They chatted mindlessly, about the party and tomorrow’s practice. Taehyung had been bragging about some girl he’d slept with last night. “What about you?” he had asked, and your breath caught in your throat. “Did you and…”—a pause, the distinct ruffle of fabric—“finally?”

“What— no,” Jungkook had said, and you felt the bed dip as he sat down on the edge beside you.

Taehyung pushed on with a snort. “Well, did you get lucky at all?”

Jungkook groaned, placed one warm hand on your back soothingly. You tried your best to level out your breathing, relaxed your facial expression as you clung to the sound of his voice. “Just a handjob. Some girl I didn’t even know. Does that count?” You could hear your heartbeat in your ears, felt it beneath your fingertips when you fisted the sheets.

And that curt admission sat in the back of your mind everyday for two years.

You turn to Jimin. “I’ve known Jungkook was a virgin since he first tried to tell me he wasn’t,” you tell him, arms crossed over your chest. “I’m pretty sure everyone knows.”

Jimin lets out a low whistle. “You’re smarter than I thought,” he grins, this conniving little smile that is a genuine cause for concern. “So you’re letting him think you don’t know?” You nod. Jimin’s smile grows. “My, my. If I had known you were this evil, maybe we would’ve hung out more.”

You roll your eyes. “I’m not evil,” you insist, flicking him on the nose. Jimin huffs indignantly. “I think what he’s doing is sweet…” you confess, feel your entire body heat up as you recall that wide-eyed look Jungkook had given you just yesterday afternoon, your kiss print fresh on his cheek. “And, well,” you look down at your shoes. “I used to dream about him being my first.”

Jimin groans. “You two make me sick.”

#networkbangtan #kwritersworldnet #jungkook smut #jungkook fic #jungkook #bts jungkook #jungkook x reader #jungkook x reader smut #jeon jungkook x reader #jeon jungkook x reader smut #bts fic #bts smut #bts #jeon jungkook #jeon jeongguk #jjk #mine

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scorpiobitch95 · 3 years ago

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Summary: You try convince Walter to love your favorite snack throughout your years together. The best dates are shared over cereal, after all.

Pairing: Walter Marshall x Female Reader

Word Count: 4.5k

Warnings: sugary sweet fluff, implied smut — nothing graphic, snarkiness, grumpy Walter to fluffy Walter, cursing, cuteness overload.

Author's Note: I let myself get carried away with this one. I needed grumpy but sweet Walter in my life. I hope you enjoy!

Edited by myself, sorry not sorry for the errors.

Taglist: @justaboringadult @greensleeves888 @cavillsharman @beck07990 @summersong69 @myloveforhenrycavill @kebabgirl67

Taglist for this fic: @lumiousmoon

*No permission is given for reposting my work, copying it, or claiming any ideas or parts as your own.

Please comment and reblog if you enjoyed!

It started when you and Walter were early dating.

💋

“Mmmm, pause. I need a snack.” Uncurling yourself from Walter’s warm body on the couch, you made your way to the kitchen to find something to cure your hunger. You called behind you, “Want anything, Marsh?”

“Whatever you’re having... I’ll have the same.”

“Cereal it is!” You pulled the ceramic bowls from the cabinet and opened the fridge to grab the milk. Out of the corner of your eye, you saw Walter’s face scrunch in confusion. “What?”

“Cereal? Absolutely not,” Walter scoffed. “Would you grab me those spicy crisps?”

“Spicy chips, coming right up.” Vernacular was the subject of an ongoing heated debate with the Brit: the great ‘Names for Snacks Debate’ was especially hostile.

Once settled back under the blanket and snuggled into his side once more, you unpaused the movie. The energy in the room shifted, you could sense that you were being watched, but you refused to look up to look at Walter’s face. The judgment coming from the bear of a man who crunched his chips beside you was glaring.

"Stop it," you told him as you kept your eyes on the movie.

Walter didn’t say a word. His eyes traveled back to the TV but kept finding their way back to you.

“Walt, what is it? Is there something on my face?” You giggled at him lightly, unsure of what was bothering him.

“You really chose that for a snack?” His face was bewildered as if you were eating a bowl of Jeep parts.

“What? Don’t tell me you don’t eat cereal as a snack.” He shook his head curtly, wearing a look of disgust. Your eyebrows crinkled together as you followed by asking, “Not even as a quick dinner?”

“Cereal is meant for one time and one place, and that’s sometimes in the mornings for breakfast. That's why they call it breakfast cereal, love. Not dinner cereal, not snack cereal... Do you also eat cereal for lunch?” He was poking fun at you now.

“No, I’m not a heathen, Walter. Here, try a bite, just trust me. It’s amazing as a movie snack.”

His eyes were wide as a grimace was sent in your direction, “You’re crazy — no one does that.”

“Plenty of people do that,” you stated matter-of-factly.

“I’m really not the biggest fan…” Walter sighed and settled further into the couch, preparing for your exasperation that he knew was soon to follow.

“WHAT. Not the biggest fan of cereal? I’m sorry, you were sheltered as a child, weren’t you? There's cereal out there for everyone, Walt. Come on, try it.” You scooped a spoonful of your sugary Cinnamon Toast Crunch and held it to him. He reluctantly obliged your wishes, eating the bite but keeping a look of pain on his face for the entire time he chewed.

"See? Delicious. Ice-cold, crunchy, sweet, perfect." A sugary grin accompanied your playful tone, and Walter shook his head again, exaggerating his distaste for having to chew such an atrocity.

"Mhm. Definitely delicious." Your goofy bear was simmering under the surface of his scouring demeanor, though he stuck his tongue out in mock disgust.

"You're not the biggest fan," you muttered under your breath and rolled your eyes for dramatic effect. "I'll show you."

💋

Standing in the grocery store, you and Walter were having a battle of wits, arguing on the subject of your sweet tooth.

“I’m just trying to show concern for your dental health since you obviously won’t; all that sugar isn’t good for you.” Walter stood stern with his arms crossed, unmoving and solid like a brick wall.

“I appreciate your worry, Dad, but I’m going to keep eating it because I love it. One day, I bet I’ll convince you and you’ll be eating it with me. Plus, my dental health is immaculate, my dentist said so.”

The expression on Walter's face was unwavering as his eyebrows raised in a non-verbal challenge to your declaration.

“I don’t know how you can stand to eat that crap,” he muttered, thinking you couldn’t hear him.

“Oh no, don’t you dare, you grump! I don’t get on you about your snacks, back off mine. ” Despite his unnecessary grouchiness, you placed a hand on his crossed arms and raised up on your toes to give him a soft kiss on his bearded face. “Balance, babe. It’s all about balance.” You dug your way through his arms to find his hands and you drug him a little further down the cereal aisle.

“Come on, grumbly, pick out a cereal you think you might enjoy, for experiment’s sake.”

💋

“Fuck, babe. I’m going to be late, we just got called out on another accident. I am so sorry… I’m not sure when I’ll be home.” Walter had been working a ton lately, and his irritation with just how much he’d been working was starting to show. The two of you had been together for a few months now and had started to grow accustomed to having the other around consistently. You both became out of sorts when you hadn’t seen each other in a while.

“Don’t even worry about it, Walter. Just be careful, please... You should still come over when you’re finished tonight, but no pressure if you’re exhausted.”

“Of course, still need to kiss you goodnight. I can’t sleep if I haven’t.”

Walter Marshall might be a grump, but that grump could make your heart flutter in ways that you’d never felt before. Maybe it was that his sweetness and his charms were completely reserved for you and you alone. His teddy bear nature only appeared when he was near you. After putting back the ingredients for dinner to save for another night, you went to change into your sweats.

Walter appeared at your front door at 12:30 that night, nearly asleep but still standing strong. You’d dozed off on the couch after his call, but were immediately energized again when you saw his beautiful form standing in your doorway.

“Hello, I’m here to have a very late night date with an incredibly beautiful woman,” Walter said, the gravel in his voice making you shiver. Despite his exhaustion, Walter managed to smile at you with one of the biggest smiles you’d ever seen him manage.

You smirked, waving him inside. “Get in here, Bear.”

Walter reached his arms out to you, inviting you into his embrace. Your arms wrapped around his thick torso and you ran your hands up and down his sweater-clad back; he melted into you and burrowed his face into your neck. Walter released an exhaustive exhale. It was heavy and forceful, as though he’d been holding it back behind a stone barricade for the entirety of his day. Warmth flooded your body as his words vibrated from his chest, “Mmm... I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. Let’s get you fed. Preferences?”

Still snuggled in your neck, he gave his reply, “Nothing heavy, please. I don’t want to fall asleep at the table. That wouldn’t make for a good date.”

“Oh Walter, we can postpone date night, you need to eat something and get to bed. It’s nearly one,” you observed gently as you leaned your head back to get a better look at his face.

“No. I came here to have a date night. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you all day. I need you.” Walter’s warm lips caressed your forehead, placing soft kisses on you. “You think you’re still up for it?”

Nodding at him sweetly, you untangled from his embrace and went to tumble through the fridge, offering out suggestions for food, but he insisted, yet again, that you don’t go to any trouble.

“Okay… you’re going to hate it, but my last option is cereal. Other than that, it’s gonna be random leftovers.” You continued moving containers around in the fridge, taking stock of what you had left from the week before.

“Actually, I think I can handle some cereal.” You whipped your head around incredulously to look and heckle him, but he gruffly interrupted, pointing a finger at you from where he sat at your kitchen table. "Don't. Don't start. It's been a brutal day, and something cold doesn't sound half bad."

You smirked in silence as you turned back and poured your bowls, dancing your hips lightly side to side. Grabbing the candles you had left out for your dinner date, you lit them and placed them gently on the table between the two of you. It was date night, after all.

“Late night cereal date, it is.” Reaching down to caress his chin, you kissed one bearded cheek before sitting beside him. Walter’s lips held a slight curl, softly smiling at your glee.

💋

“Love, snack break?”

The two of you were engaged in an intense game of Scrabble, one of your favorite date-night-in traditions. Nodding your head in Walter’s direction, you continued to study your letters and the board with pure focus until you heard the twinkling sound of cereal hitting ceramic.

Not wanting to draw too much attention, you peeked up from your letter rack to make sure your ears weren’t deceiving you. Walter was not just making a bowl for you, but he was also making one for himself.

No way.

Walter made his way back to the table with the cereal, and you looked up at him in shock as though you hadn’t already noticed what he’d done.

“What is this? What is this I see? Walter Marshall choosing breakfast cereal as a snack? Why, I just cannot believe it.” Mock-surprise overtook your form as you motioned fake mind-blowing explosions from your head. Walter rolled his eyes.

“I figured If I can learn to like you, I can learn to like cereal.”

“HEY.”

Walter shrugged, retaking his seat at the table.

You squinted your eyes at him as you declared, “You’re going down for that. And I don’t just mean by losing this game.” A wicked grin crossed your face when you played your double score word:

“CHEERIO”

💋

Walter worked a lot of graveyard shifts while you were dating and during your early years of marriage while you worked a normal 8-5. Sometimes the only moments that you could see each other were when he came home from his shift early in the mornings before you started your day or in the evenings when you got home before he left to start his.

One early morning during your engagement, Walt showed up unannounced after a hard few nights at the PD. He was worn down but happy to see you, smiling through his exhaustion. This was the longest you’d been apart in a while; you hadn't seen each other in 4 days. You kissed him, lips attacking his while his arms snaked around you and pulled you tightly to his body. He hadn’t even come into the house yet.

Pulling him inside, your hands reached up to hold his scruffy face as you placed a more gentle kiss on his lips. “Babe, have you had dinner? Let’s get you something to eat… what would you like?”

He unfastened his holster, dropping it on the table by the door. Sinking into a chair, Walter bent over to untie his boots as he answered, “Honestly, anything is fine, just some kind of food.”

“I can cook you something! Why don’t you let me —“

“Sweet, don’t go to any trouble. I just want to see you before you go to work.”

He looked at the table where you had just sat down to a bowl of cereal for a quick breakfast before he arrived and pointed lazily to it. “That, I’ll take some,” he said, sleep trying to overtake his form.

Slowly grinning at his statement, you mentioned, "Isn't this technically your dinner time?" Walter wasn’t amused as he tilted his head to look at you as you gasped playfully, “You do realize you're about to eat cereal for dinner, right, Marsh?" Too sleepy to give his verbal rebuttal, he glared at you, the corners of his lips turning up slightly, which was your signal to accept your victory and move on.

Smiling softly back at him, you made your way to pour him a big bowl and made him a cup of piping hot tea to accompany it. Watching his face as he ate, you observed the little creases and purple-gray rings that had formed around his deep ocean-blue eyes. His beard was unkempt and had grown past its normal length just in the few days you’d been apart; you could see this was a new level of exhaustion.

“Tough night?” You asked him, moving your chair closer to him.

He nodded. “Very.” The nights were becoming more strenuous recently. Ever since he had switched to the detective unit, work had been holding him hostage and was taking a toll more than he’d like to admit.

His hand reached over to squeeze the free one lying on your lap. “I’m happy to see you, love.” The hard lines on his face softened as he traced lazy circles on the back of your hand with his calloused thumb. You could see in his eyes that he meant it, that you were his safe space. Walter always was in protection mode, always on alert, even though you tried to keep him at ease when he was with you. He was only really ever at ease once he was home and you were safe in his arms.

The food began to rouse him from sleepiness, and as he gained alertness, Walter’s brow furrowed as he took notice of the cereal box sitting on the dining table. “This is the one we’re eating? I expected you to be eating more of one of those tooth-rotting cereals that you love so much.” He looked over at the box of Honey Bunches of Oats with curiosity and then back at you, lifting what you called his ‘detective eyebrow.’

“This is… surprisingly somewhat better for you? Or at least it acts like it is.”

“Oh come on, I’m not that bad. I only let you believe that I am. It is my breakfast time after all,” you winked at him knowingly.

“Good to know my words are finally starting to sink in. I mean, it’s not that much better for you,” he was reading the box now, “but at least it isn’t borderline fluorescent, like those artificial fruity ones you’re always eating.”

“You know, it’s almost like I expect the hate and just enact my deflection shield every time you walk in the door.” You started giggling, unable to keep a straight face as you threw your arms in front of your face as a shield to his words. “Don’t worry, Walt, my guilty pleasure cereal collection is well-stocked. And quit hating on my Fruity Pebbles.”

💋

Slowly over time, these seemingly random cereal dates became a large foundation for quality time. These dates became like snapshots, each one memorable in its own way.

When you two hadn’t seen each other in days, you caught up over a cold bowl of sugary sweetness. You, telling all the details of your days; him, quietly listening and trying his best to leave his nights behind.

From then on, all it took was knowing you could have a cereal date mixed in the chaos of everyday life. Anytime things got hard or heavy, it was time to have a cereal date. Anytime you had a fight: you both would pause and make a bowl of cereal, sitting across the table from each other so that you could speak your feelings. There weren’t many of the world’s problems, or your own, that couldn’t be solved over sugary cereal and cold milk.

💋

You’d dragged Walter to your shared bed as soon as he’d arrived home, having not seen him for more than a few minutes at a time for the past month. This current case of his was intense and ongoing, but he was finally finished. You knew he was defeated in energy, but you were ovulating and your hormones were raging. Your body craved his touch and the feel of his skin gliding upon your own.

The plan was to go to dinner for a romantic evening since it had been a long while since that had been possible, but as soon as he walked through the door, your feral sexuality washed over you and you jumped into his arms. You clung to him with your face in his neck, taking in his scent and the warmth of his strong arms holding you up. He clung to you just as tightly. There was no complaint from the bear, for he was more than happy to spend the evening spoiling his lover.

Cuddling in the afterglow of your countless orgasms, a storm raged outside as tree limbs slapped at your windows incessantly.

“Wow, it sounds awful out there. I know we were going out, but I think that point is moot now.” You glanced up at Walter, kissing his jaw. “Let’s just cook something easy instead.”

“That sounds great, and we can stay naked.” Walt’s eyebrows danced flirtatiously as he grinned down at you, his hands caressing your warm skin. “I’ll go hunt around so I can keep my woman energized for the night ahead. We are nowhere near done.”

He’d only been gone a minute when a crack of thunder shook the house and the lights went dark. You heard his mumbling coming from the kitchen; he had called in to get a status update from the energy company.

Walking back into the bedroom, Walter, in his naked glory, walked over to where you laid, illuminated only by the candle he held in his hand. Wow, your husband was delicious.

"Power’s out for the whole city. It’ll take hours since this storm doesn’t have an end in sight. Looks like a hot dinner is off the table… and no one will deliver in this weather. I guess we know what’s for dinner." Setting the candle on the nightstand, he crawled back into bed.

Feeling seductive, despite being completely spent from your ravenous love-making mere minutes beforehand, you still hadn’t had your fill of your husband. You bit your lip as you ran your eyes up and down his exquisite body and cheekily replied, “Me, I hope.”

He chuckled lowly, the fangs in his pearly-white smile glinting at you in the candlelight. “You? Yes. I plan to feast on you all night long, kitten. But you’re going to need some sustenance first.” He was hovering over you. You couldn’t help yourself as you reached to run your fingers along his hairy chest and wrapped a leg around his hip, pulling him closer to you.

"Make it a cereal date?" You grinned at him.

“You read my mind.”

💋

“Our child is going to come out looking like the Lucky Charms Leprechaun if you don’t change it up some, love.”

Your cravings were intense. You’d heard several different views from your girlfriends and sisters: some craved random things they never even liked before, and some craved more of the things that they already loved and ate religiously before pregnancy. You fell into the latter. Cereal was your most sought-after snack: a big surprise to no one.

There weren’t many cliche late-night ice cream runs, but there were plenty of cereal and milk runs. Walter was a dutiful dad already, not lecturing you too often on what you wanted; he knew you were doing what you had to for the baby, and you ate healthily enough… aside from the copious amounts of junk cereal.

True to numerous other times in your life, date nights were hard to come by, even still. Sometimes the only dates you and Walter would get were in the wee hours of the morning when you’d wake up with a craving.

Walter was extremely doting, and even though he’d always been a caretaker, he really came into his own when you both learned you were to become parents. He’d crawl from the bed without a word, rummaging in the kitchen to bring you a bowl of your favorite and even bringing a small one for himself. You two would snuggle in the bed and talk. Talk about your baby, about future babies, about the future, about your dreams, all of it. You never knew when you met the grumpy bear that he would become this sweet of a man, always tender with you even when he was rough. Maybe it was the cereal sugar that had sweetened him up, at least you’d like to think so.

💋

Your daughter had been in the world for a little over three weeks, and neither you nor Walter had gotten much sleep since her arrival.

Walter finally got her down to sleep while you watched from the nursery doorway. You hadn’t had a meal together or slept at the same time for more than 10 minutes in weeks.

He was standing over her crib, resting his arms on the side as he watched her sleep. He was infatuated with this tiny human who had completely taken hold of his heart.

“Honey, join me for a date?” Your smile was tired, and as your bear’s exhausted eyes met yours, you wondered if you two shouldn’t just go to bed, but you missed him. You’d barely gotten the chance to praise him for how good of a daddy he was to your little girl.

“Mhm, gladly. Our usual?” He quietly followed you to the living room, where the coffee table had already been set up with the works. Craving the feel of his touch on your skin, you both sat on the couch and you laid your legs across his lap while you enjoyed the serenity of each other’s company.

💋

A chill glided across your skin as you awoke from a dream. You rolled over, reaching your arms out to find your sturdy man, searching for his warmth. Instead, you found cold bedsheets.

Unlike Walter to not be in bed with a furry arm draped over you, you pulled on your robe and went to find him, a slight worry filling your mind.

Surely he would have woken me if he’d had to go in?

As you stepped into the hallway, you heard hushed giggles and whispers coming from the kitchen. You stopped to poke your head into your kids’ rooms. Their beds were empty.

At least it’s Saturday.

Quietly pitter-pattering to your kitchen, you peered your head around the corner to find one of the sweetest sights your eyes had ever seen: your two babes, 8 and 5, were playing a princess board game at the table with your Bear. Cereal by their side, giggles ensued as the sugar hit their systems and they tried their best to keep quiet.

Walter’s deep whisper quietly filled the space. “Shh, girls. We can’t wake Mum, she needs her rest.”

“Can I have more Cap’n Crunch, Daddy?” Your youngest had an insatiable sweet tooth, just like her mama. She was quietly bouncing in her chair and smiling a toothy grin at her daddy.

“You’re just like your mum,” Walter beamed at her, obliging her wishes. “Just a little more, love, then we need to brush our teeth and get back to sleep.”

Not wanting the girls to know that you knew about their secret, you decided to make your way back to bed, but not before catching your husband’s eye as he winked at you and a grin radiated from his face.

Warm tingles filled your body as you silently thanked the universe for Walter and the life that the two of you had built together. Walter was the best dad and husband in the world. How had you gotten so lucky?

💋

“Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Golden Grahams, love?” Walter called to you from the kitchen.

The movie was selected, the kids were away for the evening sleeping at friend’s houses, and you and Walter were having a much-deserved night in.

You called back to him, “I’m thinking I’m going to skip the cereal? I’m not really feeling it tonight. I will, however, eat the spicy chips. Oh, and grab that dip out of the fridge, will ya?”

“For the last time, they are crisps.” Annoyance was evident by his tone.

“They’re chips, Walter. You’ve lived in the states for how long now? Just give it up already.”

“No fucking way. Wait… You don’t want cereal? Are you feeling alright?” Walter’s head popped into the doorway that connected the kitchen to the living room, his face stern with confusion and concern.

“Ehh, not right now. Yes, I’m fine, Marsh,” you giggled. “Just feeling like something different for once.”

“Well, that’s shocking. I’m just wondering if you’re really my wife.” Giggles continued to flow out of you as he wandered back to where you were seated. He handed you your snack, and plopped on the couch next to you, cuddling into you as you tossed a blanket over both of your bodies. Walter started the movie and began to chow down on the bowl of cereal he’d made for himself. You couldn’t control the smirk that spread across your lips as you watched him out of the corner of your eye.

“What?” he asked, his mouth full of the golden and cinnamon squares. His eyes met yours, questioning you.

“I would just like to point out that I knew I could convince you.”

His brow furrowed in confusion, not sure what you meant. “Convince me of what?”

“That cereal is the best movie snack.”

“I don’t know if I’d say it’s the best…”

“Walt, I’m sitting here with your previous favorite movie snack in my hands, and you totally skipped over it and went for cereal. I’m just saying, I told you so. It’s okay, I’ve known I was right all along, you don’t have to admit it.”

“Hmm.” He growled, mouth full again as he ignored your statement.

“Give me a bite!” You pressed closer to him, reaching for his spoon as he angled his body and cereal away from you.

“Oh no, nice try. You tease, you don’t get any.”

“Fine, grumpy, I’ll go make my own. Keep watching, I’ll be back.”

Shuffling to the kitchen, you proceeded to grab a bowl and make your own, but you found both cereal boxes empty on the counter. Quickly turning to check your special cereal cabinet for a backup box, you discovered you were completely out.

“WALTER! Are you fucking kidding me? We just bought those!” Standing with your arms crossed in the doorway, you glared at Walt as he stared back at you unfazed.

“I hate to break up your gloating, but you created this monster, love. And don’t forget about our two other little monsters who take after you.” His grin was cocky; he knew he’d bested you. Laser beams could have been shooting from your eyes for all you knew. You shook your head in disbelief at the audacity of your husband.

That bastard. That beautiful bastard.

Walter smiled softly at you and motioned for you to rejoin him on the couch. Much to your dismay, your anger at him diffused immediately. “Love, I’ll go buy more first thing in the morning. Here, come and share mine. I’ll be nice… it is date night, after all.”

* I do not own Walter Marshall, Nomis, Night Hunter, or anything related to it.

#Walter marshall #Walter marshall x you #nomis #night hunter #Henry cavill #henry cavill fanfic #cereal dates #scorpiobitch95 #jill writes #fluff #Walter fluff

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procrastinatingsapphictrash · 4 years ago

Text

Affection

Word count: 1251

Genre: Fluff Pairing: Natasha x gn!reader

Warnings: Mentions of sex but nothing sexual (let me know if I need to add more)

Request: Hii! I'm loving all your fics about Nat, and I wanted to request something. Nat x fem reader and she's touch starved since she never really had any kind of affection in her life, and when she starts dating reader she realises she really needs physical affection! I just need some fluff with Nat

Summary: Reader and Natasha watch a movie and Natasha realizes how much she likes affection.

A/n: This request was for @stephanieromanoff, so I hope you like it because I had a lot of fun writing this one. So I feel kinda bad because I have a ton of requests to get to and I only got this request today (I did warn you guys I was’t going to do them in exact order) but I figured writing this was better than writing nothing. This request really inspired me because I love writing soft Nat fics and it got me back into a writing mood after hitting writers block on my series. Because of that I may not get part two of Feel out tomorrow like I hoped but I am trying to catch up on requests and will get part two out soon. Anyways I hope everyone enjoys and as always my requests are open, especially since I’m in a writing mood and I want to put something out every single day.

You flick through the titles, not particularly wanting to see any of them. It’s interesting that before when you had to pay for movies you seemed to want to see so many but now that you lived in the tower and you had pretty much every streaming service for free (thanks to Tony), every movie and show looked a little more boring.

“Tasha do you have any suggestions?” You ask, looking over at your girlfriend. You still were in shock you could even consider Natasha your girlfriend and although it had only been a week since your first date you would do anything not to mess this relationship up.

“I haven’t been paying attention to the choices.” She admits and you laugh a little.

“Why don’t you look through some of the options while I get some popcorn and drinks ready?” You suggest.

She nods. “Sounds good, can you please pass over the remote?” You smile and stand making your way over to her with the remote in your hand. Handing it to her you lean over and kiss her forehead and nose lightly while touching the sides of her face before you pull back and walk to the kitchen, satisfied with the blush that spread all over her face at your actions.

The popcorn doesn’t take too long to make and you pour some ice water with lemon slices while it pops so you make it back to the living room in under five minutes. The sight that you are greeted with might just be the cutest thing ever in your opinion. Natasha has the top of the blanket over her head and it wrapped around her entire body except for her eyes and she looks tiny while buried in the blankets because she has her knees pulled up to her chest.

“Did you pick a movie?” You ask her.

She jumps a barely noticeable amount in surprise, having not heard you coming. “Yeah, I thought we could watch Little Women.”

“That sounds good,” you tell her, “and by the way you look absolutely adorable wrapped in the blanket like that.”

She blushes. “I was going to take it off before you got back but it’s too comfy.”

“Well I’m very glad that you didn’t.” You tell her honestly, openly admiring her. She blushes again and starts the movie instead of answering. Even before it truly starts you know you’ll spend a good portion of the movie watching her because it was hard to take your eyes off of her and you had read the book so you knew the plot anyways.

As you originally suspected you spent almost the entire time watching her watch the movie. You love the way the emotions flit freely over her face, her giggling along with the happy parts and biting her lip when things get sad. You were just watching the scene where you (and probably everyone else) cried while reading the book when she pauses the movie.

“What was that for?” You ask, turning to her. She faces you, her eyes teary but none of them falling.

“I just need a minute to gather my bearings,” She says and you know the movie must truly be affecting her because usually she doesn’t like to reveal her emotions. “I chose this movie because you said you really liked the book, I didn’t realize it was sad!”

“You do know it’s okay to cry while watching this, pretty much everyone does.” You tell her.

Your permission seems to be the thing she needs and she breaks down into sobs. “I just can’t believe that happens, it’s so sad, none of them deserved that.”

You move over to her end of the couch, hesitantly putting your arms around her, ready to remove them when she seems to stiffen but then tightening her grip when she seems to relax into your arms. You pick up the remote and press play again, putting your arm back around her. Almost the entire rest of the movie you can feel her silently shake because she is crying and even though you already knew exactly what was going to happen you can’t help but let a few tears spill out. By the time it ends she is even further curled into you and manages to let out a small watery smile at the happy ending. You move to release her and stand up but she pulls you back down.

“No.”

“No what, Tasha?” You ask, amusement lining your voice. “No getting up.”

“No getting up.” She repeats before resting her head on your shoulder, her breath tickling your neck. You are happy to oblige her, keeping your arms around her and absentmindedly running your hand up and down your back. She hums in contentment and you can feel the vibrations in your shoulder.

“You know if someone had told me two weeks ago that I’d be dating you, I’d say they were optimistic, but if they told me you liked cuddles I’d get them tested in a mental institution!” You tease her.

She takes her head off her shoulder and looks up at you. “I didn’t even know I liked this until now, nobody has ever done this for me before.”

You feel your heart simultaneously break and fill with affection for her. “I’m sorry about that, but I’m honored to be your first.”

She giggles. “You make it sound like you mean it in the first to have sex with me.” Her expression turns to a frown. “You will be far from first with that.”

“I know and I don’t care about that.” You look into her eyes so she knows you’re telling the truth. “This is more important to me. Sex doesn’t always mean love, this, this means love.”

“Did you just say you love me?” She asks incredulously, her eyes wide.

You think about denying it, worried that it’s too soon because your relationship is so new but you’ve been in love with her for years and you can’t keep hiding it. “Yes, I did.” She continues looking up at you and as much as you try to, you can’t begin to read what she’s thinking.

“I think I love you too.” She whispers after what feels like an eternity and you let out a breath you didn’t even realize you were holding.

“Thank god, it would have been pretty awkward otherwise.” Placing a small peck on her mouth and then going back for a peck on her forehead. “However as much as I’d love to stay here, it’s getting late and we should probably get ready for bed. She pouts but untangles herself from you and brings your empty dishes to the kitchen while you exit out of the movie.

“Will you sleep with me tonight?” She blurts out when she returns to the living room and you start to splutter. “No, no, no, I didn’t mean for that to come out like that. I meant will you sleep with me literally, like more cuddles.”

She hides her face in her hands embarrassed and you laugh loudly at her mistake. “Of course Tasha, I’d love to.”

She practically beams. “Thank you!”

“You really enjoy being held, huh?” You teasingly ask her, enjoying her flustered expression. “But seriously,” you add on, taking pity on her, “I love to hold you as well, so ask anytime.” She smiles again and takes the hand you hold out for her as you lead her through the halls to her room.

---

Taglist: @fayhar @stephanieromanoff @acertainredhead @stop-drop-and-drumroll (if you want to be added, comment, send an ask or message me)

#natasha romanoff #natasha romanoff x reader #black widow #black widow x reader #avengers #marvel fanfiction #x reader

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imkylotrash · 4 years ago

Text

The Noble Kind

Pairing: Sir Gwaine x reader

Request: She's the queen, married to uther but is just a year or 2 older than Arthur. She has magic. They had an arranged marriage cause her kingdom which is extremely powerful didn't want to go to war with uther as they were taking in refugees to protect and didn't want to inforce the idea that magic is evil. She has an affair with gawain and they run away when she's pregnant. Anonymous

Tagging: @bitchwhytho @music-of-melody @shadowhuntyi

“It’s for the greater good,” you mother tells you right before you marry the King of Camelot in an attempt to prevent a war. Uther is a great king for the most part but he is frightened by what he doesn’t understand. Magic is one of the things he knows nothing of - leaving it up to your kingdom to take in the refugees running for their lives.

“To a strong alliance,” he toasts at the wedding party and you keep a smile plastered on your face through the entire evening even though you hate every second. You’ve always said you’d marry for love but there’s no lost love between you and Uther. He agreed for the alliance and nothing more. You agreed because it was the right thing to do for your people. None of you could afford to go to war with each other.

“A strong alliance,” you echo lifting the glass of wine placed in front of you. In the crowd, you spot Gwaine looking at you with sorrow in his eyes. He didn’t want to believe it until he saw it with his own eyes. But then something changes, you see the flip switch as he raises his glass to you before downing the whole thing. You should’ve known he wouldn’t take this well.

“Have I lost your interest already?” Uther asks with a sparkle in his eyes of something you can’t quite figure out.

“Of course not, dear. I was simply amused by the people dancing.” You’re quick to recover having been taught etiquette and manners your entire life. You know the game well enough and you’ve only gotten better after your mother abdicated and handed the crown over to you. The loss of her king, your father, had been too much. You stepped in knowing you’d had to give up what little life you had acquired. Gwaine was the only thing you refused to let go of.

“You should join them. Show them they can trust their new queen.” You wonder where Arthur but that question doesn’t go unanswered very long. He comes in by a back entrance quietly sitting down next to Uther.

“As you wish, my king.” You join the common people dancing and they’re quick to welcome you and show you the steps. It’s the most fun you’ve had all night. You don’t see Gwaine in the crowd though which worries you. It won’t do anyone any good if he gets drunk enough to make a scene.

“He’s in your chamber,” Merlin whispers using his magic to carry the sound to you and only you. He must’ve figured out who you were looking for.

“Thank you,” you whisper back. Merlin is the only one who knows about you and Gwaine but he’s promised to keep quiet. He doesn’t want to cause problems for neither of you. It’s another hour before you feel it’s appropriate to retreat for the night. Uther doesn’t object when you inform him that you’ll be spending the night in your private chambers and you don’t feel guilty for doing so. The marriage is strategic and you both know it. Besides, there’s something about only being one summer older than Uther’s own son.

You finally reach your chambers having sent your servants to bed with the promise that you’ll be able to take care of yourself. It’s an excuse to keep them from seeing Gwaine. He’s drunk when you enter, he’s very drunk.

“Do you ever stay away from trouble?” you ask noticing the split lip and the bruise on his cheekbone. He’s been fighting again.

“You know, I had the strangest dream,” he starts but you’re too tired to make sense of his metaphors. You want him cleaned up and ready to sleep.

“Let me,” you whisper carefully wetting a cloth and rinsing the worst of the blood from the cut.

“You could always do the witchy woo,” he says wiggling his eyebrows and puckering his lips.

“It’d do you some good to heal naturally. Perhaps you wouldn’t worry me so much,” you reply but the second he mentions the pain you’ve lost all resolve to let him heal on his own. You can’t let him be in pain when you can take it away.

“Fine,” you whisper placing your hand right about the cut and closing your eyes. In mere seconds, the wound has closed as if he’s been waiting for you here the whole time and not been out looking for trouble.

“Thank you,” he says this time a little more serious. You feel as though you can finally exhale as you crawl into bed with him. These are your moments of peace, the moments where you can avoid the pressure of your title and the expectations that come with the crown.

“You know, you did just get married. Normally, there’s something you’d consummate the marriage as well.” He’s drunk and out of his mind, but he’s your crazy drunk and looking into his eyes you feel nothing but love.

“Sober up and I’ll think about it.” You don’t consummate anything that night but you do the following nights. You get careless and before you know it, you’re late. Gaius confirms your suspicions and congratulates you thinking it belongs to Uther. But Merlin knows the truth though which means he’ll be the only person who can help you.

“We must leave tonight,” you confide in him. If Uther finds out that you’ve disrespected him in these manners, he’ll have you hung and declare war on your kingdom. If you flee, you’ll be able to have the baby and come up with some sort of plan for your return. It’s the safest option.

“Meet me down here tonight. I’ll get you out of Camelot but then you’re on your own,” Merlin murmurs already concocting a plan for how to distract Gaius as he helps you escape. There’s no time for excitement when you tell Gwaine what has happened but you can tell he’s over the moon.

“And it’s mine?” he whispers eyes full of affection. He never thought he’d want to become a father but learning the news of your pregnancy has proven him wrong.

“Of course it’s yours,” you say with as much dignity as you can muster. How could he ever think it wasn’t his? You stop dead in your tracks when Arthur appears around the corner.

“Sir Gwaine. My Lady.” He kisses your hand from obligation rather than willingness.

“Could I have a moment with her Highness?” Gwaine knows he can’t say no but the hesitation is enough to raise suspicion. He continues down the hallway as you remain with Arthur.

“He’s good with a sword but that brainless head of his is going to get him killed one day.” You chuckle having said the exact same thing to Gwaine many times.

“Perhaps his sword skills will be the thing to save him from the troubles his brainless head creates?” you suggest hoping the talk of Gwaine will distract you from the real question; why are you down here? But it doesn’t and you mention the only thing that will make him run the other way.

“I have terrible cramps. Gaius promised he had a potion that could help.” The mentions of menstrual cramps is enough to send him running and you hurry on laughing at how easy men can be distracted. Sound travels through these tunnels and you’re close enough to hear both Gwaine and Merlin.

“I used to think you hated nobles,” Merlin laughs enjoying the company of his best friend one last time.

“Yeah, well... maybe that one’s worth dying for, eh?” You don’t mention their conversation as you enter but your heart is beating a little faster after hearing his declaration. That night you and Gwaine escape Camelot with help from Merlin. You seek refuge in your own kingdom using magic to distort your features and remain hidden. By the time, Uther realises what has happened, you’ve taken in too many sorcerers for him to launch an attack that will ultimately lead to a war he will lose. Not too long after the birth of your child, you return to the throne with Gwaine by your side and a little heir running around the throne room.

“Is it wrong for me to miss being on the run?” Gwaine asks you as you walk in the garden surrounding the castle.

“I miss it too sometimes. But I couldn’t abandon my people.”

“You just might be the first noble to care for their people,” he smiles. He takes your hand in his and the topic is never brought up again. Gwaine settles into his role with grace leaving behind the tavern fighting instead focusing on little Merlin and you.

“I’m pretty proud of our little family.”

“Me too.”

#gwaine x reader #gwaine blurb #gwaine imagine #gwaine bbc merlin #bbc merlin blurb #bbc merlin imagine #bbc merlin #sir gwaine x reader #sir gwaine blurb #sir gwaine #king arthur #merlin #uther pendragon

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after-witch · 4 years ago

Text

Yandere Ransom Imagine

“That's some heavy-duty conjecture.”

Word Count: 2700ish

notes: unhealthy relationships, emotional and physical abuse, financial abuse, yandere

Imagine being a struggling adult working a full time job plus freelancing gigs just to get by in your one-bedroom apartment where the ceiling always leaks when it rains and you have to perform a complicated maneuver to make sure the door doesn’t jam up on you and you’re constantly worried about your landlord raising the rent.

Maybe a well-meaning friend gets you a gift card to an upscale bookstore because they know you haven’t had a new book on your shelves in years, or maybe you find $20 on the street like a veritable Charlie Bucket but instead of buying a Wonka Bar you head into a this fantastic artisan coffee shop on the rich side of town, a place that everyone always raves about on Instagram, just so you can try an expensive latte with hand-ground beans and flavors you’ve never heard of before--because don’t you deserve a treat, for once?

Whatever it is, wherever it is, Hugh Ransom Drysdale is waiting inside and sees you there.

And oh my God is it obvious that you’re out of place right off the bat. I mean, what the hell is someone like you doing in this part of town?

With your worn out clothes that are worn from necessity and not from being fashionably thrifted and your ratty purse stuffed with papers and candy wrappers that spill out when you dig in for your card or cash and your winter boots that you’ve probably worn 5 years in a row, ripped in the hell and patched with black tape that you hope people don’t notice.

It becomes even more obvious that you’re out of your element when something goes wrong. The gift card isn’t activated. The $20? A fake, probably a movie prop that blew in the wind. Whatever goes wrong, it means that you’re suddenly at the register, impatient people with real money tapping their expensive shoes behind you, unable to pay. You’re left standing there like a deer in headlights, unsure of what to do or say.

Normally he might just roll his eyes and remind himself that people like you ought to stick to your own shops, your own place. But something about the way your eyes go all downcast and you seem to shrink down in embarrassment makes him take pity on you. Like a stray cat in the alley hoping someone will toss it some scraps.

So he strides up and flicks out a card and hands it to the cashier, dropping a friendly greeting to them because he spends like crazy and they probably know him by name at this place, and he’s the one who hands you your coffee or your bag and your hands touch ever so briefly during the exchange.

He leads you away from the register--don’t want to piss off the spoiled debutantes and assistants on lunchtime coffee runs--and you stammer out a thank-you-thank-you and you promise you’ll pay him back as soon as you can and Jesus Christ, isn’t that just adorable? Someone like you, some lost kicked puppy who can’t even afford new boots, promising to pay him back?

He doesn’t care if you pay him back, but he finds that he would like something out of this exchange, so he says that instead of paying him back you can do him the honor of going to lunch with him. His treat.

He insists. And you can’t really say no, can you? You are hungry and he did just pay for your things and it’s the least you can do to oblige his request.

He’s not stupid. He doesn’t take you to some razzle dazzle fancy restaurant where you’ll feel embarrassed and out of place. Instead he takes you to a quiet diner, classy not greasy, where you can have an easy conversation and tell him all about yourself.

It’s funny. Normally he brings up his family name, his grandfather’s books, to women he picks up, to get them impressed and hooked and pliable. Something about you, though. Something about you is making him want to turn this into more than a lunch date and pressure for a quickie in the car to repay him.

So he holds back to see what he can do with you on his own. No quickie in the car, but instead before he drops you off--at a bus station, you insisted--he brushes his hand over yours. Can he get your number? He swears he can feel the heat coming off your cheeks as you fumble for your phone and let him put his number in your contacts.

He waits a day, then asks you out again. Dinner, this time. He asks you if you know any good places and you recommend a dive bar that you can go to after work (because 1) schedule and 2) cheap) and shit, he’s all for it. There will be time in the future to impress you with restaurants that have dress codes instead of sticky floors. You sit close on the stools and you buy him a drink (real cute, real real cute) and just for you he keeps the baggie in his pocket there all night instead of heading to the bathroom to liven things up.

Your relationship develops with an almost shocking speed. He knows just how to reel you in. I mean--look at you. Working your ass off at some dead end job, living in an apartment so shitty it takes you almost a month before you reluctantly agree to let him see it.

He can understand, though. Because you’re not that stupid and you know he’s wealthy, even before he casually brings up his family in a “it’s no big deal but I don’t want to keep things from you because we’re getting serious” sort of way.

You pretend to be casual about it all, but he can tell you’re suddenly wondering: why the hell would someone from this wealthy family want anything to do with me?

It’s a question Ransom asks himself a lot. He asks himself this when he’s snorting coke off another woman’s stomach (hey, you’re dating, but he’s got needs and they aren’t met with hand-holding) or when he’s eating another greasy burger at a shitty bar because you refuse to let him buy you a nice dress to wear so he can take you out somewhere fancy.

You’re not the type of person he normally goes for, not at all. He has strings of girlfriends and flings, but they all tend to fit that same cookie cutter mold: wealthy do-nothings with their parent’s credit card who want someone else to spoil them for a while, without caring who it is or what they’re like. They’re easy pickings that Ransom can burn through and then toss aside when he’s bored of them. Some of them cry but a few days later he’ll see them on someone else’s arm, it’s the circle of life.

With you, though, there’s more. You don’t expect him to pay for dates or anything at all (even when he wants to spoil you a bit) and you have actual conversations and you seem to actually give a shit about what he says and does. You argue with him, too, when he wants you to do something (just let him take you shopping, for Christ’s sake!) or he asks you to move in (again) and you say no (again). I mean, you really fight with him, spitting words and all.

And unlike his previous girlfriends, you don’t come crawling back a few hours later because you want to buy a new purse with his shiny credit card. Instead, you make him apologize first. Fuck, that’s hot. It’s also something he tucks away in the back of his mind to work on later--but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t admit that he sometimes has the overwhelming urge to push you against the wall and fuck you for the first time right after a good argument.

But he knows that would destroy your image of him entirely, so he holds back. He’s good at crafting a version of himself that appeals to others when he has to, and you’re maybe the first person that’s been worth all the effort he’s put into you so far.

But you need a push, a push that makes it so you can’t go running back to your shithole apartment when you fight or when you question whether or no you two have a future. You do, you’re just too naive--too inexperienced with money, to say it charitably--to realize it.

So he tips off the fire marshal about your apartment building’s shoddy fire escapes and well, damn, in the process of the investigation all the little corners that your landlord has cut come crashing down. At least they were discovered before it was the building that came crashing down.

But the evacuation of the building leaves you--and countless others--high and dry. You don’t have any family in the area, and your only half ass-decent friend in the city lives in the same building but her parent’s aren’t going to let a stranger move in.

When you finally realize you have no options and call him, voice tentative and embarrassed, he knows just what to say to get you to pack your meager belongings and wait for him to pick you up. He’s no-nonsense about it.

He knows how to avoid deflating your pride, how to keep you from deciding you’d rather stay in a shelter than take his charity. You’ll pay him back, he says, you’ll figure out a rental plan or whatever. He even teases--he’s not the best landlord, but he won’t take 2 weeks to change the toilet if you submit a maintenance request. It makes you crack a smile and bam, just like that, he knows he’s gotten in.

That night, after takeout and wine and a Netflix movie neither of you paid attention to, you fuck for the first time on his expensive sheets on his expensive bed and afterwards, when you’re both sweating and cuddling and reveling in the afterglow, he makes a note to buy you some new lingerie.

It’s all very homey, for a while. He could do without you leaving for work and working your ass off, with your freelance shit, sometimes staying on the computer until two, three in the morning. But it’s nice to have you close all the time, available to him whenever (almost whenever) he wants. He brings home takeout and you snuggle on the couch and he finally even convinces you to go out with him to a nice restaurant wearing something he’s bought and hot damn, do you look good, head-to-toe in the clothing he’s chosen for you. Especially, later that night, in private, in the lingerie.

Does he love you? The word hasn’t left his lips yet, hasn’t crossed yours either, but he can feel it underneath the surface. No. It’s more than love. He wants you. He wants to have you. And not just for the afternoon or the summer, but forever.

He spins daydreams about how he’ll clean you up nice and introduce you to the family. Probably to Harlan, first, because everyone knows that’s whose opinion really matters. Harlan will like you--he would probably like you without any primping or fixing, actually, which is more than he could say for his parents or anyone else in the family. Then once you’re in, you’re in--you’ll come to family dinners and vacation retreats where people always end up in ridiculous arguments, and you two can exchange snarky comments about the family on the ride home.

And yeah, sure. You fight sometimes.

He throws out your old clothes and buys you a wardrobe befitting someone he wants to integrate into his family. You fight about that.

He makes comments about you how you should quit your job or at least try to get a degree--he’ll pay, as long as you agree to go to a university within driving distance--to work somewhere more respectable than a chain restaurant. You fight about that.

He gets pissed when you want to meet some “friends” at a bar without him, because why would you need to go anywhere without your loving boyfriend in tow, unless you were trying to flirt with someone else? You definitely fight about that.

And, okay. Maybe he’s hypocritical.

Maybe he goes out late at night when you’re stuck doing your “freelancing work” and he’s in a rotten mood about it, and he ends up on the floor of a swanky club with drugs in his system and lipstick on his neck. He doesn’t come home until the next morning and you’re pissed and red-eyed and arguing with him, accusing him even, but you have no shitty apartment to stomp back to anymore so you’re stuck.

Until you’re not stuck. Until he casually snoops through your phone and sees that you’re looking up cheap-ass apartments and hey, you’ve already booked a few interviews already. The thought of you slipping through his fingers makes him more sober than he’s been in a while. He’s got to do something. Not to himself, of course. But to you. To keep you with him.

It’s easy enough to get you fired. He’s a ‘Thrombey’ after all, and some nice crisp bills anonymously sent to the right hands is all it takes for you to come home one night, cheap mascara (he notes: buy you some better quality makeup soon) running down your cheeks. Your freelancing isn’t nearly enough to get you into an apartment.

He assumes that you’ll give up on the idea after losing your job, but you’re nothing if not stubborn (one of the reasons why he likes you) so you start the job hunt the next morning, fresh mascara in place.

Damn, do you keep him busy. Anonymous calls. Cash in nice white envelopes. Rejection after rejection. You get so sad, so depressed. You don’t even want to go out to restaurants, so he orders in and you snuggle in his lap while he feeds you bites of orange chicken and rubs your back. It almost brings you two closer again, starts to mend the rifts that began when you refused to get over his occasional late night out.

But then you break the uneasy mending by snooping and woah, you don’t like what you find on his phone.

You fight.

Damn, do you fight. This time there’s no pretense of potential forgiveness as you begin wildly throwing your clothes into your ratty duffel bag from the back of the closet, telling him to fuck off fuck off fuck off, telling him he’s crazy, telling him that what he’s doing is fucking illegal and--

It’s the shock that hurts you the most.

The shock you feel when he grips your wrist hard and pushes back on your shoulder when you try to yank away, pushing you against the wall with a hard thud. It’s like having a rug pulled out from underneath your feet when you feel a slight ache in your back, on your shoulders, when you tell him to Let go, goddamn it and he only pushes back harder to keep you in place. It’s Ransom. It’s Ransom who’s doing this.

His voice feels unrecognizably cold when he leans in and hisses in your ear.

“You think you can just leave me? After all I’ve done for you? Let me tell you something--you won’t get another job within one hundred miles of here, within one thousand miles of here, unless I say you can. So just put your clothes back in the closet, chill the fuck out, and stop being such an ungrateful bitch.”

It’s the shock that makes you numbly hang your clothes back up in the closet, fold them again with shaking hands, and sit on the bed until the dam breaks and you cry.

And oh fuck, he’s sorry. Really. He wraps his arm around your shoulders and then he’s the one who’s crying and confessing that he didn’t want you leave him because yeah, he knows he’s a fuck up, he knows he’s got a drug problem, but he loves you.

It’s the first time he’s ever said it out loud. He loves you. “I love you,” he says, again and again, half-laughing. And he tells you you’re the only person he’s ever dated that made him want to be a better person but he doesn’t know how.

You don’t know what to say because maybe you do love him--but he hurt you and got you fired, but the tears on his face seem so genuine and he tells you he’ll never, ever hurt you like that again and fuck, he says, if you want to go get a job he’ll drive you to the interview right now just-let-him-blow-his-nose-first-please.

You make him sit down and then you’re the one apologizing and the rest of the afternoon is a shaky truce between you two as you drink hot chocolate and order in takeout and watch a movie together.

It’s not until you’re both under the sheets, satisfied and then showered, that you think about what he did to you in a clearer light. The thoughts weigh heavy on your mind, pulling and tugging. You think you might love him. He hurt you. He took care of you when no one else would. He cheated on you.

I love you, he tells you, when your mind is starting to tug itself into sleep.

He hit you. He said he was sorry.

He hit you.

#ransom drysdale #ransom x reader #yandere x reader #afterwitch headcanons #afterwitch writes #I'm not sure what to callt this because it's not a normal fic but it's not headcanons either #just #word vomit about ransom after i watched this movie every day for a week straight

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forasecondtherewedwon · 3 years ago

Photo

Runaway Ride

Fandom: Never Have I Ever Pairing: Devi/Paxton Rating: T Word Count: 4889

Summary: Kamala gets herself into a pickle, Devi needs to go to her, and Paxton has a car. Problem-solving has never been so simple, but that's how it is when your new boyfriend is Paxton Hall-Yoshida. Throw in a little hand-holding on the highway and this family crisis might just be the best date Devi will ever have.

When they finally took a break from dancing—disconnecting hands from hips and shoulders, lips from lips—Devi stepped away in a dreamy headspace. She almost collided with Jonah, but he didn’t tell her to look where she was going, only offered a shrewd, indulgent smile.

Actually, everybody was treating her like that; every eye that caught hers on her way to the table where she’d left her stuff was unjudgmental, admiring, straight up fairy-godmotherly. Devi hadn’t received this much notice since her dad’s death and her subsequent paralysis. And those looks had been pitying, freaked out. Positive attention was new and cool and she wondered, as she grabbed her phone out of her turquoise clutch, whether her socials would show more of the same when she opened them. Would people have snapped stealthy pics of her and Paxton dancing now that she’d been vaulted into the pseudo-celebrity strata of the high school hierarchy? Would the Insta posts be captioned with hashtags of their ship name? Paxi? Daxton? Vishwall-Yoshumar?

Devi never got to check.

Unlocking her phone, she found two missed calls from her mother. Maybe two wouldn’t have seemed like a whole lot to someone else, but Devi knew that, in order for her mom to risk rudeness by stepping away from the company she was hosting at home not once but twice, she’d need to be pretty frantic. Two missed calls from Nalini Vishwakumar were the equivalent of six or seven from any other mother.

Skirting the edges of the gym as she headed away from DJ Humanoid—that nit-witted saboteur of slow dances—Devi was about to call her mom back when her screen changed to an incoming call from Kamala. She pressed her other hand to her ear and answered it.

“Hey. Do you know what’s going on with my mom? She called me twice and, honestly, she knows I’m at the d—”

“Devi, shut up. Sorry,” Kamala sighed. “But I may have kidnapped your history teacher and now I’m panicking a little.”

Devi stopped in her tracks.

“You did what? Why is the sound weird?”

As she was trying to identify the background noise coming from Kamala’s end, her eyes swept over the crowd of her classmates and landed on Fabiola’s. Her friend had been smiling, mid-sway as she held Eve from behind and chatted with Sasha, but it fell off her face like Devi off Dr. Jackson’s roof. Fab disentangled herself from her girlfriend and crossed the room to stand with Devi. She was frowning, silently asking for an explanation for Devi’s distress, but Devi didn’t really have one yet.

“We’re in his car on the highway,” her cousin was saying. “He was a little drunk, so I’m driving.”

Devi had imagined that Kamala was exaggerating, but no, this was really starting to sound like a kidnapping.

“You better be on hands-free right now,” she lectured. Then, because she wasn’t exactly a paragon of road safety herself—barely an hour ago, she’d walked right out in front of Paxton’s jeep—didn’t wait for confirmation. “What the hell happened? Context, Kamala!”

“Well, as soon as I snuck out of the house—”

“But why did you sneak out?!”

“Devi, I can’t talk about that right now!” Devi’s eyebrows shot up at the clear and abnormal hysteria in her cousin’s voice. “I ran out of the house,” Kamala continued, “totally directionless, and the first thing that popped into my head was Manish’s invitation for me to come to karaoke…”

“Ew, what the fuck, don’t call Mr. K that.”

What? Fab mouthed at her, but Devi shook her head.

“That is his name and what he asked me to call him. Anyway,” Kamala said, sounding strained, “I went to your school and met up with him and now I’m driving his car and I think I might have shut my sari in the car door, but I’m scared to pull over and check because if I stop the car, I’m going to have to confront things and I think I’d rather not do that yet.”

“Kamala,” Devi said in a heavy, careful voice. “You have to pull over. I totally get what you’re saying because it sounds like something I might do—minus the part where you kidnapped Mr. K—” Fabiola’s eyes went dramatically wide as she was adjusting her tiara. “—but this isn’t you. You don’t run away from your obligations and elope with my teachers!”

“Manish and I didn’t elope. It isn’t in any way romantic.”

“For sure though? It’s not?” Devi heard another voice in the car ask.

“Mr. K, back off! Kamala’s in the middle of a crisis!” she shouted. “And please be drunk enough to forget that I yelled at you.”

“Devi, what should I do?” Kamala asked, sounding desperate in a sad way now.

“Where are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Ok, well, which direction are you heading in?”

“Um, either north or south.”

“You’re a disaster,” Devi muttered.

“What was that?”

“Uh… I said, don’t drive any faster. Try to read the next sign you pass so you can tell me where you are.”

“Alright,” Kamala said.

Devi tilted her phone away from her mouth so her cousin wouldn’t hear her frustrated sigh. She locked eyes with Fabiola.

“Kamala panicked at her engagement dinner and ran off with Mr. K. They’re either headed for Mexico or Canada, but I’ll know more in a minute.”

Fab blinked.

“Wow.”

“I know. It’s a lot. And this is me talking,” Devi emphasized.

“I don’t know if you would do anything this big. Mainly because you don’t have a driver’s license.”

“True.”

“Santa Barbara in twenty-six miles,” Kamala said in her ear.

“Damn, you made good time.”

“The traffic was quite manageable.”

“Try to calm down a little and get off the highway when you can. Don’t go past Santa Barbara. I’m coming to talk you down in person,” Devi said. “Oh, and don’t answer any of my mom’s calls; she’ll just stress you out.”

“That doesn’t seem very responsible. How about I send her a text when I stop to let her know I’m ok?”

Devi rolled her eyes.

“Suit yourself.”

“Thank you, Devi. But how will you get here?”

“Let me worry about that. Text me when you stop so I know exactly where I’m going.”

“I will.”

“’K. I’ll see you in a bit.”

Devi hung up and sighed massively, slumping into the wall and feeling a streamer crumple against her back. She and Fabiola stared at each other.

“What are you gonna do?” Fab asked.

“Be the hero my family needs, but not the one they deserve.”

“Are you misquoting Batman to justify doing something reckless?”

“First of all, rescuing Kamala isn’t reckless, and second of all, the movie isn’t called Batman, it’s The Dark Knight. Young-ish Christian Bale, hello.”

Fabiola pointed a finger at her own face.

“Young-ish out-of-touch lesbian, hello. At least I was close.”

Devi sighed again while Fab smiled sadly at her in obvious sympathy.

“It’s after ten at night. How am I gonna get to Santa Barbara?”

“Assuming you’re not going to ask your mom—”

“No.”

“Then you need a ride.”

“You need a ride? I’ll drive you.”

It was Paxton, walking up and tentatively taking Devi’s hand while darting uncertain glances at Fabiola. Devi felt her entire face light up.

“You don’t want to know where or why?” she teased.

His expression said those were insignificant details. Wow. Devi’d never had a fantasy where Paxton joined forces with her, bounty hunter-style, to track down a flighty Kamala, but this felt oddly romantic. Passionate even? They’d see where the night took them.

“You wouldn’t wanna leave the dance unless it was serious,” Paxton reasoned. “So, I’ll drive you. You wanna go now?”

“I guess we better. Lemme just grab my…”

“I’ll get it,” Fab said, raising a hand like the nerd she was as she volunteered.

She darted back through the dancers to grab Devi’s things and Devi watched their classmates part for their Cricket Queen. She was so proud of Fab. Also, she felt kinda bad for ditching such a momentous occasion. But Kamala needed her, and would totally do the same for her if she ever went off the deep end and kidnapped a dude while fleeing a proposal. Not that Devi could see herself fleeing a proposal (she glanced at Paxton as she thought this, then quickly away, thinking, Way too soon!). Carrying out a kidnapping? With a sufficiently convincing pro-and-con list, anything was possible.

“Basically, Kamala freaked and drove to Santa Barbara with a drunken Mr. K,” Devi said, because Paxton might not have asked to be informed, but she wanted him to know what he was getting himself into. Beyond that, she wanted to give him the chance to say, No way, Devi. I came here to look hot and dance up on you, nothing more.

“Oh shit,” was what he said.

“Damn right, oh shit. You still want to drive? This is going to take a while.”

She should probably have felt guilty about trying to subtly persuade him with her eyes, but not only was Paxton the least complicated option, he was also her first choice. If she maintained eye contact long enough, Devi figured it might trigger some kind of boyfriend override that made going for a long drive at night just as appealing as staying here and dancing with her butt pressed thrillingly to his groin when the teacher-chaperones weren’t looking.

“As long as we can hit up the bathrooms first. I was going to, but then I got talking to Trent, and then Marcus was doing a handstand…”

“Definitely,” Devi assured him. “Good call. Empty the tank. Oh, actually, that reminds me… how much gas do you have in your jeep? If we need to stop at a gas station, I’ll have to factor that in to the ETA I give Kamala.”

Paxton shook his head at her, smiling in what she liked to think was affectionate amusement.

“I filled it up on the way here. I needed a minute to, uh…” To her epic astonishment, he ducked his head self-consciously, cheeks pinking. “You know. Get my shit together. Up here.” He tapped his temple with his index finger. “I wanted to show up for you, like, completely. You know?”

Right as Devi was at dangerously high risk of sagging to the floor in blissful bonelessness, Fabiola sprang to her side, shoving the rest of her possessions at her.

“Ok, ok!” Devi said, harried.

She had to dump it all on the bathroom counter a minute later anyway, but after she’d done her pre-road trip pee, she came out and gave Fab a better thank-you.

“Your Highness,” Paxton told Fabiola with a nod.

Fab nodded back, smiling wryly.

“Prosecutor.”

“I think this is the start of a beautiful friendship,” Devi assessed, “but we gotta go! Say congrats to Eve for me again!”

“Sure. Drive safe!”

Devi and Paxton pushed through the doors together, striding quickly with his hand wrapped around hers. In the parking lot, she glanced sideways to see him digging his keychain out of his front pocket.

“Oh,” she said, “so I wasn’t just feeling that you were very happy to dance with me.”

Until they got into the jeep, it was too dark to see whether she’d gotten him to blush again, but she liked to think that she had. He was definitely smiling.

They got in and Devi carefully tucked her skirt around her legs, mind on Kamala’s cautionary tale. At least it was until Paxton leaned forward to shrug out of his jacket and she saw his shoulder muscles jump beneath his fitted button-down, his narrow black tie swinging forward. Dang. Fifty shades of Hall-Yoshida.

“Santa Barbara?” Paxton double-checked once he was settled behind the wheel, steering out of the student lot.

“Santa Barbara.”

Until they were on the highway and heading out of Los Angeles, Devi did her best to keep her worry about Kamala’s situation contained to the way she flapped her phone against her thigh. Usually, she was stressing about the problems right in front of her (when she wasn’t blatantly ignoring them, only to have that approach bite her in the ass later), but with whatever was going on with Kamala, she kinda had to look ahead.

Had she wanted Kamala to get engaged to Prashant that badly? Well, the best thing about Prashant was that you never knew when having additional hot relatives would be to your benefit. (Devi was already hoping that Mr. K would get over the more nerve-wracking elements of this night and just remember having fun with her stunning cousin… and that this could possibly translate into at least a month of generous grades, if she could somehow spin these shenanigans as an intentional blind date arranged by herself.) However, an engaged Kamala was wholly different from a married Kamala. She wouldn’t be around to watch nonsensical episodes of Riverdale, or be duped into hijinks, or listen to Devi when her mom was too tired, or bitch about her shitty lab-mates in exchange for sitting through Devi bitching about her complicated feelings on the subject of Aneesa dating her ex. She wouldn’t live with them anymore, and the family that had begun to miraculously fill out after her dad had died would be back down to three. And the other two members of it would be old (Sorry, Mom, she thought) and not at all prepared to champion her dating life or the cleavage-accentuating formal dress currently buoying it.

So, yeah, Devi was looking ahead—eyes glazed over as the yellow lights of cars slipped around them to prevent her vision from fully adjusting to the blue-black sky—and feeling more than a little nervous and scared of the Kamala-shaped hole she’d have in her life if her dazzling, dorky cousin left her house for one she might eventually fill with the most beautiful children the world had ever seen.

Thankfully, Paxton was there. It startled her when he took one hand off the wheel and felt across her lap to grab hers, loosely interlacing their fingers. Devi quit hitting her phone against her leg. She sent off their updated location to Kamala and then let her phone fall flat.

“Did she say where she was?” Her boyfriend’s voice was quiet in the car and she realized for the first time that her head had been too crammed with thoughts to put on any music.

“Carpinteria State Beach. Do you know the exit?”

“We’ll find it.”

“And if you want me to drive while you rest on the way back…”

Paxton laughed.

“No way. Safety first.”

“Says the guy driving one-handed,” Devi countered, not that she was eager to surrender the hand warming hers.

He turned his head just long enough to shoot her a look.

“Whoa, pal, eyes on the road!” she said. (She had a half-baked plan to call her boyfriend ‘pal’ a few times and thereby de-weaponize the word in a memory that still felt like a fading bruise, an almost-gone sore spot in who she and Paxton were before they were openly a them.)

“Sorry,” he said, staring out the windshield again. He grinned. “You look gorgeous.”

“Really?”

“So gorgeous.” Paxton’s voice was softer this time, the underlying laugh it had carried since she’d offered to drive his jeep drained out of it. It was nearly a sigh.

“Thanks. So do you.”

“You know, I feel fucking awful for hitting you with my car, but I still think I mighta felt worse if I’d walked in and seen you dancing with somebody else.”

Devi twisted their hands, touching the back of his to her thigh so she was sandwiching it between leg and palm for a moment, aiming for reassuring.

“I wanna say I would never be that flaky, but my previous offenses speak for themselves.”

“So does doing this with me.”

“Uh,” she droned, “to recap, you left a fun thing to do a huge favour for me. You’re talking about it like this is my act of redemption. I feel like if you examine it for a sec, you’ll see how I’m actually kind of a dick for accepting your help.”

“I want us to be together,” he said bluntly. “Here we are. Together.”

“It’s that simple?”

“I don’t see why it can’t be.”

“Huh. I think you’re really gonna be good for my tendency to overcomplicate a situation.”

Paxton laughed and unthreaded his fingers from Devi’s. But it wasn’t to release her for pointing out that this date was, in actual fact, the coordinated response to a family crisis; his fingertips moved lightly over her palm, momentarily trapped when her fingers flinched inward in reaction to how it tickled, then traced along the thin skin of her inner wrist. He wasn’t trying to pull away. He was lingering. Though his touch when he sunk his hand into her hair or drew her closer by her waist had always been fairly gentle, it had often had the faint aggression of hastiness to it, clutching her as they made out in her room, always listening for footsteps in the hallway. How Paxton touched her now was pure, exploratory tenderness. It made the hairs on the back of Devi’s neck stand up as a wave of shivers rushed up her spine and crested somewhere around the nape of her neck.

He must’ve felt that wave break, the foamy aftereffects in some tic of her arm or quickening of her pulse while his fingers skimmed gradually up the inside of her arm towards her elbow, because he chanced another quick glance at her.

“That feels good,” she explained.

Paxton looked forward, nodding slowly, and shifted in the driver’s seat.

“Good.”

She thought it must have felt good for him too, knowing he’d made her shiver.

—

The miles were flicking past for Paxton—another, another, another, as fast and steady as the dashed lines painted between the lanes, his arms cutting the water on the front crawl. He wanted Devi, beside him, to believe that he was paying attention to his driving, but he was honestly kinda zoned out. Like that time he’d swum to San Diego, he let his body go through the motions (in this case, twitching the wheel, putting on cruise control when traffic thinned so he didn’t have to focus on the pedals) while his mind floated freely.

Where it floated was to his girlfriend.

At ten years old, he’d been the last kid in his swim class to jump off the 10m board. It was optional—a treat after getting water up their noses turning somersaults below the surface and doing egg-beater legs in between—but all the other boys in the group had done it eagerly, shrieking on their way down to sloppy pencil dives. Paxton had climbed the stairs all the way to the top easily enough, even stepped onto the wide platform, bordered by metal railings and rough under his bare feet. He’d walked out to the end and frozen to find himself so high above the pool.

He hadn’t feared the water, he’d feared the air. Being so exposed on his own at the end of the diving board. Eventually, he’d retreated, then surprised the coach waiting down at the poolside by turning around and taking the jump at a run. Few memories felt as good as the sensation of giving himself back to gravity and letting it reunite him with the water. He’d just had to get past the exposure.

Same thing tonight, going to find Devi at the dance. Holding her hand in his had been him reaching the platform, but when they stood together, just inside the school’s doors, Paxton hadn’t known for sure whether he would take the leap or retreat. And not just for a running start this time, but in a way that turned his sixteen-year-old present self back into one of those nervous ten-year-olds who wimped out and had to take the coward’s way down—descending each step they’d climbed. He might not have run, and yet he hadn’t needed to back up and race into their relationship either. Momentum hadn’t carried them inside for everyone they knew to see them. It had been a calm approach, even if he’d been shaking on the inside when he saw Trent staring at them.

So maybe Paxton had learned something in the last six years, or maybe it was harder to feel exposed with somebody right next to you.

She really did look gorgeous, like he’d said, and because he didn’t want her to worry about his focus if she spotted him gazing at the side of her face while she texted her cousin, the glances he stole were of the knee region. Her dress’s overlay sparkled when the high lights of eighteen-wheelers passed them and the specific teal of the dress itself reminded him of a river he’d swum in once during an out-of-state family vacation. Natural and deep and fresh, and exasperating for his parents because he’d accidentally doggy-paddled himself all the way to a small waterfall and hadn’t heard them calling him back for dinner around the campfire. He felt all that about Devi, except for hoping for a different reaction from his parents when they met her.

Holy shit. He was going to have to introduce his girlfriend to his embarrassing hippy parents. But then, she’d already met Rebecca, so maybe they were set? A sister’s approval should count for a ton.

No, no, no, Devi would have to meet his parents. He was doing this. The two of them were doing this. Paxton exhaled determinedly through his nose and made himself concentrate on the remaining miles he needed to cover. His mind, anyway. His hand continued to stroke and search, covering his girlfriend’s hand with his until he had her fingers tucked away protectively under his own, and then caressing all the way up to the crook of her elbow so suddenly that she made a noise between a laugh and a yelp because he’d unintentionally tickled her. Man, she was cute.

The very end of their journey required the most concentration from Paxton; he finally took back his hand to have both on the wheel as he steered them off the highway and Devi’s got lonely or something, because it chased across to where he was sitting and landed on his thigh. His jaw clenched. He could feel the heat of her palm through his pantleg and congratulated himself on being a driving legend for driving smoothly to where they needed to park for beach access.

Devi had a pink sweater that she put on, but Paxton grabbed his jacket out of the back as well in case she needed it. It was almost midnight and a breeze rolled up off the water, rippling his tie and swishing Devi’s dress. He didn’t have to ask what they should do next—there was just one other car parked nearby and Devi’s cousin was already standing outside of it, raising a hand to wave sheepishly as they got out of his jeep.

“Here,” he said, holding out his jacket for his girlfriend to put her arms through the sleeves. “You guys talk. I’ll be down at the beach.”

Devi turned her back to him as she accepted the jacket, but she glanced over her shoulder with a look of concern.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. You’ll want privacy. I need to stretch my legs anyway.”

“Just don’t swim away, ok?” she requested. “I don’t think I can handle more than one rescue mission per night.”

Paxton could tell by her expression that it wasn’t entirely a joke. He grinned and gripped his lapels, now on Devi, reeling her in.

“I promise. You’d probably take the opportunity to try to drive the jeep home, and I don’t want to risk that.”

“Me committing grand theft auto or me getting hurt?”

“I bet they tested you for smartness,” he said, “but you think they have a test for being a smartass? You’d score high, Vishwakumar.”

“I know, I know, you don’t want me to get hurt.”

She was so infuriatingly flippant, rolling her big brown eyes at him.

“That’s right,” Paxton said plainly. There he was, up on the platform again.

Devi straightened his tie and let her hand rest flat on his chest. He remembered how overwhelmed she’d looked the first time he’d placed her palm there, right on his skin. Even now, it almost made him laugh.

“Ok,�� she said, and he was surrendering himself to the sweet strength of gravity, propelled down to the beach while Devi stayed to talk to Kamala.

—

Devi had heard that there were tidepools here, and she was nervous about stepping into one and spearing some aquatic animal on her high heel. Well, she couldn’t magically improve her night vision, but she could take her shoes off and remove the possibility of impalement. They dangled from her fingers as she picked her way down to the beach.

Her boyfriend was sitting in the sand, staring out at the ocean. It just looked so romantic—with the stars the sky was too bright to see at home, and the waves, and the back of Paxton’s white shirt in the moonlight—that Devi decided to slip into the scene without saying anything at all.

A mistake. Paxton gasped and jumped. Apparently, he hadn’t heard her over the noise of the water.

“Sorry, sorry!” she said.

He sighed and smiled, getting to his feet.

“How’d it go?”

“I think it went well. She was feeling calm enough to drive, so she’s on her way home now. She’s gonna cover for me until we get back.”

“That’s good… but what about Mr. Kulkarni?”

“He was passed out in the passenger’s seat,” Devi stated. “I guess he’s kind of a lightweight? Kamala said she’s going to drive back to our school and leave him and his car in the parking lot. She’s planning to call my mom for a ride home. If it were me, I think I’d take the bus and try to sneak back into the house as quietly as possible, but Kamala still has a lot to learn about how to thoroughly dodge your problems.”

“And maybe about how to climb to the second floor of your house from the outside?” Paxton suggested with a meaningful smirk.

She did her best to return it, but the odds were that it didn’t look nearly as sexy on her. Then again, she had moonlight and midnight and well-displayed cleavage on her side.

“How’d you learn to do that so quietly anyway?” Devi asked, tossing her shoes to the sand and stepping forward to boldly wrap her arms around Paxton’s waist.

He’d had his hands in his pockets, but as soon as she’d begun to move towards him, he’d pulled them out. His arms encircled her, his hands on the back of his own black jacket. Although Devi wanted to offer him the jacket back—he felt slightly chilly through his shirt—she didn’t want the two of them to separate. Besides, body heat was a thing. This was practically what it was for. So Devi just pressed herself closer, breathing the scent of the ocean and Paxton’s fading cologne.

“Trent,” he said.

“Yeah, actually, that checks out.”

Were there boundaries between warming someone up while having a conversation and just hugging them? It wasn’t clear to Devi, but it felt good when they both went quiet for a while. She stood unevenly on the cold sand and listened to the thud of Paxton’s heart.

“You never said yes,” he said eventually, quietly.

“Yes to what?”

“I told you I came to the dance as your boyfriend and you never actually agreed to be my girlfriend. We kinda just started making out.”

Devi lifted her cheek from his chest so she could look at him. He didn’t appear disappointed, more like he was making an observation. Maybe he’d been reflecting, out here in the dark, while she and Kamala had talked.

“In my books, that’s an obvious yes,” she said, grinning. “What more do you need?”

She could see him trying not to smile.

“A little atmosphere would be nice,” Paxton said. “Maybe a long drive, or the beach. A full moon. Romance me, Vishwakumar.”

Devi vibrated with silent laughter. Or her heart was just beating really, really freaking hard.

“Sounds like you’ve got some pretty big expectations there.”

“And stars,” he added. “There should be a shitload of stars.”

With that, he took one hand off her back to point far above them. Devi tipped her head back, the light of the stars a friendly blur as she tried to pick one to settle on, just one. Paxton’s face coming forward to hover over hers blotted them out. Her boyfriend kissed her, light and ghosting and then firm and slow.

“On the other hand,” he said, pulling back a little, “I think we were onto something with the making out.”

Devi smiled and dug her toes into the sand to make herself taller, lips at the ready and realigned with his.

“We did set a precedent.”

#my writing #Never Have I Ever #Never Have I Ever spoilers #NHIE #NHIE spoilers #Devi Vishwakumar #Paxton Hall-Yoshida #Devi x Paxton #Daxton #Fabiola Torres #Kamala Nandiwadal #couldn't find a gif I wanted and then all of a sudden I was making a moodboard

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ewritesthangs · 4 years ago

Text

Halstead

Authors Note: First installment for my Sister!Halstead x Connor Rhodes series. I do hope you enjoy. I am by no means the best author on the planet. Feedback is appreciated. Also, things may not be completely accurate, for I live in NY, so laws and practices might be different.

Plot: Shane recently moved back to Chicago to be closer to her brothers.

Pairing: Sister!Halstead OC x Connor Rhodes

Warnings: None that I am aware of, as of yet.

----------

The sun illuminates the city, alerting the patrons of Chicago that it was indeed morning. A relatively loud, heavy knock interrupts Shane’s peaceful slumber. Earning a groan from the 25-year-old.

“Unless you have an iced coffee, do not speak or enter!” She grumbles out loudly.

“Iced caramel with 5 cream and 2 liquid sugar.” A red-headed Halstead holds the coffee container out from behind the door, a grin plastered on his face. "Interview day. You excited?" Shane grabs the drink from his hands and begins to sip. "Shane?"

"I heard you. I need at least three sips of my joy juice to fully engage in conversation." Will chuckles and ruffles her hair. "I am so nervous Will." "I'm pretty sure this is just a formality. Dr. Charles was very impressed by your resume and academic standing. Like Voight." Shane had gotten a job with CPD in intelligence about a week and a half ago. Voight was utterly impressed with her resume. He wanted Shane the moment Jay started talking about her return. "This is really important to me Will." Shane states. "I know youngest Halstead. Believe me, you are an incredible young lady and you already have the internship. But you will rock this Interview." He initiated their secret handshake. "Thanks Will. I guess I love you." "Love you too, twerp. Come on. Up, get dressed. We have to be there at 7." Shane groans yet again, but obliges. Dressing herself in; a form fitting light gray top, a light gray textured pencil skirt, a maroon blazer with a small pump heel. She smooths the fabric of her blazer as she ganders at herself in the mirror. She radiated intelligence and sophistication. She puts her contacts in, applying light makeup. A nude lipstick with clear gloss accentuates her luscious lips. She was ready. "S, I'm leaving!" "Coming, coming!" She hurries down the hallway, grabbing her tote-like purse and iced coffee on the way. On the drive there, Will blasts some throwback tunes to ease her nerves. Once they arrive and the car is parked, they head inside. "SHANIE!" An excited Maggie jogs over, giving a hug to Shane. "Oh Maggie it's so good to see your beautiful face. I'm calmed down already." She chuckles. "I can't believe you're so grown up. You excited? Nervous?" With a deep breath, she nods. "You could say that." "OH, Shane. There you are. Prompt." "Good morning, Dr. Charles." "Lovely to meet you, finally. Please come with me." He leads her up to his office. "I am quite impressed with your work and history. What brings you here, well back here I should say." "Well you see, I wanted to explore my options, expand my knowledge base, and be home with my brothers. Family is very important to me." "Anything you'd like to tell me about yourself, Miss Halstead?" She takes a gulp before continuing. "You see, Dr. Charles, I have always been intrigued by criminals and their behaviors. I worked closely with them in Quantico while I was out there for college. That is why I want to study them, work with you. My brother speaks highly of you." "As he does of you." "I want to learn from you, Dr. Charles." He simply nods and writes things down. "Well, Miss Halstead, this Interview was just a formality. For records sake. Welcome to the team. You will do paperwork with Sharon Goodwin." Dr. Charles holds his hand out. She lets out a shake breath of relief she never realized she was holding. Shaking his hand, her once serious face now showed happiness and excitement. "Thank you, Dr. Charles. You have just made my entire day!" Shane beams. Daniel calls Goodwin. She comes to his office and brings Shane up to her office, where they go through the hiring/internship process, loads of paperwork and signing. Meanwhile down in the ER

The middle Halstead saunters in. "Hey Jay, are you hurt?" Worried Will asks his brother. "No. Just wanted to drop by and say hello." "See your sister?" Jay nods. "She just went up about 5 minutes ago."

Shane walks down about 30 minutes later. Her face showing no emotion. "Hey kid!" Jay walks over to her. She looks at her brothers, who are waiting in anticipation. She cracks a smile. They cheer and hug her. "Told ya!" "I knew you had it! I am so proud of you!" "Molly's tonight?" "Sure!" Jay drives her back to Wills apartment, where she changes into more comfortable attire. Still sleek, but more casual and comfortable. She goes about her day, running errands. She goes on a job to her the hospital, bring her brother some homemade lasagna with garlic bread. "Did you run here? Girl you trippin’." Maggie chuckles. "I brought some lasagna. Enough for everybody." Shane smiles and holds up her bag of food. "Includes garlic bread." "Who is that?" Connor asks Will. "My baby sister." He side eyes Connor, a silent threat made. You so much as even think of my little sister I will hunt you down. "Huh, she's all grown up now." "Yeah. Hey S! Thanks for the food." Will walks over and kisses her temple while wrapping his arm around her shoulders. "Wanted to meet everybody I didn't know." "Hi. I'm Connor." "Ahh, yes Dr. Rhodes." She looks him up and down. "Cardio-thoracic surgery. My brother told me about you." "All good things, I hope." "Eh, for the most part." She flashes him her signature grin. “I’m Shane, by the way.”

“Pleasure to finally meet you. You brother has been raving about you.”

“Yeah, he has always been number 1 supporter along with Jay and my mother.” She smiles fondly up at her brother. His smile is just as fond. “Go get some food, William. Let me mingle.” Will holds his hands up and goes to get some food, watching like a hawk.

“So, you are the intern for Dr. Charles?” Connor asks, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter.

“Why yes, I sure am. Word travels fast.”

“I overheard Will talking about it with Jay.” Connor shrugs.

“They really need to stop talking so much.” She shakes her head. Connor chuckles.

“They are very proud of you, as they should be.”

“I get that. But I want to be able to tell my good news, myself.”

“I can understand that.” He nods. “What are you doing to celebrate?”

“Molly’s.” She shrugs. “I am not big on parties or celebrations. You should come by, save me from my brothers boasting. Please!” She claps her hands together, emphasizing her want for someone to save her.

“Oh, alright. Those puppy eyes got me.”

“Thank you! Come at like 730, so it doesn’t look obvious you are there for me.”

“You got it.” He smiles a toothy smile.

Will was watching, his lip reading skills were subpar. “Hey, Nat? What are they saying?”

“I don’t know Will. Stop worrying, she is an adult. Let her be.”

“I don’t want him hurting her like her ex did.” He pouts.

“I know, and neither do I. But nothing will happen. She is not looking.”

“He is.” He grumbles.

“Will.” Nat warns.

“Fine, fine. I will lighten up.”

“Thank you.” She rubs Will’s bicep comfortingly.

#will halstead #will halstead imagine #jay halstead #jay halstead imagine #chicago med #chicago med imagine #Chicago PD #chicago pd imagine #sister halstead #Halstead sister #connor rhodes #connor rhodes imagine

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astaroth1357 · 4 years ago

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Unpacking the Angel Event (Through My Own Perspective)

Okay so uh… this was a very uncomfortable seat the Devs have offered us today and like all things that give me moral uncomfiness, I HAVE to analyze it. Blame the ethics classes. A full disclaimer, this is not spoiler-free and is pretty much entirely just me unpacking my own feelings here. What may bother or not bother me could really affect you and there is nothing wrong with that. You are entitled to your own perspective. This is just me trying to walk through all the stuff in this event that just… rubbed me the wrong way. So let's get to it.

The Costumes

So. Let's start at the beginning. Diavolo apparently had the bright idea to put everybody in magical costumes of their angel forms (or something like it in Satan's case). This is… problematic.

The reason the brothers lost their angel forms was because they fell after the Celestial War… who's greatest causality (in their eyes) was their sister, Lilith. So one could imagine that their memories as angels aren't particularly happy ones… By this point in the "continuity" (this is Post-Attic, more on that later), they would have known that Lilith didn't actually die which may soften something like this a little. I dunno, I'm not one of them and trauma is uniquely personal to the individual, but the bigger issue is that Diavolo thought this was a good idea to start with to which I say! - I'm not at all surprised by that. Hear me out.

Diavolo is heavily implied to have had a huge ass crush on Angel Lucifer. He's also uh… probably a little sheltered (as sheltered as the royalty of Hell can be) and probably not used to think of his subjects' feelings on the things he does before he just does them. This is fairly evident in other events where he'll order the brothers to do XYZ task even if they want no part in it. It doesn't surprise me at all that Diavolo would want to see them (Lucifer) as angels again and not take into account how that could affect them. I don't think that'd be malice on his part, just shortsightedness, and he likely would have apologized if any of the brothers expressed an emotional problem with it to him directly.

Do they have problems? Yes. But since the event kind of wipes them of their true selves, that's better discussed elsewhere. Moving on.

The Bangles

Holy fuck, how do we even approach this? So Simeon, in conjunction with Michael (probably, at this point I have to wonder if he's telling the truth about this) gives the brothers jewelry, presumably to wear to the party, that would… I'm not even sure. Curb their impulses? Force them to be mannered? The important thing is he did not tell them about that little detail before they put the bangles on…

This is… also problematic. First, we can try to establish Simeon's intentions versus what actually happened:

The bangles were (likely) intended to be removable. It was the mixing of the magic that locked them in place so we can assume he didn't mean this to be a permanent change.

The magic on the bangles was probably amplified by the angel costumes. What this means is though we can assume that Simeon never intended them to become quite so… different, we'll never know just how much influence he was actually trying to put on them. It could have been anything from suppressing their sins to full blown force you to say please/thank you. We'll just never get to know now…

I won't be the first person to liken this to mind control (nor the last) because… that's kind of how it turned out. Even worse still, it would have been completely involuntary on the brothers' part. Simeon DID NOT tell them what the bangles were going to do. Now, he claims later that he would have eventually, but we don't get to know when that would have been. I presume at some time after the party, because like. These are our boys. They're not going to consent to wearing something like that, they're just not.

This poses all kinds of questions and problems ranging from issues of consent to anatomy and even the worth of good deeds done out of obligation vs. free will and… I mean quite literally when I say Jesus Christ, Simeon, what the hell?!

I could write a completely different post debating whether or not what Simeon did actually had any moral merit but I won't because it'd be very dry and boring. I think the most interesting thing to take away here is that Simeon thought it was okay to do like, at all, and with approval from Michael (maybe) no less… That reflects something on angel society that I doubt will get explored but I need to ponder farther…

This section is all kinds of sticky so we need to move on.

The Development(?)

First off, to new players, don't worry this probably isn't canon (at least to the main story continuity). The Brothers should be back to normal in the new chapters and this won't have a long term effect on anything (aside from maybe a tie in to the next event ala Beach event-> Games). That's how Obey Me has always treated their events it seems and I sure hope they stick to it now. But, these are still the same characters going through a unique situation and that can offer some insight so… Let's discuss.

I mentioned earlier that the brothers had problems with this… Unfortunately, I think we only get to see Lucifer and Satan's thoughts in any detail because everyone else is too far gone by the time we reach them… Lucifer can pretty much be summed up as troubled and unhappy because (you know) not a lot of great memories as an angel. I presume that his wounded pride after the fall may also contribute.

Satan is… more complex. I’m honestly more bothered by his change than anyone else’s because even he expresses how weird this is for him... (We get confirmation that he never in fact had an angel form, btw). Poor baby is going through a full on identity crisis and there’s a certain part of his mind that he’s not even allowed to use right now... Anger. The Avatar of Wrath, born from Wrath, can’t get angry and… Something about that just bothers me at a deeper level, not even I can express properly…

Everyone else is too far gone once we reach them. Their personalities are completely different and they can’t even acknowledge that’s the case. They think that they’ve turned a new leaf but we know that’s not the reality, that leaf was very much turned for them and it doesn’t make anything feel any better…

This may be my own opinion, but part of me thinks that this portion (and only this portion right here) was actually what the Devs were going for. They wanted us to be uncomfortable by all of this for like, story reasons. It’s a narrative trick. Think of the phrase “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone.” I think they were trying to use the absence of the brothers’ usual flaws and traits as a weird way of celebrating them. Kind of like saying, “We could have given you guys these perfect brothers, but they’re not perfect and we know that’s why you like them. Look at these perfect guys, doesn’t it feel wrong?” The answer is, yes. It does feel wrong. And under other circumstances, it would be affirming like they’d be intending, “I don’t want this emotionally-open non-otaku, give me Levi dammit!” But when you add this intended discomfort with the already sketchy way we got here it just makes it all the worse…

And absolutely NONE of this is helped by...

The… End?

I think the thing I hate about this event the most (actually legitimately hate) is how it ends. In that it doesn’t. It kind of just… abruptly stops right after Lucifer starts coming to himself again. Though I suspect that’s because they’re putting incentive into getting the event cards, this in NO WAY does the narrative any favors.

Most people are not going to get those cards. Even with Lonely Devil as an option, it’s a huge time/resource commitment to get there. Because of that, the majority of people are not going to get to see the aftermath of what happened. We don’t get to see how the brothers feel about what happened. We don’t get to see if they do, in fact, come to and if they have any takeaways from the experience or if they’re utterly disgusted by it. The player character doesn’t even get the option to comfort them after something that was probably terribly traumatic. It. Just. Ends.

What that means is all of that discomfort that we had just lingers… There’s no resolution or pay off. It just… stays… This is the worst possible thing they could have done. If you want your audience to feel uncomfortable, that’s one thing, but unless you’re telling like, a psychological thriller you gotta settle them back down again! Deep moral conflict is not a turn on!!!

Personally, I don’t hate that this thing exists. I don’t. The part of me that majored in Philosophy loves analyzing media like this so I can’t say that I didn’t get anything out of it. I don’t think all media should play it safe, it’s okay to leave the audience with no good answers or a feeling of unease, but you really got to be self-aware of it. The biggest flaw of this event, in my opinion, is that it rarely comes across as self-aware of its own horror. You get a very brief glimpse of it from Solomon when he comments on how creepy things are, but Simeon’s happy. Diavolo’s happy. And though he’s a little uneasy, Luke’s pretty content, too. Add that to the abrupt ending and we never get to know if ANY of them realize how awful of a thing this was to do to the brothers... It makes it all come off as an endorsement of mind controlling your friends into better people and (to me) that feels really, really wrong.

So in conclusion… I dunno. If the next event isn’t something along the lines of “Angelic Demons Part 2: Fixing What We Fucked Up!” then I think they really botched this one guys… I hope somebody was taking notes.

#this is pretty much an essay #fair warning #long post #even for me #obey me angel event #obey me #obey me shall we date #shall-we-date-obey-me

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