#this whole scene i've never moved on | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

chuluoyi · 1 year ago

Text

fear

- gojo satoru x reader

his best friend’s defection is still a hard topic for him to swallow, and it leads into an unexpected argument that spurs you to leave, only to unlock a new fear in him when you get into an unfortunate accident afterwards.

genre/warnings: angst, gojo being mean, one scene with a worried nanami *wink*, injured reader, hurt/comfort, fluff in the end

notes: *sigh* my coping mechanism is still gojo’s past arc, which is why this piece takes place on that timeline. just a little context: reader is in the same class with nanami & haibara and was in the same mission that took haibara's life. this is probably the longest oneshot i've written so far sooo… enjoy! :)

general masterlist

A year and a half had passed since Suguru embarked on his path as a curse user. In that one year and a half, Satoru had finished his last year at Jujutsu High, and now was in the halls of his alma mater, speaking to the newly appointed headmaster who was none other than his teacher.

"You're applying to become a teacher?" Yaga asked again with a frown. He still couldn't wrap his head around it. Granted, he was his most troublesome pupil. "Why, Satoru?"

"If I said it's because I want to train young sorcerers to be strong, would you believe me?"

That was not a lie. It was actually 50% of his main reasons anyway. The other 50% was to repent what he missed with Suguru when he chose his dark path—his contempt with the current system of this jujutsu world.

"I would," Yaga responded gruffly. To him, Satoru was irritating, but he also knew that he was also extremely capable, and thus everything he did wasn't just out of nowhere. "But you still have to submit your applications. We can't make an exception even if you come from a prestigious clan."

"That's fine with me," he grinned. "Thanks, sensei."

On summer days, he'd get reminded of Suguru and silly things they had done together. Eating shaved ice, cycling together, driving either you, Shoko or Nanami mad. Satoru missed those days, it hadn't been the same ever since. Not knowing if his best friend was alright—if he was still alive at all—was exhausting.

Sometimes, he felt like he was the only one who was affected by his departure, the only one who stayed right where Suguru left him. Shoko didn't seem ruffled, if anything she just went to more bars and pachinko parlors as of late. Nanami was always a recluse, he never disclosed his feelings. You mourned him, but it was clear that most part of you would always be more focused on Haibara's death.

Satoru understood that he couldn't force anyone to feel what he felt, and he had no right to. But sometimes, he just wanted someone to connect with at his level. Someone to get him just like Suguru did.

And so when he got back to his condo that night—just right next to the one he rented for Megumi and Tsumiki, since he had moved out of his dorm—to find his girlfriend there with a big smile and a tray of cupcakes, unaware of everything and anything, he merely scoffed to himself.

"Satoru, you're back," you acknowledged, beaming like the sunshine you were. "I just baked these for the kids. Do you want some?"

Usually he'd smother you, throw some pickup lines here and there and say yes, but today, he just felt drained. "No." And with that, he stalked away to the bathroom, not glancing back at you.

It was wrong. But tonight he just wanted some peace and quiet, and so keeping his silence seemed to be the best choice as he didn't want to start a pointless argument with you. But you weren’t anything but observant, and definitely noticed that something was amiss with him.

"Are you... alright?" You approached him warily after he came out of the bathroom with wet hair. "Where were you today?"

"Just somewhere," he replied curtly. Afterwards he turned on the hairdryer, drowning the whole place with the noise even as you stood behind him with a visible question mark.

But you were still there after he dried his hair. "Is something bothering you?" you asked with a tilt of your head, concerned. By all means, you mean well. You just wanted to know if he could use your help at all.

When you pulled that expression, he couldn't help feeling annoyed, like he wanted you to take a hint, but you just didn't. "If you know, then just shut it."

It was probably the first time since the two of you got together that Satoru actually said something harsh. But you still tried to be reasonable though, bless you.

"Satoru, I don't know what got into your nerves like this, but I think sleeping through it might help. Have a rest."

"Why are you talking as if you know it?" he snapped, finally turning to you with his cold gaze. "You might not know anything, so don't be a know-it-all. Just mind your own business."

Now you were frustrated with his reply. "Once again, I don't know what happened to you. But if you're taking it out on me because I'm the closest you have—"

"Who said that?" Satoru didn't know where he got all this venom from. It was just at the forefront of his mind and he just got the urge to spew it. "You're considering yourself closest to me? Where did you get that big head from?"

You were aghast, and you blinked a few times to get your bearings. "Let me guess, it's about Geto-san, isn't it? Or the higher ups. Either of that must be what causing you to blindly place your anger on me."

"So what if it was? It isn't like you'll understand anyway."

"Satoru," you started, trying to even your breathing. "What happened to Geto-san isn't your fault. I've been telling you this. It can't be helped—"

"Can't be helped?" he jeered. "Do you know why it has come to this?" his tone took a dangerous edge as he stepped closer. He reached for you, grasping your wrist.

"Maybe because I was too blind back then. If it weren't for you—if only I didn't spend that much time on you, maybe he would still be here."

Did he just say that? Did he just imply that he had regretted the two of you getting together?

You felt your lower lip start to tremble and something seemed to obscure and blur your vision, making it hard to see him clearly. "You... don't mean that."

"Really?" the corner of his lips curled into a disparaging smile. "You never know. Before you know it, this can be over already. After all, I could have anyone out there that I want. Maybe someone less nosey than—”

That did it. You wrenched your arm out of his grip violently, as your first tear fell. His smirk vanished too, replaced with a total stillness to cover his sudden panic that was followed by a sudden sinking feeling at the pit of his stomach.

"You selfish, self-obsessed jerk," you hissed through watery eyes. He was taken aback, even amidst your anger and possible fear of him, your still managed to throw daggers at him. "Fine. You have it. I'll see myself out."

Satoru never wanted you to leave. Honestly, he would've made you stay. But he wasn't in the right state of mind and it was too late to take back what he said. He didn't want to mess this up even further.

You left the cupcakes, even throwing it away just to spite him. Driven by pain and humiliation, you choked back your sob and didn't spare a glance at him as you shut the door.

Peace and quiet. There he had it, he thought as he clenched his fists, at the cost of everything else.

Leaving that condo, every step you took felt like needles piercing your shattered heart. You wiped your tears roughly. No, you refused to cry over such asshole. He made it clear, didn't he? Whatever it was that you two shared, it was at the cost of his best friend leaving him. So now the blame was on you.

If you were thinking clearly, you would've understood that his words were likely a result of his own pent-up pain and frustration that he had kept to himself for some while. But you had no patience for that or even pinpoint what you felt right now—anger, disappointment or dread, or perhaps all three. You just felt wrongly accused.

Your feet brought you back to your dorm in the school. Now it wasn't as bustling as it once were. After Satoru and Shoko's graduation, you didn't really get close to anyone. There was Ichiji, but he treated you more like a mentor rather than a classmate.

As you sank into the comforts of your bed, You replayed the events, trying to find where it went wrong—and found nothing. After all, you had already said all that could be said. It wasn't just him who lost Geto, but you, Shoko and Nanami did too, but it was more convenient for Satoru to blame everyone else rather than trying to understand that they too shared this pain.

Nevertheless, you were disappointed. You didn't expect half of what he spouted, and it got you doubting everything you had.

"You've royally fucked up."

Satoru exhaled, glaring at Shoko through the corner of his eyes. "Yeah, maybe."

The reverse cursed technique user threw him a blank stare, taking in everything from his disheveled hair to his wrinkled trousers. "Gojo, as much as I can’t care less about your sorry ass, I'm saying this not out of concern for you, but rather for Y/N. You are an asshole."

The puff of smoke she blew expanded to create a cloud-like shape. "Yaga-sensei was our teacher. His student is now a mass murderer and wanted dead. Can you even imagine how he feels? And I can't believe I'm saying this—but weren't there three of us?"

A week had gone by and instead of doing the right thing like trying to get into your good graces, Satoru was in Shoko's infirmary in the headquarters instead. He didn't exactly know what he was looking for by going here. Maybe some lingering taste of his happier student days, and Shoko was the only one remaining.

Three of us, huh... she was right. That was precisely why he came here after all.

"You're just sulking because it seems no one cares about your best friend being the best there is. But have you thought about how our juniors also lost Haibara? Right in front of their eyes? Haibara was our friend too."

He was wrong, of course he was. Satoru realized that now. But it felt wrong to ask for your forgiveness now, not to mention the disrupting thought he had—should he let you go for good altogether?

The phone suddenly rang with such fervor that made Shoko utter a swear word. She was on call duty for the rescue team today, and it was supposedly a peaceful day until Satoru decided to barge in to become her company. "Hello? Ichiji? What—speak clearly, I can't hear you."

She switched it to loudspeaker. "...iri-san! Ieiri-san—h-help—please—"

It was noisy, and blaring at the same time, and Ichiji was... Sobbing? Choking? His voice was terribly muffled and—

"L/N-san!" he cried, and Satoru remembered at that moment that you should be in a mission with Ichiji, he remembered you telling him before.

"Hic—s-she fell... hic—she fell! B-blood! She i-is bleeding so much! I-Ieiri-san—hic—s-send help! Please!"

"Hey, stay awake. Breathe. Just breathe."

Everything hurt. Most notably, your head. You could hardly think straight when all you felt was blinding pain and how your breaths came in short wheezes.

Your vision was blurry. The numbness had started to set in and chills ran up and down your spine. You couldn't make out who in front of you was. Was it Ichiji, who went with you in this mission? The only thing that glared was blue.

"You can't sleep, you hear me?" the voice was commanding, willing you to do his bidding. It was familiar, but usually his tone of voice was much lighter, happier.

Satoru.

But why was he here? He wasn't in this mission. It was supposed to be a mission for you and Ichiji.

You remembered getting the cursed spirit after manifesting your domain expansion, until in its last ditch attempt, it went after Ichiji. You had no choice—even when your cursed energy had burned out, you still shoved him away at the cost of being flung from the top of a building.

Not again. Not after Haibara. You’d gladly pay the price if it meant you didn't have to see anyone die in front of you again.

"I..." You managed to croak out—breathing hurt, and you felt your hands being grasped tightly.

"Hey, just breathe. Y/N. Look at me.” Through your blurry haze, you focused on that cold blue, and you saw him. Satoru's sharp eyes, pursed lips and frown. He's really here.

Satoru always said that if there was a cursed spirit apocalypse, then Ichiji would be the first to die. You used to scold him for that, but now as you a laid here possibly dying in your own pool of blood, you found it to be true.

Yet at the same time you knew that with him here, Ichiji must be safe already, and it gave you reassurance so great even when you were on the verge of dying. "I... can't..."

"Yes, you can. Just look at me," he firmly rebuked, his voice came out in a hiss. For all the time you had been with him, you had never heard him so forceful. "If you close your eyes now, I won't forgive you. So please, just hang in there."

It was a struggle to take in any air and darkness encroached on your vision as your consciousness began slipping away.

And everything faded to nothingness.

Satoru honestly thought he had no fears. His worst fear had fully realized after all—Suguru going away into the darkness. What more could he possibly fear?

But when he heard Ichiji's distress call for rescue team, about how you fell from a rooftop of a building and unconscious, he realized that it was a fear he didn't know existed. His mind got disoriented and he teleported to the scene on impulse. He just had to see it for himself. With their petty argument still lacking closure, he felt even worse.

And the sight before him gave him so much fright he never thought was possible.

It was a mistake, he should have brought Shoko along.

You had laid there like a broken doll, your eyes dimmed, and not been able to breathe. He desperately tried to keep you awake, his presence beside you, yet it didn't seem to matter. He watched helplessly as you passed out in his arms.

Satoru felt nothing. The panic that had set in was suddenly gone as your limp body slumped against him, replaced by incessant ringing in his ears and tremor wracking his nervous system. It wasn't long until the rescue team came to retrieve you and even then he still felt numb. He rejected the idea that you might possibly die on him.

That went on until Shoko, who assisted in the emergency treatment, came out of the surgery, sweat on her forehead.

"It's even worse than the aftermath of the guardian deity mission last year," Shoko explained with a grim expression. "Her brain has sustained damage and it affects everything. It may take her quite a while before she can go back to the field."

When she said that, Satoru felt terror washed over him again. You almost died—was all he perceived.

The two of you had no contact for a week just because of his ego. He could still recall that day with vivid clarity, feeling a burning ache in his chest. If someone were to ask him what heartbreak was like, now he certainly would he able the to tell them the two instances in which he experienced them. What he felt now mirrored the same stinging sensation he had felt when Suguru left him.

He visited you when he was allowed to, and you were still unconscious, with many machines connected to your body. It was a sight he still couldn’t bring himself to get used to. He had seen you injured before, but never seen you in your own pool of blood, so this made him feel sick to his stomach.

"Stupid," he whispered, gently rubbing your forehead. His eyes remained fixated on you as you rested, his insides still churning with emotions. "You're not weak, and you're not hopeless." Once upon a time, Satoru might have thought of you as weak, but now he knew better.

"So why you always pick the worst decision?" The more he thought this could've been avoided, the more irked he was. The thought that he could have done something to prevent it intensified the sting of guilt, and he continued to punish himself with it.

And the more he dwelled on the idea that he had hurt you prior to this, the tighter his breath became.

But that was who you were. Self-sacrificing to a fault. And he loved you for that. There was no way of him letting you go now.

It astonished even himself—that he was capable of this love thing. At first it was an attraction, but now that you had been going on for more than a year, it felt like it was no longer a silly infatuation after all.

"Hurry and wake up, will you?" Satoru gently brushed your hair aside, his eyes fixed on you. He didn't know it even as his gut twisted, his frown deepened and his touch quivered, that he was worried sick. "I have a lot to make up for."

And he left you with a tender brush of his lips against your forehead.

Nanami Kento was the first person you saw when you awoke from coma.

You struggled to regain your senses, still feeling absolutely broken. The dull throb on the back of your head was still there, and as if you had found yourself trapped in a fog, you were only able to move sluggishly.

"You're awake?" his gruff voice greeted, laced with concern. In his hand were a bucket of fresh flowers and fruits basket, which he soon placed at the table next to your bed.

It was unexpected, because ever since the tragedy that costed Haibara's life, the two of you had been drifting apart.

You nodded, and let out a hum in response—all you could manage at the moment.

"Thank God." Nanami sounded relieved as he pinched the bridge between his eyes, and you were moved that he had shown this degree of concern.

Your remaining classmate, who suffered the burden of Haibara's life just like you. He was always quiet or brooding somewhere, hiding his own feelings.

You felt tears pricking the corner of your eyes. The fact that he visited you meant that he hadn't decided to cut you out of his life yet.

"Gojo-san is out today, but he'll be back by afternoon," he said, mistranslating your tears as some sort of a want to have your annoying—ex?—boyfriend at your side.

The two of you were still not on talking terms, weren’t you?

You so badly wanted to say thank you to him—and tell him that no, you weren't looking for Satoru—but it came out hoarse and barely above a whisper.

"Huh?" Nanami then realized what you were trying to say, and a faint smile graced his lips. "Just... get well soon, L/N. Have a good rest."

Just before you drifted back to sleep, you could hear him sigh and mutter, "Hello, Gojo-san? L/N has awakened. Just letting you know is all.”

You weren't sure how much time had passed when you woke up the second time, but the curtains were already drawn and only darkness came from the window. Your body felt lighter, but you still felt like a mess and and couldn't help but groan in discomfort.

Satoru was there, he perked up at the noise you made. And you realized that it was the first time in about a week that he faced you after that disasterous almost-breakup.

He walked up to you, his expression was more hopeful than you had ever seen him before, like a kid whose wish had been granted. He slowly shifted to sit beside you.

"Hey, welcome back." His voice was soft. It was a change of pace for him, as you were used to seeing him all loud and silly.

Now your voice no longer sounds like a lead. "Hey."

"How are you feeling?" he asked and you took a moment to look at him. He was smiling, but exhaustion reached his bright eyes, dimming them. "You know, with the whole you passing out and almost dying thing?"

His words were almost humorous as he spoke, like he didn't know what else to say except try to lighten the mood, but there was also a strain on his tone, like he was holding back.

"I'm quite fine now, I suppose..." You still felt the lingering pain and dizziness as you slowly sat up. Satoru reached out to steady you—and you realized how his fingers trembled when they made contact with your body—as his brows furrowed with worry when you winced.

"You don't look like it though." His voice dropped and the humor was gone, replaced by this haunted look. You blinked. It was probably the first time you had seem him this ruffled.

He immediately pulled you into a hug, cradling your head to his neck gently, as if to protect and shield you from the world altogether. Exhaling heavily, he leaned on you. "You scared me, you know that?"

You wondered out loud if you really had that hold over him. "Did I?"

"You can't do that to me, you hear?" Satoru stroked your hair, nuzzling his face on the crook of your neck. His voice quivered. “Don't ever do that again.”

He pulled you tighter against him, but still careful not to crush you.

You let out a snicker, letting go of everything you felt during this horrible week. "Heh, afraid to lose me, huh?"

"Shut up,” he grumbled. “What were you thinking anyway? How did you calculate that freefalling is better than letting that cursed spirit attack Ichiji?”

"He was defenseless. He could die, you know that."

"And you also can," he quipped, upset, pulling away enough to look you squarely in the eyes, his eyes devoid of any expression, yet filled with a raging wave that you could only interpret as undiluted concern.

The emphasis in his tone made you recoil and feel guilty. If you were in his shoes, you probably would've said the same thing and so you had nothing to say to that.

But the more pressing agenda in the list was the unspoken silent treatment the two of you saw fit to use against each other for the last few days. Satoru was the one who decided to address it first.

"About that night..." he faltered, looking away. "I didn't mean what I said. I'm sorry."

Satoru always had trouble processing emotions. This time too. He must've a hard time dealing with the anxiety caused by the possibility of him losing you for good, no matter how much he tried to be unaware of it.

"..." You wanted to respond, to make him understand your point, but somehow right now you were just too weary. And he sensed your reluctance. So you blurted the first thing that gnawed at your mind.

“You said you could have any other women out there—”

"No, really—" he started to panic, and it was blatantly too, which surprised you. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Us. I don't regret anything. I’m not breaking up with you. Being with you is the happiest I've been ever since Suguru left."

“That's...” you blinked, before letting out a small sigh. “Okay. Fine then. Let's just put it behind us for now.”

“I—” he almost wheezed, his bright blue eyes were overtaken with sheer urgency to explain how wrong everything had been that night. “You must know that I didn’t mean any of it. And that I hate hurting you the way I did. I won’t—”

"Satoru, I understand," you let out another sigh, fidgeting with your fingers. "Sometimes when I’m reminded of Haibara, I also get sad. I don't want to presume but I think I know how you feel. Just next time, maybe," you shifted your gaze on him, seeing how you had his attention fully. Gojo Satoru, the strongest now, was looking at you as if you had his fate in your hands. "Just tell me if you need space and I would have understood."

"Yeah, okay, sure," he responded immediately, relieved, before a lopsided grin appeared on his face, turning him back into your dork slash boyfriend. "So, am I forgiven now?"

"A thank you would be nice."

In the end, he chuckled, seemingly resigned. "You should sleep more."

He positioned himself into bed next to you, and you let him pull you into his chest again. You could feel how his taut back started to relax upon the contact. He pressed his lips on your forehead in a fleeting kiss.

"Promise me you won't pull that stunt again.”

You smirked. "I can't. What if Ichiji—"

"Then just let him die."

You swatted his arm playfully, pressing your head to his chest as he continued to run his fingers on your hair. He cushioned you carefully, and you felt the tension in him slowly melt away with each breath you took. In your mind, you figured he needed this closeness more than you did, if anything, for the sake of his sanity.

“I love you,” he whispered by your ear, kissing it lightly.

“Mmhm.”

As you felt Satoru's calming presence, it helped ease you into slumber. You soon found yourself in a deep sleep, comfortably held in his embrace.

Epilogue

Ichiji gulped as Satoru stared him down, sizing him up as if he was the most despicable creature on this planet.

Okay, he might be. He was a coward, all he could do was trembling in the face of evil. But he had come in peace, even bringing fruits as an offering! He felt bad too that he was the partial cause for you to be this injured.

He was used to Satoru terrorizing him—calling him names, slapping him, and whatnot—and he could take it. Just this time, he really looked like he could murder him on the spot if he wanted to. A small part of Ichiji mourned that you were his girlfriend, because that pretty much sealed his fate that Gojo Satoru could indeed murder him on the spot because he had a valid enough reason to.

"You are—"

"No! I'm sorry, Gojo-san! I'm sorry for my incompetence!"

"Hah?"

If he was mildly irked before, now Satoru was visibly irritated.

"You're not cut out to be a jujutsu sorcerer," he started. "You're useless. You just get in the way most of the time."

Ichiji kept his head down. No, no. He can't cry!

"Get your driving license or I'll slap the shit out of you."

"Oh?" and before he knew it, Satoru had stalked away, leaving him in the dust. How rude! But...

Get a driver license? Quit the jujutsu work?

Hey, that sounds like something I can do!

10K notes · View notes

foone · 6 months ago

Text

AAA games? Pfft. Indie games? Double pfft.

I only play games from the alternate history where Hillary Clinton was elected in 2008 and banned all video games. You can only imagine how weird their underground gaming scene is. People like to call unlicensed games "bootlegs" but they've got actual bootlegged games! I've played games about helping your grandmother in hospice care realize she's a lesbian by reading Sappho to her, at 2am in a speakeasy in Baltimore. The cops raided it the next night, hundreds of Gamers were arrested. They posted pictures all over Friendster of the Baltimore PD destroying the arcades with axes.

I nearly got busted once because I was imaging old disks from a 386 and someone tipped off the gaming cops that there was a copy of Commander Keen in there. I had to prove that I didn't know it, I was imaging the disks blind and then indexing them later, and I would of course turn over any contraband to the proper authorities.

I was already on a watch list because I'd been known to have some gamedev-related activities pre-ban. They can't arrest me for making games back in 2007 when it was still legal, but they do want to keep an eye on me since I have the skills to break the law.

Anyway that universe's bootlegs are mainly PC games. Can't really have console games if there hasn't been a console release since the Wii/PS3/360 era. At one point Nintendo threatened to release the Wii SDK so game devs in the US could make unlicensed games, but that didn't happen as there were quickly no functional Wiis left in the US, except for very rare holdouts that never move. PC games are easy to distribute samizdat and hide on a USB stick or CD-R labeled "nickelback".

Japan's games industry is still going, so the later Nintendo and Sony consoles still exist, but Microsoft got out of the business of course. They sold the franchise to Sega who were hoping to release the 360 successor (the Xbox One in our universe) as the Sega Phoenix but it never materialized, either through their own financial incompetence or because of pressure from the US. There's a lot of international treaties that the US has pushed "and this aid only goes through if you ban games" clauses into. That would have been an official UN resolution if the USSR hadn't vetoed it. For once, thank God for the security council, eh?

I mainly get my gaming news through Japanese gaming sites (through a set of VPNs, since they're blocked at the border firewall), and some tor onion site run by a weird guy in Minnesota who is obsessed with documenting all the underground US games.

There's a lot being worked on, but it's always a tricky trade off. Too much attention and the police might be able to track down the creators, and it's basically impossible to fund underground games, as the VISA/PayPal etc funds get seized immediately. There's a whole task force for that.

Anyway one of the weirdest differences between our two time lines is that they've gone back and edited out gaming from a bunch of movies. Those that they can, of course. War games was just banned because they couldn't remove the tic tac toe ending. The Net just removed the scene at the beginning where she's playing Wolfenstein 3D, by recording some new screen footage and a new voice over. She's fixing a spreadsheet in the new edition.

(Yes, I've seen The Net from this alternate timeline. On Laserdisc, of course. I'm just that kind of person!)

They even edited Star Wars. You know that scene where R2-D2 is playing holochess with Chewie? They edited it to be a board game instead of holograms, because that made it too "video gamey".

Technically it's not illegal to show gaming in a movie, but it needs to be an 18+ film and you have to show the deleterious effects of gaming and/or the gamesters coming to a bad end.

This has affected films less than you'd think, to be honest. They were never great about showing video games even before they banned them.

Anyway, go have fun playing your AAA games with hundred-million-dollar budgets. I only play indie games made by people under a constant threat of arrest for their art.

#Video games #Unreality

2K notes · View notes

januaryembrs · 7 months ago

Note

i love your sunshine!reader x specer fics so much and ngl it's one of the best spencer fics i've ever read. i was wondering how the team would react to them dating? did anyone ever suspect that there was something going on between them or were they completely clueless??

PDA | Spencer Reid x Sunshine!Reader

description: Sunshine reader is worried about telling Unit Chief Prentiss about their budding relationship, despite Spencer telling her she's being dramatic.

length: 1.8k

warnings: fluff, TINY BIT OF HOTCHNISS BECAUSE I AM STILL MAD ABOUT THEIR SCENE AT JJ'S WEDDING I have never been blue ballsed so hard.

“Sweetheart, I think you need to calm down,” Spencer’s voice was calm and soothing, as was his hand that skirted down her arm to take hers in his own. Her palm was warm, the tiniest bit clammy as he meshed their fingers together, and stroked over the back of her knuckles with his thumb, “It’s only Emily,”

“I know, I know, it’s just,” She conceded, and she smushed her face into his chest as a last ditch effort to revel in his affection before they had to go back to remaining professional, the elevator quickly approaching the sixth floor, “I feel like we’re breaking the rules. Are you positive it said nothing in the papers about workplace relationships?”

“I would stake my life on it, believe me. Me and page fifty nine, sub section five, clause three are tight as can be,” Spencer reassured, after he had spent a good seven minutes reading through their entire contract, front and back, in an attempt to make her feel better because she knew she couldn’t keep a secret if her life depended on it, even more so couldn’t keep her hands and lips off Spencer for such an extended amount of time now she’d had him.

He watched the illuminated digits flick from four to five, and he yielded his restraint just the tiniest bit, knowing they might not get a chance to love on eachother so unapologetically until the work day was over. Spencer brought his hand that wasn’t wound tightly in her own around her shoulders, squeezing her to him with a pressed kiss to her forehead, the gesture full of eight hours worth of affections.

Five turned to six just a little too fast for his liking and he was forced to let go of her as the doors slid open, trying to ignore the saddened expression on her face as they parted, the way her lips turned into a pout like a kicked puppy.

“Good morning, my angels!” Penelope chirped, a sweet coffee with a buttload of creamer swirling around her octopus mug as she headed for her office, walking right past the two agents who looked like they’d forgotten how to behave normally.

“Morning, Penelope,” She sang back, smiling at the woman who hummed as she walked, a skip in her step, yet the second the tech analyst entered her lair, the younger slapped a hand on Spencer’s arm, turning to him with wide eyes, “Oh my god, she knew!”

He chuckled, shaking his head and resting a hand on her lower back, leading her to the bullpen as she fretted, “Relax, she did not know. And even if she did, we’re not doing anything wrong,” He cooed, thankful that the floor was empty besides Emily where she poked around her office, moving some folders between her desk and cabinet, “Derek dated pretty much every woman on the second floor within the first term of me being here, Penelope dated Kevin from Internal Affairs for years,”

“But that’s, like, between floors, between departments. There’s no way they can get distracted if there’s a whole bunch of concrete and carpet between them,” She explained, and the two of them headed for their joint desk so they could set their bags down, “When I look at you, I get side tracked thinking about your beautiful hair and your stupidly handsome face and kissing you and-” She puffed her cheeks out, flustered already.

“That sounds really difficult for you, I don’t know how you ever get anything done.” Spencer said with an indulging smile, because his favourite thing might just be humouring her. Besides kissing her and everything that came with it ofcourse.

“It’s a struggle, I’ll tell you now,” She said, almost unaware he wasn’t being serious as she looked at him finally, the glint in his eyes he got when he was teasing her, “It is. I nearly tipped coffee over my lap yesterday because you fixed your hair, it’s infuriating.”

He smiled, fighting every urge in him that wanted to pull her back into his chest and kiss her face a dozen times, because he knew she wasn’t joking when she said she was worried about breaking the rules. He knew Emily would be fine with them dating, they’d all turned a blind eye to the clear tension and lingering glances that had gone between her and Hotch for years, but he hated seeing her so frazzled, so he complied with her strict no PDA rule.

He would just have to give it to her twice over later, when they were alone, and the thought of it excited him already.

“Alright, alright, let’s do this. Am I speaking or are you speaking?” She asked, rubbing her sweating hands over her legs, and he shrugged.

“I’ll do the talking, will you just do something for me,” He said, his voice calm and collected as he took the stairs, her footsteps nervously trailing behind him.

“Sure, anything,” She said, looking up at him with wide eyes where he stood a whole step above her.

“Take a deep breath,” He reminded her, grinning when he heard her pause and do as he’d said, because this was just Emily.

“I’m sorry,” She mumbled, meeting him at the top of the landing, where he waited by the office door, watching her with gentle eyes, “I just really don’t want to mess anything up, least of all with you,”

He quickly tucked a slither of hair behind her ear in guilty pleasure, “You’re not messing anything up, I promise.” He murmured, his cadence low and calming because she already seemed worked up and they hadn’t even opened the door, “You ready?”

She nodded after another deep breath, and he knocked on the door with those boney knuckles of his.

Barely waiting for Emily to invite them in, he strode into the office, her trailing behind him like she was waiting for a scolding, and Spencer simply cleared his throat.

“Everything okay?” Emily asked, her dark eyes scanning between the two of them, a look of concern flitting over her face, “Why do you guys have a weird look on your face? Did you chip Penelope’s mug again? Was it the good one? Oh man, she’ll kill you, that was her favourite-”

The rookie shook her head, and before she could breath and regulate like Spencer had been trying to tell her it happened; the word vomit she’d been shoving down for fifteen days, “We’re dating! We’re seeing each other together, I mean were seeing together, I mean wait, hang on-”

Spencer put a hand on her shoulder to hush her, and she stopped then and there, sensing he could take over for her, because she’d quickly realised she was not one to handle pressure.

“What she means to say is we’re dating, and according to page fifty nine, sub section five, clause three of our contract, workplace relations are acceptable as long as they aren’t hindrance to either the team or the work, so,” Spencer tucked his hand into his pocket, the other still gentle as it stroked her back soothingly, “Is that okay?”

Emily shrugged, her lips twitching to hide the broad smile that begged to be released.

“That seems reasonable to me,” She said politely, looking to where the rookie seemed to have found her words.

“Th-that’s it, we’re not in trouble?” She asked on bated breath, her brows furrowed and confused.

“Look, are you guys happy?” She nodded vehemently immediately, and Emily threw her hands up, “Then, there you go. As long as there’s no funny business in the office, it’s none of my concern,”

“Funny business?” She asked, and Spencer ran a hand over her braid she’d twisted into running down the back of her head, a small smile tugging at his lips, as he and Emily exchanged a look.

“No bang bang on company time,” Emily said plainly, ignoring the way the girl stiffened, her face hot and embarrassed as she shook her head.

“Never, no, never. Never ever,” She spluttered, and Spencer took it as his signal to get her some space, “None of that ever, Emily, you don’t have to worry-”

“Who broke the rookie?” Tara asked, entering Emily’s office with a stack of folders in her arms, her eyes quickly zeroing in on the way Reid’s arm wrapped around her waist, and she turned to Emily with a knowing smirk, “You owe me ten bucks, Prentiss,”

“Hold on, you guys bet on us?” Spencer asked, his expression dropping because he’d thought that the two of them had been subtle the past few weeks, even if his sweet girlfriend looked like she was keeping bees in her mouth every time there was a pause, like the secret had been begging to come out any second it got.

Emily seemed guilty, though perhaps scathed would be a better term as she fished a bill out of her purse and handed it to Tara.

“JJ owes forty, so I’m not too torn up about it,” She replied, catching JJ’s bluebell hues as she swanned past the office window, her eyes narrowing on the way the youngest agent was all but pressed into Spencer’s ribcage, the two of them looking like they wanted the ground to swallow them whole.

Her face morphed into chagrin, “Two more weeks, and I would have been up by sixty bucks, you guys,” She bit at the happy couple, turning on her heel to where Luke was sipping coffee at his desk, clueless to the meeting they were having in Emily’s office, “Alvez, cough up. They told Emily already,”

There was some sound of indignation from the desks below as Luke rummaged through his wallet, and Tara looked like that cat that got the cream as the wads of dollar bills made their way to her.

“This is gross misconduct of workplace trust,” Spencer said, his lips pursed into something annoyed, and he could feel the way her face burnt with embarrassment without even having to look at her, “Alright, we are going out to get coffee, since we’re the only ones who know how to handle things like adults,”

He led her out with a tight, protective grip, shielding her mortified expression from the rest of the office as they got back into the elevator, and he damned himself when he let her hug into his chest again, though this time it was to hide her humiliation in his shirt.

“It’s okay, at least it’s out there now. No more secrets,” He comforted, and she nodded silently, her cheeks still on fire where the shame weaselled its way out of her face, “And, hey, it’s not like they can go on forever. They’ll have to give up some time,”

The group watched the doors close behind them, Luke immediately turning to the three women with an impish look in his eye, “Twenty says they’ll engage within a year,” Tara scoffed, waving her money in his face as Emily rooted around for more money, “You’re on, I give it eight months,”

#spencer reid x reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fanfiction #criminal minds x reader

2K notes · View notes

martian-astro10 · 12 days ago

Text

Astrology observations - Part 5 (use whole signs)

🌶️ I've noticed that Saturn in 8th house people always end up having to give their hard earned Money to their in-laws, like they're never able to keep it and if not in-laws then they end up losing it in some other way.

🍵 Saturn in 10th house people usually have a very bad relationship with their fathers, I know so many people with this and it's true for all of them (tbf, their fathers deserve it, so I don't blame them). Whenever i visit them, their father will start fighting even when I'm present 🥲 like some parents atleast pretend to be on good terms in front of others, but theirs do not.

🌶️ On the other hand, moon in 9th house people are usually very close to their father. He may not always be emotionally present in their lives but they still have this desire to prove their worth to him. But most people I know, who have this, actually love their dad and frequently spend time with him. It's cute.

🍵Mars/Sun in the 1st house people are some of the most ambitious individuals. I noticed that many billionaires have this. It doesn't mean that they're good at what they do, it's more like, they'll step over anyone to get what they want, can be greedy as well. If a person has sun AND mars in 1st..... don't mess with them, because they will RUIN your life.

🌶️ Jupiter in 2nd house people suck at financial management, these people are so talented and will do a great job, get paid a hefty amount, and then just lose all that money, I actually don't even know how they manage to do it, but they just do 😭. If you have this, please give your salary to someone more responsible and only then will you be able to become rich.

🍵3rd lord in 12th house people ALWAYS do better in life when they leave their birth land. Nothing goes their way as long as they stay where they were born, but once they move abroad, it's like, their whole personality changes (in a good way), they also start feeling more comfortable in expressing their talents.

🌶️ Sun in 2nd house people are REALLY good singers, I don't know about the celebrities, but we have so many amazing singers in our university and all of them have sun in 2nd house, the type depends on the sign. But all of them have such a beautiful voice.

🍵 Saturn in 2nd house people are the ones who act like the elder sibling even when they're the youngest or the only child. Idk how to explain it, but they just have the "oldest child" energy. They're very responsible and I know people with this, whose parents did not treat them in a good way and yet they do not hold a grudge, they're like "it's okay, they were also having problems of their own, so I get it, I know they actually love me" and it's.....kind of sad. But also, very inspiring in a way. They're also very very responsible with money. They know how hard it is to earn before they even start working themselves.

🌶️ Mars in 3rd...these people....first of all, if you're reading this, please learn to talk slowly bro. These people always be talking like they gonna miss out some shit 😭, like bro calm down. Also, they wanna argue ALL THE TIME. I have a friend with this and and she makes ME cry with how long she's able to argue, they will make you agree with them before they leave you alone. So now whenever she says something that I don't agree with, I just go "yeah, you're actually right" cuz I'm NOT taking risks.

🍵 Mercury in 3rd house people can be amazing journalists and writers. They really have this ability to make you FEEL things through their writing, especially if it's in a water sign. Can be very passionate about certain social causes as well. I know two people with this and both of them have a secret twitter and Tumblr account and they refuse to tell us the username. So, they like to fight for things, from behind the scenes and avoid spotlight.

#saturn in 8th house #saturn in 10th house #moon in 9th house #mars in 1st house #sun in 1st house #jupiter in 2nd house #3rd lord in 12th house #sun in 2nd house #saturn in 2nd house #mars in 3rd house #mercury in 3rd house #astrology observations #astrology #astroblr #astrology community #astrology content #astro notes #astro community

512 notes · View notes

badnewswhatsleft · 29 days ago

Text

rock sound #312 (nov 2024)

transcript below cut:

ROCK SOUND 25 ICON

FALL OUT BOY

A BAND THAT CAPTURED THE HEARTS, MINDS AND HEADPHONES OF A GENERATION OF KIDS WORLDWIDE, FALL OUT BOY UNDOUBTEDLY CHANGED THE LANDSCAPE OF THE ALTERNATIVE SCENE FOREVER, NEVER AFRAID TO EXPERIMENT, TAKE CHANCES AND MAKE BOLD CHOICES AS THEY PUSHED FORWARD. FOLLOWING A SUMMER SPENT EXPLORING THE 'DAYS OF FALL OUT PAST', PATRICK STUMP AND PETE WENTZ REFLECT ON THEIR PATH FROM POP PUNK, HARDCORE MISFITS TO ALL-CONQUERING, STADIUM-FILLING SONGWRITERS AS THEY ACCEPT THEIR ROCK SOUND 25 ICON AWARD.

WORDS JAMES WILSON-TAYLOR

PHOTOS ELLIOTT INGHAM

Let's begin with your most recent performance which was at When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas. It was such a special weekend, how are you reflecting on that moment?

PATRICK: It's wild, because the band, I think, is going on 23 years now, which really came as a surprise to me. I know it's this thing that old people always say, 'Man, it really goes by so fast', but then it happens to you and you're just taken aback. There were so many times throughout the weekend, every 10 minutes, where I'd turn around and see somebody and be like, 'Holy shit, I haven't seen you in 18 years', or something crazy like that. It was hard not to have a good time. When I was going up to perform with Motion City Soundtrack, which was an exciting thing in itself, I turn around and Bayside is there. And I haven't seen Bayside since we toured with them. God, I don't remember when that was, you know? So there was so much of that. You couldn't help but have a good time.

PETE: I mean, that's an insane festival, right? When they announce it, it looks fake every time. The lineup looks like some kid drew it on their folder at school. For our band, the thing that's a little weird, I think, is that by deciding to change between every album, and then we had the three year break which caused another big time jump, I think that it would be hard for us to focus on one album for that show. We're a band where our fans will debate the best record. So it was amazing that we were able to look backwards and try to build this show that would go through all the eras - nod to Taylor obviously on that one. But it's also an insane idea to take a show that should really be put on for one weekend in a theatre and then try to take it around the world at festivals. The whole time on stage for this particular show production, I'm just like 'Is this thing going to go on time?' Because if the whole thing is working totally flawlessly, it just barely works, you know what I mean? So I give a lot of credit to our crew for doing that, because it's not really a rock show. I know we play rock music and it's a rock festival, but the show itself is not really a rock production, and our crew does a very good job of bending that to fit within the medium.

That show allows you to nod to the past but without falling fully into nostalgia. You are still pushing the band into newer places within it.

PATRICK: That's always been a central thing. We're a weird band, because a lot of bands I know went through a period of rejecting their past, and frankly, I encounter this thing a lot, where people have expected that we stopped interacting with older material. But we always maintained a connection with a lot of the older music. We still close with 'Saturday'. So for us, it was never about letting go of the past. It was about bringing that along with you wherever you go. I'm still the same weird little guy that likes too much music to really pin down. It's just that I've carried that with me through all the different things that I've done and that the band has done. So for us, in terms of going forward and playing new stuff, that's always the thing that's important to me; that there should be new stuff to propel it. I never wanted to be an artist that just gave up on new music and went out and played the hits and collected the check and moved on. It's all got to be creative. That's why I do it. I want to make new music. That's always why I do it. So something like When We Were Young is kind of odd really. It's an odd fit for that, because it's nostalgic, which is not really my vibe all that much. But I found a lot of nostalgia in it. I found a lot of value in looking back and going 'Wow, this was really cool. It was amazing that we did this, that we all did this'. That scene of bands, we're all old now, but it has taken off into such a moment culturally that people can point to.

Let's jump all the way back to the first ever Fall Out Boy show. There is very little evidence of it available online but what are your memories of that performance?

PATRICK: So the very first Fall Out Boy show was at DePaul University in a fancy looking dining hall. I actually applied to DePaul, but I never went there because the band went on tour. I think there were only two or three other bands. One was a band called Stillwell, who were kind of a math rock emo band, and then this heavier, more metallic band. And then we were there, and we had a guitar player, John Flamandan, who I have not seen since that show. He was only in the band for a week or two, and we were still figuring ourselves out. We had three songs and I had never sung before in front of people. I did a talent show at school one time when I was a kid and theatre kind of stuff where you would sing, but it was more in that context. And I was also a kid too. This was the first time ever that I'm the singer for a band and I was fucking terrified. We had a drummer named Ben Rose, really great guy. I haven't seen Ben in a million years, either, but we were still figuring ourselves out. The other thing is that all of us, with me being the exception, were in other bands, and all of our other bands were better than Fall Out Boy was. We were very sloppy and didn't know what we were doing, and so I don't think any of us really took it seriously. But there was a thing that was really funny about it, where even though we kind of thought we sucked, and even though we weren't really focusing on it, we had a lot of fun with each other. We enjoyed trying this other thing, because we were hardcore kids, and we were not the pop punk kids and the pop punk bands in town, that was like 'the thing', and we were not really welcome in that. There was a fun in trying to figure out how to make melodic and pop music when we really didn't have any history with that. It was very obvious that we didn't know what we were doing at the beginning.

So when did it begin to feel like things were finally clicking? When did you find your roles and what you wanted the band to be?

PETE: In regards to the music, I liked Fall Out boy, way before I probably should have. I remember playing the early demos and it giving me a feeling that I hadn't felt with any of the other bands that I had been in. Now, looking back on it, I might have been a tad early on that. Then as far as the roles, I think that they've been carving themselves out over time. We've always allowed ourselves to gravitate to our strengths. Between me and Patrick, we'd probably make one great, atypical rock artist if we were one person. Because our strengths are things that the other doesn't love as much. But I think that what has happened more is it's less of a fight now and there's more trust. We have a trust with each other. There's things that Patrick will play for me or explain to me, and I don't even really need him to explain it, because I trust him. I may not totally understand it, but I trust him as an artist. On the other side of that, it's also very nice to have someone who can veto your idea, you know what I mean? It's nice to have those kind of checks and balances.

PATRICK: I had been in this band called Patterson, and all three of the other guys sang in kind of a gravelly, Hot Water Music vibe. I was not intending to be a singer, but I would try and sing backups and, it wasn't a criticism, but there was this vibe that, while I could do the gravelly thing, my voice was coming through and it didn't fit. It was too pretty and that became a thing I was kind of embarrassed of. So when Fall Out Boy started, I was actively trying to disguise that and mute it and hide behind affectation. Pete would really push me to stretch my vowels because that was in vogue in pop punk at the time. There were all these different ways that we were trying to suppress me, musically, because we were just trying to figure out how to do the things that the bands we liked did. But that wasn't really us, you know? It's really funny, because 'Take This To Your Grave' was recorded in three sections, about six months apart. Over the course of that time, I can hear us figuring it out. I think a really defining moment for me was 'Saturday', because I am not brave, I am not a bold person, and I do not put myself out there. When I was showing the band 'Saturday', we were jamming on the bit after the second chorus, and I was mumbling around, just mucking my way through it, and I did the falsetto thing. I didn't think anyone could hear me over us bashing around in Joe's parents house in this tiny little room. But Pete stopped, and he goes, 'Do that again'. I was so terrified of doing that in front of these guys, because you gotta remember, I was incredibly shy, but also a drummer. I'd never sung in front of anyone before, and now I'm singing in a band and I'm certainly not going to take chances. So I thought the falsetto thing was really not going to happen, but when I did it, there was this really funny thing. Somehow that song clicked, and it opened up this door for us where we do something different than everybody else. We were aiming to be a pop punk or hardcore band, but we found this thing that felt more natural to me.

As you embarked on Warped Tour, simultaneously you were finding this huge level of pop and mainstream success. How was it navigating and finding your way through those two very different spaces?

PATRICK: I used to work at a used record store and what shows up is all the records after their success. So I got really acquainted and really comfortable with and prepared for the idea of musical failure. I just wanted to do it because I enjoyed doing it. But in terms of planning one's life, I was certain that I would, at most, get to put out a record and then have to go to school when it didn't work out. My parents were very cautious. I said to them after 'Take This To Your Grave' came out that I'm gonna see where this goes, because I didn't expect to be on a label and get to tour. I'm gonna give it a semester, and then it will almost certainly fail, and then after it fails, I'll go to school. And then it didn't fail. Warped Tour was very crazy too, I was talking about this at When We Were Young with My Chem. Both of us were these little shit bands that no one cared about when we booked the tour. Then we got to the tour, and all these people were showing up for us, way more than we expected, way more than Warped Tour expected. So Warped Tour was putting both of us on these little side stages, and the stages would collapse because people were so excited. It was this moment that came out of nowhere all of a sudden. Then we go to Island Records, and I had another conversation with my parents, because every band that I had known up to that point, even the biggest bands in town, they would have their big indie record and then they would go to the major label and drop off the face of the planet forever. So I was certain that was going to happen. I told them again, I'm going to put out this record, and then I'll go to school when this fails.

PETE: I think that if you really wanted someone to feel like an alien, you would put them on TRL while they were on Warped Tour. You know what I mean? Because it is just bananas. On our bus, the air conditioning didn't work, so we were basically blowing out heat in the summer, but we were just so happy to be on a bus and so happy to be playing shows. You go from that to, two days later, stepping off the bus to brush your teeth and there's a line of people wanting to watch you brush your teeth. In some ways, it was super cool that it was happening with My Chemical Romance too because it didn't feel as random, right? It feels more meant to be. It feels like something is happening. To be on Warped Tour at that time - and if you weren't there, it would be probably hard to imagine, because it's like if Cirque Du Soleil had none of the acrobatics and ran on Monster energy drink. It was a traveling circus, but for it to reach critical mass while we were there, in some ways, was great, because you're not just sitting at home. In between touring, I would come home and I'd be sitting in my bedroom at my parents house. I would think about mortality and the edge of the whole thing and all these existential thoughts you feel when you're by yourself. But on Warped Tour, you go to the signing, you play laser tag, you go to the radio station. So in some ways, it's like you're in this little boot camp, and you don't really even think about anything too much. I guess it was a little bit of a blur.

Pete, when you introduced 'Bang The Doldrums' at When We Were Young, you encouraged the crowd to 'keep making weird shit'. That could almost be a mantra for the band as a whole. Your weirder moments are the ones that made you. Even a song like 'Dance Dance' has a rhythm section you never would have expected to hear on a rock track at that time.

PETE: You know, I just watched 'Joker 2' and I loved it. I do understand why people wouldn't because it subverts the whole thing. It subverts everything about the first one. That's something I've always really loved, when I watch artists who could keep making the same thing, and instead they make something that's challenging to them or challenging to their audience. Sometimes you miss, sometimes you do a big thing and you miss, and we've definitely done that. But I gotta say, all the things that I've really loved about art and music, and that has enriched my life, is when people take chances. You don't get the invention of anything new without that. To not make weird stuff would feel odd, and I personally would much rather lose and miss doing our own thing. To play it safe and cut yourself off around the edges and sand it down and then miss also, those are the worst misses, because you didn't even go big as yourself. This is where we connect with each other, we connect by our flaws and the little weird neuroses that we have. I rarely look at something and go 'Wow, that safe little idea really moved me'. I guess it happens, but I think about this with something like 'Joker 2' where this director was given the keys and you can just do anything. I think a lot of times somebody would just make an expected follow up but some people turn right when they're supposed to turn left. That's always been interesting on an artistic level, but at the same time, I think you're more likely to miss big when you do that.

PATRICK: Going into 'From Under The Cork Tree', I had this sense that this is my only shot. It has already outperformed what I expected. I don't want to be locked into doing the same thing forever, because I know me. I know I'm not Mr. Pop Punk, that's just one of many things I like. So I would be so bummed if for the rest of my life, I had to impersonate myself from when I was 17 and have to live in that forever. So I consciously wanted to put a lot of weird stuff on that record because I thought it was probably my only moment. 'Sugar, We're Goin Down' was a fairly straight ahead pop punk song but even that was weird for us, because it was slow. I remember being really scared about how slow it was, because it's almost mosh tempo for the whole song, which was not anything we had done up to that point. But in every direction, in every song, I was actively trying to push the boundaries as much as I could. 'Dance, Dance' was one of those ones where I was seeing what I can get away with, because I might never get this chance again. We were on tour with a friend's band, and I remember playing the record for them. I remember specifically playing 'Our Lawyer…' that opens the record, which has that 6/8 time feel, and they kind of look at me, like 'What?'. Then I played 'Dance, Dance', and they're like, 'Hey man, you know, whatever works for you. It's been nice knowing you'. But I just knew that, on the off chance that I ended up still being a musician in my 40s, I wanted to still love the music that we made. I didn't want to ever resent it. It's ironic because people say that bands sell out when they don't make the same thing over and over again. But wait a second. Say that again. Think about that.

That attitude seemed to carry directly into 'Infinity On High'. If you may never end up doing this again then let's make sure we bring in the orchestra while we still can...

PATRICK: That was literally something that I did say to myself this might be the last time, the likelihood is we're going to fail because that's what happens, so this might be the last time that I ever get a chance to have somebody pay for an orchestra and a choir. I always think of The Who when they did 'A Quick One, While He's Away' and there's a part where they go 'cello, cello', because they couldn't afford real cellos, they couldn't afford players. That's what I thought would happen for me in life. So I went in and thought, let's do it all. Let's throw everything at the wall, because there's no chance that it's going to happen again. So many things came together on that record, but I didn't expect it. 'Arms Race' was a very weird song, and I was shocked when management went along with it and had kind of decided that would be the single. I was in disbelief. It did not feel like a single but it worked for us. It was a pretty big song and then 'Thnks Fr Th Mmrs' was easily the big hit off that record. So then we have two hit songs off of an album that I didn't even know would come out at that point. But again, it was very much just about taking the risks and seeing what the hell happened.

As you went on hiatus for a few years, you worked on a number of other creative projects. How did those end up influencing your approach to the band when you returned?

PETE: On the areas of the band where I led, I wanted to be a better leader. When you're younger and you're fighting for your ideas, I don't think that I was the greatest listener. I just wanted to be a better cog in the machine. When you're in a band originally, no one gives you the little band handbook and says 'these are the things you should do', you know? I just wanted to be a better version of who I was in the band.

PATRICK: There's a combination of things. 'Soul Punk' is a weird record. I love that record but I kind of resent that record for so many things. It's my solo record, but it's also not very me in a lot of ways. I had started with a very odd little art rock record, and then I had some personal tragedies happen. My EP that I put out far out sold expectations so then all of a sudden, Island Records goes, 'Oh, we think this could actually be something we want singles for'. I think we had all expected that I would be putting out a smaller indie record but then all of a sudden they were like 'oh, you could be a pop star'. So then I have to retrofit this art rock record into pop star hit music, and also channel personal tragedy through it. I hadn't ever really been a front man - I'd been a singer, but I hadn't really been a front man, and I hadn't really written lyrics, certainly not introspective, personal lyrics. So that whole record is so strange and muted to me. So I went from that album, which also failed so fucking hard - I should have gone to school after that one. But Pete had reached out to me just as a friend, and said 'I know you're in your own thing right now, and I know that you're not the kind of person that is going to be in my fantasy football league, so I'm not going to see you unless we make music. But you're my buddy, and that kind of bums me out that I don't see you at all, so I guess we have to make music'. I thought that was a fairly convincing pitch. It's true, that was what we do when we hang out - we make music. So we reconvene, and going into it, I had all these lessons that really made me understand Pete better, because Pete is the natural front end person. So many of our arguments and frustrations and the things that we didn't see eye to eye on, I grew to understand having now been in the position of the point man that had to make all the decisions for my solo thing. It really flipped my understanding of why he said the things he would say, or why he did things he would do. I remember early on thinking he was so pushy, but then, in retrospect, you realise he was doing it for a reason. There's so many little things that really changed for me doing 'Soul Punk' that were not musical but were more about how you run a band and how you run a business, that made me understand and respect him a lot more.

What are memories of that initial return and, specifically, that tiny first show back at the Metro venue in Chicago?

PETE: Those first shows were definitely magical because I really wasn't sure that we would be on a stage again together. I don't have as many memories of some of our other first things. We were just talking about Warped Tour, I don't have many memories of those because it is almost wasted on you when it's a blur and there's so many things happening. But with this, I really wanted to not take it for granted and wanted to take in all the moments and have snapshots in our own heads of that show. I did a lot of other art during the time when we were off, everybody did, but there's a magic between the four of us and it was nice to know that it was real. When we got on that stage again at the Metro for the first time, there was something that's just a little different. I can't really put my finger on it, but it makes that art that we were making separately different than all the other stuff.

Musically, as you moved forward, everything sounded much bigger, almost ready for arenas and stadiums. Was that a conscious decision on your part?

PETE: Patrick felt like he was bursting with these ideas. It felt like these had been lying in wait, and they were big, and they were out there, and whether he'd saved them for those records, I don't really know. That's what it felt like to me. With 'Save Rock And Roll', we knew we had basically one shot. There were really three options; you'll have this other period in your career, no one will care or this will be the torch that burns the whole thing down. So we wanted to have it be at least on our terms. Then I think with 'American Beauty...' it was slightly different, because we made that record as fast as we could. We were in a pop sphere. Is there a way for a band to be competitive with DJs and rappers in terms of response time? Are we able to be on the scene and have it happen as quickly? I think it kind of made us insane a little bit. With 'American Beauty…', we really realised that we were not going to walk that same path in pop culture and that we would need to 'Trojan horse' our way into the conversation in some way. So we thought these songs could be played in stadiums, that these songs could be end titles. What are other avenues? Because radio didn't want this right now, so what are other avenues to make it to that conversation? Maybe this is just in my head but I thought 'Uma Thurman' could be a sister song to 'Dance, Dance' or maybe even 'Arms Race' where it is weird but it has pop elements to it.

PATRICK: I had a feeling on 'Save Rock And Roll' that it was kind of disjointed. It was a lot of good songs, but they were all over the place. So when we went into 'American Beauty…', I really wanted to make something cohesive. I do think that record is very coherent and very succinct - you either like it or you don't, and that's pretty much it all the way through. By the time we got to 'MANIA', I had done all this production and I'd started to get into scoring. The band had done so many things and taken so many weird chances that I just felt free to do whatever. At that point, no one's going to disown me if I try something really strange so let's see what happens. 'Young And Menace' was a big part of that experiment. People hate that song, and that's okay. It was meant to be challenging, it's obviously not supposed to be a pop song. It's an abrasive song, it should not have been a single. However, I do think that record should have been more like that. Towards the end of the production, there was this scramble of like, 'Oh, fuck, we have no pop music on this and we need to have singles' and things like that. That took over that record and became the last minute push. I think the last half of that record was recorded in the span of two weeks towards the end of the recording to try and pad it with more pop related songs. I look at that record and think it should have all been 'Young And Menace'. That should have been our 'Kid A' or something. It should have really challenged people.

But we have spoken before about how 'Folie à Deux' found its audience much later. It does feel like something similar is already beginning to happen with 'MANIA'...

PETE: I agree with you, and I think that's a great question, because I always thought like that. There's things that you're not there for, but you wish you were there. I always thought about it when we put out 'MANIA', because I don't know if it's for everyone, but this is your moment where you could change the course of history, you know, this could be your next 'Folie à Deux', which is bizarre because they're completely different records. But it also seems, and I think I have this with films and bands and stuff as well, that while one thing ascends, you see people grab onto the thing that other people wouldn't know, right? It's like me talking about 'Joker 2' - why not talk about the first one? That's the one that everybody likes. Maybe it's contrarian, I don't really know. I just purely like it. I'm sure that's what people say about 'Folie à Deux' and 'MANIA' as well. But there's something in the ascent where people begin to diverge, you are able to separate them and go 'Well, maybe this one's just for me and people like me. I like these other ones that other people talk about, but this one speaks to me'. I think over time, as they separate, the more people are able to say that. And then I can say this, because Patrick does music, I think that sometimes he's early on ideas, and time catches up with it a little bit as well. The ideas, and the guest on the record, they all make a little bit more sense as time goes on.

'MANIA' is almost the first of your albums designed for the streaming era. Everything is so different so people could almost pick and choose their own playlist.

PETE: Of course, you can curate it yourself. That's a great point. I think that the other point that you just made me think of is this was the first time where we realised, well, there's not really gatekeepers. The song will raise its hand, just like exactly what you're saying. So we should have probably just had 'The Last Of The Real Ones' be an early single, because that song was the one that people reacted to. But I think that there was still the old way of thinking in terms of picking the song that we think has the best chance, or whatever. But since then, we've just allowed the songs to dictate what path they take. I think that that's brilliant. If I'd had a chance to do that, curate my own record and pick the Metallica songs or whatever,that would be fantastic. So it was truly a learning experience in the way you release art to me.

PATRICK: After 'MANIA', I realised Fall Out Boy can't be the place for me to try everything. It's just not. We've been around for too long. We've been doing things for too long. It can't be my place to throw everything at the wall. There's too much that I've learned from scoring and from production now to put it all into it. So the scoring thing really became even more necessary. I needed it, emotionally. I needed a place to do everything, to have tubas and learn how to write jazz and how to write for the first trumpet. So then going into 'So Much (For) Stardust', it had the effect of making me more excited about rock music again, because I didn't feel the weight of all of this musical experimentation so I could just enjoy writing a rock song. It's funny, because I think it really grew into that towards the end of writing the record. I'd bet you, if we waited another month, it would probably be all more rock, because I had a rediscovered interest in it.

It's interesting you talk about the enjoyment of rock music again because that joy comes through on 'So Much (For) Stardust' in a major way, particularly on something like the title track. When the four of you all hit those closing harmonies together, especially live, that's a moment where everything feels fully cohesive and together and you can really enjoy yourselves. There's still experimental moments on the album but you guys are in a very confident and comfortable space right now and it definitely shows in the music.

PATRICK: Yeah, I think that's a great point. When you talk about experimentation too and comfort, that's really the thing isn't it? This is always a thing that bugged me, because I never liked to jam when I was a kid. I really wanted to learn the part, memorise it and play it. Miles Davis was a side man for 20 years before he started doing his thing. You need to learn the shit out of your music theory and your instrument - you need to learn all the rules before you break them. I always had that mindset. But at this point, we as a band have worked with each other so much that now we can fuck around musically in ways that we didn't used to be able to and it's really exciting. There's just so much I notice now. There are ways that we all play that are really hard to describe. I think if you were to pull any one of the four of us out of it, I would really miss it. I would really miss that. It is this kind of alchemy of the way everyone works together. It's confidence, it's also comfort. It's like there's a home to it that I feel works so well. It's how I'm able to sing the way I sing, or it's how Andy's able to play the way he plays. There's something to it. We unlock stuff for each other.

Before we close, we must mention the other big live moment you had this year. You had played at Download Festival before but taking the headline slot, especially given the history of Donington, must have felt extra special.

PETE: It felt insane. We always have a little bit of nerves about Download, wondering are we heavy enough? To the credit of the fans and the other bands playing, we have always felt so welcomed when we're there. There's very few times where you can look back on a time when... so, if I was a professional baseball player, and I'm throwing a ball against the wall in my parents garage as a kid, I could draw a direct link from the feeling of wanting to do that. I remember watching Metallica videos at Donington and thinking 'I want to be in Metallica at Donington'. That's not exactly how it turned out, but in some ways there is that direct link. On just a personal level, my family came over and got to see the festival. They were wearing the boots and we were in the mud. All this stuff that I would describe to them sounds insane when you tell your family in America - 'It's raining, but people love it'. For them to get to experience that was super special for me as well. We played the biggest production we've ever had and to get to do that there, the whole thing really made my summer.

PATRICK: There's not really words for it. It feels so improbable and so unlikely. Something hit me this last year, this last tour, where I would get out on stage and I'd be like, 'Wait, fucking seriously? People still want to see us and want to hear us?' It feels so strange and surreal. I go home and I'm just some schlubby Dad and I have to take out the compost and I have to remember to run the dishwasher. I live this not very exciting life, and then I get out there at Download and it's all these people. Because I'm naturally kind of shy, for years, I would look down when I played because I was so stressed about what was happening. Confidence and all these have given me a different posture so when I go out there, I can really see it, and it really hits you. Download, like you said, we've done before, but there's something very different about where I am now as a person. So I can really be there. And when you walk out on that stage, it is astounding. It forces you to play better and work harder, because these people waited for us. The show is the audience and your interaction with it. In the same way that the band has this alchemy to it, we can't play a show like that without that audience.

#sir the ''schlubby dad'' in question is getting on stage and GROWLING. people are dying and creaming and dying and cr #time capsule #read the charts #fall out boy #patrick stump #pete wentz #joe trohman #andy hurley

555 notes · View notes

uno-san · 4 months ago

Note

Hiii! Could I rq reader who was Fords gf/so before he left and when he comes back he’s happy bc he realizes reader stayed in Gravity Falls the whole time and maybe even helped Stan fix the portal!

But then Bill comes and it’s totally up to u whether to make Bill like super jealous of reader or become just as obsessed with reader as he is with Ford idk.

Thank u!

Hello! Thanks so much for sending in a request. This is the first thing I've written in FOREVER, so I miiiiight have gotten carried away. Hope you and everybody else enjoys!

It always reminded you of the night sky.

That, or what lied far beyond it. Beyond you, maybe. But never Stanford Pines. Who, in this very moment stood several yards from where you yourself were. The both of you had that strange, not-quite night sky wrapped around your forms. Yet instead of the endless expanse that space was known for, various journals, textbooks, and equations littered that space around you.

It would have been a marvelous sight if you didn’t know the purpose behind this all-too tailored world for Stanford. A trap meant to make him feel seen and applauded in ways you couldn’t quite match. A place for them to meet.

Beside Stanford was another figure. A three-sided one to be exact who had taken place near his shoulder, where he had been far longer than you could have ever known. But here he didn’t need to whisper his lies. Here, the two of them could simply converse and enjoy each other’s company. A wonderful plan to make Stanford feel known while also shutting you out from the light altogether.

Their laughter was uproarious.

“AHAHAHAHA! COME ON, SIXER, YOU DON’T MEAN THAT!”

A shrill voice cut through your observations. The devilish figure that it belonged to had placed his hands over his chest, or stomach, as if he were trying and failing to hold in his joy. His one eye was closed and curved to show a smile that his body didn’t have the means to actually do. His tie meanwhile spun in circles as if a toy had been wound up.

‘Sixer’ had his eyes lowered to the platform of which he stood. Tucked under his arm was one of his prized journals, where each of his six fingers drummed against its spine. He looked bashful under interrogation.

“What, not quite the term your ego would prefer, Bill?” Stanford finally shot back, his gaze raising to meet Bill’s while his eyebrow raised to pose a challenge.

“NOT AT ALL!”

The demon began to circle around Stanford, who’s whole body began to turn with a determination not to break eye contact again. As if he were afraid of losing sight of Bill. Or his attention. Seeing it reminded you of a puppy enamored with its owner. Its everything, really. You had been familiar with it at some point yourself. What felt like ages ago now.

“JUST SURPRISED, IS ALL. I MEAN, AAAAAAAAALL I’VE DONE IS EXPAND YOUR MIND TO THE UNIVERSE OUTSIDE YOUR PUNY WORLD, SHOW YOU NEW COLORS, AND GIVE YOU THE PERFECT COMEBACKS EVERY TIME YOU GET INTO AN ARGUMENT,” He humbly bragged, “BUT IS THAT ALL REALLY WORTH IT TO BE CALLED YOUR-”

MUSE.

Muse.

Muse. Muse. Muse. Muse. Muse. Muse. Muse. Muse. Muse. Muse.

That damn word was going to be imprinted on your brain with how often it was quite literally repeating. Out Loud. High-pitched and nearly shattering your ear drums, a physical manifestation of the word appeared in the space to hurl itself in your direction; A move you’ve seen one too many times. You nimbly dodged off to the side without losing your footing like you had the first time this occurred. With both your feet planted firmly on the ground you whipped your head around to catch the end of the show.

The scene had frozen. Stanford’s expression was stuck in a form of denial, his cheeks tinted a rosy color that you used to make them turn. His brow was furrowed as if he were concerned. Or desperate to assure Bill that he truly was worth it all. Bill meanwhile had his arms folded behind his back while his half-lidded eye bore down on its prey like a benevolent mentor.

Bill’s pupil slowly slid in your direction.

“A BENEVOLENT MUSE, YOU MEAN.”

Bill Cipher became animated again. This time he no longer addressed the version of Stanford standing before him. His smug attention was all focused on you now. His small frame managed to tower over you in mere presence alone, even at the distance you two stood at.

Arms folded behind his back, there was a silence that followed while Bill inspected you. Perhaps waiting for you to give a response before he settled on his own. He feigned surprise.

“DIDN’T EXPECT TO CATCH YOU HERE. SIXER AND I WERE JUST HAVING A MOMENT ALONE,” Bill emphasized, his arm outstretching far past its supposed physical limit to wrap itself around Stanford’s still frame, “YOU KNOW, LIKE WE’VE BEEN HAVING FOR A WHILE. BEHIND YOUR BACK. IN FACT HE WAS JUST ABOUT TO GET TO COMPLIMENTING ME. SINCE I’M HIS MUSE. HIS SKY. STARS. WHATEVER.”

Muse.

Another manifestation hurled its way in your direction. You weren’t nearly as prepared and the edges of the word were sharp, slicing into your arm to draw what you assumed to be blood. With a wince you had to steady your balance before your glare shot back to the bastard in front of you.

He was a menace who you hadn’t realized you had been in competition with for years. And now, in a pissing contest with as the man you’re both fighting over like teenagers was lost in worlds unknown. The man you had loved and had been prepared to marry was gone now. Leaving you with his unfaithful ‘Muse’.

Oh, how you’ve come to hate the word.

It happened first when you had learned of the existence of an other-worldly being that had been secretly leading Stanford’s ambitions. Second was when you had discovered Ford’s hidden collection of idols and paintings. All squirreled away in a private chamber of his own viewing pleasure. That had been manageable.

But the fondness in his gaze when discussing their meetings made your heart ache. How he’d talk as if Bill Cipher was the sole purpose of everything now. His reason for continuing his research or facing adversity for his talents. Or the way he’d pause in the middle of a task to instead laugh at a memory of Bill from earlier, with his hands looking to busy themselves as a distraction.

All of that had hurt. But what made you hate the word most of all was its constant use to torture you. That the moment Bill had sensed your distaste for the term he had done nothing but plague your mind with it. Shoving it in your face as if he was a secret side woman in some stately affair.

Thus far this has been your nightly routine for several months now. Ever since Stanford Pines went missing from this world and so many others. With his brother, Stanley, being left behind with you to pick up the pieces to get back your lost loved one. And for some reason or other, Bill had set his sights on tormenting you.

Every night. Different visions of their bonded moments played in your mind while Bill sneered and poked fun at you for being fool enough to never notice the signs of your man slipping away. You never knew if what he showed you was true. You hoped not.

“THEY’RE REAL.”

You ignore him a moment to get back on two feet. Standing tall before him.

“Do you plan on taking me through your ‘Greatest Hits’ every night or are you going to fuck off already?” The venom in your tone caused interest to gleam in his eye. Most nights you try not to dignify his taunts with a response. But you were tired. Both mentally and physically thanks to late nights with Stanley to try to get the portal running again, or your lonely crying sessions blaming yourself for letting this go on for so long. You were exhausted.

“AW, DIDN’T THINK YOU’D GET SO CRANKY OVER A LITTLE FUN FORDSY AND I WERE HAVING! I’M SURE IT’S EASY TO GET INSECURE OVER THE IDEA OF YOUR MAN GETTING THE CHANCE TO VISIT A SUPERIOR BEING EVERY NIGHT BUT HE MENTIONED YOU ONCE OR TWICE. Y’KNOW, ABOUT HOW YOU’RE ‘SAFE’ AND ‘STABLE’.”

You knew he was just trying to get a rise out of you. Perhaps even deter you from working on that portal any further, ensuring that Stanford would remain lost to mystery forevermore. “Say what you want Bill but I know him better than what your mind creeping could ever do. You miscalculated by seeing only the parts that benefited you and that’s going to end up biting you in the ass. Because it doesn’t matter what you and Stanford had before. Whatever was there is GONE, and I know that Stanford will be coming to end you too.”

It was difficult to keep your voice steady to feign the confidence that you hadn’t had in a long time. You stood bravely in the face of Bill, who’s form only grew in size while you charged up your own argument. He was nearly towering over you now while his gaze remained steady on you. His expression was unreadable.

“WELL WELL WELL, I-”

He’s yapped for far too long.

“Maybe that’s the point to all of this,” You gestured to the spectacle put on pause, “You realize you fucked up. Pushed too hard. Or maybe you’re not even playing this for me. You’re just trying to convince yourself that Ford is still in the palm of your hand when in reality, he despises you. Wants you dead. That despite all the compliments and praises you keep showing me he still picked me over you.”

You weren’t sure if any of this was going to strike a chord. Especially with being in the dark as long as you had, there was nothing for you to fight with. The best you could do was treat him like the vindictive affair partner he was pretending to be. And it worked. Or it was the hint of a suggestion you made in saying you were chosen over him.

Bill’s form skyrocketed in size from its already heightened form, with the triangle now bending over you now to force you to nearly tilt your head all the way back just to make eye contact. His pupil was entirely black to reflect your new surroundings as the static image of Ford and their place of contact was suddenly whisked away. What used to be a bright yellow turned to blood-red bricks that you swore you could feel heat coming off of.

“STANFORD PINES FEARS ME,” Bill’s voice boomed, “AND THAT’S EXACTLY WHERE I WANT HIM. THINKING OF ME AND CHASING AFTER MY COATTAILS UNTIL THAT NERD COMES TO REASON. AND UNTIL THEN YOU-”

His fingers snapped. The ground beneath you disappeared and you felt weightlessness hit as you began to descend into a dark pit. “YOU WILL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN!”

The vision of the gigantic demon began to fade away. His voice still boomed and echoed despite the void that they were shouted into. As your conscience begins to fade into its own form of nothing you close your eyes to instead repeat his words to yourself.

Never see him again.

The Mystery Shack above you groaned with disapproval. Its wood and structure creaked as it finally settled back on the ground, thankfully still supported by its own weight once gravity returned to normal. You were face first on the ground with your head still spinning from that hasty landing you made to resist any damage. With just one peek of an eye you could see that your vision was still hazy. Only a sickeningly familiar blue light kept the basement of the Shack from being in total darkness.

Darkened figures up ahead began to move. When you tried to join them you were quick to discover that your leg caught in debris. A quick examination told you that it wasn’t anything dangerous like active machinery, and the small tugs you gave to test your aching body showed that nothing was quite broken. Hurt, yes, but all intact.

Just like the house you could feel your bones settling back into place while creaking with resentment. You could only imagine how Stanley must have been feeling. Propping yourself up with one arm you then used your freehand to begin pulling away at the rubble on top of you, trying to carefully dismantle it piece by piece so that it wouldn’t collapse on top of you.

Having been so focused on your escape you had only caught the tail-end of what Stanley was telling dipper.

“The author of the Journals…”

Your head whipped around so fast it could have snapped, “My brother.”

As if on cue a figure cladded in a black cloak removed his mask with a six fingered hand, his silver hair whipping around him as he slowly revealed a face you thought you could have anticipated after having aged years with Stanley. The fact that they were twins did little to stop you from tearing up at the handsome visage that was your Stanford Pines.

The wrinkles in his face had deepened from the last you saw him. He was still chiseled with a hint of facial hair he might have shaved off recently while his posture and expression gave off a confidence you weren’t familiar with.

Stanley began to approach him with open arms, prepared to greet the brother he’s missed for years for longer than yours. Stanford didn’t match his sentiments. Instead his fist drew back to strike Stan who had flinched out of the way- But not before Stanford’s fist froze. Left hanging in the air as something else caught his attention. Past Stanley and Dipper. Through various piles of cement and broken wood.

You.

Neither of you moved. His eyes flickered back and forth in a manner that suggested he was examining you all the same. Taking in every detail of your graying form, of each new wrinkle that has marked your age like a tree. The intensity of his gaze made your heart stall for more reasons you could count.

Was that disappointment in his gaze? Or worse, indifference? The world had already been cruel in tearing you apart in the first place. How easy would it be to have Stanford simply forget you? To have moved on to grander and exciting things since his time away. After all, Bill Cipher had enticed him once before. YOU nearly lost him once before. Who’s to say you haven’t wasted your years chasing after a man who could no longer remember your face?

Tears began to gather. They soothed the sting of debris in the air to instead replace it with a dull ache in your heart. At this point you could have been crying over any number of things. You tried calling out his name but the words caught in your throat.

He shouted yours instead. Pushing passed his stunned brother and great nephew to run in your direction. Just as Stanford was a few feet away he suddenly dropped to his knees to slide the remaining distance. It was a physical endeavor you envied in this moment.

Already Stanford’s arms wrapped around your form, drawing you in close to his chest while he buried his face into your hair. You didn’t dare utter a sound of discomfort. Swallowing your tears you chose to focus on his warmth rather than the pain your body was in. How much studier his arms felt from the last time you were held in them, however long ago that was.

“M…My dear…” Stanford gasped, as if the term of endearment hadn’t been uttered in history before. His six fingers nearly dug into your body with his tight grasp. He pressed a kiss to the top of your head, “This…This is real. Bill isn’t lying again. You’re here. You.”

From the corner of your vision you could see both Soos and Mabel staring in wonder. Their mouths were left hanging open while they slowly turned to each other to clasp hands together. Mabel began to mouth ‘they have a histooooory!!’

You opted to turn your face into Stanford’s chest to ignore all that as long as you could.

“All these years I’ve waited here for you, Stanford. Every year was spent fixing the portal, I-” Your eyes wandered to his twin, “-We’ve been fixing the portal. Stan and I together decided we weren’t going to stop until you were home safe.”

Stanford drew in a breath. The tension that coiled his posture was a familiar sign of his frustrations being withheld, and with the copious warnings in his Journals to not open the portal again you had a fairly safe guess as to what that tension was. Stanford managed to swallow it down as his hand cupped your cheek and directed your eyes to his.

The years have really gone by. For the both of you, you realized as you gazed into weary and worldly eyes. Did he see the same thing in you? Or has it occurred to him just how truly long it's been since the two of you were close like this. Since way before he was lost in the first place. To where Bill’s schemes began to put the first cracks in the foundations of your relationship.

From the distance the portal still glowed a blue hue, flickering every few moments as the machine began to lose its life at long last for what you pray is the last time. Both of you were left illuminated with blue. The beautiful sight of Stanford had been imprinted on your mind, nearly washing away the years of trauma the color had come to be associated with.

You could have sworn Stanford’s eyes were brimming with tears as well before they closed, the distance between you two gone as he leaned down to capture your quivering lips in a kiss. With it came the relief of a thirty-year grief. Not of a healed relationship but of a path to recovery and trust. You nearly grinned into the kiss. Stanford Pines chose you.

#gravity falls #stanford pines x reader #stanford pines #gravity falls x reader #gravity falls fanfic #my story #requests #book of bill spoilers #bill cipher #tw implied cheating #Billford #fordbill #wtf is their ship name? WHATEVER ITS IMPLIED #the book of bill

1K notes · View notes

ambrosiagourmet · 8 months ago

Text

In chapter 28, Marcille lays out why the journey she's been on has been worth the pain: because they were able to bring Falin back. The injuries, the indignity, and the mess of it all - they are tolerable primarily in context of destination she believes she's reached at this point.

In truth, of course, the story is far from finished. In fact, I would argue that this is actually where hers really starts. This scene holds the seed of the very thing the Winged Lion will exploit to lead Marcille to become the Lord of the Dungeon. After all, with a desire as far reaching and deeply held as Marcille's, if the only acceptable outcome is success, what other choice does she have but to bargain with the infinite?

So let's talk about this idea - where it leads her, how Laios' path intersects with it, and how they both help each other move forward in the face of failure.

First though, I want to step back and talk about something else: the shapeshifter chapters.

With these chapters recently covered by the anime, there has, of course, come plenty of fun discussions about which version of each character belongs which other character's perceptions, and what that means.

One thing I've seen pointed out a few times is the fact that both Laios and Marcille's impressions of each other are based around Falin. Marcille's version of Laios is larger and more masculine, because those are the traits that stuck out to her in contrast to Falin. Laios' version of Marcille was directly inspired by her appearance and demeanor when resurrecting Falin.

So why is this important to a discussion about Marcille being focused on success? Well, it shows us where Laios and Marcille's relationship starts: built primarily around their shared love for Falin. It's from that shared beginning that they begin to learn about each other on their own terms.

And this is true for the whole group, to be clear. They are united by circumstance - love for a lost companion, a sense of responsibility, a desire for freedom - but they all grow and help each other beyond that circumstance. They help Senshi bury the ghosts of his past and eat some Hippogriff stew. They help Izutsumi open up to mutual love and friendship. And they learn so much about each other: about Chilchuck's family and Laios' love of monsters and Marcille's desires to live life alongside others.

In the particular case of Marcille and Laios, understanding each other is what lets them save each other. It is not through Falin that Laios talks Marcille down from the edge the Lion has brought her to, nor is it through her that Marcille comforts Laios after the demon is defeated, when it is still unclear how everything will work out.

In fact, it is very specifically the unknown fate of Falin that Marcille comforts him about.

She is willing to accept the outcome - willing, now, to embrace the journey itself, rather than only accepting it as a means to an end.

This is a lesson she learns from Laios, and it's a lesson we watch Laios learn, too.

Just before making her deal with the Lion, Marcille recalls everything that led her to that moment. She lingers on the pain, recalling the worst of their journey:

She only pushes through by remembering her goals: saving Falin, and equalizing the lifespans of her friends to match her own.

And yet, 10 chapters later, when reflecting on why she actually wants to see her goals through, it is the good parts of that very same journey that shine through.

There's an inherent contradiction here, one which Marcille doesn't know how to face. How can the suffering that she tolerates also be the love that drives her forward? How can the loss that she's worked so hard to reverse also be the very circumstance that created a world she, now, cannot stand to give up?

And Laios confronts her with the truth. Because it just is.

Losing Falin forced him to open up to others in a way he never had. It forced him to choose what he cares about, and in making that choice, it gave him the opportunity to be seen. To connect with others.

He has already had to come to terms with the fact that Falin's death has given him something - he would not have been able to kill her again if he hadn't.

There is something here that is fundamental to Dungeon Meshi's understanding of what life even is. Like, I don't think it's a coincidence that part of Laios' speech to Marcille in chapter 85 is actually first seen in the chapter where they fight off ghosts.

In 'Sorbet,' while possessed , Laios thinks that it would have been better if the dragon had eaten him, instead of Falin. The ghosts make people lose their will to live - they are dragged away from life.

When he's pulled back from that brink, Laios realizes that he can't move forward without accepting that she is gone. He even compares the way he was holding on to her to being possessed: it pulled him away from life, from the present moment.

To carry on, he must accept what has been lost, and focus on protecting the life that they still have.

Like Marcille, he has to accept the contradictions of their journey. That life means eating, and eating requires death. That sometimes one must be selfish in order to be kind, and that selflessness can easily be twisted into to cruelty.

That loss will, inevitably, lead you to find happiness that you may not have found otherwise.

This is how he gets through to Marcille. And I think part of the reason he reaches her with these specific ideas is because those contradictions are baked so thoroughly into their relationship.

Marcille only met Falin after she had been left behind by Laios. Laios was able to reconnect with Falin because she left Marcille. They both met each other through Falin, and yet they only really got to know and care for one another after she died.

And of course, that's why Marcille uses the same ideas to comfort Laios, in the final chapter. It is because of Laios that she is able to accept the journey for itself, and not need the happy ending to justify its meaning to her.

Together, they help each other move forward, and accept that they may not be able to bring Falin back.

Which, if I'm being honest... I think this is the reason Falin can come back, narratively speaking, without the resurrection feeling like it takes away from the themes of the story.

After all, she doesn't do it for Marcille or Laios - she does it for her own sake. Her own hunger and her own desire to eat are the things that lead her back to life.

All three of them, together, end the story like this: not clinging to the things they are afraid to lose, but knowing they can choose to move forward together.

And, importantly, this happy ending is no longer the thing that gives the journey meaning. Rather, it is the privilege of the journey itself that is her happy ending: the chance to walk alongside others in the time they have, to get to know each other, and to eat well.

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #marcille donato #laios touden #falin touden #dungeon meshi spoilers #dunmeshi analysis #for anyone keeping track I'm on pdt so it IS still the same day that I said I'd post it on #PUT DOWN THE TOMATOES

975 notes · View notes

kasagia · 11 months ago

Text

A powerful man

Pairing: dark!young Gamemaker!candidate for president! Coriolanus Snow x fem!Capitol! reader Summary: You thought he was different. That he would never cheat on you. But apparently Coriolanus who came back from District 12, became Gamemaker, and ran for president was not the same man you knew. And you'll soon find out how wrong you were about him. Requested by: @tastycakee Taglist: @aoi-targaryen @il0vebeingdelulu @chelseyyouraverageluigi Warning: 18+; My first time writing a smut scene, so please be gentle. I hope you will like it...🙈🙈; Coriolanus Snow, toxic behaviour; smut; Coriolanus Snow's Masterlist ~•♤♤♤•~ Main Masterlist

"Mr. Snow is busy…" you slam the door to Coriolanus' office behind you, closing it in the face of his secretary, who wouldn't let you in.

You cross your arms, glaring at your boyfriend in pure fury. Coriolanus stops writing something and looks up to enter just as you loudly shut the door behind you.

He raises his eyebrows slightly in surprise at the sight of you, then frowns at the pure anger in your eyes and clenched fists. He hopes your anger isn't caused by what he was trying to hide for you... otherwise, he will have some heads cut off.

"Y/N, darling, what are you doing here?" He asks with a charming smile as he gets up from his chair and walks over to you.

"Livia Cardew?" He stops at the mention of her name. He plays confused, frowning as he slowly responds to you, pretending to try to understand what you mean.

"I have no idea..."

"You could at least have some decency and admit that you slept with that whore!" His secretary must have heard your scream. He makes a mental note to talk to her when he's alone and to make sure he sends to the district and hangs any maid from the Cardew's house who spilled his secret.

"Look... it's not that I wanted it." He starts out gently; he tries to calm you down and explain his actions, but as soon as he takes a step towards you, you move away from him and growl like a rabid animal.

"Oh, of course not! After all, it's your dick that makes decisions for you, not your brain!" You shout at him angrily, pressing an accusatory finger into his chest.

He can no longer control himself after you cross the line. His calm, collected mask falls away to reveal his own rage and iritation. He grabs your arms tightly, making you gasp softly in pain as he shakes you lightly and pins you against the wall.

But he controls himself enough to not physically hurt you… at least not more. He just holds you there tightly, taking advantage of your moment of shock to explain his motives to you.

"Listen to me. She was a means to an end. I needed some information from her. I had to get closer, sleep with her, and sneak around her house, especially her father's office. End of the story. Considering it, it wasn't cheating. It was more like business than anything else. Besides, you're way better than her, petal. And I kept thinking about you all the time and how I'd rather have you wrapped around me than that thoughtless, naive bitch."

You feel sick when you hear it, when you imagine him in bed with her, and even more sick when you hear that he doesn't think that he did a bad thing at all. You feel like throwing up, just remembering how you let him touch you and how you treated him, worshipping him as if he were your whole world. You were so stupid and naive.

"You only prove that you are as disgusting, cruel, and manipulative as I thought. You can play with other people and their feelings, but not with mine. Not anymore. It's over. I've already moved out of your apartment, so you can continue running your campaign and exploiting other people all you want. I just fucking hope you won't win." You say it angrily, pushing him away from you.

You take advantage of the state of shock he is in, and you get out of there as fast as you can. The scent of Coriolanus' perfume clings to you, and you already know you need to take a very long bath when you get home to brush it away. As well as the felling of his hands on you. You only hope you won't have any bruises after his very tight and painful grip.

You practically run all the way to your car. You get in, not noticing that your ex-boyfriend is watching you carefully from his office window.

Coriolanus' eyes don't leave you. He watches carefully as you get into the car with his hands in his pockets.

He chastises himself for being so gentle with you. He promised himself after Lucy Gray that he would never fall in love again. And you appeared, breaking his iron resolve with one smile and a kiss. He should have made sure that he had enough control over you so that you would never think of leaving him before he started spoiling you.

All the dinners, sweet words and compliments, and thoughtful dates... he had rewarded you for nothing, and now his disobedient brat thought she could just walk away from him. Yes. He had given you too much freedom.

He should immediately clearly define the dynamics of your relationship, instead of leaving you under the illusion that you have something to say in any matter.

He remembered you from the Academy, even though you were a year younger than him. You were ambitious, like him. You always followed your own plan and ideas. Little rebel. It was cute then, but now he realises he needs to temper your personality. After all, his First Lady had to obey him at all times. You might have had a strong character and fought like a lioness, but absolutely not against him. He will destroy you or teach you obedience. You could be his wolf on a leash or his faithful dog. He didn't see it any other way. And he definitely won't let you go.

Coriolanus has already lost his one bird. He won't let another one do the same and escape from him.

And he even knew who would help him with it.

"I don't understand why they're starting a campaign when there's still a good half a year left until the elections." You grumble to your labmate as you two work on a new tranquillizer for peacekeepers to use on rebels.

"They have to check the identity and background of the candidates, and so on. My father said that the process itself was a good three months of work. Besides, considering that a president usually stays in his seat until he dies of old age, it's better that it lasts longer. Let them at least work hard to earn our votes if they are about to rule over Panem all their lives."

"That's six months of seeing that son of a bitch's face on TV, on posters around town, and on practically every fucking corner. Don't be surprised that I would prefer it to be shorter."

"I don't want to be on his side, but I think he can win. You know very well that he has charisma, money, and... well." She interrupts, blushing a little. You roll your eyes at her. You know that Coriolanus is... breathtakingly handsome. His cold beauty will steal the hearts of many. It will be useful for his media image to hide what a boor he was.

"Big cock?" You joke, no longer vulnerable to the charming side he has been showing the public.

"Y/N!" She hisses at you, laughing softly and looking around the lab. Meanwhile, the rats you were testing on became... too calm. At least Dr. Gaul's snakes will have something to eat.

"What? I'm stating facts. I wouldn't be surprised if he slept his way to the top." You say, as you are preparing new test subjects and reducing the dose of preparation a little.

"Shh! The viper is coming here." She whispers and goes back to work.

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice that, in fact, Dr. Gaul enters the laboratory. She might be getting older, but she still held up well. The only thing that changed was that she walked with the aid of a cane, which only added to her intimidating appearance. And the fact that she was no longer the main organiser of the Hunger Games. Coriolanus performed this role for her. Although the title was still hers.

"Dr. Gaul." You both greet her and step away from the examination table. She watches you and your work closely, mumbling something under her breath, and raises her cane, pointing at you.

"Y/L/N. My office."

"Yes, ma'am." You say and follow her. You feel your friend's eyes on your back as you follow the woman to her office.

You close the door behind you and take a seat in front of her desk as she nods towards you. Dr. Gaul takes some pills from his desk and swallows them. One of her snakes slithers between your legs and climbs up the desk to wrap around her owner's hand and then her cane. You have not only the piercing eyes of a woman but also the eyes of a snake.

She smiles, seeing that you didn't even flinch, still maintaining your calm demeanour.

"You're not a stupid girl." She says this while examining her pet. "And yet you find yourself in situations that only cast you in this light."

"I beg you pardon?" You ask, not expecting your conversation to become so... personal.

"I always said Mr. Snow would achieve something great. At the beginning, I thought he would be a Gamemaker like me. After all, he is not suitable for being a scientist like us. He has no patience; he needs new challenges, experiences, and adrenaline. But now... you know that you can have the president as... a person who is not entirely favourable to you, right?"

"I understand that there may be some difficulties…"

"Difficulties? Child, do you know him? You must be aware of what he is capable of. Or at least have some suspicions." She interrupts you, looking at you pointedly.

You bite the inside of your cheek, trying to calm down. You were fed up with the topic of your ex. Apparently, you couldn't just break up with him without making a fuss.

"What did you want to talk to me about, Dr. Gaul? What is it all for?" You ask, slightly annoyed, and she just laughs mockingly, shaking her head in amusement.

"I like you, child. I hope you won't disappoint me. Therefore, think about what is good for your future. Pride is fatal. Money and influence bring opportunities. But you probably already know that. After all, no one who gets into my lab is a saint. Especially not you and Mr. Snow."

"I'm not a whore like him." You defend yourself, crossing your arms, making Dr. Gaul laugh again.

The snake moves from her cane to the desk and nests in your lap. Out of habit, you stroke his head, gaining interest again and a gleam of approval in Dr. Gaul's eyes. After all, this one was a particularly venomous specimen.

"Each of us is. We may not do what they do, but for money... people can do everything. Don't you remember how you sold your dear friend? How did you knock her out of the competition for a spot in my lab? How have you done everything—play every dirty card to make sure that you will become a victor? Just like Mr. Snow. I heard there was a... misunderstanding between you two, but life isn't a fairy tale, Miss Y/L/N. You can go bankrupt and ruin your reputation while waiting for your prince. If you want to achieve something, be known as a great mind like me, and be relevant in this city full of rats and snakes, then you will do the right thing for your future."

"Dr. Gaul, with all due respect, I am acutely aware of what is good for me. And it's definitely not Coriolanus Snow." You say, standing up and letting the snake slither onto her desk again.

"Pity. So prepare a contingency plan. After all, I won't live forever. It is not known who will take my place or whose name will hang above the entrance to this laboratory. It's not my choice. But if it was, I would choose you as my successor. Unfortunately, the future president will have the most impact on that. And then... it may turn out that there will be no place for you here."

"It's not certain who will win."

"Are you sure, child?" Her question can't help but make you doubt. Coriolanus wouldn't give up so easily. You know it. Just like if Coriolanus wins, you're finished. Your entire career… "Go. Think about it. I hope you will prove that you have some mind. It would be such a pity to lose such a talented scientist as you. Especially because of stupid love affairs."

You mutter goodbye to her and leave the office. You're long back at your table in the lab when the secret door opens and Coriolanus steps out.

"Is that what you wanted, Mr. Snow?" The woman asks, turning to face him. Coriolanus moves closer to the desk, but enough to be out of her snake's reach.

"You could have been more intimidating. After all, her entire career depends on her submission."

"If you want her to truly obey you, she must come to you herself. Like a pet. Like a snake. If she sees that your relationship will bring her further benefits, she will come back to you. She's not stupid enough to waste such an opportunity. At least I hope so. You should focus on your campaign."

"I'd like that too. But currently… something else is on my mind." He says, walking over to the tinted window that overlooks the lab. He puts his hands in his pockets and watches you carefully as you work.

"You're wasting your potential. Maybe your children will be wise enough to follow in my footsteps more. One is running for president, and the other is a military chemist. Such a waste."

"Don't worry. One of our children will definitely continue your legacy, you have my word." He assures her while observing you.

You lean over the table, strands of your hair falling into your eyes behind your safety glasses, as you test another biological weapon on rats. You look hot in that scientist outfit. He grunts, feeling his pants getting a little too tight. He regrets that he never took the opportunity to visit you here...

"It better be that way. And for God's sake, don't stare at her like a love-struck puppy like you did with your tribute from 12. Patience. Or you will have to train her to make her obedient."

"You know I like a challenge, Dr. Gaul." He replies with a sly, cocky smirk and turns his head towards Doctor Gaul once he has calmed down a bit and composed himself.

"Go away now. Your last Hunger Games must be amazing and unforgettable, or I'll tell her what you have planned for her." He laughs at this, shaking his head.

"I appreciate your attempts to intimidate me, but you know I'll be happy with any outcome. Whether it's keeping her on a leash or reshaping her to meet my needs as my First Lady."

"But we both know which one you would prefer more." They share a sinister smirk. Coriolanus owed her a lot. He's learned many things under her tutelage... things that he uses to make sure you know that your place is always with him.

"As I said, I love a challenge. I will be expecting you as an honoured guest at this year's Hunger Games and my wedding. Of course, right next to my fiancée."

"Don't scare her away, Mr. Snow." She reminds him when he receives a package from her with the latest biological weapon. He will test it at this year's tributes. He smiles, thinking that it must have come from your talented fingers.

"Snow lands on top, Dr. Gaul." He assures her and says goodbye, leaving through a secret passage.

He still had a lot of things to do.

It started innocently… if that's a word you could use to describe Coriolanus Snow.

You knew he wouldn't give up so easily after your breakup and that he would want to come back to you. And that he will use every means to make sure this happens. After all, he was an ambitious bastard who thought he could do anything if he tried hard enough. And Coriolanus had big plans. Plans that you only became aware of when it was too late for you to try and rescue yourself from him.

It started with roses.

Not just any roses. The most beautiful ones Coriolanus could find in his grandmother's garden. Beautiful white roses. A symbol of love, affection, innocence, and loyalty. Everything that Coriolanus lacks.

They were delivered together with a letter in which he deeply assured you of his feelings and asked for a meeting.

You happily threw them into the fireplace.

Then he started sending you roses to the lab. And from the smiles Dr. Gaul was giving you, you knew the bastard had won her over to his side. At least you and your co-worker had some fun destroying them in all sorts of strange ways, starting with burning them with a laser, throwing them into toxic waste, or even breaking them down into the substance you needed for your experiments.

One day, gifts came along with roses. Jewellery, books, clothes (even underwear, if you could call a thin set of strings that), concert tickets with invitations from him (you'd rather cut off your ears than sit next to him in the concert hall or stand by the stage), he did everything to get your attention. Which you happily denied him.

You avoided him like the plague, missing every event he was supposed to be at (even your little sister's graduation from the Academy). But there was one event your family wouldn't let you miss.

"Mr. and Mrs. Y/L/N. Miss Y/L/N and Miss Y/S/N. How nice to see you all together. May the odds be ever in your favour." Dr. Gaul greets you as you arrive at the official opening gala of the Hunger Games.

"Dr. Gaul. Happy Hunger Games." You say back.

"You too, dear child. I can steal you from your parents and sister, can't I?" Your parents nod quickly before you can speak. Dr. Gaul takes you by the arm and leads you to the upper lodge.

"I believe I should sit somewhere else…"

"Nonsense. Mr. Snow made sure your family sat near Mr. and Mrs. Plinth. They have good company, so you can make us that pleasure and sit with us." he says, taking her seat. You see that on your seat is a small piece of paper with your name on it.

"Us?" You question the woman suspiciously.

"Hello, petal." Coriolanus' voice behind you confirms your suspicions. Before he sits down next to you, he leans down and places a long, wet kiss on your cheek, while he tucks the rose behind your ear. One that matches your dress perfectly. You have no idea how the bastard did it. "You look stunning, as always. I was worried you weren't feeling well when I couldn't find you at your sister's graduation."

"I've actually been feeling bad for a few days now. The smell of roses makes me sick." You tell him, not hiding the hostility and coldness in your tone. He frowns at this, obviously not happy with your allusion.

"Maybe you are pregnant?" He replies mockingly, and you glare at him. He smiles at this, placing his hand on your bare knee. You regret not wearing a longer dress. At least you wouldn't have to endure the feel of his skin against yours. Reluctantly, you remember the time when you dreamed of his touch.

"You wish." You say, shaking his hand away as you place your leg over your knee. He doesn't care and instead places his hand on your other knee, making sure the railings of the lodge cover his hand as he gently slides it under your dress. You shiver as his cold hand presses against your warm thigh.

"Oh, you have no idea." He leans gently towards you to whisper in your ear.

Before you have a chance to push him away (or slap him), Coriolanus stands up and gives the opening speech of this year's Hunger Games. You glare at Dr. Gaul, and she just shrugs and turns her attention to the tributes. Only now do you notice that the cameras are focused on your row... and especially on you and Coriolanus.

"Aside from our little jokes… it hurts me that you didn't show up to any of the events I invited you to." He says, sitting down again as the reaping of the tributes begins.

He rests his elbow on your armrest and leans in to whisper in your ear. You know that, from a distance, it looks like he's flirting with you. And you don't like it one bit. Especially since the lives of 24 young teenagers are crashing down at the same time.

"Are you talking about your political events?" You ask, trying to shrug him off and move away from him. He doesn't let you, though, taking your hand in his and placing his hand on your knee, pulling you closer to him.

"I'm talking about our dates, darling."

"We are not together anymore. And we are not going on any dates." You remind him dryly, with great hostility in your voice. The bastrad doesn't even tremble.

"I dare to disagree with you. I never said I was done with you." He says dismissively as his hand roams freely under your dress, tracing patterns on your thigh. You shiver, despising him and yourself for the way your body responds to his touch.

"Well, I am done with you." You say it firmly, with all the confidence in your voice.

"Are you sure? Your sister is a hell of a smart beast. What a pity if the university did not accept her due to... the increased number of applicants."

"Are you trying to bully me? Threaten?" You ask incredulously, finding the strength to push his hands away from you. He gives you a slightly offended look, but instead of taking your hint and moving away, he tucks your hair behind your ear.

"I'm asking for a little cooperation. The Capitol would see me better if I was... in a committed relationship. And now all eyes are on the two of us and the tributes. They'll disappear as soon as they stop transmitting, and then the eyes of the Capitol will be only on me and you. And because you're sitting very close to me, people will think you didn't come here alone... even if that's what you originally wanted."

"You bastard..." You hiss at him angrily, and he just smiles, half amused, half cocky.

He raises his hand and caresses your cheek tenderly. You want to move away from him, but he holds your jaw tightly with his fingers. He tilts your head up slightly, forcing you to look into his icy blue eyes. He smells of roses and cigars... you wonder if he started smoking after your breakup or for business, to increase the number of contacts during these smoking encounters on the balcony.

"Just one kiss and a smile, sweetheart. Is that so much to give to ensure your younger sister a secure place at university?"

"And what later? Will you force me to get engaged to you? Get married? Create a fictional family?" You ask him furiously, knowing full well that if you give this devil a finger, he will soon demand your entire arm.

"I'm not asking you to marry me. Just about pretending to be my date... for now. You don't want your sister to suffer just because you didn't want to place a kiss on my cheek, do you?" You sigh, knowing he doesn't leave you much of a choice.

"She will choose whatever field of study she wants." You make sure by bargaining with him before you agree to anything he wants you to do. He nods, and you can only hope he has the decency to keep the agreement.

You smile sweetly at him and place your hand on his cheek, turning his face towards you. You press a kiss on his other cheek, making sure to leave a trace of your lipstick. You hear people whistling and clapping in applause.

You pull away from him and keep a fake smile on your lips, ignoring his happy, cocky smirk and tone of voice as he stands up and says an ending speech. As did the shocked looks from your family and Dr. Gaul's mischievous smirk.

You have no idea that this is just the beginning. And even if you do, you try to convince yourself otherwise.

You've had enough.

For a month now, Coriolanus has been showering you with various gifts, following you around like a shadow, taking you to the laboratory, and bringing you home. He forced you to get into his limo once. The next day, it took you an hour to cover the hickeys he left on your neck.

You weren't together; you pushed him away as much as you could, and he tried at all costs to get you back into his arms or bed or into your pants. But now he has crossed the line.

That's why you stormed straight to his office again, bypassing all the secretaries and security with your natural grace.

And what unnerved you the most was how the bastard had the nerve to smile in amusement as you barged into his office.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" You snap at him angrily, closing the door behind you. You walk over to his desk, the click of your heels echoing around the room as you throw your purse onto the chair and cross your arms, glaring at him.

"I have the impression that your greetings have become more and more dry and aggressive, haven't they, petal?

"My sister failed her first exam, even though I know she wrote it damn well. As it turns out, her professor is a dear friend of yours. Do you have any explanation for this?" You ask him accusingly, and he just smirks and shrugs, not even hiding the fact that he wasn't involved at all.

"Perhaps she didn't study enough?"

"Do you want to take it out on someone? Take it out on me, but leave Y/S/N out of it!" You shout at him madly, pointing a finger at him. He tilts his head at you in curiosity and stands from his chair, walking around the desk and standing in front of you.

You don't feel comfortable about him being so close to you, but there's no way that you'll show him that he's making you feel nervous and anxious.

"Calm down, sweetheart. This is exactly the reaction I needed from you." He says, his icy blue eyes piercing right through you, making you almost shiver under his intensive gaze. Even when you were in heels, he was slightly taller than you.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" You growl menacingly, crossing your arms defensively. He just smiles and gently brushes your hair away from your face, smiling softly. He is not gentle. You know about it. He's waiting for your slightest slip or show of weakness.

"I've been trying to contact you for weeks, sending letters, calling, leaving notes, and trying to start a conversation."

"You push me into a limo and molest me." You say, defeating all his attempts to make you feel guilty.

You won't have any Stockholm syndrome. He is the one who pursues you; he is the one who harasses you and won't let you move on after the breakup. He didn't even fucking acknowledge your breakup! The problem was with him, not with you. And you know he saw it fully in your eyes—the certainty that what was between you was far from a healthy relationship. And he doesn't like the direction you're going with your conclusions. That's why he resorts to heavier measures.

You hold back a gasp as he suddenly closes the gap between you with one step and places his hand on your cheek. You let him stroke it tenderly as he leans towards you to whisper seductively in your ear.

"You moaned so beautifully for me that even a deaf person wouldn't think you were forced. Admit that you miss me, just like I miss you. You'll make it easier for all of us."

He pulls away from you just enough to look into your eyes again. You decide to try and play his game and lick your lips, moving your gaze between his eyes and his mouth. You tilt your chin up and lean in, your lips almost brushing against his as you whisper.

"Listen to me carefully, because I'll only say this once. I. Will. Never. Come. Back. To. You. So take a hint and leave me alone." As you finish speaking, you reach for your bag and step away from him. You're walking towards the exit when, halfway there, you hear his quick footsteps behind you.

"Not so fast." He grabbed your wrist and turned you towards him, holding you close to his chest. His eyes turn a raging ocean colour with anger and annoyance at your teasing and mockery. "Do you really want your sister to have to take thousands of exams? Work harder because you couldn't commit one evening to me?"

"Evening?" You ask indignantly and in outrage, at which he laughs.

"Nothing dirty. Although I like your way of thinking..."

"Coriolanus." You interrupt him before he can continue the topic. He rolls his eyes at you, clearly not appreciating you interrupting his fun.

"I need a date for one evening. And after the successful show we put on at the opening of The Hunger Games, people are hungry for... well, more of us. What do you say? Will you find enough courage and willingness to accompany me, my love?"

"And you'll leave Y/S/N alone? No more creating problems for her to get my attention?" You make sure. He smiles... differently. With a strange, dangerous glint in his eye that makes you feel more uneasy than how you were since he pulled you to his chest. And you realise how close he actually is when he leans in, forcing you to look him in the eyes.

"Have I ever broken my promise to you, Y/N?"

"Surprisingly not." You answer after a long moment, trying to remember any such situation. He always did everything he promised for you. You didn't know if it was his advantage or… a more disquieting trait.

"You see. You have my word. I will fulfil everything I promised you, my little petal. Everything." He whispers softly, making you shiver as he gently takes a rose out of his jacket pocket and places it behind your ear. You knew this supposedly sweet act of his very well. It was the importance of his territory.

After his words, there is a long silence between the two of you. You hold your breath, mesmerised, as you stare into his icy-blue eyes. He was always so… composed around you. It was as if he was always able to do and say exactly what he wanted and planned. It was as if your entire interaction was just a game for him, a game he was convinced he couldn't lose. He lost his temper with you only once—when you surprised him with that break up…. but you aren't sure if he acknowledged it.

You come to your senses and out of his strange charm the moment he leans in so close to you that your noses gently brush against each other.

You pull away from him, much to his displeasure, and clear your throat. You keep your eyes on him, and in a challenge—one of the few acts of rebellion you can commit—you reach for the rose in your hair and take it out.

"When and where is this event?" You growl through clenched teeth.

"Friday evening. I'll pick you up at 8 p.m." He says it nonchalantly, putting his hands in his pocket. He acts as if nothing happened, and he was just inviting you to the party. As if he wasn't threatening your sister's future to force you to hang on his arm as an ornament for one evening... or maybe even longer.

"I'll go there myself."

"Not happening. You're coming there with me. Transportation is on me. After all, you're my date. It would look bad in public opinion if I didn't treat you like... a princess." He says it firmly, with a delicate smile on his lips—not the pleasant, warm one, but the cunning, cold one he showed when he won over his opponent. The one you were starting to get used to.

And you think while looking at him that if you were the princess in this story, then he was the dragon, keeping you in your palace or tower away from other people. To make sure you were completely at his mercy.

"I'm not sitting next to you in the limo or any car. And if you lay your hands on me, I will cut them off with those dull knives they serve to people with the dinner." He's more amused by your threat, but nods obediently. He takes a few steps towards you but stops, leaving a decent distance between you.

"I'd like to see you try. But you have to behave yourself. Or little Y/S/N will repeat her first year at university. Are we clear?"

"Yes. And I already have a dress, so don't you dare send me anything, understood?" He chuckles mockingly at your words, his pearly white teeth gleaming in the sunlight. You know him too well to be enchanted by such a sight of him. After all, the wolf seems beautiful too, until it attacks you.

"Perfectly. I can't wait to see you then." He says it in a sweet tone of voice. You shake your head and walk towards the exit. "And Y/N." Reluctantly, you turn towards him, your hand on the doorknob. "If I were you, I would have stopped ignoring my calls."

"Go to hell." You say it in an equally sweet tone of voice as his.

You smile at him and throw a rose towards him, bowing. Just like Lucy Gray. You smile victoriously and walk out, slamming the door behind you. You're glad you were able to finally throw him out of control and get him angry.

You leave the building with your head proudly held high. But the truth is that even though you try to pretend that you are controlling your situation with Coriolanus, the truth is that you are not. And you are absolutely terrified by it.

"You look beautiful, Y/N." your sister says as you are walking down the stairs of your house. It was Friday evening, and you were waiting for Coriolanus to come pick you up.

"Thank you, Y/S/N. Revise for the exam?" You ask, walking over to the mirror and putting on your earrings. Your long silver dress hugs your curves perfectly, revealing just enough skin that you don't have to worry about feeling Coriolanus' touch on you.

"Yes. I don't have a handsome boyfriend who would take me to the Capitol Gala. I envy you so much."

"You have nothing to envy, honey. Besides, Coriolanus is not my boyfriend. We broke up." You remind her, maybe a little too harshly judging by the way the younger girl flinches. You sigh and walk over to her with an apologetic smile. "I'm sorry. I just... don't like to remind people about it all the time. Coriolanus and I... we are just friends."

"But you were together at the Hungry Games opening ceremony! All my friends say that you two are a sweet couple and are perfect for each other." She says, adjusting the necklace around your neck, at which you smile fondly. You hug her and place a kiss on the top of her head.

"Sometimes people just… aren't meant to be together. Even if they think otherwise, remember how our parents wanted you to start dating John?" You ask, wrapping one arm around her. She winces and flinches at the memory, making you laugh out loud. You haven't laughed honestly in quite a few weeks.

"Is Coriolanus a self-absorbed idiot? That's why you don't want him?" She asks, comparing him to the boy who courted her.

"No. Not at all. He is... extremely attentive." You say it thoughtfully. And maybe other people would take it as a compliment, but to you... it was a dangerous trait. Alarming. Worrisoming.

"Well, anyway, I hope you have a nice evening. Maybe you two can talk, so he'll stop calling and sending you all this stuff. Don't get me wrong, it's nice to get jewellery from you every other day, but it must be... tiring for you if you don't love him anymore."

You smile at that. She was so… innocent; you, too, once were and believed in love. That's why you were with Coryo. He was gallant, elegant, and handsome. A true gentleman. Until he showed his true side—the side you are now afraid of. He was capable of doing many things to make sure he would get what he wanted. And now he wanted you.

"I want you to be careful..." You say, stroking her braids.

"Of what? Overworked because of studying all night?" She asks teasingly, clearly amused by your serious tone and sudden thoughtfulness.

"Of powerful men." The silence in the room after your words clearly makes your sister anxious, as does your depressed mood.

"Y/N... is everything okay?" You put on a fake smile and hug her one last time before putting your shawl around your arms and grabbing your bag.

"Of course. Don't worry about me. I'm going to have a fun night. Study. I promise it will be worth it." You say, placing a kiss on her forehead, and leave the room and house as you hear the car horn.

"Do you enjoy yourself?" Coriolanus asks, leaning in behind you and whispering in your ear as you stand at the table with alcohol and sweets.

"The champagne is delicious." You turn to look at him, to not have him behind your back, and finish the rest of your drink. You lean on the table, setting the glass down as you look at him carefully. "When can I go back home?"

"Just a few more moments, my petal." He places his hands on your shoulders, massaging them gently. You let him, leaning further into his side and closing your eyes tiredly. "Do you like it?"

"You're a poor masseur, but for lack of better hands…"

"I meant tonight. All those people who fawned over you and looked at you with respect and awe. All these women and men who wanted to fulfil your every little wish... don't you like this feeling of power? Superiority? Knowing that they will do anything to gain your favour?"

"You do it every day around me. This is nothing new." You say it dismissively and turn your back to him, taking a piece of cake from the table and eating it.

"I can stop. And I will stop if you keep pushing me away every time I try to get closer to you, every time I put my hand on your waist, every time I lean in to kiss you, and every time you push my hands away from under your dress. If you continue to insist that you are not mine, I will do things you have never imagined... even in your darkest nightmares."

"What do you want so desperately?" You ask him, irritated, putting the empty plate on the table and looking at him with an angry look as you are sick of whatever game he was playing with you.

"You." He says, taking a step towards you and grabbing your chin. He traces his fingers along your jawline, staring at your lips before returning his gaze to your eyes. "We had a good time together. You won't deny it."

"We had. And then you cheated on me." You remind him, feeling furious and hurt.

"It didn't mean anything. I told you. I'm sorry. I could have told you before it happened, let you know what I had to do… or found another way..."

"It does not matter. I don't want you anymore, Coriolanus." You tell him honestly, as you are fed up with everything that has happened between you over the past few months.

"You will change your mind."

"No. I won't." You shake your head, making his confident demeanour fall. He stares at you coldly, processing a plan in his head as he gently tightens his hand on your wrist.

"You'll do it if you still want to matter here. Do you think that if I win, I'll let you work in the lab on secret government projects? After you broke my heart so savagely in front of the entire Capitol? Do you think your family will still be willingly invited to social parties? That your family will have any future?"

"Are you threatening me?"

"I'm warning you. You can either accept me, become my wife and First Lady, or I will make sure you get kicked out of the lab and sabotage all your research for the rest of your life."

"You wouldn't dare."

"Are you sure?" You stared at each other for a moment. You sigh, angry and frustrated, and shake your head, not believing what's happening. "Let's go outside. You could use some fresh air to calm down." Before you can answer him anything, he leads you outside, his hand on your back and suspiciously close to your ass.

You sigh, feeling the cold air of the Capitol on your hot cheeks. Reluctantly, you take Coriolanus' arm as he leads you deeper into the garden to a more secluded spot.

"You wouldn't have a bad life with me. As my First Lady, you would have everything you wanted. I would fund your research. You could leave Dr. Gaul's lab and build your own, not wait for her to die, so you can inherit her legacy. You could have built your own one."

"No, Coriolanus! You can't bribe me! If you really think that I am shallow enough to agree to marry you and to play according to the illusion you have created in your head, then you are delusional. WE. ARE. DONE."

You turn around and try to get away from him. But before you can, Coriolanus grabs your hand and spins you around, causing you to bump straight into his chest.

Before you can even think about slapping him, he captures your lips with his. You moan even more in shock into his mouth when you feel him place something cold on your finger.

You somehow manage to wriggle out of his grip enough so that his hands and mouth can't reach you. You stare at the ring on your finger in shock. A big fucking diamond that probably glows in the dark and you could gouge out his eyes with if you hit him... which you really wanted to do right now.

"What are you doing?! Corio-mph!" He cuts you off with a kiss before you can get anyone's attention with your scream or really hit him.

You struggle against his grip, your nails digging into his arms, but he just groans and pins you to the tree, ignoring the pain you caused him. Before you can even realise where his hands are, he reaches back and unbuttons your dress. The material slides down to your hips, giving him a perfect view of your bare breasts.

You shiver as you watch him lick his lips and lean down to fuck the skin of your collarbone with kisses, holding your hips in an iron grip as he pins you to the tree. The cold air hits your bare skin, in contrast to Coriolanus's hot breath and tongue.

"I missed you." He whispers in your ear as his hands cup the curve of your breasts and squeeze them.

His touch is everywhere, slithering over you and clinging to you like a snake, wrapping itself around you tenderly and greedily, taking advantage of every opportunity he has. His mouth is as dynamic as his hands, biting at the tender spots of your neck, licking and sucking, marking you as his own when all he can think about is your body, pressed against him.

"I can give you everything. The whole world. For your touch, kiss, and moan when you come around me. All you have to do is accept me, me, and our future. It only takes one yes from you to make you my equal... and it only takes one no from you to make me destroy everything you love and everything you know. I will be the only one you can come to and the only person you will remember. I will destroy you if that is the price of having you, Y/N. I promise you that."

His whispered words against your skin, the hot touch of his tongue in all the right places on your neck, his hands teasing your breasts, and your quick, heavy breaths are distracting. You can't think straight, not when he's stimulating your senses, teasing your nipples, or when he's whispering his dark promises you should've been afraid of.

You come to your senses the moment one of his hands cups your abused breasts and slips under your dress, cupping your pussy. His long fingers tease you through the fabric of your panties, collecting the wetness he caused, and that's when the gravity of the whole situation hits you.

"No. Stop it. Stop! Help!" You scream, trying to push him away, but he covers your mouth with his hand brutally, drowning out any screams. You squeal as he presses his knee against your clothed cunt in an attempt to tease you.

You look at him with wide eyes as you freeze when his knee begins to rub against your most sensitive, wet (to your defeat and disgust) at his attention, part of your body.

"It ends only with me inside you, so you can either be a good girl for me or continue to be a stubborn brat and delay and deny us our pleasure. You have no idea how many times I came just from watching you from afar. You have no idea how much I want, crave, and desire you. I can't think or function normally. I can't create any plans without thinking about how wonderfully this tight pussy felt around me and how I need your soft walls to tighten around me again. So shut up and let me bring pleasure to us both, or try to keep fighting. Your stubborn struggle only excites me more, my petal."

To confirm his words, he presses himself against you, making you feel his hardness pressing through his pants and pressing against your lower abdomen. You breathe quickly, trying to think of a way out of this situation. You were in the fucking garden in the middle of a party—the gala of the year! Someone must have come here. He couldn't have just... taken you here.

"So? Will you finally accept your fate and place by my side, or do I need to break you? And trust me… I'll have even more fun."

His hands move to your hips. He changes your position, pressing you against the tree, his length rubbing through his pants against your clothed and wet core. You are trapped.

You could resist him, and maybe he would let you go... but then what? You and your family will be destroyed in the eyes of the Capitol if he wins and becomes president. You'll be finished, and your whole career will go to hell if you don't do it.

So you sigh, defeated. You close your eyes, place your hands on his shoulders, hold him for balance, and nod your head, surrendering to him.

"Look at me." You reluctantly comply, meeting his icy eyes with yours. His pupils are fully dilated, a faint blush decorates his cheeks, and you see the glint of victory and satisfaction in his eyes as he delights in his prey. You. "I need your words, my little petal." You bite your lip, furious that he's making you beg for him like a bitch in heat. As if he wasn't the one who desperately needed you all this time.

"I... please." You spit out, not looking at him. He grabs your neck in his grip and forces you to meet his gaze as his clothed body presses against your naked one, only in panties, your dress having slipped completely off of you at some point in your... conversation.

"Please what? More conviction and self-confidence, darling. Continue to be my little brat."

"Just fuck me, Coriolanus." You say it angrily, meeting his smug look. He smirks cockily, and in one quick movement, he cups the cheeks of your buttom with his hands and lifts you up, pinning you to the tree with his hips. You moan as he rubs against your clothed pussy and squeezes your ass tightly.

"Gladly." He growls, crashing into your mouth hungrily.

You gasp as he tears your panties in half, the cool night air hitting your exposed, hot womanhood. He moves his mouth to your breasts, sucking hickeys there as he teases your slick folds, making you blush with embarrassment at how wet you were for him.

He's not trying to stretch you or prepare you for taking his thick length after... such a long time of separation. The undoing of his belt and the zipper of his pants are the only warnings you get as you feel the tip of his cock with pre-cum rubbing at your entrance.

As he begins to enter you, you lower your head and bite into his neck, ignoring the collar of his shirt that covers most of his skin. Your saliva soaks his shirt as you moan into his neck.

"You know, I could have fucked you raw the day you thought you could leave me. I guess I should've done that. Put you over my knee for being a brat, give you a few spanks to remind you of your place, and fuck the baby inside you so you can focus on something meaningful. After all, your womb belongs to me, as do all of you. Although I don't know if you'd moan as sweetly and loudly as you do now… What kind of feeling is it? Having someone who you swore you despised wholeheartedly inside you? You take me too well, darling. Your smart, stubborn mouth may call me the worst names, but as long as those wet and tight down there welcome me like home, we both know what the truth is. We both know you want it as much as I do." He says, grunting as he pushes his cock into your tight pussy.

You both moan as he buries himself up to his balls inside you.

He grabs your hair and pulls your face away from his neck, capturing your lips in a bruising kiss as he gives you time to get used to the feeling of him inside you again. You mockingly think to yourself that he's waiting because he's afraid he'll finish too soon.

He fucks a line of kisses along your jaw as he begins to move. You hiss, digging your nails into his shoulders as you hold on to him. You think you've made a few little holes in his shirt with your nails, but that's your last concern now as he pounds into you faster and faster.

You both try to be quiet, trying not to attract anyone's attention, although, judging by the loud music coming from inside the building, it's unlikely that anyone will be looking for you. And hearing your grunts and moans is rather a huge challenge, but still, the last thing you want is for someone to walk into both of us...

"Mine. Only mine." Coriolanus growls into your neck; his thrusts are faster and more precise, making you bite your lip to hold back your moans, but he doesn't let you do it for long. He wants to feel and hear all of you. He wants to revel in his victory. That's why he kisses you, biting your buttom lip to the blood. He pulls away and leans his forehead on yours as he listens to the little sounds you make as he fucks the brain out of you. "Can you feel how deep I am? How well am I filling you? You will be a beautiful First Lady. Fuck. My future First Lady. My future wife. The mother of my children." He moans in your ear. You don't answer; you take ragged breaths, listening to the squelch of your joined bodies echoing around this secluded part of the garden.

You think about everything. About how perfectly he fills you, what a bastard he is, how he drives you crazy with his words and moans and touches and thrusts, and how bad it is that you enjoy having sex with him and despise what he has done. But you have some needs too...

Unfortunately, Coriolanus was the only one who could meet them and satisfy you.

"You were meant for me. Just like I was for you. We are the two sides of the same coin… WE. ARE. UNITY." He growls, making one last few hard pushes into you, making you both cum. He captures your lips in a kiss, muffling both of your screams as you fall apart around him, feeling his warm seed flood your womb.

You shake, wrapping your arms around him tightly, trusting him to hold the weight of both of you as you see nothing but white light in your orgasmic haze. You can't feel your legs, but you know you're still clenching them tightly around him. Your mind is empty; you feel amazing, electric bliss, but it is immediately followed by the realisation of what you have done.

You gave yourself to him. You agree to be engaged to him. The entire Capitol will be watching you. You will have to marry him if he wins the elections.

You're snapped out of your thoughts when he starts to move. But you don't open your eyes. You don't want to see him in his post-orgasmic state. You don't want to see his smug smirk and the twinkle in his eyes. You feel him press a kiss on your temple and slowly pull himself out of you, making you both moan.

You shiver as he sets you on your feet, supporting your waist with his hands. You feel how his seed, and your juices are lazily oozing down your thighs, reminding you of what you agreed to. About your deal with the devil.

You whine, grabbing his wrist in protest as he swipes the excess of your combined cum from your thighs and cunt.

"Don't worry, I know your limits." He says, pulling his hand away from your grip and licking it off. He gives you one of his fingers to suck, which you reluctantly agree to as he stuffs it into your mouth. "Good girl."

"Screw you."

He laughs at your hostility and zips up his pants. He reaches for your dress and helps you get back into it. After he rips your panties, you have to go without them, clearly feeling... the effects of your hot little moment.

"And what now?" You ask him as he puts on his jacket and buttons it, trying his best to hide the bloody marks you left on him.

"We go back to the party, I say goodbye to everyone I need to, and we leave. I have some rings for you to try on in my apartment. The one on your finger is only for a moment. It's big enough for them to notice it and start gossiping. You can choose which one you like more. My bed was also rather lonely and cold without you in it." He suggests, seductively, running a finger along your bare arm as he places the straps of your dress over your shoulders, making sure they don't slide down.

"Don't hope for more moments like this. I can play the doting fiancée in front of the Capitol, but behind closed doors, I'm not going to pretend that you're anything more than a pathetic, cold man who needs affection from someone who despises you with all her heart." You growl and push him away from you. You put your heels back on and take out your lipstick, powder, and mirror from your purse, fixing your appearance.

"It didn't look like you despised me when you cum around my cock just a few minutes ago." He points it out and walks over to you. He fixes his hair and yours and offers you his arm once you fix your makeup. You roll your eyes when you see in the mirror that he has tucked a rose behind your ear. AGAIN.

"Oh, shut up. I'd come around anyone. I haven't had sex in months." You say it angrily and place your hand in the crook of his arm as he leads you back towards the building and to the party.

"Same here." You snort derisively, not believing his confession even for a second.

"As if I could ever trust you again. Besides, you can fuck with Cardew and the others as much as you want. I don't care."

"I prefer to be with you, my little petal. Smile. We'll have company soon." He puts his arm around yours, pulling you closer to him as you walk down the path. In fact, Lucky Flickerman comes around the corner, talking with some women and men. They all giggle. The man stops when he sees the two of you.

"Oh... well... it looks like our future president is a womanizer." Coriolanus grimaces at his last word but is clearly happy that Lucky believes in his victory, so he smiles politely at the man.

"Quite the opposite. We just celebrated our engagement." He announces it proudly, and you hear the rest of Flickerman's company gossiping livelyly, watching you even more closely.

For the first time, you appreciate Coriolanus' strong arm wrapped around your waist. It's rather hard for you to stand after what you two did together a few minutes ago. You're glad you were able to finish before the group left for their walk.

"Oh! Congratulations! You have to come to my new show. People will go crazy when they hear about how Capitol's most popular couple is taking the next step in their relationship! And I think we are all very curious about your beginnings. And the wedding will come soon! I guess right after the election, am I wrong? Oh, it doesn't matter, lovebrids. It is indeed an amazing year for the society of Capitol and Panem."

"We will, Lucretius. Maybe as a presidential couple? Who knows... What do you think about it, my darling? Would you like an interview about us?" Coriolanus turns his head and looks at you questioningly, with mock concern and affection in his eyes. Only you can see how false his act is... or at least you think he is just pretending.

You hear one of the women gushing over the look and the way Coriolanus addresses you. The clever bastard plays the card of a guy who is head over heels in love to gain even more sympathy from society before the elections.

"It would be amazing, honey." You reply with a smile, leaning more into him as Flickerman and the others say how adorable the two of you are.

And you just stand there smiling, playing your part as the happy bride. Out of the corner of your eye, you notice Coriolanus stealing glances at you, and you can't help but wonder... is he really that good at acting, or is he serious in his desire for you and your feelings?

Coriolanus's arm wraps around your waist possessively, like a snake, as the two of you pose for photos. Camera flashes blind you, but you keep a fake smile on your lips.

Several months have passed since your... interaction in the garden. You continued to play his loving fiancée in front of the Capitol, but you remained cold and uncaring towards him. You haven't fucked in the garden since then. You made sure to push and move away from him whenever he got too close to you in private.

Luckily, you didn't have to move into his apartment, and you still lived with your parents. You managed to convince him that moving would be pointless if you were about to move into the presidential palace. You prayed every day that this wouldn't happen.

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice that he turns his head to look at you. You automatically do the same without thinking much about it. And that's your mistake. When you meet his intense gaze of icy blue eyes... you can't look away. You feel like he's holding you tightly by the chin and forcing you to look into his irises... But how can you look away when you see emotions in his eyes that they would never dare admit to you? And judging by the way it sent photographers into a frenzy as they screamed in excitation, you know you're not the only one who saw it.

You still can't figure out if it's just an act or if he actually has feelings for you. Something more than a sick obsession. Maybe you were really starting to have symptoms of Stockholm syndrome?

He pulls you from your thoughts as he leans towards you to tell you something, trying to shout over the crowd around you.

"Are you ready? Shall we go to our seats?"

You nod at him. He takes your hand in his and leads you inside the building, where the official announcement of the results is to take place. The crowd around you whistles in delight as he sees how protectively he treats you and how he guides you through the crowd while making sure you keep up with his pace and don't follow him. He has you beside him, gently distant away—enough for him to be able to cover you in case of any danger.

He leads you to a place of honour next to Dr. Gaul. He kisses you on the cheek and leaves to take his place on the podium in front of the cameras with the other candidates.

"Nice ring." The woman next to you says, a teasing smirk on her lips.

"He would put a collar around my neck with his name on it if he could. I suppose you would help him with that." You snort indignantly and furiously, at which she laughs.

"I can't deny that I'm rooting for you two." You roll your eyes at her and focus your gaze on Lucky, who opens the event.

You know very well that if he becomes president, you will lose everything. All your freedom. You will have to play the role of his devoted wife and mother to his children for the rest of your life. It is true that you will have funds at your disposal to conduct your own research in the laboratory, but will it make you happy? Could you live like that?

"But there can only be one winner…" Lucky's voice snaps you out of your thoughts. You and the entire Capitol are waiting for the results. To hear the name of your new president. "And that is CORIIOLANUS SNOW! Ladies and gentlemen, let's salute our president!"

The world is dying around you. People shout and chant the name of Coriolanus; there is a huge noise of applause and joy. You won't leave your seat. You sit there, frozen, realising the harsh truth. Now, nothing can stop him. He can do anything he wants, and you know damn well that he, like all these people, has no boundaries.

"But where is he? Where is our president?" Before you can look around, you feel hands cupping your face as someone pulls you to the left. Coriolanus' lips crash against yours, and you can only moan into his sudden, passionate kiss and let him do whatever he wants. "Oh, yes, that's where he is! Where else could a man be after hearing that he had won? Of course, at the side of his chosen one, his life companion, and his beloved! This is how it should be, my friends! This is who the Capitol has chosen! A man who loves his woman above all else and shares his joys and sorrows with her. That's the real power, my friends. The power of love. Ladies and gentlemen, our president, who is heading right this way, Coriolanus Snow!"

You don't remember what happened next or what speech he made. Strangely enough, consciousness fully returns to you after a few glasses of champagne and wine. You are standing near the bar, away from the large crowd. Coriolanus is already giving another interview when Dr. Gaul approaches you.

"I warned you." She says, and you raise a questioning eyebrow at her. "When you started dating. That there is nothing more dangerous and beneficial to women than powerful men."

"You knew since then?"

"Of course. He is obsessed with power and control. He had his little songbird, but she ran away. Then he met you and you became his new... love interest or obsession. This boy is hard to read sometimes." He tells you as you both look at Coriolanus. Somehow, he feels your eyes on him. He nods at Dr. Gaul and throws you a smirk before his attention returns to the journalist.

"So... it was never true?" You ask, placing your empty glass on the bar.

"I think he cares about you... on his own way." She tells you, which doesn't make you feel any better. You sigh deeply and order a glass of vodka, which you immediately drink. "Oh, don't be so sad. That's life, my child. My husband was just like him. He was a controlling manipulator, but he had one thing that I didn't, the thing that helped me achieve greatness and be where I am now. To be a legend. An icon."

"And what was that?" You ask resignedly, focusing your attention on her.

"Money. A rich and, above all, powerful man is able to do anything if he is madly in love. And Mr. Snow is a perfect example of this. Tell me... how much money has he already put into you? How much did you get in return for the ounce of attention and closeness he so desperately craves? You didn't want to be a whore, but we women have to act like one sometimes."

"There must be another way." You argue, unable to accept such a… cruel truth, but she just laughs bitterly, mockingly.

"There is not. This is the world of men, my child. It is their pride that guides and makes all important decisions. Behind every man, however, there is a woman who... has the strength to overshadow his pride and direct him the way she wants. Unfortunately, you have to seduce him if you want to get what you want. But I know you. And I know you will be able to do it. I know that you, of all people, are the closest to following my path and carrying my legacy."

"I am not like you." You respond quickly, outraged by the ideas she's giving you and her opinion of you.

"Of course not. There are no women or men like me. Besides, you may become the First Lady. The most powerful woman in all of Panem. Take it. Accept his proposal and the ring that you think will be your prison. Use it wisely. To your advantage. It's a chance that not many of us have. Think about it."

You don't have a chance to answer her. Coriolanus approaches you with a huge smile on his face. He places a quick kiss on your cheek and wraps his hand around your waist before turning his full attention to Dr. Gaul.

"Congratulations, Mr. Snow. Or should I say... Mr. President?" She asks him teasingly with a smug, proud smirk. Eventually, her student became president.

"Dr. Gaul, you, of all people, can call me whatever you want." He responds with extreme happiness—a sight that is truly rare. You also think that he is more clingy than usual.

"I shall leave you two to celebrate then, President Snow." She says it with a smile and walks past you, giving you a wink.

You sigh, which doesn't go unnoticed by Coriolanus. He rubs his hand gently over your back and stands in front of you, leaning against the bar.

"We have to go. Photographers and papparazi are dying to take a picture of us both." He says, adjusting the necklace around your neck. You grab his hand and place it against your neck, staring at him from under your eyelashes as you lean towards him and whisper seductively.

"Don't you want to accept my... very warm congratulations first, Mr. President?"

You see that he is surprised by your behavior. He freezes for a moment in shock, looking at you carefully. He licks his lips as his thoughts race, and you casually run your hand over his vest, supposedly straightening it but actually caressing him gently, especially his abdominal muscles through the fabric of his clothes.

"What do you mean?" He asks shakily, swallowing as you intrude even further into his personal space.

"You know what..." You whisper, pressing your leg against his crotch. He hisses, feeling you rub your knee against his cock, which is hardening from your attention. He looks around the room quickly, relieved to see that no one is looking at you.

"Why such a sudden change?" He asks, quickly grabbing your hand that was getting dangerously close to the waistband of his pants as he begins to lead you out of the party and into a more… secluded room.

"There is no change. I still hate you and despise you. But what can I say... I am very drawn to a powerful man, my darling..." You mock him, calling him cute nicknames as he closes the door behind you.

You gasp, surprised, when he pins you immediately against the door. You feel his length press against your hip as he leans over you to whisper in your ear.

"You're going to fall in love with me again. I promise you this, my little petal." And with that, he captures your lips in a passionate kiss, sealing his oath.

And as he pushes his tongue into your mouth, swallowing your moan as his hands roam and tease your pussy with his fingers, preparing you for him, you wonder if even despite your dislike for him, he'll be able to do it. After all, he was a powerful man... but you were an equally powerful woman.

2K notes · View notes

charlottesbookclub · 5 months ago

Text

i'm here (ser gwayne hightower x reader) 💚💚

Summary: you have a nightmare, but gwayne is there to comfort you 💚

Warnings/Tags: spouse!reader; gn!reader; established relationship (marriage); nightmares; angst/anxiety brought on by the nightmares; absolutely catastrophic levels of tooth-rotting fluff; let me know if I've missed anything! ☺️

Words: 2870

Author’s Note: as I mentioned in this post, gwayne hightower has absolutely consumed my life and I am down sooooooo bad for him rn, so voilá, this fic has emerged as a result of that! 💕 as I also say in that linked post, I'm not super familiar with hotd, so I'm sorry if any of the terms I use aren't canon-accurate (I watched game of thrones a few years ago and I tried my best to make it feel authentic to the world of canon, but something may have slipped through 😅). and I hope this feels in-character to gwayne! I've rewatched the scenes of his that I have access to many times for...... uhh ~Research Purposes~ but I haven't seen all his scenes yet, so I apologize if it feels ooc at all – I did my best to make it feel like him! 🥰

oh and this is key: we've all seen the necklace, right?? we know about the necklace, right????? that fucking necklace makes me absolutely feral so I've given it a backstory, because it truly has me foaming at the fucking mouth 😌 (also, if you haven't seen the necklace, may I please direct you to this incredible gifset so we can descend into madness over it together?)

as always, I hope you enjoy!! 🥰🥰 (also please feel free to share any gwayne thoughts you have – I'd love to scream about the precious man with y'all! ☺️💕)

The memory was not yours, but in this moment, it felt like it was. Gwayne had only told you the story once, with hushed words and averted eyes. You had asked, and he could never find it in himself to keep anything from you, even if it made his chest seize with shame. He told you that the whole ordeal had been a result of foolishness on his part, something he would admit only to you. He said that he recalled the memory with great embarrassment now. But you felt nothing but terror.

You stood on a large, grassy plain ringed with trees, a few wispy clouds scuddling across the blue sky above you. This was a place you had never seen, never been – but one thing was familiar. As you struggled to gain your bearings in the strange location, you saw a group of men on horseback just a short distance ahead. You recognized your lord husband instantly: the delicate silver interlace of his steed’s armor and the auburn glow of his hair in the sunlight were as familiar to you as your own heartbeat.

You called out to him, but he didn’t respond; he seemed to be in conversation with one of the other men. You ran toward the small group and cried his name again, but even at close range he appeared not to hear you. Panic grew in your chest by the moment as you hurried closer still, coming near enough that you could almost reach out and touch Gwayne’s mount. You stretched out your hand to do just that when your arm was stopped by some invisible force. There was nothing in front of you, just empty air that you should have been able to move through with no difficulty. But you were trapped mere feet from your beloved, unable to reach him.

Something was terribly wrong. You screamed his name this time, desperation compressing your lungs with the force of your yell. But it was clear that he could not hear you, since neither he nor any of the gathered men so much as turned toward the sound of your cries. Real fear gripped you now, shooting ice through your veins as you cast about you for something – anything – that you could do. And that was when a new kind of fear crept over you, one so old and visceral you could feel it down to your very bones. Shudders wracked your body as you turned your eyes toward the sky, suddenly certain that you were being watched. But not just watched – no, you were being hunted.

At a loss for what else you could do, you renewed your efforts to alert Gwayne to the danger that you could feel but not yet see. You screamed until your voice was hoarse, but you were forced to watch in horror as Gwayne continued his conversation as though nothing was wrong, even flashing that charming smile that you knew and loved so well. It was just then that the other man finally noticed that something was wrong. He cast his eyes toward the sky as you had mere moments before, saying something to the gathered men. A wave of fear seemed to run through the horses, as there was a flurry of shifting hooves and nervous snorts. You could only watch in terror as realization washed over Gwayne’s face, twisting his handsome features into a terrifying expression of horror.

You screamed at him to run just as everything burst into motion, the horses tearing off across the plain toward the cover of the trees. You found yourself moving along with them, though you had no mount of your own. Instead, it was the same terrible invisible force, dragging you along, forcing you to watch as the scene unfolded before you.

And then you saw it: the dragon. It swooped down from the sky as though it had erupted into existence from nothing, filling the empty air with huge grey wings that seemed to blot out the sun. You screamed again, but this time without the intention of forming any coherent words – the noise that escaped your throat was an expression of the fear that was buried deep in your bones upon the sight of the creature. Its lean body shot across the plain toward the fleeing men with a kind of focus and intention that proved what you had thought from the beginning: the dragon was hunting. And worse than that, it was hunting Gwayne.

Voice rubbed raw from screaming, and realizing your cries to him did nothing anyway, you watched in terrible silence as his steed thundered across the ground, its legs eating up the distance as fast as it could. And yet the dragon gained. If this was some cruel trick played by the gods, you couldn’t think what you could possibly have done to deserve this kind of torment. You could do nothing but watch, utterly powerless, as Gwayne – your Gwayne – fled for his life, his beautiful face contorted into an expression of fear that cut you to the core like a knife to the stomach. You held your breath, fearing each moment would be the one when you were forced to watch your love be consumed by dragonfire, ending both his life and yours in one swift blow of unimaginable anguish and heartbreak from which you knew you would never recover. Just as you had resolved to try calling to him one last time – if nothing else, to assure him of your love – the treeline broke around you and the horses cantered to a stop beneath the cover of the forest.

The world was still again, but the fear lingered. You could sense the dragon above you, even hear its thin, unearthly cries as it searched for its hidden quarry. Your eyes instantly found Gwayne, needing to make sure he had survived the ordeal. Indeed, he still sat upon his steed, and you watched his chest heave as he attempted to steady his breathing. The fear that still permeated the forest remained etched on his face as well, changing his features from those of the man you had courted and married to those of a young boy, trembling and horror-struck and so helpless and small.

You longed with every fiber of your being to run up to him and pull him into your arms, to feel his warm breath on your neck as he folded into your embrace. You ached to hold his face in your hands and wipe away the single lingering tear he likely didn’t even know was still glistening on his cheek. You yearned to kiss the terror away from his brow and his nose and his lips, to tell him he was safe – to tell him that you were here.

But you were trapped just feet from him, all these longings locked into your body as you pressed toward him as far as the strange invisible barrier would allow. You watched as the fear slowly faded from his face, his features once again becoming warm and familiar. You couldn’t help but smile as he seemed to return to himself somewhat. Turning to one of his companions, he opened his mouth to say something when both of their eyes snapped up to the sky, reacting to some sound you must not have heard. You followed their gaze, and didn’t even have a chance to scream as a column of fire descended from above, ready to devour you all.

You woke with a gasp. Your heart was pounding loudly enough that you could hear it in your ears, and you pushed yourself up into a sitting position as you struggled to calm your ragged breathing. The darkness in the room was soft, and your eyes adjusted slowly to your surroundings, only to find them all comforting and familiar – this was your room, your home. Instantly, you turned to your side, and let out a small sigh of relief when you saw Gwayne sleeping peacefully next to you. He was here, he was home, he was safe – you both were.

When your breathing had calmed back to a normal rate, you eased yourself back down under the covers, burrowing into his arms as he sleepily adjusted his position to accommodate you.

“Hmmm—is everything… alright?” he muttered, blinking his eyes open.

“Everything’s fine,” you assured him, “I just had a nightmare.”

He seemed to waken a little more at your words, propping himself up slightly on one arm as he reached the other hand out to stroke your cheek.

“Are you alright? Do you want to talk about it?” his voice was still thick with sleep, but you knew the questions were genuine.

“It was about you,” you reached up to cup his hand that still rested on your cheek, intertwining his fingers with yours. “And the dragon,” you added, your words barely above a whisper. Hearing his sharp intake of breath, you were certain he was reliving the memory himself, and instantly regretted your words.

“But it was nothing,” you hurried to assure him, “I just—I just wish I had been there. Or that I could have helped or—” you were distinctly aware that your jumbled words made very little sense, even to you. “I just felt so helpless,” you ended with a sigh. Gwayne watched you with soft eyes, his fingers squeezing yours in reassurance.

“You were there, though,” he responded, smiling gently, “and you did help.” You just stared at him incredulously, wondering if he was the one who was dreaming now. He read the question in your eyes with a small chuckle and disentangled his hand from yours, pushing himself up to sit.

Pressing a hand to his chest, his fingers found the chain of the necklace that he always wore. The charm was a delicate circle of beaten metal hanging from a simple coppery chain. You had bought it in the market one day when the two of you were still courting. The rich auburn sheen of the metal had reminded you of Gwayne’s hair, and you were determined to have it. The seller assured you that the little ring symbolized unending love and devotion – a never-ending cycle, an unbroken vow. You were doubtful that had been the original intention of the maker, but rather a ploy on the seller’s part to drive up the price after he realized you intended it as a gift for your beloved. Had it been that obvious how love-struck you were?

Regardless of whether it was intended or not, you liked the idea of the simple circle as a token of promise and loyalty, as well as a celebration of one of Gwayne’s most striking features. You had given it to him wrapped in a carefully-embroidered handkerchief when he had gallantly asked for your favor before a tourney. You cherished the memory of him asking you to help him put it on, and the fleeting touch of his skin and flaming hair you were able to steal as you clasped it around his neck. He won the tourney, and insisted that his victory was due at least in part to the precious charm you had given him, imbued with your affection and devotion. To your knowledge, he had never taken it off since.

Now, in the dim light of your shared chambers, he held the little ring out for you to see. It was slightly more battered now than it had been, and though its original shine was gone, it still seemed to glow with a warm coppery light. Reaching out, you took the small circle in your fingers, feeling all the tiny knicks and ridges it had acquired over time, each one of them proof of Gwayne’s promise to always return to you – an unbroken vow.

“See, you’re always with me, right here,” he gestured to the charm in your fingers. The feeling of the metal against your skin and the sweet memories that swirled through your mind caused tears to prick at the corners of your eyes, chasing away the lingering cobwebs of fear that the nightmare had spun. Gently, you released the ring and Gwayne’s fingers replaced yours on the circle, guiding it back to where it always sat on his chest, just above his heart. He pressed it there, emphasizing his words: “right here, right where you always have been – and always will be.”

Ducking your head away, you tried to hide the tears that were now threatening to slide down your cheeks as his words. But before you could wipe them on the sheets, Gwayne’s hand caught your chin, gently pulling him back to you, the rough pad of his thumb banishing the tears from your face. His eyes sparkled with affection and mirth, and you found yourself unable to stop yourself from echoing his smile.

“Hmmm… it’s more serious than I thought,” he said with mock-concern, tilting your face as though he was examining it, “you appear to be desperately and madly in love with me – a very serious condition indeed.”

You couldn’t help the laugh that spilled out of your mouth as you nudged him playfully, causing him to break into bright chuckles of his own. Your chest, which just moments ago had been compressed with terror, was now so full of love and happiness you were certain it might burst.

“And tell me, Ser Gwayne, what is the cure for this most dire of conditions?” you matched his tone of feigned worry as your laughter subsided.

“Hmmm,” he rubbed his chin thoughtfully, unable to hide the dimples forming on his cheeks, proof of his barely-suppressed smile, “perhaps marriage? I have heard many esteemed lords claim that the institution of matrimony is bound to cure an ailment such as yours.”

“Oh, but I fear I’ve tried that,” you exclaimed, “and it has only made my condition worse.”

“Then this is indeed one of the most serious cases I’ve ever seen.” He pondered for a moment, then his eyes lit up: “There is one more cure, but it’s risky. You could try true love’s kiss. One does read about those sorts of things working miracles after all.”

“What’s the risk?”

“The risk is that the kiss renders your condition utterly uncurable by any other means.” Gwayne’s lips tilted up into your favorite lopsided smile as he grinned at you, dimples glowing like twin suns, sending the delicate freckles on his face colliding into each other like falling stars.

“That’s a risk I’m more than willing to take,” you breathed as he reached out to cup your face and bring it close to his. You closed your eyes as your lips met in a burst of warm sunlight that seemed to fill your whole body with its radiance. You weren’t sure how long you remained pressed against him, feeling his heartbeat against your skin, his auburn locks twisted in your fingers, his necklace hanging between your entwined forms.

“Did it work?” he whispered when he finally pulled away, his forehead still resting against yours.

“No,” you responded happily, your fingers once again finding the thin metal of the little circular charm, “I fear I’m even more madly and desperately in love with you than before.” You met his eyes, finding them bright and soft and just as madly and desperately in love as you were certain yours were.

“Well, I like to think of myself as chivalrous, but I don’t think I can find it in myself to regret your condition,” he whispered, a teasing smile on his face as he reached a hand up to run his fingers through your hair.

“Nor can I,” you whispered back, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek.

He pulled you fully into his grasp then, maneuvering you both back under the covers without relinquishing his hold on you. You rested on his chest, head tucked under his chin as he wrapped both arms around you. Your fingers found his necklace, and you clasped it in your hand. He echoed your motion until both of your hands were intertwined around the metal circle, resting just above his heart. You could feel it beating against your skin, and you snuggled yourself even closer to him.

“This is what I imagine,” Gwayne said softly to the darkness, “when I’m on the road without you, and all I have is this small charm to remind me of what it feels like to rest in your embrace. This is what I dream of.” He pressed a gentle kiss to your forehead and squeezed your hand where it entwined with his on the necklace. “You’re always right here.”

“I’m always right here,” you echo, your words a promise, a vow.

“But thank the gods I don’t have to imagine right now,” you felt his words as his lips moved against your forehead, “because I am right here.” Gwayne wrapped his arms even more tightly around you, and you gladly tucked yourself further into his warm embrace. You felt yourself drifting back into a pleasant sleep in the comfort and safety of his arms. You heard his words echo softly in the gentle quiet of the room:

“I’m right here.”

#charlotte writes #ser gwayne hightower #gwayne hightower #gwayne hightower x reader #ser gwayne hightower x reader #gwayne hightower fanfic #gwayne hightower fanfiction #gwayne hightower imagine

700 notes · View notes

capslocked · 1 year ago

Text

KINKVEMBER DAY: 4

[prompt: roleplay] male reader x kang hyewon 8k words

“I need you,” Hyewon says in the uneasy dark of a hotel room, with two urgent fistfuls of your shirt, “need you to do to me all the things my husband never will.” “Yeah, I know,” you tell her, “you said that,” and her eyebrows move in all the wrong directions, “I’m just wondering if, you know, maybe we should give him a little more credit.”

Here’s the truth:

Hyewon doesn’t believe in leaving evidence behind and you don't find it particularly productive to doubt her; you’ve been talking in code for years. Parts and pieces of yourselves reduced down and bottled into set phrases that, to anyone else, would be totally incomprehensible.

"i've been thinking," she texts you, which you've come to understand means she's already made up her mind, "maybe we should do that thing we were talking about. tonight."

(You're not always so fast on the uptake.)

You send two back two texts, both of which ask "which thing?" because the hallway from the breakroom to your desk has poor reception and it never lets you send just one.

Then, right after you cross the threshold between signal-drowning-concrete and the glitzy glass-walled arboretum they've built to make you feel like you're not a total cog in their corporate machine, your phone pings the receipt of Hyewon's reply: a picture - her laptop, propped up on your coffee table with its screen angled for perusal, of a booking site that's filtered to show results for their 'king bed & view' room at a midrange hotel a forty-five-minute ride from your apartment.

"not really doing much narrowing down here hyewon."

She replies to you - her text bubble appearing over another couple still images, of herself in the vanity mirror as she curls her hair around her finger and holds this little black slip of a dress over her shoulder, black lacy lingerie in tow, the whole nine - with:

"i'm feeling kinda adventurous."

Five o’clock rolls around but you never really do figure it out. You spend the last three hours at work deciding which kink of hers (oh, does she have a few) this is all in service to.

There's nothing overtly sexual about her pics in the first place - not more than usual anyway, more showing off her curves and cut jaw than showcasing anything for her 'adventurous' intent. So that can't be the tell - you'd seen her in a corset once (you can't unsee it) and the angle of her hips to the mirror makes you think that if she was planning on pulling on a pair of crotchless panties then she probably would've found her thigh high stockings, too.

You try and think of what the two of you had even talked about when discussing these little scenes - how many times you'd ended up 'in the mood' during or after such a meeting of the minds, how it'd snowballed from there, a whole list of filthy what-ifs that she'd probably put more thought into than you ever have - but you draw a total blank. It could be any of a number of things.

Until,

"i left you instructions on the kitchen island," reads a text on your phone which you definitely don’t check while you’re driving -

And then it hits you.

"ah."

"yeah, 'ah'," she replies.

A quarter past seven at the hotel bar is way too early for any real promiscuous activity, but then again, you're here playing at pretend and half the fun of games like this is in the setup.

Meet me at the bar, your instructions read, introduce yourself, and play it by ear.

There's some couples at the other end, some friends downing shots by the round, people musing over their aperitifs, and a woman sipping alone at the bar - Hyewon, appearing to you from the back first:

The pointed edges of her shoulders narrow out over this tiny cocktail dress that somehow covers less of her than if it weren't there at all, skin tight, accentuating even her softest curves. She has her hair fixed a particular way - teased enough to flip at the ends but still a single sweep down her shoulders, pulled together softly by a ribbon in the back, tied like a fantasy, allowing a wispy strand to fall to her face - glossy and dark and glowing to this rich, deep mahogany where it's cast in the lamplight.

The line of her throat, of her chest. Where her hips meet her waist in a rounding flare. The effort and beauty she's gone to, for you - that she puts in every day just because she knows it gets your attention, can do more than turn a head or two; Hyewon's appearance is almost indifferent of you, only coincidental, but she puts on a damn good act.

(You look a lot more worn in comparison: jacket thrown over dress shirt and khakis, tie loose at the neck. Standard office attire with just a step-outside-regulation. Disheveled.)

A drink, you suppose - approaching the bar to try and catch the bartender's attention to order a single malt.

But if Hyewon's been waiting long, she doesn't complain when you pull into the stool beside her and sit for a long moment.

"Do you mind if I join you?" you say over a pair of politely folded hands - and that's generally where her 'instructions' end.

The look she fixes you with is just this unashamed smoldering, her body language this contradictory kind of lazy - cool, like her night was going exactly the way she planned but she still had places to be.

"It depends," she replies, one slender finger curled around the stem of her martini glass - which historically, is a drink she hates. "Who's asking?"

"Just me," you offer, letting the gesture and your tone leave it up to her. And then slowly, perhaps awkwardly: "ostensibly a complete and utter stranger who knows a gorgeous woman when he sees one - and who could never pass up a chance to see how the rest of her is."

"Smooth."

"I guess it is, considering you didn't immediately run for the exit."

Hyewon nearly snorts.

"Hard not to." She tilts her head back at you, assessing. Her cheeks are rosy pink. "A handsome thing like you doesn't usually buy themself a girl's time with flattery -"

"Buy your time or your drinks?" you tease, and you can tell she wants to roll her eyes - but she keeps them carefully lowered. Eyelashes dipping down like blackened fans.

Hyewon shifts slightly, resting her chin onto the heel of her wrist like she's leaning against an imaginary windowpane and tipping her face a little sideways. It makes you smile. "One gets the other, if you catch my meaning."

Maybe it takes you a little too long to lift your gaze off her lips to find her eyes, or off the sweeping curve of the hemline sitting high across her long legs, but she watches you for just a breath. It's a more telling moment that she pretends she doesn't know you.

"You can look at me if you like," and then without further preamble, she introduces herself with a slight tilt of the head and an expectant expression: "call me Hyewon."

You figure that if you've gotta say one word to get the ball rolling you want to say her name, and as a little revenge for forcing you to think on this scene and think on what to say, what your character would say, how exactly she wanted you to go about 'meeting' her in a hotel bar, how her fucking scenario's been building up in her head for god-knows-how-long (even though, in the scheme of the two of you and your relationship, it’s nowhere close to being the most demanding sex you've had), you reply simply with:

"Pretty."

It's satisfying, how she hesitates - pausing a little longer on your face to gauge exactly what you meant. Studying. But the next beat of your heart - or hers - is effortless, easy.

"I know. That's what my husband calls me."

"Husband?" You keep yourself from raising an eyebrow. "And I don't suppose I'm also... married?"

"Different day, different you."

"Meaning I have a wife or a mistress of my own," and you flick your wrist at the barkeep for a top-up of what's in front of Hyewon. "You're telling me I'm the kind of man who'd only settle for two."

It doesn't sound quite right, though Hyewon picks up on it. Doesn't let on. "Aren't men like you always? Charming to a fault, but always voracious - insatiable, especially with women like me."

"Women like you."

"Married women. Unavailable," she simpers, and in a practiced little motion, draws her hand out to where you can see it properly, this sparkle on her fourth finger that catches the lowlight of the bar. The diamond looks real - not that you'd actually know - and your stomach flexes up mid-somersault thinking about the financial impropriety for what amounts to a gag. A practical joke. Hyewon the comedian.

Still, you go with it and take her hand in yours, admiring. "What a pity." The glint off its faceted surface - Hyewon's watchful as she allows it.

"Isn't it," she agrees.

The more unnerving thing - besides how composed Hyewon can make herself be - is how the narrative quickly becomes a whole hell of a lot clearer with the context of marriage in play. She's mentioned it before: the infidelity thing, the way it leads to the raunchiest, filthiest bits she'll dare to explore. In some ways, her desire for the untouchable makes a lot more sense -

And maybe that's what had been nagging at your mind since she brought up the idea of playing the part: you always end up kissing in that stupid 'caught up' sort of way. With an intensity that's hard to beat. Even though you wouldn't ever cheat on her. Not in a million years. You'd watch her leave before doing anything like that.

But it's thrilling, almost, and even more thrilling that this isn't entirely improvisation: how well the two of you might actually play this off, as two total strangers to this illusory little roleplay that you'd normally say was your very last interest.

"But you know there's something I've come to appreciate about married men," Hyewon continues, her voice in this conspiratorial sort of hushed.

You blink, drawing her out.

"They know how to tie a knot."

There's the flirty wink, an upward flick of the chin that draws your eye to the span of her chest. To her body in that skin-hugging dress and your fingers entangled in hers - the gentle bump and shift of the bodies behind her, moving between the tables - Hyewon a queen of circumstance, playing to the moment as it bends; as her lips part in a pleased smile, red and smooth, almost innocent, and you can't help but imagine tasting her on your tongue, the force that'd take for her to yield when you finally got your hands in her hair.

(What a character, honestly.)

"Tell me something," you say, "why would a married woman, this pretty little thing like you, be all alone in a place like this - without her charming husband."

Hyewon's smile curls at the edges like smoke. "I never said he was charming."

You raise an eyebrow. "Good-looking, then."

"Never said as much either."

“Why are you with someone you find neither attractive nor charming?”

Hyewon makes a face, slightly pitied. “If that Isn’t what I’m asking myself everyday.”

"Hm." You narrow your eyes into something more quizzical than suggestive. It works on her anyway. "That doesn't feel too much like it's in character, Hyewon."

She shrugs, but it's that coy kind of shrug. She thinks you'll let her off easy - you usually do. All considered, she's the type who thrives off the chase and, as of today, so do you.

"But he is cute." Her expression is just this side of sweet, as she takes a dainty sip of her drink. Like the taste doesn’t bother her, like she isn't pretending she doesn't hate it with every fiber of her being. Like this is easy. "And maybe -" she quirks an eyebrow at you, withholding a smirk. "-you're right. Maybe, I was looking for someone cuter to fill the bill. And luck would have it, here he is."

So - apparently - her character doesn’t mind a little light infidelity.

Hyewon takes in the vague sense that the message wasn’t as clear as she might have liked, her forehead scrunching as she tries to convey - in a way that would communicate even to an airhead - some realization to play your part.

"Maybe it's the wrong question,” you start over, taking it from somewhere near the top, “what are you doing here, with me?"

That's when Hyewon graces you with one of the soft, slow kind of smiles: the kind that manages both an air of 'you dimwit' and 'good question'. Her fingertips barely graze yours but it's noticeably electric. Just enough to feel your pulse fluttering.

(You don't care that none of it’s real - Hyewon looks to you through thick eyelashes like a goddess of temptation and sin - and it makes something wicked coil up warm at the pit of your gut. A curious thrill and a recklessness that you have to admit feels a little nice - being the man trying to talk this woman into bed. The challenge and the buildup, the want to work for it. It's new. It's fresh. Lo-and-behold, it's kinda hot.)

When you catch her stare, she fidgets. So slightly, so briefly, your chest is on fire and you're barely into the pages of her plans, of this night ahead.

"Wish fulfillment, let's say," and that is no less true. "See it’s my husband."

"Mhmm."

"He respects me too much to do the things I'm going to ask you to do."

"Like?" you continue to prod.

Hyewon lets out the tiniest shiver of a sigh, like a trickle of cold water down the length of her spine. "Take a good guess."

You finish the rest of Hyewon's martini, slow. Savoring the warmth and bitterness sliding down the back of your throat. The night's young, sure - and if you're supposed to be spending it all wrapped around Hyewon's finger. This means you can take your time.

"Show me your room?" you propose, gesturing to the empty glass.

"I thought you'd never ask."

At your offering, she stands up and throws on her coat - long, double-breasted, chic - but only really just off her shoulders to have the hem hit her legs mid-thigh. One of her many personal quirks. Hyewon knows how to move like there aren't two eyes staring at her wherever she goes: not the awkward side-to-side of a girl who wasn't made to wear heels - a loping gait - nor the assured click, click of the taller kind that totter like it's all they've got going for them.

Something totally different: a little careless and a little haughty and an assurance of the highest confidence.

She winds an arm round yours like they do in movies, this parody of a leading lady - Hyewon not a seductress as much as she is someone who'll look the part just to convince you otherwise. There is a pretty big discrepancy, you find, between her bravado and her smile, her figure and her artistry - you couldn't act if you wanted to; meanwhile, she does whatever she damn well pleases. And somehow that doesn't even begin to cover the things that turn her on.

The two of you make for the stairs, winding up floor after floor until it's perfectly quiet, perfectly out of sight - hidden away from prying eyes and ears.

The silence of an empty hotel stairwell is thick - Hyewon's hand comes off the railing, as she takes to the wall and turns to face you. It's a gentle tug at the tie loose around your neck, barely any give before you're already there, holding her by the hips.

"Might've gotten us lost there," you whisper, as her finger plays at your chest and finds its way round the collar of your shirt. Your top button is already undone by the time you notice she's not fond of it. "The elevators would've gotten us where we're headed faster."

"Don't worry." She hums, leaning in close - like a magnet, like gravity. "You're getting the scenic route."

"Anything to stall the inevitable," you tease, but it isn't a thread she seems interested in developing.

"Something like that."

Hyewon shifts her weight back onto her right foot, her skirt riding up just barely. The dip between her inner thighs and the smooth curve of her leg is open and bare to your sight, her dark stockings like an unspoken challenge: the panties, lacy, loose, no crotch.

And it gets... indecent, the way your lips connect, how you realize half-way into that kiss, she's still smiling. It isn't any one way that does it; maybe it's the clever use of her tongue, or that particular position you've coaxed her up against the stairwell wall that makes it seem like Hyewon can't be any more in danger - it's too much to handle and your mouth goes slack on the reflex of an apology; her hand has a hold on you by the jaw and it won't budge.

"My husband," she murmurs into you, the trace of the words ghosting into the breath between the both of you. "Never lets me."

"What," you rasp, barely recognizing your own voice, your hand heavy on her side - the very real fear that you might tip over a banister because Hyewon's got her heel half-way into the back of your calf and any less bracing would bring you down. Your thoughts are a fog, with her cheek in one hand and your knee already up between her thighs.

"His wife," she almost swallows down, kisses turning chaste because maybe it's just easier to gently peck out her intentions, how she looks to you with dark eyes, heavy-lidded and wanting, a thumb trailing down the plane of your cheek. It'd feel like pity if you weren't thinking exactly the same.

You try to finish it for her:

"She likes it rough."

"No." Her nose traces yours before she connects you again - gentle and slow, and a shudder rolls all down the expanse of her shoulders; you think you have it about right. Until she makes the slightest adjustment and her grip in your hair turns agonizing, perfect and burning on the edge of too tight - too much. You are straining against the wall of a hotel hallway and she's saying, "not rough."

She kisses you. Hard. Until you gasp for the stolen air in her lungs.

"Filthy," she manages against the heat and sting at the side of her cheek.

(Damn.)

Your voice has gone and lodged itself firmly somewhere between her lungs - but there's something that says she knows. That you've got it in you, the brimming potential that might just say everything you ever wanted but couldn't figure the right way to put it.

It's the tone of her voice or the spark in her eyes, but one moment into the next - you're caught in this pull - like gravity's increasing tenfold at her will; her heartbeat's so strong you swear you feel it against your ribs as she's demanding:

"Messy. Dirty. A little uninhibited," and the obvious thrill of that must flare up like lightning under her skin - the way it makes her moan, soft and breathless: "fuck me like my husband doesn't."

She’s not even waiting for the comfort of the room yet, which in hindsight is probably checking more of Hyewon's many boxes - it's the sex in public thing, the fear of discovery thing, the desire to have you ravish her out where anyone can come upon you sort of thing - the thought of which has your jaw go a little slack too. Her leg up is coiled up around your hip, your fingers tangled in her hair and sliding up the length of her thigh, until you're fucking kneading up her ass and drawing out that desperate whine in her.

"Fuck," she exhales into your shoulder - a hand on the metal bannister to brace against those little circles you start to rub inside her, pushing - slowly - one, two, three knuckles deep, testing - before drawing back, and plunging forward again. This ache, slow and purposeful, pressing just enough into her until there's a wet sort of friction that has your hand slick all down your wrist.

It never takes long, with your fingers on her clit, fingers inside her, a palm covering the moans out of her mouth -

She cums just like that.

Whining and broken and bent under you, and with an elbow hard against her ribcage to make the breaths come shallow.

"Stay quiet for me, sweetheart," you find yourself murmuring, as your teeth graze the shell of her ear - the short burst of hair and silky strands across the back of her neck; you're undoing the neat ribbon tied round the length of her hair and letting her waves settle on her shoulder in time for you to swallow down the sound of her sighs, the tension in her lips, and the frantic jolt when your fingers push through the wet, heat of her pussy again, merciless and quick. You have to be careful; she nearly bites your fucking tongue out.

"Can't." Her jaw's tight on it, the slight staccato to her breathing, murmuring and slightly dazed: "if we get caught, someone will see. Someone will notice."

Her next exhale is more shaky. "Anyone could see us like this," with just her toes curling and her stomach tensing on every second beat. Your grip leaves a bruise. "Please-"

"We're not supposed to be doing this at all, are we? If you've got a husband waiting somewhere?"

You hear yourself, and it sounds sorta degenerate, though in all the right ways, you figure, like something straight out of one of Hyewon's romance novels, the dirty, smutty ones that she swears up and down she simply reads for the plot, but the dazed, hazy kind of mood they get her worked up into suggest otherwise.

You trace the rough pad of your thumb over her pussy, this delicate, ghost of a touch. One you'd have to strain to even tell if it was there or not until she whines - eyes screwed shut like she doesn't mean to, just does. The sound of it bouncing around the stairwell.

And then, all this wet: her skirt's ridden all the way up to her stomach, damp and near-transparent with slick, and you can just imagine the puffy pink between her legs - between her stockings in the afterglow of an orgasm, spent and sensitive and sore and wanting for more. Your eyes linger a little too long -

"I shouldn't let you," she manages, half a moan on it - one of her heels comes up the stair you're standing on and the way Hyewon clings onto you for balance says enough, but still, she demands, with all the strength her throat allows: "make it fast. You're lucky I let you see me like this at all -"

And she cuts off abruptly, looking at you.

(She'll play coy for a while longer. Which, Hyewon being Hyewon, will look like as much an effort as her sprawl out on the bed for you is.)

"The room," you say to her, harshly, "where is it."

"Four more floors."

Room 1014 as it turns out is like every other room you've ever been in, each one perhaps a little more identical than the last - except this one has Hyewon sitting in your lap while you get comfortable on the bed, and there's also the way she looks in the mirror above the headboard, the desperation in her stare, right back into the reflection.

"What all," she says, "do you want to do to me?"

This time - no explicit instructions - just an implication. You have to figure it out.

See, the image of her is like every fantasy rolled into one, wearing this thin black bra that has her breasts just about spilling over. They're amazing - the color and shape of her skin. Soft. Cradled between the cups like a godsend, and maybe that's why it drives her a little crazy how good you look biting down the ridge of her breast and flicking your eyes back up to catch her expression.

It has you feeling, if nothing else, a little ‘adventurous,’ too.

Her belly tenses on a heavy sigh and it's one hell of a thing to have Hyewon staring you down, like you're an animal or an idiot, with her eyes flashing and a thinly veiled anger in the purse of her lips. There's a thousand things she'd like to do to you - for you to do to her - but it's about the predicament: the silk necktie she'd pulled off you as you both stumbled through the door has ended up around her wrists, pinning her arms behind her back in a way that suggests a loss of control. Just the mere suggestion of a little playacting, but she's almost keening.

You feel the touch of her right calf keep rising - curving down your waist, hooked behind the small of your back - her thighs smooth, and a hot line along your sides.

"I should fuck that pretty mouth of yours," you say against the shell of her ear, because you know better than anyone, the very concept gets her wet. Uncomfortably so.

And she leans her head against your temple like she'd love it. You could be imagining the little whimper as she clenches up round nothing - until a growl escapes the back of her throat and she's saying -

"Is that how you're going to cum? With me on my knees and nothing else? Cover my pretty face? How you’ll completely ruin me?. You’re more creative than that."

“I don’t know that I am.”

Her hips move to find some friction where there isn't any until you give her some, pulling your cock out through your pants and feeling it brush, once, twice against the seam of her. Hot, and hard. Ready. And if she only tried a little, the angle was made perfectly to slot your head in, but neither of you move. She doesn't yield.

"Let me fuck myself on you," she suggests, strained, almost pleading. "Then perhaps I will."

You could take her like she is. Any which way. But this is about getting a particular reaction - one that'll leave her spent and trembling - and nothing like that will happen without a little bit of preparation and prelude. You want to watch her writhe for hours. Until she forgets she's playing a character at all, until she's panting your name and whimpering for release, her cheeks burning.

But at least it gets her writhing on you, the heat and press of her body as she leans in close, your eyes locking:

"Get your cock inside me-" the urgency in her voice. "-fuck me right now, this second-"

"Say it again."

"Fill me with your perfect cock." The words land right on your lips, frayed at the edges as the tether to her control slips another notch. "Push my thighs apart until you break me," Hyewon tells you - and then with her legs twisted up in the comforter, the creaking mattress and the sweat on the sheets: she rolls her hips like they're pleading for it.

"Pushy."

"Gentle's got no appeal for us."

"Apparently not," you reply - but then it's suddenly a lot easier, to slide one hand in Hyewon's hair, and grip at the knotted silk wrapped tight 'round her wrists to hold her. There's no hiding the subtle arching of her spine, how the pressure off her arms pulls her chest in or makes it all the more comfortable, she doesn't let on, she'll probably keep pretending she doesn't like this, that she hasn't always wanted -

You run your tongue over her collarbone and thrust up inside her, once - a warning that you're not giving in to her quite yet.

The smile that runs her lips is brittle. Like her patience isn't what it used to be - she makes a quiet little noise, pained. A flash of discomfort. But there's a moan and a curse out of her:

"Like that. Harder."

"What does harder mean?" you ask, with a deliberate repetition in motion, thrusting upward, forcing her hips to shift a few degrees further back - her knees clenching around the sheets as you're met with no give - Hyewon's resistance through a dark smile, and her grip slackened in her hands, despite you keeping a fist wound tight in the hair on the back of her head, tightening the other around her restraint.

Her throat flinches: this shudder.

She takes a couple heaving, open-mouthed breaths, before she has it in her to glare at you again.

"Harder-" The way her mouth shapes around the word gets the better of you - cute little cupid's bow in pink, full and swollen and pursed up as if in pain. Or desire. Or both, the way her head is tipped back, hair half undone - an idea is already coiling at the back of your mind. "-until I can't stand."

"Or talk?"

And when your hand loosens on her wrists, her posture slumps like it's relief, that you're finally going to move along in a direction she's getting some satisfaction from -

Hyewon shakes her head in a moment that's almost blissed.

"You," her voice breaks on the tail end, "fucking wish you could shut me up that easily -"

In a motion almost gentle, you twist the length of hair down around her, from her scalp to her jaw, and wrap it around a hand. "Let's see if you'll change your mind, shall we."

There's a sharp draw of air in past her lips, just one sound, not a word. No proper rebuttal. She bites down, teeth clicking.

So you pull.

And this isn't some revelation, that Hyewon's cunt is heaven. Slick and tight, the fit around your cock and the gasp escaping the base of her throat - that isn't new. You've been here countless times, fucked her past her breaking point, beyond what should reasonably satisfy her or satisfy you, but that still doesn't take away from this incredible, heady rush that pulses through your entire body. It never stops getting better, not inch-after-fucking-inch the way you're bottoming out inside Hyewon's body and feel how hard the rest of her muscles tense up in the contact, how her pussy tightens and quivers, and grips around the entirety of your cock, the briefest taste of pleasure and release before it's pulled back just out of her reach - overstimulated, until Hyewon cries out.

You expect, predict the fight, the whimpers that spill out of her mouth with every slap of your skin and the breathless way she begs, pleads, like she'd rather her pride take it from her than have your fingers tug her hair up, right out of her scalp, with your arm locked around her lower waist. With your cock pumping faster, faster and a pressure, hot and inescapable, right there - the friction building - the slippery-wet heat sliding along your shaft with every stroke until you bottom out and her next exhale is a sob.

A goddamn fucking sob and the warm gush of liquid down her thighs - all on you. You fingers are pressed into her ass, pulling onto you, steading her bounce - and Hyewon finds her breathing uneven, as you smear wet across the curve of her backside, rubbing circles into her lower back as you catch up on the rhythm she'd lost.

"This tight little cunt, huh," you tease, and she nods so desperately it seems like she might snap. Like she might cry again and this time for real, a drop of her eye color past the blush, streaking down her cheek. You have the wherewithal to remember your character, your blocking, your lines: "this is what your husband won't do? Won't fuck you on every piece of furniture until you're a ruined fucked-out mess? Doesn't have the decency to work over his little slutty-wife until she's passed out, dripping with cum?"

Hyewon's fingers curl up into two balls of white knuckles and she chokes on her reply. "He won't."

"Tell him. He has a hot and dirty little piece of ass right under his own roof-"

"You think," and the string of words trails off when you manage to grind in, at this angle that has her reeling, trembling at every shift and jerk in momentum. Your knuckles drag against her soft and giving curves, almost gripping at her in the attempt to hold her down on you. "-my husband isn't enough."

"Well you wanted me to fuck the domestic housewife out of you," you murmur, taking two greedy handfuls of the ass bouncing in your lap, rubbing your palms along her hips, up and around the shape of her abdomen and her ribcage like you'd map it, memorize it. She wants this, you know this: your palms come around and over and brush your thumbs against her rising gooseflesh - she's putty in your hands. "No strings attached, remember, a one night kind of thing-"

"My husband loves me."

"Then it seems-"

"He makes me cum with his hands alone."

Your jaw works tight - Hyewon's cunt feels as good wrapped around you as she says your cock feels making a mess of it.

"Tells me he'd die happy hearing me moan his name."

"Oh, because no matter where he goes," you say, fingers wrapping under and around the back of her neck, forcing her to look you in the eye, "no matter what, your sweet cunt's the only one his mouth is ever watering for, isn't that right-"

A blink, lashes thick and feathering down and over the pools of her pupils as you have a hold of her tight.

You're having a hard time with this, and you want to give it to her, the toe-curling-crescendo that would see her cumming at your will, or worse, losing the plot completely and your entire setup falling away from the charade of characters you'd both conjured. But she looks at you like she's never loved anyone like she loves you, the naked, barefaced devotion, the tenderness - a quick breath, a second - and the game is suddenly something far more personal, a truth. It isn't exactly fair: how your heart stutters. How much her heartbeat makes your pulse flutter, the electrifying rush you get when you fuck roughly up into her tight, wet cunt and make her bite down on nothing in the throes another orgasm.

You barely have a second to think of something coherent, let alone an out before she kisses you. If that isn’t totally disarming. So you move her into the next, flipping her onto her stomach, and she does nothing to fight back: Hyewon just lies there - the side of her face plastered to the comforter - exhausted, and gives a willing, malleable moan at the contact where your hand digs into the shape of her upper thighs, spreading them out as her elbows struggle behind her back.

"Here, baby," you say, finally unwinding the silk knot between her wrists, "I'll have you like the little desperate fucktoy you really are."

There's the bite to her bottom lip, the whole five seconds it takes for her hands to spread out and twist her fingers tight in the bedspread, before she whines - full-throated - and rocks back onto her toes to arch her back.

(See, the thing: Hyewon likes being fucked within an inch of her life. On all fours and pleading for more.)

With your free hand, you reach around her to run over her inner thighs.

Hyewon brings her grip to the bottom of the bed frame, for purchase, or leverage, you don't know, and in one simple motion, you slip your cock back deep inside her pussy.

You curse under your breath.

Hyewon fucking collapses.

It's a dangerous combination, having her begging and you nearly fully clothed while she's wearing barely more than this thin strip of black silk around her waist and a stocking on one leg, but you can't help it - she looks good this way.

"Fuck," she spits out, voice lost when your hips find hers in this wet, sloppy crash of skin that gets louder, faster and more punishing on each beat. "Like that, oh my God-"

Her whimpering only gets worse - when you start only pulling out halfway, until she's gasping like she can't breathe. You think there isn't a more wonderful, more obscene, more gorgeous thing than Hyewon spread out in front of you - the curve of her spine defining each and every one of the lines, dips, and rises of her body - and you would thank God or some higher deity right about now.

It’s fuck and please and every other little pliant utterance of “fuck my brains out, use me, make me beg, I'm so turned on right now I'll let you fuck me anyway you want - harder, faster, I can do whatever, just show me how, make me, push and fuck me hard until I'm raw and aching - god - like this, let me cum, please, let me - keep fucking going, oh my god, please, like this, fuck, just like this-"

You do thank God, actually - there's mirrors everywhere in this room, and you can catch the circular swing of her tits every time you force a curse and a sigh out of her: the bared teeth and the effort to push herself back on her arms, bracing for every thrust, fighting and fumbling to keep her balance and to make sure you have to pound her into the mattress until her cries reach a pitch.

Then, the thing you'd learned she'd never ask for but oh-so-dearly-wanted - you open your palm and bring it down hard on her backside. The impact of your flesh to hers, a crack, a moan and her whole body flexes - and it's then you do it again: matching the hit to the visible red outline of your handprint. The third time, she hisses, biting into the bed sheets so as not to cry out.

"Right? This is what you want? To be fucked and used?"

She doesn't reply with words, because she may in fact be biting her teeth into the cotton threadcount at the end of the bed, but she lifts her ass higher, angles her hips like she's waiting for more. Her brow is creased in a smile, even though a frustrated groan escapes her lips - so you give her that again, and again, until the back of her thighs are turning red and she's clawing one hand back along the length of your legs - pushing and pulling.

"You want me to fuck you senseless, sweetheart?"

And then, so needy and desperate she's just saying the first word that come to mind:

"More-"

"-when I've been railing into you so hard and your husband probably knows already, has to have seen, maybe he's listening at the door- oh," and your whole train of thought comes to a sudden halt upon seeing Hyewon's hand land on the perfect round of her ass, fingers pulling her soft, reddening skin taut, up and away from where your cock is disappearing between her cheeks - to allow more of your shaft into her hot, wet cunt - allow you to fuck her and fuck her up - allow the length of your shaft to slide deeper and hit all the spots that will send her reeling into this orgasm and the next.

Your gaze is stuck however, not to her curves rippling in excess, the damage of your thrusts pounding her body to ruin, or the look of flawless pleasure twisting up the pretty features of Hyewon's reflection, but instead it's the fucking flash and catch of the diamond that adorns her fourth finger. Even when you have her completely helpless, bent on your mercy, she's still wearing that promise, that intention to have and to hold, and you think, for at least a second, this whole roleplay thing isn't the worst idea: being a surrogate to fulfill someone's wildest fantasies. It might even be enough to make you hard all over again - the thrill and the debasement of your girl, lines quickly blurring between the Hyewon you'll take home and put back together and the Hyewon you're fucking pouding into a mattress - the here and now.

"Fuck, Hyewon," you find yourself swearing - steadying the hips rolling back in your palms, bending down until the flat of your chest meets her back, until your nose is in her hair, the long strands sticking to her lips and the back of her ears. Until you feel her shaking as you suckle against her skin, at her neck, hot kisses between the shoulder blades, finding a grip in her hands. Her grip in yours - as she's muffling these exquisite, needy sounds; she is perfect. Hyewon is perfect.

The first time you cum, it's this hot splatter of white: smeared across her ass and the crease of her lower back. It feels almost dirty to think that's just how you feel about it; your heart is stuttering in its erratic pace, but your eyes are drawn and enraptured, the sight of it all.

Then second, maybe your favorite: when she slips her hand to your aching shaft and simply takes you back inside her. This soft, wet, inviting heat that pulls you back to her.

"God- please," her head tips back, you feel the arch of her back through her ribs and stomach, the way her breath catches as you slide your cock through her creamed-out-cunt so much harder and smoother. "It feels so fucking good, baby," and there are tears now, welling in the corner of her eyes, "don't stop, God don't ever stop-"

She can barely finish her sentence before she's cut off, a moan ripped from the bottom of her lungs and a gasp straight from the pain-pleasure that has your balls slapping against her pussy every other stroke. And suddenly she's sitting, or rather, squirming into your arms, her face buried in your shoulders as she starts riding you, and not-quite crying and saying again - again, the whole filthy lot of things: about her wanting you to fill her, to plug her up with your cock. Every thrust she whines in your ears, clutching onto the fabric of your shirt and making a mess of herself in you.

It's this wild and reckless thing that makes its way around the room, on every surface and bit of furniture. You fuck her over the counter, let her ride you on the sofa, the chair, the two of you managing to find some sort of assistance in the wall even, the door frame, her legs up your sides and the slippery-sticky-heat of your mouths connecting and everything that isn't exactly meant to support that kind of strain buckling and nearly giving way - once when the wooden joints in the door-frame shift, once when she begs for release in that frantic voice that doesn't sound a thing like her. And the way she comes apart under you after, on top of you - is even sweeter; you imagine there's this endless possibility for love, for pleasure, a whole world in bundled in the notion that you could do it for her again, that it was always a question of Hyewon letting you have her that way, and the rest was mere foreplay - a stretch.

Only, on the bed again, Hyewon shivers beneath you, this full-body response, and you've got her stretched as she opens up - that the slightest of movements has her already whimpering out "fuck," and "please," and "right there," and "fuck you're going to make me come like this. You're so good, just fucking," and "more, harder, please, you feel so fucking good-"

The desperation for release is so palpable in her that it's curling into your stomach as your press Hyewon's knees into the points and edges of her shoulders and fold in her half - this perfect angle of leverage. Fucking her like she's yours and no one else's - the absolute delight of her cunt, wet, hot, and desperate to milk you empty - her body quaking at the force of each thrust, and the hungry grind of your hips into hers. Her fingers digging and knotting in the sheets around you until her knuckles pale, and your own grasp on her skin threatens to bruise.

"Inside me," she gasps out, because she can feel that edge just as well as you, "I want you to fill me, just cum inside, God, you always feel so amazing, fuck, like that, cum inside me, cum in me-"

"How could I say no, especially when you ask so sweetly," you tell her, kissing into her smile, "can you take another? Baby, look at me, look into my eyes, yeah? Look right back at me."

Her eyes blink and roll back a bit, almost losing focus and her eyelashes flutter - the creases in her brow, the elegant lines of her face locking up in the overwhelming tension, then, a peak.

And a demand, meekly asking you to fill her up. Until there's nothing left. "Cum," Hyewon moans, "for the love of fuck-"

You push her past her climax until she's practically weeping, sobbing through a litany of nonsense and slurred, unfinished sentences and almost howls, struggling beneath your weight and coaxing her fingers over the surge at the base of your spine. Before a hot liquid mess bursts out of you, into the deepest reach of Hyewon's throbbing cunt - cumming inside her, while you hold her down, not allowing her to move as your hips lock and you're both left groaning in utter agony.

(This was the thing you'd told her once - cumming inside her was almost always worth the effort it took to clean it all back out. You like the possessive aspect of it, maybe the slight humiliation, and more than anything, she'll just melt: once she's gone past the immediate discomfort. If anyone could really learn to get off on feeling a little filthy, it's the two of you. And she knows that too, Hyewon's eager little pout intimates, as she blinks down to watch where the two of you connect.)

You don't say much for the next while. If there's a line where this particular escapade blends back into your normal life, where the Hyewon curled up in the sheets is your own girl and not some half-conceived entity that didn't fit the reality of the rest of the evening, or how you see Hyewon everyday, even then, it’s not clear.

She's utterly boneless - this fragile, dazed thing that runs her palms all the way around her breasts and pulls up her stockings a little further up the line of her hips, as if you weren't going to peel them back and slip them all the way off when you had the wherewithal to handle it. But the strength in her isn't entirely lost either, she looks ready to burst: this air of pride and smugness - victory, right in her grin, which isn't totally surprising. Hyewon usually gets an odd satisfaction out of your participation in whatever hedonistic or obscene thing it is she wants to try.

This was her fantasy - maybe not a deeply rooted or unattainable one, but she'd worked out some kinks of hers and has walked away a far better woman for it, knowing what a sight she is to you. Like this.

"That was... fun," Hyewon eventually says, collecting articles of clothing strewn about the room.

Her shoes are one of two sets in the shoe-rack, but she'll have to look around and under the bed to find her dress. It would probably be some strange level of easy to play dumb and wait until she comes to the conclusion on her own that she should bend down and check down there, but she looks a little too worn out to really be interested in her clothes, more like, ready for the next part.

"We should do it again," her gaze lands, intent, and serious, back to you.

"Which part?" you have to ask, because you're probably still, a little slow on the uptake.

A small laugh, the sly smirk to herself; she knows she has you wrapped so perfectly around her finger, ready to bend to whatever game she can come up with: "whichever part you like."

#hyewon smut #izone smut #izone hyewon smut #kpop smut #male reader #capslocked kinkvember

1K notes · View notes

somedayillbepeterpan · 6 months ago

Text

I have gone down this rabbit hole now and I'm afraid I'm never getting out. I hope I give justice to this. And sorry if this is long.

I've seen a lot of the Colin and Marina vs. Colin and Penelope analyses in here and I want to raise this parallel as to how the Butterfly ball was such a powerful move for both Penelope and Colin. We all have our issues with how they handled Pen and Colin finding their way back to each other but let me add this perspective and hope it helps us understand how real they handled the issue of LW and pushed the character development for them both.

The scene on the left is from S01e06 (Swish) and the right is S03e08 (Into the Light)

S1 scene - Violet is still in her dressing gown, obviously distraught having just read something from LW. She hears someone come down and finds Colin.

S3 scene - Violet is dressed for the morning and her face looks a combination of surprise and confusion after reading a letter. She turns around when she hears someone coming down the stairs.

In both scenes, we see Colin coming down the stairs.

S1 - we only see Colin's back. We're in suspense on what emotional state he is in but we do know that he's on his way to elope with Marina.

In S3 - we see Colin's face immediately looking determined and ready. We see Violet calling his name quite urgently.

S1 - Colin sees his mother's face looking like a combination of disappointment and anger. He asks what's happening. She doesn't say anything but just looks at Colin with a sadness that only a mother can give.

S3 - Violet pointedly says that she received a letter from Colin's wife (I love this line so much) that sounds awfully like "I need you to explain what's happening right now."

S1 - Violet hands Colin LW without saying anything and just looks so so so sad. Colin is shocked to his core because we learn that LW (Pen) exposes Marina's pregnancy and that she has been pregnant from the beginning of the season.

S3 - Colin determinedly faces his mother telling her that they had better sit. And I'm guessing that Colin tells her everything.

Where am I going with this? (Gosh, doing an analysis is hard 😂)

The first time Colin fell in love (thought he fell in love), he was blindsided. But I believe the pain he felt at that time was made deeper because his family had to save him from the situation (Anthony explaining that his actions in the scandal will affect his sisters' prospects as well). To think that it was his mother who first learned of the situation added salt to the wound because we all know that he is a mama's boy and that the one person he dislikes letting down is his mother.

The second (and last time) Colin falls in love, he once again feels betrayed. But he's fallen in love so deeply that he can't imagine his life without Pen. The struggle he goes through in understanding his emotions was very hard to watch and it's because the issue goes beyond his and Pen's relationship. It extends to his family.

Colin's hero complex goes beyond feeling worthy of Pen's love but also worthy of the Bridgerton name. We see it several times in S3 when he mentions it in his confrontation with Portia (" I advise you not to sully our Bridgerton name...") and when Pen tells him that Cressida discovered her secret ("It will besmirch our Bridgerton name. The entire family").

The whole sequence in the study is now more significant because of what Pen addresses in their conversation-- Colin's family ("Your family... the one you so kindly shared with me, they are too good").

Pen's "sacrifice" ("But I can no longer conceal the biggest piece of information I have. My identity."), I believe, was to save the Bridgerton family (once again) and she asks Colin to stand by her as she formulates and executes this plan.

It was very important that Pen wrote a letter to Violet directly and that Colin was there right after she's read it to explain everything. From this point on, they were a team. From this point on, Colin moves in parallel with Pen instead of against it. Colin finally sees that version of Pen that she's always been even while she was LW-- the person who was always determined to save his family just as much as he does.

From this point on, their goals were aligned.

10 rewatches after, I finally see how Colin found his way back to Pen. It wasn't very obvious to me how he got over the feelings of betrayal after he discovered Pen was LW. Of course, him reading the letters help but the events leading up to the Butterfly ball, helped him see her as both Pen and Lady Whistledown and the overflowing pride we see on his face was heart-melting to watch.

From this point on, they finally see each other eye to eye. From this point on, they finally accept this version of each other.

If you got to the end, thanks for reading my humble musings.

*Editing to add this: The Butterfly Ball deep dive series

#Butterfly ball #analysis #gosh this was hard to write #polin #bridgerton #nicola coughlan #netflix #luke newton #bridgerton seaosn 3 #bridgerton season three #netflix bridgerton #bridgerton s3 #bridgerton season 3 #peterpanbutterflyball

425 notes · View notes

wikiangela · 10 days ago

Text

swept completely off my feet, this snow globe scene is turning me

written for @bucktommywinterfest prompt: December 8-14: hallmark movies/movie night and/or “I've actually never seen snow before.

rated: G word count: 2.5k

[also on ao3]

“You know,” Tommy’s voice is quiet, barely a whisper, almost drowned out by the sounds of the TV. It’s some kind of Hallmark movie Buck’s half-paying attention to, half-dozing off after the gruelling shift today. “I’ve actually never seen snow before.” “What?” Buck raises his head from where it’s been resting on Tommy’s shoulder to look at him, immediately more awake. Tommy looks back, almost surprised, as if he didn’t mean to say anything. His fingers keep moving in soothing motions over Buck’s knee, where his legs are thrown over Tommy’s lap. They’re cuddled up under a blanket, and it’s almost too hot – it’s a combination of the blanket, hot chocolate, and the quite warm early December LA evening. It’s far from a true Christmas-winter atmosphere Buck grew up with, but he got used to the warm weather a long time ago. He still misses snow sometimes. He’d never think his boyfriend never saw snow, though. “Never?” Buck asks, trying to keep his shock out of his voice. “I mean, I’ve seen it in movies or pictures.” Tommy gestures vaguely to the TV screen. Buck glances at it to see the characters walking through a snowy landscape. Ah, so that’s what prompted the confession. “I just never had the opportunity to see it in real life.” “In all your forty one years alive? Not once?”

“Evan.” Tommy levels him with a look. “You know I’ve lived in LA my whole life.”

“Yeah, but- but you’re a pilot! You can fly anywhere! And you’ve never travelled?” Buck asks incredulously.

“Nowhere where there’s snow.” Tommy shrugs. “And I’m a pilot for LAFD, honey, not a lot of travelling outside of California. Why is this so shocking? There’s plenty of people who have never seen snow.”

“Still, it’s Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, I love LA, this is my home. But Christmas with snow? That’s a totally different atmosphere. Like in those movies,” he nods towards the screen, now presenting a cozy-looking room, snow behind the window. “The air smells crisp and fresh, you can actually curl up under a blanket with your hot boyfriend and a hot chocolate and not feel like you’re burning ten minutes later,” he says and Tommy laughs, “and all the decorations look so much better with snow – why do you think some people put fake snow in their backyards?”

“We’re not doing that, by the way.” Tommy is quick to add, because lately they’re in the middle of discussing decorating his house, which Buck thinks needs to be much more festive. He already started putting up decorations as soon as December rolled around. Tommy has been indulging him with everything so far, all the lights and garlands and a wreath on his front door, and stockings – Buck ordered custom ones, one with ‘Evan’, the other with ‘Tommy’ on them. There’s also little figurines, like Santas and Christmas trees, and reindeers and whatnot all over the place. They’re only missing an actual tree and decorations outside. And mistletoe, that’s a must. Buck has plans for everything, but there’s still time until Christmas, so they’re taking it slow.

“Of course not.” Buck rolls his eyes. “I’m just saying, it looks better with snow. Also, snow is just fun! You’ve never been sledding? Or ice-skating? Or made a snowman? Or angels in the snow? Or had a snowball fight?” He can feel his eyes get wider with each question, as it’s just settling in how much Tommy’s missed out on – and a plan is forming to remedy that.

It’s not that Buck loves snow so much – he likes it just fine, but he prefers the hot LA weather. It’s just that it’s Christmas, and as un-festive as his holidays at home usually were, some of his favorite memories are when Maddie took him to play in the snow as a child, and how much fun he had with his friends, skating over frozen lakes and having snowball fights.

“And Santa!” He continues, eyebrows raised high. Tommy looks amused now, looking at Buck’s outrage with a grin. “Santa travels by sleigh!”

“Baby, I’m sorry to tell you this, but Santa doesn’t exist.” Tommy says teasingly, mock-concerned, and Buck lightly slaps at his chest. “Besides, he’s magic, he doesn’t need snow.”

“We’re getting off-track here.” Buck shakes his head. “You’ve never seen snow.”

“Never.” Tommy nods.

“Well, you’re gonna.” Buck says decisively, moving to get off of Tommy’s lap, but Tommy’s strong hands keep him in place.

“Where are you going?”

“To grab my phone. I need to find someplace to take you this Christmas to see snow.” Buck says simply, a plan already forming in his head, a thousand ideas coming at once. It suddenly becomes one of the most important things that he makes sure Tommy sees snow this year.

“You wanna go away for Christmas? Really?” Tommy asks skeptically, frowning.

“Yeah. Why?”

“Because you’re the biggest family guy I know. Don’t you wanna spend it with your family? I thought we were going to Maddie’s.” One of Tommy’s hands is moving softly along Buck’s back, the other still resting on his knee. Buck sinks into his touch again, relaxes against him.

“Right, we are.” Buck nods, thinking intensely. “Well, we can go away for New Year’s Eve?” He suggests. “We could take two days off, make a trip out of it. And if we can’t get time off then,” he adds, because it is a very busy time, and people usually take time off well in advance. They might need all hands on deck, and then they won’t get time off – or even spend it together, unless by some miracle they run into each other at a call. “We can take a random weekend in January. Or maybe even now, way before Christmas. And we’ll go see snow.”

“Where? You gonna take me to meet your parents or something?” He asks with a teasing smirk, knowing full-well that’s not what Buck meant. He’s on good terms with his parents now, they get along much better, but he’s not taking Tommy to meet them. He already has met them, but also he doesn’t feel the need to go back to his childhood home. Though he hasn’t been back there in years, they could get a hotel room and visit his parents for an hour or so, since they always visit him and Maddie lately… Hm, maybe. It’s a thought, for much, much later. Right now, all he wants is to take Tommy somewhere with snow.

“Ha, you’re so funny.” Buck shakes his head, leaning forward to press a kiss against Tommy’s smile. “No, I’d take you somewhere nice. To one of those towns in your rom-coms.” Buck grins, turning back to the TV and gesturing at the screen, the movie evidently ending, the main couple currently kissing in the snow. He wants to kiss Tommy like this, too. In a quaint, quiet Christmas town, snow falling into their hair, melting on their hot cheeks as they smile into each other’s lips. He wants to give Tommy the most Christmas rom-com kiss he’s ever had.

“Not sure those exist in real life.” Tommy chuckles, the sound reverberating through his chest where Buck’s pressed against him. He loves the sound of Tommy’s laugh, but he also loves feeling it vibrate through him, it’s always so nice and soothing, Buck could fall asleep to it.

“Well, I’ll find one.” Buck says decisively. Tommy laughs again, presses a soft kiss to Buck’s forehead, right on his birthmark.

“If anyone’s gonna make it happen, it’s you, baby,” he whispers against Buck’s skin. Buck feels his cheeks warm up, a shiver running down his spine, a dopey smile on his face.

“Yeah,” he smiles smugly, “so if you just let me grab my phone-” He tries to move off of Tommy again, but his man holds him in place, one hand sliding down his back to his hip, the other still on his knees, his grip tightening.

“Later, I’m too comfortable like this.” Tommy pouts, and it’s so adorable Buck can’t not relent. He leans back again, head back on Tommy’s shoulder, Tommy’s fingers resuming caressing Buck’s knees thrown over his lap.

“Okay,” he mutters, his hand settling on Tommy’s chest, right above his steadily beating heart. “I can think of places now, and do my research later, when you’re asleep way before me, like always, old man,” he teases, and gets pinched in his side for this, accompanied by his boyfriend’s laugh.

“Oh, really?” Tommy quirks an eyebrow. “Remind me of that next time you want me to hold you up against a wall for a long period of time.” He says with a teasing smirk, then huffs. “I’ll show you old.”

“Shut up.” Buck laughs. If he wasn’t as tired as he is, he’d try that right now, he loves riling Tommy up, and there’s a good chance they would end up against a wall, his legs wrapped around Tommy’s hips; or on the floor, or in bed, or even just naked on the couch, or just about anywhere in Tommy’s house. Alas, he’s beat, and all he has the energy for is cuddling. Maybe he could use a quick nap during the next movie before he tries to start anything. “Are we watching another one?”

“Of course we are.” Tommy grabs the remote. “You wanna choose this time?”

“No, it’s fine, you choose, baby.” Buck sighs snuggling against his boyfriend, as he watches Tommy scroll through the movie options. All of them Christmas-themed, snowy, perfect for this time of year. And normally it might not be Buck’s first, or even tenth option, but with Tommy, he really finds those movies enjoyable. Or maybe that’s his boyfriend’s presence making everything better, as always.

They can’t find time to get away until mid-January, but as soon as they both get time off at the same time, Buck books a little resort in some small snowy town he found on one of his research binges. As soon as they exit their plane, he can’t take his eyes off Tommy’s face, wanting to see even his smallest reaction to snow. It’s silly. He’s seen snow, on TV, in movies, in pictures. Still, seeing the real thing must be different. Besides, Buck will use any excuse to get away with his boyfriend for a few days.

Especially once they get into the town center, the cab driving them to their resort. There’s still leftover Christmas decorations, there’s a thick layer of snow on the ground, it looks like it’s sparkling in the early afternoon sun. It looks magical. The look on Tommy’s face is even better.

When they exit the car, their feet sinking into the snow, Tommy takes a deep breath, inhaling the icy, fresh air so distinct for snow. He bends down to touch the snow, childlike wonder in his face. Buck is so happy to give this to him, as simple and silly as it might be. He loves Tommy so much, he wants to give him everything he ever dreams of. He’s also very happy to be able to give him some firsts, even if they’re not as groundbreaking as the firsts Buck’s experienced with Tommy so far.

Tommy’s still looking at the snow, now melting in his hand, probably freezing. Buck pays the cab driver and takes their bags out of the trunk, but before they go inside, he gives Tommy a second more. It’s adorable how awed he looks.

It’s starting to snow, too, and when Tommy looks up at the sky, snowflakes dotting his cheeks and getting caught up in his hair, his smile could light up the darkest night, all scrunched up nose and crinkling eyes – the most gorgeous smile Buck’s ever seen in his life. He looks like an angel. It really looks like a scene straight out of Tommy’s favorite cheesy holiday rom-coms. They’re basically alone on the street, surrounded by so much snow, the town really quiet and serene, some vague sounds of life reaching their ears from a few streets over.

Tommy’s so entranced by his first time touching snow and seeing it fall in real life, he doesn’t notice Buck bending down to pick up some snow himself. Buck grins wickedly.

“Hey, baby,” Buck gets his attention, and is almost sorry to ruin the mood, but getting hit with a snowball is a crucial snow experience, and he won’t deny his boyfriend that. So, he throws, gentle enough, the soft snow basically falling apart – fortunately, because he hits Tommy’s face. Tommy yelps in surprise and Buck laughs – and then starts running when Tommy retaliates.

That’s how they end up in a snowball fight, turned wrestling in the snow, turned making out in the snow, right at the entrance of their resort, not caring who sees or judges them, just full of pure, unadulterated joy, happiness, and so much love.

They’re both soaking wet and freezing when they get the keys to their room, giggling any time they glance at each other like a couple of teenagers, the elderly woman at the front desk smiling at them amusedly and fondly. Buck grins at her, and puts an arm around Tommy, kissing his temple. He can’t stop smiling.

They take a walk in the evening, fingers intertwined, snow softly falling, the town looking so peaceful and beautiful and picturesque, like from a postcard. But all Buck sees is Tommy’s face. His sparkling eyes and wonder in his face, and that amazing, wide, happy smile.

“So, you’re having fun?” Buck asks, swinging their hands back and forth. Tommy turns to look at him with a grin.

“Yeah. A lot. More than I expected.” He nods, brings their hands up to his lips to kiss Buck’s knuckles – and as always, this move makes Buck violently blush. “Thank you.” Tommy adds softly, squeezing his hand tighter. “For bringing me here, for being here, for being you. For every day since we met. I’m so grateful to have you. I-” he stops, turns fully towards Buck, his face serious but still so, so fond. And oh, Buck thinks he knows where this is going. His heart starts beating faster. “I love you, Evan. I love you so much sometimes I can’t believe it’s possible.” He shakes his head, his eyes shiny, the gorgeous smile on his face melting Buck’s heart.

“I love you, too, Tommy.” Buck whispers, not wasting even a second once Tommy stops speaking. His heart has been screaming those words for weeks, if not months, and it feels like the biggest relief to finally voice them. “So, so much. I’ve been dying to tell you, I love you. I love you, I love-”

He presses the rest of the words into Tommy’s lips when Tommy puts a hand under his chin and brings him in for a kiss. It’s soft and gentle, both of them not able to stop smiling, as snowflakes fall all over them, catching in their hair and on their eyelashes, small specks of cold on their skin, Tommy’s cold nose pressing into Buck’s cheek. It’s perfect.

He’s standing in the middle of a snowy little town, kissing the man who’s his everything, who’s his entire future, while snow falls around them, and it might just be the most perfect kiss of his life.

[also on ao3]

194 notes · View notes