#those metaphors are a really good description
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anistarrose · 4 months ago
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I'd like to propose a dark horse candidate for the most interesting line in The Book of Bill. And it's this near-unreadable, seemingly one-off joke from the "Skin" page:
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[ID: tiny text reading: "Help! This is not Bill Cipher. My name is Grebley Hemberdreck of Zimtrex 5. I'm one of thousands of beings Bill has devoured over trillions of years whose souls are now trapped inside him. You have to free me! It's horrible in here. He just keeps playing the song "Good Vibrations" by Marky Mark on an endless loop. Please, please, this is not a joke! The Zimtrexians were once a proud and mighty people, but now our spirits long for release from this..." End ID.]
Okay, so Bill devours souls who then live out a horrible existence inside him. That's just some typical and expected Bill behavior, right? Nothing to be shocked by? Maybe not, but one thing jumps out at me... and of all things, it's the way that Bill keeps playing that Beach Boys parody (correction provided by @fexalted: no, not in fact a Smiley Smile parody, but a real song!) on loop.
Because in The Book of Bill, there's a recurring motif of characters playing music for a very specific reason: to repel an unwanted presence inside their head. This is what Elias Inkwell, and later Ford, did with the "It's A Small World" parody — they tried to keep Bill out of their brains. Or, metaphorically... to drown out his voice.
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[ID: a Journal 3 page with a cassette taped inside. It's titled: "The World Is Small Ever After for Always." Ford writes: "If it's war you want, it's war you'll get! If you want to torture me? I'll torture you back!" End ID.]
That doesn't necessarily mean that Bill finds the voices of devoured souls to be troubling, let alone downright haunting, does it? Well... not quite on its own. But there's a "color" code on the page about TV static that says a lot:
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[ID: a code consisting of colorful squares, translated to letters that spell out: "he never sleeps he never dreams but somehow still he hears their screams." End ID] (screenshot courtesy of @fexiled)
The context of the page implies these "screams" come to Bill especially when he listens to TV static, and the broader context of the book implies that these are the screams of his destroyed home dimension, Euclydia. Therefore, not necessarily those of the souls he devoured, from Zimtrex 5 and possibly other dimensions.
Except... do those two things really have to be mutually exclusive?
The beings that Bill devoured were accumulated over "trillions" of years, plural, according to Grebley. In Weirdmageddon 1, Bill claims to have resided in the Nightmare Realm for precisely "one trillion" years. So the "devouring" habit probably extends back even further than his time in the Nightmare Realm...
Enter @acetyzias, pointing out a very conspicuous word — and one of the only uncensored words — from Bill's description of destroying his home dimension:
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[ID: the word "mandibles". End ID.]
Oh, and how does Bill describe the "monster" that destroyed his home to Ford, when Ford asks about revenge?
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[ID: Journal excerpt reading: "Sixer, it would eat you alive." End ID.]
For a long time, Bill's destruction of his home has been associated with fire, even when the story's told by Bill himself. But through the way the book characterizes Bill's guilt — and characterizes how the consequences of what he's done remain lurking deep inside him — I think The Book of Bill lays out the hints for another motif: devouring.
And, well, when it comes to how Bill destroys things... it wouldn't be without precedent.
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[ID: screenshot of Bill in Weirdmageddon 3, taking a bite out of the Earth. End ID.]
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hier--soir · 10 months ago
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a lover's pinch | eight
joel miller x f!reader
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pairing: professor!joel miller x f!reader rating: explicit, 18+ mdni summary: the one where they get caught. warnings/tags: au, university professor joel, age gap [20 something years diff], ethically dubious relationship due to inherent power imbalance, domestic bliss, gratuitous descriptions of joel reading, joni mitchell, explicit unprotected piv sex, delayed gratification, dirty talk, finger sucking, biting, academic praise kink, cream pie, who's in the pic on joel's desk??, angst, confrontation, an orpheus and eurydice metaphor uh oh, those blue panties from 3 come back to haunt us. word count: 6.9k nice series masterlist | main masterlist chapter moodboard a/n: i need someone to make me write [or not write] the way j miller phd does in this... also sorry and i hope you like it and sorry again follow @hier--soirupdates if you'd like to be notified when i share my writing this is part eight of ALP. you can read the previous parts here: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
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Winter descends over Maine not with a bang, but with a whimper.  
The days and weeks fold together in a blurring mess of sleep ins and papers and coffees, until suddenly a month has passed, and you hardly noticed it slipping through your fingers.
You spend less time at home, and more tucked on one side of Joel’s couch, your feet in his lap as he lounges down the other end. You dip pale toast in runny yolks at the table, listening to him on the phone to Sarah in the other room. Hear him say I’m good, baby girl… I’m really good when she asks how he is.
You ride shotgun in the truck between his place and the university, slipping out the passenger door a little early every time. Walk the final stretch lest someone notice his glasses, your hair through the windscreen.
On campus you watch him up there on his stage, a burn in your chest, and see how he seeks you out in the after. How he props you above him and returns your gaze finally. Curls his body around yours and repents for every time he had to look away.
It's warm and it’s kind and it’s trading books with scribbled notes in the margins.
It’s rain smacking against the windows as you read, his scruffy chin nesting in the slope where your neck meets your shoulder, two sets of eyes staring at the same words.
It’s nodding off in his bed where the sheets have started to smell like your perfume, eyelids heavy as you wait for him to get home. It’s wearing only his clothes and being woken up by his face between your thighs, pupils blown and lips slick.  
It’s finding each other at the end of a long day and hearing him say, I thought about you all afternoon.
And this feeling of familiarity writhes between the slats of your ribs. A comfortable, quiet fondness that you see reflected in his eyes when he looks at you; that you hear when that tender mouth forms your name.
You gorge yourselves on it. Put lips to the crooks and thorns in each other’s bodies and suckle on that fondness, swallow, swallow, and watch the well never run dry.
The bleed is endless. Beneath the stain of time it floods and flurries, melting the two of you together until you start to feel certain it could never end.
Until, of course and at last, it does.
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Sunday.
It’s late, you think. Somewhere in the mess where time blurs between sunset and midnight, Winter stealing hours that feel like minutes.
The curtains in his living room are drawn, low yellow light warming the room from a tall lamp in the corner. Blue spins in the on the record player, a gentle sway of sound that fills the room.
I like listening to Joni on Sundays, he’d confessed in the bathroom, bashful as he rubbed a towel over you, drying the wet ends of your hair and the slick skin of your shoulders.
He reads at the table now, strong chin cupped in his palm as his eyes flit across the pages of a textbook.
Something to do with conservation; a Minoan palace in Knossos, you think. He’d explained it earnestly, but his curls were soft and fluffy from the shower and his glasses were resting on the tip of his nose and so you’d found yourself zoning out, eyes going from round to heart shaped as you nodded along from the couch.
Every few minutes he grips his pen and jots down a note before glancing up to check on you. And whenever this happens you avert your eyes quickly, pretending to be enthralled by the half-finished essay on your screen. You have a feeling he catches you each time, because he keeps laughing softly, tutting under his breath as he goes back to reading, foot never stopping its tap-tap-tap in time with the music. The only time he gets up is to flip the record, and soon those little laughs and huffs start to mix with Joni’s bell-like voice, and the opening lyrics to California swell through the room as you type at a glacial pace.   
She sings, I met a redneck on a Grecian isle, and you glance up again, eyes turning wide and doe-like when you find Joel already watching you. He gave me back my smile, Joni sings. But he kept my camera to sell.
“How’s the writing going?”
“Good.” Liar. “Great, even.” Bad liar.
Joel’s eyes narrow behind his glasses, lips twitching in a clear attempt to smother a laugh, but he just nods, looking back down at his book.
He’s wearing home clothes. That’s what he called them. Home clothes.
When he’d said it, still pulling them on, you’d wanted nothing more than to grip his hands and stop him in his tracks, but you’d sequestered yourself to the other side of the room instead, sorely committed to the study evening he’d suggested. But he’s in soft grey sweatpants and an even softer looking white t-shirt, and every time he sips his coffee he hums happily against the rim of his mug, and his bare foot goes tap-tap-tap and Joni sings Oh, will you take me as I am?, and—
“Come here.”
You blink. His eyebrows raise expectantly, lips split into a broad smile now.
“Unless you’d rather stay over there and keep starin’.”
You reach him as The Last Time I saw Richard, the final track on side two, begins to spin.
Joni sings, all romantics meet the same fate, and Joel’s knees fall apart, thighs splayed so handsomely across his chair, inviting you to take a seat. You ignore the woeful lyrics and focus instead on the knowing smirk on his face, taking a step forward, and another, until you’re stood between his open legs.
He doesn’t touch you. Just smiles, all saccharine and easy, leaning back in his chair.
“Much left to do?” He points at the laptop in your hands.
“Maybe another hundred words,” you grumble and put it down on the table. “Today, at least.”
Joel hums, eyes flicking down. His gaze skirts across the bare skin of your legs, the soft sleep shorts you’re wearing; ones he puts on you himself, and knows you don’t have anything beneath.
“Come here.” He pats his thigh; stops you with a soft tut when you try to straddle him. “Naw, baby, like this.”
Soft hands tilt your hips, turn you until your back is to his chest and he’s drawing you onto his lap.
“Oh.” You smile, leaning your head back onto his shoulder.
Nose turned into the side of his face, you brush a kiss to the edge of his jaw and sigh in relief as he wraps his arms around your middle and squeezes.
The space between his chest and the table is a little tight; small enough that if you were to lean forward a few inches your ribs would knock against the wood.
As if he’s thinking the same thing, Joel leans forward. Presses you against the table, one hand coming up to hold your face. His fingers are soft on your skin, offering small amounts of pressure as he grips your jaw and encourages you to look forward.
“Gonna tell me what’s on your mind?” he asks.
The hairs on the back of your neck stand up a little, skin prickling at the shift in his tone. Still soft, still quiet, yet with something… demanding, shifting just below the surface.
“You,” you say, cringing at the way your voice takes on a higher quality all of a sudden. Steeling yourself, you add, “You’re distracting me.”
“Wasn’t doing anythin’,” he responds simply. “Just sittin’ over here, minding my business while you burn holes in my head.” 
“You know what you’re doing.”
“I cooked dinner.” He squeezes you again. “Fed you. We showered, and now I’m readin’.”
“You were humming.”
Joel kisses the shell of your ear.
“And tapping.”
He flutters his fingers against your hip.
“S’that such a crime?” he murmurs.
“No, but…” You sigh when his tongue snakes out, tracing the soft curve of your earlobe. “But it…”
“But but but,” Joel mocks, and you can feel his sick smirk against your neck, teeth teasing along your carotid now. “But all you can think about is my cock, ain’t that right?”
Your stomach falls away. Everything firm inside you turns to goo as he laughs, knowing he’s right.
“So needy,” he taunts you, holding your hip tighter as his length begins to thicken against your ass. “Had all day to ask for it.”
You don’t respond, tongue tied and more uninterested in your essay than ever.
“Just lookin’ for a distraction now,” he teases lightly. “The more you put it off, the harder it’ll be to get it done, baby.”
“I know.”
“If you know.” He hooks a finger over the waistband of your shorts. “Then finish it.”
“S’not that simple,” you whine, rolling your hips over his lap. A sharp puff of air warms the back of your neck, so you do it again. His hand tightens around your jaw.
“Just a hundred words, right?” he coaxes gruffly. “Come on now, I’ll make it worth your while.”
You feel his thick cock beneath his sweats, stiff and pressing between the crease of your thighs, melting what’s left of your resolve. You want to grind down against it. To pull your soft sleep shorts to the side and let him sink inside with no more pretence. But you put your hands on the desk, eyes on the screen, and Joel slides his warm palms beneath the hem of your t-shirt. Floats them over the curve of your stomach, the soft flesh around your ribs, waking thousands of tiny hairs that cover your skin until his fingers meet your chest, and he cups your breasts.
You shiver, lids growing heavy as he squeezes and tickles at your skin. Your nipples harden to peaks against his rough palms, and he sighs at the feeling, face resting against the back of your neck as he plays.
“Fuck,” you sigh, voice a broken buzz in your throat as he pinches one of your nipples between his thumb and forefinger. “I thought you wanted me to write.”
“I do,” Joel murmurs unconvincingly. “A hundred words, go on.”
Hands like lead on the table, it feels like an impossible task. Even more than it did ten minutes ago. You force yourself to lift your fingers to the keyboard, vision sharpening as you look for where you left off. You try to shut him out, try to ignore the way his tongue warms the skin on your neck, the way the hairs on his thighs tickle against yours, and begin to write.
But he doesn’t make it easy.
The second you finish the first sentence one of his hands drifts down your stomach to cup your pussy over your shorts. You flinch, heart galloping in your chest when he sighs in your ear.
“Joel,” you whimper, pleading already. “I can’t if you…”
“You can,” he soothes. The warmth of his palm is suffocating, so hot against where you’re already wet and wanting. Thick fingers press against the fabric, nudging it between your slick folds until it goes damp. “Just ignore me, baby.”
“Easier said than done,” you reply. You type five more words, chest rattling with heavy breaths as he paws at you, thumbing at your clit through your shorts.
His breath is hot and heavy against your neck and his soft curls tickle your skin as you try to focus.
“Ignore me,” he repeats, and you squeak as he tilts you forward. A rush of breath spills from your mouth, chest flush to the desk, ass suspended above his lap as he shifts behind you. And when he pulls you back down, you sigh pathetically over the fact that he’s pushed his sweats down.
The full weight of his length presses against you, nestled between the rounded flesh of your ass, and you manage to mumble his name.
“Just—” You’re panting now; considering begging. “—I can do this later. I will finish it later, I swear, just—”
Joel nudges your shorts to the side and presses a finger between your folds. A ragged gasp stutters out of you, finger jammed against the keyboard. A steady stream of kkkkkkkkkkkkkkk fills a line of the document as he smears your wetness up to your clit.
“Fuck,” you mumble, hips tilting forward, trying to chase the feeling.
“None of that,” he tuts quickly, other hand slipping down and pinching the skin at the inside of your thigh. You’ve only backspaced half of the k’s when he slips two fingers inside you. “Come on, now.”
Thirty words fly as he crooks his fingers inside you. Slow and gentle, thumb rubbing messy circles against your clit as he works you open.
“That’s it,” he coos, pressing a third finger inside. Your cunt sucks desperately at his fingers, the skin of your face warming as you catch a glimpse of your reflection on the laptop screen. Jaw hanging low, a silent prayer for relief written across the open slant of your mouth. “My smart girl. Knew they didn’t give you that degree for nothin’.”
You gasp and swat at his wrist, but a satisfied little smile cracks your face for a moment when he laughs. Only for it to fall seconds later when he lays a sharp bite to the back of your shoulder. You moan, voice cracking around his name, rutting desperately against his hand.
“You can do it,” he flatters you, sickly sweet and entirely convincing as he strokes at your insides. Curling and stretching until you’re turning to a wet trembling mess in his lap, wobbling through half-assed sentences that you aren’t sure even match up with your essay outline anymore.
“Good,” Joel murmurs. “That’s good.”
“Don’t look,” you slur out, heart pounding at the idea of him reading anything you’ve written in this state. “It’s f-for your class, you can’t look.”
“Not lookin’.” He noses at the back of your ear. Presses an open-mouthed kiss to the hinge of your jaw. “Just lookin’ at you, m’always just lookin’ at you.”
“I’ll finish it.” You switch up your tactic now. Voice low and breathy, the back of your head resting heavy on his shoulder, eyes longing to close. “Tomorrow, I’ll write it—”
“Tomorrow?” His thumb drags harder on your clit.
“Yes,” you gasp, stomach tensing. You feel a bit floaty all of a sudden. Locked out of your own mind, all thoughts spilling from between your thighs as desire grips you, consumes you. “Please, just…”
“What, baby?” he prompts. “Say it.”
“Just let me sit on your cock,” you groan. “Please, I can’t think right now, I’ll finish it, I promise.”
“You fuckin’ promise—Christ,” he grumbles, fingers drifting from your tight clutch. “Just a little more, baby, for me.”
You don’t even really know how it happens after that. Ears roaring, skin tight, everything is a blur as you write and write and write and he presses his leaking tip between your folds works you down onto his length. Hands everywhere, so warm, so rough, holding your thighs, your waist, your breasts, your shorts to the side. Slower when your gasps spin higher, you think, always knowing when to ease up, when the burn gets too much too quick.
Joel grips your thighs, prying them apart until your calves are on the outside of his, and then he’s shifting his legs open wide, giving your own no choice but to follow. You feel the full weight of him in this position. The long, thick stretch of his cock inside you as your legs dangle listlessly over his lap, toes straining and failing to reach the floor. You can do nothing but rest heavily across his thighs, those hands still everywhere all at once, and whine pitifully as your walls spasm and clench around him, coil inside pulling tighter and tighter.
Vision waning, the text on your screen warbles as Joel slips the pad of his finger against your clit and begins to play with it. Soft little rubs that have you going tense and leaning forward on the table, braced on your elbows and grinding down into his lap, desperate for release, for movement, anything. It feels like your brain is splintering into a thousand tiny pieces inside your skull.
“You’re so wet,” Joel rasps, forehead heavy against your shoulder blade as he groans. “Pretty pussy’s drippin’ all over me, honey. You really need it that bad?” 
You say something you think, mouth moving and eyes rolling as his hips shift up in a weak little thrust. Just one.
“Keep goin’.” He sounds pained, half-drunk as the words stumble out of him.
Your mind slips further from your grasp and you’re typing pure gibberish. Slurring messes of letters cloaked in perfect punctuation. Your fingers fly across the keys, painting commas and full stops and semi colons around complete and utter bullshit as your cunt flutters and your belly stirs.
His finger glides and his cock pulses and your vision darkens and you come. Shoulders hunched, table digging into your forearms, you fold forward and cry out as an agonisingly brief orgasm rips through you.
It’s over before it’s even begun, but Joel groans and offers a shallow thrust, your cry turning to a gasp as he grips your thigh for dear life.
“Oh good girl,” he murmurs, fingers slowing against your nerves, not wanting to overwhelm. “Fuckin’ squeezing me so tight, baby.”
“Joel.” There are tears in your eyes now. Liquid frustration that pools against your waterline and threatens to spill when he still doesn’t fuck you how you need him to.
“How much left?” he asks roughly, rocking his hips against yours in a steady pace now. Gentle, rolling movements that snag on the heels of your orgasm and hold it close.
“Huh?”  
“How many words?”
“I don’t…” Your eyelids flutter. “I don’t know.”
“Shit, sweetheart,” he laughs a little then, rueful but not unkind. “That’s gonna be hell to edit.”
With a furious groan you slam the laptop closed, the sharp smack of metal on metal filling your ears as he grips your hips and really starts to fuck you.
It’s not fast though, not rough. Just deep, lingering strokes that grind against the end of you and nudge you stumbling toward the edge. He pinches your clit between the tips of his middle and ring fingers, rubbing slow drags up and down against the hood like that. Moaning and sweating, you slip your hand over his. Press lower and let your fingers glide around his girth, thick and vascular between your thighs, hot skin wetter every time he pulls out of you.
“Feel that?” Joel pants, teeth nipping at the top of your spine. “You’re creamin’ for me, baby. Fuck, I—I need to taste it.”
“Shit—oh god.”
He grips your wrist and drags it up, chin harsh against your shoulder as he sucks your fingers into his mouth.
The groan he lets out is filthy as his hot tongue snakes out to lick the webbing between your fingers, and you tip your head to watch his eyes roll back. His thighs tremble beneath you, but you can’t be sure it’s not just the vibrations of your own body tricking you.
But no, it’s him. His hips stutter against yours, deep plunges stilting into shallow movements, and he stalls deep inside your cunt for a second on the end of every thrust, as if his brain is short-circuiting.
You hook your fingers in his mouth, the tips digging into the gums behind his teeth, and tug him back to reality. He nips at your fingers and moans, hand falling heavy between your thighs again. And he doesn’t stop now; keeps pushing and pinching and fucking and grinding until your pussy is pulling tight and slick around his length and your fingers are fanned loose and shaky across his face, and you can hardly breathe except to say Joel or please or oh my god.
“Can feel it,” he grunts breathlessly, skin smacking against yours in a sharp staccato beat. “Deep breath, baby, c’mon, let me have it.”
“Your teeth,” you gasp feverishly. “Bite me again.” 
“Fuck,” he snarls and then he’s grating the hard line of his incisors along your shoulder.
The sweet pinch of his canines digging into your back sets your cunt aflutter around him, mouth hung open in silent ecstasy as he fucks you full of his seed and you suck it in deep, tight with longing, still panting and high when it begins to drip from where you’re connected, spooling around his cock and smearing between your thighs and his.
His chest heaves against your back. Chest hair damp wet sweat, dripping through your thin shirt until it can’t decide whether to cling to his skin or yours. There’s an ache at the base of your spine, maybe a muscle pulled, and his thumb presses into the flesh there as if he can sense it.
Sounds come back slowly. Joni’s finished and the needle tracks around the runout groove on the record, a little crackle flaring every few seconds where the two channels join. Joel’s breathing too, rough against your shoulder, harmonising with the wet sound of his lips peeling from your skin.
You tilt your head to the side.
Wild eyed, cunt-struck, Joel knocks his nose against yours. Groans low when you flick your tongue out to graze across his bottom lip. He’s bitten it rough and ragged and red, and you want to soothe the sting. His glasses are on top of his head, smudged lenses tucked amidst wild fluffy curls.
You try to kiss him, hard and wet, but he stops you with a hand to your jaw. Cradles your face and strokes your cheekbone and wipes the spittle from your lips before kissing you lightly. Chaste and gentle, like the two of you are ten and have never kissed anyone before, have never been brave enough to use your tongues.
That invisible bleed in your chest drips heavier. You picture a thick spurt of red against your chest cavity as he kisses the corners of your mouth, the tip of your nose, your eyelids.
“You good?” he asks quietly.
You nod, smiling when his lips catch and drag across your skin with the movement of your head.
A moment passes like this. Searching kisses dotted over your smiling face. The swell of your cheeks, the ends of your eyebrows.
“Sometimes I feel like you aren’t real,” Joel confesses. A bare bones whisper that tickles the skin between your eyebrows, where his lips rest now. “Like you might just melt away if I don’t hold on tight enough. Disappear if I look away too long, and I’ll be stuck tryna convince myself that you were ever really here.”
Twisted up in his arms, you can feel the way his heart batters against his chest, thrashing through to vibrate against your back. He might as well be plucking the admission straight from your own mouth.
“I’m real,” you murmur against his neck. “I’m here, it’s real.”
“Me too,” he says. Something wet tickles your skin, but it’s gone in a second. Rubbed over by his thumb, soothed with another kiss.
I love you, you think, but when you speak it comes out as, “No melting.”
Joel laughs softly. Kisses you again. “No melting.”
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Thursday.
“It was too much.”
“It was fine.”
“I said the word grateful three times.”
“Four, actually.” You chew the inside of your cheek and shrug apologetically. “I counted.”
“Jesus,” Joel sighs, reaching up to a drag a hand over his face.
He’s pulled his desk chair all the way across the office. Tie loosened and top buttons undone, he slumps in it a little. His thick knees almost brush against yours where you sit in his armchair.
“Hey, I liked it,” you smile, bumping his knee. “It was nice - shows you care.”
“Well, you ain’t all that hard to please,” Joel smarts, lip quirking up into a sly grin.
Mouth open in a scoff, you feign offence, dragging your laptop from your satchel and making a show of ignoring him.
“How the mighty fall,” he continues, sighing dramatically and tilting his head over the back of the chair. The light coming in through the window hits his face just right, and the grey hairs in his curls shine. “Grateful to have been your professor… asshole.”
“Don’t be precious,” you laugh softly. “You’re just embarrassed because you said you were going to miss us.”
“That was a lie,” Joel tuts, brushing you off with a hand in the air, biting back that grin. “I ain’t gon’ miss any of you assholes. And when those final papers come in—” He taps a finger against the top of your laptop “—I’ll be sayin’ my prayers that any of you can string a worthwhile sentence together.”
“If you’re lucky,” you drawl, batting his hand away. “You’ll teach some of us again next year. And when that semester finishes, you’ll say all of that shit again, because you’re a sap, Joel Miller.”
Joel stares at you for a moment, face softening, and then clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth. “Smart ass.”
“And you love it,” you quip easily, only balking a moment later when the word hangs awkwardly in the air. Hands pausing on your keyboard, you glance up, neck hot, only to find Joel watching you still. Face suspended in a small smile; eyes light as he nods.
“I do,” he says after a moment. “But you’re on thin ice, wise guy.”
He plucks a book from his desk and spreads it open on his lap, either not noticing or simply not caring as you watch on, slack jawed. I do.
After a moment, Joel taps his foot against yours again. “Write.”
So, sucking in a breath, you do. Time passes and rain starts to drizzle against the window as you write, and Joel reads. Having forgotten to put a record on like normal, he hums lightly under his breath; some tune you can’t place but still nod along to. Every few minutes he turns his page, and the sound sends a shiver down your spine.
You hate the way he holds books. Hate the way he cradles the spines, thumb hooked around the footnotes to hold his page. Hate the way his fingers trace the stanzas as he reads, tender and patient, and always afraid to miss something. Hate most the way the tendons on the backs of his hands flex when he turns the page. How the veins around them go fat and blue the longer he does this, as if all the blood in his body is sprinting towards the words. It’s a dangerous sort of eroticism, watching him read. You hate how much you love it.
In need of reprieve, you focus on your own hands. Crack tired knuckles and stretch out cramps and aches, taking a moment to peer over at his desk. The picture frame you’d once been so curious about is propped on the edge of it once again.
You can see Joel behind the glass panel, sporting a shit-eating grin with Sarah, clad in a graduation gown, tucked proudly against his chest. Taken the day she finished high school, you know now. And you’d never noticed it that first time, months ago, but Ellie’s face rests in the corner of the picture. Pink tongue stuck out and eyes pinched shut; she’d snuck her head into the frame at the last second apparently.
You gaze fondly at it, and feel that familiar warmth in your chest over the fact that he’s put it back out. No more hiding.
“What’re you lookin’ at?” Joel glances over his shoulder, and then smiles.
“It’s a good photo,” you say. “You look so happy there.”
“I was. It’s one of my favourites,” he nods, adjusting his glasses on his nose. He seems to consider you for a moment, eyes flicking around your face, fingers fidgeting with the corner of his page. “Hey, I uh… Sarah actually called yesterday.”
He pauses. Takes an unusually deep breath and folds the book shut.
“Okay.” You blink, confused. “Is she alright?” 
“Yeah.” He nods quickly. “Yeah, yeah, she was uh, she was askin’ about the holidays, and if—”
The office door creaks open, and Joel’s mouth seals shut as Rachel walks hastily inside, rushed words filling the small room.  
“Joel, sorry, I need to grab—oh.”
There’s an odd pause after the words catch in her throat. A moment of uncomfortable stillness as the three of you inhale all at once, glancing around the room as if seeing it for the first time.
You and Joel aren’t touching, but your knees rest close, one of his feet in the space between yours on the carpet. Laptop propped on your knees, your final essay still lays open with a stream of edits pasted through the margins, cursor blinking at the end of the word nostos.
Joel, tie undone and sleeves rolled up, looks painfully casual in your presence.
“Sorry.” Rachel blinks, hovering awkwardly as the door clicks shut behind her. “I didn’t realise you had a… a meeting today?” The end of her sentence flares up, as if she’s confused, phrasing it like a dubious little question.
You offer a smile in her direction and hope it comes across as relaxed, a little encroaching even; as if you are the one who has interrupted; the one who should not be here.
“It’s fine,” Joel supplies easily, straightening in his chair to give her his full attention. His face gives nothing away. Stoic and calm, the way you’d imagine him to be if you weren’t here at all. “Everything alright?”
“Yes,” she says, frowning like she’s affronted by the question. Looks between the two of you again, listless fingers curling at her sides. “Just came to get that Livy copy back
You look back at your screen and will yourself to type something. To appear casual, studious, as if your heart isn’t lodged in the base of your throat.
“Sure,” he nods, gesturing vaguely toward his desk. “It’s in one of the drawers on the left.”
Rachel nods, walking over to the desk, and as her back turns you spare a glance at Joel. Find him already looking at you, eyebrows pulled down a little. Pink lips mouth It’s fine, married with a soft nod of his head, and for the second time in seconds you attempt a smile. 
There’s the sound of wood sliding against wood, and then a soft, tired kind of silence. The lack of sound seems to swell, the air in the room thinning, your eyes focusing on Joel’s fingers on the armrest of his chair, tap tap tap, Rachel’s unruly curls somewhere past that, her face downturned, looking at something. Wary breaths held in unison, synced heart beats racing. It’s fine, it’s fine, no melting.
“Is this some kind of joke?”
Your head snaps up. Joel turns in his chair and begins to ask what’s wrong, but all that ends up coming from him is a sort of choked noise, rough around the edges, and breathless in the middle. Chest on fire, you let yourself look past him to where she stands.
Her gaze is hard as she stares Joel down from across the room. A slip of blue; soft material visible between her fingers, held up for a stunned chorus to see.
Your hearing deafens a little as you look on, motionless, a vague memory of birthday boy and got your cute little panties all soaked thinkin’ ‘bout my cock? playing in your mind. Of a damp patch on his shirt as he tucked blue into his desk drawer.
Joel says Rachel’s name, you think. Can see the way his jaw moves, the way her dark eyes sharpen, flitting back and forth between the two of you. And then, like a volcanic eruption or the swell beneath a wave, realisation crests the hill and It’s fine cracks and crumbles and turns to dust in your grasp. You don’t know what she knows, or how she knows, you just know that she does.
“You… what is this?” Rachel’s face shifts into something uncomfortable. A warped, grotesque shot at a smile. But as her lips curl upward, eyebrows down, it’s nothing but a contorted mess that blurs endlessly between confusion, surprise, and then horror. “This… her? She’s the reason you—”
“Rachel.” Joel’s entire body is wound tight. You can see the edge of his jaw from where you sit; the way his shoulders pull back, tight he watches her.
Your body seems to hold itself together for a moment. Breath caught on an inhale, lungs expanded, eyes frozen on the hard line of his nose, the arm of his glasses—places you feel safe to hover. But then she speaks again, and everything lurches back into focus. Like a needle scratching on a record, or tires squealing as a car pulls to an abrupt stop at a red—the words make you cringe, chest deflating and face crumpling.
“Jesus Christ, Joel,” she’s saying, and her voice raises, louder to match the disbelief in her tone. “You… she’s a fucking student.”
When the fear hits it doesn’t come slowly. It strikes hard and solid; an icy sheet of dread that sucks at your fingers and numbs your extremities. Cool and abrupt, it sinks to your bones and promises that you’ll never again feel anything but this. It laughs in the face of your warm kind month, pressing its chilled ice picks to the back of your eyes until they burn.
Her words hang heavy in the air, thick weights that press down on three sets of shoulders, and you have never wanted anything the way you want to see Joel’s face right now. To look at him and believe that this isn’t as bad as you know it to be. See that mouth tell you it’s fine and remember how it tastes.
Instead, a fear-stricken Orpheus, you will yourself not to look at him. Despite that longing, the way your arms beg to stretch out, to hold and be held, you do not look. No, you don’t think you could suffer the double death of both knowing this is happening and seeing him know it too.
In his place, you let your eyes turn to Rachel, and find that she already stares at you, small mouth cracked ajar in incredulity.
Mind whirring, racing, stumbling; fumbling to pin back together the pieces of who you once were in her eyes and who you are now. This woman you admire so, whose career path you’ve dreamt of, whose wit and quirk has propelled you, invigorated you.
It’s agonising to watch—the way her face morphs into something so unfamiliar as she looks at you now. An expression that once held only admiration, kindness, marred here by an inexplicable sense of pity. Not hate, or contempt, which perhaps would be easier to handle. Easier than the way those dark orbs go round and solemn with worry as they fall upon your anguished frame. It’s a slap in the face; camaraderie washed down the drain like the dregs of a long overdue bath, as she grips your soiled underwear in her fist.
Joel says her name, you’ve lost count of how many times he’s said it now, and she spurns his attempt at placation like a snake. Fast and deadly, venom dribbling from her tongue. 
“Someone else?” she says, and her voice is like never before. Mirthless and cold, fury laced through every word. With a sharp jerk of her elbow, she tosses the underwear across the room. They land against Joel’s chest, caught silently in his fist. “You’re fucking sick.”
“This isn’t what you think it is—” Joel starts, and you think you hear his voice shake.
“It isn’t?” She laughs cruelly at that. “You haven’t been sleeping with one of our students?”
The cursor blinks on your screen. Nostos, nostos, nostos, nostos.
“Listen, can we talk about this somewhere else?” he asks. “Not like this, I—”
“Oh, is this not a convenient time for you?” she scowls. “Jesus Christ.”   
The urge to speak bubbles in your chest. You don’t even know what you’re going to say until the words are spilling from your lips, disjointed and warbled, a voice that doesn’t even sound like your own.
“I pursued him,” you say.
You can feel them looking at you. Can hear the way you must sound to her, like some kid and not a woman who’s almost thirty years old and just as much to blame. But you can’t stop it.  
“We’re both adults. He never made me do anything I didn’t—”
Joel says your name sharply. His fist, in the periphery of your downturned gaze, grips your balled up underwear so tight that the blue is entirely invisible within the thick masts of his fingers.
You suck in a breath, and it feels like the last bit of air in the room disappears into your lungs, so you hold it there. Keep it safe inside and figure that if all three of you were to suffocate then at least the truth, and all the foul consequences that come with it, would die here with you.
“Can you give us a minute?”
Silence falls in the lull after those words, and it takes a moment for you to look up, finally. To realise that the double death wasn’t in looking at Joel, but in understanding that he’d spoken these words to you, not her.
Eyes locked with his, you feel the fear move to your side. Hang low until it ebbs and flows in the space beneath your ribs—a sharp ache with no end in sight. He looks tired; resigned. Mouth thin and downturned, cheeks splashed with red.
You think you must say something. Some fumbling, awkward acknowledgement, because Rachel is giving you that look again and you can’t bear it. Can’t stand those eyes, that misplaced pity.
You collect your things, hands numb as you pile them into your bag and head for the door, skin prickling in defence against the silence that follows your movements.
Outside his office, alone in the long corridor, you know you should go. Should follow the wall down the stairs, out to your car, and not look back. Can you give us a minute? But that sharp ache leaves you cowering against the wall, limbs heavy, ear to his door. 
“Rach,” Joel says softly, and it’s so familiar that your stomach rolls, lids fluttering closed. “It isn’t what you think, just let me explain, alright? We met before the term began; before she was my student. Before.”
“And then?”
“What?”
“I said, and then?” Rachel’s voice is steely. “You met her before and, what, you saw her in class and decided it was fine to let it continue? You—”
“Everything was consensual. You know me, I would never—”
“It’s not as simple as that, and you know it. Did you not think about what would happen if you were found out? Her credibility will be destroyed, Joel.”
“I know—”
“I mean for fucksake, her first major presentation was given at a conference where you were the keynote speaker. How do you think this will look?”
“Fuck, I know. Can you keep your voice down, please.”
There’s a brief silence. You hear shuffling, feet against carpet, and a dull spike of fear flares in the back of your mind. The idea of getting caught a second time, eavesdropping from outside the door. Against better judgement, you don’t move, and Rachel speaks again.
“You’re wrong,” she says. “I don’t know you. I… you aren’t the man I thought you were.”
You don’t hear Joel’s response over the drumming in your ears. Hot blood thrashes and roars inside your body, veins pounding with terror. Hands shake damp and weary at your sides, thinking hard, hard, grasping for solution, for the chance to say I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, this is my fault.
But he must have said something because then you hear it. A low fragment of a human voice, words spoken clear as day. They slice through your ears and have you peeling away from the door, swallowed by a white-hot longing to disappear as you stumble down the hall, the stairs, until you’re sucking in cold air on the pavement outside.  
It’s raining hard now. Thin spray that comes at you sideways, lashing at your face and blinding you. You curl your back to the downpour and search thoughtlessly for your car, hands outstretched, those words of hers ricocheting off the inside of your skull.
When you find it, you press your key into the door and slump inside, and you still can’t avoid it. She might as well be standing right by the door, peering in at you. Shock in the jut of her brow, disappointment in the slant of her mouth as she whispers those words over and over through the crack in your window.
"I don’t care if you love her, Joel. I have to report you.”
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refs:
joni mitchell's 1971 Blue album. [life changer]
the hollow men by t. s. elliot [fat juicy banger of a poem]
orpheus and eurydice from metamorphoses by ovid, tr. by a. d. melville
thank you for reading x
1K notes · View notes
pomefioredove · 5 months ago
Note
HIII I SAW THE FLIRTY PROMPTS EVENTS AND RAN HAHA
Can I please get "You're a shy little thing, aren't you?" with Rook please???? 🙏🙏🫠🫠🤍
anon this one is PERFECT omg screaming...
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summary: "you're a shy little thing, aren't you?" type of post: short fic characters: rook additional info: romantic(?), reader is gender neutral, reader is not specified to be yuu, Rook being a little freak, shamelessly flirty, not proofread a part of this event
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There's that feeling again.
Your heart rate picking up, muscles tensing, adrenaline urging you to find somewhere to run, a quiet corner to lurk until those eyes you feel on the back of your neck have turned away...
You're surrounded by people, but even the crowd isn't enough to hide you.
For so many years, you hadn't been noticed at all. An unsaved seat, a forgotten name, a dull, drooping wallflower with nowhere to root. Ignored and undesired, nothing more than a piece of furniture in everyone else's lives.
You had long come to accept that it's just how things are, even here.
And, so, the feeling of being watched is wholly unfamiliar.
You slip out of the midday crowd and into a quiet corridor. Your worst fear, really, is that whoever's keeping their eye on you is picking you apart at the seams, analyzing your every flaw...
As if being quiet didn't make you enough of a target...
"Ah, there you are! I thought I lost you,"
You nearly jump. For a moment, you're tempted to look around the vacant corridor for someone hiding in the shadows, because, surely, that voice isn't addressing you.
The boy at the other end of the hall tilts his head. "Ah, do not be frightened! I was only worried you had been swallowed by the crowd,"
You blink.
"...Me?"
"Oui," he responds, putting his hands on his hips. "You are such a tiny thing, I could not let any harm befall you under my watch."
There's something rather unsettling about his gaze. Familiar, even.
"Tiny?" you scoff at the description. "...Who are you, anyway?"
His smile is just as uneasy. Too eager, you think. "Je suis désolée, how rude, I have not introduced myself yet. Where are my manners?" he scolds himself, taking a step forward.
"Rook Hunt."
No, not familiar at all. You've never seen this man in your life, even if there's something about his gaze that strikes a chord with you.
You give your name in return, to which he hums.
"You are quite the interesting creature, you know."
Creature? You give him a sour look, and he chuckles.
"I mean it in the loveliest way. Like a flower which takes a century to bloom, or a comet one might see but once in their lifetime,"
He speaks enthusiastically, and thus fast, leaving you dizzy with metaphors and imagery.
"...Is that a compliment?"
A small smile graces his lips, and he leans forward. "Would you like it to be?"
Full of surprises. You instinctively lean back, further away from those piercing eyes.
He hums again, eyes shining with amusement. "Ah, ah, have I embarrassed you? My apologies,"
"I'm fine," you lie, and leave it at that. You can't seem to come up with a good excuse, and your face feels warm.
Rook tuts, circling around you like a predator surveying its prey.
"...There is no shame in being flattered, chérie. Though I would gladly embarrass you all day just to see that lovely look on your face again,"
You watch him carefully, though avoid eye contact as he stops, eventually, standing in front of you again with a little smile.
"It is a shame you hide yourself, even now. Your beauty should be appreciated," he says. "...Though, I admit, I find the idea of keeping it all to myself rather tempting."
He's going to give you a heart attack, you think. You can feel the embarrassment swelling in your chest, making your heart beat a little faster and averting your gaze to the ground.
He chuckles. "You're a shy little thing, aren't you?"
"I..." you cough awkwardly, eyes fixed on the floor tiles. "...Don't get complimented often."
Rook places a hand over his heart, as if offended by the very thought. "Non? What a cruel world we live in, where such beauty goes unnoticed! The very notion wounds me!"
"Well, then..." he says, getting down on one knee and taking your hand in his, kissing each of your knuckles.
"...Let me make up for it, chérie."
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msgexymunson · 1 year ago
Text
Forbidden Fruit
Description: The newest object of your affections happens to be Eddie; your father's closest friend!
A/N: this is just smut personified and I ain't even sorry. Enjoy it with caution, hells saving a mighty fine warm spot for you ;). 
Warnings: age gap, Eddie's in his forties, reader implied 20s. Voyeurism, fingering, p in v unprotected sex (wrap the thingy, trust me I'm old) 
5k words
Masterlist Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5
Delicate fingers are slipping under the waistband of your sleep shorts. You stroke at your soft skin, running in teasing patterns. Your body begins to react to your secret touches, downy hairs starting to stand on end as your skin prickles with sensation. Then your hand drifts lower, lower, until it meets your pubic hair. Massaging your breast with your other hand you try to relax and empty your mind, just focus on the feeling. Not that it works. All you see when you close your eyes is Eddie. 
This is wrong. So fucking wrong. He was at least 20 years your senior. Hell, he was one of your father's closest friends. It may as well be forbidden. He probably thinks of you more like a daughter than a lover. 
You couldn't help it though. Recently he was just looking so damn fine. You're not sure if it was just him getting better with age, or you growing up and appreciating the man in front of you. Either way, woof. 
Your fingers find your clit as you think back to earlier today; the events of which hadn't been much help in quenching your mounting feelings. It had been a lovely day, the sun was beating down and there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Eddie and your father had teamed up to do some of the yard work. Eddie was always on hand to help with any manual labour, or to fix things. He was really very good with those hands. 
Well, it was a beautiful day, so sunbathing seemed perfectly acceptable behaviour, and not an excuse to be in the yard at all. Nuh uh. You'd headed outside in your skimpy red bikini, book in hand, and laid on a lounger keeping one eye on Eddie. 
God, he'd looked particularly good today. His hair was grasped in a messy bun with a shock of grey and white visible through it. His stubble looked a few days old, peppering his chin and sharp jaw. Those eyes of his sparkled, a deep chocolate brown you wanted to dive into. Jeans clung to his muscular thighs, only wearing an old wife beater on top, showing off his tattoos and chiselled arms. There was a brief moment when he'd lifted up his vest to use it to wipe the sweat from his brow. Abs had gleamed in the midday sun, flexing and taunting you on purpose, or at least it had felt that way. 
When your father had gone inside to grab them both a beer, Eddie had sauntered over to you and crouched right by your lounger. You had done everything you could to keep your face neutral, even though your head was screaming and flinging its metaphorical hands in the air. 
"Hey sweetheart." 
The gravel in his voice sent shivers down your spine. 
"Hey Mr Munson." You responded, trying to keep your eyes on your book. 
"How many times I gotta tell ya? Call me Eddie." 
You glanced over and saw a slow grin creeping across his face, as he eyed you up and down. Is he checking me out? 
Tearing his eyes away, he spoke again. 
"So, where's the little boyfriend today?" 
"What? Oh, him. We broke up. He was… selfish" you reminded yourself of all those disappointing encounters, flicking through your mind like a magazine of the mundane.
His grin widened at that. 
"Oh, that's such a shame." 
He sounded so sincere, but that smile of his was certainly telling a different story. You found yourself looking at the way his eyes crinkled when he grinned. Probably thought he wasn't good enough for me, just like father said. 
It was like he'd read your mind. 
"He wasn't good enough for you anyway." 
"You think?" 
He'd leaned into you, as if telling a secret. You could smell him, lingering sweat, aftershave and cigarettes. Drawn to him, you'd sat up and moved a little closer. His words were a whisper in your ear, his hot breath on your neck making your heart beat just a little too fast.  
"What you need is a real man." 
Mouth falling open, you snapped your head to face him. A quick wink and he was back on his feet, smiling at your father who had just returned from the kitchen. He had walked off without a glance back. 
You press your clit harder at the memory of his words, your other hand snaking its way into your top to tease at your hardened nipple. A real man. 
Was he talking about himself? Or had he just been teasing you for your taste in boys? Either way, his words had made you wet, your thighs clinging together in supplication. 
Fuck it. If he was on your mind you may as well lean into it. Your thoughts wandered, making up scenarios in your head, thinking of those thick fingers replacing yours. Your speed on your clit doubles, thighs squeezing together. It still wasn't enough. There wasn't enough pressure. 
Pulling your hand away in a huff, your eyes land on a cushion on your bed. Hmm, now that just might do. 
Clambering to your bare knees, you straddle it, positioning the seam to sit just where you needed it. 
Now, this was better. You could almost imagine him underneath you as you humped at his impressive length. You assume he had a huge cock. Well, he did in your fantasies anyway. Pulling your top off and away, you tease at your sensitive nipples, one hand keeping the cushion in place. 
So close, you were so close. The warm feeling was pooling in your belly, your clit humming with desire. Scrunching your eyes shut and whimpering, a particularly good rub had you moaning out "Eddie!" 
Unfortunately, you had failed to hear the approaching footsteps. 
"Yeah sweetheart?" 
Frozen, you can only watch in abject horror as your bedroom door swings open and the object of your fantasies is standing in the door frame. 
"Oh shit, I thought- did you just say my name?" He seems split between looking away and getting an eyeful. 
Grasping the bed sheet you quickly cover up your bare chest, cheeks burning scarlet. 
"Sorry." He adds, looking you up and down one last time, and finally swings the door shut. 
Well that's it, now I need to move to a different state. Fuck fuck fuck. 
"Hey, honey, come hear a sec!" Your mother's voice, ringing up the stairs. Trying to get the blood to diffuse from your cheeks with sheer force of will, you hastily scramble to put your top back on. 
"Coming!" You shout back. Well, you nearly had. So fucking close. 
Making your way downstairs past the bathroom you see your parents arm in arm, Eddie spread out on one of the bar stools in the kitchen. Practically feeling his grin from here, you focus on your parents. 
"We're going out to dinner hon. Mr Munson here, well he was going to have a look at the cable. I can't get the damn thing to work. Sure you don't mind Eddie? Ain't you got somewhere else to be?" Your father looks towards Eddie with his question. 
"Nope. Completely free. I'm sure I can fix it." 
"Thanks buddy, you're a lifesaver. Hon, can you look after him? Make sure to give Mr Munson anything he needs." 
Cheeks flaring again with heat, you mumble out your agreement. 
"Thanks sweetie!" Your mother adds, planting a peck on your cheek. Then, they leave. It's just you and Eddie. 
He begins to walk towards you. The walls suddenly seem too close, your skin itchy, hairs standing on end. He stops in front of you, too close for comfort. A rough hand reaches to you and you flinch. He quickly pulls it away. 
"Well, better fix the cable." He smiles at you, and turns on his heel to the TV room, leaving you staring at his retreating ass as he leaves. 
Maybe he's not going to mention it? 
The thought seems too good to be true. You turn to leave, back the way you came, but a strange force is pulling at your gut. Pretty soon you're standing in the door frame of the TV room, staring at Eddie's ass as he bends to look at the cable box.
Fuck, that perfect ass.
He must have changed from earlier. Maybe he'd had a shower? He certainly smelled good. Staring at his back you notice his hair looked damp. 
OK, so, ignore what happened. Eddie seemed to be. Act natural. Be a good host. 
"Eddie, do you want a beer?" 
He doesn't bother looking back, but you hear his deep voice say, "sure thing sweetheart." 
Making your way back to the kitchen, you grab a beer for him and one for yourself, to steady your nerves. 
Placing it on the coffee table, you let him know it's behind him, as you swig your own. 
"Could you come down here sweetheart? I need a hand." 
You fall to your knees beside him. 
"Show me your hands?" 
Confused, you hold your palms up. 
"Perfect, tiny hands. Here." And he grasps one, swallowing it up in his large palm. The skin on skin contact is a shock to your system. 
He pulls your arm gently. 
"There's a cable right there, can you reach that?" 
Sticking your tongue out of the corner of your mouth, you extend your arm, reaching into the gap he couldn't quite hit. 
"Got it." 
"That's it. Good girl." You suck in a sudden breath at his words, warmth simmering in your core. Eddie doesn't seem to notice. 
He's adjusting some other cable, moving the network box to a better position as you stare at the veins in his neck. 
"So, did you finish?" 
"Huh?" Confusion floods your face as you scrunch your eyes at his words. 
"Earlier, when I walked in. Did you finish?" 
Your mouth hangs open. He mentioned it so nonchalantly, not even gaining eye contact. You're so shocked that you answer him without thinking about it. 
"N-no." 
"Shame." 
What sort of alternative reality is this? 
"OK, can you feel my hand? Give me that cable." 
You pass it to him wordlessly, fingers brushing his ever so slightly. 
"There. Should be fine now. Try the remote."
Turning the TV on, it does indeed work. You switch it off as Eddie sits back on his heels. 
"It just wasn't wired correctly. Easy mistake to make. So, you need a hand?" 
"Huh?" You sound out doltishly as he swigs his beer. 
"Seemed like you could do with some help earlier is all." 
Swallowing hard at his words, you feel your thighs clench and your heart race. 
"Eddie, what are you saying, exactly?" Words spilling out a lot calmer than you felt. 
"All I'm saying is, you looked like you could use some help. I reckon I could help you out. A lot more than a cushion, anyway." He says, a slow smile spreading over his face making your knees want to melt.
You stare and stare, momentarily lost for words. 
"Come on sweetheart, there's a reason why you were moaning my name. We need to get whatever this is out of our system. " 
You will your legs to move, to flee. They don't. They have their own agenda it seems, taking a shaky step towards him, and another. He's still kneeling on the floor, a slight smirk pulling at his face as if he has all the time in the world. 
Your knees do buckle then, under the weight of his words, as you mirror his position. There's a slight gap between you, but you're closer than you think you ever have been. The air between you seems to hum with desire, an electric current buzzing back and forth. 
Reaching out with hesitant fingers, you finally close the distance, resting your hand softly on his knee. 
"I'm- I'm sorry that I, erm, said your name, it's so damn embarrassing-" 
"Don't be sorry," he responds, his giant hand coming to rest over yours sending your pulse into overdrive, "that was the hottest thing I've ever seen." 
"Really?" You can't help the disbelief dripping all over your tone. 
"You're kidding right? I've been fuckin' hard for the last hour, I'm sure it's not healthy." 
You giggle into your hand at his confession and move to look down, but his hand is on your jaw then, pulling your chin up. 
"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, you know. We can just forget all this and I'll leave." 
His stare is firm and sincere, but there's an undercurrent of need behind those eyes, one that's making the pulse between your legs hammer out a tattoo on your insides. 
Before it even registers in your head, you're the one pushing toward him, drawn in by that stare. Your lips are crushing against his when you realise you had taken the leap and kissed him. Eddie's hand presses into the small of your back, pushing you bodily against him, the other snaking into your hair. Opening your mouth to deepen the kiss his tongue begins to slide against yours. Never had a kiss felt so good, so sordid. You wrap your arms around his middle to steady yourself as he explores your mouth greedily. 
A slam of a car door snaps you back to reality; pushing your body off him hurriedly you look around with wild eyes. 
"Hey, sweetheart, it's OK. It's not them, it's too early for that." 
You stop and listen, and realise he's right. 
"Sorry." 
"Hey, it's OK." He smiles, flooding your tummy with warmth. 
"You wanna go and get comfortable, sweets? We can, well, just this once."
You nod and stand up wordlessly, leading him to your bedroom. Your pace is slow and measured as you walk up the stairs, belying the running commentary in your head. 
Oh fuck, I can't believe this is happening. This is Mr Munson for fucks sake. Dad would absolutely freak. Oh fuck. 
As you're closing the door, he's kicking his shoes off and sitting up on your bed. His rough demeanour and chiselled physique look so out of place, juxtaposed by the sweet pink bedclothes. 
"Come here sweetheart, right here." He says, patting his lap. You move over to him, trying to work out exactly where he wants you. 
"Knees either side, come on baby, I know you know how to straddle." His smile is dipped in sin, biting his lower lip slightly and flashing his teeth. You take a shaky breath and mount him, your thin sleep shorts barely covering your expectant pussy. 
"Can you, um, take your jeans off?" You ask hesitantly, "I wanna feel you." 
"Whatever you want baby, I'm here to help." 
You sit awkwardly to one side as he wiggles his jeans off those perfect hips, giving you a teasing sliver of his lower abdomen to gawp at before he's gripping your hips forcefully and pushing your core down against his solid bulge. 
"Hmm, nearly perfect," he says, giving you an appraising look. 
"What's not right?" You feel your cheeks blush, waiting for him to point out some flaws you have. 
"Well, I'm sure when I walked in earlier with you in this position you were topless." 
An impossible amount of blood flushes your face, chest, neck. Eddie's thumbs trace calming circles into the flesh of your hips, catching the hem of your top and slipping just beneath. 
Lifting your top up hesitantly, you move your arms up and away, discarding the clothing on the floor of your room. 
Eddie's eyes are fixated on your nude breasts, letting out a slow breath. He holds your hips harder, fingers bruising into you. 
"There. Perfect. You are perfect sweetheart. Such a good girl for me." 
It's deeply pathetic, the noise that escapes your lips at his praise, but it serves to break the spell Eddie is under and forces him to look at your rosy cheeks and pouting lips. 
"Fuck, you like that sweetheart?" He asks, large hands clinging to your hips, starting to grind you back and forth. His breathing is laboured, as if he's trying to hold himself together.
"Yeah." You say back, voice small, hiding under his studious gaze. 
"Don't go all shy on me now baby. This good, yeah?" 
You nod, mewling at the sensation. He's rock hard, and just the feel of his solid dick rubbing back and forth, hitting your swollen clit with each pass has your head spinning. Just two layers, two layers of flimsy fabric lay between him and you. Between him entering you. 
"Talk to me sweetheart. What do you need?" 
His eyes are searching yours, so eager to make you happy. 
"Please, please play with my nipples." 
A rough hum rumbles from his throat, hands creeping up to your chest. 
"So polite. Whatever you need sweetheart." 
Taking over grinding over his member, you feel your skin thrumming, heat bubbling in your gut as his hands begin to trace over your curves. His thumbs graze the underside of your tits with confident movements. Expecting him to start pinching at your nipples, it takes you entirely by surprise when he leans forward and takes one in his mouth, sucking hard. 
Whimpering quietly, you grip his shoulders, willing yourself to be quiet. It's like Eddie can read your fucking mind. Unlatching from your nipple, he grabs your chin firmly between his thumb and forefinger, forcing your eyes to meet his. 
"I told you. Don't be shy. It's just you and me here. I want to hear you. Every whimper, every fucking moan. I'm committing this to memory, so make it a good one." 
A watery grin unfurls over your face, eyes tearing up unexpectedly. 
"OK Eddie." 
"Good fucking girl." 
"Oh God-"
Before you're done moaning at his words, his lips are immersing your nipple again, wet and warm and rough; as he pinches the other with hardened skin fingertips. A thick tongue darts out, flicking back and forth over the hardened nub. 
"Oh Eddie, oh fuck!" Your moans are loud and unashamed, your hips frantically humping over his turgid cock, clit swollen, nearing on sore.
His breath diffuses over the sensitive skin of your breast. 
"See that's it baby, I know, I know. Keep going, use me." 
Chasing your release your movements become almost violent, hands grasping onto his wavy locks and tugging hard. He groans at that, almost a growl. Teeth scraping your aching nipple, he unlatches with a wet pop and instead bites into the joining spot between your neck and shoulder harder than anyone had done before. The act was bordering on feral. An animalistic gesture, sucking on your flesh as if he was sucking the orgasm out of you. 
It was working. The low simmering in your gut had bubbled over, threatening to pull you under into the deep depths of pleasure. You let it, screaming out his name as you lost breath, quickly losing yourself in the gaping depths of your release. 
Slowing your frantic rocking movements, you finally slow to a halt.
"Feel better sweetheart?" 
You hum, fingers tracing over the muscles of his toned arms. Your pussy hasn't gotten the message however, clenching around nothing. Your walls are pulsing, wanting to clench onto something, anything. 
"Yeah I'm good." 
"Don't lie to me." 
Gasping at his hard words, you look into his eyes. 
"If you're done I'll leave-" 
"No!" You shout, gripping him harshly,
fingernails embedding into his skin. This can't be over, not yet.
"See?" He laughs, almost mocking you, "if you need more, say so. I want to help you. What do you need?"
"I-" fuck why is this so difficult? "I need, I need something inside me." 
"See? Was that so hard? You want my fingers baby? I'll make you come, as many times as you need." 
You nod enthusiastically, slipping off his lap. He turns you to the side suddenly so your legs are draped over his. Firm, smooth strokes rub up, up, up your thighs making you quiver. 
"Take these shorts off. I need to see that pretty pussy of yours." 
Wiggling out of them, they land on the floor in a heap. 
"Fuck. Spread your legs a little." 
It isn't in you not to comply. Your knees fall open, entirely exposed. 
"Well, look at you. Fucking perfect." A rough hand slots between your legs, two fingers rubbing the length of your pussy. 
Leaning back on your hands, your back arches into his touch, hips moving upwards to meet each stroke. 
"You really want this? You want me to fuck you with my fingers?" His movements are tantalising and slow. Your body begs for more, more. 
Nodding at him, you soon see it's not enough. 
"Use your words sweetheart." Fingers whisper across forbidden skin, circling around but never touching your clit. 
"Oh God please, please I need you, please fill me up!" All modesty forgotten.
"Fuck, yeah that's it, hmm" you feel his fingers swipe your wet lips, about to go deeper. Leaning forward, he angles his head towards your cunt, and spits, hard.
Holy fucking fuck. 
That act had you clenching all over again, rocking into nothing. 
"Oh she likes that! Dirty girl." 
He smiles his approval and gathers your combined wetness, two fingers diving deep inside you. It's aggressive and rough and entirely what you've been craving. 
"This what you wanted baby? My fingers filling you up? Fucking into your cunt?" 
His words are filthy, switching something inside your head you weren't aware of until just now.
"Yeah, fuck please, stretch me out, I fucking need you baby, please please please!" 
Your tiny hands are gripping onto him, desperately seeking him, digging into skin and flesh. 
"Oh you are so hot. Keep begging, I like it." His salacious grin pours over his features, fingers working you roughly, nestling into a spot inside that had your toes curling. Your breathing is heavy and ragged, as his other hand slaps harshly against your thigh. 
"I said beg." 
His ministrations start to slow. 
"No, don't stop! Please, oh fuck please, I need to fucking come Eddie!" Your eyes seeking his with a desperate gleam, toying with your features. 
"Yeah, that's it sweetheart, fuck," and his hand lands a hard smack against the side of your ass making you shriek. 
"You're a dirty girl, aren't you?" His fingers continue, setting a brutal pace, each stroke reaching your g spot pathetically easily.
"Yeah, oh yes, for you I am." 
A thick tongue runs up the side of your neck, pushing his fingers harder, deeper. 
"Oh Eddie I'm gonna come, I'm gonna come, don't stop!" 
"Not stopping, not even if you paid me. Come for me sweetheart." 
Your hips betray you, rubbing against his fingers as hard as they can, desperately seeking your second release. 
They don't have long to look. Suddenly it bursts around you, popping in your head like a firecracker of feeling, pulsing out of you in waves. Your fingers wind into his hair once again as your orgasm floods your system, hands almost frightened of being swept away. 
You knew he was good with his hands but fuck, his words were something else. 
"Oh my God that was incredible." You stutter out, legs still trembling. 
"I aim to please. You good now baby?" His fingers whispering over your arm, catching your nerves, making quivers run over and over you. 
If I'm good, he's gonna leave, and that will be it. Fuck, just don't want it to be over. 
"No. I need you to fuck me. Just this once. Please. I- I need you to cum inside me."
"Shit sweetheart, you want my fuckin' cock? How could I refuse such a sweet good girl." 
Laying you down against your many pillows, he stands, ridding himself of his shirt and pants. 
Oh fuck, just look at his cock. 
It's swollen, throbbing against his slickened pubic hair, wetted by your own juices. Licking your lips impulsively, you spread your legs wide, wanting to guide his hips between yours.
"Fuck that's a pretty dick. So fucking big." 
He looks at you, quirking an eyebrow. 
Oh fuck you just said that out loud. 
"Yeah? You want it? You want me?" 
He's smiling, stroking at his throbbing length, making an emotion akin to jealousness bloom in your chest. 
"I need you Eddie." 
He climbs between your thighs again, letting another glob of spit fly from those perfect lips of his. 
"Oh!" You moan eagerly, writhing beneath him.
"You are perfect, aren't you? Fucking filthy and ready for me." The head of his swollen member nudges your soft opening. 
"I'm on birth control, please just fill me up." 
"Oh fuck you're gonna make me bust if you keep on like that." The words are admonishing, but he sounds impressed. 
His weight dips onto the mattress between your legs, making it sink dramatically. You grab his relatively narrow hips, your slender fingers forcing his body between yours. You need him inside you, now.
The fat, leaking head of his cock rubs against your intumescent lips. 
"Fuck me Eddie, I need you, please fuck me!" You blabber, fingers flexing hard against his hard muscles. 
The mushroom head of his turgid cock pushes against your sodden opening. It breaches you then, forcing its way into your soaking lips. 
Pushing harder and harder into your deepest depths, you whimper, walls quivering around his fat length. 
"Eddie, oh God Eddie!" Your moans are unrestrained and throaty, him rubbing against the spot that makes you wobble inside. 
"You wanna come again? So fucking greedy sweetheart." You expect those words to have bite to them, but he's grinning, forehead nearly touching yours as he hikes your legs around his middle. 
You hump at him recklessly, hips thrusting against his waist as hard as you can. 
 "Oh my fucking God, fuck!!" 
You release hard, wetness squirting over Eddie's imposing length as you moan hard and loud. 
"Hey honey, we're home!" 
Oh fuck oh fuck oh fuck. 
Your eyes flick wildly to Eddie. It doesn't help that he seems amused, chuckling a silent laugh into your skin. 
"I've, I've gone to bed, see you in the morning!" You cry out desperately, hoping to heaven, or hell, that they listen. 
"Eddie fix the cable?" You hear your mom call out up the stairway. 
"Yeah he's, he's really good with his hands!" You shout back, Eddie's body shaking with silent laughter over you, the arms caging your head trembling with barely contained amusement. 
"Great news, night honey!" 
You grip Eddie's shoulders as hard as you can as you listen for the minute changes in air. There it is, mother and father both going to bed. 
"Fuck that was close." You huff, releasing your titanesque grip on his shoulders. 
"But I'm not done sweetheart." 
He thrusts hard and deep against you, his impressive member rubbing against that sweet spot yet again.
"Eddie, you can't, fuck-"
"Oh I can. You just need to shut up." He grins quietly, holding your body close to his. 
"Oh Eddie, oh-" 
"Shhh, fuck sweetheart, shut the fuck up." He whispers urgently into the skin of your neck. Your mouth forms a perfect 'o', wiggling against him ardently. 
He releases his cum into you with a hard, shuddering thrust, throbbing and throbbing out of him. It pumps inside you, pushing you to the edge of coming yet again.
Eddie knows. 
Grinning wickedly, he latches his teeth to your nipple again and sucks hard. Moments later you feel your release explode from your core, dampening your bed sheets in the process. 
Thrumming against him, sweaty skin against sweaty skin, you manage to coax your breathing to a normal level. 
"I hope that's everything you wanted sweetheart, 'cause it aint happening again." 
Before you can protest, Eddie is leaving the warmth between your thighs and aiming for the window, so no one suspects what just happened between you two. A few sure movements and he disappears, however reluctantly, into the night. Leaving you huffing, and panting, and wanting. 
@eddiemunsons-missingnipple @eddiethefreakkmunson @munson-blurbs @roanniom @eddiemunsonfuxks @eddiesprincess86 @corrodedhawkins @eddiethefreakkmunson @indouloureux @icallhimjoey
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thatlittlered · 5 months ago
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lovefool | aaron hotchner
warning(s): 18+, detailed description of sexual acts (m!masturbation) under the cut!
GIF by @scuttling
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previous parts
author's note: feast on this, my metaphorical children, because more and better things are coming very soon. I also made a masterlist for your reading convenience.
Follow me @MadeofLilies at Ao3 and let me know if you want to be tagged here.
-.-.-
Aaron finds himself quite disoriented when he wakes up next to you. Smooth cotton on his cheek, mellow morning light peeking through the blinds. The warmth of a soft body prevails over all. Chests touching, limbs entangled. It is almost becoming too warm under the covers, or it might just be the rush of realization.
The lovely smell of your freshly washed hair brings him closer; so close that he might nudge your cheek with his nose if he moves a single inch but he doesn’t dare. It would be the first ever act of intimacy between you in daylight.
You must have felt his breath on your face because you stir until there’s no space left between you. There is nowhere to look but in each other’s eyes.
It should feel weirder than it does.
He looks so young under this light; his face littered with moles that you would like to kiss. His hand dares to move to your eyebrow and settles the hair there tenderly before moving downward. The touch of his thumb might as well be a kiss when he’s tracing your cheekbone, your nose, your mouth.
“Good morning.”
His voice is hoarse and it makes you laugh.
“Good morning, Aaron.”
Neither of you wants to move, but you decide to take the plunge, “I’m going to make some coffee, okay?”
“Okay.”
He takes his time getting up, looking around your room for more pieces of you to remember. He is drawn to your vanity where your perfume and hairbrush lie. You’ve left out a toothbrush for him; ever thoughtful.
When he finally joins you in the small kitchen, you’re a sight for sore eyes and you smile when you see him, pushing a steaming cup of coffee his way.
“Are you hungry?”
He sits so sweetly across from you on the kitchen island.
“I’m okay, thank you.”
Your feet touch, but neither of you moves away.
“You don’t eat breakfast?”
“I have cereal with Jack, mostly because he asks me to.”
The ease with which he had touched and kissed you the night before has dissipated, ephemeral confidence melting away to leave behind a man unsure of what to say or do. He wishes you had met a long time ago, when he could have given you the best parts of him. His best now is… meager. Those parts of him seem long gone, or more accurately, forcefully taken.
Now everything is an impossible decision to make. Every moment of intimacy comes with the fear of imminent darkness. He must dare to break way.
“We have cereal.”
You get up to grab the box from the shelf and when you turn around, he’s almost caging you between the counter and his body. His hands are on your face again, holding you in place so he can kiss you with the taste of coffee on his tongue, which begs for entry.
You both willfully ignore the tension building up between your bodies and how easy it would be to give in completely right now. It’s too soon, way too soon. He was simply taken with the smallest bit of skin that had peaked through when you reached to grab the box; wanted to remember what you taste like, to break away.
His hands are still on your face as he speaks, forehead to forehead.
“I can’t stay long; I have to pick up Jack from his aunt’s. I promised him we’d spend the day together.”
“That’s okay, I understand.”
He kisses you again but lingers, one last taste before he has to go.
“I would really like to take you out to dinner on our next day off.”
-.-.-
The days that follow are torture. You’re all drowning in backed up cases and the endless stream of paperwork that follows. The peaceful night of sleeping in each other’s arms and the coffee laced kisses are but a distant memory amidst this chaos.
Yet, in the rare moments when everything slows, it’s hard to keep his eyes off you, especially today. Especially when you’re wearing that red blouse. Aaron’s seen it before, appreciated it just as much as then against your complexion, but there’s something exhilarating, sinful about having seen it hang in your closet. It puts everything in a new perspective; this tantalizing secret between the two of you waiting to be realized again and again and again, if he can help it.
If only you had the time.
It takes all the self-restraint he can find within him not to approach you at the hotel. It would be easy, so easy, wouldn’t raise the faintest suspicion if he just knocked on your door after hours and you could talk – just a little. But, he can’t. He won’t. There are still limits.
Emotional exhaustion is a trap, with the mind begging for rest and the body ignoring its pleas till collapse. His body begs for you. Pleads to be held and kissed and gently lulled to sleep now that it knows the feeling.
The shower pressure is sharp, unkind, nothing like you, but the warm fog that follows… he can almost see before him the soft plane of your bare shoulder, the drops of water on your collarbone. He had not dared to look past, but he can only imagine and oh, he does. He could have surrendered himself completely, laid on top of you in the small bathtub in a mess of clothed and naked limbs. He could have allowed -begged of you- to touch him, feel any part of him you wanted to and then grant him the gift of doing the same. The smoothness of your wet body under his hands, the desperation in your kisses.
He can almost feel you on his fingertips right now, so, he gives in. Takes himself in hand to relieve the almost painful feeling. It’s muscle memory really, there should be nothing truly sensual about it but he can’t keep the images out of his head. His body recalls every detail of your touch and his mind takes advantage.
Images and feign sensations of your feather light touch on his stomach, trailing down to pay attention where he most needs you to. Your thumb presses delicately on the head, teasing him into a desperate awakening of his every sense. He is leaking for you already and you don’t let it go to waste, dragging your thumb up and down slowly until his precum spreads all over. It makes it easier to go further, pull the extra skin down gently and enjoy the sheer magnitude of him.
He jolts in your hand at the movement, but stays perfectly still after in fear that you will stop. You wouldn’t, not ever. A large vein runs on the bottom part of his cock and you can’t help but trace it, watching the way he reacts. He jolts again, begging for more, more of whatever you can give him and you take the hint. Your hand wraps around his base completely, enveloping him in softness he would die for, before beginning to move up and down in long, slow motions.
You kiss his cheek, his jaw, his neck and he is about to collapse in front of you, nothing but a desperate, needy mess for you to play with. He is painfully close, can’t possibly even keep his eyes open and you can tell, so you go faster, harder. He comes with your name in his mouth.
Everything slows down from there. The spell of the warm shower fog once again wears off and when he opens his eyes, it’s painfully clear you’ve taken over his whole existence, so much so that he must fantasize about the things he’d like to do to you, and things he’d like you to do to him, in order to get through the night.
Come morning, when you’re all gathered in the jet and going home, he can’t look you in the eye.
You notice.
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aqqleshiqqing-archive · 1 year ago
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ME RN
『 ᴀɴᴅʀᴇᴀɢᴀᴍɪ ᴄᴏɴꜰᴇꜱꜱɪᴏɴ {ᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ} 』
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𝐒𝐂𝐄𝐍𝐀𝐑𝐈𝐎: First childhood friends, to a one-sided rivalry, and now close once more.
It’s been almost a year since Freya and Byakuya fell in love at their former high school, Green Hills, and are now attending Hope’s Peak Academy. And yet, they still cannot admit in words what they feel for one another.
❝ 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵'𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘦𝘯𝘥 𝘰𝘧 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. ❞ — 𝘍. 𝘚𝘤𝘰𝘵𝘵 𝘍𝘪��𝘻𝘨𝘦𝘳𝘢𝘭𝘥
。゚•┈୨♡୧┈•゚。 — Short Fic
[ Okay to Reblog — reblogs are appreciated :) ]
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Two sat within a nook of a wide expanse, obscured by the metaphorical labyrinth of intertwining bookcases and the shadows they cast from the warm glow of dusk. There was an intimacy in the dimly lit and confined space, as each shallow breath became audible as the sound reverberates around the nook. The two read silently while indulging in their quiet affection, being engulfed in the plush fabric of bean bags — the young female’s idea, of course. Her other half, the taller male, pulls the chain of an antique lamp situated next to them — the light’s warm hues flooding the secluded space.
The girl places her delicate hand atop his, causing him to tense slightly before clumsily grasping at her fingers with his, letting his thumb rub against the side of her palm.
“Freya…” he murmurs, before gripping her hand tighter, “this… we can’t have this.”
Freya makes a soft sound, almost of pain. “No… no… we can. Don’t be like that, Byakuya.”
He exhales somewhat heavily, shaking his head. “It’s not just about your desires, Freya.”
“— Our desires, Byakuya.” she corrects, as he consequently sighs.
“Our desires.” Byakuya repeats rather reluctantly. “I’m sure you need no reminder of our positions, regardless. We can’t have this.” He squeezes her hand tighter on that last word, almost painfully so, yet the passion his gesture communicates is blatantly for her.
She mulls over her options, but decides on a rhetorical to force him to articulate and justify his position, “Why?” she asks.
“I’m not playing mind games, Orator,” the coldness is apparent in his tone. She looks at him a bit wistfully, though he avoids any eye contact and vulnerability, guilt, or regret that may ensue by merely looking at her hurt expression.
“Byakuya… talk to me, look at me… please…” the desperation triggers his protective instinct for her, snapping his gaze to hers instantaneously; his eyes can’t help but soften. Damn it.
“I cannot go against my family and it’s traditions that have lasted generations. This is how we’ve survived, this is how we stay in power. This? Us? It holds no benefit to my family. It is weakness.”
“Is that what 'us' is to you, Byakuya? Merely a point of weakness?”
“If that will stop your pointless dribble, then yes.” he cuts. Silence follows his remark as Freya blankly stares at him, knowing that was an obvious cop-out. With a dismissive “Tch”, he continues, “Even if I chose to pursue you, do you really think I could actually escape the shadow of my family? Or the expectations of society? So what if it is all archaic and outdated? It works.”
“Yes, actually. Byakuya, you’re the heir, they rely on you now. They can’t get rid of you, they can’t replace you, and they can’t dismiss you. You make the rules now. Do you even hear yourself? You’re letting them dictate your life, you’re acting powerless!”
“Powerless?” A hint of venom slithers its way off his tongue. “I’m not powerless.”
“Stop acting like it then.” However firm Freya sounds now, there was an undercurrent of care in her voice. She dials back to a softer tone — it’s hard for her to be so angry or even argue. “They control and abuse you like a tool. You owe them nothing. If they don’t like it, they can deal with it because they’re the problem, not you.”
“Abuse? That a rather bold claim, I hope you can back it up.” he scoffs.
“They never parented you, they never treated you with kindness. What did they actually do for you except giving you wealth? They use you and you know it.”
If it were anyone else, he’d demand an apology for such accusations. But this is Freya, he can’t falsify some conjecture about the grandness of his family — or that cold hard discipline was a gift to make him a dedicated, efficient man. Byakuya wants to say that, wants to think that, wants to believe that… but such is cognitive dissonance, which goes against his principles of honesty to her. Because she’d see through it in an instant; she would never believe it, hence speaking lies benefits no one.
So instead, they stare at one another in a perpetual, solemn silence. Their deep, exhausted breathing and her whimpers bounce around the nook, echoing and magnifying the sound of heartbreak. He can’t stand the look in her eyes, the tears obscuring her starry eyes he has looked into over many years… over many iterations of herself; yet she always remained soft and kind, yet he always loved each and every version of who she is. And in that moment, he isn’t the man his father groomed him to be, he was a lost boy longing to be found, and wanted to hold the hand of the little girl he called his first friend, his only friend, and his only love. He swallows a lump in his throat, breaking the minute of quiet.
“What do you see in me?”
Part of her wants to lash out and run, distancing herself from the situation. Part of her wants to frame it as ineffectual with pretty conjecture with words like glass diamonds — but when faced with the hard malice of reality, a counterfeit diamond shatters and the beauty along with it, leaving only the hurtful truth. Freya meets his eyes with her own, the steely blue of his has lost their lustre. In that brief instance, she finally realises he’s hurting too… and badly. His eyes resemble that of a wounded animal far more than the predatory gleam he usually possesses.
“Everything… I see everything.” Her voice is reduced to a gentle whisper, weak and fragile — passionate still, yet destitute of the oratory prowess that cemented her speaking talent as ‘ultimate’. “But what I see most, is a loyal, principled man who will always do what’s right. But I also see a lonely man, and a man who never got the chance to grow outside of his family. I see a man who still needs to find himself and come to terms with the fact he isn’t a machine. And I know you, Byakuya. Because I’ve always known you, ever since we were children. I still see that boy in you, and he is crying.”
Byakuya sits in the quiet left after she spoke, perhaps for a little too long judging by her pleading eyes — but he starts gently rubbing his thumb up against her palm again. Finally, he forces out an answer.
“We first met here, in this library…”
Freya nods gently in an encouraging manner and a gentle, small smile, “Yes, of course.”
“We were so different.”
“Not really.”
Byakuya takes a moment to think, “Perhaps not.”
“Freya?”
“Yes, Byakuya?”
“I'll make sure we always stay together, I promise.”
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suzukiblu · 20 days ago
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Day three of “obligatory sugar baby Kon” behind the cut. tw: implications of past grooming/abuse and the inherent problems in someone who was in that situation trying to flirt with someone actually age-appropriate. prev: (( chrono || non-chrono ))
“I–what?” Tim says like a useless idiot, attempting to shut his useless idiot brain up long enough for it to stop replaying Kon saying “you got me all this nice stuff” on a loop on literally every single possible level of his thought processes. It is, uh . . . not going well. At all. In no way whatsoever is it going well. 
Though “wear for you” is just a lost cause, considering. “Wear for you” is just the metaphorical elevator music of the rest of his life now, Tim guesses. That’s just a thing he’s gonna have to deal with for the rest of his life. When he’s sixty-five and faking being on his supervillain deathbed so he can retire in his alternate reality of choice, he’s gonna be thinking that instead of “Rosebud”. He’ll be thinking that on his actual deathbed, even.
“I mean–you like it when I wear the stuff you get me, don’t you?” Kon says and Tim probably wouldn’t notice the slight flash of self-consciousness that flickers across the other’s face if he weren’t literally on top of him and a Bat, but he is, in fact, literally on top of him and a Bat. “Makes for a way nicer wrap job than the comics page.” 
. . . Tim has a lot of thoughts about that phrasing. Just–a lot. A lot of very confused and tangled-up and all-over-the-place thoughts that he can’t even really narrow down to a specific emotion or genre of emotions or even “positive” or “negative”. 
Kon describing himself like he thinks he’s something to give him–something he’s willing to give him–that is just a very, very tangle-inducing thing to hear. 
“A ‘wrap job’,” Tim echoes slowly, because there are way, way too many ways to take that description, but not all that many good ones. He’s used to hearing Kon flirt like he thinks he’s the hottest thing since sliced bread, all cocky and smug and preening, not talking up the girls but talking up himself, way too self-centered and self-obsessed and– 
. . . ah, Tim realizes very, very slowly. 
He’s used to hearing Kon sell himself when he’s flirting. He doesn’t talk up the girls; he talks up himself. 
He talks up–the product.
“What, you don’t like presents, daddy?” Kon asks as he gives him a flirty, teasing grin with that flicker of self-consciousness still in the back of his eyes. Tim thinks about those opaque sunglasses he likes to wear all the time and wonders if maybe Kon isn’t used to people seeing his eyes this much. “
Tim decides that salt-and-burning Cadmus is actually not enough, and he also needs to throw Rex Leech into an active volcano and maybe also literally every single girl Kon has ever dated for more than five minutes, whoever said girls are. Just–this doesn’t feel like making out on the ledge did, where Kon was all soft and eager and overwhelmed and Tim felt like they were on the same wavelength; this feels more like . . . 
Talking up the product, again. 
“I like you,” Tim says, and shifts his hand down to Kon’s shoulder, which feels like–less risky territory right now, maybe. “That’s not–I mean–” 
“You know I’ll be whatever you like,” Kon purrs, and shifts his posture just enough to make himself less of a bed and more of a lounger; curved and shifted to support Tim more than himself, and Tim feels–
Tim feels very weird, suddenly, and not in a good way at all.
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a-hazbin-reader · 10 months ago
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Hello!! I just loooooove how you write Alastor, this unhinged bastard 😂 anyway can I request Alastor with a lesbian, chaotic reader, who's always drooling over women (especially Alastor's friends)(read: Rosie). Toooootally not self-indulgent. Obv platonic pls!! Thank you in advance 🙇
- 🥀
Omg I love this SO MUCH
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Alastor X Reader Headcanons
❌️Romantic
✅️Platonic
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TW: TERRIBLE TREATMENT OF READER, reader being funny af, idk who is more unhinged, slight Mimzy X Reader, slight Rosie X Reader
Description: ☝️⬆️
First of all, he's gonna be your wingman NOT because he wants to help but because it's funny when you fail
Encourages your chaotic nature and uses it to his advantage, will not let you be caged
Someone beneath him wants to pick a fight with him??? Oh he'll give them a fight
*sets down an oversized pet carrier*
*feral animal sounds and vicious shaking*
Alastor opens the door and lets you wreak havoc on them, it's just too hilarious
All metaphorically of course
😳
They get you a toddler leash because you're always scampering off straight into trouble???
Alastor cuts it the first day Vaggie takes you out
*massive destructive explosive sounds in the distance*
"What the FUCK, ALASTOR!?"
Alastor: 😏
You're his favorite feral little ball of chaos
BACK TO BEING YOUR WINGMAN
It's amusing how quickly you change gears when it comes other women and how they enthrall you
He often gives you a handkerchief to clean up your drool, pushes your mouth shut when it's hanging open and grabs the back of your clothes to keep you upright
He does look out for you though
If Mimzy is currently in your sights then he won't let her take advantage of your attraction towards her
That greedy little thing will take you for every dime all while she flirts and toys with you
If you're feasting your eyes any of the overlords(*cough*Carmilla-*cough*Missi-*cough*Velvet-*cough*) then he'll straight up tell you no
Not him bonking your head sweetly with his staff before pushing you out of harm's way
Rosie is an exception tho
He knows she can fend you off herself if she really wants to but also that she won't really do any harm to you
Not that you're not very charming
Rosie just thinks you're adorable!! All the eager attention you're giving her! She could just eat you up!
No seriously...she could...you would taste sweet
No you're sweet
You're making her blush
And you're making her hungry
"Okay, time to go!"
So Alastor sticks around and looks out for you in those moments but he also thinks it's hilarious when you shoot your shot
Feeds you terrible pick up lines and almost dies of laughter when you actually use them
"Hey! Tie your shoes!! I don't want you falling for anyone else~"
"She actually went with that one?!"
Will properly fix your hair or clothes up before you go out on a date, he can't have you looking shabby
If you ask him for advice then he actually has some really good ideas for romance
It's just difficult to get him to give you a honest answer because it's so funny when you fumble a bad bitch
Actually, he does try to set you up with women he thinks could be good for you
"Fascinating, but have you met my good pal Y/N yet? She is QUITE a character!"
Alastor is your partner in crime and you're wingman but he's pretty terrible at both
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Gah!! I hope you liked this one!! I wanted to really get the little gremlin vibes!!
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skyenish · 4 months ago
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| Ruler of Everything | Scarabia animatic 🐍☀️ |
———
I love songs that can be interpreted and applied in so many different ways, and Ruler of Everything is one of those songs. I felt like it fit Jamil, not just in the lyrics of the part I used here, but for a big part of the song!
The anger and sense of injustice “Juno” feels towards time, this all mighty and powerful thing that rules over all, fits Jamil’s anger towards a system that he’s but a pawn in. And the way that Juno takes his frustration for the injustice he endured out on the sun, his best friend, can also resemble the way Jamil took it all out on Kalim, his “best friend”. There are a lot of really cool comparisons, and the video essay “Ruler of Everything is a song about Time” by MarcButEvil has a really good analysis/theory on the song, and a lot of what he said I felt kind of resonated with Jamil in a way? Not all of it, but certain things.
The line “in the gallows or the ghetto, in the town or the meadow, in the billows, even over the sun, every end if the time is another begun”, refers to the way that Time rules over everything and everyone, the poor, the wealthy, and even those above. But in this metaphor, where Time is the system of the Scalding Sands, or even just the ruler of it, Juno, or Jamil, isn’t happy with it. He is mad that he’s been had, so he lashes out. He doesn’t understand why it has to be like this, and like Juno, Jamil feels like his life means nothing in the grand scheme if thing. He’s just a servant to be thrown away and discarded.
The line “If this mirror were clearer, I'd be standing so tall” really reminds me of the way Jamil pities himself, the way he makes up excuses. “If only (blank) I could show them all.” He is arrogant, he thinks he’s so much, and maybe it is, but in the grant scheme of the system he lives in it’s not worth a lot. “You understand mechanical hands are the ruler of everything?” I think it’s interesting to think about!
Wow, that was a long ramble about a song most of you probably don’t even know! Sorry if it was hard to follow, I kinda just started typing, zoned out, and ended up with this. But I do highly recommend this song, it’s a lot of fun and quite existential. Thanks for reading the description, and now that you’re here I have a question for you: what is a song you find oddly fits a TWST character, and why?
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overtake · 8 months ago
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“a sexual awakening so intense it registered on the richter scale” is the single best and most accurate description I have ever heard.
pov: you're 16 years old and doing the final test for your super license ahead of joining f1 as the youngest ever driver. you expect the doubt and hate, and you know you can prove on track why you deserve to be there once you actually get in a car, but until then, you just have to be the subject of everyone's headlines and criticism for a factor you can't control.
then this guy comes along.
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race winner who got himself to a top team and is beating his world champion teammate, a cool older handsome charismatic guy with a giant smile and big brown eyes, beloved and kind while still being fiercely talented, competitive, and hungry? the guy who you met in 2011 and who gave you the time of day before you were old enough to sniff at the f1 grid. he's not even going to be your actual teammate (yet), but he still takes the time to tell you he's looking forward to seeing you on the grid when so much of what you've heard is nonstop criticism.
he tells you good luck for your super license with a big grin meant just for you
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and this is how it makes you feel.
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this is live footage of daniel ricciardo becoming a permanent fixture in max's spank bank. it's one of those foundational crushes you have at a young age that sticks with you for life and unconsciously affects "your type" forever and never truly goes away.
also, i just think everyone should hear the way max very softly says "he's a really nice guy, yeah" with so much affection packed into every word.
how are you not to psychosexually imprint on him? one look at that video and max was ready to risk it all. he's been metaphorically tucking his hair, kicking his feet, and giggling since day one. he found a guy who he could race hard, who would challenge him on track, but who would still make the miserable pr days better for them, who was always laughing at max's jokes every time he did his little glance over to ensure it landed. max is so fiercely loyal to his people, and daniel has clearly earned that trust.
tldr: max verstappen is number one dirlie and if he were on f1blr, he would be writing long posts with onboards, data, and that ☝️🤓 attitude of his explaining in detail why everyone is wrong about daniel, and i hope it haunts all the max fans who get their rocks off to calling daniel a washed asshole loser that max's porn folder is daniel late braking compilations.
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wizzdot · 4 months ago
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The Patron Saint of One Way Trips
ch1
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Description: this is my first fic. Please be nice. It’s an A/B/O verse fic, not sure how it’ll end yet but it’s probs gonna be poly!141 in a pack situation. It’s a reader insert. Y/n will be used. It is going to be multi chapter so please follow / notify yourselves for updates. Happy reading. It’s going to be pretty traumatic. Mdni - there will be everything in this fic. Reader is she/her and omega. Taskforce 141 are all alpha. Alejandro is alpha, Rudy is omega. Others will be mentioned as and when they appear in the fic. Hugs and kisses, Wizz! Xx
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"Bring Laika to me" Dr Dimitrov demands.
*Y/N's POV*
It is the middle of a harsh Russian winter. It is now approaching the 6th year, I think, of being held in this facility under the control of the ultranationalist terrorist group led by an Alpha, Vladamir Makarov. I have never actually met Makarov, but have heard stories and segments of information that I could pick up thanks to my very broken knowledge of the Russian intellect.
My room, or cell, to be more precise, is damp and dark.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
The sound of water falling from the ceiling sounds like the ticking of a, slightly out of time, clock. I close my eyes and count the ticks inside my own head, as far as I can go, before losing my place in the thousands and starting at one again. A sad metaphor for my life, really. After a few hours, the drips fade into heavy footsteps. I sit up and brace for whatever was about to happen. Like an obedient, albeit unstable, mutt. Hackles raised, but too scared to actually bite.
The door of my cell smashes open, jarring me from my self prescribed detachment from reality. I blink away the sound of dripping and concentrate on the two guards standing in front of me. I bow my head and submit. The guards stand proudly and sneer at my submissive nature.
"Pfft How is she the last one standing Sergei? I had my money on the ex-military Alpha. Not this little mutt... what even is she anyway? I can't scent her.." The guard jeers.
The other, less chatty, guard scents the air and seems to agree, all the while, I stand, offering my wrists for them to cuff in order to move me to wherever it was they were sending me this time.
"Such a good little bitch you are, Laika" the first guard sneers at me. I stay still, staring at my dirty, cracked shoes.
I am escorted by both guards toward a larger room. I have been here many times. It wasn't a nice room.
"Dr Dimitrov.." the guard announces "Laika - as requested" before they both turn and leave me to face the Doctor and his two assistants. The door closes and I am maneuvered to sit on a hard chair with restraints on the legs and arm rests. The assistants glance at the restraints and then to Dr Dimitrov, who is shaking his head. "No, she won't need those. Laika here, is an obedient little mutt. Isn't that right, Laika?" he mocks. I do not respond, continuing to look down, submissively.
"We have a new task for you Laika. Requested by Makarov himself. Now, personally I think its above your skill set, what with you being the weakest of our three original assets, but sadly we have no other choice now the other two are... expired" I glance up at him and scan the creepy, slimy smile on his face, and immediately drop my gaze back to the ground.
Should I be thankful to be the surviving one? I don't feel very thankful. I feel hopeless. I never had much hope, but to now feel completely and utterly devoid of it is really rather terrifying. I can feel heavy globs of tears well up in my lash line, but I refuse to let them fall. I can only pray or..hope.. that I - what was the word..? 'Expire' during this task too.
I snap out of my own thoughts and realise that the Doctor and his assistants had been discussing my mission and I had not been tuned in. I try to follow but they are talking in Russian so I only pick up segments. Something about a task force, 5 - or was it 4 - men. I am roughly uncuffed and I feel a hard hand grip my chin, wrenching my gaze upwards to meet Dr Dimitrov's. "You WILL comply, Laika. You remember what happened last time you acted up? And the time before that?" I weakly nod my head with wide eyes, terrified of the consequences. I didn't think I 'acted up' but when your controllers are as evil as this, any small fault is picked apart.
*3 years earlier*
I had been dropped discreetly, by Dimitrov, on the verge of a small Spanish village where a supposed cartel gang were holed up. My task was to, simply, eliminate the leader and one other assistant. I tailed the group for days and took stock of what they did every day and how they interacted. I'd been told that these men were responsible for bombing an airport and killing innocent civilians and children. The facility had been testing drugs on me for the past 18 months and they'd finally settled on the cocktail that suppressed my designation and kept me fully under their control. I was just a puppet on a string, but I was always reassured that I was on the 'good side' of history.
I had been away from the facility for a few days now, loaded with my weapons, maps and drugs, that I obediently took, three times a day as scheduled. During a scuffle with a small sub-group of the cartel, my bag was damaged and burnt during my escape. I dont realise what that actually meant until the following morning, when my head felt a bit clearer and my senses less foggy. I continue to go through the motions of tailing the man and his second in command. I had learnt that the leader of the Cartel was called Vargas and the other, Perez, or Parras, or something along those lines. The second day without my drugs, I realised that they were a bonded pair, and they actually were kind to those they met. My brain was telling me to follow orders and get back to the facility sharpish, but my heart wanted to observe the pair. It all blew up when another group rolled into the village and I was caught in the middle of a huge battle. I needed to complete my mission. I sneak round a building that I know Vargas is holed up in. I had seen the other man surrounded by armed men so assumed he had been taken care of already. I get to a rooftop and set my sniper rifle up and as I am about to take a shot I feel a sharp tug on my leg. I immediately roll and hold a knife to the neck of whoever had touched me.
I drop the knife, allowing it to clatter to the floor. The tap on my leg was a boy -maybe 4 years old, covered in blood and looked like he had been charred slightly in a fire. I feel some sort of instinct to protect him so I tuck him under my arm, tell him to be quiet and set back up at my rifle, readjusting the sight. I see Vargas through the cross hairs, and then behind him, I see one of the guards who work at the facility. This guard in particular is a brute of a man, always touching and groping me. Something comes over me then and I line up my sights and shoot him down. Vargas glances in the direction of the sniper and I can't be certain if he catches my eye or not, but I run, with the small boy under my arm.
I call in to be collected after the mission had failed. I had done as briefed and walked clear of the village. Three black trucks pull up and heavily armed guards step out alongside Dr Dimitrov. The child is pulled from my grasp and shot between the eyes. "You will learn to obey, Laika" he bellows down at me. I must have collapsed in shock when I saw the boy shot. "LOOK AT ME YOU USELESS MUTT" I hear but cannot collect myself to understand what is happening. I am ripped from the ground, jabbed with a needle, and thrown into a cage in the back of one of the cars. I wake up numb and strapped to the chair in the dreaded room I had come to hate so much but now I couldn't remember why I hated it.
"Dr Dimitrov, you'll be pleased to hear that the asset has been topped up with suppressants. This won't happen again. We are working on a long lasting injection which will enter her blood stream and alter her DNA for up to 8 weeks. This will remove any risk of this happening again. We apologise for any responsibility we may have in the failure of this objective" I hear from behind my chair. My brain is fuzzy, I feel like a spectator trapped in my own body.
"Good, Whatever the timescale on this injection is... Half it" Dr Dimitrov orders.
"Yes Sir" I hear from behind me, before hurried footsteps rush from the room, followed by the sharp slam of the door.
*Present Day*
I am returned to my cell with the instruction that I am to be collected at midnight for drop off at an undisclosed location. For the past 3 years, the facility had been successfully using the injectable suppressor drug, which kept me obedient and free of any symptoms of my designation, whatever it may be. They knew I wasn't an alpha due to my anatomy which left two options - Beta or Omega. They don't want to test as they know I am undesignated and had never experienced a heat when I was captured and still hadn't, possibly thanks to the suppressants but most likely due to the fact I am a Beta like my late mother and father, and two siblings. I try to sleep but thoughts plague my mind which is unusual in itself as my brain is usually in a constant haze due to the chemical alteration it has suffered for the past however many years.
I am tucked up the corner of my cell listening to the ticking of my imaginary clock.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
I smell them before I hear them. And then I hear them before I see them. Or I hear the facility's alarm blaring, anyway. I try to hide in my cell but there is nowhere to go. They always remove my weapons before putting me away. I hear heavy, but fast footsteps splash down the hallway outside my room. I tuck myself immediately next to the door so anyone looking in through the small window wouldn't be able to see round the angle of my hiding spot. I hear the footsteps stop.
"Looks clear in my hallway, over" a strange accented voice speaks roughly, attempting to be quiet. His position from directly outside my door gives him away though but if he doesn't think I am here, then I will stay as quiet as a mouse until he leaves. I hear a radio muffle to life on his shoulder "Clear here too, over" a smooth, recognisably English voice radios back.
I feel my eyebrows furrow as a trace of a scent starts wafting through my door. It smells like rain and grass and...gunpowder. There are other scents too that I cannot place. Scents I haven't smelt before, or, it had been so long since I had, that I no longer knew its name. But I knew rain, grass and gunpowder. I try to chase the scent slightly, seeming to be distracted for a split second. I am broken from my thoughts when the crackly radio crashes to life again.
"Soap! Hostiles coming your way. They are wanting something - fuckin loads of them.. stay sharp" I try to muffle the gasp at the voice. He sounds like he could take on a bear in a fight, and win, just by shouting at it to piss off. I had never heard such a rough, strong voice. That was the voice of their leader. I just knew it.
The man with the strange accent starts buzzing about in the hallway, trying to find somewhere to fight from. He starts whispering to himself. "what the fuck are they lookin' for eh? Thought I'd cleaned the place out for fucks sake. Fuck it.. in here will have to do".
The handle of my cell starts shaking roughly, the rattle gets louder and louder. I am stuck, just out of view, like a deer in the headlights of a fast moving car. I hear him attach a small blast to the door and he blows the locks out, the door swinging open. He catches it before it hits the wall, avoiding the usual crash that occurs when the door swings open like that. He gently turns and shuts the door to make it look as if nothing had moved. I stay frozen. He steps back, and as he takes his first proper glance of the room, our eyes meet.
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prettyinpwn · 3 months ago
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Bill and Ford and Adult Grooming - Why Gravity Falls is a Metaphor Champion for Abusive Relationships (GF Writing Analysis Pt. 4)
GF Writing Analysis Series:
Pt. 1 - Ford Pines: A Masterclass in Writing a Good Flawed Character Pt. 2 - How Gravity Falls Could Have Been Better + Poor Ford and Wendy Pt. 3 - Mabel Pines: How Well Was She Written... Really?
Hello and welcome to the fourth post in my GF Writing Analysis series! Though the title is self-explanatory, I still want to warn folks that this post will contain dark content relating to adult grooming AKA abuse. If that is content you'd rather avoid (and for some reason your filters did not catch my trigger warning tags), this is your heads up that this post will contain that type of discussion.
For those of you who are not sure what adult grooming is, no, it's not the sexual grooming between an adult and a minor like we typically think of when the term "grooming" comes up, nor does it have to be romantic at all, although sexual acts can be a part of this form of grooming. It is defined as:
"-the predatory act of manoeuvring another individual into a position that makes them more isolated, dependent, likely to trust, and more vulnerable to abusive behaviour. The goal is to prepare the other person for abuse (for example, sexual or financial) later. Therefore, the groomer’s first step is to establish friendship and trust." (Source).
It is my belief that the relationship between Bill and Ford in Gravity Falls - which The Book of Bill helped illustrate even more - is one of adult grooming. This post will explore how the concept of adult grooming applies to the relationship between Bill and Ford, how it changes our perception of them as characters, and the value of showing metaphors for abuse in media for all ages - like Gravity Falls is - to help bring to light this very real and underdiscussed issue and help victims recognize it themselves.
Defining Adult Grooming Further + Who Bill Really Is
We already visited the definition of adult grooming above, but we haven't explored the psychology behind it yet. Namely, I want to explore who partakes in adult grooming on both ends. There is the abuser, and the victim.
The abuser is described as often being:
"Narcissists, Antisocial predators, con artists and sexual aggressors practice grooming to target and manipulate vulnerable people for exploitation." (Source).
Well, very obviously, we know that Bill is the abuser. But... why? He could be a narcissist, an antisocial predator, and a con artist, just like the above description. But which? Why is he an abuser?
Well, our first inclination might be to turn to The Book of Bill and think about his backstory; how he could see in the third dimension in a two dimensional world, tried to "liberate" his dimension to see what he could see, and... then slaughtered them all. He implies it was an accident. He just "wanted the best" for his people. But... drumroll please... get ready for a U-turn into some literary talk...
The Great Gatsby references surrounding The Book of Bill were more than just a "lol random" joke. Infamously, the narrator of The Great Gatsby, Nick Carraway, is what's called an 'unreliable narrator'. This is a writing technique defined as:
"-any narrator who misleads readers, either deliberately or unwittingly. Many are unreliable through circumstances, character flaws or psychological difficulties. In some cases, a narrator withholds key information from readers, or they may deliberately lie or misdirect." (Source).
To me, after understanding just how much more Hirsch has tied The Great Gatsby to The Book of Bill's release (e.g "TJ Eckleburg" being the password to get into the associated ARG website, offering a free PDF of The Great Gatsby on said website)... I think what Hirsch is trying to say, is... Bill is an unreliable narrator, as well. Not that that wasn't already well established throughout the series.
Let's ask ourselves this question: is there anyone Bill hasn't lied to? Tried to gain sympathies from? I'll wait. Because the answer is no. Bill lies every time he opens his mouth. Even the god of the Gravity Falls setting - the Axolotl - calls him a liar in the Dipper and Mabel and the Curse of the Time Pirates' Treasure!: Select Your Own Choose-Venture book.
So as a small aside to the main point of this post: I don't think there's anything in The Book of Bill that we can guarantee is proof or canon. If I'm honest, I think The Book of Bill is the mad rambling of a monster trying to justify to us as well as himself that he's better than he really is. He's an unreliable narrator to himself because he needs to save himself from mentally shattering upon the admission that, yeah, he's really that horrible of a person.
If I were to define what The Book of Bill is, is it's a sad attempt to elicit sympathy for a monster, by a monster. It's a masterclass in how he - as an abuser - grooms someone. If you read The Book of Bill and walk away feeling bad for Bill, then congratulations! You would have fallen prey to him just like Ford did. And just like everyone who ever fell prey to him before that.
The metaphor Gravity Falls and its extra content illustrates through Bill is how charming, funny, and enticing and sexy according to Tumblr for some godforsaken reason abusers can be in real life. Because the worst of monsters are the ones who do everything to convince you they're not.
So what does this say about Bill as a character? Don't be fooled. He really is that monstrous. He doesn't have any redeeming qualities. Everything Bill does is with a goal in mind, a person to be used or manipulated to get there, and with a complete lack of conscience to stop himself from doing it. And that's what makes Bill such a strong and terrifying villain: He really is that evil. He really is that soulless. He's not a villain of great strength or power that can be easily defeated with might. He's a villain that underlines something very real beyond a screen or book page, something that we all likely have experienced in real life: an abuser.
Bill and Ford: Abuser and Abused + How Bill Does It
Getting back to the definition of adult grooming, let's explore how it works. There are typical steps abusers like Bill use. We'll list them, then list examples alongside each step that show how Bill used these tactics on Ford for the sake of both exploring their characters more, and illustrating how well Gravity Falls depicts actual abuse.
Please note that I'm using this source as my guideline on the steps of adult grooming.
Step One: Targeting the Victim
The abuser first looks for someone they can target. They learn all they can about the victim. Typically, they look for victims who are:
Unpopular or have family problems. Gee... who does this sound like?
People who have low self-esteem. GEE... sounds familiar again.
People who have mental/physical disabilities. Although Ford does not have either, at least not proven in canon, it is possible that his genius could be considered a disability in how high IQ individuals typically are more socially isolated, depressed, anxious, insomnia-ridden from overthinking, and can have troubles with making friends due to likeliness to correct others (*cough* "Grammar, Stanley." *cough), different senses of humor, and being misunderstood. (Source). Plus, we know his polydactyly caused people to outcast him.
People who have already been through abuse. I - and many others - have made the point that it's common fan interpretation that Ford's father was abusive to a point. At the very least, I have argued in previous posts that Filbrick taught Ford that "value = what money you make from smarts". He was, after all, supposed to be "their ticket outta this (New Jersey poor neighborhood) dump", right? Assuming this is true, well... Ford was already taught from a young age that his value was in how others could use him. Filbrick may have primed him to be abused by Bill, unintentionally.
Okay, so we've established step one of adult grooming, and how Ford fits 99% of these criteria at least for the type of victim an abuser targets. What about step two?
Step Two: Gaining Trust
Honestly, I don't need to elaborate much on this part. I'll just quote the article I sourced before, because any Gravity Falls fan will instantly know how this applies to Bill and Ford:
"Groomers can be hard to notice as they will do their best to appear safe and genuine. This makes it hard to identify them. Over time, they will gradually manipulate the victim to be dependent on them."
"While gaining trust, the groomer may use flattery like offering gifts, admiration, and sharing “secrets” with the person to make them feel special. The groomer may do favours for someone. The groomer may gradually begin asking for favours in return, generally starting small. This may be the start of a romantic relationship or a simple friendship."
"Groomers may share secrets with their target in order to make them feel special and trusted by the groomer. This also may make the target feel they need to share secrets of their own, which the groomer may later use to increase their power over the target."
I mean... *gestures at all of Ford's journals and interactions with Bill in The Book of Bill*. Bill couldn't get any more textbook abuser/adult groomer than this. He praised Ford, shared secrets with him, made him feel so special, etc.
Step Three and Four: Filling a Need and Isolation
These steps are quite self-explanatory. The abuser (Bill) convinces the victim that they need them. "You need me to complete your portal project, Ford.". "No one else understands you, Ford.". And then comes the isolation, and where we'll touch on Stan and McGucket.
"Groomers will likely try to isolate the victim from their loved ones. This may be evident in the way they refuse to meet family and loved ones. Or perhaps they bad mouth them, or try to point out to the victim that the groomer is the only one who really and truly cares for them. Being isolated from friends and family makes it harder for the victim to notice warning signs."
Bill convinced Ford he didn't need anyone but him. He convinced him to isolate more and more; to push his brother away, to push McGucket away, until Ford had literally no support network, making him prime prey for Bill to take advantage of.
Step Five+: The Real Abuse
This step can manifest in many different ways. After reading the article sourced above, there are so many similarities to what Bill did to Ford. I'll list them here:
Continuing isolation.
Destroying self-esteem.
Physical abuse (leaving Ford with bloody knuckles, making his body hurt, leaving him on top of the Shack in the freezing cold, etc).
Seek to take control over victims (in Bill's case, the fantasy/supernatural metaphor of possession is just that: a metaphor for control).
Normalizing behaviors that aren't normal ("Here, I'll just possess you more and more, I swear giving me complete control is normal!").
Making the victim feel helpless.
And many, many more. Folks, I'm not going to lie: I would not be surprised if Hirsch and other writers involved in Bill's creation read a manual on how abusers work (or maybe experienced it in their own lives, but hopefully not, as I wouldn't wish that on anyone) to write Bill. Because Bill does these steps on cue to Ford. He is a textbook abuser.
So... What Does This Say About Bill and Ford?
The dark humor in Bill's writing is that he portrays his shadowy side as lighthearted, but there's a very, very dark underbelly of abuse in everything he does. Even the way we interact with Bill as viewers/readers in real life is a microcosm of his abuse. Look at how he's written:
"Oh, I look like an innocent, funny little triangle guy. Don't mind me. *Does something horrifying and awful.* Oh, I'm just funny, trust me, look how sad I am for losing Ford, and how I drink about it, and I'm all sad here in interdimensional therapy, and I kept a speck of dust from my dimension in my hat! I swear I'm really regretful!"
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Text in point: "I'm just a rascal! A funny little guy! But everyone seems to think I'm "evil" or "a sociopath".
He wants to be a hero, or a star, as he calls it. He shows himself on a magazine cover, as someone talked to in a live show, as the leader of the Henchmaniacs (which I'd argue are also either are abusers or victims themselves based on how Bill describes them in the book), etc.
But he's a liar. He's a conman. He's a dream demon; a demon that has power over dreams, but dreams are just that: lies and illusions. Like I said, even the Axolotl thinks so:
"Saw his own dimension burn. Misses home and can't return. Says he's happy, he's a liar. Blame the arson for the fire."
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What that line and this screenshot means, is that Bill is 100% to blame for the destruction he wreaks. He didn't "show people the truth". He burned them alive because they didn't worship him as the hero he wanted so badly to be, and he blamed it on, "Well, they just didn't GET what I was trying to tell them.". And the worst part about Bill, is he knows deep down he's to blame; that he has the blood of millions on his hands. But he literally tries to describe it as "liberating" his kind. Ford knows this, too, and tells us directly in The Book of Bill that the book itself is a sham:
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Key quotes being: "It will become whatever it must to deceive you, to pull you in." and "DO NOT BELIEVE A WORD".
Honestly, there's only one line Bill ever said that was truth:
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Yet, even though Bill knows he's a monster, he never stops. He's had millions of years to change, yet he hasn't. And I doubt he ever will. That's why the Theraprism is effective: it's a jail of his own making. He could get out if he wanted to get better and worked at it. He's always had the key to unlock his cage. But he won't. Because he can't admit fault.
So instead of fixing himself, he keeps wanting to drag others into his cage with him. Like a man drowning who'll grasp onto anyone else struggling, pretending he's helping them float together, only to push them down to keep himself above the water. But in the Theraprism, he has no one to pretend to. He's a "theatre kid without a stage", like Ford said. A little emotional leech without someone to latch onto. He's just alone, like he was after he destroyed his entire dimension.
As for Ford, he champions the story of a victim who regained his power and heals through the love of his family. If you read his and Bill's story from the perspective of abuser vs. victim, it's the story of a man who was isolated, taken advantage of, nearly destroyed... but then wrests his power back and chases after his abuser for thirty years for revenge. However, it's telling that it's not through his thirst for vengeance that Bill is defeated, but through his brother's love for him and the rest of their family.
I mean, look at the main villains of Gravity Falls: someone who sacrificed his family (Bill), someone who was selfish and didn't give a crap about his family (Gideon), etc. And the heroes: people who self-sacrificed for their family. All the Pines wrestle with this theme, from things as small as Dipper giving up a let's be honest very minimal chance at Wendy to make Mabel happy and win Waddles at the fair, Mabel destroying her puppet show to save Dipper from Bill, Ford self-sacrificing and getting tortured for I don't even know how many days locked up with Bill during Weirdmageddon to protect others, and Stan performing the ultimate sacrifice in the finale for his family and world.
Bill is the antithesis to the Pines: a selfish abuser who killed his family. And the Pines are heroes because they learn the moral lesson of the story: to give up pride and selfishness to forgive, self-sacrifice, and love your family and do anything for them, despite your trauma or prior disagreements. They could have just as easily ended up like Bill: awful because of a refusal to admit fault or self-sacrifice. But they don't, because they learned what Bill never did.
That's also why this show focuses so much on the theme of past vs. future and letting go; the Pines learned to let go and accept change, Bill never did. He's stuck. Funny how time stops whenever Bill shows up in the real world, huh? /symbolism wink
And that's why Gravity Falls - and Ford and Bill's story especially - is a champion metaphor for abusive relationships and healing from them.
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taeggukxiie · 1 month ago
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I don't really like endhawks and it's not so much because of the age gape or the fan/idol relationship (la brava and gentle have some age gape and bakudeku are the pure description of fanatization/idolization trope and I like both of those ships), but more because endeavor literally embodies what Hawks hate the most.
Hear me out on this one, they have cute interactions but for me the fact that Hawks stayed by endeavor's side even knowing what he did to his children is kinda out of character. I mean the whole thing why keigo wanted to be a hero was to help people and make them smile because he went through abusive behavior all his life. Endeavor do save people but doesn't make them smile, not directly anyway. Hawks wanted to help the new generation, but endeavor traumatized the generation he gave birth to. Hawks wanted to be free, but endeavor stole freedom from his children (at least until he becomes number 1 and shoto comes to UA).
I understand hawks forgiving and accepting endeavor even after what he did, because hawks is so optimistic that he wants to believe eveyone can change for the better, but I don't understand him staying by endeavor's side. I mean, how traumatic would it be to discover that your idol who saved you and gave you a dream to follow did the exact same things as the person who traumatized your childhood? I see some narrative problems here. Or maybe it's just that hawks is too optimistic for his own good.
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The thing is, I think Hawks so desperately needed a symbol to give him hope that he didn't even try to look more profoundly into endeavor's mistakes. Like he tried so hard to convince himself. Here we can see that hawks says he could keep up with training and abuse by the commission because someone supported him, probably implying endeavor. But it wasn't even true, hawks just chose to idealize enji because he saved him, but enji didn't know hawks before metting him as a hero, so he couldn't actually support him in his dream. I know it's only metaphoric, but it does mean that Keigo just needed something, someone to hold onto because of all the suffering he went through. And he chose endeavor, who was the only person indirectly "caring" for him.
Now maybe it's because I adore Hawks and I hate endeavor (the man and his actions, not the way he's written), but I can't imagine them in a romantic relationship. How could Hawks give his trust and love to the exact same profile as his father? How could they live together without hawks remembering the abuse? I think that even enji himself wouldn't trust his own reactions and feelings, hunted by the past. "The past never dies", and it's true for everyone in this story.
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Look how similar they are. Honestly I don't really understand horikoshi on this one because if he wanted to give enji a loyal sidekick, then why give Hawks an abusive father?
Or if horikoshi wanted to give us grumpy x playful duo, then do it with dabihawks? They had so much potential to be our favorite bickering duo, and their drama would've been so good if they both knew each other before touya's death, became close during hawks undercover mission and then went through a heartbreaking breakup during touya's reveal.
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(look at them they could've been soo good as a grumpy x playful duo aah)
Instead, we got Hawks indirectly supporting the same abuse he went through and the destruction of dabihawks' potential with the biggest absence of interactions ever after the first war.
(Also I want to add that I respect everyone's opinion and I don't hate endhawks shippers at all! It's just my point of view on the ship, everyone is free to ship whoever they want if that stays legal 🙏)
Maybe I'm going too far into the analysis (someone stop me please I'm talking too much-), but I really think that endhawks couldn't work, for hawks as much as for enji. Now the interesting thing to ask would be : would dabihawks actually work in a romantic relationship? I guess we'll never know.
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ao3-shenanigans · 4 months ago
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How do you make your writing feel less stilted? I feel like when I write I’m too literal, I am always straight to the point and I don’t know how to make it seem more natural. I’ve only just started writing and I really like the idea I’m writing, but it just feels kinda stilted
Good question! Theres always the advice to use similes, metaphors and other descriptive language when possible, but if you’re looking for something more specific…
Instead of stating something to be similar or related, try starting a new paragraph with a story or fact about the related thing and then bring it back to the main idea.
For example, instead of saying something like:
‘The diner was familiar, like the one John used to go to with his grandmother when he was young.’
Try something like:
‘Growing up, every Saturday John’s grandmother would let him sleep in an extra twenty minutes before throwing open the curtains to allow the golden summer sunshine to spill across his face. He’d then get dressed and climb into the old beat-up car and flip through the radio stations until Grandmother would bat his hands away and switch it to the classical radio as they made their way to the local diner.
To complete this Saturday morning ritual, they’d sit belly up to the bar and order the massive diner pancakes, orange juice with John’s and black coffee with Grandmother’s. They ate the same thing every week but John didn’t complain, he wouldn’t have it any other way.
It had been almost a full decade since they’d eaten together like that. The cracked and faded diner parking lot John stood in now called back to those happier times.’
Or instead of:
‘John felt butterflies in his stomach while waiting for the phone to ring.’
Try:
‘When a butterfly first comes out of its chrysalis, it’s wings are far too wet to be good for anything so the poor creature must stay in place slowly flapping its useless wings to dry them and hope that no predator comes upon them.
John feels rather like those vulnerable insects, he thinks, while waiting for the phone to ring. Everything is on the line.’
I’ve found this method is a fun way to fill out the page as well as gives you opportunity to show more about the character and tell more then the literal situation.
Hope this helps some!
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melit0n · 11 months ago
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Half-Starved
- Synopsis: Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley was born hungry. Born with a relentless nagging feeling curled up right between his oesophagus and the squirming muscle of his stomach. From the very moment Simon opened his eyes, he was hungry for something he could never have; affection. But then there's you. The night owl so willing to offer the one thing he can't have.
And he finds that he'd bleed out if you told him you liked the colour red.
- Oneshot
- Obsessive! Ghost/Reader
- Word Count: 3.7k
- Warnings: Descriptions of gore, canabalism as a metaphor for love, mentions of past domestic abuse, implied past sexual assult, implied stalking
- Ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52474849
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Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley was born hungry. 
Born with a relentless nagging feeling curled up right between his oesophagus and the squirming muscle of his stomach. From the very moment Simon opened his eyes, he was hungry for something he would never have. Left to starve in the gloom of the locked cupboard he was shoved into for not shutting up. He spent fifteen-odd years greedy for any drop of affection he could get. Anything he could grasp and hold onto, no matter how many bruises it would leave him with. No matter how long he would have to spend chained up like a bad dog in the corner of his room licking his wounds telling himself that it was worth it. That the blood was worth it. The pain was worth it. 
Anything to be acknowledged. 
Now, once again finding comfort in the gloom of his home, he is still hungry. Even more so. 
To him, touch is a fragile subject. A broken subject he hates talking about because of him.
Gunfire and stab wounds are nothing in the face of a father’s punch. Intimate, innocent digits can still feel like creeping, coercive hands.
Yet, a fasting man’s stomach still growls. 
Fragile subject or not, he still craved it. Maybe too much. He wanted, wants, to be held tight enough so he doesn’t break. Wants to be vulnerable. But he’s still afraid he’ll end up being a scared kid looking into the slit eyes of a snake again.
He blames his younger self for the predicament he’s found himself in. Wants sit down with the kid and shake him by the shoulders and ask why. Why he put himself through that for that long. 
Even so, he can’t blame him. 
He knows how hungry he is now; feels the scraping like dull claws against the soft spot between his liver and his spleen. He can only imagine what it was like for him as a child. 
He’s blocked most of those memories out now, though.
He sits through the tugging, the pulling, through each dull meeting. Each dark night spent alone in his bunk. Each evening he spends licking wounds that just won't close. 
Unfortunately, this issue, this dilemma, is a hard one to fix. A hard want to satiate. His callsign is well earned, afterall. Sometimes even he blurs the lines of the dead man walking and the human being hidden behind layers of constantly taught muscle and scarred skin. Makes it a bit hard to gain attention other than fear and unease, let alone affection.
But then there’s you. 
The first word that would come to his mind is kind. 
Out of the blue, draped in moonlight and glimmering stars, you appear, seemingly out of nowhere. But, you’re here. And there. And everywhere, really. 
He sees you in the local corner shop, holding tightly onto the sleeve of whoever you’ve brought along. 
He doesn’t see their face. Too obscured by the dim lighting
He sees you on the train, and occasionally on the bus: brushing your hand, intently, against that of your work friend’s. You both take the same one into the city, bright and early hoping to miss the morning crowd but never succeeding. 
He doesn’t see their face, either. 
Bit by bit, he begins to notice things. Notice habits that shouldn’t be his to examine. 
You use physical affection as not only a way to show affection itself, platonic or romantic–he isn’t particularly good at guessing unless it’s glaringly obvious–but as a form of comfort and encouragement as well. 
In less than a month into his leave, you’ve managed to become a staple in his civilian life. 
He sees you in the morning, always at the train station with breakfast and lunch in hand, looking quizzically around to see if you’ve missed your train like a doubtful deer. 
He knows you know you haven’t. You’re like him; you’ve got an obsession with time. 
While his is instilled by the harsh words of the military, yours is brought about by a tight work schedule. And maybe something else. He wonders what that something else is as you both board the already stuffed train, both standing in the same carriage full of warm, already tired bodies. 
He sees you in the afternoon as well, sitting outside on a park bench with a friend and eating lunch. While you talk, you have a habit of taking tiny crumbs off of your sandwich, flicking them off to the ratty pigeons that flock around your feet like moths to a flame. 
You always have the same lunch; the same sandwich bread from the same corner shop with the same filing. You have a thing with regularity, routine, as well, it seems. 
Just like him. 
Of course, he sees you in the evenings too. You both take the same train home, and almost always end up so close yet so far from each other on the carriage. Your work friend gets off at the stop two before yours and Simon’s; always leaving you with a pat on the shoulder and a closed eye smile, which you almost always return. 
You have a habit of jumping, ever so slightly, when you get off the train. Simon finds it quite cute. It’s almost as if you’re actually afraid of the gap.
Of the fall. 
Either way, you part ways without knowing you’re parting from him, leaving you missing from him, and head back to your home. Ghost has an impulse to follow you, spurred on by a mix of curiosity at where you live and wanting to make sure you’re safe.
From what, Simon doesn’t truly know. 
He almost does. Stands awkwardly in front of the station watching your figure turn into a small dot, but Simon urges himself to head home. To sleep. 
You linger in his thoughts each time he walks back. 
At first, he’s oddly amazed, a bit in awe, if he were honest, that you can give so much affection so easily, touch so easily, and receive it tenfold from the people around you. 
Then, there’s annoyance, titering on the fine, chipped-away line of anger. Like a mantra, he asks why it’s fair someone can give, give and keep on giving, let alone receive something back, and he can’t? How can you hold someone so closely and not be afraid of a knife in your back? 
Maybe that’s Ghost talking, he thinks. 
Eventually, he falls off the flimsy line of annoyance and anger and into the muddied trench that is jealousy. Jealous not only of you, how you can give and receive so easily, but of the people in your life who get to experience the affection that you give to any warm body that passes by you. Said people who don’t understand how precious and rare that experience is to others. 
To him. 
He wants to taste it. Badly. 
Then, it morphs. Twists and turns like a dying thing, all red with chunks of fur sticking at odd angles, into attraction. Turning from a want to be held, a quiet plea to the God they taught him about in primary school for you to keep him together for just a little bit longer, to a need. A need to kiss until both your lips are bloody and raw, bitten and chewed like a pomegranate, seeping your liquid life for him to drink as an elixir. 
He’s seen the way you kiss, and God above he needs it. Needs you. He doesn’t care if it’s the fleeting, platonic kisses you gift to your friends on the cheek (he wants you to take a chunk out of his cheek. Wants you to chew on the fat like the gum you always have in your mouth), or if it’s the rough ones you give to the people you bring home. The ones that have them chasing your lips for more, which you always allow because you never stop giving. 
Simon wants it. Ghost needs it. 
Consequently, the dull scratching of the claws in between his liver and his spleen grows sharper. After years of the scratching, the pulling, the tugging, he’d thought his hunger pang’s talons had grown weary, thought he’d grown accustomed, but he feels them. Feels the sharp pang like a pistol’s bullet and it bloody hurts. Has him hunched over on his bed trying to claw out his stomach because, for the first time in years, it's hurting him. 
And, for the first time in years, Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley decides to listen.  
As more time passes, more time spent getting soaked outside your house in the rain waiting for you to come home because you’re oddly late for all the time he’s known you, it changes again. Writhes around in his stomach and the fat in his veins, to something much worse. Much more harmful, at least, to you. In all the pain of his hunger, he contemplates taking chunks out of you. Maybe that will satiate the creature that squirms in his bloody viscera, laying claim to all of his innards in an attempt to get him to feed for once in his life. 
He wants, needs, hungers to feel the comforting weight of your blood in the bottom of his stomach. 
Zoning out during meetings easily turns to daydreaming of taking one of his hunting knives to your flesh. Cut strips of skin, like you’re his sacrificial lamb to slaughter and devour, and finally put those butchering skills he gained to work somewhere other than on the field. 
He promises he’ll be delicate. Promises he’ll be kind. Promises Simon, and not Ghost.
Promises Simon, who’s more corpse than he likes to think.
He can’t help but imagine how you’d cry when he’d do so. Fat tears dribbling down your soft cheeks and getting caught in the corners of your lips.
He hates hearing people cry. 
In his dreams and his waking hours, he’s endlessly followed, stalked, haunted by the echoing sobs of someone lost to him in some distant sun-stunned, sand-smothered land.
But you?
He doesn’t mind one bit.
It’s another piece of you for him to consume, another piece of you that you can offer to him–gift to him–to bring you two together. 
He knows, God knows he knows, how much it takes to be vulnerable. He doesn’t think he’d be able to describe what he’d do to taste your tears. To savour your salty sadness upon his tongue and be able to offer comfort. To lick your face dry and hold you in his arms; warm body against warm body just like he’s daydreamed about.
The more time that passes, the further he falls. 
On slightly rarer occasions, ones where he’s alone in the leaden quiet of his room for longer than a human, a soldier, should be, he thinks about feeding your own lovingly cooked gore to you. Get’s him more riled up than he’d like to admit.
At first, it’s a blurry image. Murky and obscured by a civilian subconscious that tries to remind him of who he is. But, slowly, it dissipates. Becomes as clear as a mirror reflection: a candle-lit dinner, like the one’s his mum had in the pictures that used to hang on the wall. Warm lighting. He’s tried his hardest to cover up the smell of his cigarettes for you, a scent that clings to his walls like mould. Hopes that the smell of whatever he’s cooked for you overwhelms it. 
Soup sounds good, doesn’t it, ey? 
It’s a macabre yet intimate fairytale that finds its way into his thoughts when all else is quiet. Leaves him tossing and turning in his bed because the scraping just won't stop. He swears he's bleeding out from the inside, and he’ll break his own kneecaps from how long he’s been on the floor at your feet begging you to make it stop. To stop the scratching, the itching, the nagging feeling. For you to clean and stitch up his wounds, new and old. 
Quickly, he finds he’s utterly enamoured with the thought. Obsessed with it the way Price does with his plans. Fixated on the idea of being that close to another human being. To be able to physically intertwine each other’s cells through mutual consumption. To be sewn into the quantum patterns of your being. For you to feed him a proper meal like his parents never could.
He remembers being taught in his History class–the one with the old hag of a teacher who, with her droning words alone, convinced him not to take it for GCSEs–that in some old, archaic civilisations, people used to eat each other as well. Cooked an arm or a hand for their lover as a promise. A promise that in life, and eventually in death, the two of them would share an utterly unique bond. Eternally linked to each other's souls. 
If he were honest, he didn’t listen for shit in those lessons. Only really paid attention when they had a sub, and even then half the class was too rambunctious for anything to really get taught. The only reason he remembers was because his mates joked about Victorians eating long-dead mummies like it was a five-star meal for weeks after that lesson. The joke got old quickly, but it stuck with him.
Even so, Ghost decides he could die happy on the field–layered in mud and blood that wasn’t his–knowing that a part of you was anatomically intertwined with him. That, even when he was dead and gone, probably much earlier than he should be, you two would still be connected. He would have a piece of you, and you him.
And you, him. It’s another idea that stays with him, plagues his mind and every meal he eats: mutual consumption.
He decides he doesn’t mind extra scars, extra wounds, because he knows you’ll lick them clean for him. Knows you wash them, stitch them up and check on them so they heal properly. 
In the end, that is the intimacy he dreams of. The affection he wants from someone. Wants from you. 
His body is yours, as yours is his. So let him be yours. Give him that chance. Let him feed. Let him fulfil you. 
The idea leaves him with a small smirk on his face, one he doesn’t do well to hide. One that has Soap nudging him in the ribs for with a prodding grin of his own. 
So, he makes a decision. For once, Simon and Ghost agree on something and work together as one, instead of turning the other off for the greater good. 
The decision? To feed. 
To finally know what it is like to be full instead of half-starved. 
The scraping, the nagging, only grows stronger. 
He makes it a point to bump into you as much as he can before his next mission. 
Anywhere is a dinner table to him. On the crowded train, brushing his rough hand against yours to ease the hunger for even a second. In the artificial lighting of the run-down corner shop, grabbing that bag of snacks that are just out of reach for you. ‘Accidently’ bumping shoulders with you on the pavement. That one allows him to talk to you, too. 
If only for a moment. 
All he wants is anything. Anything will do. But it only temporarily satiates the pang, doesn’t satisfy it. He just gets hungrier and hungrier and hungrier. 
He knows you’ve begun to notice him. You’re getting hungry too. He just hopes it’s in the same way he hungers for you. 
He hopes you’re hungry for him, and him alone.
At first, you attempt to offer him platonic comfort, which, God above, tastes so sweet. You offer soft touches on his shoulder. You gift fingers intertwining with his own as you cross the street to his home because he’s gone off on another bender trying to stop turning over in his bed and seeing the inside of a coffin that he has to dig his way out of again. 
‘N you’re just some poor night owl who’s trying to be kind. 
It becomes a routine. Both for you and him. You know he’ll come out of the pub at quarter to one and you know he’s expecting you. You’ll walk the same walk to his home, fumbling with his keys as he looks at you with the softest eyes you’ve ever seen on a man, hands intertwined. You’ll still carry him home and close the door softly with your foot as you lay him on his couch and get him a glass of water and whatever painkiller he has lying around. You’ll still stay as he chats, drunkenly, to you. You’ll take care of him and he’ll be whole, for just a moment. 
At least until the morning comes, anyways. 
He begins to hate the sunrise. Hate the light and the work and the people which drag you away from him. 
He hungers for your touch the same way water hungers for the cavities of people’s lungs. Hungers for your skin like he hungers for the nicotine in his cigarettes. Hungers and begs and pleads until you both fall like Icarus; wax melting and dripping off your backs as you try and crawl your way back to the sun, back to the light, while he drags you down into the depths of the deep blue. Keeps you tight in his embrace so you can’t disappear into the blue again. Disappear like the moon and the stars that hide their fires and fade away when the sun comes up.
It's almost poetic.
In the midst of your drowning, the front door opening startles you out of your stupor. 
You do that a lot, Simon notes. You’ll black out and stare at a wall blankly for hours, either in dead silence or to some piece of music too quiet for him to know the name of. He doesn’t question it. Verbally, at least. 
From how easily you dissociate, he’d say it’s something you picked up a long time ago. He’ll find out when, eventually.
He knows the face of it, afterall. The blank eyes that see nothing and everything. He isn’t wrong to wonder what you’re thinking about, or what memory plays on loop that keeps you a temporarily vacant statue. 
Sometimes, something small in him wonders if he's the cause of it. 
Then he remembers he’s human. He’s human and it’s normal to seek affection, and he carries on eating. 
Carefully, you get up from the couch, approaching him as he walks over to the kitchen counter. The blue plastic bag he has rustles loudly in the spotless kitchen. 
“What’s that?” You ask, gently, placing a hand on his shoulder to get a better look. 
Please give me more. 
He lets out a knowing grunt and pulls out two round, red fruits. At first, you mistake them for apples, but the star-shaped top throws you off. 
“Pomegranates?”
He nods, looking into your eyes for some sort of approval. 
Gingerly, you take one of the pomegranates out of his hand, his fingers twitching as the pads of your digits brush against his. 
I’ll take anything you give. 
Your eyes dart back and forth between him and the fruit as you do so, careful to earn his compliance as you inspect the fruit. 
Just please give me more. 
They’re a deep red, almost crimson, and the shine reflects your face on its vermilion skin. 
“Chopping board,” He pauses. “Please?”
Nodding absent-mindedly, you place the fruit back into his cupped hands. 
You open the drawer behind the both of you and pull out an old chopping board, red soaked and stained into the wood that Ghost just can’t seem to get out. You place it on the counter next to the pomegranates, along with a clean bowl he didn’t even hear you grab, and then find your way to the knife block. Hearing the subtle shink of a blade against wood, Ghost turns and scrutinises you as you try to remember which knife is the fruit knife. 
Choosing the shortest one, you hold it by the handle, facing downwards just like Simon taught you, and place it on top of the chopping board with stitched-up hands and missing fingers from all the times he’s begged for more. From all the times you’ve said you have nothing more to give, but he knows you always have more. Knows you’ll always keep giving.
I’ll take even the spare and broken bits. The parts you don’t even want.
You watch, intently, as he delicately cuts the top of the pomegranate off, slicing through the thick skin. 
Just look at me. 
Gently, he peels the layers of the pomegranate back, kissing each one with the tips of his fingers, letting it stain them something beautifully violent. 
Touch me. 
He reveals the soft viscera inside, glancing back over to you again and again. Looking for something in your eyes. 
Let me be full.
Then, he cuts it into quarters–continuously surprising you how gentle he is with it–but not down to the skin. Leaving it in a filleted star-like shape, he turns it upside down on the bowl, and, using his hand, slowly shakes the seeds off of the fruit into the bowl. 
Once he’s finished, sure he’s got all of the seeds off, he moves onto the next. Repeats the same process. Maybe he repeats the same thoughts, too. 
After he’s done, he sets the empty corpses aside. The red spills out onto the counter. You’re worried it’ll drip down onto the tile. 
He’s staring. Not at you, but at the bowl of red. It’s almost eerie, how still, how quiet he can become. 
The silence is deafening. You want to fill it.
Suddenly, he takes a bloody scoop of the red viscera with his hands. 
Be full. 
Lets the pinkish liquid dribble down his hand. 
Let me fill you, and in turn, you me. 
Then his forearm. 
Feed on me until there is nothing left.
Then down onto the immaculately clean counter.
Let us decompose, intertwined. 
The kitchen smells like bleach. It makes the back of your throat itch. 
He offers his hands out towards you, like an olive branch, like some lurid type of eucharist, and, like the obedient dog you are, you feast. 
Please. Please. Please, please, please, please-
“I love you.” He mumbles, fondly watching the muscle of your tongue dart out to catch the pinkish juice dribbling from your frothing maw. 
-just say you love me, too. 
You’re eating, and you begin to repeat it, but Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley has taught you well not to speak with your mouth full. 
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I've spent the past week hearing 'Abbey' by Mitski at every turn, so it's safe to say that was the main force driving me to write this lmao. I'm pretty sure that if I heard that song or saw something about bloody pomegranates one more time I would've started chewing the flesh off of my own bones. 
Cannibalism as a metaphor for love is an incredibly profound, and, in some ways, poetic literature device for the sheer destruction a toxic relationship can cause, so, I wanted to try my hand at it! And also to stop myself from clawing my face off from hearing anything about this cannibalism metaphor from literally everywhere on the internet.
Do tell if this feels too out of character for Ghost. I originally planned this for König, but I ended up changing it. Overall, thank you for sitting down and reading my work! It means a lot <3
I'll leave it up to you if the metaphor is really a metaphor in the end. 
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steddieunderdogfics · 7 months ago
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This week’s writer spotlight feature is:  @wynnyfryd! Wynnyfryd has 34 fics in the Stranger Things fandom and all of them are in the Steddie tag!
i don’t know, you figure it out
Plot Holes
biting you biting you biting you- oh! kissing you!
Satanic Ritual: DO NOT WATCH!!
She's got some of the FUNNIEST writing in this fandom, and it's very snappy too like. She's an editing demon for sure, she can take a concept that I'd think would take paragraphs to explain and find the right words to make it hit just as hard with like, two sentences. I also really really love how descriptive her metaphors are, really visceral sometimes, and she's really good at writing realistic life events but still making them fun to read about even when it's about like, devastating shit. The sex she writes is also intense as hell! -- @griefabyss69
Below the cut, @wynnyfryd answered some questions about their writing process and some of their recommended work!
Why do you write Steddie?
I am but a humble bisexual — I see two beautiful brown-eyed men makin’ beautiful brown eyes at each other, I go a little insane for two years. It is what it is.
What’s your favorite trope to READ?
late-night moments of quiet hopeful hesitant intimacy over a shared joint or cigarette. Thin wisp of smoke between them, stars dancing in their eyes. Yeah. YEAHHHHHHH 
What’s your favorite trope to WRITE?
This isn’t really a trope so much as a dynamic, but I love a good dipshit 4 dingus dialogue-heavy scene. Don’t get me wrong, I think Eddie and Steve can both be very smart and knowledgeable in their areas of interest/expertise, but these are two young dudes with no access to the internet. I love letting them be confidently incorrect dumbasses. Just ‘yes and’-ing each other’s stupidity while an exasperated third character begs for mercy.
What’s your favorite Steddie fic?
Well, this question is impossible and furthermore rude. This question came into my home and didn’t take its muddy boots off. This question never mailed me a thank you letter for my lovely wedding gift. That blender was expensive; the absolute nerve. No but seriously, I think The Lathe by palmviolet is going to stay with me forever.
Is there a trope you’re excited to explore in a future work but haven’t yet?
I’m a big fan of doing canon divergence from different jumping off points — the beauty of having characters live in the same small town their whole lives is that you get so many great opportunities for these “what if our paths crossed sooner” moments.  I have some very loose notes for a S3 fic where Eddie is the movie theater employee who finds Steve and Robin in the bathroom after they escape the Russians, and I also have an old WIP set between S1 and S2 where lifeguard Steve rescues Eddie and then spends the summer teaching him how to swim. Would love to revisit those after I finish the trailer park AU (which I will be referring to as TPAU because my fingers are tired and because ‘toilet paper au’ makes me laugh.)
What is your writing process like?
Uhhhhh. 😂 I mean, for TPAU, basically just insert the scene from Dune 2 of Paul’s first sandworm ride: I’m shaking I’m sweating there is sand in my nostrils and I am surely about to die— oh wait, maybe I’ve actually got this? Am I actually doing it? Oh shit, look at me go!   For one-shots I like to use a more structured outline and bracket method. I start by dividing my doc into numbered scenes, with each scene getting a notes section and a prose section, like this:
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This format gives me a lot of freedom to switch up the order of scenes and to move between scenes so I avoid writer’s block. I can also jump ahead to scenes I really want to write without making a mess of my outline. Once I have something written in the prose section of each scene, I go back and work on replacing each bracket with prose until there are no brackets left. Lastly, I create a new blank doc and copy the prose over in order so I can read the full fic and work on edits from there.  
Do you have any writing quirks?
I have been known to abuse a semicolon. And an em dash. And a conjunction at the start of a sentence. Yes, I do have ADHD.   I’m also a lyricist, so I feel like my prose tends to stray into poetry territory pretty often.
Do you prefer posting when you’ve finished writing or on a schedule?
When I’m finished! Which is probably why I tend to stick to one-shots; I get impatient and want to post stuff the second it’s ready.
Which fic are you most proud of?
‘i don’t know, you figure it out’ for SURE. I’ve never written a fic this long or stuck to a writing project this consistently in my life. Like ever. The last time I even came close was my first NaNoWriMo when I was 16, which was, uh… years ago, plural, and I’ll leave it at that. 😂
How did you get the idea for i don’t know, you figure it out?
“There’s a dead rat on his doorstep.” That’s it. That first sentence/scene popped into my head while I was bored at work, and then I started thinking, “hey, you know what? I don’t know that anyone’s ever done a fic where Max and Steve trade places for S4; that might be fun.”  And then NaNoWriMo was coming up, so I thought it would be cool to try live posting a fully improvised fic every day for a month to see how many words I could write. And then this tragic wet cat version of Steve Harrington grabbed me by the throat and took over my whole life.
When writing Satanic Ritual: DO NOT WATCH!!, what was something you didn’t expect?
How SAPPY these two got!! My god, boys, I’m trying to write smut over here, stop having a beautiful existential crisis! (I blame Briston Maroney for that though lol, I think I listened to ‘Body’ like 1400 times that month.)
What inspired Satanic Ritual: DO NOT WATCH!!?
@inklessletter posted this totally gorgeous art of Steve and Eddie recording themselves kissing, and I promptly lost my mind.  
What was your favorite part to write from biting you biting you biting you- oh! kissing you!?
This exchange: Steve: “What? I’m just asking!” Robin: “You’re being embarrassing!” Steve: “No, you’re just embarrassed. There’s a difference.” Like it’s just so them lmao
How do/did you feel writing i don’t know, you figure it out?
You know when you set out on a long hike in the summer and three hours later your calves are screaming and you’re covered in sweat and your sunburn’s starting to itch and this one horse fly won’t fuck off and your cell phone doesn’t even get service out here so literally WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO YOURSELF, and then you climb that last hill and look out on the most beautiful landscape you’ve ever seen in your silly little life? Basically that.
What was the most difficult part of writing Plot Holes?
Ooh, that one was fun! The only real difficulty was trying to keep it to a microfic because the concept could definitely be fleshed out to a full story — @griefabyss69 and I were joking around about “what if someone did ‘plot hole’ for the @steddiemicrofic prompt fill?” and then that fic just fell out of my head in about 15 minutes. 
Do you have a favorite scene and/or line from any of your fics?
For sure! I’m currently super proud of the graveyard scene in the most recent update of TPAU — I don’t write true horror often, but I love horror so it was really fun to give it a try! Favorite line from any fic is probably this reference to ‘You’re Divine’ in my fic Monsoon Season because I love uncomfortably-aroused prude Eddie, and his internal monologue cracks me up every time I think about it: Freddie Monsoon’s debut novel is called The Fourth Chime, and it is, as far as Eddie can tell, the first installment in a series of unapologetically filthy fuck fests about a man whose lover gets flung into an alternate dimension during an apocalyptic event and miraculously returns as some sort of… sexy bat-boy with a fucking horse dong and a bite kink. Critics are calling it “the most romantic novel of the last decade.” It’s me; I’m Critics.
Do you have any upcoming projects or fics you’d like to share/promote?
My main project right now is finishing TPAU if it kills me, but beyond that, I have a few one-shots for @subeddieweek in the works, including a collab with @griefabyss69 that I’m so so SO excited to share. It’s hot, it’s funny, I can’t wait for y’all to read it. 
Outside of these questions, Is there anything YOU would like to add?
First of all, as @wormdebut would say: I think you’re pretty. Thank you so much for all your hard work! I love this blog, and I love answering questions <3 Secondly: - Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. - Toss cubed sweet potatoes and parsnips, sliced sweet onion, and fresh garlic in a mix of olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary, and then spread in a single layer on a foil-lined baking sheet.  - Bake for ~40-45 minutes. (Potatoes and parsnips should be soft without being mushy when you poke them with a fork.) - Prep your sauce: I made a dijon drizzle situation by mixing olive oil mayo, a dash of dijon mustard, lemon juice, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and a splash of water, but you could also add a little dab of hot sauce, bbq sauce, or different mustards. Basically just grab like four condiments out of your fridge and play around with the flavors you like until you make a mix that’s thin enough to pour. - Drizzle roasted veggies with sauce. - Enjoy a very tasty side dish (or do what I did and eat the whole sheet as a meal like some sort of parsnip goblin because you were too lazy to make the main dish after chopping all those veggies) okay thank you love you byeeeee
Thank you to our author, @wynnyfryd, and our nominator, @griefabyss69! See more of Wynnyfryd's works featured on our page throughout the day!
Writer’s Spotlight is every Wednesday! Want to nominate an author? You can nominate them here!
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