#this is longer that I expected but whatever

[nochepsicodelica]

Part I

"Hey, uh-uh. What did we say about stealth-ing in the house?"

Crap. You stand in the kitchen for a few seconds longer, thinking about how you're going to play this off.

"I didn't even make a sound, your hearing is amazing, baby!" You say, attempting to boost your lover's ego to distract him from this for now.

"Didn't hear you, I saw your shadow scurrying after you into the kitchen. Now quit stalling and come here."

"I reek of sweat and blood. Maybe I should shower first," you divert once again.

"Get over here or I'm coming to you, and I'm not gonna be a teddy bear about it."

You sigh and put your duffel bag down, dragging your tired feet to the living room. Before Toji can get a look at your mug, you put a hand over your mouth, not touching, just hovering over it. Finally, you step out into the bright, warm toned light, and look at Toji, like a bunny in the face of an enormous bear that could crush it with a single paw.

He crooks a finger, beckoning for you to come closer. From where he sits, he can see a scratch beneath your eye and one on your cheek.

"I know you're tired, but I need to see my girl," he says, making your heart shake like a rattle.

You drop your hand and take more purposeful steps towards him, ready to crawl into his embrace like you always do after the day begins to close out.

"Yeah, come here, baby," he says, making room for you on his lap, and sure enough, you weren't lying. As you settle onto his lap, the combination of your sweat and the irony smell of the dried blood on your clothes is potent. Does that stop him from holding you tight? Hell no, he handles you like you're fragile, because he knows you are. Your tiredness allows you to be that way after a long day of showing the contrary. He can't ever stress enough to you how much he understands that.

"What'd you eat for lunch?" Toji asks, rubbing your back while you rest your head on his shoulder.

"Lance and his wife invited me to go get ramen with them, but I wasn't that hungry then, so they gave me a couple granola bars," you mumble.

"Nice people. They really do treat you like you're one of their own kids."

"Mhm," you hum, turning your head to bury your face in his neck. He smells like safety and comfort. You come home to this every day.

"Let me see your face, doll," he murmurs. "I'm not gonna yell at you or get you in trouble or whatever bad thing you think is gonna happen. Just wanna see your pretty face," he says, in response to your hesitance.

You sigh, nervous for no reason. It's really not that bad, but it is noticeable. Slowly, you pull away from his neck and sit up for something you think will be incredibly anticlimactic, but... anything for Toji.

He stares at you, long and hard, inspecting every inch of your face for deep serious cuts. So far the only major damage is your busted lip.

"Are you mad?" You ask, as he runs the pad of his thumb over a thin, jagged cut on your cheek.

"No reason for me to be. Does your lip still hurt?" He asks, unable to look away for too long. Your lips are one of his favorite things to look at and he stares at them plenty, so it's not unusual for you.

"Not really," you respond, shaking your head. "It hurt like a bitch when it happened, but not so much anymore. Lance had some extra disinfecting wipes in his glove compartment so I cleaned it up a little on the way here. I'm fine."

"Hm. Any serious damage to your body?" Toji asks, massaging your shoulder blades, instinctively. "Arms, legs? How's your back?"

"I'm fine, baby," you insist, smiling at all the concern he's showing.

"Any scrapes on your hands or knees?"

"Probably, but i'm okay. Seriously, i'm fine."

"How 'bout a warm bath?" He suggests.

"I'm f--" you start, expecting another question of concern. "Wait, um..."

"A nice... toasty bath," he utters softly, carefully, to further entice you. "with those relaxing bubbles you love so much."

It sounds amazing, but only one thing could make it perfect.

"Can you stay with me? In the tub, I mean," you clarify. "I'll do a pre-wash. Get all the nasty off and... and i'll call you in once i'm done. You don't have to, of course," you add, a sheepish laugh following. "But, I would love you a million, billion, gajillion, if you did.

"Sounds perfect, doll," he agrees, leaning forward to kiss your cheek. Normally he would turn that last bit into a full fledged banter about you loving him when it's convenient to you, but your energy is limited, so he'll put it on hold for now. "You let me know when you're ready."

Despite him asking that of you, he does not let you out of his sight at all. He leans against the doorframe of the bathroom and watches you. Watches you remove your worn, filthy clothes. Watches you scrub your body down, head to toe. Your back has faded scars scattered over it, you have little cuts just below your ribs and scratches on your waist, and yet Toji thinks you've never looked more beautiful. He can't imagine you without a few scuff marks. He met you that way, he knows you that way, but all in all, he loves you in all ways, whether you've been grazed, you're healing, or scarred.

This may be one of his favorite rituals to do with you. Lying back against the tub with you sitting between his legs and resting against his chest, you jump between guessing how you both got your scars...

"Hm... severe rope burn?"

"Yeah! How'd you know?"

"You know the one I have on my ankle? Yeah, rope burn. Your turn."

"That's a blade's doing, isn't it?"

"Nope, this is my chains' doing. Yeah, I know, I know. Laugh it up, doll. Even the best mess up sometimes."

...and appreciating the fact that you're both so good at what you do, that you're still here.

"Gimme a kiss, baby," Toji requests, smirking fiendishly as his gaze darts between your eyes and your lips.

"Mm-mm," you say, shaking your head with a teasing grin. "Not with my lip all ugly like this."

"Not ugly. You look hot as fuck. Now give me a damn kiss."

You give him a quick peck, and he scoffs like you offended him with something so chaste.

"You wanna try that again, and give me a chance to, you know... be ready?"

"No, not really," you jest, gasping when he pinches your butt under the foamy water to show his disapproval of your response. "Alright, alright. Just be gentle," you plead, caving in to his needs, as usual.

"Yes, ma'am," he responds, grinning victoriously as he pulls you in closer to get a proper taste of your lips. They're soft as ever, despite their current, temporary appearance, and kissing you is as sweet and satisfying as it's always been. Nothing will ever change that for him.

"Fucking love you," he murmurs, the words a soft breath against your lips.

"Love you, too, baby," you respond, before going in for more.

A/N: Reader and Toji have different handlers. Lance is reader's handler, Toji still works with Shiu.

[fozmeadows]

This is a very real mental trap that young adults frequently fall into - I certainly did! - and for the purposes of explaining how to avoid it, I think it's helpful to lay out in detail exactly how it can happen.

Let me explain: As a child, every birthday is a milestone, and when you hit ten, you're finally in double digits! Huzzah! Eleven and twelve are ages of immense developmental significance, and then, at thirteen, you're Officially A Teenager. Fourteen matters because you're no longer a baby teenager; fifteen is frequently an age of cultural significance, and then there's sixteen, where you often start to gain more adult legal privileges. Seventeen is somewhat liminal, because it's an intermediary point between two responsibility-bestowing birthdays, but it matters for exactly that reason. Eighteen, of course, is a massive deal - the Age Of Technical Adulthood - followed by nineteen, the Last Year Of Your Teens. And then there's twenty, obviously, which means you're in a whole new decade, until finally, you get to 21, which in the US means you're now at the legal drinking age and elsewhere is celebrated as the last, you're-finally-out-of-childhood birthday.

In other words: up until 21, pretty much every birthday constitutes a tangible social level-up that's as perceptible to others as it is to you, and because most teenagers these days occupy extremely age-stratified school and social systems, there's a clear demarcation between those to whom the age-stratification applies (teens) and those to whom it doesn't (adults). Even in those last couple of years, when you're going off to university or entering the workforce or both, there's usually still a residual sense of novelty, where any adults you encounter in adult spaces will recognise you as a newbie, teachers and classmates alike will classify you according to what year of your undergraduate degree you're in (first year/freshman, second year/sophomore, third year/senior), and socially, if you're in the US, you're still marked out in certain contexts by not yet being of legal drinking age (regardless of whether you want to drink or not).

And then you turn 22, and it all just... stops.

There's no new level-up at 22. If you do an undergraduate degree or begin an apprenticeship starting at 18, as is common, you'll most likely be done by 22, but whether you continue with further study, go into the workforce full time or take a break, outside of a handful of hyper-competitive, youth-dominated fields and extended traineeships, there's no more layers of age-stratification in which to situate you relative to everyone else. Abruptly, you're on the adult side of the teen/adult calculus, but of course that younger era still feels more relatable, more you - that's what you're most experienced at! And that's always going to be a difficult transition to make! But particularly for people who've never really socialised outside their own age bracket - who've never had a community or extended family experience that's routinely put them alongside a wide range of people of different ages before this point - the idea that they're suddenly not only able, but expected, to socialise with colleagues, cohort-mates, acquaintances, friends-of-friends, friends' partners, coworkers and other random people who could be as many as five, ten, fifteen, twenty, even thirty-plus years their senior? Suddenly, a lot of them have no idea what to do, even if they've previously been successfully social people, because those age-stratified systems they're used to, combined with the collective milestone-marking of youth, have always worked as built-in icebreakers. By which I mean: prior to 22, when you meet new people in your approximate age bracket, you can ask, What grade are you in? or What school do you go to? or When will you graduate? or What's your major?, and immediately be assured that, whatever the answer, you've at least asked a comprehensible question anchored in a degree of shared experience. And at the same time, you're constantly surrounded by people and organisations who are actively working to create social opportunities for you, whether in the form of parents driving you to extracurriculars, classmates throwing birthday parties, schools hosting regular events or universities offering clubs and meetings and mixers. But removed from those frameworks, suddenly, everything's a crapshoot. And to make matters worse, you might not yet have that much practice at ballpark-figuring someone's age, which can make it even harder to know what sort of conversational gambit to go with.

(Which is one of the many reasons why, to go on a brief tangent, people who were deemed weird kids in high school often socially flourish in their twenties: because their perceived "weirdness" at the time frequently comes from not fitting in to a highly structured, age-segregated social hierarchy. Placed in more diverse settings that put a greater emphasis on things like shared interests, professional competence and social flexibility than on relative age combined with participation in collective milestones, however, and suddenly they've got more strengths to draw on than those whose social go-tos were built on scripts that abruptly no longer apply. But I digress.)

The point being, 22 can be wildly confusing in ways that all your prior experience with getting older really doesn't prepare you for. Which is where and why - to finally return to the specific point OP was talking about - the temptation to continue to associate oneself with youth and younger people can suddenly arise. You feel like you've got more in common with them; you understand the rules better; and really, aren't you closer to them than to someone who's 28 or 35 or 50? Well, sure; but you're also not them, and more to the point, the developmental aim now is to move away from them. That doesn't mean you can't still have younger friends or feel nostalgic about what you've outgrown, but you do have to acknowledge that the whole point of what came before was to prepare you, once you reached this point, to transcend it. To grow up. And part of that is realising that adulthood is a journey you're on, not a destination you're already meant to have reached. In metaphoric terms, what you arrive at on turning 21 is the station: adulthood is the train you then board, and ideally, it'll keep travelling onwards for sixty-plus more years, and throughout the trip, you'll be talking to passengers who all got on at different times to you. Adulthood doesn't mean waking up one morning and finding that your love of fantasy novels has been replaced with a desire to file early taxes; it means you get fantasy novels and taxes, and the specific balance of freedom and responsibility that means a failure to do the latter due to preoccupation with the former (or with anything else) is entirely on your own head.

Which also means acknowledging that, however knowledgeable you were or felt yourself to be on finishing high school or college, you've ideally still got sixty-plus more years of learning to do about everything from the human condition to history to politics to how to cope with the Sisyphean task of laundry and dishes. You're meant to keep growing, in other words - and you can't do that if you mentally arrest yourself as Still A Little Baby Minor to try and escape your uneasiness with the fact that certain conversations are, in reality, far more complex than you previously realised. It's okay to admit you don't know something, or don't know enough; outside of work, there's no-one grading you on your ability to pretend you did the reading, and no penalty for shutting the fuck up if what's being said goes over your head, or for needing to take a day or two to properly digest it and form your own thoughts.

Because the thing is, being 22 is a finite state. Regardless of whether you feel fully adult or not, you're still going to eventually wind up turning 23, and then 24, and so on until you're far enough removed from where you were that continuing to think of yourself as a minor becomes increasingly absurd. But if you've made no effort to grow in that time, to actually acclimate yourself to the realities of adulthood - even, or perhaps especially, to the more difficult and upsetting parts of adulthood - then what you're in danger of becoming is that most terrible of things, an adult who can't take responsibility for themselves. The kind of person who (for instance) complains about how hard their life is while making no meaningful effort at improving it, because they've never learned to view discomfort as anything but a personal attack, and thus cannot reliably distinguish between an injustice and an inconvenience; between someone pushing their boundaries and the necessary if not always enjoyable business of cooperative living.

In short: adulthood is something you continuously work to have, not something you passively obtain, and if your response to the inherent challenge and necessary discomfort of that work is to try and claim you've got no responsibility to perform it, then all you're doing is committing yourself to being juvenile and annoying. And that is far more cringe than any fifty-year-old enjoying cartoon shows will ever be.

I think mostly what young fandom types (and I guess younger people in general) who are very very invested in the idea that “20 is still basically a minor” need to understand is that the feeling of “I’m just a child pretending to be an adult, and everyone else around me is a REAL adult” is DEEPLY universal (and won’t stop, ever, by the way, sorry!) and also is not, like, praxis.

Believe me, I get it, but the self-infantilization needs to stop, especially when you’re trying to engage in conversations about actual children and the harms they can face. Yes, it is scary to wake up and realize you’re 22 and you still feel like you’re 15, but it happens to all of us. You’re an adult. You have to deal with it.

[vesna-v-irkutske]

In 2014, Artyom Anoufriev registered on a dating site for prisoners.

«"Probably the most uninteresting profile on this site." Posted on Sat, 14/06/2014 - 22:07 by Anoufriev92 Interests: jurisprudence, freestyle, law, music, English language Name: Artyom Gender: M Date of birth: 04/10/1992 Place of permanent residence. Country: Russia. City: Irkutsk Social status. Education: secondary Religion, denomination, faith: atheist Current place of detention. Country: Russia. City: Ognenny Ostrov, 16 The end of the current term: December 2039

Hi, everyone. I'm writing this only because this section of the profile is mandatory. I'm an absolutely versatile person from Irkutsk, who didn't have time to get out of his gray Siberia in the first 18 years of his life. My story is absolutely not exciting, but it's just plain stupid, and there's not much to tell. However, it's worth noting that people are not simply imprisoned for nothing, especially for life. Without touching on the issue of my real misconducts before society, dryly stating what I was found guilty of, according to the verdict of the Irkutsk Regional Court: organization of an extremist community, murder of six people, attempted murder of eight people, theft, robbery, desecration of the body of the deceased, and all this by an organized group motivated by ideological hatred.

I go through the stages (forced transportation of prisoners from one place of detention to another) almost all over Mother Russia and everywhere I hear, both from prisoners and from employees: "So young, and already life imprisonment? Grew up fast…" Or something like that. And I no longer explain to anyone that I am "a victim of the System, and I was convicted under an artificially inflated public outcry," because, by and large, no one cares, and 9 out of 10 newcomers to the colony say that they're not guilty. Or almost not guilty…

So, before my incarceration, I studied at a medical university, sometimes I worked part-time. I became interested in jurisprudence and law only in prison, because I didn't think I needed it at liberty. Freestyle is real texts that are read to the beat, not a sport. Well, as for music, I love a lot of different kinds of it, mostly heavy and electronic. I have 5 years of music school (guitar) behind me. In my free time, I read either classics or whatever I have to, but actually, I don't have time for it yet.

Why did I come to this site? Well, at least for the sake of simple communication with some adequate girl from 16 to 35 years old. Starting a family is, of course, good, but first I need to at least get out of the bad situation I'm in. Legally, this is possible, but time will tell how things will turn out in reality.

Not sending photos because I don't have my own pics and, most likely, so far, their appearance is not expected.

Well, and in conclusion, I'll say this: "I don't care much about the chatter of journalists. When forming an opinion about a person, build it on facts, not stories, and think with your own head."»

[shinoko-oshi]

Obsessed stalker ex simon

You knew it was him, the burning gaze you felt on the back of your neck whenever you were on dates. You never saw him, but you knew he was there. A ghost, he was.

You knew it was him when all your Tinder dates ghosted you after the first night. Didn’t even want to know what he threatened them with to keep them away from you, but judging by the dead silence that always followed, it was enough.

What made your blood boil though was the fact you never saw him. Never even caught a glimpse of him when you knew he was watching (which was always). He wanted to stalk, to nitpick at your life, fixing and ripping out the things he didn’t like other men, yet was too coward to show his face? Made you scoff.

So, perhaps, you got creative. Created bait for the piranha and his razor sharp teeth.

You didn’t care for the guy much, but he was decently attractive and all over you at the bar. So you took him home. Made sure the window blinds were open. Told him it would be fine, that your apartment was high enough above the ground, no one would accidentally look in.

Only willingly. Only with what you always assumed was military grade binoculars.

You let the guy touch you, just like Simon used to. Let his hands run down your sides, let him kiss you with just enough tongue to make it messy. All while keeping your face turned slightly toward the window. Letting him see everything. 

Knowing damn well Simon’s knuckles were already white from how hard he was gripping whatever wall he leaned against.

You fucked the guy on the same bed sheets you once begged Simon to buy. Stupidly expensive yet Simon had caved anyways, pretending to be annoyed but secretly soft when he gave them to you. That was before.

Now? Now, they were just the sheets you fucked another man on. And you hoped it stung. 

With your face still flushed, red and glowing from your orgasm, you got up and told the guy to get home safe. Said it was dangerous outside this late. Never said what was dangerous but you didn’t need to. Something in your tone made him hurry home anyways.

With that you headed to the shower, turning the handle as you stepped under the warm water. You were halfway through rinsing out the conditioner out from your hair when you heard the front door creak open. Following with heavy steps down the hallway. Leading all the way to the bathroom, before the door creaked open.

You didn’t even need to look back. Already knew it was him.

“Took you longer than I expected,” you said casually, fingers still combing through wet strands of hair. “Was waiting for you.”

No response. Just the quiet rustle of his belt hitting the tile floor. Then clothes. Then warmth at your back, rough hands gripping your hips like they were his to claim.

His mouth brushed hot near your ear. “Yeah, well… I didn’t expect you to go fuck some other guy,” he snarled,

“Knowin’ you were fuckin’ mine.”

He shoved you up against the cold tile wall. Calloused fingers sliding between your thighs, teasing your arousal soaked pussy, before thrusting two in deep with a fast pace.

“You knew what you were gettin’ into when you were with me” he growled. “I fuckin’ told you.”

“I let you have your little break. Your stupid, measly dates. But I draw the line at another man touchin’ you. Got that?”

His other hand landed a sharp slap to your ass.

“I just—I wanted your attention,” you mewled, “I missed you.”

He chuckled darkly at that, the sound low in his throat. “I missed you too, baby. Yeah? Too much.”

He pulled his fingers out from your cunt, bringing the thick head of his cock to your entrance, inching in with slow pace. 

Before he got too impatient, driving all the way in with a rough thrust. The first time he’d felt your pussy in months. Still mildly surprised he didn’t cum the second he bottomed out.

He fucked into you hard and relentless, dragging out every bit of pleasure you had in you.

What was that, luv? The guy made you cum once? Well, he’d make you cum three times and then he’d wrap you up in a blanket after he was done to keep you warm and his.

After your third orgasm, your trembling legs gave out so he held you up with one arm and fucked you through his own high, hips grinding until he spilled deep inside you.

Still didn’t pull out.

He took a few extra minutes to fuck his load deeper inside you, making sure you felt it, every drop until he was satisfied.

Afterward, he scooped you up in his arms and carried you to the couch instead of the bed. When you asked why, he grumbled.

“Not sleepin’ on sheets another man fucked you on. Not ‘til they’re washed.”

He lay down, pulling you into his chest like nothing had changed.

Finally able to sleep through the night since breaking up, knowing his entire world was safe and sound in his arms. Exactly where you belonged.

I tried to add in a british accent for once lmao i usually forget

[dedalvs]

hey friend, i know you’ve been a pretty serious supporter and user of duolingo for a long time (so have i!), so i’m curious what your feeling is about the announcement that they’re going to be doubling down on using more and more AI for content creation, including using it to avoid having to hire actual humans?

personally, i’m really disappointed - i’ve disliked how much they’ve been using it so far, but the app is otherwise a great tool, and all of the other apps seem to use it, too, so it’s not easy to just jump ship to an app that isn’t using AI. i’ve seen a lot of responses that are like “hurr hurr just use a textbook idiot” which i find really unhelpful; learning from an app is easier and a lot more convenient in a lot of ways than having to use analog materials, especially if you study a high number of languages. still, i don’t ethically feel that i can keep giving them money if this is the direction they’re going.

what are your thoughts?

This is going to be a longer answer than you might have expected.

In 2001, fellow undergrad. Reiko Kataoka (now a professor at San Jose State) resurrected a club that had been dead for a few years at UC Berkeley linguistics: The Society of Linguistics Undergraduates (SLUG). One of its former undergraduate members, Alan Yu (now a professor at the University of Chicago), happened to be a graduate student at Berkeley at the time, so he helped her get it off the ground. The club was exactly what I was looking for at that time: a group for ling. undergrads. to get together and talk about language and linguistics, my new favorite thing. It was great! I even put together a couple phonology problems using my conlangs to distribute at a meeting. The following year I became the second president of the new SLUG and helped to create the SLUG Undergraduate Linguistics Symposium, where I gave my first talk on language creation. Being a part of this club was a major factor in shaping my undergraduate experience at Berkeley.

When I graduated I went to UC San Diego to pursue a graduate degree in linguistics. Part of the reason I chose UCSD was because it was an incredibly inviting atmosphere. Before we accepted they paid for prospective undergraduates down to San Diego and housed them with current grad. students who told them about the program and took them out for dinner, etc. It allowed prospective students to ask questions they wouldn't ask of professors (e.g. who's got beef with who). It was really cool, and so in our second year, we continued the tradition of housing prospective grad. students. Since we both went to Berkeley, my ex-wife (also a Berkeley ling. grad.) and I hosted Klinton Bicknell.

Klinton, it turns out, was the current president of SLUG. I didn't know him while I was at Cal, but we did overlap. It turns out he had renamed the club SLUGS, which I thought was weird. He said "It happened organically" and laughed in an off-putting way. He very much gave off the impression of someone who will smile at you and say whatever is necessary for you to go away. Klinton ended up going to UCSD the following year and I ended up leaving the following year.

Fast forward to 2016. HBO had put the kibosh on Living Language Valyrian, and so I turned to Duolingo. They had previously reached out about putting together a Dothraki course, but I declined, due to having a book out, Living Language Dothraki. With no hope for Valyrian, I asked if they'd be interested in me putting together a course on High Valyrian, which I did. I had some help at the beginning, but, truth be told, most of that course was built by me alone. I became very familiar with the Incubator, where Duolingo contributors built most of their courses. It was a bit clunky, but with enough elbow grease, you could put together something that was pretty darn good. It wasn't as shiny as their in house courses, because they couldn't do things like custom images, speaking challenges, etc., but it was still pretty good.

At the time I joined, everyone who was working in the Incubator was doing it for free. We were doing it because we wanted to put together a high quality course on our language of choice on Duolingo. When Duolingo went public, they realized this situation was untenable, so they began paying contributors. There were contracts, hourly wages, caps on billable hours, etc. It essentially became an as-you-will part time job, which wasn't too bad.

The Incubator faced a couple potentially insurmountable problems. When the courses were created by volunteers, Duolingo could say "This was made by volunteers; use at your own risk", essentially. Once they were paid, though, all courses became Duolingo products, which means they bear more responsibility for their quality. With so many courses (I mean, sooooooooo many courses) it's hard to ensure quality. Furthermore, "quality" doesn't just mean "are the exercises correct" and "are the sentences interesting". Quality means not being asked to translate sentences like "Women can't cook" or "The boy stabbed the puppy". With literally hundreds of courses each with thousands of sentences written by contractors, there was no way for Duolingo to ensure not just that they were staying on brand with these sentences, but that they weren't writing ugly things. There were reporting systems, there were admins that could resolve things behind the scenes, but with so much content, it became a situation where they would have had to hire a ton more people or scale back.

We saw what Duolingo did before with one aspect of their platform that had a similar issue. If you remember way back, Duolingo used to have a "forum", that was a real forum, but for most users, what it meant was on every single sentence in Duolingo users could make comments. These comments would explain grammar points, explain references, make jokes, etc. It was honestly really helpful. But, of course, with any system like that comes trolls, and so volunteers who had come to create language learning resources also found themselves being content reviewers, having to decide which comments to allow, which to delete, who to ban, etc. As Duolingo became more popular, the troll problem grew, and so eventually Duolingo's response was to kill the forum. This mean you were no longer able to see legitimate, helpful comments on sentences. They threw the baby out with the bathwater.

This is why it was no surprise to me when they shuttered the Incubator. The technology was out of date (from their standpoint, you understand. Their in house courses were way more sophisticated, but they couldn't update the Incubator without potentially breaking hundreds of courses they hadn't created themselves), quality assurance was nearly impossible, and they were also paying people to create and maintain these out-of-date courses they had no direct control over. Of course they closed it down. It would've taken a massive investment of time and resources (and capital) to take the Incubator as it was and turn it into something robust and future proof (think old Wordpress vs. Wordpress now), and Duolingo wanted to do other things, instead—like math and music. And so the Incubator died.

But that wasn't the only reason. This was something we heard internally and then heard later on publicly. There was rumbling that Duolingo was using AI to help flesh out their in house courses, which was troubling. This was before the big Gen AI boom, but after a particularly pernicious conlang-creation website I won't name had come to exist, so it caught my attention. I decided to do a little digging and see what this was all about, and I ended up with a familiar name.

Klinton Bicknell.

Indeed, the very same Klinton Bicknell was the head of all AI ventures at Duolingo. Whether enthusiastically or reluctantly or somewhere in between, he was absolutely a part of the decision to close the Incubator and remove all the contractors who had created all the courses that gave Duolingo its reputation. (Because, seriously, why did most of us go to Duolingo? Not for English, Spanish, French, and German.)

I know you sent this ask because of the recent news about Duolingo, but, to be honest, when I saw one of these articles float across my dash I had to check the date, because to me, the news was old. Duolingo isn't just now replacing contractors with AI: They already did. That was the Incubator; those were contractors. That is why there won't be more new language courses on Duolingo, and why the current courses are frozen. This isn't news. This is the continuation of a policy that had already firmly in place, and a direction that rests solidly on the shoulders of Klinton Bicknell.

But you don't have to take my word for it. He's talked about this plenty himself:

Podcast (Generative Now)

Article in Fast Company

Article in CNET

Google can help you find others.

At this point there's a sharp and baffling division in society with respect to generative AI. On the one hand, you have those of us who disapprove of generative AI on a truly fundamental level. Not only is the product something we don't want, the cost—both environmental and ethical—is utterly insupportable. Imagine someone asking you, "Hey, would you like a sandwich made out of shoelaces and shit?" And you say, "God, no, why would anyone ever want that?!" And their response is, "But wait! To make this sandwich out of shoelaces and shit we had to strangle 1,000 kittens and drain the power grid. Now do you want it?"

On the other side, there are people who are still—I mean today—saying things like, "Wow! Have you heard of this AI thing?! It's incredible! I want AI in everything! Can AI make my table better? Can I add AI to my arthritis? We should make everything AI as quickly as possible!"

And conversations between the two sides go roughly like this:

A: Good lord, now they're using AI art on phone ads? Something has to stop this… B: Yeah, it's so cool! Look, I can make a new emoji on my phone with AI! A: Uhhh…what? I was saying it's bad. B: Totally! I wonder if there's an AI shower yet? Like, it could control the temperature so you always have the perfect shower! A: Do you know how much power it takes to run these genAI apps? At a time when we're already struggling with income inequality, housing, inflation, and climate change? B: I know! We should get AI to fix that! A: But AI is the problem! B: Hey ChatGPT: Teach me how to surf!

It's frustrating, because the B group is very much the 💁 group. It's like, "Someone was using ChatGPT and it told them to kill themselves!" and they respond, "Ha, ha! Wow. That shouldn't have happened. What a learning opportunity! ☺️ Hey ChatGPT: How do you make gazpacho?" There's a complete disconnect.

In terms of what you do with your money, it's a difficult thing. For example, I've used Apple computers consistently since 1988. I'm fully immersed in the Apple ecosystem and I love what they do. They, like every other major company, are employing AI. If you go over to r/apple any time one of these articles comes out, it's all comments from people criticizing Apple for not putting together a better AI product and putting it out faster; none saying that they shouldn't be doing it. They're all ravenous for genAI for reasons that defy my understanding. And so what do I do? I've turned off the AI features on all my Apple devices, but beyond that, I'm locked in. From one direction, I look like a hypocrite for using devices created by a company that's investing in AI. From the other direction, though, I am using their devices to say what they're doing is fucking despicable, and they should stop—and I'll keep doing so so long as there's breath in my body.

Duolingo isn't necessary the way that, say, a computer or phone is nowadays. Duolingo is still usable for free, though, of course, they make it a frustrating experience to use its free service. (This is certainly nothing exclusive to Duolingo. That's the way of everything nowadays: streaming services, games, social media... Not "Well give you cool things if you pay!" but "We'll make your life miserable if you don't!") If you do use their Incubator courses, though, I can assure you that those are AI-free. lol They're too outdated to have anything like that. Some of those courses are bigger than others; some are better than others. But all of them were put together by human volunteers, so there's that, at least. At this point, I don't think Duolingo needs your money—nor will they miss it. They're on a kind of macro plane at the moment where the next ten years will either see the company get even bigger or completely disintegrate; there's no in between. They're likely going to take a big swing into education (perhaps something like Duolingo University [Duoversity?]) and it's either going to make a ton of money or bankrupt them. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I've taken the Finnish course in its entirety and we're doing Hungarian now, and I've learned a lot—not enough, but a lot. I'm grateful for it. I like the platform, and I agree with the basic tenets of the language courses (daily shallow intake is better than occasional deep intake; implicit learning ahead of explicit instruction is better than the reverse). I'm grateful they exist, I'm grateful we can still use them (because they can always retire all of them, remember), and I think it's brought a lot of positivity to the world. I think Luis Van Ahn is a good guy and I hope he can steer this thing back on course, but I'm not putting my money on it.

[kitkat13001]

✦ — 3. centerstage

⋆.˚✮ prev ⟡ m. list ⟡ next ✮ 2.6k words

-> hitoshi shinsou x pro-hero!reader

✮ the longer you work with hitoshi, the more you notice things are starting to change. you’ve always been self-assured, but this team-up is really throwing you for a loop. ✮ tracklist: 505 - arctic monkeys, tek it - cafuné, wait a minute! - willow, deja vu - olivia rodrigo, fire - tv girl, closer - chainsmokers + halsey

you’re still not quite sure how to feel about this whole working-with-hitoshi thing. you’ve been pondering his apology ever since he voiced it, something uncomfortable stirring inside you from the entire ordeal. 

you’d considered returning it (since you’re definitely not absolved of blame in the matter), but you haven’t found a good time. it feels half-assed in any case, so you’ve just been trying to play it cool. 

luckily work has kept you both busy enough, what with the mission having progressed more than you’d been expecting. it’s been a good buffer to have something to focus on other than each other. 

it’s actually been kind of…nice. there’s still that lingering weirdness of the monumental history between you, but you’re slowly falling back into old habits. 

conversation comes a little easier during long patrols, occasionally stopping out for coffee during late nights of report filing, less venom behind quips exchanged during combat. you try not to let the nostalgia of it all overtake you — though that’s easier said than done.

“hey!”

your head snaps up, given no time to react as a bolt of energy hurdles right for you. you yelp as your body is yanked out of the way just in time, debris raining down behind you as the charge hits the wall you were just standing in front of. shinsou’s capture scarf is wrapped securely around your waist, him standing a few feet away with a pinched-brow expression. you shoot him a sheepish smile before readying yourself for the next strike, jumping back into the fray with hitoshi at your side. 

you two make quick work of the villain and it’s not long before she’s seething, wrapped up in hitoshi’s capture weapon. you’ve been trying to pick off stragglers from the syndicate in the hopes of extracting more information, but it’s been rather unsuccessful. still, a villain off the streets is a win you’ll take for now. 

you dust yourself off, flashing a sly look at shinsou. 

“can i compliment you this time or are you going to chew off my head again?”

“no, go ahead and sing my praises,” he replies with the hint of a wry grin. 

“ha!” you snort. “you’d like that, wouldn’t you?” you’re quiet for a few seconds before giving a little laugh. “we should compete in the asshole olympics.”

“oh, we’d win gold.”

“mm, maybe silver. maybe. give ourselves some grace, save the gold for real pieces of work like them,” you reply with a hum, nodding at the villain sitting on the curb before you. he gives another little half-smile, chuckling to himself. 

it doesn’t take long for law enforcement to arrive and take the villain away, leaving you and shinsou with a quick thanks. 

“you going to get all dolled up for the cameras?” hitoshi asks as you’re walking back towards the agency. he’s talking about a press conference that edgeshot has arranged, both for exposure and to calm the public. you haven’t come out with the information about the bust being moved up, but you and shinsou have been approved to give a vague statement in order to quell the public’s curiosity (and gas yourselves up). 

“nah, i like the fresh-out-of-battle look,” you reply. “i think dirt and blood suit me.”

he snorts at that. “definitely.”

“how ‘bout you?”

“oh yeah, i’m about to head to hair and makeup right now,” hitoshi replies sarcastically. he grunts when you shove him lightly. 

“shut up! i meant, like, are you going to be fine in front of the press?”

he shrugs. “i’m not afraid of the cameras, i just don’t like them. not much of a choice here, though, but it’s whatever. you’re probably going to do most of the talking anyhow.”

“oh, am i?” 

he gives you a look. “aren’t you?”

“tch. yeah, yeah.”

once you get back to the agency, you both split to file your reports and get ready for the press conference later. 

you decide to remain in your hero suit, only giving yourself some minor touch-ups. best not to look like you’re trying too hard, especially when you know hitoshi would never let you hear the end of it. 

you’re actually on your way down when hitoshi drops down beside you, hanging from his capture weapon for a second before he drops to his feet. 

you’d be startled if he hadn’t done this a million times before, back when you were partners. 

instead, you fix him with a deadpan look. 

“you’re such a spider-man wannabe.”

he wrinkles his nose, though its near-imperceptible under his mask. “the comic book guy?”

“don’t act like you don’t know who spider-man is, hitoshi.”

“i’m not a thing like him,” he insists, matching your pace as you two walk to the conference room. 

“you’re right,” you reply coyly, “you’re batman because you’re emo.”

“you’re such a geek.”

you can hear the buzzing of reporters even from down the hall. you sneak a glance at hitoshi, but if he’s nervous it doesn’t show. he looks aloof as always — hands in his pockets, permanently hooded eyes, slouchy shoulders. your brows pinch just a little, squaring your shoulders and striding into the room with purpose. 

the reaction is immediate. you’re nowhere near top-five (or even top-ten) status, but your work with the lurkers has made you quite recognizable. the reporters squawk about, calling your hero name and waving microphones around. cameras flash in your face from all around the room, but you don’t pose for them this time. 

you head straight to the podium, trying to exude confidence. you can’t quite tell if hitoshi’s presence by your side is a source of comfort or nerves. 

the reporters quiet down when you tap the mic, introducing yourself and hitoshi. 

“good evening. i’m glad to be here with nighthide to assure you all of the safety of our community regarding the syndicate under investigation. we’ll be giving a statement and taking a few questions tonight.”

hitoshi steps forward beside you, reading the prepared script off a card in his hand. he projects a certain nonchalance, but there’s no mistaking the confidence behind his demeanor. 

you had told him before that he hadn’t changed, but that’s not true. he’s grown, clearly in more ways than one. you’re so caught up in him that you nearly miss your cue until hitoshi steps back to allow you to resume your place. 

the clamor starts back up as journalists and reporters push forward to get to you. 

a sharp-looking woman in the front thrusts her microphone in your face, waving over the video camera. 

“this is quite the fresh team-up,” she remarks, gesturing to you and hitoshi. “may i ask — what exactly is your relationship to nighthide?”

you’re used to leading, invasive questions during interviews. reporters love fishing for drama and personal anecdotes. you’re normally good about redirecting or deflecting, but this one has caught you slightly off-guard. they never start off the bat with something this direct, and there’s something off about her accusatory tone. 

“i— we’re coworkers?” you wince internally at the nerves apparently in your voice.

she presses on. “but you were in the same class at u.a. were you not?”

“yes, we have records that indicate you were both ranked in the top 10 of your graduating class!” chimes in another.  

“well, yeah, but—” you don’t even get to finish your sentence before another anchor interjects. 

“another one of our reporters dug up these photos—”

“is it true that you two were romantically involved?”

you sputter, cheeks burning as you burst out with a “no!”

“did you have plans to start an agency together after graduation?”

“we have records of you two teaming up in your early career—”

“—photos of you both in kyoto during the mass evacuations—”

“do you plan on pursuing this—”

“—awfully close for ‘coworkers’ to—”

your face is hot from embarrassment and the bright lights. the camera flashes have turned from irritating to unbearable. you can’t even get a word in between them. the assault doesn’t cease, and now they’re pouncing on shinsou too. 

“is there a reason you’re choosing to emerge from the shadows now?”

“yes, and does your choice of partner have anything to do with that?”

“is this all a publicity stunt or are there other factors of your personal history at play here?”

“i—” hitoshi’s violet eyes flicker to you for just a moment and it sends a bolt of panic through your body. you don’t give yourself the chance to name whatever emotion is swirling in his deep gaze, breaking away from the suffocation and shoving past your security detail to get out. 

you hurry down the hall and out the back, practically gasping for air as you burst out the door. 

the evening breeze cools the sweat that’s beaded on your forehead and nape, and you shakily take a seat on the steps. you glance back to ward off the paranoia, but no one’s followed you yet. 

you don’t know how long you sit there, stewing in anxiety and guilt, humiliation and frustration. your head whips up like a threatened deer when the door opens, but your shoulders relax a little when you see that it’s hitoshi, and that he’s alone. 

he takes a quiet seat beside you. you expect him to say something, but he remains silent.

“not gonna offer me a smoke?” you ask when the silence stretches uncomfortably, a half-hearted attempt at a joke. 

he glances at you with soft eyes and the ghost of a smile. “nah, ‘m tryna quit. apparently it’s bad for you or something.”

you give a shaky laugh. it’s another long moment before you speak again, voice small. 

“sorry for ditching you back there.”

it’s bad enough that you turned tail, but leaving hitoshi to fend for himself against those reporters? your gut shrivels with shame. 

“‘s okay. i drove ‘em off well enough,” he replies easily. 

“i don’t normally freak out during interviews,” you admit, rubbing your arms self-consciously. 

“i know.”

you turn to look at him. “you…know?”

hitoshi chuckles dryly, kicking a pebble away lightly. “you’ve got quite the glowing record, rookie. i’m sure they’ll forgive you.”

he speaks with such familiarity that your stomach does a little somersault. “you watch my interviews?” you muse, trying not to sound hopeful. 

hitoshi shrugs. “when they’re on.”

your face pulls into a little smile. “you watch my interviews.”

“don’t flatter yourself,” he scoffs, pulling his scarf up around his face like a defense. “‘m not a stalker. aizawa keeps up with all your careers and i’ve seen a couple telecasts, alright?”

you hold your gaze, beaming. “you watch my interviews.”

he makes a noise, somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “don’t read too much into it, okay? what i’m trying to say is that you’re gonna be fine. they won’t hold it against you — and if they do, i’ll make such a scene that you’ll look golden again. good as new.” he finishes with a huff of finality and you laugh. 

you’re close enough now that your shoulders are touching and it’s taking everything in you not to rest your head against him like you’d done so many times before. 

you didn’t realize just how much you missed him, not until now. 

you sit quietly for some time longer, but the question leaves your lips before you can talk yourself out of it. 

“can i ask you something stupid?”

hitoshi glances at you swiftly before looking back down at the pavement. “shoot.”

“were you… “ you’re not even fully sure you want to know, but it’s been eating at you for so long that you figure you might as well ask. “are you mad at me? for everything?”

he gives a long sigh after some deliberation, and then he’s quiet for a long moment after that. you think he’s not going to reply, and you wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t, but then he speaks.

“i was,” he admits quietly, “for a long time. hurt, i guess, more than anything. but it was all such a long time ago and we’re both different people now and…” he shrugs, helpless. “i don’t know, i guess it feels stupid to hold on to such old feelings when there’s more important shit to be done, yknow?”

hitoshi sneaks a quick glance at you, searching for something in your molten eyes. you hold his gaze even after he’s looked away, something stirring in your stomach that you can’t quite place. 

“can i ask you something even more stupid?”

he exhales a little huff, an almost-chuckle. “knock yourself out.”

you feel stupid saying it out loud, but you don’t think you can’t possibly humiliate yourself any more now. 

“…can we try being friends again?”

to your surprise, his lips quirk into a tiny half-smile. he snorts softly, knocking his hand against yours. “sure. ‘f you’ll stop being a brat about it.”

your brows pinch in a scowl, which only widens his smile. 

“i’m not a brat!” you insist, jabbing at his shoulder. 

“i’m not a brat!” he echoes back, parroting your voice with his modulator. 

“i hate when you do that!” you huff. the way you’re smiling doesn’t sell the statement. 

“ah, you like it.”

you two stay out back for a while longer, not wanting to break the fragile bubble of respite. as the sun begins to drop, you both agree to head back and face what’s sure to be a mountain of consequence inside. you almost shiver at the thought of facing kamihara after the scene you’d made. 

you try not to dwell on the feeling of hitoshi’s hand in yours when he helps you to your feet, or the way his touch lingers even after he’s let go. 

you’re rounding the side of the agency where most of the press has dispersed, though none of the stragglers are brave enough to approach (which you’re glad for). 

there’s someone else standing over by doors, though — a figure who becomes increasingly familiar as you approach. 

you stop in your tracks, dumbstruck. she catches sight of you and hitoshi, lighting up as she hurries over. 

“is that eri aizawa?” you cry in exaggerated disbelief. even though you’re playing around, seeing her scamper over to you sends a pang of bittersweet nostalgia through your stomach. she looks so grown up compared to the last time you saw her, but you still see the timid little girl you remember from your days at u.a. 

“oh my god, you’re so big!” you marvel, throwing your arms around her before you can help yourself. she giggles when you lift her with the force of your hug, giving her a playful spin before you set her back down. “last time i saw you, you were about yea high!” 

you wave your hand at waist length and eri’s cheeks turn a bashful shade of pink. “well, it has been a while…congratulations on your mission, though! i was super happy when ‘toshi told me you guys would be working together again!”

you turn to hitoshi, who you’d just about forgotten was there, but his face is pretty much unreadable. 

“yeah, it’s been…” you trail off when eri’s head turns back when her friends call out, a group of junior high kids lingering back behind you.

she hoists her bag back up with an apologetic smile. “sorry, i should get going. you two have hero work and i’ve got a test tomorrow.” she makes a yikes face and you laugh fondly. 

“better get moving then, little lady. good luck on your test.”

“thanks! it really has been too long, though.” she frowns like she’s thinking before she lights up with renewed joy. “you should come by for dinner again! i miss when you would always come around. i could even get dad to make your favorite.”

your stomach sinks, just the tiniest bit, but you can’t say ‘no’ to her giant smile and big scarlet eyes. so you muster up a big smile, squeezing her shoulders fondly. “dinner sounds great.”

“perfect! it’s a date then.” 

eri beams up at you, and you try very, very hard not to look at hitoshi. 

dividers by @/saradika-graphics, header by kitty with pics from pinterest!

taglist: @deadhands69 @frvv @cccandynecklaces @tokeposts @lover-no-lover61 @getvaccinated @accidentpronedork @crushmeeren @p4rkcha3w0n @cyberesc @bloomstream @eloshifts @bythevay @cc1306 (ask/comment if you’d like to be added!)

🫵 this one’s for toke n sydney!! had fun w/ this one!! (even if it was a pain to finish LMAO) next chapter might be a little shorter, but things really pick up from there. hope everyone’s enjoying it so far, i def am!! <33

[emmiesoverthemoon]

what's a little ink?

pairing: han jisung x reader

word count: 7.3k

summary: you wanted the upper hand. you came for a tattoo. you also came for him. and somehow you ended up in his hoodie, eating his eggs, and wondering how a bet turned into this stupid, soft thing you just can’t resist wanting

tags: tattoo artist au, friends to lovers, fluff and smut. porn with plot. sweet, sappy, and gross romance. enjoy

requested by @burlesquerade hope u like it honey

It all started with a simple, completely ridiculous bet. You and Han had been hanging out for hours, as you often did, swapping old stories and making fun of each other’s quirky habits. Laughter echoed around the cozy living room, the kind of laughter that was easy and natural, the way it always was when the two of you were together.

"Okay," Han said, a sly grin spreading across his face. He leaned forward, eyes glinting with that playful spark you knew all too well. "If you can beat me at this stupid game one more time, I will get you whatever you want as a prize."

You raised an eyebrow, already suspecting he might be setting you up for something ridiculous. "Whatever I want? Really?"

"Yep. No holds barred. You name it, and it’s yours," Han assured you, his tone full of confident mischief. "But if I win…" He paused for dramatic effect, leaning in so close you could feel the heat of his breath on your cheek. “You have to let me tattoo you.”

You snorted, shaking your head. “Tattoo me? Really? That’s your big gamble?”

Han’s smile grew wider. “I’m a tattoo artist, remember? It's a fair trade. I think you’re too scared to let me do it.”

You couldn’t help the laugh that escaped your lips, your fingers tapping idly on your cup. “Scared? Please. I’m not scared of a tattoo.”

His eyes narrowed, a challenge sparking in their depths. “Oh, so now you’re saying you can handle it? Alright then. You’re on. But we both know I’m going to win.”

You gave him a playful smirk. “Big talk for someone who has no idea what they’re up against.”

The game you were playing—a mix of cards, trivia, and guessing games—was silly, and it didn’t take long for the competition to become heated. But, much to your surprise, you did win. By a narrow margin, of course, but a win was a win.

Han’s mouth dropped open in disbelief, and you had to bite your lip to stop yourself from gloating too much. You had been expecting him to be smug, but now, as the reality of the situation sank in, you saw a flicker of something else cross his features.

“Alright, alright,” he muttered, trying to hide his grin. “You won. So what do you want?”

You leaned back in the chair, considering your options. There were so many things you could ask for—something extravagant, maybe—but you had been thinking about this for a while. Han had been inking people for years now, and you had always wondered what it would feel like to have him work on you.

So, you decided to go for it.

“I want a tattoo,” you said with a straight face, barely able to hide the excitement in your voice.

He blinked at you. “Wait… you’re serious?”

“Totally,” you answered, your grin impossible to hide. “You’re going to ink me, Han. And you can’t back out.”

He stared at you for a long moment, as if trying to make sure you weren’t joking, but then the challenge returned in his eyes.

“Well, if I have to do this, I get to choose where,” he said, his tone slightly mischievous. “No complaints, okay?”

You snorted, rolling your eyes. “Fine. As long as I get to decide what the design is, I’ll leave the location to you.”

Han smirked and held out his hand. “Deal.”

The text from Han came just before noon.

“Hope you’re not chickening out. Studio at 3. Wear something loose. ;)”

You stared at your phone longer than you meant to, heat crawling up your neck. Chickening out? Hardly. But that stupid winking face was another story. He always knew how to push just the right buttons—just enough to make your pulse quicken, just enough to stir things that should probably stay buried.

Still, you showed up. Of course you did.

His studio was tucked into a quiet side street downtown, its glass windows fogged slightly from the early spring chill. You had been here before—countless times, really—but never like this. Never with your skin on the line. Never with your heart threatening to beat out of your chest for reasons that had very little to do with ink or needles.

The soft chime above the door rang as you stepped in. Han was already inside, hunched over a sketchpad, his brows knitted in concentration. A pencil twirled between his fingers as he tapped it against his lower lip, eyes flicking to you the moment you walked in.

And just like that, the air shifted.

He smiled, slow and crooked. “You came. I’m impressed.”

“You told me to. I don’t exactly think that counts as bravery,” you replied, trying to play it cool, even though you were already peeling off your jacket, already catching the way his eyes flicked to your collarbone with something unreadable.

Han rose from his chair, brushing his fingers through his soft brown hair. “I sketched some ideas. Wanna see?”

You nodded, joining him by the desk where several sheets were spread out. The designs were delicate—subtle, intricate things, clearly drawn with you in mind. One of them caught your eye: a minimalist crescent moon nestled inside a trail of tiny stars, the lines fine and whisper-soft.

“I like this one,” you murmured, fingers brushing the paper.

“I thought you might.” His voice had dropped a bit. He was watching you closely, as if your reaction meant something more than approval. “It’s gentle. Quiet. But it lingers.”

You swallowed.

“I’ve decided where to put it,” he added after a beat, stepping closer.

“Oh?” you asked, lifting an eyebrow. “Do I get a hint?”

Han smiled, tilting his head just slightly as his eyes traveled—unapologetically—over your exposed shoulder, down the dip of your neck. “Upper shoulder. Right where it curves into your neck. Here.” He reached out, fingers grazing the exact spot, the barest ghost of a touch. “It’s a place you never see, but everyone else does. Intimate. Subtle. Kind of like the moon.”

You froze. It was a good idea—too good, actually. Because now, your body was responding to more than just nerves. The closeness. The delicacy in his voice. The way his fingertips lingered, resting there a heartbeat longer than necessary.

“I trust you,” you whispered, hoping it would ground you.

Han met your gaze. For once, he looked serious. “Then lie down for me.”

The chair was cold at first, the studio quiet but for the low murmur of music and the faint clatter of his tools. You lay on your side, hair pulled up and shirt slightly off one shoulder, baring the space where he would work. The air kissed your skin, but it was Han’s presence—his warmth—that you felt most acutely.

He cleaned the area with methodical care, the scent of alcohol and antiseptic somehow comforting. But it was the way his hand curved around your shoulder, the way his thumb brushed the nape of your neck, that made you hyper aware of every inch of yourself.

“You okay?” he asked softly.

“Mhmm.”

“Tell me if it hurts too much.”

You chose not to tell him that it already did—but not because of the needle.

As the machine buzzed to life, the first kiss of ink stung. You flinched, just slightly, and felt his other hand firm on your back in response. Steadying. Anchoring.

He worked in slow, precise strokes, the pressure rhythmic, hypnotic. But each time his fingers brushed your skin, each time his breath tickled your shoulder from how close he leaned—it lit something warm and aching inside you.

His voice broke through the quiet after a while, low and slightly hoarse. “You’re really still. Most people twitch like hell when it’s here.”

You exhaled, barely moving. “I think I just… don’t want to mess you up.”

“You couldn’t,” he murmured. And for a second, the machine paused. His hand stayed, resting lightly over the fresh lines. “You’re kind of perfect like this.”

Your breath caught.

You didn’t dare move. Didn’t dare ask what he meant. But in the pause between one stroke and the next, the silence pulsed—thick with something fragile, something not quite spoken yet.

He resumed working, but something had changed. His touches had always been skilled, steady, but now there was a new kind of deliberateness in the way his fingers slid across your skin—slower, more lingering, more aware. The buzz of the machine became background noise to the static dancing along your spine.

Your breath came shallow and controlled, each exhale purposeful, but no amount of focus could erase the way heat pooled low in your belly each time he adjusted your position, each time he leaned in just close enough that his breath grazed the shell of your ear.

"You’re warm," he said suddenly, voice barely audible over the low thrum of music.

You tilted your head, cheek brushing the leather of the chair. “Is that your way of saying I’m sweating too much?”

A quiet laugh. "No." He wiped the spot gently, fingers spread wide against your upper back. “Just saying... your skin feels alive.”

You bit the inside of your cheek, willing yourself not to shiver.

He paused to dip the needle again, but his other hand stayed pressed against you—thumb dragging absently along the edge of your spine. And then, as though the words slipped free without permission, he added, “It’s kind of driving me crazy.”

The machine stilled. Your eyes snapped open.

“What?”

Han blinked, as if he had not meant to say it aloud. But the corner of his mouth lifted anyway, a half-smile that was equal parts sheepish and satisfied. “Nothing. Just... hard to stay focused when you’re under my hands like this.”

Your pulse spiked. “You’re the one who insisted on choosing the placement.”

“Maybe I wanted an excuse to touch you like this. To drive you crazy”

The air between you crackled. He was close now—too close. His hand still rested against your skin, fingers slightly curled as if resisting the urge to grip tighter. You felt it in your bones: the shift from friendly banter to something heavier. Something hungry.

The tattoo needle remained idle, forgotten for the moment.

Your voice came soft, but steady. “Are you always this... handsy when you’re working?”

He leaned in slowly, slowly, until his mouth hovered just behind your ear. “Only when the canvas makes it impossible not to be.”

Your breath caught. You could feel the heat of him, the deliberate pause before he moved again—not toward his tools, but toward you. His hand slid from your shoulder, knuckles brushing the side of your throat in a line so featherlight it made your skin pebble.

Your voice was barely above a whisper. “You said you wanted to drive me crazy, too.”

“Is it working?” he murmured.

You closed your eyes, exhaling. “I think you already know the answer.”

Han chuckled under his breath, but there was a tightness in it—like restraint stretched thin. Still, he didn’t kiss you. Didn’t push further. Instead, he pressed a hand to your waist and guided you gently back into place, the spell not broken, only deferred.

“I should finish,” he said, almost hoarse.

You nodded, breathless. “Yeah. Finish.”

But every second after that was charged. Every brush of his hand, every hum of the machine, every stolen glance when you dared to peek up at him—all of it thrummed with the knowledge that something had shifted. And neither of you could pretend it hadn’t.

You lost track of time. Moments bled into minutes, drawn out by the quiet rhythm of his work and the unspoken weight between you.

By the time he shut off the machine, your body felt like it had become a tuning fork—tight with tension, humming with everything unsaid.

“That’s it, you're done,” Han said quietly, voice thick.

He reached for a clean cloth, gently dabbing the inked area. The sting had dulled into a soft ache, but the way his hand moved over your skin—slow, deliberate, reverent—was what left you breathless.

He lingered there, thumb brushing just above the fresh lines. “You did good. Barely moved.”

You shifted onto your elbows slightly, twisting to catch his face. “Is that praise, or are you just surprised I didn’t faint?”

His gaze met yours. For a second, he said nothing. Then, a smile tugged at his lips—but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“You’re a lot tougher than you let on.”

You sat up, pulling the collar of your shirt gently over one shoulder. “Maybe you just bring it out of me.”

Han stood there, still holding the cloth, still watching you with that unreadable expression. The tension between you was no longer subtle. It stretched between your bodies like a wire, thin and tight, vibrating with things neither of you had said out loud.

You looked away first.

“Let me pay you,” you said, reaching for your bag.

“Don’t,” he interrupted. “This wasn’t about that.”

Your fingers froze on the strap. You turned slowly. “Then what was it about?”

He hesitated, jaw tight. The weight in his gaze softened for a beat—something bare flickering through, like he wanted to say everything but chose instead to say:

“I wanted something of mine on you.”

The words landed in your chest like a drop of ink in water—sinking, blooming.

You didn’t respond right away. The silence folded around you again, but it was thick, pulsing, the air saturated with all the ways you almost touched.

Finally, you smiled, small but real. “Well... now you’ve got it.”

He laughed under his breath, but it was quieter this time. A little more careful. “Yeah. Guess I do.”

You moved toward the mirror, pulling your shirt slightly aside to see the finished piece that now lay protected by second skin. The crescent moon curved delicately against your skin, soft as a secret, sharp as a wish you hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

It was beautiful. It was everything you could have asked for.

You caught Han watching your reflection—eyes fixed not just on the ink, but the shape of you, the moment of you. Like he had never really allowed himself to look until now.

And still... he did nothing. And neither did you.

Just two bodies, standing too close, tied together by a single piece of ink and a silence that spoke louder than anything else.

You turned from the mirror, fingers brushing down the edge of your collar one last time. The skin was still tender beneath your touch, but not as tender as the weight in your chest.

“I should go,” you said, voice a little too light. A little too careful.

Han nodded once, but he did not move from where he stood. “Right. It’s late.”

You moved toward the door, bag slung over your shoulder, shoes forgotten under the bench. The silence followed you like smoke—slow and curling and hard to breathe through. You could feel his eyes on your back.

But just as your hand touched the knob, you paused.

“…I’m not usually like this.”

The words escaped before you could catch them.

Han’s voice came from behind you, lower now. “Like what?”

You didn’t turn to face him. “This affected.”

A beat.

Then: “Me neither.”

You turned then. Slowly. He was closer than he’d been a moment ago. Still not touching. Still not reaching.

But close.

The streetlights from outside filtered through the frosted windows, casting soft shadows over his face—his expression was unreadable again, but his eyes were not. They were dark and warm and searching. Like he wanted to speak with his hands instead of his mouth.

“I should walk you out,” he offered.

“I don’t need—”

“I know.” A pause. Then, his voice was gentler, “Let me anyway.”

You nodded.

He opened the door, and the cool air of the hallway hit your skin like a shock—like stepping out of a dream. The clack of your shoes echoed softly as you both walked, side by side, neither of you speaking.

You reached the door to the street. The city breathed on the other side. Stillness clung to the space between you like fog.

“Hey,” Han called, just as you stepped onto the threshold. His voice pulled you back. “Wait.”

You turned, heart stuttering.

He was standing close again. Too close. The kind of close that felt deliberate. His hand hovered near your waist, fingers flexing once, like he was debating whether to touch you again.

He didn’t.

Instead, his voice dropped. “If I kiss you right now… would that mess things up?”

Your breath hitched.

The world held its breath with you.

You let the silence stretch. Let the ache of it crawl up your spine. And then you said—quietly, honestly:

“I think not kissing me might mess things up more.”

And still—still—he did not kiss you. He only looked at you like he wanted to memorize the moment, the space between your mouths, the way you had just told him everything without saying it outright.

He smiled, slow and heavy with intent. “Then maybe I’ll wait until it really ruins me.”

Your throat went dry.

“Night,” he murmured, stepping back.

And just like that, the door closed between you.

But your heart stayed in his hands.

It was past midnight when your phone lit up.

"You still awake?"

You stared at the screen, thumb hovering, heart already answering before you could.

"i never really went to sleep"

Three dots appeared, then vanished. Then again.

"Me neither"

A beat of no incoming messages passed, then:

"I'm keeping myself up thinking about earlier''

Your breath caught.

"the tattoo?"

"Not exactly.."

You didn't respond right away. You didn’t have to. The air in your room had changed—thicker, tighter, like his voice might pour from the cracks in the wall's paint if you leaned in close enough.

And then the screen lit up again—this time, a call, to which you answered—not after panicking for a few seconds, of course.

“…Hey.” You whispered into the microphone.

His voice was low, rough from too many unsent words. “You looked good tonight.”

You swallowed the simmering embarrassment down. “You saw a lot of skin.”

“Not the part I meant.”

A silence stretched. Not awkward—intimate. It curled through the receiver like warm breath against your neck.

“Come by tomorrow,” he said finally. “I need to check your tattoo.”

“You just want to touch me again.”

“I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you by saying I didn't love every second of touching you. Come by tomorrow, please?”

Your skin flared at the bluntness. There was no smirk in his tone. No teasing this time. Just heat. Quiet and real.

You whispered, “Okay.”

The next day, you were back at his studio.

You told yourself it was just for aftercare, but the second you walked in, saw the way he looked up at you—eyes dark and steady—you knew you were both done pretending.

“Shirt,” he said softly, gesturing to the seat.

You sat. You peeled the fabric from your shoulder, the same stretch of skin that had sparked the night before and haunted his thoughts since. His hands were gloved, but his touch still felt like bare electricity.

He leaned in, inspecting the ink, but the space between you crackled. “Looks good,” he murmured. “You’ll heal fast.”

“So I can go?” you teased, voice thinner than usual.

He gave you no answer. Just peeled off the gloves, tossed them aside, and placed his bare hand against your back—palm flat, warm. Possessive.

“You came back,” he said. “That’s what I wanted.”

You turned your head, letting your cheek rest against your shoulder, watching him. “I did as I was told, Han. So what now?”

Han stepped around to face you. He reached up and touched your chin, tilting your face to his. The air between you shrank to nothing.

“Now I kiss you.”

And this time, he did.

His mouth was warm, unhurried, like he was tasting something he had waited weeks to touch. His fingers cradled your jaw, and you melted into it, into him, into the truth that had been aching beneath your skin for days.

He pulled back, just an inch.

“Still messing things up?” he asked, breath brushing your lips.

You smiled. “Only in the best way.”

The kiss tasted like every moment that came before it—charged, aching, sweet with restraint. His mouth moved against yours like a secret unraveling, like he had memorized the shape of your lips before ever daring to touch them.

You leaned into him, fingers curling into his shirt, pulling him closer like instinct. Like gravity. Han followed the movement without hesitation, one hand sliding around your waist, the other brushing the side of your neck—soft, reverent, as if you might vanish if he held you too tightly.

When he pulled back, just enough to breathe, your foreheads touched. Your eyes stayed closed.

“You have no idea what you’ve been doing to me,” he whispered.

You opened your eyes. “Then show me.”

The words cracked something open between you. Quickly, he sat beside you on the tattoo bed and pulled you onto his lap.

He kissed you again—deeper now, his hands no longer tentative. One slid under your shirt, fingers warm against the small of your back, the other braced at your hip like he needed the anchor. You shifted in his lap, and before you realized you had even moved, he groaned low in his throat at the feel of you straddling him, bodies pressed with no space between.

Still, he slowed. Just for a breath.

“You okay?” he asked, voice rough.

You nodded, nose brushing his. “More than.”

His lips returned to the bare side of your throat—soft at first, then with the scrape of teeth. Your hands threaded into his hair as you tilted your head for him, shivering when he dragged his mouth down the slope of your shoulder.

“Han,” you breathed.

He stilled for a moment, forehead pressed against your skin.

“I’ve wanted this,” he said. “But not just this.”

You stilled, heart thudding.

“I want every version of you,” he continued. “The fire, the softness, the silence. I want the way you look at me when I'm not looking. I want the way you talk like you are not afraid but touch like you’re terrified.”

You exhaled, chest caving. “You noticed everything?"

“I tried not to.”

He leaned back to meet your gaze. His hands moved with more intent now, but still gentle—still you-first. His thumbs traced the curve of your hips beneath your shirt, and you shivered under the slow build of it.

And then, still holding your waist, he laid you back against the padded bench—carefully, gracefully—like you were something rare. Like he had dreamed of this exact moment in the quiet between days.

Your shirt came off slowly, inch by inch. His hands explored like a map he was finally allowed to touch. Every kiss was a promise: I will not rush this. I will learn you inch by inch. I will memorize every sigh.

When his mouth found yours again, the kiss burned hotter—teeth clashing gently, breath shared. You tugged at his shirt, and he pulled it over his head in one clean motion, your hands already seeking skin, already desperate to feel.

Still, even in the heat, he slowed now and then—traced your ribs with a single finger, kissed the inside of your wrist. Whispers scattered between kisses.

“I want you,” he said. “But I also want you.”

You arched into him, fingertips splayed across his back, heart wide open. “You have me.”

The second his shirt hit the floor, your hands were on him—tracing the taut muscle beneath warm skin, nails catching just enough to make him hiss. His mouth was back on yours before you could take your next breath, more forceful now, more needy. Tongue sliding against yours with a hunger that made your spine arch and your legs tighten around his hips.

Han groaned when he felt it—your thighs drawing him in like a vice, like you already knew exactly how this would end.

“Fuck,” he murmured against your mouth. “You feel too good.”

“You haven’t even felt me yet,” you whispered back.

His eyes darkened.

He pulled you up in one fluid motion, strong hands gripping your thighs as he laid you down atop the workbench, your back pressed against cool wood, your skin burning beneath his palms.

He kissed down your throat, not slow anymore. Messy, greedy, open-mouthed kisses that left your pulse stuttering. He bit lightly at the curve where your shoulder met your neck, and you gasped—head tipping back, legs spreading instinctively, begging for more contact, more friction, more.

His hands slipped beneath the band of your pants, thumbs dragging over the sensitive skin at your hips.

“These need to come off,” he growled, voice thick with want. “Right fucking now.”

You lifted your hips to help, letting him tug them down along with your underwear in one swift motion. The heat in his gaze when he looked at you—all of you—bare on his table, flushed and panting, legs spread for him like it was the most natural thing in the world—

It made your stomach flip, made your core throb.

“You’re gorgeous,” he said, like he was angry about it. “So fucking pretty and wet already, and I haven’t even touched you properly.”

“Then do it,” you whispered. “Touch me.”

And he did.

One hand pressed your thigh open, the other sliding between your legs, fingers stroking through your slick folds in a rhythm that was maddeningly light. He teased your clit with the pad of his thumb, watching the way your hips jerked, your mouth parted around soft gasps.

“You gonna let me make you come with just my fingers first?” he murmured, leaning close, breath hot against your ear. “Wanna feel you grip them before I fuck you. Want you so messy I can’t think straight.”

You whimpered, back arching. “Yes—please, Han—”

He slid one finger in, slow, letting you feel the stretch. Then two. Then a curl of his knuckles that had you crying out, your hands scrabbling for purchase on the edge of the table.

“That’s it,” he groaned. “Grind on my fingers. Let me see how desperate you are.”

You did—hips rocking, thighs trembling, your core clenching around him as he worked you open with deliberate pressure, circling your clit with his thumb until the pressure built fast and dizzying.

“I can feel you getting close,” he said against your throat. “You gonna come for me, baby? Right here on the table where I ink people’s skin?”

“Fuck—Han—yes—”

You shattered with a cry, legs shaking, body arching against his mouth as he kissed you through it—murmuring things you could barely process, words lost in the white-hot rush.

And when you finally came down, breath heaving, he leaned back and licked his fingers clean with a satisfied smirk.

“Think you’re ready for my cock now?”

You nodded, dazed. “Please.”

He undid his belt with one hand, gaze locked to yours as he stroked himself—slow, thick, already slick from the sight of you. Then he lined up, ran the head through your folds once, twice, teasing your oversensitive clit just to watch you twitch—

And then he pushed in.

You both groaned—deep, guttural—like relief and hunger all at once. He filled you in one slow, brutal thrust, burying himself to the hilt.

You were soaked. Sore. Already wrecked.

But he did not stop.

He fucked you—hard, deep, each thrust lifting your hips from the table, your hands clawing at his back, your moans turning to whimpers, then cries. His name over and over.

Your moans spilled out in sobs as your second climax hit you like a dam bursting. It was hot—blinding—your release painting his cock in pulsing waves, your entire body locking up beneath him. All the hunger, the want, the times of aching tension you had swallowed back whenever he so much as looked at you with those dark, unreadable eyes—it all came out in that moment. You clenched tight around him, and he groaned loud and low, his head dropping to your shoulder.

“God—look at you,” he rasped, voice wrecked, pride and awe tangled in every word. “So good for me. So perfect when you come.”

But then, his hips stopped to a jarring halt. He was still buried inside you, forehead pressed to yours, breath ragged. You could feel the tension in his body—every muscle taut, his hips stuttering in that way that told you he was right on the edge, right there—

But holding back. Just for you.

You cupped his jaw, breathless but steadying. “You didn’t come.”

He shook his head, eyes fluttering. “Wanted to feel you first. Wanted to see—fuck—how tight you get when you come around me.”

Your body gave a little twitch at the memory, still oversensitive, still full. But a flicker of something else lit behind your eyes.

You kissed him—slow and deep—and then, with a sly smile, clenched around him deliberately.

He choked on a moan, arms trembling where they braced beside your head.

“Baby—don’t—”

“You always so in control?” you whispered, brushing your lips along his jaw, down his throat. “Or are you just that good at hiding when you want to break?”

He groaned, head falling to your shoulder. “Please—fuck—”

You rolled your hips beneath him, just a little. Just enough.

“You’re still so hard,” you murmured, voice thick with satisfaction. “Still deep inside me like you need to be. You want to come? Want to fill me up?”

“God—yes.”

“Then allow me.”

You pushed him gently, and he let you—collapsing back into the chair beside the bench, cock glistening and flushed as it slipped free, twitching with the aftershocks of restraint. He barely had time to breathe before you dropped to your knees between his legs and wrapped your hand around him—tight, slow strokes from base to tip that had him gasping and clenching the arms of the chair.

“You look so pretty like this,” you murmured, kissing the head of his cock, licking the slit just to taste the salt of him.

His hips bucked and he cursed—head thrown back, abs tensing.

“Sensitive already, aren’t you?” you purred.

“I’m gonna—fuck—I’m gonna come—”

You took him into your mouth before he could finish the sentence—deep and warm, tongue swirling as you bobbed your head, one hand cupping his balls, the other pressing down gently on his hip to keep him from thrusting.

He was loud now, whimpering, begging, gasping your name like prayer.

And when he came—god—

It was with a broken moan, back arching, thighs shaking under your palms. You swallowed everything, licked your lips, and looked up at him through your lashes as he tried to remember how to breathe.

His eyes were glassy, hair clinging to his forehead, chest rising in jagged waves.

You smiled. “Still in control?”

He laughed—wrecked, breathless. “Fuck no.”

You climbed into his lap again, your bare skin still warm, flushed and tingling, and curled against him with a quiet little hum.

He wrapped his arms around you like instinct. And then, softly:

“…Round two’s gonna ruin us both.”

You grinned against his neck. “Good.”

The studio held comfortable silence for a moment.

Only your breathing filled the space—shallow and warm, mingling with his where you straddled him on the tattoo bed again, skin flushed and shining in the low amber glow of the work light. The air smelled like sweat and sex, care, and ink—hot, heavy, and honest.

Han was still beneath you, arms slack, mouth parted. His chest heaved, his cock softening between your thighs.

You dragged your fingers along the lines of his jaw, smug and satisfied. “Speechless?”

He blinked once. Then again. Something shifted in his eyes.

“No,” he rasped. “Just… trying not to fuck you so hard this bed breaks.”

You laughed softly—until his hands shot to your hips and slammed you down onto his thigh.

You gasped, the sudden friction making your oversensitive body jolt.

“I let you ruin me once,” he growled, voice low and wrecked. “Your turn now.”

You barely had time to react before he stood, arms beneath your thighs, lifting you like nothing. Your back hit the nearest wall—your bare skin flush to cool concrete, legs wrapped around his waist, his cock already hardening between you again.

“What—Han—”

“You think you can just look at me like that,” he snarled against your neck, grinding up between your soaked folds. “Touch me like you own me. And then walk out of here? Nah.”

You shivered. His cock pressed right against your entrance.

“Han—”

“Look at me.”

You did.

He didn't give you a warning. Just a brutal promise, growled against your skin; “I’m gonna fuck you so good you’ll forget your own name—but still remember mine when your hands are between your legs for weeks after.”

Then he was inside you again—deep—in one smooth, merciless thrust, hips snapping forward so hard your back hit the wall with a dull thud.

You gasped—high and breathless—arms clinging to his shoulders, nails biting into skin.

“Han—fuck—”

He caught your cry in a kiss that was anything but sweet. All tongue, teeth, and desperation, lips crushed to yours like he needed your breath to survive.

Your walls fluttered around him already—sensitive from the first round, still dripping wet and raw, but ready despite the ache. He filled you so completely, so perfectly, it stole the air from your lungs.

“I felt this pussy clench around my fingers,” he groaned, pulling back just enough to slam into you again. “But it’s nothing—nothing—compared to how you grip my cock. So fucking tight. So wet.”

You moaned—helpless—every part of your body trembling as he started to move.

Hard. Fast. Focused.

Your back scraped against the wall with every thrust, the studio echoing with the filthy slap of skin on skin, the sound of your choked gasps and his rough groans.

“You want control?” he hissed, fingers digging into the underside of your thighs, forcing them open wider. “Then take it.”

He pulled out.

You nearly cried from the loss.

Then he moved you back to the table, your knees hitting the workbench edge as he turned you, bent you forward, pressed your chest flat to the table.

You barely had time to breathe before he plunged back inside from behind, the new angle making you cry out, high and broken.

“Louder!” he commanded. “Let the whole damn building know how good I fuck you.”

And louder you were when he found that spot inside you—over and over again, the pace brutal and relentless.

He gripped your hips, pulling you back to meet every thrust, the obscene sound of your slick arousal growing louder with every stroke. Your legs started to buckle—nerves frayed, every inch of your skin alight.

“F-fuck—Han—I can’t—too much—”

“You can. You’re taking it like a fucking dream,” he rasped, reaching down, rubbing your clit in tight, wet circles that made your vision blur.

Your whole body tightened—shaking, clenching, desperate to come again, and again—

He leaned over you, lips to your ear, voice hoarse:

“Come on my cock again, baby. Milk it. Let me feel that pretty pussy worship me.”

And you did.

You shattered—body convulsing, mouth open in a silent scream as you came hard, squeezing him so tight he cursed and slammed into you with one final, brutal thrust.

He came with a shout—loud, raw, high—hips jerking as he spilled inside you, his hands fisting in your hair, his teeth grazing your shoulder.

You stayed like that for a moment.

Ruined. One tangled, sweaty, aching mess.

Then his hands softened—smoothed up your back, traced the curves of your hips like reverence.

He pressed a kiss between your shoulder blades.

“…Still remember your name?”

You laughed, wrecked and breathless.

“Remind me?" you whispered.

You did not remember collapsing—just that one moment he was still inside you, and the next, you were draped across the tattoo bed like laundry left out to dry. Your skin tingled, nerves alight, thighs sticky and trembling, your mind still floating somewhere just above your body.

And Han?

Han was slumped in the chair again, legs spread, one arm thrown dramatically over his face.

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered into the crook of his elbow. “I think I blacked out. You short-circuited me.”

You snorted, face still pressed to the cool surface of the bench. “You short-circuited me. I’m literally leaking.”

He scooted the chair to get a full view of what you were talking about, eyes glassy but mischievous. “Good. I want it dripping down your thighs next time you show up in those little skirts you wear.”

You blinked. “Next time?”

Han grinned, wicked and lazy. “Oh, baby. This is so not a one-time thing. I’m gonna put a stamp on you like a repeat customer loyalty card.”

You rolled onto your side, raising a brow. “You’re gonna fuck me five times and give me a discount on a flash piece?”

He laughed—loudly. Like you caught him off guard. “God, you’re a menace.”

“You’re the menace. Who says that shit mid-stroke?” you shot back, mimicking his earlier line with mock dramatics: “‘Forget your own name but still remember mine?’ Who writes you?”

He leaned forward, dragging his fingers up your bare spine. “No one writes me. I just improvise.”

You narrowed your eyes. “So… you freestyled your way into making me cum thrice and see stars?”

He winked. “What can I say? I’ve got bars and stamina.”

You smacked him with a rolled-up paper towel, but he caught your wrist and pulled you into his lap, arms curling around your waist like he never wanted to let you go.

Then—softer, like he almost did not mean to say it aloud:

“…I really like you.”

You stilled, looked over to him and kissed him gently, pouring every single ounce of reciprocation your being had to offer him. Because maybe he was a cocky, ridiculous, and insatiable man—but he was your cocky, ridiculous, and insatiable man.

Even when he was a little bit of a menace.

The silence after pulling away was heavy—not the uncomfortable kind, more like an exhale. A shared, serene stillness, your heartbeat slowing while his lips ghosted along your jaw, your collarbone, the tender edge of your throat.

He had not moved far.

Still close. Still inside your gravity.

Then Han shifted, propping his head on one elbow which rested on the arm of the chair, eyes sweeping your face like he was memorizing something. His fingers moved before his mouth did—brushing a strand of hair behind your ear, thumb dragging down your cheek.

“Hey,” he said quietly.

You blinked up at him, still dazed. “Hey.”

He hesitated—not out of uncertainty, but because this, somehow, felt bigger than everything you both had already done.

“You don’t have to go home tonight.”

You blinked. “Huh?”

His voice stayed soft, careful, “I mean… you could stay. With me.”

You stared.

He rushed to fill the silence, eyes darting between yours.

“Not just for more of this—though God, don’t get me wrong, I want more of this—but like. We could crash at my place. Order food. You could steal my hoodie. Wake up and make terrible coffee together. You could see what I’m like in the morning. Spoiler: not sexy. Kind of grumpy. But you’re good with chaos, right?”

You laughed—but something in your chest ached, cracked just a little.

Because he meant it—this wasn’t just about lust anymore. Not even about proximity or chemistry.

It was a choice.

He was asking you to stay, to see him past the high, into the quiet.

You leaned up, kissed him once—slow and certain.

“I’ll stay,” you whispered.

And the way he looked at you then—hopeful and smug and so unmistakably fond—made you feel warmer than anything else that night.

Sunlight crept in like it was in on a secret, painting lazy gold across your bare shoulder.

You stirred, slowly, blinking awake to the smell of coffee and something warm—eggs?—cooking in the kitchen nook. Your body ached, in all the right places. Inner thighs sore. Lips swollen. A fingerprint or five pressed like stamps into your hips. You stretched, wincing slightly, and smiled.

And Han—God, Han—was nowhere in the bed, but his hoodie had been draped over your legs like a blanket, his scent wrapped around you like a sigh.

You slipped it on, oversized and soft, sleeves swallowing your hands, and padded barefoot across the polished concrete toward the sound of gentle humming and the clatter of a pan.

Han stood with his back to you—shirtless, hair wild and sticking up in twenty-seven different directions, tattoos flexing as he flipped something in a pan. There were two mugs of coffee already out. One black. The other just the way you liked it.

You leaned on the doorway, biting your smile.

He sensed you, because of course he did.

“You’re up,” he murmured, glancing over his shoulder. And then, softer, like he couldn’t help himself: “Fuck, you look good in my hoodie.”

You padded up behind him, wrapping your arms around his waist, pressing your face on his nape.

“You’re feeding me. You really trying to make me fall in love with you?”

He chuckled, flipping the egg once again with a practiced hand. “That was the plan, yeah. Ruin your body, then win your heart with food.”

You laughed against his skin. “Tactical.”

He turned the stove off and turned in your arms, resting his hands low on your hips, looking down at you with sleepy warmth in his eyes. You felt it then—not just the physical closeness, but the easiness of it. The comfort. The pull.

“You staying the whole day?” he asked, voice quiet now, vulnerable in that way he rarely let show.

You nodded, brushing your lips over his collarbone.

“Only if you kiss me like that again,” you teased.

He grinned.

And did just that—slow, sweet, a kiss with no agenda other than to keep you there.

Later, with your stomach full, your limbs loose and drowsy from the best kind of indulgence, you found yourself curled up on the couch—Han’s head in your lap, your fingers absentmindedly playing with the messy strands of his hair.

Some terrible movie was playing on his television. Neither of you was really watching it. The remote lay forgotten on the floor. His fingers traced idle patterns on the bare skin beneath your borrowed hoodie, the both of you half-clothed, half-tangled, fully comfortable.

“This is dangerous,” you murmured.

Han cracked one eye open. “What is?”

“This. Us. You looking at me like I hung the stars and made your coffee.”

He smirked without moving. “You did, though. Kind of. That coffee was perfect.”

You rolled your eyes, but your cheeks warmed anyway.

His expression softened, gaze dropping to where his hand rested just beneath your ribs. “You should let me tattoo you again,” he said after a long beat.

You looked down at him. “Now?”

“No,” he smiled, “not now. But someday. Something small. Just for me. Somewhere only I get to see.”

Your stomach flipped at the idea. You tried to play it off. “That’s a lot of trust, letting you draw on me permanently.”

His fingers slid a little lower, dangerously close to a place that still pulsed with the memory of last night.

“You already let me ruin you once,” he said with a grin. “What’s a little ink?”

You snorted, swatting at him half-heartedly. “You’re so full of yourself.”

“And you’re still here,” he countered easily, nuzzling into your thigh like he belonged there. Like he always had.

You sighed contently as you carded your fingers through his hair again.

“Yeah,” you whispered, half to him, half to yourself.

“And I'm here to stay.”

drops this in your hands and runs off into the sunset

taglist (ask to be added here): @petersasteria @gdinthehouseee @aizshallnotbefound @burlesquerade @floofeh-purpi @ldydeath @wcnderlnds @ttturnitup @breakmeoff @sherrayyyyy @ricecake9999 @leni111 @scream-queen-25 @spiritualgirly444 @fairyprincesslvr21 @loonybunny1 @uuchii @sherxoo @m-325

[shuenkio]

Zero o'clock — 니키 🎆☄. *. ⋆

Paring: Ex-bf Ni-ki X M!reader

Synopsis: Will he ever be here again with you, on the new year countdown at the same spot? When both of you already broke up? Would he? Genre: Angst but happy ending. Cw: curse or more? Non proof read | English is not my first. This is a work of fanfiction, do not throw unnecessary tantrums on this nsfw/sfw blog. ©Shuenkio

It has been months ever since you broke up with your so-called boyfriend. And the reason behind this was the right person wrong timing however there was a hint which you never noticed that NIKI still longing for you no matter what the cause, even though both of you knowing that no one had the time to even spare one attention or affection,

Let alone suffering to this point where everyone part ways.

Where was home when you wanted him? Then there he was, out there busy with whatever project schedule he had with his friends, at first all he says was it only takes a few weeks nevertheless the week turns into months, months. And why is that? You caught him red hand where he's hanging out freely in the club, but that's not enough, the fact there was girl and boy by his side, both of his hands clinging on their shoulders? it's not even funny at all when you found him there when you were there for running errands. It was a suffering sight to encounter that could make you tear blood. The first time you thought your first love was meant to be last yet it was wrong. Heart ache is not a strong word to even describe how bad you felt it more than that.

And when he asked why would you break up with him? Simple,

"we're not the right one"

At the campus, the new year's countdown celebration. There were people, countless students presence to celebrate together. The night filled with the blank less cloud that let the full moon shine through the earth.

You were there, the same spot again where you used to stay close with your lover but it was all in the memory now. Something really did not stay the same despite how good it was, never meant to be ?. Your friends asked you if you'd come along with them so you won't feel lonely but you politely decline, need time for yourself though you were not alone anymore, this is a festival after all, definitely feel lonely.

Little did you know, Ni-ki were already there, from a distance not so far away. He'd determine that you'll never spend this memories year alone. He will make a change tonight.

It hurt him the day both of you decided, he begged, asking for forgiveness, mercy, spare for time to be a better boyfriend again but it was never that easy, a broken glass can't be pieces with glue easily. Earning back your trust that could cost more than just words, is the only way.

And he knows that, seeing you with somebody else only to make him jealous, furious, does not sit right. That person will never be anybody but him only. The love that he built for God knows how long a waste will never be — He was such a selfish person for love. Stupid crazy in love with his ex-boyfriend.

"Hey" a familiar voice utter. You know instantly who he was, didn't even bother to turn around. It was awkwardly silent. Playing hard to get on his nerve, Ni-ki palm grip on your slump shoulder as he turns you to face hum.

"You do not have the right to ignore me" his finger points at your face like a threat, he was true to his words and there was no more funny business in him anymore — which makes you unsure and not a single word left your lip. You stood there with him hover, like a shield. The same spot, the same jacket he wore that day, nostalgia hit you in the gut that drew tears to your eyes, you couldn't control any longer.

On the other hand, Ni-ki knows you too much to the fact he wasn't even surprised, and was expected you would be a cry-baby, forever his cry-baby.

"I fucking hate you, why can't you just leave me alone? You always bother me so much when I am trying to move on" the dawn has fallen, but you were so strong that nobody can read your expression to assume.

"Hate me all you want, because hear this M/n! I don't A no as the answer, hm? "

I will apologize, make it up to you till the day I die if I have to, but our relationship never ended since that day you decided— *sigh*

say it, I need you to say what is on your mind hon, you don't have a choice, no one will understand you like I do, go grab your sack and explore the world, you will never whether you like it or not we stuck" Ni-ki manipulate again, he will always use this card and it always work. You want it, want to say that how toxic this relationship or him was, you will still be too deep, drowning in his love that can't be surface — and the fact he also did the same but the once time mistake, killed your trust.

This time you no longer hold in anymore, you cry in his face, salty tears streaming down on your beautiful cheeks that can only be seen by him, one and only. They say you only show your true color with your lifeline and here we are.

"Fine... You won me again, you moron"

Ni-ki won. The only victory that he feels like he won in life. He'd vow from the earth to heaven he never made his boyfriend carry the weight of pain again. As Ni-ki slid his fist down and grabbed you by the waist and held you close into a warm embrace, while he covered you in his long jacket, nobody would see your vulnerability. Your head against his heart, just feels right than the cure of cancer.

"M/n you will always love me and will always, say yes to me and I will kill for you, I'm sorry I make you went through shit, this time I'm pinky promise you, yaksokkhae?"

"Yaksokkhae" (promise)

His hand was tight in yours; fingers intertwined like a promise. He knew you knew he’d never let go. Not now, not ever. There was a feeling in the air not quite peace, not quite ache, something in between. As fireworks bloomed against the midnight sky, painting color into the dark, the moment etched itself into something permanent. This place wouldn’t become just a memory. He was here. He would always be here. And you would never have to stand alone again.

That’s zero o’clock love — the kind that starts again and again when everything else resets.

A/n: It been a while since i write angst, but never real angst but now it here with my love- Ni-ki san... I know some parts may be awkward but i hope you can understand ever single sentences, and for the cover thank to my love @angelsfat3 mwah. Also, happy 1 year's writer debut on tumblr... May 1st.

[sarahroutldge]

country club jitters

a/n: my second rafe fic - just a fluffy blurb. might make a part 2 of the actual night, but I thought this worked on its own. lmk if you'd be interested in a part 2, and lmk your thoughts in general (I love feedback - any feedback)

summary: you try to calm down rafe's nerves before he has to address his dad and almost all of figure eight.

word count: 1.5k

warnings: fluff, minor angst (but it's just rafe's nerves), mention of drugs, again it's mostly just a fluff piece, not proofread (oops I got lazy)

“Rafe, if you’re not ready in twenty minutes, the car is leaving without you,” Rose calls from downstairs. You just roll your eyes at the warning from your boyfriend’s stepmother, as you put on your dress in Rafe’s closet. 

Trying to distract your already stressed boyfriend from the extra pressure Rose was putting on the situation, you call out to him. “Babe, could you get the zipper?”

Rafe nods from his en suite bathroom, even though you can’t see the movement. “In a second,” he shouts, hoping you won't hear the crack in his voice. 

Looking in the mirror above the sink, Rafe splashes cold water on his face, hoping to clear his head for the night ahead of him. The young Cameron heir has been dreading this night for weeks. Though he’d been preparing for a while now—and in truth, perhaps he’d been preparing for this moment his entire life—he just couldn’t shake the nerves. What would have been just an ordinary fundraiser was really a turning point in Rafe’s life, where he’d been tasked with giving the keynote speech about what exactly they were raising money for. Most years, Ward gave the speech with Rose right by his side, but this year Rafe knew his father was testing him. Though Ward phrased the opportunity as a question, Rafe knew saying no wasn’t a possibility. If he wanted to finally prove himself to his father and to the community, he’d have to start tonight. It didn’t matter that he’d been clean for a year, or that he’d been doing quite well at Cameron Development; the wealthiest families of Figure Eight still thought of him as the aimless, addicted Cameron heir who’d never live up to his father’s expectations.

His only saving grace of the night was knowing that you’d be there, standing by his side (although not literally, because Ward said that was unprofessional). As his girlfriend of nearly two years now and as childhood friends before that, you’d seen him crash and burn, and you were there to pick up the pieces. You’d seen him grow both personally and professionally, but you know that until he got through this speech, he would have a hard time thinking the same of himself.

When he doesn’t come out of the bathroom, you decide to just make your way over to him anyways. You exit Rafe’s closet and knock at his bathroom door, even though it’s slightly open.

“Uh, come in,” he says quickly, and you ignore the quiet shake in his voice.

Holding up the side of your dress, you look at the man you love leaning over the sink—face dripping with what you hope is water and not sweat—with his hands holding onto the edges, almost red from how hard he’s clenching. “Babe, can you get the zipper?” you repeat, hoping to draw him out of whatever’s going on in his mind.

Rafe shakes his head and turns to you, finally making eye contact with the woman he thinks—no, knows—he’s gonna marry one day. “Uh, you look…” he stutters, his words escaping him.

You give him a curious look in return, and when he registers your confused expression, he shakes his head again. “You look gorgeous, Y/N. But then again, you always do.”

And even though you’ve been hearing him say things like that for longer than a year at this point, you can’t help the giddiness on your face, the shyness that his words still manage to bring out in you. Walking over to him, you cradle his face with your hands, leaning up to press a light peck on his lips. “You look so handsome,” you whisper into his lips, and you can’t help but grin at the fact that you’ve finally managed to pull a bit of a smile from the stressed man before you. 

Rafe presses his hands against your waist, and you shiver from the coldness. “You are the only good thing about tonight,” Rafe states, and you frown.

“Don’t say that, babe. Kelce thinks he’ll finally get Topper’s mom to dance with him tonight, and I just know you want to see the look on Top’s face if that happens.”

Rafe chuckles, always pleased at the way you can dissipate his nerves so easily. They haven’t entirely gone away, of course, but your presence always makes them more manageable. Not quite knowing how to express his gratitude in words, he presses another kiss to your lips, this one more passionate than the one before it. But it’s not heated and there’s no tongue, because he knows that you’ll be pissed if he messes us the makeup you just spent forty-five minutes on perfecting (it would have been twenty minutes, but Sarah decided to barge in, claiming she needed your opinion on all eight of the dresses she was considering wearing tonight). His hand moves to the back of your dress, gently tugging the zipper up, just as his lips leave yours. Punctuating the action with one more peck, he slowly removes his hands, missing your warmth but knowing the both of you need to get a move on.

“Just let me put my shoes on, and we can head out,” you reply, and he nods, following you out of the bathroom. Sitting on the edge of Rafe’s bed, you pick up the heels from the floor, sliding them onto your feet and fastening the ankle straps. You stand up straight and turn around, expecting to see your boyfriend behind you, but he’s disappeared again. “Rafe?” you call out, confused (and maybe a little bit worried).

“I’m here,” he shouts from the closet, before exiting with his hands hidden behind his back. His hands come forward to present you with a black rectangular velvet case. “I got this for you a month ago, but with work and my dad I forgot to give it to you. Thought it might look nice with your dress, though.”

You look up at his eyes, wide and almost hesitant. “Rafe, you didn’t have to get me anything–”

“I know I didn’t, but I got the idea and I know you don’t love super flashy jewelry but I remembered that one necklace you love broke and I… I’m rambling here, yeah, just open it. If you don’t like it, then we can return it, or maybe swap it out for a different metal.” If the way his voice quiets wasn’t so adorable, you might make a quick joke about it, but instead, you figure that he’s gonna have to deal with enough teasing tonight, so you accept the present happily. Opening the box, your breath is taken away as you admire the simple gold chain, with a lowercase “r” pendant, small but proud.

“Oh, Rafe… it’s beautiful. It’s perfect…” 

“Really?” he asks, with that adorable hesitant voice only you ever get to hear.

“Yes, I love it. I love you. Would you…” you ask, gesturing to the clasp. He nods, and the two of you walk over towards his full-length mirror. He removes the necklace from the box, and you hold your freshly-done hair up above your neck. Not trying to get distracted, Rafe pretends not to notice the goosebumps he leaves as he lays the necklace on your skin, before closing the clasp. He lets his hands rest on your shoulders for a second, as the two of you stare into each other’s eyes through the mirror. His hands slowly move around your waist, and he pecks your cheek.

You giggle at the gesture, and Rafe kisses you once more. “As much as I’d love an extra ten minutes up here with you, I’m 99% certain that Rose will leave without us if we’re not downstairs in thirty seconds.”

You chuckle and he grabs your hands, the two of you making your way down the grand staircase of the Cameron residence. When Rafe sees no one in the foyer, he checks his watch, and sends you a smirk. “And it looks like we have a minute to spare,” he adds, before leaning in to kiss you. But before your lips can make contact, Rose barges into the foyer. 

“No time for that, we’ll be taking pictures for the family Christmas card at tonight’s event, and I can’t have you covered in glittery lip gloss when it’s time to pose.”

Rafe just rolls his eyes, tugging your hand after him. You chuckle at Rose’s words, standing next to him as Sarah and Wheezie make their way downstairs. You lean up to his ear and whisper, “for what it’s worth, I think my lip gloss looks great on you.”

But apparently you didn’t speak quietly enough because you hear a gagging noise coming from behind you. You turn around, facing the somewhat annoying but extremely sweet youngest Cameron sibling. “When you have a boyfriend one day, I promise you’ll understand.”

“Don’t give her any ideas,” Rafe says a bit too seriously, and that just makes you hold back a giggle.

Whispering to Wheezie, you say, “don’t worry, I didn’t tell him about Jake from Social Studies.”

“I heard that!”

again, I always appreciate feedback and I love getting requests, so please send them in <3

[ceescedasticity]

Ways kings of elves have stopped being king (some of this is arguable, but in my opinion/analysis):

Finwë: Decided that something else was more important than acting as king (when he left Tirion), and then threw his life away fighting Melkor instead of fleeing.

Fëanor: Fëanor I don't think stopped being king before he died? He was just really bad at it the entire time. —He did stop being king of the portion of his people he abandoned in a bad situation out of spite/paranoia/whatever. And if we're going to look at it that way—

Thingol (of all the Sindar outside Doriath): I would argue he stopped being their king when he retreated behind the Girdle. Unlike Fëanor I don't think it was feasible for him to do otherwise and he did at least allow them to also retreat behind the Girdle, so I don't blame him the way I do Fëanor, but as a king it was an abandonment of responsibility.

Denethor of the Nandor: Died fighting defense in a battle he could not have avoided. No idea how effective he was as a king, but he stuck to his post to the end.

Maedhros (as king in name): Despite his having explicitly abdicated I would not call this giving up on being king. It was the best thing he could do, and he didn't give up responsibility for any of the people he was responsible for.

Fingolfin: I would argue he set aside his kingship when he rode out alone. Unlike Finwë I would not say he chose to set it aside for other priorities; I think he thought (insofar as he was thinking at all) this was the most appropriate thing he could do as king. I also think he was wrong and I expect most of his surviving subjects would agree with me.

Finrod: Decided something else was more important than being king. The narrative would agree that it was more important but as a king that's not good. Whether he threw his life away as much as Finwë did is debatable — he didn't set out to duel Sauron, they tried to sneak past and got unlucky, but the whole quest was insanely risky for questionable payoff.

Fingon: Died at his post. Whether the battle was a good idea to begin with is debatable, but its goal was a good one and he died acting as king.

Turgon (as High King of the Noldor): I don't know if anyone outside Gondolin ever thought of Turgon as High King, or if Turgon thought so himself, but if anyone did, he abandoned everyone outside Gondolin. Like Thingol I don't know that he realistically could have done anything else; unlike Thingol he did not admit any refugees, so he comes off worse there.

Orodreth: Died at his post. After several catastrophic mistakes that got his people largely killed when they might have lived at least a while longer, but he died acting as king.

Thingol: This is a funny one because Thingol never abandoned being king but I'm not sure I'd say he died at his post either considering he was murdered because of a sketchy jewelry commission. He died off-duty?

Dior: Died at his post, as did Nimloth. How culpable they were in setting up the situation that killed them is debatable, but died at their posts.

Turgon: I would argue set aside his kingship when he stayed and died rather than try to evacuate. Like Fingolfin I think he thought this was the most appropriate thing to do; as with Fingolfin I disagree; unlike Fingolfin he didn't make any grand inspirational gestures as he died so it looks even worse.

Idril (never called herself queen, but she effectively was for a while there): Decided something else was more important than staying and leading and left on a trip people didn't come back from.

Eärendil (never called himself king): Decided something else was more important than staying and leading, and ultimately this is vindicated, but he did not do any king-ing to begin with.

Elwing (did she call herself queen? I forget): This one is kind of tricky, but on balance I'd say she followed in the footsteps of Fingolfin: All is lost, time to die dramatically.

Maedhros (as king in all but name of the Fëanorian faction): In my analysis, Maedhros set aside his duties as king-in-all-but-name at some point no earlier than the end of the Nirnaeth and no later than convincing Maglor to steal the Silmarils. This is quite a long window and it's possible he went back and forth a bit. I don't know whether he consciously decided to prioritize the Oath and his family over his people or if he thought self-destructing in this way was the most fitting thing he could do, but either way: he's abandoned the responsibility he took. Unlike the rest of the setting-aside-kingship people on this list, though, who went off alone or nearly so, everyone kept following him.

Outside the First Age (and including even more never-got-called-kings), I'm not sure how strategic Celebrimbor's confrontation of Sauron was; Amdír and Oropher died at their posts after making terrible decisions which screwed their people over; Gil-galad died at his post while ensuring a victory, imagine that; Amroth decided something else was more important; not sure how to classify Elrond and Galadriel, who both put saving the world over leading their people specifically; we don't know about Thranduil, Celeborn, and Círdan.

Edit: On further reflection, Fëanor is like Thingol in that he never quit being king, but the way he got himself killed wasn't really in the line of duty either.

[derocatem]

Y Si Fuera Ellos || Anaxa

summary: one last night, together, have let your life to change in more ways than you could ever expect.

content warnings | smut + angst + fluff (minors dni), chubby reader, genderfluid reader (reader have both vagina and penis in this (could be read as afab with a (magical) strap or intersex), switch top reader, reader is a scholar alongside Anaxa, Anaxa and reader are in established relationship already and their relationship developed is showed in bits and pieces, intersex Anaxa (praise dear Cerces for it), switch bottom Anaxa, mentions of 3.0 to 3.2 information and POSSIBLE spoilers for ahead versions (?), reader and anaxa spends quality time together (bathing, studying together, ect.), breast play, body worship, fingering, receiving + giving handjobs, piv sex, missionary sex, passionate + emotional sex, rough sex, overstimulation, supernatural male pregnancy and non explicit birth mentioned but not described, body horror in a way(?), death, original child oc, family and domestic life + possible more (?)…

a/n - #1 “magical” strap is a strap that is worn by afab individuals and mimics dick, can produce cum and you could feel it like it’s connected to your body (pls i don’t want to elaborate more you get it 💔)

#2 - i tried to give all important details but not to spoil anything too much, please say if i should tag something 🙏

#3 - it’s very bad, i haven’t written in a long while i just wanted to write something for my man coming out today

“Was it all worth it?”

“Every single second of it? Was it?”

You ponder on that question again in your own mind when you remember…everything, this usually happens not too regularly yet not quite irregular either, once in a while if you have to actually think about it when you’re free that these days don't really happen often but it’s okay.

As harsh sun of the eternal land landed upon you early this morning through the open window, much to your energy barely made you to flip around in the bed like a lazy teenager as your hand pulled onto the thin curtains and pulled them lightly as you now definitely used all of your energy to flip back around onto your stomach and close your eyes just for a moment longer as you thought to yourself”

“Was it worth it?”

.

“If you think that you are not worth it, why would you be here in the first place? You must be either really dumb or really stubborn to not give up?”

Anaxagoras spoke, his tone factual and full as he looked at you, his gaze unwavering as he clearly mentally judged you for whatever reason that you clearly can’t even remember how long passed since then. Your first meeting. A year older yet so far away from you in studies that it made you believe that you won’t ever finish. Much to your horror back then, you were forced to work on many experiments and projects in the Grove together due similarly to your courses that you shared together. Now it brings you a small smile as you now noticed some things that you didn't back then.

It was kind of adorable how he started looking out for you, you could actually give a decent argument to his question and express your support to his…blasphemous comments and started arguing with others scholars about gods that you held so dear to your heart when you were a child yet…sky is fake, isn’t it? you know that now really well.

Even when you started actually getting more confident and understanding of all knowledge around you as your studies progressed, you got comfortable in getting uncomfortable and getting out of your comfort zone of comfort that you actually started…being able to actually explore your own ideas and experiences.

By the end of the academic days, you and Anaxa just like…silently understood that you understood each other’s minds much better than others could ever. Even that memory of when you were doing the research, the fleeting touches and comforting night spent looking at each other’s faces longer than supposed to when you should study were clear to both, last your of your academic studies, first kiss finally came as they finally sit too close to each other’s, your head on his shoulder before looking at him with those eyes and fuck, why are trying to tug on strings of his heart.

Even when you guys had your first time together after you both graduated and got accepted back into the groove as the staff members. It makes you chuckle now that you know that you were both virgins AND having unprotected intercorse? Were you trying to procreate so quickly or?

Jokes aside, youth madness as people would say it, isn’t it?

“Was it worth it?”

.

Your smile faltered just a bit as you remembered the time that Anaxa got the information that he’s supposed to be next crysos heir for titan of reason, the future is making fun of you isn’t it?

Though it might be a selfish thing, you couldn’t help to feel like…you haven’t deserved such a thing? You were young and in love, sometimes even crying to yourself when you knew that he accepted it. In back of your selfish part of yourself, you wanted him to yourself.

He is yours, isn’t he? Your partner, someone who lays in the bed next to you late at night, stargaze together as you hopelessly daydream about your future together and someone that actually likes to bottom instead of top? you found yourself a perfect person to co-exist till the end.

Your smile falters a bit more when he starts…changing. Physically changing at least, that void that started forming on his chest and other parts of his body like cracks in the ground, chipping away from him as endless greenish void continued showing, growing as you could only partially rest your head on his chest deep in night as you curled around him like a needy child, craving a reminder that he’s still next to you.

Amused dry chuckle left your lips as you thought about the star-shaped hole in his chest…you loved to tease him about it in more ways than one.

When your fingers danced around his chest as you rode him almost silly. When his hair was sprayed on the pillow around his head, almost like a halo as his reddish blue eyes could barely hold eye contact with you before rolling back to back of his head from the pleasure of your walls squeezing around his girth. His eyes always turned a bit more to red, his natural eye color when he was with you. You always bring out his human side so selfishly, so greedily making him crave you like a forbidden fruit from the finest lands that galaxy could ever offer. Making him love yet hate mornings that you wake up next to him, beautiful like a dream as your head rests on his chest, your voice still heavy with sleep as you speak, your eyes glossy as you look up at him and hold him closer to your heart.

“Was it worth it?”

.

Your expression now neutral your eyes slightly opened, glancing at the nothing in particular as you remembered that…time. Last time actually. Last time you got to hold body of your beloved in your hands selfishly.

You knew very well what Anaxa planned. You weren’t a dummy, maybe not an crysos heir but your endless nights full of reading and learning history made you understand clues and read through the actions that made you understand what your partner was meaning to do.

Even Cerces—…or rather Calypso were now residing inside your partner’s body like she found it, a corpse that is now used for keeping her alive gave you a little privacy for your own sake. She might be the titan of reason but she also loved, now dead titan of love, her beloved one.

*

Resting against Anaxa’s body you bathe together, your fingers gently brushing through his hair you washed his hair from behind him. Tips of your fingers rubbing through hair and massaging his scalp before rinsing it off. luke warm water softly splashing against the walls of the bathtub as you moved when washing each other’s bodies, innocently appreciating the beauty of the human body together as you guided his head to rest between your breasts when you finished, deciding to spend some more time together here. Your lips pressed against his scalp as your fingers slowly moved from his hands to forearms, then his upper arms and shoulders as you gently squeezed and worshiped skin underneath your fingertips.

After it your hands slowly circled around to his front as you lowered your head and started pressing light, butterfly kisses on back oh his neck as your fingers went over the length of his neck, feeling up his adam's apple before brushing his collar bones softly before going over his chest and stopping against now slightly prominent ribs, one hand rubbed over his ribs as other went up and cupped one of his breasts, gently rubbing it as a soft noise slipped through his mouth but he decided to stay silent and let you continue your little ministration. You hummed against his neck, you pressed lingering kisses on his neck as that hand that lingered went towards the crack in his chest before two of your fingers slowly slipped into the void.

Moan slipped his lips as his head lulled back on your shoulder, letting you press more open mouth kisses against his skin as your fingers slowly slipped in and out of his chest, making him practically whimper as your hand found its way over his stomach towards between his legs, your hand softly grabbing his cock as you give a few experimental squeezes around the shaft and head before pumping it up and down, letting him feel a bit of the pleasure of act of pleasure that usually happens between you.

You decided to tease him, after just a bit you slowly pulled away your hands from his body as you pulled out the plug of the drain as you turned his head towards you and gave you a dirty look while looking like a wet cat. You giggled before kissing him apologetically before helping each other out of the bath and you two didn’t even bother to put on the clothes as you entered your shared room together.

“Sun” was slowly setting down on the city as you two stared at it wordlessly before you took a step closer to him, taking his hands into yours as you pulled his body against yours together as you rested your forehead against his for a long moment.

Your breast pressed against his, soft tummy resting against his stomach and his cock slightly twitching as it brushed against your thigh. His own hands slowly followed almost the exact same route that you did, slightly rough tips of fingers caressing your skin like it’s a sacred thing, gently rolling mounds of your breast between his fingers and brushing though rolls of your back gently, rubbing your thighs and squeezing around your hips and waist as you own body got excited from his touch.

After a shared kiss, you took the lead as you guided him towards the bed before making you face him as you got a hold of his butt, squeezing it before lowering your beloved into the sheets. Your lips quickly found his as you two made out.

You pulled back as you started at the beautiful man underneath you, your hands gently spread his legs as shifted between them, your fingers rubbing over the length of his things as you spoke as you lowered yourself down, kissing down his stomach and slowly pulling down as your lips pressed a few lingering kisses over the length of his already erected cock before gently probing against the hole underneath his cock before slowly inserting your fingers in, drawing a moan from him as you lifted yourself back, fingering him slowly before picking up the peace.

“I-wish for you to stay here with me, very much so, y’know?”

You spoke, your voice neutral and light but a hint of genuine emotion in your voice as you worked him open. There was always an elephant in the room, even when you don’t address it. Always looming over both, especially the last 14 days since he betrayed Crisos Heirs and seemingly joined the Council of Elders, you know it wasn’t the complete truth yet you know the real reasons why he did it, you could only put hope and faith in his experiments. He will die in the end either way.

“It’s a selfish thing, I'm aware, but it’s still a wish.”

You chuckled, keeping your emotions in check barely as your fingers didn’t waver from it’s peace as you flexed them inside Anaxa before pulling them away and practically shamelessly licking them clean before him as a light blush appeared on his chest and cheeks.

You moved slightly, getting into a more comfortable position as your hand grasped your shaft, giving it a few pumps before centering it on his entrance as another held onto Anaxa’s waist to keep him in place, his legs instinctively moving around your waist as you pushed inside.

Giving his waist a squeeze you slowly pushed your hips forward as he mewled at the size, his hand clasping around your arm on his waist as the other hand kept his legs open as you gave a couple of trusts, as you couldn’t help but to moan as he was practically sucking you. Your voice stuttered as you spoke again, gaze fixated on him as your feelings grew harder to hide as you picked up your speed, your frustration over everything around you finally getting to you as Anaxa moaned and gasped as his legs quivered from each slaps of skin against each other as you blabbered about.

“Fuck- i just wish to keep you next to me. Keep you here—..”

You spoke as every thrust of your hips makes his head fall back into the pillow as breathless moans escape his lips if your lips weren’t on his, mouthing every single reaction from him and engraving them into your memory.

Even when you already finish so deep inside of his body, your hips don’t stop. Going far and beyond as you greedily pump him full of your seed as his cunt greedily squeeze and relish in the warmth substance that was now so deep inside of him. Your hand on his member, helping him ride out his high as his stomach gets coated with his own cum as an almost filthy ring of combined releases slips away from his gaping core as it slides down his skin into the sheets when you pull out.

Finally you let yourself cry, almost pathetic sounds emerge from depths of your poor, human heart as you weakly flop next to his breathless body as you sob, not wanting to wake up tomorrow to your partner, love of your life not existing as he get sentenced to the execution by Aglaea because of mingling with Kephalie’s body to find the answer to his life long question.

“I don’t want to-…i don’t want to not have you next to me Anaxagoras. I want to hold you to my side for the rest of my life. I could only love someone like you and that’s it. And no one like that exists.”

You spoke your heart out, most words barely understandable as you sobbed into his chest as you curled around him. His hands now gently rubbed against your back, letting you cry out your fears and troubles to him. After a while, when your tears dried out and your head rested on his chest again, you whispered softly as your head felt too heavy for your eyes to stay open to for much longer. Your words broke the pained silence as a tear slipped over your cheek towards his chest before it slipped into the endless greenish void inside his chest.

“Please…just don’t leave me alone.” I love you.

It was almost silly, Anaxa thought to himself as he watched you slowly slip into the dreamland as his hand gently cupped your face, his thumb passing over your cheek as he brushed away draid tears from your skin as he kissed your forehead as he whispered against your skin softly.

“Don’t leave you alone?…What a surprise tomorrow will have to you, my dear.” I love you too.

*

Even when you wake up the next day, your body as usually turning around automatically to greet the love of your life just for your breath to catch as you see empty…not empty sheets?

A soft sound greeted you as your heart skipped a beat as you were greeted by…a baby? Newborn baby curled into the soft blanket as it fluttered her eyelashes open and looked at you before cooing softly, greeting you like you were the guest in your own bed as she smiled at you, immediately recognizing who you are.

Your voice got lost on you as you almost abruptly sat up, not even caring to cover your naked body with sheets as you cradled the little baby to your chest as the little head rested on your chest as you felt your heart beating in your ears. You finally dated to look down at the baby within your chest more deeply and…stare at her. She had just a light bit of the hair on top of her head as her eyes showed a mix of your own eyes color mixed with Anaxa’s natural eye color. Soft futures mix of both. A sound akin to sob left your lips as you couldn’t help but to smile at the little being in your arms.

You brought a little baby to your heart after checking if she needed anything quickly before laying down and just…feeling the moment. You glanced finally outside towards the Downcloud whose entrance was still visible from the window of your room of the house where you and Anaxa used to live together when you finally became officially together when you and him weren’t working in the Grove of Epiphany. You took a deep breath as you knew what would happen next.

*

He was…indeed very much dead. You got a full story from other people after the entire “show” went down with tricking council of elders and Caenis and entire all of other crysos heirs and citizens and how he practically ripped out the coreflame from his heart for his to get the crysos heir journey could continue. He was called a great performer for a reason.

You would probably sink down some rabbit holes after that and never show your figure again in public but you know that you couldn’t. You know that Anaxagoraa would want and you do have now a couple months old baby, Aurora. Only so little and young but you can see her father within her as she was going ahead her age, already standing up and walking at 9 months with little help from you, not even a month later she called out for you with her words being your name and funny version of Anaxagoras names as you showed her picture of you and him from the years back as you introduced her to him, not wanting her to not know her other parent. You know that Anaxa would like that.

He literally used the state of his body, power and knowledge to actually make his daughter from within him AND birth her from the gaping hole in his chest in the middle of the night of his last day being alive…so it’s only fair, i guess?

.

You would like to to remember more of your dear partner but a little grabby hands doesn’t give you a chance to think about him too much as she demands your attention, or politely said requests your mind to be on here as she curl into your chest as she slept next to you as she giggled into your skin as you smiled at her. you two had a lazy and comfortable cuddle session with a droma plushie she carried with herself like a lucky charm.

You finally pulled yourself and her out of the bed, her body resting onto your hip as you carried herself towards the window as you two grazed upon the holy city. She rested her head on your shoulder as you kissed her head and glanced over the Castrum Kremons one last time as you smiled to yourself as you let yourself relax and get comfortable as you knew what was coming to happen in just seconds.

.

“Was it worth it?”

And you finally had the answer to that question on your last breath as the world around you crumbled as Trailblazer cracked the truth of this world and you hugged your daughter closer to you and her plushie before finally answering.

“…I think it was worth it every single minute.”

“May we…all reunite in the new world before the gates of truth together.”

[saynomorefic]

How about 40 and 41? Separate or combined, whatever you feel like 🔥

Simoon thank you ❤️❤️ I'm going to separate them (except I do think this also counts for 41, what do they do to turn each other on)

40. What is their favorite place to kiss the other? (Cheek, hand, closed eyelid, neck, nose, etc.)

"Why do you do that?" Wille asked. Simon was pulling his shirt on, his hair ruffled, after leaving Wille's arms.

"Do what?' Simon asked.

"Kiss me on the forehead," Wille said. Simon looked perplexed.

"Do you not like it?" Simon asked. He could tell Simon's mind was already elsewhere, busy with all the things he needed to do and remember that day. Wille wanted him for just a little longer.

"No, I do, it's just that's your 'I'm getting out of bed and leaving you' or 'I'm sorry you're feeling sad' kiss."

"Oh really? Are you keeping track of all my kisses now?" Simon asked, smirking.

"Well." Wille shrugged. Simon glanced down Wille's chest, amusement and softness in his eyes. He took a step closer.

"Maybe... I don't normally get to kiss you there, when we're outside. Because I can't reach." Wille hummed. "I dunno. It just feels right." He carded his hands through Wille's hair ever so gently, and Wille grabbed his hand and threaded their fingers together.

"it's nice," he breathed. "Protective. Like you're going to keep me safe."

"I want to," Simon sighed. "I try to."

"You do," Wille replied, and pulled Simon's hand to the back of his mouth, brushing two light kisses over the back of his hand and his knuckles. Simon's eyes hitched up into creases and he chuckled.

"What?" Wille asked, suddenly a bit self conscious. Maybe the vulnerability was getting to him.

"You say my favorite is forehead kisses, but I think this is your version." Simon lifts their intertwined hands, then tilts his head.

"Really?" Wille asked.

"Yeah," Simon smiled. "It's sweet. Princely." Wille groaned, rolling on his back.

"it's fine, Wille," Simon laughed, tugging on his hand. "I like it. It makes me feel nice."

"Really?" Wille asked, confident Simon was done teasing for now. "Like what?"

"Like--" Simon looked at him sort of intensely, pulling his lower lip into his mouth. "Like you're saying thank you. Like you worship me, maybe." Wille blinked, not expecting that answer, and squeezed Simon's hand. He kissed the back, gently, then slowly started kissing up Simon's wrist, then forearm, fighting to keep going as Simon began to giggle and writhe away.

"You like feeling worshipped?" Wille asked into Simon's skin. Simon finally got away, cheeks red, eyes blissfully happy.

"I have to go, Wille," Simon insisted. "You can make an encyclopedia of all our kisses and what they mean, but I have morning rehearsal and I can't be late again." Wille rolled his eyes but moved quickly, trying to catch Simon before he walked out the door. He pulled Simon in and he went easily, Wille's hand going to Simon's neck, Simon letting it. They kissed briefly, Simons head tilting back into it, and it sent a jolt down Wille's spine.

"This one is my favorite," Wille muttered into Simon's lips.

This one was so fun! Where do you think Simon and Wille's favorite place to GET kissed is? 😉

Ty @youngroyals-events for hosting ❤️❤️

[hoiststowline]

_sunstreaker x reader

one | two | three

“I thought you were busy all week?” 

such a persistent caller left you heavily confused, mostly after glancing at the caller ID while attempting to carefully balance an armful of groceries. ungracefully, you pick up the call, knowing if you ignored it any longer you’d be dealing with rapidly dwindling patience and then some.

trying to muster a more lighthearted follow-up, you add: “Not that I’m not happy to hear from you, but you always somehow know to call at the worst time.” 

as if almost on cue, Sunstreaker scoffs on the other end, never one to be so easily troubled by your sarcasm. “What a greeting. Even worse, you say that all the time, y/n. It’s getting annoyingly old.” 

“Sorry, I’m sorry. Hello, Sunstreaker.” you present an amused laugh after it, displaying a jesting tone whilst backtracking. “May I ask why are you suddenly able to call when you spent an hour telling me not to this week?” 

upon reaching the door, you fumble around for your keys whilst propping your phone between your shoulder and ear. though you weren’t expecting an elaborate explanation, it was fair to question such an unexpected appearance. you always missed him when he was away, finding it was becoming increasingly difficult to watch him go, after being accustomed to each other’s company for so long. this time around, you actually had forewarning, knowing he was to be gone for an unknown timetable, so the blow was a little softer. 

not by much, but you planned to withhold such sentiments until his arrival back, if only to make it a little easier on yourself. 

“Don’t worry about it.” translates into something a little grander than his vague explanation, but you’d set that aside for the moment. any venture to try and pry it out of him, especially over the phone would lead nowhere, and only leave an agitated Sunstreaker in its wake. 

“Consider it not to be worried about.” you return, finally finding your key in your back pocket. “So, what’s up?”

“What are you doing?” without leaving room for a response, he adds on to his question rather quickly, ill at ease. “Right now.” 

“Trying to put my groceries away, one second.” once inside, your phone and keys land on the counter, then pivot to set the bags on the table. with both hands free, you switch the call to speakerphone to respond to his inquiry, delighted to possibly spend some time together. “Is there a reason, or just wondering?”

A grumble of frustration follows close behind your investigation, finally settling on: “Oh, what’s the term you use?”

curious, your head tilts to the side. not quite sure what he means given the zero context, you go to ask for more when he evidently remembers. 

“I’m on house arrest, and I’m bored.” 

your brow raises at the reasoning, unsure what to do with such delicate information. mostly because that’s seemingly all he’s going to provide, awaiting your reaction to his admission of wrongdoing. clearly, he had to have done something of offense, to be unable to leave the base and not allowed on the mission he had been originally tasked with. 

“Can I ask-” 

“No.” it's far too curt, scaring you somewhat that he knew what the next thing out of your mouth was. 

treading carefully, you try again. “Okay. I can try to be over soon.”

“Soon?” Sunstreaker complains, seemingly displeased with your proposed compromise.

in a sing-song voice, you gently toe the line of poking fun. “Take it or leave it.” 

“You’re so lucky that I can’t leave, or else I’d be outside already.” his agitation lingers moderately, even before your teasing, so clearly whatever or whoever put him on house arrest had done the deed of pissing him off. “Hurry up.” 

without intending to, you wore his restraint down to the very last ounce, hardly a hello as he asks what took you so long upon arriving. 

“You and consequences really don’t get along.” you hum, watching with vivid levity as he throws his hands up, either in exasperation or defeat. 

“Has anyone ever gotten along with consequences?” Sunstreaker seethes, looking over his shoulder your way. “I was going crazy here by myself, I wasn’t looking for a lecture from you either.” 

feeling a twinge of guilt, you hastily reply. “Sorry. I didn’t-” 

“I know.” and he means it, striving to come across as sincere.

trying to evade an approaching awkward silence, you try to change the subject swiftly. “You’re here by yourself? I didn’t think that was possible.”

“What do you mean?” he now turns in full, looking down to meet your gaze, confusion apparent.

“Every time I’ve been here, it’s been busy.” you hum, observing the empty command center. “Not that I’m here a lot. What, is this the third time?”

“Fourth.” he winces to himself, knowing he answered that far too quickly to appear casual. “And you’ve only just realized that? This ship is so small, it makes it feel so crowded all the time.” Sunstreaker deadpans, beginning down the hallway, a path you were only somewhat familiar with. 

“Is that why you like creeping around my house at four in the morning?”

Sunstreaker jolts, his shoulders jumping to his helm as he nearly stumbles in surprise. “You’re still on about that? I was telling the truth, you’re so annoying.”

“I just happened to put two and two together,” you hum, trying to fall in stride beside him but failing miserably. “I knew there was a reason you liked hanging around my place, I just had to figure it out.” 

though still entirely too inquisitive to the reason why Sunstreaker was put in whatever the cybertronian equivalent of time-out is, you were satiated in keeping him company. you could understand his frustration, whether or not the punishment was deserved, and it wasn’t very often that Sunstreaker asked something of you. 

he strong armed his way into a lot of things, finding himself in situations that he’d rather forget than try to reason and sift through. for someone who at first was disgruntled with your untimely friendship, Sunstreaker really did enjoy doing as much as a twenty-something foot tall mech could do for you. it was just as he had said earlier, he was going crazy here by himself. 

in a roundabout way, he was asking you to join his company after a survey of the situation, finding that he never had the place to himself and didn’t know what to do with such a circumstance. 

at first, it was mildly irksome to discover that he really never asked for what he truly wanted, coming to find that a lot of what he says has a double meaning. perhaps that’s why he always found himself in trouble, because others hadn’t taken the time to delve a little deeper into his mannerisms, taking everything at face value. maybe that’s why the both of you became fast friends, because you were willing to take a step back and analyze his words, not immediately vexed at his talking in circles. 

Sunstreaker hardly requested anything of you, so such a small plea could never be turned down. 

“Yeah, well, me and my big mouth.” 

in turn, you falter, stopping short to try and figure that one out. Sunstreaker doesn’t give you the time to do so, continuing forward towards his quarters and promptly leaving you behind. 

“What?” you press, scrambling after him. “Did you get in trouble the other night?” 

he laughs dryly, suddenly unable to look your way at all. “Trouble? No.” 

“You’re lying.” 

he freezes, promptly trying to assure himself it’s because he’s now in front of his berthroom door, but his subconscious reveals the truth to him without being cued.

“Says who?” he counters, punching in his code a little too aggressively. “You don’t know what goes on here.” 

“You’re right.” those words he doesn’t hear regularly, if at all. Sunstreaker can’t even recall the last time someone agreed with him, even if over something so trivial. 

“I don’t know what goes on here, but I do know when you’re lying. You always have that weird laugh when you do.” 

finally, he moves to meet your eyes. “Weird?” 

you shouldn’t be surprised that’s what he decided to take from your observation. 

the exterior door panel moves over in one fluid motion but neither of you make any move to enter, standing eerily still in the chilly hallway. 

“Please don’t- just, don’t get in any more trouble. Especially if it’s technically my fault.” 

“Your fault?” Sunstreaker snuffs, waving a servo dismissively. “No, it’s not. And who’s to say I wanted to go on that stupid mission anyways. Maybe this was my plan all along.” 

with a small smile, you effortlessly repay his teasing. “I don’t think so.”

“Whatever,” stepping to the side, he gestures you inside with a subpar and unenthusiastic motion. “I don’t have to convince you. It’s a miracle you even came when I asked.” 

“Why is that a miracle?” 

entering the room, you walk about halfway inside before turning around to face him, tilting your head backward. “I wanted to come.” 

following right behind you, Sunstreaker falters to reply, uncertain of what such a loaded statement could mean.slowly, he moves his helm toward you, peering down your way with a facade of confusion. “You did?”

you shrug, trying to fight the tightness that arrives in your chest upon catching the way he looks at you. “Of course I did. That’s what friends do.” 

right. friends.

[haedia]

🎲 and as much as I love your Illario work I am curious as to your Rookanis

Okay. I had to go to my partners' house for a few hours earlier which kind of derailed my progress on this idea. And then it got away from me...and became much longer than I anticipated it to become.

The number I rolled earlier was 23, a kiss influenced by alcohol or other substances. So, below is an evening spent in part between Rook, Lucanis, and Davrin. It takes place after: Weisshaupt, their first three-person hang out, and after the near-kiss scene.

It's also kind of rough still but I wanted to post it sooner rather than later. I expect I'll refine it and post it on ao3 eventually.

Drunk hang out and kiss below the cut.

Following the harrowing experience of Weisshaupt, Rook found a new solace and comfort in her friendship with Davrin and Lucanis. 

Everyone had fought valiantly at the Grey Warden fortress that day but the bonds forged between the three of them deepened in a way she didn’t expect would occur.

Ghilan'nain still lived but so did they; and reveling in being alive in the company of those who fought against the elven goddess almost felt like an act of retaliation in itself.

After the shock wore off, after wounds healed, and after the team settled back into the rhythm of life at the Lighthouse, a new routine developed between the three of them. The first time occurred when Rook walked in on Davrin and Lucanis swapping outrageous tales while deep in their cups. It had been a delightful evening of drink and story and food (after Lucanis decided he needed to spoil them with his cooking). 

Some “nights” they would meet in the dining hall, move the table away from the fireplace, and scoot the couches closer. They would each bring something to share: be it drink or food or sweets. And the three of them would relax into the company of each other, whiling away the hours as they drifted further into pleasant drunkenness. 

One such night, Rook headed to the dining hall, her offering of Dalish sweet cakes in a package under her arm. She opened the door to the sound of Lucanis’ incredulous snort and Davrin’s voice carrying across the room. 

“I’m serious!” he retorted, indignant.

“I’m not drunk enough to believe that story, Davrin. Try again.” Lucanis said with a laugh. 

“Did you two get started without me?” Rook interrupted whatever reply Davrin was readying as she strode into the room. 

“Rook!” the two men called out in unison, glasses raised and clearly pleased to see her. 

Davrin already had a bit of a glassy-eyed expression and a reddened warmth colored the peaks of Lucanis’ cheeks. If that wasn’t enough evidence to condemn them, the near-empty bottle of Anderfels spirits told quite a story. 

“Before you say anything” Davrin started, noticing Rook’s cocked eyebrow at the state of the bottle “Lucanis made a few drinks for when you got here” 

Rook glanced between them and Lucanis crumpled under her scrutiny 

“...In case we got too out of hand before you got here” he admitted. His cheeks pinked further as he got up to retrieve the drinks he’d made.

“Lucanis!” Davrin admonished his retreating form but Rook couldn’t help but laugh. She was a touch annoyed, but it had taken her a while to arrive. She didn’t blame them, exactly.

“I’m sorry I kept you waiting. I nearly got sucked into a Veil Jumper thing before I was able to slip away to the eluvian.” Rook said as she set her package down on the table before the couches and took her regular spot in the farther corner of the couch. 

Lucanis returned with two frosted glasses of something colorful and delectable-looking. He placed one in front of Rook, handed her the other, and took his spot beside her on the couch. 

“Now, when you say ‘sucked into a Veil Jumper thing’, I hope you mean figuratively.” He said, concern clear on his face. 

“You never know with them” Davrin echoed as he reached for an unopened bottle of something dark. 

“Yes, I was being figurative. They wanted me to stay and, well, basically join in something similar to this but with them” she said as she brought the cold glass to her lips and took her first sip. Bright citrus and berry flavors burst on her tongue as she swallowed. 

“Oh, this is a dangerous drink, Lucanis” she laughed and sipped more deeply the second time. 

“That’s what I was hoping for” He chuckled in response, and took a swig of his own beverage.

—

Sometime much later, after many drinks, many tasty treats, and many ridiculous tales told, Davrin bid them goodnight. Uncle Eldrin needed his assistance in the morning and so he decided to be at least somewhat responsible and turn in earlier than he usually would. 

Rook sat back in the corner of the couch, cushioned by a variety of pillows and drifted in a pleasant haze. Lucanis was similarly relaxed. At some point in the night, he’d kicked off his boots and had stretched out, resting his feet on the coffee table. 

She knew that if she brought attention to his posture that he’d immediately snap back into something akin to his normal state: reserved, proper, distant. 

Things had been awkward since their near-kiss weeks ago – weeks that felt like a lifetime ago. In battle, all of that fell away and they returned to something similar to how things were before: they fought together seamlessly with an energy that bordered on joyous. 

But once they were away from the din and chaos – in the Lighthouse or any other quiet place – the tension returned. Words lodged in her throat, his jaw worked before he’d excuse himself in silence, and she’d wonder if she should have followed him. Back then or at any other time.

Seeing him like this, eyes half-lidded as he nursed his drink and watched the flickering flames, it made her heart ache. 

Be it for the drink or some other reason, the tension had yet to reassert itself after Davrin left. 

It’s probably the drink, Rook thought sourly as she looked down into her glass. She gently rocked it in her hand to swirl the liquid. It was a deep burgundy color and tasted of currants and other dark berries. Lucanis was quite skilled at crafting such mixed drinks, she’d decided. 

“That’s quite an intense look. I hope that drink doesn’t displease you” Rook was startled out of her thoughts by Lucanis’ observation. He’d scootched over beside her while she’d been lost thinking about how things were better between them while they were drunk. He sat there, his elbow propped on the back of the couch, head resting in his hand, and regarded her with his dark, thoughtful gaze. 

“Oh, it’s nothing.” his eyebrows went up at that and she continued “The drink is wonderful, Lucanis. Really. They always are”

“Then…something else is bothering you?” He asked slowly. Lucanis’ gaze swept her features – clearly looking for some further sign of distress. 

Rook wasn’t going to ruin the mood, though. She drank deep from her glass, set it down on the table then turned to face him, matching his pose and posture. 

“Just that we don’t get enough of these evenings. We really need to stop the world from ending so we can spend more time together like this.” Rook flashed him a smile that she didn’t exactly feel but hoped he took as genuine. 

“That would, indeed, be ideal” Lucanis returned her smile with one of his own and Rook couldn’t help but feel a flutter inside at just how beautiful he looked in that moment. The firelight softened the shadows under his eyes and the drunk flush gave him a youthful glow he lacked out there in the harsh light of day (or the Fade). 

Rook hadn’t meant to stare so long, lost as she was in thoughts of him – of them. She hadn’t even noticed him move until Lucanis’ hand was suddenly cupping the back of her neck as he gently pulled her the rest of the way to him. 

His beard was softer than she expected it to be, Rook thought belatedly as their lips touched. Her eyes fluttered closed as she leaned into the kiss. It didn’t penetrate her brain what was happening until his fingers twitched at the nape of her neck. Rook gasped against his lips and shivered at the touch. 

Lucanis recoiled suddenly, breaking the kiss. “Rook – I...I’m sorry.” He tried to pull back. “I –”

“I’m not.” Rook followed him, twisting her fingers into the fabric of the front of his shirt to keep him from retreating entirely. 

“I shouldn’t have –” he acted like she was a burning ember, pulling his hands away from her – his face flushed from drink and shame.

“Lucanis” Rook leveled what she hoped was an entreating look at him. “I’m not sorry.”

“You – What?” He asked slowly, uncertain.

“I’m not sorry. About kissing. About…this.” Rook spread her fingers on his chest before gripping the fabric again. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Please believe me.” 

Lucanis’ eyes closed at the sensation of her touch, as he tried to stifle a pleased shudder. 

“Rook…” his voice trailed off as she drew her fingers up to his shoulder “It’s…it’s not a good idea”

“Lucanis…” Rook let out a sigh edged with frustration, “Interrupting Solas’ ritual wasn’t a good idea. Fighting blighted gods isn’t a good idea.” Rook leaned closer to him “I can handle whatever could happen here. Surely you know that by now”

Lucanis took a steadying breath and after a long moment, leaned towards her until their foreheads touched.

“...I do.” he breathed out. He took her hand from his shoulder and brought it to his lips to press a kiss against her knuckles. “You can handle anything, Rook.”

“I don’t know about that, but I think I’ll stick to whatever this is” she said with a weak laugh. Rook nosed against him and with a tentative smile, Lucanis pulled her into another gentle kiss.

[userluhna]

࿔⋆ SOMETHING IN BETWEEN

hwang inho x platonic!reader

based on this request

words: 2.7k

warnings: in two part; in the games and not in the games. even in the game inho is being referred as inho. platonic relationship. mention of the games. reader being 20.

enjoy! :)

not in the games

you met inho through work.

you were around twenty, juggling university and a small job at a record store. he came in about once a week—quiet, always lingering a little too long, flipping through records like he had all the time in the world. sometimes he’d talk to the owner about music, just a few words here and there. when you rang him up, he always smiled, soft and kind. over time, he started calling you by your name.

you never talked much, just polite exchanges. but he always came back. one day, you weren’t doing so great. something small had happened at university—something that shouldn’t have hit so hard, but it did. you’d gotten slammed with assignments, couldn’t manage your time, cried the night before. your balance felt off, your eyes still a little swollen.

when he came in, he noticed. he didn’t say anything at first, just browsed like always. then, after a few minutes, he picked up a record and looked over at you. “did you even listen to this one?” his voice was low, steady. grounding. you smiled politely. “no, never really got around to it.”

he walked over, holding the record out to you. “you should. it’s good when you’re having a bad day.” you took it from him, not saying anything. his eyes stayed on you for a second longer than usual. then, quietly, he slipped you a tissue. he must’ve seen it—the way your eyes had started to shine a bit too much. “i’m sorry,” you said, voice thin as you turned away, hand half-hiding your face.

“it’s okay,” he replied, calm as ever. “we all have bad days.” after that, he was gentler with you. more careful. not in a weird way—just more tuned in. he asked how your day was, talked a little longer when he came by. sometimes about music, sometimes books. you didn’t even notice when it started to feel like friendship.

one day, you mentioned how your class schedule left you skipping lunch most days. the next week, he showed up with food. nothing big, just something warm in a paper bag. you tried not to cry again. you were far from home. he noticed the gaps and filled them in quiet, small ways.

then one day, you saw him outside the store. total accident—you bumped into him near the train station. he looked at you with a smirk. “are you following me? that’s not cool, you know.”

“really?” you raised an eyebrow. “you’re going with that?”

“what can i say,” he shrugged, deadpan. “dad jokes are timeless.”

you laughed harder than you expected to.

you ended up sharing a coffee that day. nothing big—just a quiet moment between the two of you at a corner table, warm cups between your hands, steam curling in the air. you learned a little more about him. and he did about you. he asked about your studies, what you wanted to do, if you even liked it. you told him the truth, that sometimes you didn’t know. he just nodded, like he understood that feeling more than he let on.

“you’re allowed to change your mind,” he said, watching the street outside. “more than once, even.” there was nothing strange between you. no pressure, no questions you didn’t want to answer. just something steady.

when he passed by the record store, he’d ask, “did you eat?” if you said no, he’d already have something. wrapped neatly, like he made a plan for you just in case. “you knew i’d say no,” you’d mutter, unwrapping whatever it was—rice balls, pastries, a sandwich too big for one sitting. “yeah,” he’d say with a shrug. “you’re predictable like that.”

when you had a rough day, you’d text him. just; you free later?

he always was.

you’d find him already at the café or waiting at your usual bench in the park, hands tucked in his coat pockets. sometimes you talked, sometimes you didn’t. sometimes he’d just listen while you spilled every thought out like it had nowhere else to go.

“do i talk too much?” you asked once, embarrassed after a long rant about professors and deadlines and an accidentally burnt pot of rice. “you don’t,” he said. “you think a lot. that’s not the same.” when winter came, he asked if your apartment was warm enough. you’d said it was fine, but he showed up anyway with one of those plug-in heaters, just in case.

“you really didn’t have to—”

“it’s not that serious,” he interrupted, already setting it up. “besides, you complain too much about cold floors.” he always carried a jacket for you. he never said it out loud, but it became a habit. you’d meet him outside in a thin sweater, arms folded, shivering. “why don’t you ever wear one?” he asked, handing his over.

“because it ruins the outfit,” you said simply. he gave you a look. “that’s the worst excuse i’ve ever heard.”

“style is suffering.”

he snorted. “that’s not style.” you talked about music a lot. he’d tell you about the bands he used to love, the weird gigs he went to when he was your age. you’d share your playlists, and half the time he’d pause, squint, and say, “this came out when i was in high school.”

“you’re so old,” you’d tease, sipping your drink.

“i’m experienced,” he’d say, deadpan. “huge difference.” and when he talked about the weather like it was a serious topic, you’d just look at him with disbelief. “you’re doing it again,” you’d say.

“doing what?”

“talking about the wind like it owes you money.”“it does,” he’d say. “that wind yesterday? personal.”

as time passed, his presence just felt right. like he’d always been there. you didn’t even notice when it started to feel like safety. he talked about his life too, sometimes opening up just a little. but you could tell when it was too much for him. so you’d take the time to just watch him, quiet. “you don’t have to say everything,” you told him once. “some things are heavy. i get it.”

he just looked at you, thoughtful, and then nodded. one day, he called you kid.

“eat something, kid.”

“text me when you get home, kid.”

“what are you even listening to, kid?”

you never said anything, but it felt like a shift. a small, quiet shift. you had exams one week, barely slept, just ran on coffee and small bites between studying.

“you look bad,” he said when he saw you, setting a coffee down in front of you at the record store. you didn’t argue. he sighed, then handed you a small paper bag.

“it’s soup.”

“you didn’t have to—”

“just eat it. and go home early today, yeah?”

you nodded, too tired to protest. later that night, he texted: did you eat all of it?

you sent back a blurry photo of an empty bowl.

he replied: good. now sleep.

he wasn’t always warm. sometimes he’d be distant, quiet for days. but you never took it personally. you’d send him little things—a photo of a dog you passed, or a terrible pun you heard at school. and eventually, he’d reply, even if it was just a few words.

one day, your parents didn’t pick up the phone. not once, not twice—three times. he noticed the way you stood there, phone still in your hand, staring at the screen.

“well, you’re with me today,” he said, placing a hand on your shoulder, a small gesture of comfort. that one sentence stayed with you. you started to think of him as someone you could rely on—not quite a friend, not quite a parent. something in between.

in the games

at first, he didn’t pay you much mind.

he was there as 001. silent, focused. one goal in mind. not much time to worry about some kid barely out of university. he noticed how young you were, of course. barely twenty. too young to be in a place like this. but he didn’t say anything.

he only stepped in when two other players started messing with you—just words, small jabs, but the kind that could build. he didn’t raise his voice. just walked over, quiet, and said, “is this how you want to play?” they backed off fast.

you didn’t know if he did it for you, or just because it wasn’t fair. “you okay?” he asked, not looking directly at you, like it wasn’t a big deal.

you nodded. that’s when 456 called you over. said you were too young to be on your own. they had a group already. you learned their names quickly. inho didn’t say much, but when you skipped your meal later, just pushed it around, he noticed.

“eat,” he said. you glanced up. he didn’t look at you, didn’t wait for a response. just left the word there. like it was non-negotiable. maybe it was sympathy. maybe something else.

during the six-legged pantheon, you were with his team. jung bae stepped aside when a pregnant woman approached, found another group instead. you were nervous—he saw it in the way you held your hands too tight, your eyes darting around.

he didn’t speak. just put a hand on your shoulder before it started. solid. grounding. afterward, back in the room, everyone talked. shared.

someone asked why you were even here. you hesitated, but then you told the truth. you were a student. you’d lived off your parents’ money. but your mom had gotten sick. treatment wasn’t cheap. she passed. and then the money was gone. just like that. you didn’t cry when you told them. just said it plainly, voice flat.

that’s when it hit him. something he’d kept buried started to shift. when lights-out came, he didn’t sleep right away. stayed near you—not too close, but close enough to step in if he had to.

“get some sleep, kid,” he said, almost like it was a habit now. during mingle, he kept you nearby again. eyes tracking you quietly. when you got separated, you looked around—no sign of him. you tried not to panic. then he came back. spotted gihun first, then you.

“you okay?” he asked, his voice steady. you nodded, a bit breathless with relief.

then the game started. number two was called. panic spread fast. everyone reached for someone.

your hand moved before you could think, grabbing for something solid—his arm. his grip closed around yours immediately. firm. not hurting. just sure. “come on!” he called, pulling you forward. your feet moved before your brain did.

he didn’t let go. not when people slammed into each other. not when you stumbled. and when you almost fell, he didn’t hesitate—he picked you up. he pulled you into one of the rooms and kicked the door shut behind you. you collapsed against the wall, legs barely holding you. your knees buckled and he caught you, arms around your shoulders now, not tight but steady.

inho wasn’t a hugger. you could tell. but right then, he held you. because you needed it. and maybe—maybe he needed it too.

you buried your face against his chest, just for a moment. he let you. he didn’t say anything about it. but later, after things settled, he looked at you longer than usual. and maybe it hurt him a little, because he hadn’t meant to care this much.

not about you. not about a kid.

after that, he didn’t leave your side. he made sure you ate. that you rested. he passed you once, just walking by, and messed up your hair lightly with one hand.

“you’re tougher than you look,” he muttered.

you smiled, small. “so are you,” you said.

masterlist

[wake-me-up-inside-imagines]

If it’s a topic you’re comfortable writing about, could you do something about yan Charlie with a mentally ill reader? Like anything from delusions & paranoia to anxiety, whatever you prefer! :)

I can do that for sure! I'll try to keep it more vague in terms of the illness, but this'll probably revolve around more anxious themes then anything else. I also don't suffer from delusions, so if anything alluding to that is inaccurate, I apologize.

Yandere! Mafia Boss With A Mentally ill Reader

Gn! reader

Warnings: Anxiety, depression, Stockholm syndrome, kidnapping, technically forced drugging? Charlie makes you take meds for whatever illness you have, mentions of delusions and hallucinations, non specific mental illness, panic attacks, Charlie's wording and thoughts on mental illness can be seen as rude or insensitive but he's trying

Divider credit goes to @enchanthings-a

-Yandere! Charlie has very little real experience with mental illness. He's no psychologist, not even close, and his job is nowhere near understanding of such things. In his world, any sort of mental state short of unwavering in strength and consistency is viewed as a weakness to exploit, or in the worst case, a determent to the organization. There's no room for such people in Charlie's organization, not if he wants the most efficient of men at as his disposal.

-Having said that, you're different. A whole other world. You're not meant to be some powerhouse of mental fortitude Charlie expects from his employees. In fact, he adores your differences. It makes you feel more human. More like a person, rather then a pawn in his ever growing drug empire.

-He doesn't really notice anything's abnormal about you, at least at first. Sure, you're wary of him, scared even, but he gets it. he is a criminal after all, someone an ordinary citizen like you would naturally be afraid of. It doesn't help that he's kidnapped you either, forcing you into a new environment against your will. He can be delusional, but he isn't stupid. It's a shock he doesn't expect you to immediately shake off. Even as weeks pass and your behavior doesn't change, he still doesn't think much of your unfamiliar behavior.

-It isn't until you begin falling into Stockholm syndrome that he begins to get concerned. You've become much more accustomed to him, even displaying a slowly progressing level of affection toward him on a daily basis. And yet...you're still anxious around him. Skittish. Paranoid. He'd go far as to say you're sometimes more inconsistent with your behavior, mostly when you seem to be upset. It's not the reactions he's used to. There's something different there.

-He gets more concerned with each passing week, watching your odd habits. He's not well trained in human behavior, but he knows that this isn't right. Something's off, but he doesn't know what. But how can he ask you about it? he doesn't want to make you feel insecure, but at the same time, he's frustrated. How can he fix this? How can he help you when he doesn't know what's going on?

-He avoids questioning you for a while, but he keeps a careful eye on you. Still, it isn't until he catches you mid panic attack in your room that he decides he can't put off this conversation any longer. He's never seen a panic attack before, not in this context. Some of his rivals have had similar reactions under torture or when their loved ones are taken hostage, but not like this. Not without noticeable cause. Not when they and their loved ones were safe and sound, like you are.

-His first reaction is one of fearful anger, which didn't really help the situation much, but he can't help it. He doesn't know how to comfort people, especially when they're in such a state of panic. What's wrong? Why are you upset? Did he do something? He doesn't understand, why can't you answer him? What's the matter with you?

-It takes a while for Charlie to actually calm you down once he realizes how insensitive he must be to you. He awkwardly manages to ease you from your panic with gentle touches and hushed words of reassurances, and it's then that you're finally able to explain what's going on.

-He doesn't really get it, but he can see whatever mental turmoil your going through is serious. His first thought is that it's stupid to be so anxious over such insignificant things, but he reminds himself that you can't control your fears. You're not like him, devoid of any sort of fear or care. Something's going on in your brain, and even if he doesn't understand it, he knows he needs to help. He hates to see you suffer like you are. He wants to make it better.

-First and foremost, Charlie asks you what you need from him. He's not sure how to help, so what better way to start then asking you? He'll do whatever you need from him. He took you away from the world to show you love, but he also took you away to keep you safe. What kind of husband would he be if he couldn't help you fight the dangers of your own mind?

-Charlie spends the first little bit of time spending every waking moment he isn't working with you, desperate to keep you from freaking out again. Despite you explaining it to him, he still feels like he'd be a failure if he left you on your own while you were struggling. You need him to be there with you, to protect you from your mind. He'll use the time to converse with you more about your issues so he can understand, but he'll also do some research, just so he can get a better feel on how to help you.

-One thing he learns is that medication can do wonders for some people, so he finds and threatens hires a psychiatrist to prescribe you some medication. He's steal some for you, but he'd rather have a professional involved in figuring out what's right for you rather then rely on just the internet. Rest assured, You don't really have a choice in the matter as Charlie feels medication might be the best way to fix whatever's going on, but he'll be sure to monitor you, just to make sure it's working, and you can always switch meds if whatever you get put on doesn't work well.

-Charlie also makes sure to remove any possible stressors in your life. He can't really do anything about his job so that stays the same, and he's not gonna return you to your home, but he will do whatever he can to make your environment as friendly and calming as possible. He'll get a sound machine, candles, soft or comfortingly textured items, whatever might help you quell your anxiety, he'll get.

-On that same note, he does his best to learn effective methods of helping you as time passes too. He'll probably threaten hire a therapist to work with you virtually as they have more knowledge then him, but he'll still do his part in learning newer, more basic coping skills other than the "tough it out" method. He's actually quite soothing once he gets the hang of everything, doing a relatively good job at keeping his cool while holding you tightly to his chest.

-Speaking of, there's nothing Charlie wants to do more then hold you tightly in his arms. When you're panicking, or just having a rough day mentally, he wraps you up in his embrace, promising he'll protect you from the terrors of your mind and the world. He'd dead serious about it too, he doesn't play when it comes to your mental wellbeing.

-Unfortunately, Charlie isn't the best at dealing with hallucinations and delusions, if that's what you suffer from. His gut tells him to brush them off and remind you how stupid/unreal they are, but he also doesn't want to make things worse by being blunt in his beliefs. He truly has no idea which route to take, so oftentimes he'll end up doing very little that's actually helpful to you. He'll continue to do research on the matter and he'll listen to any advice you or your therapist have so he can help you, but it'll take a long time for him to get used to it.

-The only time Charlie ever intentionally uses the "tough it out" method on you is if you're depressed. But not in a insensitive, "it's not a big deal" kind of way. He knows how bad depression can be, but he also firmly believes the best way to help you overcome it (besides medication and therapy) is through powering through enough to take care of yourself. He'll force you to meet your basic needs, he'll take you on short, non-exhausting walks, he'll engage in your hobbies alongside you, anything to keep you from rotting in your bed all day. He wants to help you find that spark of life again, he'll be damned if he lets you slip into a comatose-resembling state. Rest assured, he'll stay with you through it all, and he'll do his best to not make you feel bad about your lack of spark.

-Overall, despite his rough edges, Charlie's actually relatively decent at helping you manage mental illness. It doesn't matter the type or severity, he loves you all the same and hates to see you suffer. You're his spouse, what husband leaves their spouse to struggle on their own?

-Charlie will take care of you. He'll make sure you feel better, living the best life you possibly can. That's his ultimate dream, after all.

And he will make it reality.

I hope you enjoyed!