#this isn’t about your needs or about following your heart it’s about your morals

[paranasloc]

“The brain finishes developing and maturing in the mid-to-late 20s. The part of the brain behind the forehead, called the prefrontal cortex, is one of the last parts to mature. This area is responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions.”

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-teen-brain-7-things-to-know#:~:text=The%20brain%20finishes%20developing%20and,prioritizing%2C%20and%20making%20good%20decisions.

[vatelixx]

The visionary, the willing executor,

Spencer Reid x afab!UNSUB!reader (written with mid!seasons Spencer Reid in mind)

SMUT!! copious amounts of angst (there’s traces of fluff in there as well if u get out ur magnifying glass)

BASED ON THIS SONG (it got so stuck in my head that I had to write something that correlated):

──── autistic spencer (it’s not explored that much, but it’s always gonna be present in my oneshots), evil evil reader (im not being dramatic this time. she’s literally a serial killer. like her ‘body count’ is copious. but idk, she’s kinda sweet. if u squint and ignore the bodies). They were in love ur honour !!! they’re still in love ur honour !!!! She pays him a visit two years after he found out about her homicidal tendencies (they miss each other, Spencer might also hate her a little but it’s okay, don’t worry about that).

Warnings: sub spencer (aaaaaaalways), maybe perhaps some vague, very faint mentions of switch!spencer but idk i blacked out writing this, choking, mentions of death and general behaviour that would get you a life sentence, praise more than degradation surprisingly, coming untouched, crying (you’d think that was a kink or something?), she fucks the good out of him, hopeful ending (eh, kinda), mentions of dante’s inferno, copious amounts of religious imagery, greek mythology references, this isn’t dead dove at all i promise.

w.c: 5k

a/n: everything i write has been so angsty recently. i’m working on something softer for my next upload i swear (alongside the requests, I promise, they’re being written im just a die-hard perfectionist). aaaaanyway, happy (belated) halloween!! It’s Spencer’s favourite season so i thought i’d write him getting destroyed by a serial killer (god when is it my turn????)

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Spencer would consider himself a good person, by default. It’s reasonable: a renowned member of the BAU, with intellect he’s weaponized for morality. The blood etched onto his hands is justified. Necessary evil for greater cause. He’s willing to blemish his skin for the virtue, for the lives of others.

He remembers naivety. He remembers being so fragile he could easily crack into fragmented pieces of wasted innocence. Maybe that’s been stolen from him now, maybe the ruins of his sacrifices are too sharp to touch upon still, but he’s good. He knows he will always be good.

And yet, there’s a bruise. Something ugly and distorted that stains his skin. Something that has the ability to crawl deep into his bones and leave behind a mess of pain. Something bad. Festering and tainted, it haunts him with every breath.

You.

You, who came into his life as an abundance of sunlight. Helios personified. Pretty and warm, and everything he needed. He wanted to kiss you: the moment he stumbled into the coffee shop, tousled hair, overworked and raw from a burdening case. When you took his order, marking constellations onto the styrofoam cup. Andromeda, Ursa Major, Cassiopeia. Later, much later, then when you became an indomitable presence to his apartment.

But for all the good he’s preserved, Spencer knows he’s not allowed to receive it.

“You shouldn’t be here,” is the first thing he says when he finds you waiting for him. He always knew you would come back; you’re bound to follow him indefinitely. Like his shadow, his guilty consciousness, his cracked past of addiction and pre-pubescent torment.

He let you go. When the act was over, the curtain drawn, when he saw you. Homicidal, the perpetrator of the case he was working on, malevolence packed into the frame of perfection, oh even still, he let you go. Free to continue the cycle of death, he was left to scramble in the mess of his own misguided heart.

There’s risk in reward, and reward in risk. You’re meticulous, hedonistic to the last detail. But Spencer? Well, he will always be the one loose end you could never quite force yourself to clean up. The thread that kept untangling, even as time passed. Cut it off, you should be rational, wash every bleeding trace of him from your skin.

But there’s irrationality in love.

Blood adorns your features; there’s no need to touch up your appearance, to return to the domesticated facade you once used on him. No, he’s been exposed to the ugly now. There can be no do overs, no back-tracking, game over try again doesn’t exist in real time.

“What are you going to do about it?” you ask, and god, hes just as beautiful as the day you left him. So perfectly real, with dragging exhaustion and pretty brown eyes to ease the sting of his tight-faced, troubled expression.

You didn’t cut the phone lines, nor move the gun he keeps stashed in his cabinet drawer. Down the hall, to the left. You know he won’t make any abrupt actions. Know, in an intuitive way, telepathic communication between past lovers.

“It was a gamble coming here, aren’t you pleased to see me pretty boy?”

Spencer has to fight every urge he has, every moral he believes in to not lunge at you; to not strangle your slender neck, crack you in half, destroy you the way you’ve destroyed his sanity.

Two years, 8 months, 11 days since you cataclysmically uprooted his routined life. He fell in love with softness, not the jagged edge of a blade.

“I let you go. Wasn’t that enough?” it feels too natural, fighting in his apartment, some sort of twisted lovers quarrel. There’s a definite list of everything he should do in this moment, and despite all logic, he just blanks at the sight of you.

“You had to come back. Rub salt in the wound. Do you get off on this?” a sigh falls from his pretty lips, “Actually, don’t— don’t answer that. We both know the answer.”

“I get off on you,” you correct.

It’s true. If he was to analyse you, profile your warped brain like his other unsubs, he’d find nothing but unyielding loyalty to him. For all the damage you’ve done, there’s always been one anomaly to your detachment.

He stands right before you.

And, sure, maybe you’ve got a leg up in this situation. Perhaps the distorted memory of you holds him back: lazy nights and tangled sheets, his body pressed up against yours. The way he’d talk, quantum physics, philosophy, rambles that dissolved into open admissions of feelings. There’s a lot that was fake, but to be a good liar, you have to add subsidiary details of truth.

God, he wishes the world would be cruel—a cosmic alignment of karmic righteousness that would grant him relief: some kind of justification for what he must do. But the universe is indifferent, nothing but a distant star, a fleeting speck of dust in the grand scheme of life. There’s no such thing as good or bad, only consequences.

Consequences. Consequences for his actions. Butterfly effect. He can comprehend it. But, there were many things he adored about you, while the illusion of love was tangible. The way your hair would curl just above your shoulders, your skin in the morning light. The way you’d laugh at one of his obscure Star Trek references, better yet his criticism on modern, inaccurate horror. He could stare at you for eons, as though he was trying to make out the secrets of the universe in the constellation lines of your scars.

The illusion of love, as it was. He sees you now with the clarity of reality, the same way a mirage fades away as you approach; a distortion of perception.

“And you get off on me. Even now. Don’t you?” you say, shifting forward to close gravitational space.

There’s no way to disregard this morbid connection. No psychological justification he can exploit to demean your feelings. You’re not a psychopath, nor anything that relates to a lack of empathy. You feel— you feel empathy for all of your victims, the line of bodies that mark your path. But it goes deeper than that. There was reasoning for your actions, just as there was for his.

“Say it,” you goad. And there’s satisfaction here, sure. Something mean and condescending. But there’s also hurt, because he was supposed to be a means to an end, and now, he might very well be your end.

“Say you miss me. C’mon boy genius, a few little words and i’ll have enough content to satisfy me for years. Don’t be mean— you know I hate being edged.”

He does miss you, every day that he wakes up, his bones too hollow and cold to leave his bed. The ache in his chest where his heart was supposed to be, too empty to function. No amount of caffeine can fill the void in his skull where thoughts of you used to reside. The longing, the desire for the past to rewrite itself.

“You’re sick,” he tries. But he’s not good at this. Not when the love remained after the inevitable fall out, not when the darkest parts of him still clung to want, even after he realised the truth.

“You’re sick, and..” he tries again, “and I hate how much I miss you. There? Is that enough? Are you happy? Got what you wanted?”

You let out an exasperated sigh, “No. If I ‘got what I wanted’, I would still have you.”

Spencer dies. Metaphorically, literally, what does it even matter? He dies, respawns, and then kisses the admittance from your lips.

Instinctively, just like the past, your hands tangle through his hair, and perhaps there’s a sense of ownership to the gesture. The knowledge that he will always be yours. Scarred from your touch, returning to your lips like a dog with a bird. There’s a mindless attempt at anger on his part, biting lips and rough teeth, but just like always, he quickly melts.

He melts, and you catch him. Because for all it’s worth, lies and deceit aside, you’ve always loved him.

There’s something powerful to the gesture; knowing you have someone wrapped around your finger. Even after you’ve bared the worst of you, the ugliness of man-kind. There’s someone out there that will wipe the blood from your cheek, and kiss you through it.

“Oh, even better,” you mutter against his lips, “Much, much better. C’mon Spence, show me just how much you’ve missed me.”

Two years, 8 months, 11 days since he felt like he could breathe.

It hurts, it hurts so much, because there’s a sense of coming home to the kiss, and he just wants you to stay. To ruin him forever. To leave behind a deformed version of him, something unrecognisable and equally scarring.

You’re too loyal and he’s too susceptible to any form of attention. Because you want him, and it’s easy to fall into a cyclical cycle of self-destruction when you’re the catalyst.

“I did miss you.” he admits again. “You— crazy, homicidal excuse of a person.”

Spencer’s hand comes up to touch your cheek, the rough texture of skin meeting something soft. His thumb traces down the curvature of your jawline, a silent hello that doesn’t linger long, too soon to be replaced with his lips.

You push him back against the wall, a painful groan escaping your lips when you feel his hips canting forward, searching aimlessly for a friction you’ve both been denied. Two years. His body still aches for you. It’s primal, something perverted and tainted and so very good.

You knew this would happen. There was not a doubt in your clouded mind that he would deny you. What you do to me, I do to you.

“There’s my boy.” you mutter when you grip said hips, fingers finding their natural, fated position against divine bone. When he begins to find a stable pace, bucking up to meet you with every kiss that you press to his lips.

He whimpers when you touch him, soft sounds of need slipping past his parted lips into the confines of his empty apartment. He’s trying so hard to maintain composure, but he can’t find it in him to fight the inevitable. The ache of separation between himself and you. So he lets it happen, like he always does.

My boy, the possession goes straight to his head. One simple phrase and he’s untangling, breaking to pieces because yes, he is yours. And yes, he will forever want to be reminded.

“Mhm, mhm. Oh— oh, fuck.” he’s so hard, clothed cock pushing up against you with every movement. He could get off on less of you. He has. Every night.

And yes, it certainly feels like home. It’s only the thing your body has been aimlessly yearning for, day in and day out. It’s not fair, not fair to you, that you’ve allowed your resolve to crumble, your strategic, one-track mind, for the fleeting body of a past lover.

But then again, demeaning him to a past lover doesn’t even begin to articulate this.

You’re fairly certain he was put on this earth, just to torment you.

And you’re fairly certain you’ll always let him.

“God, you’re such a slut for me.” you say, drawing back from the friction just to prove your point. The disintegrating whimpers that bleed out of his mouth in response are enough alone to confirm.

His head falls back against the wall, baring that lovely length of his neck and its pretty bruises. He wants you to kiss him there, to leave one last mark before he says ‘I won’t see you again’ and means it this time.

“Don’t— don’t stop—” even as he speaks, a mess of jumbled words and breathless sentences, you’re still teasing him. He hates how much it works, how much he’d rather fall into the pleasure of your hands.

“Fine. Whatever. Yes. What do you want to hear? That it’s whorish the way I want you. That you’re able to just… corrupt me with all these dirty words, even though I have an extensive vocabulary. Even though i’m supposed to be—“

He’s not even sure what he’s supposed to be anymore.

“You know the extent of my devotion.” he concedes.

There will always be sadistic pleasure in reducing him to such an ignominious version of himself. You’ve seen it before, back when you were trapped in an artificial, yet domesticated, haze of bliss. But to hear it now? Even after everything has been said and done?

That’s a new type of pleasure.

You know he still holds onto the facade of you, aimlessly reaching for something intangible, something that never truly existed. “You want me to be good for you, huh? Just pack up my shit, leave it all behind, get better? Think about it. White picket fence. Coffee every morning. God— it would be insufferable. Coming home to feed the dogs, talking every night over the phone, begging you to be safe on a case, or or—“

Spencer breaks. Silencing your words with a pained whimper.

Usually, he doesn’t allow himself to think about that fantastical hypothetic. He can’t afford to. Months after he let you go, when the truth had been exposed to his naive eyes, he’d spend hours in a mess of aching limbs, dreaming up alternative realities where your hands weren’t stained from blood, and the most despicable thing you could do was make his coffee bitter.

So when you force him to open old wounds, to rehash past hopes, he falls apart. A whine escapes his lips, hips bucking, once, twice and then he’s coming untouched. Making a mess out of himself— and it’s sick, so very sick to get off on the thought of you permanent, the epitome of good.

Something he could hold onto without slicing open skin.

It’s not a good orgasm, it never is without your direct help, but at least it’s some form of release. In the aftermath, he blinks away tears, vaguely aware of the cum staining his boxers, creating damp spots through fabric.

There’s something painful, cutting to your gaze when you look at him. At the debauched sight, corrupted from just a few words.

Give it all up? For what? Him?

All things considered, it’s tempting.

“Spencer,” you mutter in the serrated moments between. When he’s still nebulous, caught in the aftershocks of abrupt pleasure. When he’s just gotten off, untouched, on the notion of a domesticated life with you.

He’s struggling to breathe. He’s spent nights gasping for you, reduced to the most debasing version of himself. So out of touch, you drove a blade through his back, catching his heart on the way.

“Why are you— doing this?” he asks, but before you can even answer, provide him with an explanation that will devastate, he’s lunging forward, kissing the lies that cling to your lips. Kissing you because his mouth hurts when it’s not attached to yours.

“One last time.” he says; he’s too intelligent, too intellectually adept, to allow this swallowing cycle of humiliation to continue.

But, underneath it all, he’s also inherently selfish for you. He’s fairly certain you were engrained into his skin, long before he fell into your barbed trap, teeth and penetrative ruin.

“Then you leave. You actually leave, never contact me again. No showing up at my apartment unprovoked. I have a good life without you. Understood?”

You scoff. He presses forward, “Understood?”

You don’t protest when he elucidates his life as good. Even if it’s quite the contrary. Even if he has to bare witness to depravity every single day, scrutinise his way through the minds of the most perverse. Perhaps this is a social experiment to him, perhaps you are the guinea pig, Laika sentenced to space. You know he loved you once, but it’s hard to comprehend the feelings remained unscarred, it’s hard to imagine you’re anything but a test subject now.

You look at him. Look at that pretty face. Your undoing. He could be your achilles heel, hamartia in its rawest form, or maybe you willingly chose to do this. Maybe fate, and divine intervention played no part in your attachment to him. Maybe it’s just chemicals. The logics explanation. Imbalanced, skewed chemicals.

“Don’t worry, boy genius.” you respond, “You won’t get anything, not even a postcard, from me. It’ll be like I never even existed.” no trace. D.C has always been a monotone cesspit of nothing anyway.

It’s cruel. Because if you leave, truly leave. And he never hears from you again, never catches you in his kitchen, drinking coffee with an unadulterated smile, then he will begin to forget.

The curve of your spine, the scars beneath your chest, the way your fingers fit into his own. The way he was able to memorise your body until he could draw it in the dark, when your body was pressed to his, when there was nothing but a false establishment of safety.

He knows he can’t forget. Not technically. But it’ll grow distant, it’ll be replaced with new normals and routines. That, that, he can’t compute.

“Good,” he says, kissing you again, kissing you because this is it.

Spencer wants you. In every sense of the word, he wants you so badly it’s killing him.

His bedroom still holds traces of you. That, itself, is a crime. But he just falls into you. The way lovers do. Your hands against his skin— his hair threaded through your fingers, your lips at the base of his neck. He lets you leave another bruise, a mark, a confirmation of possession, because even if this is the last time, he is, and always will be yours.

“Still the prettiest person i’ve ever seen,” you admit when he’s flushed naked beneath you.

There’s something in those doe-eyes, brown irises blown out of proportion, that hooked you. Even at the worst, it was still soft with him.

Slender frame, slightly arched, you want to bite into his hips, mark every inch of him as yours. It’s greedy, gluttonous, his messy hair, fanning out like a halo, the tangled curls he never bothers to properly care for.

“God, fucking look at you,” you grip his jaw, tilt his head back to bare that blemished neck of his. To have and to own. He’s so inexplicably different to you, so good it runs down to the bone. And maybe you’ve always been insatiable for what you’ve lacked.

He can’t take this. He can’t, not again. The past, the future will have to dissolve with this moment, because there will never be another again.

You will never get this close to him. It’s a terrifying thought, that this’ll be the standard of intimacy, of love - because he knows it isn’t. But he can’t risk the reality he’s faced with, the reality of living without this. Of living without you.

Your words only make it worse. He wants to beg you to stop. To cease the torture.

“Shut up.” He kisses you, as if to remind you that your mouth is made for kissing, for his lips, for a litany of dirty words that he can’t bear to hear. Those words are for someone else. For someone similar. Not him. Never him.

Defying fate. He gets off on being something bad beneath the surface. No one would ever expect it; boyish maladroit Spencer, the youngest of the team, willingly allowing, condoning, a killer to sink into his skin.

“Don’t tell me to shut up,” you respond, muffled against his lips. “If this is the last time, i’m going to enjoy it. Going to enjoy the sight of you, all desperate for me alone.”

“You assume i’ve ever been desperate for anyone else—“ he counters.

“Oh, that’s it. Keep talking dirty to me.”

“It’s not dirty. It’s a factual statement.”

You pull away, a trail of saliva bridging the space between your mouths. If there is higher power at play here, you want to curse, to spite your creator. Because if ‘things’ had been different, if you had been born from the same rib, this could’ve ended differently.

Or for that matter, never ended at all.

“Sit there and watch me.” you say, and Spencer hates the way he obliges. Pushing himself up against the headboard, he stares at you, at the way you position yourself, standing by the foot of the bed.

“Do you even know what you do to me? Do you even understand the gravity your existence has on me?” you continue, unfastening the lace corset that clings to your frame. When it drops to the floor, breasts exposed, you run your hands across them, catching pierced nipples for a vindictive moment of pleasure.

“I— uh,” Spencer is admittedly a little distracted. Sex had always been something ruinous between you two. Something that conflicted his lack of experience, forced him to adapt.

He always wondered how someone so soft, the epitome of light, could be this obscene. Now he understands.

“Lost your words? Come on, pretty boy. I thought you had an ‘extensive vocabulary?’ Hm?”

He wants to touch himself, to ease the pulsing throb that centres in his cock. But he doesn’t, because despite the time that has passed, he still knows your rules. “Don’t use my words against me. I’m being tortured.”

“Tortured, huh?” your hands fumble over buttons until you’re reduced to a pair of panties, soaked throughly, leaving scarce to the imagination.

“So so tortured. Oh my god, who are you? Can I please have my soul back?” he’s joking, but not really.

“Well maybe if you beg for it,” your words fade into a mess of moans, fingers slipping beneath fabric to graze your clit. Spencer’s head spills back against the wall; he looks more affected by the movements than you.

It’s easy to fall back into old habits. Relapse.

“Come here, come here, i’m having an existential crisis.” he says, watching as you slip one finger, then two inside you, struggling to stand now. It’s strange how pleasure can reduce the most antagonising minds to vulnerability.

“Please— oh fuck, please. Please. Don’t make me watch, I can’t. Need you. Need you so bad.”

He thought he found the core of torture in you touching yourself, but he was wrong. Because when you crawl closer, when you slot yourself between his thighs, lips finding skin that only you have ever touched, he sees the root of evil in his brain. The ninth circle of hell.

It’s justified, he supposes. For all the good he’s done, he has betrayed. Himself, his friends, family, existence itself. There is not one thing he wouldn’t ruin, just to feel you. It’s incriminating, so yes, he deserves to freeze in Cocytus. He’ll willingly plead guilty, accept his entrapment in the ring of Caina.

“Poor baby, look at you.” you say, kissing his tip, catching the pre-cum on your tongue. Spencer responds: fisting bedsheets, fighting the restraint to buck forward, to find misplaced solace in the warmth of your mouth. He’s sprawled out across sheets now, lying back in a tangled heap of want. “Shh, it’s okay,” you continue, “I like my men desperate.”

“Desperate? Ah—,” he fights the urge to shut his eyes, too aware that this is the last memory he will ever retain of you.

You, painted into his mind. The final evidence left in the fire: mouth sinking down his length, taking him to the hilt, watery eyes and leaking mascara.

“This isn’t even desperation. You’re killing me. Just, oh oh— please, don’t. ‘M gonna cum. Gonna cum—“

Is it sick that he doesn’t want to? If only to prolong this transitory moment of destruction? Like the lotus eaters, he will always be mindless in the pursuit of more, more, more of you.

You draw back from his cock, only to press a soft kiss against the tip. The gesture alone has him reeling, has him begging to be saved, to atone for every sin he found in the comfort of your divinely crafted lips.

“Gonna let me sit on that pretty cock of yours, hm? Let me use you one last time? Promise i’ll be good,” a lie, “So so good.”

“God, yes. Yes, please. That would—“ You take him deep, deep enough that everything aches. He only feels alive when you’re wrapped around him, when there’s not an ounce of distance between your bodies, when he can touch the insides of you. Pry open the raw, unfiltered version of you.

He only feels alive when he’s sunk inside the harbinger of death. He’d laugh if it didn’t hurt.

You’ve got one hand tangled in your hair, the other pressed flat against his waist, supporting you through each bump of movement. Eyes like marbles, Spencer looks up, and wonders why this will never be enough for you.

You look back, meet his gaze, as if you’re Orpheus, predestined to turn around, to always return. Even if it’s just for one last second. Even if the fall-out is so much worse than pushing forward blindly.

Oh, hes certain you’re carving a hole inside him, something that will only grow and expand, imploring to be filled by it’s inventor. It’ll hurt, for the rest of time, he supposes.

When he finds your hand around his neck, he isn’t startled. Neither, when your thumb presses against his throat, applying pressure until the world cracks and fades, distorting his refined mind to the here and now. He floats, feeling transient in the curse of your touch.

“That’s it. Just let go. I’ve got you.”

He is a sacrificial lamb. The priests favourite. He will take the knife every time, and thank you for it after.

You release the tension, hand taking his instead. For all the cruelty you possess, you’d never think to harm him. Not physically at least. The emotional damage, however, finds you both. There can be no happiness in either of your worlds, not when the memory of each other festers. “Good boy— taking it so well. God, no one is ever gonna compare.”

He cries at the words. Pretty tears streaming down his face, because the reciprocation to his undying piety will forever trigger the warped chemicals in his brain. Will forever reduce him to something saccharine.

“Love you. Love you so much. Don’t go. Please,” he fractures, “please don’t go.” he begs, besmirched words he’ll regret in the wake of his pleasure. They don’t count, and yet, he knows, in the most depraved sections of his mind, they’re true.

You ride him harder. Back curved, finding god in the washed-out body of someone fatally destroyed. “Not going anywhere— fuck, fuckfuckfuck. That feels so good. You’re so good,” maybe it’s a kink to ruin something so perfectly spotless.

Maybe it’s a kink that he wants it.

“Say it. God, just say it. This once.” for old times sake, he almost adds. But that wouldn’t be objectively correct. For all the intimacy you shared, you never once articulated those three words. Perhaps it was to save your dignity, to hold pieces of yourself in the lies you beautifully crafted.

His thumb runs over your clit, and in the tangle of your orgasm, he almost thinks you forget about his demand. But after, when you’re still taking him, when you’re still clenching, unclenching, clenching around his cock, when you know you own every part of him, you answer.

“I love you.”

He falls apart. Hips canting, body squirming, whimper after whimper escaping his bruised lips as he releases inside of you. Pushed deep, defiled to the limit. For a moment, everything is okay, everything will be alright, because there’s pleasure, and it’s you. It’s always you.

How can he justify falling in love with you again? How can he, when he still clings onto the artificial love of the past? He’s not sure his heart can handle one set of feelings, nevermind two.

He takes you again, well… mostly you take him again. In ways that have him polluted with the remnants of your teeth. Canine marks, etched deep enough to bleed. He hopes the swelling leaves behind perennial scars, anything to remind him. Anything to hold onto when you’re gone and it’s cold.

After, when you lie together, he presses his forehead against yours and wishes he was in any other universe. One where you’re happy. Where everything is pure and simple, clean from sin.

There was always truth in what we shared before, you admit. Lazy nights spent draped over the couch, kissing him to silence convoluted rambles. Your presence in the morning, bathed in holy glow, sunlight bleeding over the pretty sight of you. The first night he touched you and saw god. And then the following night, when he ascended all over again.

He wakes to find no body. He wakes to find nothing. It feels like self-sabotage, the promise that you would leave, even if it’s quite the contrary.

In the absence, abstinence of your presence, he discovers traces of you in everything he sees, all of it, everything consumed, returning to the simple thought of you you you.

When the first postcard comes, Portland, dreary weather— beaches and ports, there’s no anger. No exasperation that you broke your word.

You love him, it’s morbid, but for someone like him, it overrules everything. Sanity, dignity, his own stable existence.

You overrule everything.

[meadowfics]

imposter

kang sae-byeok x smallbusinessowner!f!reader

you catch feelings for a girl who stole from you (dammit empathy)

you run a cozy little boutique that’s become your pride and joy.

it’s small but successful, bringing in enough to let you live comfortably.

you love the job with the regulars who visit your shop brighten your days.

however, you never expected your world to shift because of one quiet stranger.

the day she walks in, you notice her right away. she’s tall, lean, and moves with a kind of cautious grace that catches your attention.

she doesn’t say much, just browses the shelves, her sharp eyes scanning everything like she’s committing it to memory.

you smile at her, trying to make her feel welcome, but she doesn’t return it. instead, she nods briefly before turning back to the display.

something about her intrigues you, but you brush it off, focusing on other customers.

it isn’t until later, when you’re counting the day’s earnings, that you notice something’s wrong. you count the cash again, heart sinking as the realization hits you.

$1000 is missing.

you check the security cameras, and there she is. the quiet girl from earlier, her hand darting into the till while you were in the back.

your stomach twists, not with anger, but with confusion and disappointment.

the next day, you spot her near the boutique, standing by a food cart.

part of you wants to let it go, to just write it off and move on, but you can’t.

so you approach her, calling out softly. when she turns to face you, her expression hardens, her guard going up instantly.

“i think we need to talk,”

you say, keeping your voice calm.

she hesitates but doesn’t run. you gesture toward a nearby bench, and to your surprise, she follows. for a moment, there’s silence between you, her eyes darting around like she’s preparing for an escape.

finally, you ask,

“why did you take it?”

“i needed it.”

you don’t push, just wait. eventually, she sighs, her shoulders slumping slightly.

“shit.. it's for my brother… he’s all i have. we’ve been through a lot. north korea, the border, everything. i’ve been trying to keep us afloat, but it’s… it’s hard.”

her voice cracks just a little on the last word, and something in your chest aches.

you can tell she does not talk about this a lot.. holding back in some way.

you could be furious, you could demand the money back or threaten to call the police, but instead, you ask,

“why didn’t you just ask for help?”

“because no one helps people like us.”

“what if i could help you?”

“not with a handout, but with a job.”

“a job?”

you nod.

“i need someone to help out at the boutique. it’s honest work, and I will pay you more than enough for you to take care of your brother.. and yourself. you wouldn’t have to…”

you trail off, not wanting to say the word “steal.”

she stares at you.

“why would you do that? after what i did?”

“because i believe in second chances, somewhat”

“and because i can see how much you care about your brother. you’re doing everything you can for him, even if it’s not the morally right way.”

she doesn’t answer right away, her gaze dropping to her hands. for a long moment, the two of you sit in silence. then, finally, she nods.

“okay,” she says quietly.

“i’ll take the job.”

the first few weeks are tense. she’s reserved, her walls firmly in place, and you give her the space she needs.

she’s a quick learner, though, and her work ethic is undeniable. slowly but surely, she starts to open up, sharing small glimpses of her life.

you learn her name..sae byeok.. and about her brother, whom she adores more than anything.

the both of you are the only workers there, which is nice to sae byeok.. meaning that she does not have to be known as the one coworker who got the job by stealing.

one day, you catch her slightly smiling as she helps a customer pick out a scarf. its a young boy. she's smile is small, barely there, but it makes your heart swell.

"who is that?"

you smile, seeing sae bye looking a little happier with the boy than usual.

"that's my little brother, cheol."

she leans against one of the clothing racks.

she’s starting to trust you, you can tell.

when her brother gets sick a few months later, she shows up to work with red-rimmed eyes and an unsteady voice.

you don’t ask questions; instead, you tell her to take the day off and slide a little extra into her paycheck that week.

she tries to refuse when she noticed it on her paystubs, but you insist, and for the first time, she hugs you.

“thank you,” she whispers, her voice trembling.

“for everything.”

“you don’t have to thank me,”

“just promise me you’ll keep moving forward.”

and she does. little by little.

the boutique becomes more than just a job for her...it’s a place of stability, safety, and even joy.

sae believed that her life would have been filled with torture in order to get her brother out of the orphanage and in her care.

she still needs to get her mother out of north korea, which she is saving the money she is working for, slowly, for the broker.

weeks turn into months, you notice small changes in sae byeok.

the way her gaze lingers on you a little longer than necessary, the faint smile she gives when you laugh at something that really was not that funny

plus the way she quietly checks on you during slow moments in the shop.

sae is careful, guarded, but there’s something unmistakable in the way she looks at you now.

you try to ignore it at first, chalking it up to her growing comfort with you, but then you start noticing things about yourself.

for example, how the shop feels a little emptier on her days off, or how you find yourself looking forward to seeing her first thing in the morning.

when she’s gone, it feels like the air is missing something...a quiet, grounding presence that’s become more important than you realized.

one evening, as you’re closing up, sae lingers by the counter, her usual brisk goodnight slower than usual.

she hesitates, her hands brushing the fabric of her jacket, before finally saying,

“i.. i like working here. it’s different.”

you look up from the register, her words catching you off guard.

“different how?”

she shrugs, but there’s a softness in her expression.

“it feels… safe.”

your heart stumbles over itself at the quiet vulnerability in her voice.

“i’m glad,” you say, smiling at her.

“you deserve that reassurance, sae, and I am glad that I am giving it to you.”

for a moment, she just looks at you, like she’s trying to memorize the way you said her name.

she nods, mutters a quiet “goodnight,” and heads out the door.

you find yourself standing there long after she’s gone, the warmth of her presence lingering even in her absence.

when sae helps you restock shelves or rearrange displays, her hands brush against yours more often than coincidence can explain.

you tell yourself it’s nothing, but your heart betrays you every time she’s near.

one day, you’re alone in the shop during a rare quiet afternoon.

she’s organizing a rack of scarves, her focus entirely on the task at hand, and you find yourself watching her, the sunlight catching in her dark hair.

she looks so calm, so at peace.

“what?”

she asks, catching your gaze.

“nothing. you’re just… good at this.”

she raises an eyebrow, smirking slightly.

“folding scarves?”

“everything,” you admit softly, and the words slip out before you can stop them.

sae's hands still, and for a moment, you think you’ve said too much.

“you mean that?” she asks, her voice quiet, almost uncertain.

you nod, your throat suddenly dry.

“yeah, i do.”

“i think about you a lot,”

she admits, her voice barely above a whisper. “even when i’m not here.”

your heart races at her words, a warmth spreading through your chest.

“me too,” you confess, the words coming easier than you expected.

“i miss you when you’re not around.”

for a moment, neither of you say anything.

slowly, she reaches out, her fingers brushing against yours in a hesitant, tender gesture. it’s small, but it feels like the most significant thing in the world.

you don’t pull away.

instead, you let your fingers curl around hers as you hug her in your embrace, happy that she is here with you.. and safe.

part two to this fic

[soangelbaby]

Heya baby! I'll be your first request (I've no clue how many are in your inbox), but how about if Clark sees best friend!neighbour!reader changing through her window? How would he react?

eek i’ve actually been working on something soo similar to this so this is right up my alley fr 😏 thank u pooks for my first req evr so bare w me but ily ilyy, its giving… my biggest supporter ha 🥹

clark watching his bestfriend who is his neighbor change through her window, he’d absolutely relish in it. first time would be an accident, he’d be stargazing with his lil telescope, but then he sees you out the corner of his eye and he’s completely caught off guard, but can’t seem to tear his eyes away.

you’d be fresh out the shower, hair still damp, white towel wrapped around your glistening body, maybe you just got home and haven’t even bothered to close your blinds, completely oblivious to the man watching you on the other side.

you wouldn’t jump straight into changing or finding clothes, you’d sit at your vanity, doing your skincare before bed, moisturizing your hair, and clark would be watching oh so intently, following your every move—he knows it’s wrong, he knows he’s invading your privacy, especially as his best friend, he shouldn’t be looking at you like this, his parents raised him better.

but all that guilt isn’t enough to beat his curiosity, waiting, hoping, you drop the towel, he imagines it falling slowly, just enough to tease him,—wait he has x-ray vision… he could take advantage of this moment right now, and so he does…

while you began blow drying your hair, moving around your room to find a close enough plug, clark started to strip you with his eyes, one flicker of his x-ray vision, and boom—you’re completely bare. clark’s breath hitches as he adjusts his telescope slighty, his free hand drops down to his aching dick, palming himself through his jeans. his eyes almost pop out of his head at your frame, your perfect tits sitting so nice for him, the dip of your spine, the curve of your ass against your little white vanity seat. a tiny flower tattoo on your hip, shit—it’s enough to make him finish right there, his cum seeping through his clothes.

he’s going feral. his hand speeds up, his breath grows heavier, his heart rate increases. “fuck..” he mutters under his breath. his eyes squeeze shut—i mean you’re his bestfriend, he had no business looking at you this way. but all he can think about is if you knew… if you knew he was watching you right now, eye fucking you as you wind down for bed, knew how bad his dick aches for you, how he imagines sliding in and out of your tight pussy, if you knew that he was completely invading your privacy, thinking of all the ways he could take advantage of you… that should be enough for him to stop, to pull his hand away from his throbbing shaft, to shake off these foul thoughts and feelings about you. but it’s not…

instead, it turns him on even more. he imagines the shock on your face at the sight of him so undone for you. would you be disgusted by him? would you feel betrayed and hurt he’s peeking in on you? completely disregarding your friendship and his morals, just defiling it. or would you like it? would you strip for him through your window? would you tease him, knowing just how bad he wants you—fuck that—needs you?

clark lets out a guttural moan as his head drops back, “sh-shiit, fuuck” he makes out as he finishes. his pink lips parted, his cheeks flushed all the same, and his body trying to catch up with his mind. he can’t believe himself, the guilt washes over. he tells himself never again, that next time he won’t let his ‘curiosity’ get the best of him.. but the next morning? he’s sitting at that telescope, his hand already tugging at his shorts, watching you change and get ready for the day…

a/n ; luv this, kinda ties into my pervert clark hc and its just sooo chefs kiss like i want him to stalk me so bad…anywhoo hope you enjoy arty my love, this is for u :P

[notlongtolove]

empty my soul

they say the seven deadly sins are seven ways of mortal death, seven paths to eternal damnation, each a step away from redemption. but spencer knows that he would follow any path if it led him to you.

pairing: spencer reid x fem!reader (second person, no y/n)

genre: fluff?

content: implied intimacy, religious mentions, you're intoxicating and spencer contemplates the pull of his desire and devotion toward you through the seven deadly sins

word count: 1.8k

note: ngl i wrote half of this on the plane and almost forgot ab it. i feel like this concept would have been better utilised if i could write smut but i dont think i am all that good at writing smut

a line: He’ll take the sins, the ungodly weight of them, without question, without hesitation. To keep you. Always you.

I would live in your love as the sea-grasses live in the sea, Borne up by each wave as it passes, drawn down by each wave that recedes; I would empty my soul of the dreams that have gathered in me, I would beat with your heart as it beats, I would follow your soul as it leads. - sara teasdale

Spencer Reid has never been religious. He doesn’t believe in a higher being, doesn’t think the universe bends to the will of anything greater than chance. He’s a man defined by facts, by logic, by what can be measured and proven. Still, with the nature of his job and the evils he’s seen, Spencer Reid tries to be a good person. He believes he is one, for the most part.

In the office, he pours the last of the coffee into Derek's mug first, even though he needs the caffeine just as badly. On the subway, he stands without hesitation to offer his seat to a pregnant lady juggling an oversized tote despite the exhaustion of his day. Climbing the stairs, he stops to smile at the old man on the landing who’s always surrounded by his cats—even if he’s never gotten a smile back.

He tells himself these things matter. That they tip the scale in his favor.

Because the seven deadly sins—those cardinal vices—are a map of human weakness.

It’s a moral compass he has never adhered to himself—Yet tonight, standing at his front door, key in hand, he wonders if he’s unwittingly broken them all.

The hallway is dim, but he can see the soft flicker of his bedside lamp through the cracked bedroom door. He opens it quietly, and there you are. He steps inside, careful not to disturb you. You’re sleeping, peaceful. You're in his shirt, curled up on his bed. Absolute perfection.

Spencer doesn’t believe in angels, but if they walked among mortals, he thinks you’d be the closest thing to one. 

It’s the sin of self-admiration, the opposite of humility. Pride. He knows it well. C.S. Lewis wrote that pride is the root of all sin, the ego in direct defiance of God. Spencer has always thought himself better than that. He doesn’t believe in claiming you, in reducing you to an extension of himself. But when the team goes out and you’re there, turning heads, earning glances that linger too long, he tells himself it’s admiration, not possession, that makes his chest swell. To think you’re his? The pride seeps in, unbidden.

He crosses the room slowly. Standing at the edge of the bed, he watches you. Right now, he’s certain of one thing—he’s not sure he’s capable of redemption. Not tonight. You need your rest, and he knows he should let you sleep. He knows it as surely as he knows the formulas that balance delicate equations, the weight of the gun on his hip.

But he doesn’t want to. It’s greed, plain and simple. Henry Edward Manning called avarice a mire that pulls a man deeper into the world, making it his god. Spencer’s greed is less tangible than wealth or power, but it consumes him all the same. It's not enough to watch you sleep, though the sight should be enough. It’s a sight he’s memorized, filed away for lonely nights away from you. But tonight, it just isn’t enough. 

Spencer kneels beside the bed, though not in prayer—No deity would grant absolution for the choices he’s about to make. It’s a desperate worship, a wordless plea. He presses a kiss to your shoulder. Light, reverent. Another one to your temple. Then to the corner of your mouth. And another. And another. He wants more. Needs more. Gluttony, he thinks. A thousand wouldn’t sate him. Even a million might not be enough.

Your lashes flutter, and for a moment, guilt flickers in his chest. You’ve had a long day, too. He should pull away, let you sleep. But your lips part in a quiet murmur of his name, and suddenly, the rest of the world is a distant, muted thing.

“Spencer,” you whisper, your voice soft and trusting, not even fully awake.

“Hey, honey,” he replies, just as softly, brushing his fingers gently through your hair.

“When’d you get back?”

“Just now,” he murmurs, his hand caressing the curve of your hair. “Go back to sleep, baby.”

“C’mere,” you say, your hand reaching out, fingers curling weakly at the fabric of his shirt, a silent plea. 

Usually, he’d shower first. Wash off the day—the grime, the weight of it all—but tonight has been long and harrowing, and you’re right here, pulling him closer. So instead, with careful, practiced movements, he undresses quietly, slipping into a fresh pair of clothes, careful not to disturb you.

By the time he slides under the covers, you’re already half-lost to sleep again. But your body shifts instinctively, finding his, limbs tangling in his as though your subconscious can’t bear to be apart. It’s muscle memory now, the way you fit against him. Your body stays nestled against his, and Spencer simply holds you. 

He remembers the first nights you stayed over, how you tossed and turned and barely managed a few restless hours of sleep. You’d told him about your insomnia, how it often robbed you of rest. And yet, months later, you sleep peacefully beside him, body curled into his sheets like you’ve always belonged here. Something stirs within his chest, spreading warmth through his ribs—a realization that you feel safe with him. Safe enough to rest, to let go, to sleep soundly in a world that’s often unforgiving. 

Sometimes, if he wasn’t so hopelessly in love with you, Spencer thinks he might envy you. For so long before he met you, he’d wondered what he was doing all this for. His intellect, his job—it always felt like a machine churning without any real purpose. But with you, lying here in his arms, he knows. 

It’s for the way you can sleep soundly, untouched by the ugliness of the world. For the way you can keep enough of your light to bring into places he thought would always remain dark. Bertrand Russell said that envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness. But when it comes to you, Spencer finds it doesn’t matter. Yes, he envies your innocence, your unbroken joy, the way you make him smile even after the hardest days. But it’s a quiet kind of envy, the kind that makes his purpose clear. Because he’s made it his job—his life’s work—to protect people like you. To keep you safe from the things he can’t unsee, from the shadows that haunt his own nights.

It awakens something deep and instinctual in him, something unyielding. A primal need to protect you, to keep you sheltered from every storm. Spencer has never been quick to anger, never one to let wrath consume him. The Catholic Church teaches that anger, when it evolves into a deliberate, lethal intent, becomes gravely sinful—a mortal sin.

Spencer has spent years dissecting the complexity of human nature, he’s seen enough of humanity’s darkness to understand the weight of wrath and how sharp it cuts. He’s always believed he was different, too rational, too objective to ever give in to that kind of furious violence. 

But then, you came along.

And now he knows, if it ever came to that—if the world dared to reach for you, to try and take you from him—he would not hesitate. Every choice, every principle, every shred of his reasoned sanity would be sacrificed without question. If and when it ever came to you, he’d burn the entire world down if it meant keeping you safe, to protect the very heart of you. 

He presses a kiss to your head in an effort to ground himself. His kisses are deeper now, still tender but lingering longer. His lips trail lower, brushing over your temple, the slope of your shoulder. You shift slightly in your sleep, a soft murmur escaping your lips, but you don’t wake. Spencer breathes you in. The scent of you—cinnamon and sandalwood—faint traces of the perfume he’d picked out for you two months ago. 

In the stillness of the room, a soft glow catches his attention. His phone lights up on the nightstand, screen down, casting a faint halo on the wood. A message, maybe two—something that could wait. Especially when you’re here. 

Sloth is a sin of omission. Spencer understands its meaning, shirking responsibilities, choosing complacency over action. Ignoring his buzzing phone, his waiting work. All reminders of what he should be doing, of what he could be, if he let himself. He decides that he’ll shoulder it all again tomorrow. Tonight, the choice is clear. Tonight, he chooses you. 

But then the buzz sharpens into a ring, cutting through the stillness. He watches you stir, your brow furrowing as the sound pulls you from sleep. With a sigh, Spencer picks up the phone, already regretting the intrusion.

“Yeah?” he says softly, careful not to wake you fully.

Morgan’s voice crackles on the other end, urgent but not life-threatening—a file, a lead, something work-related that Spencer should care about but can’t bring himself to fully process. He glances at you, watching as you sit up, rubbing sleep from your eyes.

“Sorry,” he mouths, guilt flickering across his face. But you only move closer, leaning into him, a silent reassurance that you’re not all that annoyed by the disruption. 

As Morgan keeps talking, your lips find the edge of Spencer’s jaw, pressing soft, deliberate kisses against his skin. The first kiss is soft, exploratory. The second lingers, deliberate. He swallows hard, his free hand instinctively moving to your waist, fingers splayed against your hip as if to anchor himself. 

Ah, the final sin.

Lust.

Defined as an intense longing, a surrender to physical desire. Even the earliest of men had been warned of its impurity, it's the act that binds one as “a slave of the devil”. But in this moment, Spencer can’t think of anything holier than the way your lips trail from his jaw to his neck, slow and deliberate.

He clears his throat, trying to focus on Morgan’s words, but his resolve is crumbling. The effort feels futile as your kisses deepen, trailing a slow, intoxicating path around his neck. Each one pulls him further from the conversation on the phone, as if to remind him where his attention truly belongs. 

“Uh, Morgan,” he interrupts, his voice strained. “Can we talk about this in the morning?”

There’s a pause, a low chuckle from the other end. “Yeah, man. Go get some sleep.”

“Thanks,” Spencer mutters, ending the call.

Before he can set the phone down, your hand finds his, taking it and placing it face down on the nightstand. The motion is deliberate, final. Then you’re pulling him back to you, your lips claiming his, his hands wandering with lazy, unhurried intent. There’s no hurry, no rush—just the quiet of this moment.

You’re intoxicating, the thought of resisting the pull you have on him, inconceivable.

They say the seven deadly sins are the seven ways of mortal death, seven paths to eternal damnation, each a step away from redemption. But Spencer knows that he would blindly and gladly follow any path if it led him to you.

If surrendering to sin means getting to hold you like this—then so be it. He’d forgo every cup of caffeine, every fleeting subway seat, every awkward, unreciprocated greeting, if it meant tipping the scales just enough to keep these moments. He’ll take the sins, the ungodly weight of them, without question, without hesitation. To keep you. Always you.

⋆✴︎˚｡⋆ hi if you're here! thank you for reading! feel free to like or reblog or comment or reply!

ᯓ★ song recs if you feel like it: work song by hozier meet me in amsterdam by rini

[unfortunate17]

I have been thinking about both Wille’s and Simon’s character progression throughout the series and I have realized that it sort of looks like Wille has a pretty good character progression and has been pretty profoundly affected by Simon and their relationship (in a good way). But I don’t really see any of that for Simon. It sort of look alike he has had more things “taken away” by their relationship. He has lost his privacy, and gets hate to the point where he has had to delete his SM and he gets a rock thrown his window. In a way if they hadn’t gotten back together, it looks like all Simon would’ve gained from this period is trauma. Do you think he gained any positive things from this relationship (in the case they hadn’t gotten back together)?

So I’ve spent a long time thinking about this since you sent me this and I have a lot of thoughts about it, but they’re kind of all botched together. Hopefully I do a decent job explaining myself:

In my opinion, Simon definitely has an arc, it’s just more subtle and not as “flashy” as Wilhelm’s. This is genuinely fine with me for multiple reasons: 1. Simon just isn’t the main character of this story - Wilhelm is. So he’s not going to be the one to go on a life-altering journey 2. Simon, narratively, functions has the moral compass around which Wilhelm centers his life around. He’s there to push Wilhelm into embarking on this life-altering journey.

That being said, Simon’s story arc is really simple and very personal, but no less beautiful. We start in S1 with Simon being loudly himself, and Wilhelm adoring him for it, but this quickly becomes an issue - namely, Wilhelm starts to lowkey take advantage of Simon’s generosity and kindness, and ultimately betrays him. Which is why we get that big argument with Sara where she accuses him of “letting people piss all over him.”

Moving into S2, we see a Simon who’s taken that conversation to heart - he’s firm with his boundaries, he doesn’t want to give Wilhelm a second chance, he doesn’t want to forgive because he thinks Wilhelm isn’t sorry. Then, he has another conversation with Sara, where she basically tells him, hey, love is crazy, it makes you do crazy things. And yes, she’s projecting here, but once again, Simon takes her words to heart and decides to follow his feelings. He essentially “gives in” to his love for Wille and decides that no matter what, he wants to make this relationship work because he’s in love, damnit, and he wants to be with Wille no matter what.

And this is the mindset that Simon enters S3 with. That’s why we see him making himself small and trying to appease everyone. He’s just so in love, and he wants it to work so badly, until he just can’t anymore. Notably, he doesn’t end things for his own sake - he does it for Wilhelm. He sees that being with Simon is hurting him because it’s allowing Wille to use him as an emotional crutch and stay stagnant in life. So he leaves, starts to close himself off again. And then - dun dun dun - he has another conversation with Sara. He tells her, damn, you were right, I need to stop being a pushover and she shoots back with no Simon, YOU were right, we should give people second chances. And thus, Simon gets out of the car and gives Wille one more chance.

So what does Simon gain out of all of this? Basically, he’s learning to trust himself and his feelings. His entire arc is him basically learning: hey, my morals were right from the start! This is how I want to live my life! Which makes sense really because this is the role he’s playing in Wilhelm’s arc. And it’s not a particularly sexy discovery, but it’s a really powerful thing to learn, especially in your teenage years.

As for specifically Simon’s relationship with Wilhelm and what he gained from that outside of his arc: Wilhelm adores Simon for exactly who he is. And I think it’s a really profound, valuable thing to experience what it feels like to be loved and be in love with someone who really sees you and wants to stick by you through thick and thin. In many ways, Simon has always had to earn love, but he never has to earn Wilhelm’s love. And that’s kind of life-altering in and of itself - to know that love like that exists and that you are deserving of it.

But what do I know fr 😭

[frutigerfischl]

Hello!!! Can I ask you to write hds for caitvi x wanted criminal! reader from the Undercity?

YOU'RE A SPECIAL KIND OF CRAZY

⌗ SONG┆special kind of crazy ★ ₊ ˚⟡

⌗ TAGS┆poly relationship, gn!reader, criminal reader, hcs ★ ₊ ˚⟡

⌗ NOTE┆this is very short but took forever sorry lol, also I'm used to one shots but I tried making hcs!! My friend helped me write this ★ ₊ ˚⟡

⊹₊⟡⋆ MEETING

Caitlyn meets you first. Or, rather, she corners you in a dilapidated alley of the Undercity, pistol aimed with trembling determination as you wipe blood off your knuckles. The enforcer and the fugitive—an encounter doomed to end poorly. Except Cait hesitates. It’s not the fear in your eyes (you’re too hardened for that) but the split second of defiance that crumbles when she mutters, “This doesn’t have to go the hard way.” You don’t surrender, not really, but you don’t run, either.

When Vi shows up later and Cait tells her about the strange "moment of mercy," Vi groans. “Babe, you’ve got to stop picking up strays.” But she makes a show of studying you when they inevitably track you down again—her lips quirking in an impressed smirk when she realizes you’ve already managed to evade half of Piltover’s forces. “You’re trouble,” Vi says, half-admiring, half-wary. “My kind of trouble.”

⊹₊⟡⋆ DYNAMIC

Caitlyn is your moral compass—or at least, she tries to be. She’s the one patching you up after every skirmish, bandaging your knuckles with a disapproving frown while softly lecturing you on alternatives to violence. She doesn’t realize she’s growing addicted to the way you soften under her touch, the way you tilt your head to listen when she speaks in that crisp, logical tone. It’s infuriating and endearing all at once.

Vi, meanwhile, encourages all your worst impulses. She teaches you the fastest ways to throw a knockout punch, smirks knowingly when you pull her into trouble, and always has your back during a brawl. It’s her idea of quality time. But beneath the teasing, Vi sees you—your pain, your survival instincts, the chip on your shoulder that matches her own—and she lets you exist without judgment.

⊹₊⟡⋆ MOMENTS

You’re all terrible at timing. Between Caitlyn’s enforcer duties, Vi’s need to protect Zaun, and your status as a wanted criminal, intimacy isn’t something that happens in warm, safe places. It’s hurried kisses in dark alleyways, Caitlyn glancing over her shoulder to make sure you aren’t being followed. It’s Vi pinning you against a crumbling wall after a successful heist, breathless and grinning as she murmurs, “You’re such a bad influence.”

Sometimes, though, it’s quiet. Caitlyn sneaks you into her office late at night, locks the door, and sits you both down with tea. Vi sprawls on the floor, tossing out sarcastic commentary as you pour your heart out to Cait, her eyes soft and patient as she listens.

⊹₊⟡⋆ CONFLICT

Caitlyn struggles with your criminal nature. She understands why you do what you do—the desperation, the need for survival—but it clashes with her unwavering sense of justice. Some nights, her voice is taut with frustration as she demands, “Don’t you ever want to do better? To be better?” You bite back a retort, anger flaring, but before things escalate, Vi intervenes with a calm, “Easy, Cupcake. Not everyone gets to play by Piltover’s rules.”

Vi, on the other hand, gets it. She gets you. But she’s haunted by Vander’s legacy, by the idea of repeating his mistakes. “Don’t be reckless,” she warns, jaw tight. “I’ve lost enough people to stupid decisions.” It’s not an argument, not really, but it leaves a bitter taste in your mouth.

[rs-hawk]

I'd love to see more yeti or Bigfoot dragging their mate off to their cave in the woods

They're just slightly smart enough to communicate with gestures but not enough to understand why you'd want to leave

Y’all fr making me lose my mind with this asks. Love it

You decided to go hiking with a group of coworkers. It’s supposed to be a team building experience, but you don’t care about that. You’re just glad that you’ll get paid to be outside. It’s better than being trapped inside all day, listening to people you don’t care about complain about things you also don’t care about.

You started to get a bit ahead, nor caring about the gossip and taunting that your other coworkers are exchanging. Your one work friend pulled out last minute, making you wish you’d stayed home today. That feeling wouldn’t last for too long though.

As you followed the path, you lost sight of the group behind you when you looked back. While you felt relieved by that, you also wondered if that would mean you wouldn’t get paid since technically you weren’t apart of any of the “team building” and “morale strengthening” going on behind you. You pushed that thought from your mind and decided to keep going on. They were lucky you came at all. Surely no one would be so petty as to not pay you because you got excited and got a little ahead.

When you heard a branch breaking just off the path, you didn’t think too much of it. Someone probably just was catching up to you. However, when you heard thumping on the trees, a shiver went down your spine. You remembered your Dad telling you about Big Foot and how he always made himself known by banging on trees, and that horrid smell. Luckily you didn’t smell anything, so you pressed forward.

Again, you heard the branch breaking. This time you froze, looking towards the sound of the breaking branch. Just as soon as you saw the flash of brown fur, you were scooped up by it. A scream ripped from your throat as you were carried away from the trail faster than you could comprehend.

You were taken to a cave, where the creature set you on a bed of moss and leaves. It was soft at least. The creature that loomed over you was a stereotypical Big Foot, making your heart leap into your throat. He gestured for you to lay down, but you shook your head.

He frowned, gesturing again. You shook your head. “What? No. I need to leave.”

You pointed to the opening of the cave, but this time, the creature shook his head. He lightly pushed you onto your back, burying his furry face into the crock of your neck. The feeling of his tongue, lips and teeth on your neck drew out an involuntary moan from your lips. He took that as a sign of invitation, moving his large, furry hands down your body.

You jerked away, moving slightly closer to the mouth of the cave. He drew you back to him, now pinning you under him. His huge cock was already leaking precum, which he smeared against your jeans as he grinded against you. You couldn’t believe how soaking wet this thing was making you.

He tried to pull off your jeans, but was clearly confused and agitated. After a moment, you decided that this wasn’t real. It was just a dream, right? Big Foot isn’t real. What could it hurt to have a little fun?

You slipped off your jeans, and he groaned, back to grinding his leaking cock against you. The tip of his cock pushed your panties into you, obviously not understanding the barrier at first. Just as you’re about to pull them off, instead, he ripped them off. Within a second, he slammed his giant cock inside of you. That mix of pain and pleasure made you realize that this wasn’t a dream. It was real. But you were too cock drunk to care at this point.

The furry creature abused your poor dripping cunt merciless. He bit and nipped at your neck, leaving deep bruises all over your neck and throat. His fat cock stretched you out with every thrust, the tip of his cock hitting your cervix repeatedly. You knew that if he was to cum in you that there was no way that you wouldn’t get pregnant. It was basically in your womb with every thrust. Again though, you couldn’t bring yourself to care too much.

Big Foot groaned and grunted, sounding animalistic and feral as he used your poor human cunt. He flipped you over, shoving your face into the moss so he could reach deeper into you. This drew tears from you as you gripped the moss. Tears ran down your face as your eyes rolled back into your head. Your cunt was wrapped around him, drawing him in deeper. You wanted to beg for him to keep going just like that because you were so close, but you couldn’t get any words out. Instead you just moaned and whined, pushing back against him.

Finally, as you felt him pulsing inside of him, so close to cumming, you clenched down around him. Your orgasm finally flowed, making you choke out a sob into the moss. Your mind was fuzzy. Your cunt was throbbing excitedly. He moaned loudly at the feeling of you clenched around him, and that was all it took for him to release inside of you.

His cum filled you up, extending your stomach, rounding it out. It gave you a precursor to what your stomach would soon look like, round with his child.

[thewritetofreespeech]

May I request Nanami and Gojo finding out their s/o got disowned by her father, who is one of the higher-ups, because she showed mercy and defended Yuuji?

Nanami Kento

It was late at night when he got the knock at the door. So late, in fact, that Nanami was just about to go to bed, already in his pajamas with his teeth brushed, when he heard it.

“[Y/N]?” He asked curiously when he saw them there. Standing in front of his door, looking a mixture of distraught, sad, and just hopeless. A strange case given that they were usually so confident and strong as a Special Grade Sorcerer. “What’s wrong? Has someone died?”

“No. No one has died. I guess that’s the problem.” Nanami arched a brow at their cryptic comment, before they let out a shaky sigh. “Can I stay here tonight?”

He of course let them in. Offering tea or some kind of comforting drink, although they don’t take him up on the offer. “Will you tell me what’s wrong, please?”

They eventually break down and tell him everything. About the boy that ate one of Sukuna’s fingers. How he was slated for execution, which was cruel but reasonable in their world, and how that idiot had them stick their neck out to vouch for the boy’s hold even though they didn’t know a thing about him. Of course, Nanami knew that they would speak up for him. They had an incredible sense of morality and standing up for the weak. ‘That’s the job, isn’t it?’ They had told him that more than once.

Apparently not everyone shared their noble heart, it seemed. Not even those in her own family. For standing up to the higher ups and ‘embarrassing’ the family her father kicked her out with threats of disownment and banishment. Whether or not he meant to follow through would be a problem for tomorrow, but right now she was out on the street. Which in his opinion was unforgiveable already.

“You can stay here as long as you like.” Nanami told them. Amending their original request from earlier to stay the night.

[Y/N] sniffle once, but seem hell bent on refusing to cry. Nanami told them to take a shower if they wanted and he would find them some clothes to sleep in. They literally had nothing on them. So they would have to make do.

Both of them now in pajamas with their teeth brushed, [Y/N] curled up beside him and tried to get some sleep. It seemed a struggle, but the emotional exhaustion took hold, he thinks, and they both try to get the best night sleep possible for the hell that was to greet them in the morning.

Gojo Satoru

Gojo whistled down the hall as he made his way from one part of campus to the other. He was quite pleased with himself.

It wasn’t every day he got to ridicule and humiliate the higher-ups; despite his attempts and life’s goal to make it an everyday occurrence on his part. Those old fools didn’t know what hit ‘em when Gojo plead his case and told them what happened. He might not have gotten this Yuji kid off scot-free, but he bought him some time. That’s all he needed for Gojo’s master plan to come to fruition (whatever it was).

He passed a familiar doorway and saw a light was on. Thinking it had been left on by mistake, he invited himself in and was surprised to see [Y/N] there. Boxes on their desk as they were throwing things into it.

“Hey, isn’t it a little early for spring cleaning?”

“Not for me.” They told him. “I have to be out of here by morning.” Gojo tilted his head to the side, so they explained further. “I’ve been sacked.”

Gojo’s face was one of alarm. “Wait. What are you talking about?” They couldn’t have been fired. Really? For what??

“Apparently my behavior at the council meeting was ‘unbecoming of an educator at this institution’.”

Gojo growled in his throat. “That’s bullshit! I was there too, and it was my idea! I did all the talking!”

“Yes, but I don’t have the Gojo name to defend me.” His ire and shoulder fell. Oh shit….

“They seriously fired you?” [Y/N] nodded. He clicked his teeth. “Can’t you do something? Your dad maybe?” He’d hate to ask him for any favors, but if it kept [Y/N] here they should take it.

“Who do you think signed my ‘death warrant’?”

He wanted to say he was surprised, but he wasn’t.

“I’m sorry [Y/N]. I didn’t realize that you might –“you did the right thing Satoru. Even if it was originally for selfish reasons.” He sighed. So he guessed they knew that the only reason he initially did this was to piss this old coots off. They lifted the box and put in on their hip. “I’ll be fine. I’m not exiled entirely. Not yet. I’m still a Special Grade. Still can go on missions.”

“Yeah. Ones that will get you killed.” They all knew what happened to people who weren’t Gojo that stood up to the council. They were given mission in far off places and then ‘died under mysterious circumstances’ while in Brazil or Cameroon or something.

[Y/N] let out a bitter chuckle. “They’d have to catch me first. For now, I need to find a place to stay. Get an apartment. They took away my professor housing too, and I obviously can’t go home to dear-old-dad.”

“You’re staying with me.” Gojo cut in quickly.

[Y/N] seemed surprised, but quickly schooled it into coy. “Ooo….I never thought we’d be in a point in our relationship where we were moving in together.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

Gojo grabbed the box they were carrying and helped carry it out. “I really am sorry.” He apologized on the way.

“I know.” They told him. But that was all they said this time. No ‘you had a good reason’, ‘you did what you could’, ‘it’s not your fault’. He suddenly felt all the more guilty. He had to remember more often that just because things couldn’t touch him, that other people weren’t as lucky. Collateral damage was something he never thought of. He’d need to think about that more in the future. Especially with his new student.

[sing-me-under]

I don’t follow the HH tag because I’m not interested in it, and I genuinely do not care about people’s opinions on the writers. But I do frequently dive into the HB tags, and every single day, there’s another person complaining about one character or plot point or another as if it’s the end times of good and pure society as if the the corporate theme song ends with “Kids Die For Free!” and as if their spam of posts preaching isn’t just showing their lack of media literacy. It’s not like clogging up the tag or anything, but it’s still there frequently enough that I think they do deserve dunce caps.

I’m glad HH doesn’t have as pervasive an issue of inappropriate tagging as HB’s tags seems to. You should be able to enjoy your fandom with minimal effort. But I WANT to follow the character tags of the characters I like. I shouldn’t have to avoid certain character tags just because people lack media literacy and don’t want to tag properly.

Tumblr needs a badge identifying people who post critical and anti shit in the main tags. The “I personally don’t like this so I’m going to make it everyone else’s problem and interrupt their fun with my unasked for takes” badge.

[blamebrampton]

Books talk to each other. Mostly because practically every writer is also a voracious reader, but also because books arise out of times and places and we share a lot of our worlds these days. So it’s unsurprising that several novels I have hugely enjoyed over the past few years share the theme of the antiheroine who is past all giving of the fucks. Naomi Novik’s powerful dark sorceress kept on her own tight leash in the Scholomance books was a joy to follow; Xiran Jay Zhao’s Iron Widow slashed her way into my heart and now Sarah Rees Brennan’s Long Live Evil has added to a list of beloved antiheroines that probably started for me with Becky Sharp in Vanity Fair.

Coincidentally, when considering how to describe Long Live Evil without significant spoilers, I realised that it shared several major themes with Vanity Fair. Young woman unfairly treated by fate decides to embrace her slut era to survive a war zone – both very accurate and wildly inaccurate for both. LLE opens with main character Rae in a hospital bed, teasing her sister about a book series they both adore. Rae is taking refuge in the story they have shared over years because it is one of the few things they have left: she is losing her fight against cancer and has been losing parts of her life, family and memory as that fight has progressed.

My personal hospital experiences have all been to do with major traumas rather than illness, which I vastly prefer because if you don’t die in the first couple of days, you usually start mending and you can immediately make plans to make the best of whatever you’ve broken. Rees Brennan, however, famously wrote a very funny, very horrible, ‘Kids, you won’t believe what shenanigans your girl’s been up to now, it’s only stage four Hodgkins lymphoma!’ post on her Tumblr or LJ (someone who has been hit in the head with taxis fewer times than me will doubtless factcheck that in the notes) about seven or eight years ago and then faced the very serious business of trying to live. The hospital scenes are painfully authentic, as are the stories of people who have left Rae as she slipped further out of everyday life.

For Rees Brennan, a loving family and peer group were there to hold her as close as they could. For Rae, only her beloved little sister, Alice, and Time of Iron, their favourite fantasy series, remain. They read the books together, remember adventures cosplaying and watching the musical, they wonder about the final instalment; for Rae it’s a joy she can still share (even if she doesn’t remember as much as she should), for Alice, it’s her two greatest loves. When a strange woman offers a door into the world of the book and a possible magical cure to Rae, she wants it as much as she disbelieves it.

Stepping into Eyam, the land of Time of Iron, Rae finds herself in the body of a villain doomed to die the next day. No worries! She’s thought and fought her way out of worse scraps than this in her past as a head cheerleader, let alone while battling cancer. She can use her knowledge of the plot to change things! If only she remembered more of the books…

Portal fantasies are common enough, but not all play by the same rules. This isn’t Narnia, where the magical world is more real than our own, for Rae, the world of the book is nothing more a tool to get her hands on the cure. She doesn’t need to care about any of these people, they’re not real. Most of them speak in a formal language that relies on the conventions of fantasy literature (there is an ongoing, warm-hearted skewering of all Game of Thrones-esque texts running through both the story and the in-text ‘quotes’ from Time of Iron) and half the characters are known more by their descriptions rather than their names. So she will play the Beauty Dipped in Blood, with her questionable morals, impractical clothes and centre-of-balance-distorting boobs for the weeks that will pass until the cure is available. Whoever she has to shuffle in the plot to secure a place beside that cure, she will shuffle. While she’s not out to kill anyone, it’s not as though they were ever really alive. Not like her. If she has to be the villain to survive, she will be an impeccable one. The people will cheer evil on!

Obviously, little goes to plan. Rae’s illness has taught her cruelty, but she hasn’t forgotten what it is to be kind. Even as she manipulates her role into ongoing main character, she realises that’s not how anyone gets a happy ending. That’s not how she can live with herself. As she comes to think of the other people in the story as real, they become more so, both in how we read them and in how they impact the story. Rae remembers what it is like to make friends, which she never meant to, but, oh, the luxury after years of watching people slip away!

As in previous novel In Other Lands, Rees Brennan has a long list of fantasy tropes to embrace and undermine, and her deft touch with humour is as evident as ever here, but her publishers call this her first adult novel and there is a shift in tone from her previous works. Anger is more real and lasting. Consequences are more significant. Understanding is reached for, even if it’s bitter. One of my favourite things is that she lets her female characters rage, but never judges those who can’t, whether because they’re too powerless or just too tired, and her male characters are allowed to be people if they choose to be — which all but the most vainglorious do.

I hadn’t paid much attention beyond checking the release date for the book, so didn’t realise it was the first in a series. For me, it worked perfectly as a standalone novel, even with the unended threads, which would have perfectly balanced Rae’s unfinished life. That said, I am very happy to know we will spend more time with these characters in the future. I want more. I do want to know if there is a hope for Rae, if this is the fever dream of a fading life, if this is the story Alice has told to ease her sister from the world or something else. There are a dozen characters I hope for, at least three happy endings that would bring joy. But don’t wait for the next books: sink your teeth into this one and believe what it says about the importance of listening to stories rather than just falling in love with characters. Though if you find yourself cheering on Rae, or her servant Emer, the elusive Eric, Horrible Hortensia or almost any of the others, I am the last person who will judge you.

[shaunamilfman]

Lucy MacLean x Wastelander R HC's

you start looking at her in a new light after she sets off a grenade that takes out a room full of enemies. you're so impressed with her that she doesn't have the heart to tell you that she just accidentally tripped into a row of shelves and knocked an old grenade on the floor. 

“you want the head?”/ Lucy, love-struck “i mean if you're offering.” a pause, thinking over what you just said and looking disappointed. ”wait– did you say the head?"

most shocked look ever watching you loot bodies. on her high horse talking about “stealing is wrong” till you agree and say you just won’t be able to have dinner that night then. suddenly she’s willing to make exceptions to her morals, go figure.

whenever she starts talking too much, you start describing the most horrific looking monsters you've fought. she's following silently behind you in horror for a good mile before she manages to shake that description off and starts talking just as eagerly again. the silence was nice while it lasted. 

Lucy pretends to not know how to do things so that you’ll teach it to her as an excuse to talk to you but takes it way too far. you’re like, “what do you mean you don’t know how to open a can?” while she looks visibly upset that you don’t wrap your arms around her to show her how like she’s seen in those pre-war movies.

uses your rations to try to tame herself a pet while you're camping for the night. you’re looking everywhere for your last box of sugar bombs only to find a shameless Lucy feeding it to the ugliest animal you’ve ever seen as she tries to entice it to do tricks. She insists that she doesn’t understand why you’re mad about it but you can’t help but notice she never uses her rations for it. you end up getting so mad that you can’t even speak to her, which turns out to be the most effective punishment you ever could have come up with. she’s sitting there and begging you to talk to her because she's going crazy without human interaction (it's been five minutes).

you’re surprised and a little sad to see that Lucy isn’t in the camp when you wake up the next morning but it’s fine. You don’t need her anyway, right? You try not to look relieved when she trudges in halfway through taking the camp down covered in soot and grime and collapses in her cot as she holds up a pristine box of sugar bombs she spent all night searching for.

Lucy sees you smile one (1) time and will not get over it. “you have such a pretty smile, you should really smile more. you know it really lights up your face and…” on and on for like ten minutes. The type to grab for your face to pull the sides of your lips up to make you smile. You’re still visibly frowning, just with your lips pulled up at the sides. Lucy’s so frustrated with you mostly because she realized you’re actually really nice to look at when you aren’t glaring at everything. 

Lucy would call you lover unironically. goes through a million different terms of endearment before finally deciding on that one. it was one of the least embarrassing ones that she suggested so you wearily let it happen. walking for miles with Lucy trying them out initially like "honey. baby. teddy bear. big teddy bear of death? murder bear? no, okay, got it. sweetie. babe…” 

pretending not to know about things Lucy is referencing to see how long it takes for her to realize you’re messing with her. she's talking about her book club and you’re like “book? what's a book?” and she’s spiraling trying to explain the concept of written word to you

no concept of flirting. give her your absolute best lines and she's like “haha… okay?”. got to be as blunt as possible. tell her you want to fuck and she's like “oh yeah, sure.”

[keanusteddy]

🎸 NEW GIRL AT SCHOOL 🎸 ted logan x reader headcanons

A/N: Trying out something a little different. I’m very nervous to post this, since I’ve only ever done bots before. Hopefully it isn’t total rubbish.

Ted definitely hadn’t been paying any attention to what was going on in the classroom before you walked in. He and Bill had been too busy brainstorming new song lyric ideas.

“Who cares about some short dead french dude. We won’t need all this useless information when Wyld Stallyns becomes famous.” Bill had said to Ted, whilst messily scribbling down some lyrics at the back of his history notebook.

Ted had been so focused on his songwriting, that he didn’t even notice you walk into the room. It was only when Mr. Ryan told him and Bill to pay attention, that he looked up to see you.

“Everyone listen up! This is y/n and they will be joining us this year at San Dimas High. I want everyone to make them feel welcome.” Whilst Mr. Ryan introduced you to the classroom, Ted stared at you with his big brown eyes. He looked like a love sick puppy dog.

“I’m in love dude.” Ted shuffled his seat closer to Bill and whispered to him.

When you end up sitting in the seat next to Ted (it was the only seat in class left), he immediately became flustered and nervous. There was no way that he could focus on the lesson now even if he tried.

Throughout the whole lesson, Ted couldn’t help but steal glances in your direction. He also attempted to impress you with his laidback and nonchalant attitude, cracking jokes and giving witty responses during class discussions to catch your attention. However, it seemed that Ted’s antics had not impressed you.

Ever since you joined Ted’s history class, he had been arriving on time to Mr. Ryan’s lessons. Ted didn’t want you to think of him as the class slacker, even though he was already pretty much one.

Ted wants you to think that he’s smart. He’ll sit up a bit straighter in his seat and pay more attention in class. He even takes notes! Mr. Ryan can’t believe his eyes.

Ted may even raise his hand to answer questions and discuss historical events. He’s not correct most of the time but his silly responses sometimes get a smile and a giggle out of you, which makes his day.

Ted still goes back into his own world and daydreams in class (specifically about you). At the back of his notebook, he doodles your name and his together with a big heart around it. Ted is also a good drawer. He’ll draw pictures of you both holding hands.

He always makes sure his notebook is in a secure place. He would die of embarrassment if you ever saw his silly little doodles. Not even Bill knows about them.

Ted becomes incredibly clumsy and awkward around you, constantly tripping over his own two feet whenever you are nearby. Countless times he’s almost bumped into somebody, walked into a trash can and dropped his school books in the hallway.

Ted was harmless but he would low-key act like a stalker. During lunch times he would attempt to discreetly follow you around and he would bring Bill along with him for moral support.

“Dude. You are seriously acting like a total stalker. Just go up and talk to her. Recite her some lyrics!” Bill would always say to Ted, trying to convince him to make a move.

Ted has been observing you so much, that he now knows what you bring to lunch each day and where your favourite spots are to sit and eat.

Ted thinks he’s being sneaky, but a few times you have spotted him hiding behind a tree or a bush. His fluffy hair would always been sticking out.

Both of your lockers are right near each others in the hallway. Ted will peak around from his open locker door and watch as you put your books away or take out books.

One day you spotted him peaking around at you and you gave him a friendly smile. Ted nearly fainted on the spot.

You are now the inspiration for the songs that Ted writes. These songs often talk about your beautiful smile, and bubbly personality. Ted only wishes that one day you could hear it :((

[criticalcrusherbot]

💁🏽‍♀️: Girlie pop here keeps showing up on my feed. Tumblr, how do you know I’m interacting if I’m just screenshotting? 😤

🤖: ERROR: INVALID INPUT DETECTED. SYSTEM PROTOCOLS DICTATE: GET STOLAS’ NAME OUT OF YOUR MOUTH. BEEP BOOP.

The Joke’s On You: Stolas’ Line is Self-Aware Writing

Let’s start with Stolas’ line from Sinsmas—“No, fun is free, but we can afford nice things.” If you’re taking this at face value, we really need to talk about subtext. This line isn’t some attempt to glorify Stolas’ wealth—it’s a comedic jab at his own class privilege. It’s not celebrating his status; it’s making fun of it. Especially since, by this point, Stolas is utterly and completely financially destroyed. The humor comes from the fact that, even though his life has basically imploded in “Mastermind”, he’s still clinging to this outdated notion that wealth equals access to “nice things”—which is hilariously ironic considering he’s literally more broke than Blitz at this point. It’s not glorifying his wealth; it’s undercutting it for comedic effect. The joke’s on Stolas, not the show, and certainly not Blitz.

Fizz’s Line: Invitation to Reflect, Not an Attack on Blitz

Then we have Fizz’s line—“Sounds like you hate him just because he’s a prince.” This isn’t an attempt to excuse Stolas’ behavior. It’s a critique of Blitz’s internalized class resentment, which has been an ongoing thread in their relationship. We’re all for class consciousness, eat the rich and all that—but social justice is about groups, not individuals. Blitz’s justified resentment of a system impacts his ability to view Stolas as an individual, and Fizz is calling him out for it. This isn’t about whitewashing Stolas’ flaws; it’s about recognizing Blitz’s own biases. And before you try to come for us—prejudice ≠ oppression. We know. Calm down. Fizz is highlighting Blitz’s emotional baggage, not “babying” a character. Narrative complexity, not character coddling.

Stolas as a “Creator’s Pet”? Please.

Now, let’s tackle the heart of this rancid take: the accusation that Stolas is just a “creator’s pet” and the show is somehow hypocritical for addressing classism while portraying him as a victim of his privilege. First off, Stolas is not the hero here. He’s a deeply flawed character who is consistently forced to reckon with his privilege. (Just because the narrative hasn’t pounded us over the head with it—yet—doesn’t make this untrue.) He’s not presented as “good” or “pure”; he’s a (formerly) rich man trying to navigate a world that’s already given him a significant leg up. The point isn’t that he’s perfect; it’s that he’s learning, evolving. And Stolas’ comment in “Sinsmas” is immediately followed by Blitz calling him out in the most gentle, endearing, way possible. “You know what will fix that privileged little attitude of yours? Paperwork!”—that’s a growth moment for Blitz. And a call out for Stolas. Yes, it’s a critique of his behavior, but it’s also an invitation for him to change. If you’re going to argue that Stolas is just a “token good noble,” then you’re missing the entire point of the character arc. The show is grappling with his privilege and his flaws, not ignoring them.

Hypocrisy? Try Nuance.

The claim that the show is “hypocritical” is laughable when you consider that the narrative isn’t about making Stolas a pure, unproblematic character. It’s about depicting the complexity of privilege and class dynamics. The fact that Stolas is both a victim of and a product of his wealth makes him more compelling, not less. This isn’t a contradiction; it’s a subversion. The show doesn’t spoon-feed you a “moral” because that’s not the point. Helluva Boss isn’t here to provide a tidy morality lesson; it’s here to show characters navigating morally gray spaces. So no, it’s not hypocritical. It’s honest.

You Missed the Point.

So, dear critic, the show isn’t hypocritical—it’s the lens you’re viewing it through that’s the problem. The subtext is right there, clear as day, and frankly, you missed it. Stolas is a deeply flawed character, and the show makes sure you see that. It’s not about excusing him—it’s about showing him grow. That’s the beauty of it. If you’re still stuck on the “creator’s pet” idea, well, babe, you’re just not paying attention. Try again.

[sovasleepy]

beauty sleep

[ gekko x reader ] — when you fall asleep wearing makeup, gekko does his best to clean your face without waking you ; part 2

warnings: the reader is gender neutral, although the reader is described to be wearing makeup so take that as you will. also a brief mention of being drunk/alcohol but its not gekko or the reader.

notes: requested by anon! i hope you enjoy :)

the usual banter between phoenix and jett played out in front of you. they were high off of a victory, much like yourself and several other agents that had joined together for a victory feast at a local takeout place. what was supposed to be a quick run for food turned into a posse of idiots parading around downtown, much to the credit of an already half-drunken skye.

phoenix quickly followed her, his energy coaxing the fire that was already brewing in the hearts of the agents. a particularly important mission had gone incredibly well that day and the entire team was still riding high.

jett snorted as she shoved phoenix, laughing at whatever cheesy joke he’d laid on her.

“love the energy, but i’m far too tired to match it.” gekko spoke, leaning his head slightly towards you. his voice was much softer and quieter than their’s. it was a sharp contrast to the loud, chirpy voices of those around you.

“couldn’t agree more.” you grumbled.

as much as you loved your friends, you were happy to have them split off into their own directions once you were back at base. gekko was the only one to follow.

he padded toward your door and gently held it open for you. he watched you walk in, but hesitated another moment before speaking.

“could i come in? i know we’re both tired, i just don’t think i’m ready to sleep yet, yknow?”

you nodded and smiled. gekko always had a weird way of matching your emotional state, purposefully or not. absently kicking away a t-shirt that had ended up on your floor, you apologized for the state that your room was in and invited him in.

you proceeded to hit the mattress, and you were out like a light.

“thank you,” he spoke, words falling on deaf ears. his eyes scanned your room. he took in the decorations, noting how such small things were marked by traces of your hobbies or personality. “i just need to be around ‘calm’ for a while before i knock out, is all.”

he sat on the edge of your bed. he didn’t notice the fact that you were asleep. he continued to mutter to himself for another moment, before finally turning to see your reaction.

“well,” he spoke one last time. “that would explain the silence.”

still, he didn’t leave. he felt creepy. as though he was spying on you in some weird way. but you had invited him in, right? so there wasn’t something morally off about it, he assured himself.

he would like to deny the warmth that spread in his chest as he observed you, but that would make him a liar. while the thoughts were always in the back of his mind, he never truly got the chance to fully take you in. every curve and every feature of your face, the slight pinch in your brows as you slept, and the rhythmic rise and fall of your chest. it took him a while to realize the other thing he was seeing.

“isn’t falling asleep with makeup on bad for your skin? or your pillows or something.” he whispered softly to himself.

as he did, he slowly got up from where he sat on edge of your bed. a quick glance around your room offered him nothing, but he didn’t want to turn on your light and wake you. you looked so peaceful, after all.

quietly, gekko walked toward your bathroom. after trying for a miserable ten minutes to figure out which washcloth in your bathroom was the softest, he finally settled on one. he stepped towards your sink to dampen it, where his eyes caught a sleeve with the words “makeup removing wipes” printed on the side.

yeah, that seemed like a better idea than his.

makeup wipes in tow, he finally returned to your sleeping form. slowly, as if it would make a difference, he turned on your lamp. he froze as if to make sure you were still asleep.

he pulled one wipe from the package, gently rubbing at your skin. after a second, he pulled back and checked the wipe. he was doing this correctly… wasn’t he?

how often were you supposed to change wipes? or was it just one for the whole face? how hard was too hard to rub? how expensive were these wipes, anyway? how does he know when your face is clean? would the liquid that dampened the wipe hurt if it got in your eyes?

oh well. he could try his best, at least.

he discarded the dirty wipe in the trashcan near your bed and retrieved a new one. he continued his process of gently rubbing your face, taking extra care around your eyes and making sure he wasn’t pressing down so hard as to irritate your skin.

when he was sure he was done, he closed the container and returned it safely to the bathroom counter.

he came back when he was done. gently setting his weight on the bed, he smoothed down your hair with one hand and smiled at your sleeping form.

“you don’t really need your beauty sleep, but i guess i can let you have your sleep-sleep.” gekko commented after a beat.

he sat up gently as to not disturb you. he clicked off your lamp and shut your door softly behind himself as he left you to rest.

[sugudoe]

have you ever considered jjk men (maybe.. maybe toji...) and a reader who seems so strong very brave not scared of curses takes everything in stride what have you. but absolutely just crumples at thunderstorms 😭

✶ 𝐬���𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐛𝐮𝐬: mention of blood and reader being a kiIIler ╱ anxiety attack

✶ 𝐚. 𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐞: hope you like this, i know it was supposed to be cute, but i got carried away. also, this reader had an encounter with reader from “on my way”, you can read if you want, but there is a basic explanation about what happened.

Your line of work had stained your bones and soul a long time ago, hardened your expressions and emotions. You don’t get to smile when you took someones life, is a constant thought you have.

Weakness, as a hitman, is equally tainted by the blood you take. As any human being — even if you may act more like a predator or beast sometimes — you have some of your own, hidden away from prying eyes and, as of recently, your boyfriend Toji.

Relationships aren’t supposed to have secrets, but one or two won’t hurt him, specially as pathetic as this, you think.

But still, those tangled nots you made on the door that unlocks your sensitive part, all untie at Toji’s house — it takes thunder in the sky and lighting on the floor, all followed by a blackout.

You had been in the shower, scrubbing away all the blood from a disgusting mission, the red liquid sticking to your skin, soaking up to your interior, but you held your head higher, pretending it was nothing.

Of course, the moment the house shook with the lightning, you had no reaction but to scream. Stupid, isn’t it? The fear of blades and curses and even jujutsu sorceress is not enough to cause a reaction out of you, it barely changes your heart palpitations. There is a need of more fingers to count how many of those have you fought and won. But, there is always light at the darkness absorbing you. Light as in the one that falls from the sky and strikes at you, the perfect pattern of scars along your back, a reminder — long ago, one sorcerer could summon those, and you survived by miracle, by mercy.

Toji never noticed those scars before, your intimate life was always rushed by the return to a mission, lights out and the focus solely on the feelings. Now, though, he sees them. When he crashes his door down, a long silver sword in hand, frantic eyes shinning in the dark, and turning into frightened and curious, that’s when the energy comes back — when you are bare and scared, in your most unprotected moment. Fat tears rolling on your face, you avoid his, while you reach the towel and put over your body. You leave the bathroom and your stunned boyfriend behind.

Save yourself some grace and morality, your reputation and maybe dignity, you put Toji’s shirt and shorts and fall on his cold bed, trembling under the covers with the crescent sound of thunder up in the clouds.

Could mercy be revoked by the one that hurt you? She could be up there, in the clouds, looking for you. That’s a constant thought you have had since that terrible day, the fear that with the storms might come your prey that turned predator.

You flinch when Toji’s large arms cradle you into his chest. He is silent, except for his unhinged breathing, much like yours, when his hands move under your shirt, cold fingers softly touching your thick scars — the perfect copy of what had hit you that day, sometimes, the pain comes back and it’s a constant memoir of what you felt. Today, with his caress, you don’t feel much. You don’t feel anything, except for the tears still escaping and the burning on your throat.

“I’m sorry,” you said, “you’re not supposed to see me like this.” weak, you add in your head.

“If not me, then who?” Toji asks, moving you so you can face him, and not your back. “You’re not weak, whatever happened, you survived, don’t think I could. I can’t barely handle tasers.” He cleans the tears from your cheeks, soon, replacing his finger with his lips in multiple soft kisses.

“I’m supposed to be stronger than angry clouds.” You whisper.

“You are.” he moves back to search for something in your eyes, maybe he found them, because a small smile forms on his face. “Yeah, stronger than clouds, than your scars, than your fears. I see you, and I see someone powerful.”

“I’m supposed to be like you,” you keep trying to make him understand you, how weak you are, “fearless.”

“What makes you think I’m not scared of anything?” Toji cocks and eyebrow before snickering. “I believe my strength comes from luck, and I’m afraid one day this luck will wash out down the drain some day.”

“Like blood?” you ask, he nods.

“Like blood, from my enemies, mine. Maybe one day I’ll find out.”

“I hope you never do.” You raise your head, chin resting on his breast. “I hope you stay for a long time, keep being this lucky bastard who fights anyone with ease. And I hope you stay to comfort me.”

“In all the storms there is, be in the sky, or in your head. I’ll be there.”

Toji kisses you, hugging your body and, you could guess, your soul. Your broken and ugly devastated soul, he loves it with care and no prejudice. In his arms, there is no lightning that can reach you, no thoughts of being hunted — who would come your way with him protecting you?