#this is me bridging the gap between the two sides of this fandom

[agoddamnrayofsunshine]

Its fair to say that the DC fandom is a pretty divided space between those who care about canon and those who don’t and I usually veer closer to the canon-caring side but every now and then I venture over to see what those fanon madlads are up to and I have to confess to being, at the very least, deeply entertained every single time

[death---dealer]

Girl when I tell you I absolutely NEED part 3 to Customary or I might die!! Omggg that yearning shit had me covering the smile on my mouth and licking my feet. 🤭 It’s too good! It’s too cute! You might actually be a wizard. I’m bowing down to you, slow-burn queen 🙌

My fingers.... They are burning.... with dESIRE.

Title: Wounded Pride. Fandom: ( Kindgom of the ) Planet of the Apes. Rating: T. ( Mentions of violence, blood, injury and mating. ) Words: 6K ( Someone stop me jk don't. ) Pairing: Implied! Noa x Human!Reader. Summary: You were ignoring each other, that much was clear. How long was it going to last? Noa felt like he was bursting at the seams and you felt like you had lost all sense of reasoning. ** Does Contain Spoilers for Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. **

READ THE SERIES HERE. ●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・●・○・ “Noa!” That was a frantic tone and lured the Chimp to raise his head in question. His ears moved to focus on where it was coming from. Off to his left, maybe 10 or so meters away. Not too far if he needed to run. He made a barking sound in response. Hearing his name was not enough.  His vision caught a few things. Leaves tangling against the ruins of a past structure. Echo in nature, through and through and hideously ugly. Nothing like what Apes built he beamed with decent pride at that. His body swung at the sound of his name vibrating along the walls encapsulating him like a barren playground. His set of feet and hands were pressed into the ground now. He was braced, ready to take off. Respond, Noa’s mind felt like it was melting, waiting for his fellow friends to communicate. He traced his gaze right along the trees that were bursting through the sturdy concrete, determined to grow in such ludacris circumstances. His chest rose and fell rapidly, faster than he had felt in quite some time, at least since his encounter with Proximus Caesar.  “Noa! You need to come quick!” The fur along his spine pricked at that, standing on edge. A sensation not often felt with him. It screamed ‘danger ahead!’ His nerves yelled at him, muscles feeling tense. The voice was very much Soona’s, tangling with Anaya’s as they began yelling over each other. Well, it couldn’t have been that serious if they were both taking time to yell, some tanglement of arguing with each other hitting Noa’s ears as he finally picked his pace up to a gallop. Coming to what could only be described as a skirting stop, Noa’s hands and feet dug into the earth below him to stop him from tumbling over, making quite crazed eye contact with Soona and Anaya as his mind caught up with his body. Both unharmed, he sighed from relief at that. Anaya was breathing heavily - Nervous? Noa questioned silently and looked at Soona again, shoulders fraught. He stared at her, expecting an explanation without having to ask for one. She was quick to oblige but didn't bother with words. Merely stepping aside, her entire self bumped into Anaya’s and they both shuffled to the side on all fours looking between Noa and what was behind them in the long grass that grew without care. Noa came forward, keeping his senses on guard in case there was danger with what Soona and Anaya had found. His friends were fast to follow right behind him. Noa never had it in him to advise that he was just as scared as they were at times like this. He swallowed it down and did what he needed. Soona and Anaya needed him to be brave and that was often his gift to them. Their gift back? Their unwavering friendship and support through the years. Green eyes scaled the grassy area in front of him to observe before he got too close. Some blades were painted red. Noa hesitated briefly. It had to be blood, Noa roughly vocalized to Soona and Anaya to stand back, stay back. They did just that, stopping their movements as Noa bridged the gap of two feet between himself and the patch. 

“Still… Alive?” Soona asked quietly. Noa glanced back at her, watching as she dipped her head precariously. Anaya was standing close to her, holding onto her arm out of fear. Noa looked back at the grass, or rather, what was in it. Between the long entanglements of weeds and vines he could make out the striking notions of blood splatter. Fresh, it still looked wet. Swallowing back something that was resting in his throat, Noa stood. If there was danger, he needed to appear as large as he could. One of the many tactics a Chimpanzee had when faced with the unknown. The extra height he got going from all fours to bi-pedal was all he needed to see clearly what was in that busted patch of grass. ‘Echo!’ He signed at Anaya and Soona. 

‘Has to still be alive!’ Anaya was fast to respond to his best friend, his hands finding it a bit difficult to move so quickly. The next set of words were jumbled but Noa understood. It had made a sound when Soona and Anaya probed it, which prompted them to call Noa in return. 

‘What…’ Soona’s signing was slow compared to Anaya’s. She was always more thoughtful and Noa savored that in this moment, trying so hard to keep himself from going straight into panic. ‘What… do.. We do?’

‘Put out of misery.’ Anaya wasn’t joking. 

Noa held his hand up, fingers twisted into a hard fist. Soona and Anaya both fell deathly quiet. He was not about to mercy kill. What was in front of him would die on its own once the cold of the night came around. There was evident damage to their legs, close to the ankles, blood pooling there and trickling down the smooth nature of the skin into the dirt below. He made a fast sign to his friends telling them. He heard them both gasp under their breath as Noa made a move closer, crouching to get more detail, his hands and feet tangling in on themselves with the spaced movement of Noa’s broad body. Cut around the temple, hit by rock maybe, or fell on face, burns around wrists, most likely from being bound. Noa was making quick notes of what he was seeing. He looked right. Nothing. He looked to the left and noticed blood droplets and traced their trajectory mindfully. It was coming from the direction of the cave that kept the Eagle Clan secluded from other Apes in the area. That was all Noa needed to know. The Echo in front of him must have been hunted, nearly to the brink of death.  ●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・

‘How?’ Anaya signed at Noa, huffing deeply at his friend who was pacing, very distraught. The sounds from the Ape in front of him told Noa to stop moving and to focus, pay attention to the conversation at hand but it was apparent with the shoulder movements of aggravation that that was not going to happen. Noa was an obsessive creature, and Anaya knew that. Once he was locked and entranced by something, by any force of nature, Noa would tear it open and figure it out to satisfy his need to fix, his need to deduce. That’s what made him so good at tinkering, at resolving. It must have been a secretive thing Noa wanted to talk about this time around, eager to get Anaya alone. Stalking and biding his time almost all day to get his friend pinned for a conversation. Without Soona, without his mother. ‘Echo got offended?’ The signing of those words were accompanied by a funny face, Anaya very obviously curious how Noa had managed that one. Neither had heard of an Echo being offended, though, from the Elders of the Clan, they had always made the assumption that they were quick to anger. Maybe the same thing, Anaya bargained with Noa, but Noa felt this was different than simple anger and told his friend that sternly.

Noa had put everything incredibly broad, unsure of how to approach his closest confidant with what had happened between himself and you. Too many details would give away Noa’s primal intent. He gave the gist of it with words a few minutes ago, Anaya intently listening to Noa’s voice waver. Up and down, the placement of his tone unsure and full of self-loathing. He continued, explaining in part the conversation about the human custom of kissing, only the important details, followed by a very cliff-noted version of the hunting endeavor. Anaya must have sensed the urgency, choosing to sign rather than put more effort into it by speaking. Anyway, he justified it further by thinking that signing was more private. Less likely for someone to overhear, or well…. Oversee. Tilting his head to the side, Anaya felt a sigh roll from him as Noa finally stopped pacing, now choosing to sit rather defensively on his hands and feet. ‘How?’ Anaya repeated. 

‘I do not know.’ Shamefully, Noa dropped his hands after admitting that, his jaw clenching tightly for a moment as he grinded his teeth together. They clattered, his canines distracting his train of thought for a split second as he moved his tongue over them. ‘Echo just…’ Signs were not coming to him. Thoughts were not coming to him. Throwing his hands up in vivid frustration, Noa gave up and let a growl fall from his lips, snarling his lips for a second as it became a bit louder before tapering into a hum of sorts. Anaya blinked, hunching forward on all fours and drifted his way very slowly to sit by Noa. 

‘Why… you bothered?’

‘I do not know.’ He repeated this time. 

Anaya nodded, only looking at his friend from the corner of his eye. ‘Maybe… Apology?’ That was definitely an avenue that Noa had considered, in fact it was the first thing that popped into his mind. Chimps were good at apologies. Never with words, often they reached their hands out, palms up and waited for the party getting the concession to accept. It had a great acceptance rate, but Noa doubted you’d want that. Just throw an apology your way and see how it sticks! What could go wrong? You’d never talk to him again…  He grunted out a denial to Anaya at that prospect and turned his shoulders away. Defensive in nature. 

‘You… need tell Anaya…’ He tilted his head in hesitation, knowing what he was about to suggest would be a dangerous path, even though they were friends. “What Noa actually said.” There was confidence in his verbalization, stressing and driving home to Noa that it was a necessity to spill his guts for Anaya to properly gauge the situation and help. “Asked.. about mating.” Noa was fast to speak, hoping that maybe his voice was too weak for Anaya to understand. He underestimated it though and it came out sounding like a sour grape. “Asked if pleasured.” Noa turned his face towards Anaya, giving him a certain look that told him all he needed to know. He got his needed information and now he needed to process. And… It surely brought to light a lot of things. 

A lot. 

Anaya sat back on his butt, displaying a rather surprised expression. Noa didn't bother looking at him, already able to see the emotions on his friend's face just in his mind. That’s what they got for years of being around each other. Each minute move either face or body was known and read right away. 

“Stupid.” He told Noa honestly which resulted in a chortle from the Eagle Clan’s leader. It was the sound of agreement. “Echo like privacy. Stupid to ask. Not like us! Keep many secrets away from Noa, from all Apes.” There was intense scrutiny in Anaya’s voice. There was a reason why the Elders told stories, wary ones, about the Echo’s. About how they were and how they disregarded things that weren’t important to them. Selfish! Anaya chuffed, wanting to pull Noa in physically and beat him into submitting, giving Anaya all the answers he needed to deduce what Noa was already enthralled in. Instead though, he urged, “Why ask?”

Noa dropped his shoulders at the mild scolding and dipped his chin towards his body. He knew what Anaya was saying was right and there was no logical excuse anymore why he asked what he did or why he felt somehow entitled to an answer from you. ‘Curious.’ He didn't have it in him to speak.

Anaya wasn’t seething perse, instead, he was statically quiet which was even worse to Noa. Anaya was a chatterbox, even if it was about nothing of consequence. This… Was out of the norm and it made Noa incredibly uncomfortable. He began shifting his weight from one side to another, swaying out of mere anticipation of being scolded again. And if Anaya got too into it, Noa could just choose to gallop away. He didn't have to take it! He was the leader. He was… He was the Eagle Clan. 

“Stupid.” Anaya muttered again, picking himself up and moving. He couldn’t be next to Noa as he processed. 

“Told me they only mate out of survival, hardly… the other reasons..” Anaya’s mouth popped open. Noa got further into the conversation than he led his friend to believe. Previously, the assumption was made that you didn't respond and merely began ignoring him out of offense. 

Anaya exploded. “Echo not stupid, Noa is. Should have left it to die in the woods when found. Then, Noa wouldn’t be here telling Anaya stupid things!”

Noa lurched at that. Not at Anaya, but unquestionably at the implications of his words. At least, that was what Noa was going to tell himself later when the guilt set in that he drew his aggression at his best friend. The animalistic movement was taken the wrong way, made evident as Anaya billowed as Noa approached him, drawing into himself to appear smaller, more weak, more favorable. Raising his hand up, Noa was chaste to brush his fingertips against Anaya’s open palm. Apology. Simple and clean. Anaya submitted to his friend and watched as he turned, leaving the Chimp still as dumbfounded as before. Though, with a bit more insight. 

●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・

You could smell dried blood but you couldn’t bring yourself to lift your heavy eyelids. Warmth was collapsing over you, wave after wave. Each one brought another one of your senses with it. There was a mild tingling in your right ear, prickling at your hearing as you tried to adjust it enough to figure out your surroundings. Last thing you remembered was stumbling… Hands pacing over a bricked wall in the dark, trying too hard to find a place where you didn't need to run for your life. Your hand pressing to your forehead, bloodied from a cut on the side near your temple, vision blurring in and out of focus. Your knees buckled from exhaustion, crashing onto grass that definitely appeared softer than it felt… It was hot for a second but then it was awfully cold, your body taking a plunge into an invisible ocean of sheer ice. Then, it all went black. Maybe, if you were lucky, you were dead. Whirling endlessly in limbo somewhere between the Earth and the Heavens, searching for the next place to go. Maybe you were asleep, dreaming up violent situations from your subconscious. After all, it did what it wanted to in your dreams; you had no control over that. Would you be aware if you were dreaming though? That idea spurred you to cross it off the list of possibilities. Hm… Or maybe you were dead, you repeated. Your eyes did not want to open. You were so warm… Another wave hit you all of a sudden and you became aware of the smothering sensation of animal fur against your back. Against your arms. Against your legs. Against your entire body. Voices without bodies were floating around you. They sounded human enough and that put you at some ease. You jumped the gun there. Thinking you had been caught by a bunch of ravenous Apes. Ha. Ha. Ha…

Jolting, you were abruptly conscious. 

Not conscious enough, you decided. Drawing a deep breath into your lungs to accommodate for the lack of air you got while passed out, you found your eyes peering into green ones directly above you. Not just regular green, you tilted your head and tried desperately to ignore the throb coming from your temple. Entrancing, grappling for dominance with flecks of outstanding gold against a canvas of darkened pupils. Oh yeah, you were dead. You were definitely looking into the eyes of God, you said sarcastically in your wounded trance and shut your eyes again. “Awake! Echo is awake!” You heard that clear as day and it did nothing to help the already soundless nature of the drumming in your head. It was followed up but a few soft hoots of acknowledgement which caused the hair on your arms to stick up in defense and your eyes to fly open without reserve. Ape. Ape. Ape. You counted them with wide eyes. Three. Maybe? Maybe more? You had a hard time telling as your eyes were adjusting back to some sort of normalcy after being drenched and flooded with blood. Wherever you were was not very bright save for a fire in the corner that drifted up what appeared to be wooden planks that were tilted inwards. No natural light came in and it beckoned your internal clock to assume that it was night time. You were in a structure of some type; that was easy to figure out regardless of lighting. With Apes. Not just Apes, you squinted and raised yourself on your forearms. Chimpanzees. Three sets of eyes, similarly colored to the ones you woke up peering into. You had no idea nor interest in knowing which one was observing you so closely. If you weren’t dead before, you may as well have been at that moment as you sprinted backwards, almost face first and staggered to your feet. Automatically, you were in a defensive position, trying to ignore the feeling of twisted pain in your ankles. Racing your hands everywhere, you tried to find something to grab. Something to defend yourself with. You needed to! There was nothing in the vicinity. You couldn’t even tell where the door was and your eyes were frantic to find some sort of escape. Shoulders rising and falling quickly, you turned and looked at the Apes again. Your heart was going to jump out of your chest. Your head was pounding and you felt like if you moved your feet anywhere, you were going to tumble. What did they want?

Your mind was flying at a faster speed than you were able to process any cognitive thought. Words were blaring in your ears without anyone yelling. Your group of fellow Humans were all hunted, their chanting still wild in your head. Apes were dangerous. Apes showed no compassion. They liked the kill, they liked the satisfaction. The deeply ingrained instinct to be afraid of them because you didn't understand them, the wild weaned fear of what they could do to you. What they were planning to do! Were they… Oh god, they were going to kill you and then skin you and then eat your insides--- you scrambled again, no regard for how you must have looked as you dropped to your knees, muttering under your breath as you flew around on all fours. You needed to find a way out. There had to be a way out. They were going to attack, they were moving!

Wait.

You paused, hunching on your hands and knees, feeble attempts made to catch your breath but you still found yourself panting like a wild animal. Mouth agape, you looked at the Apes in the room with you before letting your gaze fall down to their hands. Were they… Using sign language?Your back came into crushing contact with the wooden wall behind you, earning a tiny flinch from you as your right shoulder blade radiated. You must have been bruised there, you thought. Despite the grinding pain you were in, you tried to push further back as one of them, only slightly bigger in stature compared to the other two dropped to all fours, now eye level with you, and languidly moved towards you. First a hand, followed by a foot and then repeated until they were right in front of you. Your breath caught in your throat as they leaned in, deathly close to your face that you were able to smell them in your nostrils, mixing now with that previously noted taste of dried blood. Oh, they were going to rip your face off.

“Alive.” They said to you, taking a brash step back when you moved. No shit, you wanted to say but you couldn’t find your voice. Your eyes widened at the movement of them and the sound of their voice. Not aggressive or mean, but it was pensive and quiet. Observant, and you wondered if they were even talking to you or just verbally acknowledging to the other two Apes that you were, well… Alive. Whoever this Ape was… Was courageous enough to face you, to be near you but obviously held some reservations. There was absolutely no way they were just as afraid as you were. 

“Injured.” That was directed towards you, eye contact frantically being made when the smell of fresh blood became more abundantly noticed. Almost afraid to look down, you felt a small gush coming from your right calf. It slipped down the curve of your muscle, mixed with something… A paste of some sort that in itself, in your cloudy disposition, was rather fragrant if you focused on it. Something like a root, pulled and crushed from deep in the Earth. How did that… Get there? You looked at your injury, nothing more than a gash, deeper than it appeared though and it ached if you moved your foot in any awkward positions. “Wh…” Your voice came out ridiculously hoarse, hand reaching up to touch the outside of your throat. The Ape in front of you was watching it all. The inquest on your face, your fingers holding along your throat and focusing on your heart beat. How long have you been out? A day? Two? A week? Swallowing hard, you lubricated your vocal cords just enough to force out a question, “Wh-- What did you… do..t’me?” That was definitely slurred.

“Did nothing!” Another Ape finally spoke, their voice frantic and distraught.Not from nerves…. Right? You looked at them, then at the one adjacent, who was just a touch smaller than the other two, before your gaze fell on the one closest to you, wrought breathing causing your lungs to feel rather tight. Shifting, you tried to relax but found that it only brought discomfort. 

“Injured.” The one in front of you said again, this time with a bit more confidence. Whether it was true or faux, you had no idea but it was difficult to sort anything through your thought process at the moment. You were barely processing the fact that there was quite literally a hole in your calf let alone that an Ape was communicating with you so… Civilly. “Found in… ruins. Dying.” Your lips parted, suddenly becoming aware that you were thirsty. The severity of the words spoken hit you like a feathered ton of bricks. Softly at first, it was initially hazed by the idea that they were capable of saving you instead of killing you. Then, it sank in and it felt like your body was tied to a chair, someone banging on your chest over and over again to just drive the point home that all your preconceptions about these Apes might have been wrong. No! It couldn’t have been wrong! You lived your entire life afraid of them, being told from your childhood to be afraid and to always run away. It was only solidified when each of those Humans you were around were hunted, killed and their bodies dragged around in a triumphant show-boat by a group of Apes on the back of their horses. Squeezing your eyes shut at that visual, often the cause of nightmares for you, you shook your head vehemently. There was no way. 

“We…” They continued on, “saved.” There was a gesture towards the two Apes across the room. “Brought Echo back here… Spear head in leg,” Huh, that explained that, you bargained for some sort of reality. “Took out, stopped bleeding then…” They came to a slow stop and signed something over at the other two. You had no idea what they were saying now. Sign language was not your forte. Maybe, if you could push aside the vibration in your head, you’d be able to read them from body language but that was thrown out the window when you opened your eyes, tears forming at the edges and ultimately blurring your vision. 

“Echo then wake up.”

You snapped, “Wha… What the hell is an Echo?”One of the two behind lurched ever so slightly at the apparent aggression you put into your words, but the one crouched in front of you put a hand up to tell them to stop. 

It gestured at you. 

You rolled your eyes. That must have been their name for Humans. Each clan called them something different, you had figured that out over the years. Instead of having individual names, the human race was deduced down to a word such as ‘Echo’ or ‘Nova’, which you had heard in passing, speckled usually in more secluded clans and only talked about in detail when you were around the fire late at night with other humans. It was lore, it was ghost stories. It was reality now. “I--- Have a name…” You whispered. “(Name).” Hm… With a tilted head to the side, a response came. “Noa.” Finally giving you a bit more clarity. He pointed at the two Apes behind him accordingly, “That Soona,” She looked at you, terrified obviously, but seemingly confident in her friend's ability to talk to you. “Anaya.” Even more terrified, and not as obviously convinced in this Noa Ape to be as outrageously courageous as he was appearing.

“Are…” You quivered in on yourself and looked at him. A string of tears hit your cheeks, hurting at your temple even more than before and profusely lit the flame that caused the beating in your head to intensify rapidly. “Are you going to kill me?” Noa looked at you, draping you in some sort of melancholic state as you realized just how… human his eyes were. How they observed every morsel of your face, taking in the details and probably thinking just how hideous you were compared to Apes. How he’d scrutinize your scent, your well being, your entire self. But, he said nothing, gaze flickering between your eyes before he moved attention to your calf again. You followed suit. It looked worse than it felt, at least you had that. If he were going to kill you, wouldn’t he have already done it? There was a fleeing moment where he felt offended at your accusation, feeling the same coming from Soona and Anaya - primarily the latter. But, he had to remind himself, you were Echo. You did not know any other ways.

“Not all Apes are that way. We do not kill… Echo’s here.” You stiffened watching as he drew himself onto his hands and feet again from his default crouching stance. That was a complete and full sentence. You tried to not bark at him with confusion, not impressed by any means… Well… No! Not impressed. You knew they could talk. It was well---You knew… they could… Your eyes blurred and you felt your head fall to the side before you urged yourself into a more aware state. It lasted only moments before you lulled into an awkward dance with unconsciousness and invested fear. Coldness rocketed right through your leg at the application of more of the root smelling paste to your wound. It didn't sting perse, instead, it felt numbing. Were you so out of it that you didn't see Noa grabbing what appeared to be a clay jar of sorts? Fingers pushing into it and then smearing its contents on your body? You so desperately wanted to ask him what the hell he was doing, putting on you but you were shot with another wave of black. You passed out. ●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・

Almost sickly aware of the pair of green eyes on you at all times, intricately staring at your movements down to the minute shift of your shoulders as you breathed, you did everything you could to ignore them. Your hands were busy; helping Soona untangle some twine that had gotten itself into a mess of very intricate knots. She had praised you for your help, explaining that ‘Echo hand… smaller than Ape..’ It was a simple and gentle compliment from her, you being grateful to be of some use to someone else in the Clan and not just Noa. With your hands working, your mind fell into a leisurely state as you tried so desperately to convince yourself that Noa wasn’t foolish enough to pull you away from a social situation with Soona. It would seem suspicious and ultimately, Soona would tell Anaya who would then in turn absolutely panic and tell Noa to back off, leave you be and that the only purpose you served here was to please Noa’s curiosity about the Teachings of Caesar. Thinking those things did nothing to help you feel calm. In fact, it was very much the opposite. Your mind did not stop at that though, enticing you to look up. You swept the entire village with your gaze. He had to be there somewhere, he rarely chose to drift off by himself without either of his friends, or even you on occasions but that was only when you served a purpose to him, you convinced yourself that at the moment the agreement was made that you would help Noa understand about human culture. You were still actively trying to convince yourself of that after the last two conversations that abhorrently played in your head in excruciating detail. The absolute devastation on his face when he realized that he had asked you the wrong thing and your petty response was the top of the list for your mental replays. It was your pettiness and inability to say anything positive in response to him that got you the most worked up despite your answer to him being that of pure truth. Humans didn't mate, in Noa’s words, for pleasure. They mated for survival. Setting your twine down now that it was a straight line, you looked over your shoulder once more before glancing down to pick up another knotted piece to work on. Well… What were you supposed to tell him? Looking at it now in a less offended state, you should have just told him that you didn't want to answer. There were a few times in the past that Noa attempted to push a question on you, soon coming to embrace acceptance that you weren’t willing to give him any response and he’d drop it. The two of you never fought about it, never went days upon days without talking or seeing each about them. Were you even fighting? Tilting your head, you shuffled on the ground and spread your legs out instead of sitting cross-legged like you had been for at least the last half hour. Then you began bargaining. He had asked you before if you had mated. If you had someone before you found your way to the Eagle Clan. You never answered him, even then. It was left alone for a long time, Noa not wanting to pry into obviously human privacy. So he was consciously aware of the status of the question he begged you to answer only a few days ago.  You fixated on the way he had signed that word. Pleasure. It was a slow signing, his two hands in front of his chest with a perpendicular circular motion. It was a flurry of intensity. The question. Your chaste answer. Noa falling silent next to you, no doubt self-reflecting at the idiocy of the question. And then… Oh… You had the absolute torture of being silent for the rest of the hunting trip. Noa ignored you, you could sense the coldness coming off of him in waves due to his inner thoughts taking over. You wanted nothing more than to ask him when he inquired about pleasure. How he even knew that it was a pleasurable experience for a human. Was it for Apes? Chimpanzees? You had no idea, choosing to linger in your ignorance and figure that it was not an element to their mating standards.

Huffing, you sat your twine back down and told Soona in a soft tone of voice as to not alarm her, “I need to go pee.” She let you go with silence, figuring your rather fast pace was due to really needing to relieve yourself.

A quick excuse to get you on your legs, pacing towards the right and through the entire embankment of the village to the very edge. Kicking a rock under your foot as you approached the small creek, the very sight of the first incident with Noa, you felt like doing nothing more than grabbing your hair and screaming to the high heavens. What was wrong with you!? Now you were the foolish one, asking questions that shouldn’t need to be asked, that didn't need an answer because what fruit would come from knowing if Apes mated at all for pleasure?

Coming around the small creek embankment, your fast feet came to an almost stumbling stop. Your mind didn't process as quickly as you halted harder than anticipated and almost felt yourself go face first into the shallow water in front of you from the sheer momentum you had. A set of broad shoulders, lined delicately with thinning fur in preparation for the summer, were facing you. Sun peeked across the west as it began its gentle descent into night, flushing the sky now with a light hue of pink and orange. Ah yes… That oh so familiar body in front of you, hand dipped in water in quite solace was none other than the Chimp you were ignored by for days. Well, not just ignored by. You did your fair share of skipping around the stone to not run into him.

Tightly wrapping your fingers into fists at your side, you contemplated going back. It appeared he hadn’t heard you, hadn’t sensed you coming or at the very least, you weren’t worth turning around or acknowledging. Your heart sank at that thought. You were just another tool he used to get his way into fixing a problem that wasn’t his to fix. He… Looked so small… You brought your bottom lip in and chewed it out of deliberation, eyes scaping up his back, broad by nature, but from his posture now, it was brought in on itself and he looked reminiscent of a little kid who had just gotten into big trouble. Maybe, you muttered inside of your own head and trailed your way towards him. You were still contemplating if you wanted to talk to him, but the very least you could do was to appear next to him and give the chance.

‘Know you are there.’ There went your element of surprise as Noa brought his hand back in and rested it against his chest in a coiled position. He wasn’t just crouching, he was holding himself.

“I---” You stumbled backwards, feet shifting to move your weight but your mind was telling you not to run. To confront. You didn't want to! You wanted to leave it alone, you didn't want to… To… Have to see his face. “I’m sorry, I didn't know you’d be up here, I just needed to---”

“Think.”

Swallowing softly, you planted yourself behind him, only a few feet and looked at the water that was so enviously caressing his hand. Looking down at your own palm, you felt it tingle with want… You wanted to be that water and freely float yourself against him in some bid to calm, ease… Love… “Yeah…” That was spit from your mouth so softly, almost afraid that Noa wouldn’t be able to hear. He didn't turn to face you so you figured that he did in fact hear and was either waiting for silence to fall over the two of you again or for you to say something else. He waited.

●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・○・●・ Tag List: @ohwaitimthewriter @saturnnie-03 @hera-annwn @filliandkili @hadesbabygurl @supergoat12 @callsignwindow @moonchild1433 @kaenalsha @whamsworld @yummyfant @unsteady-bitch @twinspineout

( Sorry if tumblr is a jerk and doesn't tag properly. It does that sometimes I've noticed. )

[directdogman]

Hey dogman, idk if you answered this

Who, out of both DSAF and Dialtown, was your favourite to write and/or create?

It's very hard for me to pick favourites with my characters because I don't tend to give characters a lot of screen-time unless I find a character interesting or fun to write. You've caught me in a talkative mood, so warning, there's an onslaught of text coming!

DSaF: Dave was the most fun to write for, as I remember it. I mean, the guy is the walking personification of chaos and even when he's being constructive (eg, rigging robots to do insane stuff), it's usually in a destructive capacity. Dave will do LITERALLY ANYTHING but contribute to society in meaningful/valuable ways.

In terms of what character-writing I was most 'proud' of, I was also pretty happy with Dr Henry Miller, as a villain. Namely the research he embarked on, described in his logs in DSaF 3 (which the fandom evidently agreed with, as I got really strong feedback on those logs.)

One issue a lot of people (including myself) have with canon William Afton is that he's this kind of mad scientist character but his research doesn't really seem to be... idk, going anywhere? Other than using remnant (soul nectar?) to make kids possess robots, it's kind of a mystery how he got to this point he did from running a bad fast food restaurant. William gets fleshed out motivations in TSE and even then, it mainly revolves around his relationship with Henry Emily, iirc. It's actually pretty accurate to how real serial killers think, imo, but there's a pretty wide berth between this kind of serial killer and becoming a sci-fi fast-food mad scientist... So, I decided to try to bridge that gap.

DSaF Henry's logs actually mention where the idea for his research came from, namely the fact that he existed in a world with normal scientific rules just like ours and seemingly discovered something supernatural, and he approaches it like an amoral scientist would - trying to figure out how to figure out more about the fabric of reality using the newly discovered phenomenon of possession. The 'joy of creation' phrase people pulled from Golden Freddy's phone call in FNaF 1 is given context - Henry is trying to find out what's on the other side (and eventually, how existence itself formed.)

There's other aspects to his character that make him more interesting too, like the implication that his research is partially an excuse for him to act on an underlying sadism (with scenes implying that he inflicts damage on others than can't be justified as assisting with his research.) His background as a dissident/quack laughing-stock scientist (thanks to pushing his soul theory in a best-selling book, which is considered pseudoscience) BEFORE he embarked on his journey to become a fast food tycoon also makes it less farfetch'd that he'd be capable of y'know, harvesting human souls intentionally to continue his research?

I had more for the character on paper that people haven't seen but some of it wasn't revealed due to it feeling a bit too disturbing to publish. None of the contents would've been all that controversial, more just too tonally disturbing when written about in detail (like a omitted part from his backstory/lore post where he managed to pick up a hazy audio of his wife + son's crying from the radio of the car his wife/son drowned in and reacted with genuine elation upon realizing he'd discovered a new scientific phenomenon (as this was the first time Henry witnessed soul-possession.)) Yeah.

I don't feel much of a need to revisit Henry as a character because as a series villain, he was pretty thoroughly-written and he did his job effectively... And his fate was well earned! (He even got an epilogue short-story a few years back, further cementing his fate!)

Dialtown: From the characters/writing that the fandom has seen? Tough to say. I genuinely really like every DT character. Gingi and Mayor Mingus are two of my favourite characters to write for because they're both really insistent and react to adversity in a really comically indignant way. Mingus is more like Gingi than she cares to admit in very specific ways, which is the core hypocrisy of her character - she's one of the most abnormal things IN Dialtown, and spends the game on a quest opposing abnormality that she, herself, can't stand.

Many absolute rulers have debilitating physical and/or mental cruxes and despite that, usually have the final say on what is/isn't okay, often guided by arbitrary preferences. It's funny to remember all of the ancient kings and emperors who dictated how others should act, talk and even think, when very many of them themselves were anything except a good reflection of their own subjects! It's an irony I quite enjoy and leads to a fun character to write for!

My favourite DT writing is probably some of my Callum Crown speech drafts. I have a definite bias here since Crown's character is based on many figures I've encountered in my own reading (and his story relates to topics I enjoy reading about.) A lot of that is real nerd shit that wouldn't be interesting to 99.9% of DT fans (like a long conversation where Crown + Milt discuss a campaign speech Milt wrote for Crown and they bicker about if the wording/arguments used are truly honest.) Again, not super relevant to Dialtown-proper, but it explains a lot about why the world of DT ended up the way it did.

Realistically, the story of Dialtown itself is basically a weird little epilogue to a story that ended decades upon decades ago, centered around a bunch of small-town nobodies circling around the carcass of the last surviving main character of the old story.

I'm also very happy with Gingi's character partially because I know more about Gingi's past/future than you guys do. Gingi has such rotten memory that Gingi's backstory before DT's story begins is basically a complete mystery. Thanks to Gingi never getting close enough to any humans before laying its eggs, there's nobody in Gingi's life that can fill in the gaps. Companionship means so much to Gingi because prior to meeting The Gang, Gingi is aware of a massive and unknown block of time that's a complete mystery precisely because Gingi had nobody in its life. To Gingi, this time was basically akin to being non-sentient or dead, and Gingi would never go back.

While I was making DSaF, I drafted a ton of other stories on paper. I considered making most of them, but decided not to for various reasons, despite getting some solid feedback from collaborators. Bits of almost all of those project ideas made it into DT, with Gingi having traits from several other main characters I prototyped years and years ago. This includes where Gingi came from and what exactly Gingi is. I don't want to mislead people into thinking Gingi is more important than it is, like Gingi is the key to unlocking DT lore (I promise there's a LOT of aimless scuttling/devouring in Gingi's past and relatively little else!) BUT: Of everything from those old scrapped projects, Gingi is what I decided deserved to survive the most. And that has to count for something.

One day I'd love to make sequels to DT and perhaps explore some of the stuff I've described above, like why the hell the world of DT is the way it is or maybe where the hell Gingi spawned from. Thanks

[fuckyeahisawthat]

Got tagged by @chaotic-neutral-knitter to share my favorite fics I've written and I feel a little bad not putting any of my 3 OFMD fics on the list. But in my defense it was very hard to choose between my 116 slutty slutty children, and while I like my OFMD fics a lot (especially Learning and Remembering) I decided to limit myself to five fics across all the fandoms I have written for over the past nine (!!) years, and there are some that stand above the rest.

Maybe I'll Show You the Way (Dune, Paul/Chani). Maybe my recency bias is showing but I really think this is one of the best things I've written. Paul and Chani's whole "falling in love while fighting side by side in an anti-colonial armed resistance movement" romance in Dune Part Two felt like it was designed in a lab to appeal to me specifically, and I just wanted more of it! What started with a simple "5 times they fucked in between fighting the Harkonnens" premise has become a novella-length character study about war, politics, solidarity and resistance to oppression in all its forms, interlaced with a very sweet, youthful first-love romance that always has a bittersweet edge because we the audience know these characters are living in a tragedy. This fic is one chapter from completion and I've been stalling because I really wanna stick the landing on this one, but it will get finished!

a narrow door, swiftly closing (Dune, Paul/Duncan) Different ship, different era (post-Dune Part One) and a very different vibe. The fun of this ship is the multiple power imbalances running in different directions (younger/older, student/teacher, lord/vassal, end product of a 90-generation eugenics program with a mind that can bridge time and space/Just Some Guy). It's also got that chewy age gap thing where the older character has watched the younger character grow from a child to an adult and has to wrestle with the realization that they find them sexually attractive now. Peak forbidden romance and mutual pining in this one and not just one but two of my favorite finally-crossing-the-line kisses I have ever written.

Three Times Is a Habit (Trust, Primo/The Other Paul) Ah yes, my "which doomed curly-haired teenage twink heir to a powerful dynasty named Paul are we talking about?" era. For a hot second (most of 2021) I was really into this hidden gem FX limited series Trust, based (with many creative liberties taken) on the real kidnapping of John Paul Getty III in Italy in the 1970s. The fun of this fandom is that every ship is an absolute garbage fire of bad decisions, and writing the trainwreck emotional logic that leads to a traumatized teenager repeatedly hooking up with his kidnapper was an adventure. There's also a fun meta layer at play in the relationship between our reality, the fictionalized "true" version of the kidnapping that happens in the show, the lies the characters tell about the fictionalized version of the kidnapping in the show, and the version of the characters I'm writing, some of whom are based on real people and some of whom are made up. (Is this RPF? You decide.) This fic will make zero sense if you haven't watched the show. But you should! It's a wild ride with a great cast (Donald Sutherland presente!)

Salvage & Scrap (Mad Max: Fury Road, Gen) Two minor characters who have a combined total of maybe five minutes of screen time produced what was until recently my longest fic on AO3. This fic was based on a fantastic prompt: what if Ace (the older war boy who seems to be Furiosa's second in command on the War Rig) and Valkyrie (Furiosa's Green Place gal pal) both survived their violent vehicular encounters and met each other? The idea was immediately appealing to me because they both care about Furiosa but have known such different versions of her, and the way their worldviews would clash seemed like great story fodder. I still love the imagery of them meeting at the place where their worlds have literally collided--the wreck of the War Rig in the Rock Riders' canyon. Also I recently reread this and I forgot how devastating the tiny glimpse we get of Furiosa is in this fic.

Fightplay (Mad Max: Fury Road, Max/Furiosa) You know this list wouldn't be complete without a smutty Maxiosa fic. It was really hard to pick one piece of the 127k smut novel I wrote about them in non-chronological order over the course of about 3 years (2015-2018). But Fightplay was definitely the start of writing uhhh a certain kind of dynamic for them. The prose is very spare and exacting in a way that I still find hot 9 years later.

Tagging @thebyrchentwigges, @thetardigrape, @nandamai, @bethagain, @demolitionwoman-blog and anyone else who wants to do this!

[zapreportsblog]

I'd love to see Edward and Ben(separate) with their mate waking up from a coma. After an accident she fell into a coma for 6 months. Please and thank you!

❝waking up❞

✭ pairing : Edward Cullen x reader x Benjamin

✭ fandom : twilight

✭ summary : (y/n) fell into a coma for 6 months after a tragic accident here’s her first moments waking up

✭ twilight masterlist

Edward Cullen :

The soft beep of monitors and the sterile scent of the hospital room formed an unfamiliar backdrop for Edward Cullen as he stood by the bed, his golden eyes focused intently on your still form. Six months had passed since the devastating car crash that had left you in a coma, and his heart had been stuck in a perpetual state of apprehension and longing.

"Edward, I think she's starting to wake up," Alice's voice broke the heavy silence. She stood on the other side of the bed, her eyes fixed on you.

His breath hitched as he watched your eyelids flutter, a sign that your consciousness was beginning to reemerge from the depths of sleep. He reached out and gently took your hand in his, his cool touch a stark contrast to the warmth he hoped you would soon regain.

"(Y/N),” he whispered, his voice a mixture of anticipation and relief. "Can you hear me?"

The seconds seemed to stretch into eternity before your eyelashes quivered again, and this time, your eyes opened slightly, revealing tired but conscious orbs that locked onto his. The corners of his lips twitched with the hint of a smile, his eyes shining with emotion as he met your gaze.

"Edward?" your voice was weak, barely more than a whisper, but to him, it was the most beautiful sound in the world.

"I'm here, love," he murmured, his thumb brushing over the back of your hand in a tender caress. "You're safe now."

A myriad of emotions played across your face as your memory began to piece together the events leading up to this moment. The accident, the darkness, and now, the sensation of his touch grounding you in the present.

"Edward," you repeated, your voice stronger this time. "What… what happened?"

"You were in a car crash," he explained softly, his eyes never leaving yours. "You've been in a coma for six months."

Six months. It was a disorienting concept, and you struggled to process the passage of time that had occurred while you were trapped in that void between consciousness and oblivion.

"I've missed you," you admitted, your voice trembling with emotion.

"I've missed you too, more than you can imagine," he confessed, his gaze intense and full of unspoken words.

The room seemed to fade away as you locked eyes with him, your heart echoing the unbreakable bond that connected you. The weight of the past six months and the uncertainty of the future melted away in the presence of his unwavering love.

"I love you," you whispered, the words carrying the weight of all the emotions you had held onto during your coma.

His smile was radiant, a beacon of hope and happiness that illuminated the room. "I love you too, (Y/N). Always."

As he leaned in, his lips met yours in a gentle kiss, a connection that bridged the gap between the time you had lost and the life that awaited you both. With every heartbeat, you knew that your journey was far from over, but together, you were ready to face whatever challenges lay ahead, hand in hand.

And so, in the soft glow of the hospital room, two souls found their way back to each other, their love stronger than ever before, and their hearts beating as one.

Benjamin :

The forest echoed with the haunting calls of distant creatures as the twilight sky painted the landscape with hues of orange and purple. Benjamin, with his bronze skin glistening faintly in the fading light, stood amidst the trees, his thoughts consumed by the events of the past months.

Six months ago, a confrontation with a group of Normans—vampires who had renounced the traditional ways of their kind—had left you gravely injured. Benjamin had fought valiantly to protect you, his mate, but even his elemental abilities had struggled against the overwhelming force of the Normans.

His golden eyes never left the path that led back to the Cullens' residence. It was a path he had walked countless times, carrying the weight of hope and fear in equal measure. The Cullen family had rallied around you, never giving up on the belief that you would awaken from the coma that had ensnared you.

Suddenly, the air around him seemed to shift, and he turned to see Carlisle approaching through the undergrowth. The patriarch of the Cullen family wore an expression that was a mixture of caution and optimism.

"Benjamin," Carlisle's voice was gentle, a soothing balm to the turmoil that churned within him. "There have been changes."

His heart raced at the implications of Carlisle's words. Changes could mean any number of things—a decline in your condition, a new development, or perhaps…

"Tell me," he requested, his voice betraying his urgency.

Carlisle's eyes held a mix of sympathy and reassurance. "She's waking up."

Time seemed to stop as Benjamin processed those words. A surge of emotion swelled within him, a blend of elation and trepidation. His heart pounded with a rhythm that matched the thunderous pace of his thoughts. After six long, agonizing months, he could scarcely believe that the moment he had prayed for was finally here.

He followed Carlisle back to the Cullens' home, his anticipation growing with every step. The atmosphere in the house was a curious mixture of tension and excitement, the other family members gathered in the living room, their expressions a reflection of the emotions that swirled within the room.

As he entered the room, his gaze was drawn to you—still and serene on the bed. A tangle of emotions threatened to overwhelm him as he approached, his heart aching with a longing he had scarcely allowed himself to acknowledge.

The steady beeping of monitors filled the room, a reassuring cadence that underscored the delicate balance between life and the void. He took your hand in his, his touch gentle yet firm, as if trying to bridge the gap between your unconsciousness and his unwavering presence.

"(Y/N)”, he whispered, his voice laden with emotion. "It's me, Benjamin."

And then, as if in response to his words, your eyelids fluttered. The tension in the room heightened as those present held their collective breaths. Your eyes slowly opened, and for a fleeting moment, you seemed disoriented, as if trying to make sense of your surroundings.

"Benjamin?" your voice was a fragile whisper, your gaze finding his amidst the sea of faces.

Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes as he nodded, his grip on your hand tightening with both gratitude and relief. "I'm here, (Y/N).”

A gentle smile curved your lips, a spark of recognition igniting within your eyes. "I remember."

The room seemed to exhale as a wave of emotion swept through those gathered. The past six months had tested their faith, but in this moment, hope and love prevailed.

As your eyes met Benjamin's, the unspoken connection between you radiated with a warmth that defied the cold uncertainty of the supernatural world. The darkness that had threatened to claim you both was slowly giving way to the light of your resurgence—a testament to the power of love, determination, and the bonds that transcended even the most dire circumstances.

Edward Cullen and Benjamin :

The tranquil town of Forks held its breath as a soft rain fell, casting a gentle rhythm on the world below. Amidst the towering trees and the emerald undergrowth, the Cullen residence stood as a haven for the supernatural family that called it home. Inside, a hushed tension filled the air as two powerful vampires—one with bronze hair and the other with golden eyes—stood in a room that had been a sanctuary of hope for the past six months.

Benjamin, his gaze fixed on the still form before him, couldn't help but let his thoughts drift back to that fateful day when the accident had occurred. A shooting incident during a hunting trip, a stray bullet finding its mark, and the life he had built with his two soulmates had been shattered in an instant.

Edward, his presence a calming force beside Benjamin, shared the burden of worry that had weighed them down for half a year. He understood the depth of the bond they shared with you, a connection that defied explanation, and the agony of waiting for the moment when you would awaken.

The sound of approaching footsteps brought their attention to Carlisle, whose presence was a beacon of knowledge and compassion in the face of uncertainty.

"Edward, Benjamin," Carlisle's voice was steady, though it carried the weight of the news he bore. "There have been changes."

Benjamin's heart raced as Carlisle's words hung in the air, the implications clear. Edward's gaze locked onto Carlisle's, a mixture of hope and apprehension reflected in his eyes.

"Tell us," Edward requested, his voice even.

Carlisle's eyes held a depth of understanding that only came from centuries of experience. "She's beginning to wake up."

A surge of emotions swept through both vampires—emotion they had learned to conceal behind their immortal facades. For six months, their lives had been in a state of limbo, the bond they shared with you a constant reminder of the life they were fighting to preserve.

They followed Carlisle back into the house, the tension in the air palpable. The other members of the Cullen family had gathered in the living room, their expressions a mirror of the emotions that echoed within the room.

As they entered the room, all eyes turned to the bed where you lay, still and vulnerable. The steady beeping of the monitors was a reassuring backdrop to the myriad of thoughts and feelings that swirled through the room.

Benjamin approached the bed, his steps careful as he took your hand in his. Edward stood beside him, his gaze never wavering from your face. The bond they shared, rare and powerful, connected them to you on a level that transcended even their own understanding.

"(Y/N),” Benjamin whispered, his voice a mix of emotions that ranged from longing to relief. "It's us. Benjamin and Edward."

The room held its collective breath as your eyelids fluttered. For a moment, there was hesitation in your gaze, a fleeting sense of disorientation as you emerged from the abyss of unconsciousness.

"Benjamin… Edward," your voice was a fragile whisper, your eyes searching their faces for confirmation.

Tears glistened in Benjamin's eyes as he nodded, his grip on your hand tightening with a blend of gratitude and hope. "Yes, love. We're here."

Edward's expression softened, a warmth igniting within his eyes as he met your gaze. "We've been waiting for you."

A soft smile graced your lips, a spark of recognition lighting up your eyes. "I remember."

In that moment, as the rain continued to fall outside and the room seemed to hold its breath, the unbreakable bond between the three of you resonated with a quiet strength. The trials of the past six months had tested your connection, but here you were—awakened, aware, and surrounded by the unwavering love of the two vampires who had been by your side through it all.

The journey ahead was uncertain, but with Benjamin and Edward at your side, the echoes of awakened hearts promised a future filled with unyielding support, fierce determination, and a love that transcended time and circumstance.

[grace-aline]

Why I think Bob Newby had to die (part 2)

Make way for Jopper!

Listen. I’m as into shipping ST characters as much as the next Byler. Edits, fanart, fanfiction. Can’t get enough of that shit. Shipping is such a good, positive lens to watch the show through, and my GOD does it bring out some incredible analysis and literary criticism in the fandom.

I feel like I should preface this post by saying that, although I’m very fond of Bob, I’m not anti-Jopper by any stretch of the imagination. Hats off to those who are, but unfortunately I think that fighting Jopper is a bit like fighting the tide going out; like it or not, it’s probably going to happen. Canon Jopper definitely has its issues, don't get me wrong, but it’s exactly that; canon. It’s the most logical, inevitable endgame outcome at this stage, and I don’t think that’s likely to change.

However. I do think that Jim Hopper’s presence in the show was enough to write Bob’s death warrant.

Because from the minute Bob steps onto screen, bridging the gap from extra to character the longer the camera remains trained on his cheerful, innocent face, the same kind of inevitably follows him. Not the inevitability of his death, per say, but certainly a sense that somewhere in writing headquarters, an egg timer has been flipped on Bob and Joyce’s relationship, and that their time together is now counting down. In Beyond Stranger Things, the Duffers talk at length about Bob as being Joyce's "dorky boyfriend" who ultimately “...was always- he was always going to eat it.”

Joyce and Hopper, on the other hand, are one of those duos who are written with a implied degree of romantic certainty from the very beginning of the show. The eye contact, the bickering, the way she calls him ‘Hop’. We as viewers are given the ability to speculate as to their history from their first scene together; when Joyce arrives at the police station to report Will missing. From episode one, season one, they’re looking at each other like this:

It's not necessarily overt, but I don't think it's too much of a stretch to say that there is implied history between the pair. When you watch this scene, you also just. Get the general sense that Hopper is going out of his way to help Joyce? I know, I know, Hopper is initially very dismissive of Joyce’s concerns. But the way Joyce is able to talk her way into meeting with the Chief of Police, the way that Hopper himself organises searches and takes time out of his day to meet with and give Joyce personal updates… I guess you could argue that, being Police Chief in a small town, Hopper doesn’t have anything better to be doing with his time. But it’s not like he's only doing the bare minimum for her and Will, and we don’t see him answering early morning callouts or searching through the night for Barbara and Cindy Holland, for example. To me, it definitely reads as Joyce getting special treatment from Hopper.

It's not just us viewers speculating, though. Throughout the show, multiple side characters assume or otherwise divine the fact that Joyce and Hopper have unfinished business together. After defending Joyce to his officers and storming off, Callaghan remarks to Powell that “Her and the Chief have screwed before, right?”, Doctor Owens assumes that Hopper is Will’s “Pop”, and Murray gives the pair a fair earful when he finds out that they’re not dating: “...why don't you two cut the horseshit and get to the part where you admit your sexual feelings for one another?... And now, rather than admit these feelings, you're dancing around one another with this mind-numbing, frankly boorish mating ritual." Even Alexei, who has like half an hour of screen time total and has only known Joyce and Hopper for a couple of days, is shocked by the fact that “They have not had sex?”

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that any viewer or character with even an ounce of media literacy can tell that the Duffers establish Joyce and Hopper’s slow burn romance from very early on in the show. Despite their personal obliviousness (or perhaps more likely, their unwillingness to acknowledge the elephant in the room), there are a few key scenes in which even Joyce and Hopper themselves acknowledge the tension between them.

Bringing us back to season 2, though, what I’m most interested in are their interactions in 02x01: MADMAX. (I think it’s important to look at the series of moments between Joyce and Hopper here as being accumulatively damning to Bob, rather than individual scenes which could mean nothing on their own.) Keep in mind also that this is the first time we’re seeing Hopper and Joyce interact this season; the last we saw them together, they were on a high-stakes mission to bring Will back from the dead. First, Owens mistakes Jim for Will’s father, a mistake he continually makes throughout the series.(I'm thinking about the way that he later addresses/defers to Hopper’s wishes for Will, rather than Bob, and the way that he pulls Hopper, rather than Bob, aside to explain that Will is infected by a parasitic host.) As they depart the lab, Hopper and Joyce have an interaction which is slightly tense and defensive, respectively. After a pause, Hopper asks, “How’s, uh, Bob the Brain?”, not meeting Joyce’s eye, his tone faux-casual. Joyce replies, perhaps a little too quickly, saying, "Don't call him that... He’s good! We’re good.” Her tone has no real bite to it, though. Not long after this chronologically, but in the next episode (2x02: Trick or Treat, Freak) Joyce and Hopper share a cigarette back at her house. After discussing Joyce’s concern about Will’s worsening condition, they move on to (dangerous) reminiscences:

“Brings me back to old times.” "What?" "Well. Sharing my cigarettes between-" "Fifth and sixth period.” "Yeah, under the steps. Mr. Cooper caught us that time, remember? He was like ‘hey, assholes...’” “-we ran, we just ran.”

They laugh together, and then pause, holding one another’s eye contact as the music takes on a slightly melancholy tone. And I know, I know, eye contact isn’t concrete evidence. But just look at the way that they’re looking at each other:

As viewers, I think the Duffers want us to read into the subtext of this interaction; that is to say, what isn’t being said rather than what is. The Duffers want us to, in hindsight, rewatch the scene and see Hopper’s jealous curiousity, Joyce’s playful banter and obvious connection with Hopper despite her ongoing relationship with Bob.

So, Joyce and Hopper’s connection to one another is carefully and clearly established from the beginning. Let’s look at the suitors vying for Joyce's attention, then.

Hopper is a man of action, a man of impulsive decision and a blustery kind of confidence. Being ex-military and generally just fairly quick off the mark, he has a talent for coming out on top of whatever challenge is thrown his way. On top of this, we as an audience are expected, even encouraged to prefer him as a potential suitor because we spend more time with him, and because his character arc is more satisfying. There’s more meat, more complexity to a character who starts out carefully written to be somewhat unlovable in season one. You have to work to like him, work to see his perspective and appreciate how his past, intentionally fed to us in touching, accumulative flashbacks, informs his current approach to relationships. When season 2 opens, we see soft spots, fleetingly, in the way he takes El in, feeding her and clothing her and keeping her alive. We see a soft spot in the way he is implied to have gone with Joyce to every single one of Will’s appointments and in telling her to “…call me first” if she’s worried about Will. In other words, Hopper’s usefulness in dangerous, high pressure situations, when combined with his slow character growth, gives him this inherently endearing quality to audiences. If you didn’t start an outright Hopper fan, maybe you didn't necessarily want to like him, but you knew that characters needed and relied on him; and slowly, slowly, he grew on you too. Maybe not, I don't know. But that's my interpretation.

By contrast, and intentionally I think, Bob fails where Hopper succeeds. He isn’t as smooth or as quick-witted as Hopper. For example, he is frequently shown making verbal blunders, such as being too forward with Joyce by telling her he wants to move out of Hawkins with her, or giving Will poor advice regarding his episodes. On a more mundane level, a lot of his lines are framed in such a way as to make him come across as a little bit socially tone-deaf, unaware of the potential cause for embarrassment in phrases like “sneaky little buggers”, “the Bob-mobile”, or who could forget, *vampiric accent* “I hope it doesn’t suck!” And sure, Bob’s manner of speech is endearing in its own way, but what I’m trying to convey is that, unlike Hopper, it comes with a catch; we as viewers can’t help but cringe a little at him, even as we smile. The central characters are no different, either. Below are actual, real-time reactions to Bob:

Also unlike Hopper, Bob is less situationally and physically adept. He’s got his brains, but he doesn’t know how to use a gun, he doesn’t stand up to Owens and the other Doctors when they're mistreating Will and he ultimately fails to get out of the Lab, a character flaw which costs him his life.

From an even closer reading, just look at the way Hopper and Bob grate against one another in the Lab, one of their first and also one of their last scenes in the same room. To the absolute credit of scripting and acting choices in the scene, Hopper is fiercely calm and focused on the logistics of their escape, while Bob appears out of his depth from the way he gets uncharacteristically snarky with Jim, the way that his breathing is louder and more erratic than the other characters', and even Bob's comedically awkward stance as he tries to help Hopper to raid one of the dead guards:

I think there’s also something to be said about their obvious height difference. Sean Astin, who plays Bob, stands at around 5”6 inches, meaning that David Harbour, who plays Hopper, towers over Bob at approximately 6”2 inches. Now obviously height differences don’t actually, materially matter, but I think the way that Hopper physically dominates and intimidates Bob in his greater height and stronger build is meant to be another, subtler indicator that Bob is in over his head, quite literally.

And then, once he’s alone, Bob’s panic escalates, visibly sweating profusely as he starts to make regular, fatal mistakes. He leaves the gun behind in the basement, he knocks over a broom, alerting a Demodog to his hiding place. And of course, he stops running too soon in the reception hall, ultimately leading to his demise. Helpfully, the Duffers make sure you don’t miss any of these slip-ups with the use of an ominous zoom and a carefully timed stinger on the abandoned gun, and the way the broom falls in a dramatic, almost comic slow motion.

It would have been much quicker and more efficient for them to just hold up a big sign that says, “Bob is weak compared to Hopper guys! He’s not cut out for Joyce’s lifestyle!”

And listen. I’m not saying that I think Bob deserved to die for being unable to match Hopper’s cool-headedness or his combat skills. But I do think that the Duffers exaggerated Bob’s gentle goofiness at times, so that when standing next to Hopper, fans know that ultimately Hopper will replace him.

Interestingly, David Harbour confirms my theory in the Beyond Stranger Things documentary, which covered the filming of Season One and Two: “Does Hopper think that Bob and Joyce are a good match? I would say absolutely not. I mean look, I get the impulse that she’s following in terms of like… she was clearly in a very destructive relationship with Lonnie, and she’s clearly very protective of Will. And so she’s sort of chosen this guy that’s going to be… very nice to her, very nice to Will, and be a kind of good, dorky father figure.” He then goes into how he thinks that ultimately, Joyce and Hopper are “…two really lonely, lost people that really need each other.” “The short answer,” he goes on to summarise, “is I do feel like the sex will be a lot better with Hopper than it is with Bob.”

Hard to know what to say after that one, so there you have it. Another reason why Bob Newby had to die.

[kinnporsche]

here’s yet another kinn & porsche rec list! just like with the first two, this list is ordered according to length (from longest to shortest), and each is written by a different author! also, all currently incomplete fics have been marked with (wip). listen, when i tell you kp fics are literally piggybacking me through this year, i mean that shit. there are an insane amount of talented people in this fandom, we’re honestly so blessed. anyway, please be sure to read the tags, and show the authors some love! [part 3/?]

�� echoes in my dreams by nuwildcat – explicit / 92k words

It’s been 10 years since the first Kaiju attack, humanity built the Jaeger program to fight them, and Kinn Annakin Theerapanyakun is one of the top Jaeger Pilots in the world. There’s just one problem—none of his co-pilots have lasted past a year with him. Enter Porsche Pachara Kittisawat. Somehow, this disaster of a bartender with no Drift experience shakes Kinn’s understanding of the Drift and changes humanity’s fate at the same time. Well, as long as Kinn doesn’t kill him first.

— instinct by thewayside – explicit / 90.5k words (wip)

Not everyone has an instinct, an animal self that lives inside a person, born from their souls and forged to live in their flesh. Hundreds of years ago it was common to have bears, rabbits, fish, and lions, a menagerie of animals—but now, as time and dilution of bloodlines has increased, the most common thing to have is nothing at all.

— two shots by martynax – explicit / 81.8k words

“So I’m supposed to end a mafia dispute?”

“Something like that,” he mutters, wondering if he’s making a mistake, revealing it to Porsche so soon. Nothing is set in stone, after all. But he has a gut feeling that the man appreciates honesty and simplicity much more than intrigue and schemes.

“Then why don’t you kill him yourself?” Porsche questions, but that is going to stay a secret from him for now. He won’t give Porsche ammunition to get away from the deal. If he says he’s trying to keep it a secret from his father, he could find a way to get in contact with him and fuck things up for Kinn. It may be far-fetched but Kinn’s not taking any chances.

“How about you answer one of my questions?” He asks, cocking his head slightly to the side.

“Oh? You show me yours, I show you mine?” Porsche teases him. The raised corner of his mouth and the twinkling in his eyes makes it clear he’s making allusions to their dicks.

“I know mine is bigger, there’s no need to compare. You would just embarrass yourself,” Kinn tells him with a smirk of his own, helpless against the pull Porsche seems to have on him. Porsche laughs, clearly surprised at the comment.

— ‘til the fever broke by vesna (mrsronweasley) – explicit / 63.6k words

In a world where having a sex slave is a status symbol, Kinn’s father gifts him with a slave.

— stumbling to the edge ‘series by firerisingoverthehills – mature / 51.4k words

Kinn doesn’t kiss. He just doesn’t. Not since Tawan and how that whole shitshow ended. Porsche must read something on his face, because he actually bridges the gap between them. He sets a hand on the seat next to Kinn’s thigh and leans into his space. His knee is up on the seat, the other leg hanging off it. He leans in close enough that Kinn can feel his steady breaths on his face.

Kinn is going to tell him. He’s going to lay down the rules. Tell him that he doesn’t kiss. That he doesn’t like to be challenged. He’s going to—

And then Porsche kisses him and Kinn... Kinn doesn’t stop him.

(Or: An AU where they meet in a slightly different way, Kinn still falls head over heels though.)

— xxx curious straight boy ‘series  by mirrorofprinces – explicit / 34.2k words

“Porsche is extremely close to signing. In fact, he has a final meeting with the execs on Monday morning. The only condition is that he wants to request his first partner, and it’s you.”

Kinn takes a long drink of his whiskey, sets the glass down, and runs his tongue over his teeth. “So you had to meet with me, urgently, to tell me that a beautiful boy wants me to fuck him, thinking I’d say no.” He drums his fingers on the bartop. “Which means there’s a catch.”

— the house don’t fall (when the bones are good) by bytherirveriwept – explicit / 11.3k words

The reality of Kinn is at times a grasping, hungry thing even when he is standing still.

(Or: Porsche and Kinn are the Theerapanyakun agency’s best team. They live in each other’s pockets and share their deepest secrets. But when Porsche takes on the role of bait in their latest mission, it throws their entire relationship into a spiral.)

— gone was any trace of you by kurtstiel – explicit / 11.1k words

Kinn is looking at Porsche like he’s seen a ghost. Porsche blinks and the haunted expression is gone, Kinn smoothing it over with something neutral, but there’s still something fragile at the edges of it, like a crystal figurine balanced on a ledge. Kinn’s body relaxes in a way that’s purposefully casual, tucking his outstretched foot back onto the bed.

“You were in the bathroom,” Kinn says. He phrases it like an answer rather than a question.

(Or: Porsche left Kinn in their bed with nothing but a note. In the aftermath of the shootout, Kinn can't stop thinking about it.)

— quis custodiet ipsos custode by concernedlily – explicit / 8.1k words

Porsche props his chin on Kinn’s chest, on his favourite spot in the valley between his pecs, and peers up at him. “Tell me? I’ve never seen you have a nightmare like that.”

He toys with the edge of the bandage wrapped awkwardly around Porsche’s shoulder. It’s a knife wound, scored shallow but long down from his collarbone towards Porsche’s nipple, which is certainly in Kinn’s top ten parts of Porsche’s body and probably top five, and not to be endangered under any circumstances. Porsche had tried to treat it himself and Kinn had dragged him to the medical wing and supervised the stitches and the bandaging himself, mentally cursing out the minor family’s men for a crowd of incompetents the whole time. “Deng. He was… the first bodyguard who died for me.”

— cliff jump ‘series by airgiodslv – explicit / 7.3k words

“You know the rules, then?” Kinn asks.

Porsche looks amused, like he can tell how badly Kinn wants to wreck his composure. “No kissing, no marks on you, bubble bath first,” Porsche recites easily. “I read your notes file.”

Kinn is almost certain Porsche isn’t supposed to tell him the escort agency keeps a notes file.

(Or: An AU in which Kinn requests an escort for the night, and gets Porsche.)

— love on the water, love underwater by butterflylungs – explicit / 7.3k words

The golden light of the sun washes over him, rays catching in his dark hair, caressing his skin. Porsche would do unspeakable things for this man, and the fact that he’s been neglecting him in favor of work bothers him more than he can put into words. He misses Kinn with every breath, with every heartbeat, and he wishes he didn’t have to spend so much time away from him.

(Or: A day off, a surprise trip, and the dreams they’ve had to let go.)

— forward is the doing by daltoneering – explicit / 5.5k words

He exhales an acrid lungful, and opens his eyes. Right here, in the electric scarlet of the evening, they had made their choice. Design had shaped them for too long; now, the broken glass on the floor shimmering like a thousand stars to wish upon, Porsche lives by decision.

The door into the bar spills a shadow out into the light of the yard, and Porsche reaches for Kinn with simple instinct: their hands meet in the gloaming, and Kinn folds himself around Porsche’s side like a coat, or a blanket.

(Or: In the red-blue neon of the lights behind Hum Bar, Kinn and Porsche chose each other—and what better way to explore the meaning of that than through devastatingly tender-horny sex?)

— i’m the only one at the end of the day by kinnpornsche (bloodyinkwells) – explicit / 5k words

“I know this is a revolutionary idea, but maybe you could trust your boyfriend to not be cheating on you every time you see him with another man.”

“What is it from?”

“Instead you just assume I’m a slut,” Porsche barks, and then his voice softens. “When I’ve only ever been loyal to you, and you know it.”

(Or: Porsche flirts with someone for a job. Kinn doesn’t take it well. Porsche talks back.)

— no one does it better by midnightfreeway – explicit / 2.8k words

Kinn takes comfort in being in control. Control is power; control is freedom. It allows him to act on his own initiative. It brings him pleasure in a world where danger lurks around every corner. Kinn has no idea who he would be without it. An empty shell of a man, a puppet with someone else pulling the strings.

But it gets tiring, always having to fight for your own survival.

— cravin’ by yeetlegay – explicit / 1.8k words

It’s only when Kinn is two knuckles deep in Porsche’s ass, his teeth buried in the meat of his thigh, that it occurs to Porsche he probably isn’t that straight.

[friends-to-lovers-tournament]

Friends to Lovers Tournament: Round 2, Side A, Match 4

propaganda under the cut!

Fuyupoly:

Submission 1:

they're from the winter troupe of the mankai company, and unlike the other troupes they're all adults. that said, they all have varying degrees of trauma and emotional stuntedness. it takes them some time to fully open up to each other bc they're all very cautious of each other's boundaries and don't want to cross any lines which initially led to some issues in the group's formation. over time they've learned to bridge the gap while still being mindful of hard boundaries. at one point they have a discussion about what exactly their relationship is (gay) cuz they were talking about how the other troupes have clearly defined dynamics (spring=family, summer=besties, autumn=rivals & teammates) but they don't,, and homare deadass says they're "people bound by a common destiny" which in and of itself sounds very Gay (like why are you as a man bound to other men by a common destiny), but it goes even further because homare starts spouting WEDDING VOWS: "In sickness and in health, for better or for worse, we shall share our laughter and our tears as those with an intertwined fate... How beautiful we are!" THIS IS A DIRECT QUOTE FROM THE GAME AND THE MC EVEN REMARKS "i can already hear wedding bells in the distance..." 

gradually they become closer, in individual sub-units based on who's paired up as co-leads for a play, and as a troupe overall. also two of its members are childhood friends who had a messy 'divorce' in their young adulthood and it took the game breaking its genre to introduce a timeloop for them to finally make up if that means anything to you. one of their troupe songs "precious to us ~bokura no kisetsu" has some pretty beautiful and fruity lines: "The many kindnesses born in me here / Never fail to breathe life into my chest / Even all the pain and bitterness / Have now become dear to me (Ah…Stay with me)", "No matter how many times our season passes / Let us keep living together / Holding our hands, without ever letting go / Let us open up the curtain of tomorrow", "There is no need for words, because once our gazes meet / Joy sparks a light in your eyes", "Our journey, may it be a brilliant one / As our breaths overlap as one"

a lot of their plays has a LOT of homoerotic tension between the two leads too. their first play has tsumugi and tasuku play angels, and it's heavily implied that tasuku's character has an unrequited crush on tsumugi's character. their third play has azuma play a vampire and tasuku play Just Some Guy and it's generally agreed in the fandom to be one of the gayest, if not THE gayest, play A3 has ever written. obviously the vampire thing is very fruity, but there's also how the vampire was longing to bite the human but was holding himself back, and when the vampire left the human in the end, the human was absolutely HEARTBROKEN over it and was swearing they would reunite one day. the stage play of this takes it even further by having the vampire embrace the human from behind and BITE his neck. the fourth play is a watered-down adaptation of Phantom of the Opera where they genderbend Christine into Chris among other things and change the relationship between Chris and the Phantom to one of friendship.... ostensibly so, because there's still a lot of homoerotic undertones in their interactions. i could go on but this should be enough of a sampling taste 

Submission 2:

the writers rlly said "let's take 2 normal guys who are childhood friends and have been into theatre since their school days and have them go through a pre-canon messy divorce, an eccentric poet with a potentially controversial haircut, an amnesiac sleepyhead who can only be awoken with marshmallows but is also somehow extremely athletic despite doing nothing but sleeping and eating marshmallows all day, a man who is so beautiful and mysterious he breaks gender, and a supposed android from a fictional south asian country, and throw them into a blender, oh and for good measure let's throw in some theatre and angst and gay and angst and gay" and the end result was marriage. i mean it took them a lot of awkward fumbling around and conflicts to get there but they got there and thats what matters. ok *technically* in-text they're all rlly good friends and kinda found family BUT they are found family via marriage papers i do not make the rules chief

Submission 3:

The reason why they are so friends-to-lovers to me is because their relationship is founded on quiet and unconditional acceptance of each other—regardless of how flawed they may be or how heavy their burdens and trauma may be. When the troupe first formed (sans Guy who was in another country at the time), they didn’t have any major clashing personalities at the very beginning and generally they were mindful of each other’s boundaries, unlike the other troupes that came before them. However, it’s BECAUSE they were too mindful of said boundaries that it was difficult for them to break down their walls and bond as a team—and there were a LOT of walls to break down, as all of them had varying degrees of emotional baggage and trauma.

In fact, it’s only three plays in that they finally truly start opening up to each other, with Azuma getting the ball rolling by opening up about the deep loneliness that haunted him ever since his childhood. It’s during this conversation that they also discuss what their relationship as a troupe is, because the other troupes have defined their relationship as a team (Spring is family, Summer is best friends, Autumn is rivals & teammates), and Homare goes on to declare that they’re “people bound by a common destiny” and goes on to spew wedding vows: "In sickness and in health, for better or for worse, we shall share our laughter and our tears as those with an intertwined fate... How beautiful we are!" I mean… it can’t get any more obvious than this, really. They are married.

But anyway, Tsumugi says he wants their relationship to be one where while they respect each other’s need for space, they’ll also be there for each other and share their pains and burdens—or in his words: “supporting each other when our burdens become too heavy to bear on our own”—which I think is really sweet because it carries this idea of quiet, unconditional acceptance; they don’t push each other to share more than they’re comfortable with sharing, but with whatever they ARE comfortable with sharing everyone carries the load and pain because pain is easier to bear when you’re not bearing it alone <3 

A later part of the story focuses on Hisoka, a mysterious amnesiac, being terrified of regaining his memories and facing some “sin” from his past that has led to another character, Chikage, trying to take revenge on him. When he confesses this to the rest of the Winter troupe, Homare asks, “How heavy is this sin you bear?” and Azuma suggests, “Perhaps it’s just heavy enough for the five of us to carry together.” (at this point Guy hasn’t joined yet). The stage play adapts this scene into a song called Key to Memory. The key (pun unintended) part is 1:27 where there’s a back-and-forth between Hisoka and the other Winter troupe members (sans Tasuku because he wasn’t in that particular play)

Hisoka: “I’m scared…”

Tsumugi, Homare, Azuma: “It’s okay.”

Hisoka: “My unforgivable sin…”

Tsumugi, Homare, Azuma: “Let’s carry it together.”

Hisoka: “I might not be me anymore.”

Tsumugi, Homare, Azuma: “It’s all right. We understand and we accept you, so let’s go together.”

And it ends with Hisoka singing: “I was afraid to open the door of my locked memories. But if everyone is here, I believe I can do it.”  In both the game and stage play, Hisoka fully regains his memories and reconciles with Chikage (long story). He tells Fuyupoly he can’t go into detail about his past with Chikage because it’s dangerous but he’ll tell them when the time is right, and they accept this saying that no matter what his past is, they know and love him as their Hisoka which obviously is a very sweet thing for friends to say, but it’s also very Marriage-coded to me.

Later, Guy is introduced as an android from Zahra (a fictional South Asian country) and joins the Winter troupe as a temporary member—because he’s stuck in Japan for the foreseeable future—until they find a permanent member to replace him. The other Winter members have a conversation among themselves and agree that regardless of whether he’s really an android or a human they’ll accept Guy for who he is and help him improve his acting, which again harkens back to the idea of ‘unconditional acceptance’. Eventually it’s revealed that Guy is in fact a human who has forgotten his memories of the past and his emotions. He recovers his memories all at once which shocks his system and causes him to pass out. When he wakes up in his room, he finds the rest of the Winter Troupe asleep around the room—which I believe is symbolic of their whole theme of “quiet acceptance”: they don’t want to push Guy to share beyond what he’s comfortable with, but they’re always there to listen to him and share his load if that’s what he wants. He opens up about the memories he recovered, and they don’t treat him with pity like he’s a lost child, but still extend gentle empathy and understanding. They also emphasise that it genuinely doesn’t matter to them whether he’s human or android because he’s Guy first and foremost. It’s at this point that Guy truly lets himself become part of the Winter troupe/Fuyupoly and not just as a temporary stand-in member, because he’s found a place where he’s found himself again and people who will accept who this “himself” is, whether that be an android devoid of emotions or a human brimming with vivid beautiful emotions.[Mod note: There’s a LOT more but we’re afraid of crashing the post. I (Deli) summarised it the best I can since I’m familiar with A3, but if you want to read the full thing you can check it out on this google doc)

Sourin:

okay so i have a picture to crack explain the sourin supremacy

but i also have legitimate reasons lmao

1. sousuke and rin both GET what it's like to want something so bad but not be able to achieve it. they know each other's pain so well, and they know just how much effort the other person puts into swimming. AND THAT MUTUAL UNDERSTANDING STRENGTHENS THEIR BOND SO MUCH!!! this is also the reason why they are each others' comfort person because the other just GETS it, no need for any explanations

2. they're passionate as fuck about the same thing (swimming) and they help each other train harder and swim better,,, like get you a couple with the same obsessions as you!!!

3. THEY SWAM A RELAY TOGETHER and that means a lot in swimming because IT'S BASICALLY SMTH A TEAM DOES WHEN THEY HAVE ABSOLUTE TRUST IN EACH OTHER AND THEY DEPEND ON EACH OTHER AND THEY LOVE EACH OTHER AND IT'S BASICALLY THE SWIMMING ANIME EQUIVALENT OF I LOVE YOU

4. when sousuke told rin about the shoulder injury he was literally so devastated because his love couldn't follow his passions anymore,, AND WHEN SOUSUKE RECOVERED FROM THE SURGERY RIN LEGIT CRIED HAPPY TEARS!!! and sousuke was always there for rin w/e he had a slump bc he compared himself too much to haru and others,,, like gods they care so much for each other

5. sousuke is the earth and rin is the fire,,, AND RIN LIGHTS A FIRE IN SOUSUKE WHILE SOUSUKE GROUNDS RIN LIKE PLEASE THE MOTIFS ARE LITERALLY RIGHT THERE EVEN IN THEIR COLOUR SCHEMES (teal + maroon) 

in short: sourin supremacy because these two bois are so perfect for each other"

[caralara]

has something happened, Cara? did i miss something? sofia stunt as in sofia the scandinavian girl everybody forgot about? is she back? what has asia to do with that stunt? totally agree that louis' career would only benefit if there were some women in his team but i'm really confused about what exactly you're talking about now. have a lovely weekend!

Hi!

Oh my comment was set off by the AFHF announcement, and the subsequent detective rabbithole everyone went down trying to figure out where it will be this year, and loads of people saying Mexico bc of the cacti in the picture plus that Mexican promoter account tweeting and deleting AFHF recently. I got riled up about how badly they failed last year for AFHF, how we could tell right from when they announced it (quite late) to then being there and seeing how they only sold 2/3 of tickets and not even everyone showed up. They had to cut back massively on staff (one of the reasons why entry was handled so badly and why they didn’t have enough staff to hand out the wristbands), and how they absolutely need to have a (financial) success with this year‘s AFHF in order to not have the whole festival get jeopardised and maybe cancelled. And that led to me talking about the root problem of the team being just men, and then listing examples of their recent fuck ups that very likely wouldn’t have happened that way if they had a woman on their team they‘d listen to once in a while, like for example the Sofia stunt. I guarantee you that no man on that team even thought about the fact that in 2023, with a majorly queer, feminist female fanbase that huge age gap could be problematic for Louis‘ image with his fans, because men in general don’t think about much younger women being with older men as problematic at all. They dropped her like hot iron *after* the backlash from all sides. Then they didn’t handle communication well when they cancelled Asia at all. Like. At all.

For AFHF, I understand that Mexican fans are super passionate but I already gotten many messages by latam fans saying even though living in Mexico City they wouldn’t be able to afford it. I don’t think it’ll be in Mexico, they really need to be in the black numbers for this year‘s AFHF, so they need it to be accessible to fans with strong financial powers. Europe has the majority of louis‘ fandom with strong financial power, and logistically it would be crazy to fly back and forth about 16-18 hours between European festivals for AFHF, if he could do it in Europe again.

If he keeps it in a similar time frame (august) as the past (although he’s already had the first announcement two months earlier than usually), there’s only the last July or last August weekend (going into September) available.

A friend actually sent me the Ponte de Segura bridge that looks a lot like the viaduct used in the picture, and it’s right at the border of Portugal to Spain. End of July he’s got two festivals in Portugal and Spain, and he could easily oversee the set up during the week between those two.

There’s also huge festival grounds 20 minutes from that bridge, that usually hosts the BOOM festival, but only every other year - meaning that July weekend is free for 2024 and the infrastructure for the festival has been well established (since 1997) with shuttles, vendors, camp sites, stage infrastructures… it looks really great.

The thing that still got me entertaining Mexico as a possibility is the cacti that have been edited in, that mostly only grow in South America, and the Mexican promoter.

Anyways, tell me louis wouldn’t go for this?? The shore, the lake, the rocks, the surroundings, the heat??

Anyways the real clowning begins if you imagine louis launches AFHF to be TWO days by having Niall headline the first day… that would certainly draw the necessary crowds and they’re already doing a bit of the festival run together this summer 🤡🤪

[sun-marie]

xoti for character breakdown <3

How I feel about this character: I like Xoti a lot!! With all that goes down with the Gods in PoE1, I think it was very bold of them to feature a very faithful cleric in the second game and explore how she keeps her faith to Eothas/Gaun despite.... All That. I also like how she contrasts Edér and shows a darker side to the Eothasian faith, and the game never feels like it's out to "prove her wrong" for her belief, just to push her to explore it. Her design is also very good, it bridges the gap between monk and cleric very nicely!

All the people I ship romantically with this character: She's real cute with Maia imo, even if it sometimes veers a little into "manic pixie dream girl" for me (sometimes). Their relationship feels like they're finding a calm in all the storm and I really really enjoy that. And Firefly is an adorable nickname <3

My non-romantic OTP for this character: Honestly, with the exception of the obvious no-go's like Maia+Tekēhu and Xoti+Pallegina, I feel like the entire Deadfire crew could fit this spot for each other. For Xoti specifically, I think Edér is an obvious choice, I like how her infatuation evolves into genuine respect once they learn more about each other. In addition, I also love her friendships with Serafen and Aloth, I love the moment when Serafen looks into her mind and is like "uhhhhh HEY, watcher?", and the mentor-esque role Aloth fits into feels so cozy. She and Tekēhu also give me huge sibling energy, for better and for worse lol.

My unpopular opinion about this character: Again, no idea how popular/unpopular this is in the PoE fandom, but I personally really hate her accent. Like deeply. Like it's an issue I have with all of Deadfire actually, because in that game they decided to give nearly every Readceran a rural/southern American accent (including Adaryc who definitely did not have one before) and for me it dips into stereotype territory that I could really do without. Like, "oh the group of people with a strong belief in their "dead" god, who's all about forgiveness and redemption, and who are generally seen as uninformed suckers except when they're seen as sleazy religious cult-leading con-artists? yeah let's give them American Southern accents" like fuck offfff fr. At best it feels just kinda lazy when nothing else about Readceras really reads as "southern" (Xoti's name for example more brings to mind Chinese than Texan), and at worst I find it kind of offensive! It doesn't help that almost none of their accents sound very natural or well-researched, just kinda generic hollywood "cowboy accents" and that I've already heard plenty of that from CR's Imogen and FCG

It specifically bugs me with Xoti bc she can be both naive and super flirtatious, which imo is fine on it's own but those two traits + the accent rub me the wrong way soooo bad.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: I hope we see her again, either in Avowed somewhere or in a future Pillars game <3

GIVE ME A CHARACTER: and I’ll break their ass down:

[pulchrasilva]

i know a place where the pain doesn’t reach

Fandom: Roleslaying With Roman

Relationships: Blood Red Song/royono

Characters: Youngblood, Noise, Roman, a cameo from one of the sides + mentions of other roleslaying characters

Summary: Youngblood and Roman refused to let Noise go back to Fantabulous Neon, instead kidnapping him and taking him to Frogtown. But once they arrive, it's clear something is off with Noise - and it might not be what Youngblood expects. But this is a chance to start soothing old wounds, both literally and metaphorically, that Youngblood won't pass up.

Word Count: 3336

Warnings: some slightly questionably morality, mentions of destruction etc, difficult emotional situations, scars, chronic pain, Youngblood does a bit of that 'i could heal it' stuff, self-deprecation, eating bugs, food issues, non-sexual nudity, well-meaning kidnapping, past violence, The Bard King (he needs his own warning tbh)

Notes: title from Come Wander With Me by Brian Fallon

AO3 // My Masterpost

Noise had tried to stay in Neon, to go back to their duty as First Chair and the people they were supposed to command. He didn't succeed.

It was a good thing Roman picked Noise up and threw him into the car when he did, because Youngblood didn't want to think about what might have happened if he hadn't.

Noise put up a token struggle as Roman carried them away from the collapsing city but once he managed to get them into the car, they just... stopped.

Youngblood threw himself after them and slammed the door, heart pounding. They couldn't get out of there fast enough.

It was only as they were driving away that Youngblood began to worry. He and Roman, already criminals by Bard law, had just kidnapped the First Chair. Sure, Noise didn't seem too upset about it – but that was a whole other can of worms. Youngblood wouldn't put it past the Bard King to accuse them of abandoning their post as First Chair. And Noise had already suffered too much at that bastard's hands.

In trying to keep him safe, they may have put Noise in even more danger.

The journey had been quiet. Noise hadn't looked back at Neon once, but Youngblood knew they were thinking about all the citizens and Bard Guards they were leaving to be overpowered by the fey.

A pang of guilt went through Youngblood as he remembered all the people that he'd left to fend for themselves against such a powerful attacker. But he couldn't regret doing it.

He couldn't handle the thought of Roman, bright and smiling Roman, being hurt as he tried to save people. Or the idea of Noise, already beaten down and hardened, charging back into danger on behalf of the College that had hurt him? It was unbearable.

Maybe he was selfish. But Youngblood knew that his friends, the two most important people in his life, were safe and happy, and that was more than worth all the lives in Neon.

They hadn't talked about it since arriving at Frogtown. Youngblood knew that Noise was conflicted, mourning the people they had lived and worked with, and relieved to be out from under the Bard King's thumb (at least for now). But they hadn't talked about it.

The drive had been uncomfortable, to say the least. Noise silent, Roman unusually subdued, and Youngblood having no idea how to bridge the gap between them.

The taxi driver dropped them off at the inn, where the innkeeper introduced himself as Lily Padton.

“Free of charge!” he said as Roman began to get out his money bag.

“Thank you!”

“Why?” Youngblood demanded.

“Well, you’re newt to the area! Besides, you three look like you’ve had a rough day. I’m perfectly happy to house you while you figure out where to go from here! Now come in, come in,” he said as he herded them all inside. “You can leave your things in the croak room.”

Youngblood thought he should probably be a little suspicious of that but Mr Padton gave them such a big smile as he herded them inside, and he was just so tired. Roman and Noise seemed to trust him. They would be okay if he just let it go for a little while.

Roman of course made fast friends with their host. He smiled and joked and made pleasant conversation, offering to help as Mr Padton bustled around the kitchen and insisting on doing something even after being waved away.  He seemed much brighter now than he was on the way here.

Meanwhile Youngblood sat to the side and watched Roman in what was apparently in his element. He didn't know what else to do with himself. He tried not to glower too hard but it was difficult. Social niceties were not his strong suit, especially not with the mood he was in.

The only person missing from the scene was Noise. The minute they got inside he'd made a beeline up the stairs and claimed a room for himself, slamming it shut behind him. Youngblood didn't think they were angry per se, but they definitely weren't happy, and he didn't know what he could do other than give them space.

Youngblood wanted to help, to do something. But if he got it wrong, he risked shattering the friendship they were slowly rebuilding entirely.

No matter how much he wanted to help, he was helpless.

So he sat there, quiet and brooding, managing to feel alone even surrounded by Roman's chatter.

"Right!" Mr Padton exclaimed suddenly, snapping Youngblood from his thoughts. "Dinner is almost ready. I just need to set the table, then I'll serve it piping hot!"

"I can do that!" Roman jumped in front of Mr Padton, collecting cutlery from the draw and sweeping into the dining room before he could protest.

Mr Padton chuckled, before turning to Youngblood. "Do you think your friend will be hungry, kiddo?" he asked gently.

Youngblood blinked. It was so obvious. Why didn't he think of that? "Yes!" He blurted out. "Yes, I'll go get him!"

Maybe Youngblood couldn't help Noise with everything they were dealing with right now, but he could make sure they ate. That was something.

He leapt up, making a beeline for the stairs before Mr Padton could respond.

"Oh-" he ribbited, "Alright then, kiddo! You two come on down when you're ready."

"Thank you, Mr Padton," Youngblood called back, not even waiting to see whether he heard it.

***

"Noise?" Youngblood knocked on the door gingerly. "We’re about to have dinner, are you coming?"

"Yeah, yeah." The response sounds distracted, hastled. Like something was wrong. "I'll... I'll be down in a bit. You guys start without me."

It set off alarm bells in Youngblood's mind.

He couldn't help it. After everything that had happened these past days – the injuries Noise sustained in the bards duel, watching their fingers slip past his own as they were swallowed by the cart, learning exactly what happened to their eye – the idea of Noise distressed and alone was unbearable.

Before he could even think about it, Youngblood burst through the door, sword already in hand.

But there was nothing there, nobody who posed a threat. Just Noise, squawking at the sudden entrance.

So what was wrong?

Youngblood turned his attention to Noise, whose face was slowly turning pink as he babbled about "privacy" and "manners" and "what's even the point of knocking if you're just going to barge in" and hurried to sweep his cloak over himself. Because their shirt lay on the bed, along with a small vial. Youngblood's face started to heat as well as his eyes fell on their bare chest, before Noise managed to wrap the cloak around his shoulders and draw it around himself.

"What are you doing?" they shrieked.

"I- I didn't-" Youngblood spluttered, hastily putting his sword away like that would undo the awkwardness of the situation. "I thought something was wrong!"

"Wrong? What could possibly be wrong?"

"I don't know!" His voice rose. "Forgive me for being worried about you!"

"Well there's nothing to be worried about," Noise snapped. "So if you could go off to dinner with your new friend and close the door behind you, that would be great." A hand slipped out from behind their cloak to point like he might not be able to find the door himself.

Youngblood froze as his gaze locked onto that hand, and Noise froze with him. Starting at the wrist and disappearing into their cloak, was a mass of dark purple, twisted flesh.

Burn scars.

There was silence.

Youngblood swallowed. "Was... was that me?"

Noise paused.

"…What do you think?"

Feeling sick to the stomach, Youngblood strode across the room, grabbed his hand and flipped back the cloak. His heart sunk as he took in the full extent of the scarring, twining around their elbow, up their bicep, and touching their collarbone.

Noise hissed through his teeth and snatched his hand away. He stumbled backwards, gingerly wrapping his other hand around his wrist.

"Sorry!" Youngblood blurted. "Sorry, I didn't mean to... Does it hurt?"

"No." They looked away.

"Noise," Youngblood said softly, prompting them to meet his gaze. "Please, don't lie to me."

They didn't reply.

"I can help?" The thought of using magic on Noise again made his stomach twist, but the idea of leaving them in pain was far, far worse. "I might be able to heal it."

"You think I haven't tried that already?" Noise scoffed. "I've seen countless healers, and none of them could do it." They looked at him, considering. "I don't know why, Bloody, but your magic sticks."

"But I was the one to do it! Surely I can undo it."

Noise sighed. "That's what they all said."

Youngblood frowned at them, anguished but silent.

"I can’t be healed. The best I can get is to ease the pain."

"Then let me do that."

They waved him off. "I don't need you for that. I just need to apply the salve the College Healer gave me."

"But I-"

"Youngblood." Noise cut him off. They spoke softly, but his mouth snapped shut. "You don't have to feel guilty. It was an accident."

"No." Youngblood shook his head. "It's not that."

He still felt guilty, of course he did. After almost every interaction with Noise, his mind drifted back to what he'd done and the state they'd been in when he left. But that wasn't why Youngblood wanted to help, not really.

It took some courage to admit it, but once the words were out Youngblood knew they were some of the truest he’d ever spoken.

"I want to help you because I care about you, Noise."

There was a pause.

Voice small, Noise asked, "You do?"

And Youngblood's heart broke.

"Yes. Yes, of course I do. Please, Noise. Let me help you."

Noise stared at him for a long moment. "Okay," they whispered.

Hesitant, Youngblood drew closer. He lifted his hand to the edge of the cloak.

"May I?"

Eyes wide and cheeks flushed, they nodded silently.

Youngblood gingerly peeled away the fabric and put it on the bed, leaving their torso bare once again. Noise didn't meet his eyes as he put a hand on their shoulder, the contact feeling like it burned, and led them to sit next to him on the bed.

"What do I use?" He murmured.

"What?" Noise blinked. "Oh! Here." He scooped up the small vial on the bed and placed it in Youngblood's palm.

The salve was a paste, pale green with small flecks of herbs that hadn't quite been crushed, and cool to the touch. Taking Noise's arm into his lap, Youngblood began to work it into their skin with diligent care. Keeping his touch as gentle as possible, rubbing small circles across the scars and making sure to give equal attention to every inch.

He started at their shoulder, applying the salve with one hand and gently holding their wrist with the other as he moved down their arm. The scars were a strange shape, spiralling around Noise's arm like vines. It became methodical, almost meditative, to work his way down those lines. Youngblood couldn’t say how long he spent at his task, all his focus on doing the best job he could for Noise. He just moved his fingers to the vial, back to Noise, softly circling, and repeat.

A heavy silence had settled over them, but not an uncomfortable one. Noise's hand was heavy in his, the touch of his fingertips against their skin unignorable even as he tried to keep it light as possible.

There was something familiar about this. The silent significance in every action was new, but the deep affection in the air and the things unspoken but mutually understood were like old friends to him.

Finally, Youngblood reached Noise's palm, still cradled in his hand. The first point of compact, the place that first got burned. Youngblood scooped up another dollop of salve and, taking a deep breath, continued smoothing it in.

Noise made a small sound as his fingers ghosted over the knot in the centre of their palm and Youngblood paused, gaze snapping up to look at them.

"Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to-"

"You didn't hurt me," Noise hurried to reassure him. "It just... feels nice."

They were staring steadfastly at where his own wrist was held tenderly in Youngblood’s hands.

"Oh." Youngblood replied, suddenly too flustered to do anything other than continue soothing the scars he had left on them with the pads of his fingers.

***

Roman raised his eyebrows at the colourful display set out across the dinner table. He knew this was a town of frogs, but he still hadn't expected such an... insect-based diet.

Mr Padton looked his way, seemingly for approval, and Roman immediately replaced the doubtful expression with a beam. It was just a difference in culture, no need to be rude. He'd already eaten his fair share of insects as a child running around Reston, and these ones were even cooked!

But back in Fantabulous Neon, Youngblood had seemed horrified when he thought they were being served cockroach – he wouldn't like this one bit. And Roman could only imagine how Noise would react.

Speaking of: Noise still hadn't come down for dinner, and Youngblood hadn't returned since offering to go get him.

It had been a while now, but that wasn't too surprising. After such a long couple of days, they both deserved a chance to rest in privacy. But they won't be able to recharge if they're hungry - Roman should bring some food up for them.

And if that would give him the chance to see the horror on their faces when they saw what was on the menu, that was only a bonus.

He swept up a few serving plates - some kind of insects lightly drizzled in syrup, a plate of brownish mush with tiny legs sticking out, and something that might actually be cockroaches served on a bed of roasted vegetables - to take upstairs.

"Your friends not coming down?" their host asked as he began to ascend the stairs.

"I figured I'd take some food up for them." Roman smiled. "It looks delicious!"

"You're a good lad," the Mr Padton said, pleased. "You go on up, kiddo."

It was a strange balancing act to carry the three large plates without dropping anything, but Roman managed, walking slowly and taking care not to trip.

Eventually he made it to Noise's room, where he assumed Youngblood was too.

With his hands so full, he knew he didn't have a hope of knocking. Deciding manners would have to be forgone, Roman shoved the door open with his shoulder and called, "I come bearing gifts!"

He was stopped short by the sight in front of him.

Youngblood and Noise, curled up together on the bed. Noise, shirtless, rested with their head on Youngblood's shoulder, a scarred hand placed on his chest. Youngblood had an arm wrapped tightly around his waist, and their tail twined around his upper thigh.

It was so tender, so vulnerable yet relaxed, in a way that he'd never seen either of them. He'd been travelling with Youngblood for a while now, and slowly getting to know Noise since leaving Neon, but this was a level of familiarity and trust that he couldn't even dream of. The sight had his heart aching with a sudden craving for this, this intimacy, with them.

Noise's eyepatch was off to the side, eyes closed and the right lid slightly slack. He was still slumbering peacefully but Youngblood's snapped open, frowning at his clumsy entrance.

Roman flushed.

He wasn't supposed to see this.

"Roman-!" Youngblood started.

"Sorry! Sorry, I didn't realise-"

It was such an intimate moment, and he'd just walked in without thinking twice.

"I just thought, food! Sorry, I'll um I'll go-"

The arm Youngblood had around him tightened as Noise began to stir at the sound of his stammering and Roman cursed. He'd only managed to disturb them more.

They stretched, languid as a cat, and rolled their head to face him.

"Roman?"

Their voice was so soft that his mouth immediately snapped shut. Somehow, he managed to feel even more guilty that he'd disrupted their peace.

"Sorry," Roman whispered, trying desperately not to make it any worse.

"What are you doing here?"

Roman cringed. "I thought you might want some food?"

They propped themself up on an elbow at that, peering at the plates Roman still had precariously balanced in his arms.

Noise's eyes lit up. "Are those honeyed dragonflies?"

"Uh."

Roman looked closer at the dish. Those could be dragonflies.

"Maybe?"

Youngblood wrinkled his nose.

"Ugh," he said at the same time as Noise cheered sleepily.

"Give, give!"

That wasn't quite the reaction Roman was expecting, but he found himself delighted by it.

"One plate of dragonflies, coming right up!"

The pair sat up, Youngblood leaning against the headboard and Noise soon returned to their place curled against his side. Roman deposited the dish in his lap, careful not to spill any food - he knew how particular Noise could be about their clothes.

They blinked blearily and smiled at him. "Thanks, farm boy."

"It-" Roman flushed, busying himself with arranging the remaining plates on the bed, "it's farm man. And you're welcome."

He did his best to hide how jittery Youngblood’s intense gaze made him, but he was sure they both noticed his hands shaking slightly before he could tuck them behind his back.

"Well-" Roman said, almost hysterical and definitely too cheery. "Enjoy your dinner! I'm just gonna-" He swallowed. "I'm gonna go."

"Roman?" Noise called, freezing him in place just as he was about to flee the room. "Where are you going?"

"I- I’ve got to eat too, you know," he said, a half hearted joke that fell flat.

He looked back to see Noise looking at him with big, mournful eyes.

"You're not eating with us?"

"I thought you two would want some time alone, you know, I wouldn't want to intrude."

"Roman," Youngblood interrupted. He’d been silent for so long that even that low muttering of his name immediately stopped Roman in his tracks. "You're not intruding. Come eat with us. Please."

And that was all it took for Roman's admittedly feeble resolve to crumble. His shoulders slumped.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Roman. We want you here."

So, hesitating and slightly clumsy, Roman climbed into the bed. He didn't know what to do with himself but Noise didn't let him flounder for too long, pulling him against their side.

"I love honeyed dragonflies," he said, already digging in, and beaming at the taste. "I haven't had them in ages! Youngblood, here!"

Youngblood grimaced and screwed his eyes shut, but obligingly opened his mouth to let them feed him a spoonful. He looked faintly sick as he swallowed.

"Oh, Bloody," Noise cooed, half mocking and half sympathetic. "We'll find some other food for you tomorrow."

"I'm sure Burgundy has a stall around here," Roman chimed in. "She's everywhere! Her employees are very resourceful."

Youngblood looked at him, despairing. "I can't just eat bread, Roman!"

Noise couldn't hold back their giggles. "You might have to!"

Then they turned to Roman, another spoonful in hand. "Your turn, farm boy!"

"Oh! Um-" his face heated as he let Noise feed him the dragonflies. It was odd – crunchy, and with a bitter flavour that cut through the sweetness of the honey. Roman decided he liked it. "Mm." He grinned at Youngblood, who pretended to gag.

Roman soon found himself absorbed into the serenity of the couple, spooned around Noise and laughing with them as Youngblood groaned at the food (although Roman suspected he may have been exaggerating his disgust slightly to make them both laugh).

A little bubble of joy burst into existence inside Roman, and for the rest of the evening it only glowed brighter.

[achilles-the-boy-of-gold]

anonymous fandom confessions: I loved the ending of good omens s2. is it sad? yes. does it make sense? also yes. idk I just think it was a great way to end the season and “bridge the gap” between two bigger plots.

also people said that it wasn’t “quiet, gentle, and romantic” but I’d argue that it was. the whole season felt overall less busy than s1 and it focused on the character’s relationships together more. not even specifically aziraphale and crowley. I’d also argue that part of the ending is gentle and romantic, at least for gabriel and beelzebub.

I agree. Even though it was sad, it wasn't angry or brutal. It gave blue and green vibes, not red and orange. And also ineffable bureaucracy was very gentle and romantic like, "I found something that mattered more to me than choosing sides"???? I love them so much 🥰🥰🥰. S2 definitely focused more on characters and less on an overall goal they were trying to achieve, which I liked. There was no time limit, so therefore with was emotionally stressful, not (idk how to word this better) actually stressful. Although the ending is sad, I agree tgat it was very well written, and a good way to end a season(amd make it so they get renewed for a 3rd)

[iwishicanbeagoodpianist]

The Sun and the Shadow

Pairing: OC x OC Fandom: Star Wars Summary: A bounty hunter X romance story that will take you from the dirty street of Corellia to the expanse of the universe on the times previous to the Phanton menace events Warnings: Depictions of Violence

“Take a deep breath!… 1… 2… 3, pull the trigger!” The sequence was ingrained in his mind, a product of the special training he had received at the Caridia academy, fully funded by his boss Vookto, who publicly was one of the most well-known and popular politicians in Coronet City. Nevertheless, Deng Terrik knew exactly who Fela Vookto was, leader of the criminal consortium “Void Knights”, ruthless, heartless, and capable of anything.

ZIMM. The beam from the modified blaster rifle lit up the night once again, bridging the gap between the building he was in, 5 km away from the target, the landing platform at the private spaceport, owned by a minor Hutt clan that had recently tried to establish itself in the city.

ZIMM… Deng fired a second time, wounding a Trandoshan who was preparing to shoot him, even though the distance made it impossible to hit him. He immediately took out his communicator and said, “Nexu, I’ve softened the resistance a bit, now it’s your turn to finish the job. Be careful with the Trandoshans, I’ve taken out a couple, but nothing guarantees there aren’t more around… they’re a plague.”

For a minute, Deng only heard the white noise coming from the transmitter, testing his patience to the point of approaching his rifle again, thinking about how to finish the job himself from this distance.

“Boss… Sorry, the guys were busy dispatching the external guards. We’re in the elevator proceeding to…” ZIMM ZIMM, several blaster sounds interrupted the transmission. Deng rushed to look at the visor and managed to see a rain of blaster fire attacking a position from which another remaining Trandoshan was futilely resisting, shooting with his blaster until about 10 minutes later, an explosion, possibly from a thermal grenade, completely silenced him.

“As I said, a plague. Perimeter clear?”

“Yes, boss,” Nexu replied.

“Understood, secure the merchandise first and then wait for me there,” Deng said authoritatively. “Also, grab the cleanest of your men and prepare the uniforms.”

Without waiting for a response, Deng got on his speeder and quickly accelerated to the spaceport, blending in with the usual city traffic. On the platform, Nexu was waiting for him, a short but heavy Besalisk, with a blaster in each of his two lower arms and the uniform of a port guard. Deng took the uniform and started changing there.

“Any casualties?” Deng asked.

“A couple of droids and a Zabrak freelancer who decided to play hero instead of waiting for the grenade to take effect. A shot between the eyes. He forgot the fundamental rule.”

“Never face a Trandoshan with a rifle head-on,” they both said in unison.

Already wearing the uniform, Deng approached one of the Trandoshans he had killed with his rifle and took out his vibroknife, cut off the main finger they used to shoot, and grabbed some of the blood to smear on his uniform. Finally, he looked at the Trandoshan once more and spat on the ground.

About 30 minutes later, several port police units arrived at the scene, different from the ones Deng had previously arrived at.

“What happened here?” questioned Hysio, the unit chief, an older man with visible scars from years on his face.

Deng immediately got into character, as he had done many times before, changing his expression to a fairly realistic imitation of shock and fear. “Lieutenant Barrick, ID X-24053, sir. We received an emergency call on a short frequency on our transmitters, and upon investigating, we were attacked by both sides. In the end, we managed to defend ourselves after shooting for minutes and taking them down, but the scene is horrible, and our transport has been destroyed.” As he indicated this, he pointed to the bodies that had been repositioned to match the story.

The chief glanced at the scene, maintaining his stoic expression until he saw one of the boxes strategically placed with its lid deliberately left open. He approached it and, with the droid unit accompanying him, inspected the manifest. For those present, the veteran chief did not seem too concerned about what he was seeing; however, Deng’s ocular implant revealed the reality: microexpressions of anger and sadness broke the chief’s stoic mask.

Deng discreetly smiled; this was a scenario he expected, especially when the manifest indicated that the spice and other contraband items belonged to Porro Shulo, a city council member, enemy of his boss Vookto, and finally, the one responsible for the death of Chief Hysio’s family 10 years ago; a detail Deng had obtained thanks to one of his contacts in a seedy cantina in the lower city.

“Finally, I got you, bastard,” the chief whispered as the grimace on his face became more obvious.

“Sir?” one of his subordinates asked.

“Everyone, cordon off the area and register the evidence. I don’t want any report to exist without passing through me first,” he said vehemently and then began giving specific orders to each member of his unit until he reached Deng. “Barrick, take one of our transports and take your men to the headquarters, take these credits and buy them a round of whatever they want. Today they’ve done a good job, but we need fresh eyes on the scene, and you guys need some R&R.”

“Understood, sir!” Deng said, his voice trembling with the “shock” he had managed to imitate perfectly after many years.

Deng and the syndicate men got on the transport and left the scene as more units arrived. After a few minutes of following the path to the port police headquarters and after one of his men confirmed the transponder modification to mask their route, Deng turned left to the tower from where he had shot the Hutt mercenaries hours earlier. There, Nexu and the rest of his men were waiting for him, with his suit and one of the Hutt’s boxes they had taken as loot.

“The plan seems to have worked perfectly, boss,” Nexu said with a tone of surprise. “We didn’t have much time to fix things as you had ordered at the scene, and we thought we would have to rescue you from the cops.”

Deng laughed, something he rarely did in front of others, but given how things had turned out, he could allow himself: “Certainly, all of you have the delicacy and subtlety of a Gamorrean,” Deng said, causing general laughter among all the mercenaries. “But for this job, it wasn’t as important as guiding Chief Hysio in the direction we wanted, and once he took the bait we left him, it was impossible for him to focus on anything other than Councilor Shulo… the man hates him to death, and with good reason. Now we just need to ‘help him a little’ and ‘inform’ the Hutts about what Shulo did with their cargo… the poor councilor won’t last more than a month in his position.”

This comment generated surprise among the men, who until then had not understood the nature of the game being played, but their attention and interest lasted less than 5 minutes, replaced by a bet among them on who would finish off the council first, the Hutts with their mercenaries or Hysio.

After putting on his suit, Deng dispatched orders to those present and indicated to Nexu where to take the cargo and how to distribute it. After agreeing on the location where they would meet later, he said goodbye and got on his speeder, heading to his hideout. On the way, he received an encrypted call on his private transmitter, which he answered after activating security measures to avoid being followed.

“Vookto,” Deng said with a deferential tone of respect.

“How did it go?” Vookto asked in a tone very different from the one he used in his public interviews, where people only saw the respectable Czerialan representative.

“All in order. In less than a month, there should be a vacancy on the Coronet City council.”

“Good! We can finally place someone the public can trust in such an important position,” a phrase whose subtext brought a smile to Deng’s face.

“I know it’s been busy weeks, but I have a project outside Corellia, and I need someone trustworthy to oversee it. Come to my residence in 2 days to coordinate details.”

“Understood, see you in 2 days, Vookto,” Deng said diplomatically, though with effort given the exhaustion and adrenaline crash he felt.

Once the transmission ended, Deng activated the autopilot of his speeder, and his eyes focused on the city, its neon colors, imposing buildings, and vehicles speeding in all directions. After a while, he arrived at his hideout, whose entrance was in the opening of one of the mega skyscrapers under construction for decades.

The speeder parked on the platform, and Deng got off while taking off his clothes, holding the Trandoshan’s finger in his hand and bearing old blaster burn marks and healed cuts on his back. He entered the code on a panel, and a compartment opened with a series of fingers similar to the one he had cut hours earlier, perfectly preserved.

He looked at the finger in his hand one last time, smiled again, placed it with the others, closed the compartment, and headed to his bed as the opening above his hideout slowly closed, and darkness began to take over everything.

[whatstruthgottodowithit]

Liability

Fandom: Bullet Train

Pairing: Tangerine x Female Reader

Characters: Tangerine, Female Reader, Lemon

Tags: Bullet Train, Arguing, Friendship, Insecurity, Fucking, Fingering, Smut, Mild Angst, Kissing, Interupted Sex, Aftercare’s a bit shit, Moustaches, Tangerine & Lemon, Lemon & Reader are tight, established friendship, Female Reader, Penis in Vagina Sex, Fucking against a wall, quickies, if one of y’all speaks Japanese I am very sorry, Readers Codename is Peach

Summary: Reader and Tangerine fight and make up

Notes: that bit where tangerine 🍊 gets interrupted yeah it’s a bit different

‘Whoever killed him has that suitcase,’ Tangerine said.

‘A diesel,’ Lemon said, clicking his finger and pointing at me. I smirked as Tangerine’s jaw tightened.

‘A Diesel definitely has that briefcase,’ I said looking at Lemon who sat across from me.

‘Will you stop comparing everything to Thomas the fucking tank engine?!’ Tangerine snapped as his fingers pinched the bridge of his nose. Lemon and I fell quiet for a moment as we watched him heave a heavy sigh. Silence fell between the three of us, well four if you counted the contractors dead son who was sitting beside us blood staining his cheeks. Finally, Lemon piped up, ‘Well it’s not an Edward who’s got it is it?’

‘For fuck-‘ Tangerine started but I cut him off.

‘Oh don’t be so narky,’ I snapped back, ‘besides the blokes dead now nothing we can do about it. I say we find the briefcase-‘

‘Oh so the white death can chop off just one limb each instead of both-‘

‘Well what do you suppose we do? We can’t magic him back to life but we can find the briefcase it’s on this train somewhere for fuck sake,’ I said, irritation riling inside of me.

I loved Tangerine. Adored him but sometimes he was really fucking irritating. Always looking on the black side of things. Always worrying. We’d always got out of things before. Why would it be any different this time?

‘Yeah well maybe if you had kept track of it like you were supposed to we wouldn’t be in this fucking mess,’ he spat.

‘Oh is that right? All three of us were responsible for it not just me. Because this job was for the three of us if I remember rightly.’

‘Well maybe I liked it better when it was just the two of us,’ he grumbled.

‘Tangerine-‘ Lemon interjected but I was hot on his tail that rage bubbling up.

‘Oh is that right?’ I said, ‘you’d rather it was just you? Just the guys?’

‘You know what…yeah,’ Tangerine said. His jaw was set and his eyes stony.

‘I’m just a liability huh?’ I said. My arms were folded now trying to hold myself together. I could feel the ache around my chest as I looked at him, almost egging him on to say all the things I’d worried about since I’d first joined the boys.

‘You’re not a liability-‘ Lemon said, looking between me and his brother as if we were two tennis players slinging the ball across the court to one another.

‘Well she’s not a fucking help,’ Tangerine said in a low voice that almost sounded like a growl. If I wasn’t so angry I’d be turned on with how he looked right now. His jaw was clenched, his eyes dark and flaming. His arms were pulsing against his shirt, tight and taught against his muscles.

We locked eyes for a moment, neither of us wavering until finally I broke contact. I turned in my seat grappling with the coat I had thrown across the head rest.

‘Peach,’ Lemon said as I stood up next to Tangerine who rolled his eyes. I was trapped in my seat and he didn’t seem to want to move, no doubt seeing that as giving in somehow.

‘Move,’ I said, looking down at him with a look of disgust.

‘Look Peach,’ he said, holding a large hand clad in thick rings in front of me.

‘I said move,’ I repeated withholding the urge to knock that hand out of my way. He and Lemon shared a look before he swivelled his legs to the side of his chair creating a small and awkward valley for me to shimmy through. I manoeuvred carefully through the gap, trying to save some face and hopefully not fall over. As I got out he moved his long legs back under the table and rested his hand upon it his fingers interlaced.

I looked at them both for a moment and then turned my gaze on Lemon solely.

‘I’m going to go and search this half of the train,’ I said pointing towards my right. I could feel Tangerine’s gaze upon my face but I refused to look anywhere but Lemon’s direction. He was trying to pay attention to me but his gaze kept flitting to his twin, what I assume he thought was unnoticed.

‘If you could do me a favour and search the other side, that is of course if you can tear yourself away from playing the blame game and actually do something useful,’ I said and without looking at anyone else I turned on my heel and strutted down the carriage and through the door to the adjoining compartment. Once I was through the door I darted into the toilet amidst the two carriages and locked the door behind me. I threw my coat on a peg on the door and went to look in the mirror. As I stood in front of the mirror, my hands gripping the sink in front of me, I realised I was shaking. With anger or insecurity I didn’t know.

I had been with the boys for a few months now. We’d met on a job and I had gotten them out of a tight spot. They had thanked me endlessly and promised me they’d make up for it. I’d told them that I wasn’t the kind of girl to hold onto a promise. So I cashed it in straight away and asked them to add me onto the team. I needed back up. And I figured having me there added an extra layer of believability to their outfit. Sometimes things needed a woman’s touch.

And sometimes being a woman was really fucking hard. I don’t know why I had gotten so upset. I knew that it had only been months but I thought I had become…one of them. I thought we were a team. I wanted to be part of the team. Not someone to sling the blame at when things got sticky. Not someone who was held to a different standard. Not a liability.

I let go of the sink and stood back assessing my appearance. My hair was slicked back in a hair clip and my outfit was simple. A tight sweater and a short leather skirt with knee high boots that were surprisingly easy to fight in, not to mention the heel packed a punch when sacking someone in the Crown Jewels. I decided not to bother taking my coat as I left the small bathroom figuring I’d come back for it later. I peeped a glance down the window to the carriage I had come from. Lemon was still sitting there though he didn’t notice me at the door as he was deep in conversation. I moved out of the small connection and into the next compartment quickly reminding myself of what I was here for. I needed to forget everything. I needed that briefcase.

I walked along the carriage slowly, my eyes roving over every nook and cranny the case could have been stuffed into. I mumbled general ‘hellos’ and offered smiles whenever I crossed paths with someone which fortunately was few and far between on this side of the train. My path continued through a few more carriages though as I got to the back of the train I realised my mission was ironically, fruitless. I had made it to the back of the train now, a room full of controls and panels. I bent down a little my eyes scanned every single one trying my best to commit it to memory though it being all in Japanese did hinder me a bit. I spoke minimal Japanese and my reading skills weren’t much better. I sighed and pulled back deciding to head back and find the boys.

As I opened the door to the control room stepping back into the stock room. It was jam packed with cupboards and trolleys that the staff used to dole out snacks and beverages. And there, leaning against one of the snack trolleys was Tangerine. I stopped in my tracks when I noticed him. How long had he been there? And why was he just lingering?

I folded my arms across my chest which made him smirk.

‘Come to check I’ve done my job?’ I said coolly.

‘Just making sure this side of the carriage is done,’ he said leaning up off of the snack trolley. We stared at each other for a moment until I broke and moved towards the opposite door heading back to the carriages but he was quicker and before I could get there he was stood in my way.

‘Tangerine,’ I grumbled trying to step around him.

‘Wait,’ he mumbled. I looked up at him and he was watching me with a soft expression, pleading in his eyes.

‘Why should I? Besides thought you wouldn’t want to be hanging around to much with me. What with me being a liability and alll,’ I said trying to move past him again but he grabbed my shoulder keeping me in place.

‘You can’t even let me apologise without that smart fuckin mouth interrupting huh?’ he sighed.

‘Funny, I didn’t hear much of an apology coming at me,’ I griped folding my arms across my chest but they were only there for a second as the dropped to my waist as I stood there stunned now feeling his large hands on the sides of my face as his lips met mine.

He kissed me with fervour and I allowed him too, then, once my mind caught up with everything that was happening I kissed him back. My arms wrapped around his neck as his hands trailed down my body finding my waist and pulling me into him so our bodies were forced together.

‘What was that?’ I said breathily as I pulled back.

‘Me trying to say I’m sorry,’ he smirked, ‘figured it was the only way to shut you up.’

‘You kissed me to shut me up?’ I snapped trying to pull out of his grasp. Panic flooded his face as his grip tightened around me stopping me from moving, ‘no, no, look I didn’t mean it like that.’

‘Then what did you mean?’ I said.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘I really am sorry okay?’

‘Oh yeah what for?’

‘For blaming you,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t your fault. The briefcase I mean…it was mine. I watched you put it away and I didn’t say anything…I didn’t say anything because I was too busy staring at your arse in that skirt. In fact I’ve been too busy staring at you a lot of the time…’

‘Tangerine,’ I sighed as he leaned down and kissed me once more. And again. And again.

‘We can’t-‘ I said as he walked me backwards until my back collided with a snack cart. I groaned as his lips met my neck and he sucked a little, making me shiver in my core.

‘I know,’ he said, kissing my neck again as his hands roamed down my body, cupping under my ass so he could lift me up onto the top of the trolley counter.

‘The case,’ I grumbled but my thoughts were disappearing one by one until my mind was only on his lips which were showering kisses all over whatever flesh was on show.

His lips moved back to mine and we kissed deeper than before until he broke away and said, ‘I’m not gonna finish anything if all I can think about is fucking you.’

He looked at me watching me closely as if waiting for permission but I didn’t say anything instead my hands grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and pulled him into me. As we made out my hands danced up and made their way into his hair pulling on it. I felt one hand on my thigh pushing up until it was fully under my skirt his fingers grabbing on my hip as his thumb trailed across my underwear instantly making me shiver.

I moaned biting on his lower lip as his fingers moved rubbing through my underwear which was getting slicker by the minute. My hands left his hair as I started fumbling with his pants trying to get them unbuttoned as fast as I could. I could feel him underneath the fabric. Pressed up against it tight and rigid begging to be relieved. My palm rubbed over it making him grunt as his mouth returned to my neck.

All of a sudden he was missing. His hands, his fingers, his mouth. All gone. And as I looked up I spotted him now across the carriage shifting uncomfortably as he straightened up and a train attendant stepped through the sliding glass door with her trolley. She smiled at me and then at him and we both smiled back trying to sell the illusion that nothing was amiss.

She nodded at me and it was only then I realised I was still sitting on top of the counter. I hopped off smoothing my skirt out and trying to ignore the warm stickiness in my knickers.

‘Tororī kara nanika hoshīmono wa arimasu ka?’ She asked looking at me and then at Tangerine. Who, entirely unlike himself, looked like a deer in headlights which made me smirk.

‘No?’ he said though it was more a question than an answer.

‘Īe, dōmo arigatō,’ I smiled at her. Even if I wasn’t too sure of what she actually asked my confidence in the reply seemed to land right with her as she turned her attention away from the both of us. She busied herself with her cart stowing it away and placing everything where it should be. I stepped around her and though he was still flustered I grabbed him by the waistcoat and pulled him outside. He followed me willingly as we got into the adjoining my eyes scanning for anywhere we could hide. Spotting a toilet I pulled him inside and our bodies collided again, the interruption long forgotten.

He pushed me up against the wall as his mouth returned to my neck and his hands carressed down my body. My fingers grappled with his waist coat pulling it open. He shirked it off of his back barely losing contact with me. As my hands focused on his pants he hiked my leg up around his waist, his fingers returning to their position from before. He moved my underwear to the side teasing between my folds with his fingers before he inserted two fingers into me. He stopped as his rings became flush with me instead opting to pump in me shallowly his thumb now honed in on rubbing my clit. I shivered under his touch my hands now frantically trying to get his pants down. As I unbuttoned his pants and pulled them out of the way along with his underwear he sprung out.

He was thick, uncut and slick with precum. It oozed along my fingers as I grabbed hold gently moving my hand back and forth. He moaned as I touched him panting against my neck.

‘Fuck me Peach,’ he grumbled.

‘I’m trying to,’ I chuckled, grinding against his hand. This seemed to rev him up into another gear. He pulled back looking at me with a smile which widened as I gasped when his fingers left me. With one leg already hiked up he found the other and forced it to join making me wrap my legs around him. One hand gripped behind my back, which was pressed against the wall partly holding me up, and his other pressed the wall next to my head. My hands gripped around his neck praying he wouldn’t drop me.

The hand against the wall came down between us as he took over where I’d left off tugging himself until he was lined up with me. He looked at me carefully teasing my slit a little as he waited for permission. I nodded and in one swift movement he entered me down to the base.

I hissed as he bottomed out. His fingers were a good warm up act but this was a lot thicker taking me a minute to adjust.

‘You alright darlin?’ he asked and I nodded pulling him in towards me so I could kiss him. I could feel him smirking as I kissed him then as he started to move in and out of me he mumbled, ‘good because I’m not stopping.’

He was moving quicker now building momentum as that old familiar feeling climbed higher and higher like a wave waiting to crash back down. One hand stayed wrapped around me whilst his other held my hip so he could pound up into me. He held me so tightly I knew I was going to have bruises later on. I didn’t know what to do. I was gripping onto him for dear life, relishing in the pleasure each movement gave me. My lips attacked him everywhere kissing, nipping, sucking wherever I could get and pulling whatever fabric I had to out of the way so I could continue.

That was when I heard the change in his breathing and felt the rhythm change in his hips. He wasn’t going to last much longer. And my climax was coming too.

‘Kiss me,’ I mumbled pulling him towards me.

‘You’re the boss,’ he said leaning in and locking lips with me. It was slightly more tender than I anticipated but I didn’t care. I ground down against him, creating friction against my clit which knocked me over the edge.

‘Fuck, fuck, fuuuck,’ I whimpered as I came, my walls convulsing around him making him grunt and pick up the pace. He moved quicker chasing his high and I shivered suddenly feeling tender as he hammered into me. His eyes were closed as I watched him but they opened as my fingers pushed an errant hair that had fallen in his face out of the way. My fingers traced down his face, stroking it gently as my thumb ran across his bottom lip.

‘Cum for me baby,’ I whispered. He nodded as if it was any simple instruction and a second later I felt him spill into me. He moved in and out a couple more times before he fell against me, pinning me between him and the wall. His head came to rest in the crook of my neck for a minute. His breath was heavy and wet but in all honesty I didn’t care. In fact, I found myself stroking his face. We stayed like that for a moment until we both seemed to come to our senses, or rather back to reality.

He slipped out of me and helped me until I was standing on my own two feet. I could feel wet stickiness pooling between my legs and I cursed myself for not taking my underwear off. Now I was going to be sitting like that all night. As he tucked himself back into his pants and redressed I grabbed a couple sheets of toilet paper and cleaned up a little, washing my hands after. As I stood at the sink I felt him come up behind me. I looked back at him in the mirror and smiled. He smiled too as his hand rested on the counter top, trapping me in between them. He leaned down and kissed my cheek and before I could do anything he left, leaving me standing facing myself in the mirror.

As I did, regret and anguish flooded through me. What had I just done? We had a case to work. A job to do. He couldn’t stop thinking about my arse before how was I supposed to carry on without thinking about everything that just happened. I’d thought with my vagina not my head. I’d potentially fucked up our entire working dynamic. I mean, he was to blame too but if I hadn’t opened my smart fucking mouth maybe this wouldn’t have happened. He was right.

Maybe I was a liability.

[smilingformoney]

MAJOR trigger warnings below for rape/sexual abuse.

My response to @idioticconsultingdetective’s post.

When I was 15, I was raped. It has, naturally, left me with a lot of trauma. I still get intrusive memories sometimes, when my brain pushes traumatic moments to the forefront of my thoughts for no apparent reason.

It doesn’t happen much. Once or twice a year maybe. And yes, it has been happening today.

Every victim of trauma has their own coping mechanism. Earlier this year I found a fic on ao3 that I found actually helped. It was gross, disgusting (NOT romanticising anything as @potionsev has suggested) and I couldn’t tear my eyes away. Somehow - I’m sure a psychologist could tell me why - it helped me to compartmentalise my intrusive memories. I’m now more able to make myself believe the memories are just scenes from a story. Now, on the odd occasion it happens, I can go to that fic and convince myself I’m just reading a story.

I have never actively promoted that fic to anyone. The only reason it was discovered, someone looked at my ao3 bookmarks and found it. I should have made it a private bookmark, but to be quite honest I didn’t even consider something like this would happen.

When Twitter user ols7en asked me why, what was I to say? Was I to tell a 15 year old stranger, in 140 characters or less, that I was raped and the fic helped me process my trauma? Perhaps I should have not responded at all. I made a mistake in trying to brush it off as if it was nothing. I hoped they would move on, but perhaps I put too much stock in my irrelevance.

But at the end of the day, none of what I just said should matter. It shouldn’t matter why I read something. Policing what people read in fiction is policing thoughts, and as we hopefully all know, that’s a very, very slippery slope.

I don’t owe anyone this explanation. I’m giving it anyway because I know communicating my feelings helps me calm down from the near on 12-hour anxiety attack I’ve been having today.

Now, why did I delete my twitter account? Well, I’ve been close to it for a while now and this triggered my final decision. I’ve tried hard, for months, to fit in with the twitter fandom. It’s never worked. I’m not sure why - is it the generational gap? Is it the character limit restricting nuance? I’m not really sure. I’m the same person here and there, and here I seem to be vaguely popular. So there’s got to be something different between the two platforms restricting me from bridging the gap.

Pandora pointed out two things.

1. Sexualising Snape and Alan Rickman. We all do it here (mostly). Not so much on twitter - why? Again, who knows. Maybe in hindsight I should have restricted minors from following me.

2. ‘Attacking’ other users for developing minor characters. Not at all what happened, again perhaps this is due to the character limit restricting nuance. I tweeted in response to someone else that I found it confusing to log on and see people talking about characters I’ve never heard of. It certainly wasn’t an attack. Some people took issue with my describing them as ‘original’ - as if this is something I, with my 200k-word OC fanfic, would ever use in a derogatory sense.

What has really saddened me is the way Pandora has made this a personal goal to… whatever her goal is here. It’s sad because I liked her. I thought we were getting on. Then to be told I was never liked - that hurt. Why follow someone and interact positively while harbouring resentment? Why not simply not follow, not interact? I feel silly being personally hurt by a stranger on the internet, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t.

Finally, to end on a positive note, I want to say a great big THANK YOU to everyone who has been kind to me today. I have told my side of the story to friends and they’ve comforted me, but more than that, people I don’t interact with have come to my defence. People who don’t follow me, who don’t know me or my side of the story. They’ve seen Pandora’s post and defended me. That, to me, is the true nature of the Snape fandom. 💚🐍

[naughtyneganjdm]

Trapped

Summary: After Negan and Maggie become trapped in a home from The Reapers' attack on the group, they are forced to be together to talk about the tension going on between them.

Characters: Negan & Maggie

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/33529606

Warnings: Swearing, smut, mild dubious consent, rough sex, hate sex, etc.

Notes: This was a request. At first, I thought it was a joke, but when the person wrote me very kindly to ask me for this, I agreed. I know Negan and Maggie as a couple would enrage a big part of the fandom. If that's you, just don't read the story. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I hope the person who asked me for it enjoys it. Warning, this does have some spoilers from the end of episode 2, in case you haven't seen the episode yet.

“Come on,” Negan called out, waving his hand on when he made it to the broken-down home that he had found with Maggie while running away from the attack that The Reapers brought down on their group.

Clinging desperately to the door at his side, Negan waited for Maggie to catch up and the moment she made it into the home, he slammed the door shut behind her. Immediately locking up the door, he reached for the nearest china cabinet that was right beside the door to block off the doorway. Testing the weight of the cabinet, Negan made sure it would definitely be hard for someone to open the door. There was no way someone could open that door without struggling to do so.

The windows were already boarded up and Negan moved over toward one of them to look through the gaps that were there to see if they had been followed. Thank God, it seemed like they had snuck away without being spotted. Then again, these people were good. They could be out there and they would have never even known it until one of them got hit again. Fuck. How did he get stuck in a situation like this? He knew that he should have said no when they asked him to come on this trip. For some reason, he just felt forced into trying to continue to prove his worth in the community. Then again, if he would have said no to begin with, he was certain they would have forced him anyways. There was no way that Maggie would have let him stay back in Alexandria. There was a reason he was here and he knew that by now.

After standing there for a few minutes to make sure there was no movement in the distance, it seemed like they were safe and Negan took a moment to finally catch his breath. “I think we are safe. For now.”

When he turned on his heel, he let out a grunt when he saw that Maggie had her gun raised once more at him. It was pointed directly at his face and Negan held his hands up in the air defensively. “What now?”

“You made me leave them,” Maggie scowled, her face scrunched up in rage making Negan theatrically bob his head before lowering his hands at his sides. An irritated smirk pressed in over his exhausted features and he shrugged his shoulders. Here they were again. He did something right and that led him to having a gun pointed at his face. This seemed like it was going to be a never-ending cycle between them. “I could have saved Agatha. We could have helped her.”

“If you didn’t leave and I didn’t save you, you would be walker food right now too,” Negan snapped, his eyes narrowing while he stared out at Maggie. There was tension in the air. It wasn’t the first time she had that gun pointed at him today and he knew it wouldn’t be the last. “Instead of letting you die, I saved you. Your friends…all of em’, they are dead. There was nothing you could do to save them. You would have lost your life if you would have tried.”

“Those people were like my family. It should have been you out there instead of them!” she declared making Negan mutter something under his breath and roll his eyes when she said that. Somehow, he managed to save her life and he was still the bad guy. If he did something wrong, he was the bad guy. If he did something right, he was still the bad guy. There was no escaping this tiresome cycle. “They were some of the best fighters I knew.”

“Well clearly it doesn’t matter how good of a fighter you are when it comes to these people. You are dealing with master tacticians here Maggie. If you would have stayed and I didn’t do what I did, we wouldn’t be having this little stand off right now. You would be dead if I didn’t do what I did,” Negan pointed out, wiggling his fingers between the two of them, his eyes big with annoyance. “I made sure that your little boy just might have a chance that his mother might return to him after all of this.”

There was a deafening silence that fell over the both of them and Maggie’s eyes narrowed. A moment later her gun lowered. At this point, he was just getting sick of constantly being threatened with death even when he was doing something morally right. Negan wobbled over to the stairs to see that the upstairs area was blocked off. Checking the rest of the house, Negan confirmed that they would be safe in the small living room that they were locked up in. Everything else in the house appeared to be locked up very well.

A pained wince fell from his throat when an ache flooded down his right leg. Looking down toward his leg that had gotten injured in the attack, Negan could see the blood that was seeping through his pants. After the injury, he had wrapped the bandana around his leg to stop the bleeding, but who knew if it was actually fucking working. It burned like hell.

“This is your moment to relax. Gather yourself. In case they find us again. ‘Cause we are either going to have to run like hell or fight back,” Negan instructed, nodding over toward one of the chairs that was in the corner of the room. Instead of listening to him, she simply glared at him and Negan threw his hands up in the air. If she wasn’t going to take the time to do it, he was. “Or just ignore me. It’s not like I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about or anything.”

Moving over toward the corner of the living room, he dropped down in the corner to rest himself. Clutching tightly to the tire iron in his hands, Negan surveyed the dark room around them. The lights from the cracks in the boarded-up windows is what filled the house with light and he grumbled to himself. The house looked like it had seen better days. The green walls had dirt caked on them and there was a smell of mildew that lingered in the air. A floral chair was sitting upright in the corner and Negan found himself surprised that even though this place was a mess, that it still looked somewhat livable. Setting the tire iron aside, Negan tried to give himself a moment to let the tension from his body leave him. If he continued to be anxious, he knew it would make him fuck up. In order to get through this alive, he knew that his mind needed to be clear.

Loud, uneven breaths fell from Negan’s throat. Dropping his head back against the wall, Negan bit down firmly on his bottom lip and groaned when he felt the pain radiating from his leg. Clearing his mind and thinking of a plan was hard to do with the immense ache. Lazily, his eyes opened and he could see that Maggie was looking him over from where she was standing by the window. Her eyes locked onto his leg and the expression over her face was cold.

“I hope it hurts,” Maggie slurred after finally moving over toward one of the seats at the other end of the room and it made Negan crack a smile after she said that. Nodding, he looked down toward his leg and let out a grumble.

“It does. You’re in luck,” Negan sneered back knowing that things had been tense since the subway station between the two of them. Well, hell…they were always tense. Just not trying to save Maggie when she slipped undoubtedly made everything worse. It felt like only a minute had passed before Maggie was getting up from where she was seated to pace through the living room. She was looking from window to window as if trying to come up with a plan. “You’re going to wear a hole in the damn floor with the pacing if you keep that shit up.”

“Do you ever shut up?” she jeered and it made Negan snicker. Part of him wanted to be a smart ass and give her the answer he often would others, but instead he stayed quiet. “I’m trying to think of a way to go back. Maybe one of them…”

“None of them made it out Maggie. They are gone. You saw it. I saw it. Pretending that you can somehow save them is only going to get you killed. We need to move forward,” Negan instructed, swallowing down hard. Visibly she hated the answer, but so did he. The more numbers they had, the better chance they had against The Reapers. It was just the two of them and they had no chance of making this work. “Before we keeping moving, we first need to take a few minutes to gather our strength. If we run on empty, we’re just going to be easy targets for these people. You saw how easily they killed everyone. We have no chance just the two of us.”

Instead of listening to him, she continued to stare outside the cracks in the window. With a frustrated grunt, Negan reached to pinch at the bridge of his nose and shook his head, “You know, just because you hate me doesn’t mean you have to be stupid. Sometimes I know what the hell I’m doing and saying. I could be helping you here.”

“You don’t care about helping,” she yelled at him from where she was standing by the windows and Negan dramatically threw his hands up in the air before rolling his eyes. “I don’t want to hear your bullshit.”

“You’re right. I don’t give a shit. If I didn’t give a shit, I would have left you to die! I didn’t!” Negan maintained, his eyes getting dark with anger when he rose his voice back at her. “I am so sick of you people telling me how I feel and what I’m doing when my actions are going against what you are actually saying. You’re right, I left you there at the subway train, but let’s be honest you would have pushed me off the fucking thing if roles were reversed and you fucking know it.”

There was a silence and her face twisted with an emotion he couldn’t quite read. Lifting his finger, he spun it in the air and pointed at her, “Exactly! You would have and you know it! But I just saved you a few minutes ago. I could have just left you to die and then I would have been fine. You would have been out of my life and I would have been so much safer. Yet here we are after I just saved your ass!”

Maggie’s face twitched in irritation after he said that and a defeated breath fell from her lungs. She moved over to the opposite side of the living room and dropped down in the corner facing straight at him. Her bright eyes glared out at him and pierced through him making an uncomfortable sigh escape his throat.

“Listen,” Negan panted, still trying to catch his breath. His heart was hammering inside of his chest and he reached up to wipe at his face with the back of his hand. “I’m sorry that your friends died out there. I know that…”

“Don’t,” she held her hand up in the air to cut him off, to keep him from saying anything else. “You’re not someone who is sorry. You may have saved my ass. Okay. But you’re not someone that is sorry. If you were sorry, you would have already apologized a long time ago. You’re a cold, dark piece of shit. Where your heart should be is a blackhole of emptiness. So don’t sell me that you are sorry.”

“Are you talking about Glenn?” Negan inquired, his thick eyebrows arching up when her head tilted to the side. Yeah, he fucked up knowing that she hated even the sound of Glenn’s name falling from his lips. “What would apologizing for what I did to Glenn do for you?”

“Shut up,” she demanded and Negan shook his head, his loud breathing filling the air around them. “Don’t say his name.”

“Are you telling me that saying I’m sorry for what I did to Glenn would make you feel better?” Negan pushed the subject harder and his voice filled with just a little bit more venom. Her body locked up upon hearing his words. Shaking his head, he bit at his bottom lip and threw his hands up again. “Me apologizing would do absolutely nothing for you Maggie! It won’t bring Glenn back. It won’t make up for the pain and the agony I caused you. It won’t bring your little boy’s father back…”

Almost immediately Maggie stood up from the ground and stomped over toward the corner where Negan was to whip the gun against the side of Negan’s face again. This time it connected hard enough for him to get a bloody nose. The taste of his blood over his lips was enough for him to prove that. Instead of moving, Negan watched as Maggie brough the gun up to point at him again.  

“I don’t know what you want me to say Maggie. Do I regret what I did? Every fucking day of my life. I didn’t know you were pregnant, but at the time I didn’t give a shit. I saw a group that killed my people and I was out to get revenge. I thought back then the man I became was the man I was supposed to be. I was wrong. I didn’t think about the awful, horrible things I was doing, but me apologizing is not going to make up for the things that I did,” Negan insisted with a sadness in his tone, his hazel eyes almost tearing over as he spoke. “I still did those things. Yeah, I’m the not man I used to be anymore. I hate what I did to people. I hate the man I became. I hate the person that I was. I wish I could go back, but I can’t. But what good would apologizing do? I can’t change what happened. I took the person you loved away from you. I can’t make up for that. I never will, no matter how hard I tried.”

There was rage in the way that Maggie was breathing, her finger was over the trigger and Negan’s bottom lip was trembling while he stared up at her, “So am I sorry Maggie? Yeah. I’m sorry. But does it change the way you feel about things?”

Maggie’s whole body shook while she kept the gun raised up and when she lowered the gun to look away from Negan, he cleared his throat. Pushing the blood away from his nose, Negan knew that it hurt like hell, but there were other things on his mind. Inside of his chest, he could feel his heart pounding away, but he knew that he needed to get it off his chest, “If you find peace in killing me, then do it Maggie. Do it now. Get it over with. I’m accepting of it. This cat and mouse game of constantly threatening me is helping neither of us. I’m trying to be a better man and if the threat of death is over my head all the time, then what’s the fucking point? I know you hate me. If killing me…”  

“Shut up,” she lowered down on her knees and he heard her shuddering breaths filling the air. Uncertainty filled his body at how to handle this whole situation. Getting up from the corner of the room, he moved across the room and knelt in behind her. Placing his hand over her shoulder, Negan for some unknown reason even to himself was attempting to comfort her. “Don’t…”

“Listen, I know you’ve lost a lot,” Negan began and he felt the power of her turning toward him knocking him over onto the floor.

Scrambling backwards toward the corner of the living room where he was originally, Negan knew that he wanted to let her have her space. God, that was a stupid idea. The stare she was giving him made him cuss to himself when she took her time walking over toward where he was seated. Looking up at her with his big eyes, a grunt escaped his lips when she smacked him firmly across the side of the face.

“Do you ever shut up?” Maggie repeated an earlier question, hitting at Negan’s face over and over again. Lifting his hands up, Negan tried to block his face, but her hits lowered to his chest and instead of fighting those, he let her do it. The face he wanted to keep safe so he could still think with his head when the time came, but if beating on him helped her release whatever was going on…he could handle a few bruises. “Do something!”

“No,” Negan shook his head with a grimace when she hit him determinedly in the center of the chest. There was confusion that flooded her face. A loud grunt fell from Negan’s throat when she reached out to slam her hand into the center of Negan’s throat making his head slam back against the wall. A pained sound fell from his throat that was replaced with shock when he felt her lips over his. The kiss was rough, but Negan didn’t react to it because he didn’t know what was happening. Frozen, Negan was utterly confused with her actions while she kissed at his lips with quite some strength.

When Maggie pulled away, Negan’s eyes narrowed out at her and he cleared his throat uneasily. Staring in Maggie’s vibrant green eyes, Negan knew that she was still furious with him. So, what the hell was happening here? Did he just picture that whole fucked up scenario in his mind? “What’s going on here?”

“Just, shut up Negan,” she demanded, her hand still sturdily placed over the center of his throat and Negan hummed when her mouth covered his again.

Part of him was fucking terrified still. How couldn’t he be? It just had been so long since he had the soft caress of another pair of lips over his. Because of that, his better judgement was slipping away. Gradually, he started to kiss Maggie back. The adrenaline was flooding through his body while she kissed him. There was a need to want to reach out and touch her, but he kept his hands firmly at his sides. Just now, he wasn’t holding back in returning the gesture with his lips against hers.  

“Fuck,” Negan growled out when she bit at his bottom lip and tugged on it with her teeth. Wincing when she looked him over with her big eyes, Negan didn’t know how to respond. Was that her angry at him for kissing her back? Was that her way of being rough? Pretty much right now Negan was staying still because he didn’t want to make the wrong move. His breathing had gotten louder and he watched her shift over him. When her hands reached out for his belt, he finally lifted his hands to grab a hold of hers. “You don’t want this. You don’t.”

“For all you know the two of us could be dead in the next few minutes Negan,” she reminded him and his eyebrows arched in curiosity when she said that. Sure, that would usually make someone look at sex differently, but sex with Maggie made him think he would certainly be dying within the next few minutes. It felt like some kind of trick from her end. “Now do us both a favor and shut the hell up.”

Against his sense of logic, Negan lowered his hands and watched her pull apart the belt in his pants. Truthfully, his breaths were panicked ones. Biting down on his bottom lip, Negan adjusted his hips when she struggled to get the material of his pants apart. When she got the zipper down, Negan felt her hand pushing beneath his pants to grab a hold of his manhood to pull it out into the cool air surrounding them.

Looking down, he watched her hand pumping over his length clearly working to get him hard. Licking at his bottom lip, Negan didn’t know if he should be asking her what was on her mind. Was she going to get him hard just to cut it off? At this point, that’s what he thought she was doing. So yeah, he probably sounded like a scared little bitch, but he was. With his dick out and his enemy being the one in control of it, that wasn’t exactly something he was comfortable with.

A deep rumble of a moan fell from his throat when his body reacted to the firm grasp her palm had wrapped around him. Even frightened he was getting hard and he cussed to himself wishing like hell he wasn’t having this reaction. Involuntarily, Negan’s hips arched up toward her closed fist that was pumping over his length. Damn, he wished this didn’t feel as good as it did. The moment was horrible. They had people after them. They needed to be quiet, yet here Maggie was giving him a hand job. That in itself was confusing enough.  

“Fuck,” Negan grumbled, his throat flexing while watching the determination in her eyes. Even though he tried to force himself to be quiet, muted moans fell from his throat. Dropping his head back, short jolts of pleasure filled his entire body and he didn’t know how to react. When he was completely solid in her grasp, he let out a wince and bit harshly at his bottom lip. “What’s happening here Maggie?”

Silence. Nothing in return to his question. Looking down toward his lap, Negan gulped loudly. There were a lot of thoughts running through Maggie’s mind. She wasn’t saying anything, but he could tell that there were so many things she was thinking about. The look in her eyes told him that. Maggie bit at her bottom lip before getting up. Pulling her jacket from her body, Negan watched it drop to the ground and his throat went dry. When she reached for her pants, Negan felt a warmth flood throughout his cock making him grunt. There was no lying that his body was excited at the idea of sex with the incredibly beautiful woman before him. Just, he kind of wished he knew what the hell the outcome of this was going to be.  

His thick eyebrows bounced up in surprise and a panicked exhale escaped his throat. Maggie was swiftly tugging at the material of her pants after she kicked out of her boots. When she kicked the material aside, Negan felt his mouth go dry. Licking his lips, he let out a shuddering breath when she moved in over him.

“Maggie?” Negan tried to get her to look at him to find some kind of reason as to why this was all happening. Reaching out, Negan tried to grab her face in his palms and she slammed his hands back down at his sides. Obeying, Negan kept his hands down with tension in his body. When she crawled in over him, Negan let out a sigh. Reaching down, Maggie pushed the material of her panties aside and Negan couldn’t help but steal a glance. Noticing that she was getting more comfortable over him, he couldn’t keep the idea that this was fucked up out of his mind. “Wait, are you sure about this?”

“What? You don’t want this?” Maggie reached up with her right hand to grab a tight hold of Negan’s throat again, putting a tiny amount of pressure on the soft spot at the center of it. Negan’s Adam’s apple bounced in his throat and his teeth gritted together. “That’s a shame. I thought you might be the kind of guy that likes to be dominated by a woman.”

“Well, yeah…” Negan stammered, his body quivering when he felt her warmth hovering just over him. In another world, yeah, he would have jumped right into this. No questions asked. Maggie was fucking beautiful. But knowing their past, knowing what happened…he was having a hard time having this all make sense. “I’m very interested, but I just…”

“Then sit back, shut up and enjoy it,” she ordered and Negan’s jaw flexed when she reached down between them with her free hand to caress over Negan’s solid form. Lifting her hips up, Negan kept his eyes hooked with hers. When the tip of his cock traced through her folds, a moan fell from his throat and his eyes got heavy with lust. “For the first time I think you’re speechless Negan.”

A grunt fell from Negan’s parted lips when Maggie lowered her body down his length. The sound of Maggie’s gasp filled the air and he felt her fingers clinging tightly to his shoulders when she attempted to brace herself. Damn, Negan wanted to touch her. To put his hands on her hips, but this was all Maggie.

Attempting to look down at her body lowering down over his length, Negan felt her bang his head back against the wall again making him hiss when she did it. Tugging her fingers through his hair, she demanded his eyes to be hooked on hers. The warmth of her surrounding him was almost too much to take. Watching her lips part and her eyes come to a tight close, Negan felt his heart pound harder inside of his chest. God, he was looking at Maggie in a new light and he had no idea where this would leave them afterwards.

By the time she lowered over him completely, Negan lifted his right hand and slid it in over her side. Grasping loosely to her body, he was surprised that she didn’t force it back or yell at him. Maggie adjusted herself over Negan, trying to find the right positioning to keep herself comfortable before her hips started to raise over his length before lowering again.

There was a fire flooding Negan’s veins while he watched her face scrunch up. She was taking her time getting used to his body and it was causing chills to run through his whole body. Grunting, Negan felt Maggie’s nails biting into his shoulders from where her hands were grasping firmly at his shoulders to help her movements over him.

Each roll of her hips over him had started to become more confident. The rocking of her hips up and down had become steadier, fluid movements. They had to be quiet, he knew that, but he couldn’t help the occasional moans that fell from his throat while Maggie had absolute control of his body. This was something he could never even imagine in his dreams. Even in his dreams he would have known better, so whatever was happening now was a mystery to even him.

“Maggie,” Negan spoke her name and she hushed him, lifting one of her hands to place it over his mouth. Each thrust down over him started to get more powerful and his eyebrows clenched. Pulling his head away, he wondered if she was thinking of someone else. With her eyes closed, he didn’t know what was going through her mind. Leaning forward, he claimed her lips in a kiss and it seemed to shock her when he did it. Negan was unsure of himself at first, but the more she seemed to get into it, the more he did as well. Brushing his tongue between her lips, he flicked it faintly against hers before growling out when he felt her dominant movements over him. “Fucking hell…”

Maggie was rough. She was using him the way she wanted and there was no fooling anybody. This wasn’t out to be romantic. This wasn’t out to be a gentle moment between the two of them to fix what had been happening. This was a hard fuck and she was using his body the way she damn well pleased.

Hissing out, he felt her biting into his bottom lip again and undoubtedly this time she broke the skin. Curling his fingers around the back of her neck, Negan let his thumb drag over her throat and down her jawline. There was a darkness in Maggie’s eyes that he hadn’t quite seen before. He hated to admit it, but he liked it.

Going to speak up, Negan felt the firm smack of Maggie’s hand against the side of his face and he made an angry sound. Instead of saying a word, Negan powerfully wrapped his arm around her waist to pull her in firmly to him. Using his strength, he helped her bounce her hips over him. Their breaths became more frantic when they started to work together. Another firm smack filled the air after she hit him again, but Negan took it. This was hate sex. That’s what she wanted, so what the hell? Negan was going to give it to her.

Starting to thrust his hips up from underneath her, Negan was matching her movements over him. Each time he would buck upwards toward her, a whimper of sorts would escape from her throat. Kissing her again, Negan knew that they were attempting to be quiet. The last thing they needed was walkers hearing them and drawing them to the house. Then it would certainly lead The Reapers to them.

The sounds of their bodies smacking together were loud. Maggie was grasping to him tightly, trying to take control of the moment, but Negan kept bucking his hips up toward her. Maggie’s body froze over him and he could feel her nails digging into the cotton of his shirt. Keeping up with the movements of his body beneath her, he watched her eyes slam shut. Her palms dropped to press in over his abdomen as if to try to stop his movements. Maybe she didn’t want to have an orgasm because of him, but Negan picked up on the want of her body and continued to use his power to thrust up toward her repeatedly.

With a cry from Maggie, Negan pulled her to him. He felt her body start to tremor and shake over him. His mouth covered hers and he felt her forcefully pushing into his abdomen to get him to stop when she reached that orgasm he had worked so hard to build up inside of her. With shaking, tremoring thighs and her body flushed, Negan took his time to admire the woman he knew fucking hated him over him. If things were different, he could easily find himself getting attached to a strong woman like this, but their pasts would make it impossible. The natural glow she had after having an orgasm made her look stunning to him. The hate still lingered in her eyes, but the pleasure laced into her expression turned him on so much. Visibly, it seemed like she was not exactly happy with herself that Negan had been able to make her climax, but her body certainly enjoyed it.

By the time she finally shook the feeling, her eyes lifted to his and she looked angry. With a firm shove, Negan’s back hit the wall again. Her right hand pressed in over Negan’s mouth and her left reached back to brace herself over him. It was the hurt leg she grasped to and Negan immediately let out a pained sound against her hand that was covering his mouth. Using the stability she had in the moment, she sturdily brought her hips over his again and again. It was hard to focus on what he was feeling most in the moment. The pain from the injury she was digging her fingers into or the incredible amounts of pleasure she was drawing out from inside of him while she had her way with him.  

Growling against her hand, Negan’s eyes slammed shut. There was a fire burning in the pit of his stomach and he felt the muscles in his abdominal area start to flex. Desperate moans began falling from Negan’s throat when he could feel his orgasm approaching with her forceful movements over him. A frustrated, mumbled sound pressed against Maggie’s hand when she lifted her hips from Negan before he could cum. Her fingertips wrapped around the tip of his penis where the head met the shaft forcing him to hold back on his orgasm. A pained yelp fell deep from his throat when his body was absolutely ready to fall apart.  

God, she was fucking torturing him with this. When he was denied his orgasm, she crawled back in over him and with ease her body slid back down over his. Shakily, Negan reached for her hips and tried to help move her over him so he could work his body back up to that pleasure point. Almost immediately though, she reached for his hands and forced them back against the wall over his head. Holding tightly to his wrists, Maggie continued to control the movement over him and Negan cried out into her mouth when she began to kiss him again.

“Please…” Negan begged noticing that her movements were rough until she felt him tensing up beneath her. Whenever he was close to coming, she would stop all movements and it had him a shuddering mess. Negan wasn’t one for begging, but his body was tingling. Everything was eager for a release of some kind, but she wasn’t allowing it from him. “Maggie, please.”

“It hurts to want something so bad, doesn’t it?” she hovered her lips over his and Negan’s eyelids were heavy with lust. There was a want in his eyes and she knew that she had him in the palm of her hand. “To be controlled in every way possible.”

Negan didn’t say anything, he just desperately tried to move his hips, but she had the power and the strength over him right there. Maggie’s eyes were locked on his. The grasp she had around his wrists was getting tighter and Negan’s lips parted. He was panting, his chest rising and falling repeatedly.

“I asked you a question, does it hurt?” she repeated what she had said and Negan’s head fell back. His eyelashes fluttered and he felt her adjusting his wrists so she had them hooked together with one of her hands over his head. Using her free hand, she smacked at the side of his face again making him grunt before she grabbed a tight hold of his chiseled jaw. “Speak when you are spoken to Negan.”

“Yes,” Negan finally gave in and gave her the answer that she wanted to hear. She was using his own words against him and he was picking up on all of the hints. “Yes, it hurts. It hurts a lot.”

“Good,” she nodded her head, keeping her hips still over his while he remained inside of her. “Now beg me. Tell me you want to cum.”

“Please Maggie,” Negan felt her smack him again and he winced when she did it. The side of his face was starting to burn, but the sensitivity of his body was increased from it. Her beating the hell out of him surprisingly turned him on more than he expected when her hips started to unhurriedly move again. “Maggie, I’m begging you…”

“Do it better,” she demanded with another smack and Negan felt her hips starting to bounce powerfully over his extremely aching body. He was ready to explode and he knew that. It wouldn’t take much more. His body was shaking beneath her. His thighs were tremoring and his thick jaw flexed.

“Please, I’m begging you with everything that I am, let me cum,” Negan whimpered and after a few more steady movements over him, Negan threw back his head and let out a roar of a moan. His jaw dropped, his body shaking when his orgasm started. His hips eagerly bounced up toward hers and he was surprised how good his release actually felt. When she stopped moving over him, she dropped his wrists down and firmly shoved his head back again. Pulling her hips away from Negan, he cussed out a slew of incoherent words while she shakily pulled herself back and away from him. “Fuck me.”

Licking his lips, Negan looked down at his aching body and felt butterflies in his stomach. No one had ever taken control of him like that before and he found himself in awe of Maggie. When his eyes connected with hers again, Negan could see that she was fixing her panties and reaching for her pants. While she was still sitting on the ground, she was tugging her pants back up her body.

It took Negan a while before he could even gain the strength to pull his pants back together. Pushing himself back beneath the material, Negan started buckling them back together and his throat went dry. Doing that had Negan looking at Maggie in a new light and he was surprised how just having sex with her could affect him so much.

Almost immediately, Maggie had herself put back together and she was looking out the window again. On wobbly legs, Negan managed to pull himself up and finish putting his pants back together. Taking the time to gather himself again, Negan moved across the living room and reached out to try to touch Maggie’s shoulder.

“Maggie…” he wanted to find out what that was. Yet, he felt her pulling away from him.

“I still fucking hate you Negan,” she informed him, looking over her shoulder at him and Negan’s jaw flexed upon hearing her say that. “I want you dead and it’s still taking everything inside of me not to kill you. It was just hate sex. That’s all it was. It’s changed absolutely nothing.”

“Okay,” Negan simply responded knowing that sadly, it changed some things for him. It wasn’t like he was in love with the woman before him, but he definitely was starting to see her in a different light. While he wanted to talk about what just happened, he knew better than to do that. She was done with it. She didn’t want to talk about it, so it was best for him to forget it. That was probably half the torture in itself. It was something he wanted to think about. It was something that felt so good, yet she didn’t want to acknowledge what happened. That was torture in itself. “So, what’s the plan boss?”

Maybe it was for the best for Negan to forget this all happened in general. Hell, he knew he wouldn’t be able to do that, but this changed nothing for Maggie. And no matter how much he wanted there to be something more to this, he knew there wasn’t. It simply was what it was and nothing more.