#to be fair a lot of things went wrong with the first half of his project | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kmt123whatsthetea · 1 month ago

Text

Official Business

Fred Weasley x reader

Requested by: @mytrinityphelps

Request: “Office sex with coworker Fred Weasley (and him wearing glasses)”

A/N: Thank you for the request! I'm sorry it's taken so long to actually start and upload. But it never slipped my mind. This might just be my longest fic yet, so I hope it's actually enjoyable. I’m not gonna lie, I kinda forgot about the glasses request and I’m so sorry. I reread the request and went “mentioning glasses once might not cover it”. I’m sorry

T/W: Unprotected sex, Office banter, Blowjob, Nearly caught, Belly bulge,

What could you say about working as an Auror?

It was a decent job with decent pay, the hours were your casual 9 to 5 with weekends off.

Oh, and there was your coworker Fred. He wasn't the most serious guy, having left his job at a joke shop for better pay to keep his business up and running.

He was tolerable, unlike some of the other stuffy old workers who were seemingly glued to their desks. He was a little older than you with a ginger mop of hair and glasses that framed his deep brown eyes. He was friendly, always offering to bring you a morning tea and coffee personally instead of relying on the house elves. He even bought you a small owl ornament for your desk to commemorate your first year anniversary of working there.

Maybe you liked the flirty banter more. How during lunch breaks he’d comment about how you looked better than any dessert ever could, and that he looked forward to your smile more than any monthly wage slip. He really knew how to make your day brighter.

When he noticed the blush that spread across your cheeks in response to his teasing, he took a step up. Some of your favorite comments of his all shared a similar trait. They made you want to jump his bones. It was impossible not to when he spoke the stuff of wet dreams in that soft teasing tone.

“Your lipstick looks pretty, I wonder how it would look trailing down my chest”

“Looks like you’ve had a heavy workload today. Here I’d hoped you could take heavy loads, baby”

“You look tired, you’d sleep a lot better in my bed”

Oh, he was really trying to rile you up. And it was working like a charm.

Working overtime wasn’t rare in this line of work. Desk jobs always had their fair share of paperwork pile ups. Most workers left it till the next day or took it home to complete when possible. You only had a bit of work left and decided to stay to avoid the unnecessary task of homework.

One thing that caught you off guard was that Fred hadn’t said goodnight to you like he usually did before leaving. He did it every night. Was he angry at you? Had you said the wrong thing?

The thought stung a little, but you could always ask him about it the next morning.

Half an hour into your work was enough for a tea break. It wasn't procrastination if it counted as hydrating. Heading along the familiar hallway was second nature for you, but stopping dead was new. In the vast rows of desks, was a familiar ginger mop of hair. Was Fred Weasley staying late?

You made your way downstairs, an idea in mind.

Fred hated staying late. He hated this job. He had only taken it for some extra income towards the joke shop. He took the 9 to 5 job due to Georgie and Angelina expecting their first. At least if he was running the shop, he could be more lenient with trips to St Mungos. He still had a whole 3 hours worth of work to get through just to catch up. How people did this full time, he didn't know.

The approach of heels made him keep his head down, thinking it was some higher up reader to scold him for not taking the job seriously. But when a mug of coffee was placed before him, his head soon whipped up. There you were, like an angel in his time of need. You somehow looked perfect, like you weren't working overtime from an 8 hour shift. Instead of reaching for the mug handle, he reached for your hand in a tender grip.

“You’re a lifesaver, you know.

Your thumb trailed over his knuckles softly, a soft yet teasing smile on your face.

“I guess you owe me then”

That brought a smile to his face, giving your hand a tug causing you to fall onto his lap. You laughed softly, your hands finding his shoulders. This was his usual flirting to the max. But what was the harm in a bit of teasing?

“Give it your best shot, Weasley”

Knowing Fred in the capacity that you did, you should have known that he wouldn't take it as harmless teasing. He took it as a challenge.

His other hand found your cheek, pulling you closer to press his lips to yours in a kiss that seemed almost desperate. He let go of your wrist in favour of holding your waist to keep you steady on his lap. His lips pressed harder against yours, like a kiss along could merge your bodies. He wanted to be closer to you. He seemed confused when you got off of his lap, trying to hold onto you tighter, but his confusion turned into shock when you lowered yourself between his spread legs. He couldn't help his excitement as he practically ripped his belt off.

“You’re really gonna suck my dick? Sweetheart, you’re something else. Most girls would complain about ruining their lipstick, but you love being a dirty little office slut, don't you?”

He groaned when you pressed a kiss to his bulge in response before your hand took over, palming him teasingly. Your fingers tugged his zipper and fumbled with his button before his boxers came into view, and they were pulled down even quicker. Fred reached into his boxers, pulling his cock out. It stood tall before your face, his shaft veiny and girthy. The curtains definitely matched the drapes when it came to his pubes.

“Are you always this hard, Fred, or does a bit of kissing turn you on?”

He chuckled, his hand cupping your jaw to pull you closer.

“I'm always hard for you, I just don't show it as blatantly as you do. I knew how wet you got for me. I wonder if you ever played with yourself in the bathrooms thinking of me…or did you just finger yourself under your desk while I told you how pretty you looked every morning?”

That blush that filled your cheeks when he spoke, that's what he loved most about you. How that small tint of pink made you irresistible. How naturally it did.

His thumb caressed your blushing cheek, it was the result of him after all. Little did he know, it was all for him. You’d give all of yourself to him.

Your tongue gave his tip a gentle prod, reveling in his hiss at the touch. He sounded beautiful with every response, but those you drew from him were your favourite. Your lips wrapped around his tip, suckling softly. Fred stifled his moans, bringing his tie to his mouth and biting it to keep himself quiet from any other late workers. You looked up at him through your lashes, the sight making you wetter. Fred was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, his face nearly as red as his hair and his tie tucked between his lips while his cock throbbed for attention. He was like fine art.

Your lips returned to his cock, your cheeks hollowed as you tried to take him in your throat. His eyes bugged out when he felt your mouth take him deeper. But it was all cut short at the sound of footsteps coming down the hallway. Fred pulled the tie from his mouth and nudged you gently, his voice merely a hushed whisper.

“Sweetie, stop. Someone, fuck…someones coming”

His hands ushered towards the underside of his desk making sure you were tucked in before pulling his chair up and trapping you between his legs. The footsteps stopped by his desk, one of your colleagues commenting on how he was here late, making some joke about his allergy for work slowly being cured. Fred could only nod along, his mind still in panic mode from nearly being caught getting sucked off by a coworker. You, on the other hand, took delight in how the tables had turned. It was your turn to tease him.

You leaned your face closer to his cock, sliding your tongue along his shaft and tracing his veins. You could hear his groan which he quickly covered up with a coughing fit. You could hear the coworker checking on him and patting his back, but you didn't give him a reprieve. Your lips circled his tip, suckling gently. Your coworker ran off, something about getting some water for Fred. He pulled his chair back and helped you out from under the desk.

“Sweetheart, we don’t have time”

He pulls his shirt over his erection and drags you by the hand, along the hallway and to the small utility cupboard that housed quills and inks. He pushed you in first and followed you inside, muttering a few enchantments under his breath. He had to make sure no one would hear you two and most importantly, that no one would try and open the door.

His hands wrapped around your waist like a python, pulling you into him. You pulled your pencil skirt up, hooking your leg over his hip. You dropped your voice to a sultry whisper.

“Then you better not waste anymore time, Fred”

His hand slithered between your bodies, pulling up your pencil skirt and tugging your panties aside. He practically growled at how wet you were, his fingers soaked from that brief touch. He couldn't wait any longer. He lined his tip with your entrance and pulled your hips, sliding you down his cock. You let out a relieved moan, grateful for Fred’s enchantment. His cock was buried so snug inside of you, every clench around his thickness felt like he could break you.

You risked a glance down and the sight of his cock causing your belly to bulge made you whimper. Just the sight alone caused that band to tighten. Your hands gripped his shoulders, pressing needy kisses to his lips. Fred pulled his hips back and thrust back into you, wanting to be as deep inside of you as he could. He wondered what it would be like to cum inside of you, painting you deep inside, but he didn't want to push his luck. There was plenty of time, and there was no way he’d have that much fun in an office storeroom. If it took, that would be a terrible place to conceive.

He licked along your bottom lip, his pace never slowing.

“I'm close, sweetie. Cum on my cock, make a mess”

His hand moved back between you both, desperate fingers circling your clit in tight, quick circles. He could feel your grip on his shoulders tighten, your eyes rolling back in bliss as you clamped down on his cock. A pornographic moan ripped itself from your throat as your juices coated his shaft. You were so warm and tight, that he contemplated just throwing all care out the window but instead he groaned and pulled out, his hand wrapping around his dick and pumping fervently.

His cum painted your bunched up skirt, leaving a sticky stain on the grey fabric. You didn’t call him out on it in your blissed out state, only noticing when you slowly came down. Even then, it was just a skirt. It was worth it.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’ll buy you a new skirt if I have to. Maybe some pretty lingerie as well”

His signature smirk returned as he whispered in your ear.

“But then again, I’d prefer you naked”

#fred weasely x y/n #fred weasley x you #fred weasly x reader #fred weasley headcanons #fred weasley smut #fred weasley fic #fred wealsey fic #fred weasley x fem!reader #fred weasley

274 notes · View notes

buckevantommy · 4 months ago

Text

alternate 8x06 where Buck doesn't race ahead:

They go to the movie. They share popcorn and hold hands and Buck watches a captivated Tommy more than the screen. He's thinking about date nights where they don't have to worry about two cars or parking. He's thinking about going to sleep next to Tommy and waking up beside him instead of one of them rushing back to their place for clothes or bc they have a shift soon. He's thinking about the drawer he gave Tommy turning into half a closet and all of Tommy's things in his space becoming their space..

..and then he remembers: Tommy has a garage with a carlift and engine parts and a muay thai setup. Tommy has furniture. Tommy has a yard and a garden and trees. Tommy has a house.

Buck turns his attention back to the movie. Now he's thinking about the illogical nature of asking Tommy to move into the loft: it's not fair to Tommy and also it's not the best idea. He doesn't know what the best idea is, yet, and maybe he won't know until he talks to Tommy.

Because that's where he went wrong in the past: moving in with girlfriends without actually talking about it first, it just sort of happened or was expected. and they all left him. He doesn't want Tommy to leave him. They've been together six months and haven't talked about the future. Buck is thinking about the future now so he needs to talk to Tommy - see where he's at and how he feels.

Back at the loft after the movie, in Buck's bed after sex, Tommy can sense Buck's restless mind. He checks in, because he always does, and Buck hesitates. Then asks: "Do you ever think about the future?"

And Tommy says sure, so Buck presses for details, curious, and then it's Tommy's turn to hesitate. But he mentions some stuff about work - flying certain crafts, heading up a training program, a few bucket list items, but all in all just keep doing a job he loves and keep renovating his little house or maybe there's a little holiday cabin that needs some work.

Nothing about Buck. Nothing about a partner or a family. Buck's heart does something funny in his chest, something uncomfortable, and his nerves kick in properly.

"What about you?" Tommy asks, and Buck swears he tenses under him.

"Captaincy, one day, I hope. I travelled a lot in my youth so I don't really have the bug for that anymore, but I was alone then. I think I'd wanna go places if I wasn't alone. And I don't wanna live here forever, obviously." He means the loft, but he's not closed off to the idea of living outside LA. And since he has no self preservation, he adds: "And.. you." He doesn't say mention getting married or being a father, because that feels like too much all at once.

His nerves are having a field day as Tommy remains quiet.

Buck leans up, terrified and desperate to see Tommy's face. "Do you.. see me in your future?"

They're naked and pressed together under the tangled sheets. Tommy's hand has stilled where it was tracing soothing patterns on Buck's arm. It isn't right. The air feels charged in a bad way, like waiting for lightning to strike.

"Evan.."

"I love you." He doesn't want to say it like this, not for the first time, but it suddenly feels urgent, like tommy has to know right now and maybe it'll change the way he just said his name - like an apology, like a regret.

"You don't love me. You love the idea of me."

And that- that's not true. And it hurts. And Tommy's face has fallen. "No, I-"

Tommy sits up, dislodging Buck, and swings his legs over the side of the bed.

"Wait- where are you going?" Tommy's gathering his things. He's getting dressed. Anxiety and dread swirl in the pit of Buck's stomach.

"I'm going home."

Home. It hurts to hear. "You don't have to leave-" Buck knows he's pleading, he doesn't care. He scrambles off the bed, tugging on his boxers as Tommy reaches for his shirt.

"I think it's for the best."

"No, it's not- we can talk about this."

"There's nothing to talk about."

Buck stills. Tommy's holding his jacket, standing at the top of the stairs, trying to school his features to hide his emotions. He does that. He hides things. "What's happening right now?"

For a brief moment, tommy lets devastation show on his face, before it's tucked away behind a mask.

"I thought.." He doesn't know what he thought. He'd hoped Tommy felt the same, that they were on the same page. Six months in and he can already picture a life with Tommy.

"I'm sorry."

Sorry you thought this was more than what it was. Buck feels sick. His heart is stuttering. "Tommy-"

"Goodnight, Evan."

It feels like Goodbye, and Buck can't find the words to make Tommy stay before he's disappearing down the stairs and the loft door is closing behind him.

Sometimes lightning strikes the same place twice. Maybe it's connected to the string of bad luck that's followed him his whole life. Maybe he's jinxed, or cursed. Or maybe it's his own fault, his choices acting as a conductor for the kind of carnage most people only experience once.

#bucktommy #.txt #fic fodder #evantommy #tevan kinkley firepilot #fanfiction #the abby bs does not exist in my canon. i also wanted to explore buck thinking through things a little and them still blowing up #in his face bc tommy has untold relationship trauma so foregt moving in together bc ily would spook him. he'd been ignoring the signs #with evan - didn't realise he was falling for him or rather the idea of him. but he knows how this ends and it doens't end well for tommy..

161 notes · View notes

radiantmists · 3 months ago

Text

Haven't finished my day one fic but here's my entry for @charles-rowland-week Day 2: Chorb!

I see a lot of cute orb-ghost content and love it, but for some reason when I sat down to write my brain went: that experience must be terrifying on both ends. Especially if it happens when they're pushed to the brink, a circumstance that otherwise leads to ghosts just... dissolving. Especially the first time.

So here's the first time!

***

Charles can't remember how he got here; he hasn't really got any idea where here is, except that the ground he's lying on is too hard and the light is so bright it burns his eyes whenever he opens them.

Though that might actually be something wrong with his eyes, judging by how much the rest of him hurts. He must have pissed someone off real bad, to be in this much pain, but he can't remember who or why. He hopes it was worth it.

"Charles," says a voice, a voice he knows. Edwin's here, and he sounds upset, and like he's trying to hide it. Charles manages to pry his eyes open for half a moment before the searing pain forces them shut again, but in that brief second he gets a glimpse of Edwin-- just his neck and the bottom of his face, the harsh press of his mouth.

Charles has seen that expression before, knows it comes along with wide eyes that give away what might look like frustration otherwise; this is the face Edwin makes when he's terrified.

Edwin shouldn't be terrified. Charles tries to reach for where he thinks he was, to comfort him, but just the idea of moving his arm reminds him of how much his shoulders hurt, and he half-screams before he can swallow the sound.

"Charles, just-- just lie still a moment," Edwin says beyond the roaring of his ears, and it shouldn't be a hard request with how much moving hurts, but Charles doesn't think he can bear to lie here like this much longer, the ground digging into him and the pain burning through his bones.

There's something wrong about that. Charles shouldn't be able to feel the ground, however hard it is; he doesn't actually have bones to burn.

He's dead, but he's still hurting, somehow, and that doesn't seem fair, does it? He'd sort of thought he'd escaped it, for a while. Maybe a little pain was the cost of being alive, but now-- unable to feel any good thing-- it just feels cruel.

He's so tired of hurting.

"Charles," Edwin's voice breaks through again, only this time the tone is different, somewhere beyond fear. "Charles, please, don't-- please just stay--"

His voice breaks on the plea. Because he is pleading, which is all kinds of wrong. Edwin doesn't beg when he's terrified; he goes silent and still like a hunted rabbit, which Charles hates with all his being but he hates this too. Edwin shouldn't beg. He shouldn't have to, not with Charles, who has embarked on the afterlife-long project of making him as happy as possible.

Not going anywhere, he tries to say, but his mouth doesn't want to obey him and instead he just sort of groans. He can't move his fingers-- he's not sure he has fingers, right now. They don't hurt anymore, but he can't really feel them either.

He remembers that: losing his fingers first, then his toes, then more and more. Edwin had been there then, too, strange and funny and unbelievably kind, and Charles hadn't had the chance to worry about his toes. Edwin had given him that gift, the gift of not being scared, and then he'd tried to run off like it was nothing, like after all that he'd thought Charles would just leave Edwin to the lingering terror in his eyes when he spoke of Hell.

That terror has never left completely, despite Charles' best efforts. He's started to think it never will, and the thought hurts, but at least he'd thought it was getting better; except now Edwin is terrified, and he's the one begging Charles to stay. He's still talking, somewhere beyond the pain, and though Charles can't make out the words, that heartbreaking tone is still there.

Charles isn't leaving him. He refuses. But he can't bear this either, the pain making it so hard to think, to remember. Edwin's voice is a lifeline, but it's getting more and more difficult to hear it, and he's not sure it's just the ringing anymore.

He's a ghost. He doesn't have ears to ring, not really, or bones to ache or eyes to burn when he opens them. Piece by piece, half on purpose and half unable to hold on, he lets it all slip away, until all that's left is the conviction: whatever happens, he wants to stay.

It feels a little like changing his hair, the way Edwin had taught him, just holding on to what he wants until that's what he is.

Mostly, though, it feels like dying.

***

He knows less and more, like this. He doesn't know where he is, and there's no feeling to help him guess, no pain or light or voice in the ears he doesn't have anymore. He doesn't know how he got here, doesn't know how long he's been here, doesn't even know who he is, really.

But he's not confused, because what he knows is this: he's dead, and it's not fucking fair, because he had so much left to do. He knows he was going to do better, that he was going to fix things, and now he'll never have the chance. Part of him seethes at that, and part of him just wants to take the hint and stop trying.

Except he also knows, somehow, that he does have another chance. That he's still here, even if he can't feel or taste or smell-- or even see or hear. That he can move things, somehow, change them, sometimes even fix them. He can solve crimes and save lives and on very good days he can make Edwin laugh.

He remembers that, the last time he'd made Edwin laugh-- just a little chuckle, really, but helplessly sincere, and the smile had stayed on his lips when he'd said, really, Charles--

The world unfolds around that voice speaking his name, first just memory into sound and then the awareness of ears to hear it, of a head to turn toward it and arms to push himself up, of something soft and forgiving under his palms, and of eyes he can open to see Edwin's face, remarkably close and blinking with surprise that, as Charles watches, collapses into relief.

"You came back," Edwin breathes. From this close, Charles can see the tears well in his eyes. Edwin, who he's seen burn half his hand off without even noticing, is crying over Charles.

It's not really a choice, to reach out with hands that still look a little misty and pull Edwin close. Edwin clutches him back, curling his hands in the back of Charles' shirt and tucking his chin over Charles's shoulder like if he just holds Charles close enough, he can hold him together.

Maybe he can. Charles curls his own fingers into Edwin's coat, breathes deep just to feel his ribs expand into Edwin's grip, ghost-cool but firm and real, real, real.

"I was afraid you were gone," Edwin says.

I was too, Charles doesn't say.

"Told you," he murmurs instead, "you're stuck with me."

#dead boy detectives #charles rowland #dbda #edwin payne #dbda fanfic #charles rowland week #something is bugging me about the structure of this so i might edit a bit before putting it on ao3 #and im still learning the boys' character voices #but here it is! my first dbd fic #my writing #god how do people write short pieces this is so hard

135 notes · View notes

ninzied · 1 year ago

Text

and that's how it works

a co-worker au. based on the prompt: kiss out of spite. ~2.4k.

Alex can’t stand him from the start.

He tries not to actively dislike any co-workers, as a general rule. It takes effort, and time, neither of which he wants to spend on this guy—unless said work has been affected, which, Alex has to admit that it hasn’t.

But there’s something about him that rubs Alex the wrong way the moment they get introduced.

He’s hard-working, Alex supposes, and the quality of the work isn’t lacking. He’s punctual, and to-the-point in his emails. None of those things are an issue. He does make a habit of helping himself to Alex’s office supplies, but a few missing staples and running out of printer paper don’t exactly justify a grudge.

The guy’s personality is, objectively, annoying. He has the worst taste in ties, which to Alex says a lot, and he can’t go more than five minutes without alluding to his pedigree in some way (Alex knows this because he and Nora have made a drinking game out of it at work functions).

Still, it doesn’t explain the weird surge of resentment he gets every time he looks at the guy. And not understanding it might be the most annoying part of all.

He just wishes he knew why.

Alex works in the legal department, but the coffee’s way better in HR down the hall, so most mornings he’s using their break room. Most mornings, and at lunchtime too, and in the afternoons more than once until Nora starts cutting him off, which. Fair.

Apparently he’s not the only one who’s discovered HR’s superior coffee, though, because he’s always there too, and always at the same time as Alex. Seriously, can he not? It’s bad enough that they share a cubicle. Now Alex has to suffer the insult of watching him fucking microwave his coffee like some kind of sociopath, too?

“Are you following me?” Alex demands to know one morning, a little ridiculously. He’s aware that HR is not the best place to be throwing accusations around, but he’s kind of had it with this guy. “Because—”

At that exact moment, the door is opening, and Henry Fox is walking into the room.

“Oh, hey,” says Alex.

Henry glances at him the way he always does, that is to say, a little bemused as to what Alex is doing here. But Henry had been his point person when he was hired six months ago, so he must know Alex works here, right? Besides, he’s been coming to drink their coffee every day of those past six months now, and he knows Henry knows this because their breaks usually overlap and the way Henry barely says two words to him half the time is starting to feel kind of personal.

“It’s Alex,” says Alex, because, well, just in case.

“Yes, I’m aware,” says Henry. After a beat that’s long enough to get awkward, he says, “Err. Right then.”

And then he smiles and waves at Hunter, who isn’t even supposed to be here either, and walks over to take the seat Hunter has saved him like they’re all in fucking high school.

Hunter says something smarmy about a new art gallery or what-the-fuck-ever he went to last night, using a slightly too-loud voice that’s clearly meant to be overheard. Alex grits his teeth.

“Oh, I’ve been meaning to go,” says Henry. “What did you think?”

Alex scowls. Fuck, he fucking hates Hunter.

“So how’s the transfer going?” asks Hunter one day.

Alex jerks involuntarily and splashes hot coffee all over his hand. “Motherfucker,” he says, and then, because his filter is fully shot now anyway, he glances over at Henry. “You’re transferring? Like, jobs?”

“Oh. Um. No. Departments,” says Henry. Alex supposes that’s all he’s getting—four whole words must be some kind of record—but then Henry continues. “To editing. Starting first thing next week.”

“Oh,” says Alex. “Cool. That’s…a big move.” Literally. That’s, like, whole floors away. He opens the freezer door with his good hand, and wonders what the coffee tastes like up there in editing, if it would be weird to find out sometime. He grabs a fistful of ice.

“Yes,” Henry is saying. “It will be quite the change, and I—wait. Sorry.” He stands abruptly, and Alex stares in surprise as Henry comes over and stops right in front of him. “Please put the ice down.”

“Um,” says Alex. “O…kay?”

“You should use lukewarm water,” says Henry. “Cool, at best. For your hand.”

“Oh,” says Alex. “Right. Thanks.” He turns to the sink, feeling weirdly aware of the fact that Henry is still standing there. “It’s too bad,” Alex says before Henry can decide to sit down next to Hunter again. “Kind of a big loss for HR.”

Henry’s brows knit back together. “Is it?”

Alex shrugs. “To my knowledge, no one else personally escorts new employees to their cubicles on the first day of work. Like you did with Hunter here, for example.” He levels Henry with a grin. “I was there when you showed him around, in case you don’t remember.”

Henry’s expression is inscrutable. “I do,” he says.

Alex makes a point to not look away. “Guess that wasn’t a thing back when I started.”

“Ah,” says Henry. He’s flushing for some reason now. “No, I suppose not.”

Alex considers him. He can’t decide if Henry’s playing dumb, or if he really doesn’t remember that he’d been the one to help hire Alex. Then he decides he doesn’t care, because both options make him feel like something on the bottom of Hunter’s shoe, which he hates.

“Think I’m gonna head back.” Alex looks expectantly at Hunter, who only lifts his mug like he’s still planning on being a while. Fucking fine.

He can still see the two of them through the glass pane in the door when Nora walks by with a stack of folders.

“You okay?” she asks, in a tone that says she’s guessed the answer.

“Fucking no,” says Alex anyway. “What are they even doing? Talking?”

Nora sneaks a peek through the window. “Appears so,” she deadpans. “Talking in the break room. Unbelievable.”

“I know, right?” Alex scowls, then realizes he’s left without his coffee, which makes him scowl even harder.

Nora sighs, then slips her free arm through his. “Let’s walk.”

“Do you think Hunter likes him?” asks Alex. Because—not that he’s spent a lot of time on this—Alex thinks that Hunter does, and nothing is worse than the thought of Henry liking him back because he doesn’t know any better.

Maybe Alex should say something.

Nora is looking sideways at him. Alex isn’t sure why. “I think what Hunter likes is people with a pedigree,” she says. “Anyway, what’s not to like? Henry’s a snack.”

“What?” says Alex. Objectively, Henry looks a bit like an Adonis, but, “That is so beside the point. And just because Hunter’s like Harvard royalty or whatever doesn’t give him the right to come in here and trick people into liking him when—”

“When you were here first?” Nora supplies.

“What?” Now Nora is really missing the point. “This has nothing to do with me, or with Henry. I just meant, like, you know. In general.”

“Right,” says Nora. “I must have misunderstood.”

Alex keeps going back to the break room, of course. The coffee’s still better, and he can keep bothering Nora even though she’s transferring soon too (to marketing two floors down, the traitor). None of those things have changed just because Henry is no longer there every day.

The one thing that does change, Alex notices with a dark kind of satisfaction, is that Hunter does not go back to the break room. In fact, he starts bringing his own coffee each morning (Starbucks, which seems very on-brand). If anything, Alex only has more reason now to escape to HR and not spend any more time around Hunter than necessary.

About a week after Henry’s transfer, Alex realizes he’s used the last of the break room’s cinnamon. Again. Goddamn it, he thinks. He’s just spent the morning in back-to-back meetings, he’s getting his coffee hours later than usual, and now this?

He rifles through the cupboards for a second and then a third time just in case there's a rogue bottle somewhere. “Fuck me,” he mutters.

“What’s the occasion?” comes a voice from the door, and Alex turns to find Henry leaning against it. His arms are crossed, and he’s doing that chin-tilty thing that apparently means Alex has zero control over what comes out of his mouth.

“What are you doing here?” Alex blurts.

Henry raises an eyebrow. “I could’ve been asking you the same thing for the past six months or so, but I haven’t.” He uncrosses his arms and comes over. “Would you believe me if I said I came here for the coffee?”

“No,” says Alex, with absolute certainty. “You don’t drink coffee.”

Henry blinks. “I could,” he argues after a moment, then straightens a little. “In fact, maybe I planned to start today.”

“Uh huh.” Alex gestures for him to have at the machine. “Do you even know how to use it?”

“Can’t be that difficult,” says Henry. He gives the machine a dubious look, and Alex doesn’t mean to but he starts to laugh.

“Here, I got it. Was about to make some for myself anyway.”

“Ah.” Henry looks abashed suddenly. Even the tips of his ears have turned pink. “Suppose you’ll be wanting this, then.” He pulls a ground cinnamon bottle from his pants pocket.

Alex shakes his head in disbelief. He could actually kiss Henry right now. “How did you—?”

“Well, you were running low last I was here,” says Henry, like that’s a totally normal thing to have noticed when Alex has never seen him touch the spice rack once. “Figured you'd be out by now, so I nicked some from the break room upstairs. No one’s been using it there anyway.”

The shock on Alex’s face makes him backtrack. “Sorry,” he says, flushing an even deeper pink now. “I—didn’t know you’d be here. You’re usually, um. Earlier. I can return it, if you’d like.” He says all this in a rush.

“No, it’s great,” Alex says emphatically. “Don’t you dare take it back.” He’s still staring a little, but that can’t be helped. Henry knows how he likes his coffee. And Henry had planned to restock the cinnamon without Alex ever knowing.

Henry clears his throat, looking around them. “You didn’t bring Hunter with you today,” he notes.

“No,” says Alex immediately. “God, no. And I don’t bring him anywhere, he just. Shows up. Honestly, I can’t stand the guy.” Shit. Maybe he shouldn’t have said that.

“Oh, thank Christ,” Henry says, looking immensely relieved. “Now that I don’t work in HR anymore, can I just say how little I enjoy his company?”

This is way better news than when Henry had first reached out to Alex with his offer letter and starting salary. He grins. “You can. In fact, please say more.”

Henry looks rueful. “I really shouldn’t.”

“It’s just that—” Alex sobers a little. “He was the only person you seemed willing to talk to.”

“It was easier, for me.” Henry takes a breath. “I feel less shy around people whose opinion of me doesn’t matter as much.” He pauses, something meaningful in the way he looks sidelong at Alex now. “I do want to be better about it.”

Alex nods, considering this. He tries hard not to smile. Probably not hard enough. “I can work with that.”

“You do realize neither of you work in this department,” says Nora, pulling food from the fridge.

Henry sips the tea Alex has just made him. Coffee, turns out, had been a lost cause. They’re both leaning against the counter, elbows not-quite-touching but getting closer to it every day, by Alex’s estimation.

“Do any of us, at this point?” Henry muses.

Nora shrugs. “Fair.”

“Just don’t tell You Know Who,” says Alex.

“Who’s You Know Who?” Hunter asks from the doorway. He has a confused smile on his face as he looks from Henry to Alex back to Henry again. Normally the sight of Hunter fills Alex with the most profound irritation, but now he’s feeling kind of pleased.

That’s right, he thinks smugly at Hunter: Henry is mine.

Huh. Suddenly things make a lot more sense now.

“Hey, did you get my email about the museum opening this Friday?” Hunter asks Henry, and Alex bristles instantly. Did Hunter not get the look Alex just gave him?

“Ah,” says Henry awkwardly, and it would be endearing if he didn’t also look so deeply uncomfortable. His awkwardness now is so different from the bashful kind of awkward he used to be around Alex; honestly, Alex can’t believe he’d never been able to tell between the two until now. “Actually, I’m—”

“Going,” says Alex, “already. With me.”

Henry looks at him in happy surprise. “Really?”

“Really,” Alex says firmly. And then, because he likes how dumbstruck Hunter looks right now, and because Henry doesn’t pull away when Alex puts an arm around his shoulders and he really, really likes that too, he does the only thing left that makes sense to him, which is to lean in and kiss Henry. He kind of feels like he might die when Henry kisses him back.

Fuuuuuuck.

Henry’s eyes are still closed when Alex leans back. He’s dimly aware that Nora has shooed Hunter out and closed the door behind them. He’s more acutely aware of how Henry licks his lips, then opens his eyes with an oddly vulnerable expression and says, “Alex, please tell me you didn’t just kiss me for Hunter’s benefit.”

“What? No. I mean—not exactly.” Fuck. Why can’t he use only the words that he needs? “The answer’s still no, but I might’ve used it as an excuse if I’d kissed you like two weeks ago. But that’s not why I kissed you just now, and it’s not why I’m going to kiss you again.”

“Oh, you think you’re going to kiss me again, do you,” Henry says with a hint of a smile, lifting his chin in a kind of challenge that Alex does not intend to back away from.

“One-hundred-percent,” he says, then pauses. “Unless you plan on reporting me to HR.”

“Honestly,” says Henry, “I might have to report you if you don’t.”

“Well, we can’t have that,” Alex says, very seriously, and he pulls Henry back in.

#rwrb #red white and royal blue #rwrbedit #rwrbsource #rwrb fic #firstprince #firstprince fic #rwrb fanfic #firstprince fanfic #usernuria #iuserzoe #userveronika #usersteen #chrissiewatts

374 notes · View notes

ohlawdthebirds · 10 months ago

Text

Ace In The Hole

Platonic!141 x Gn! and Asexual!Reader

Huge thank you to @groguspicklejar for letting me turn her drabble into a full fic. You can find the drabble here.

TW: Nothing huge, slight NSFW because sex is mentioned in this fic.

Synopsis: Price is fed up with how much Soap and Gaz sleep around. He's at his wits end until you come up with a solution.

And credit to @cafekitsune for these gorgeous dividers.

FREE PALESTINE FOREVER!!!!

Captain John Price was a lot of things: a respected member of the armed forces, a diligent leader, and an overall powerhouse of a man. He’d survived weeks of bootcamp, hailstorms of bullets, and targets on his life at every given turn. That all being said, he found himself wondering where he went wrong in life. When did he, captain of an elite task force, become mediator for his subordinates’ squabbles?

Soap and Gaz sat in front of him, petulant as toddlers, arguing over their latest paramour. The two of them shared a barracks room and were arguing over a “sleepover schedule” so that all of their “needs” were being met. From what Price had gathered, they currently had no set schedule, leaving them walking in on each other while with their barrack bunny of the week.

Not for the first time, John Price considered an early retirement.

“Ye cannae take the whole week, ye bampot!” Soap was indignant over Gaz’s proposed schedule, one that would give him Monday through Thursday, leaving Soap with Friday and Saturday. Sundays were off limits. Even God rested.

“Ah’m no lettin’ ye keep the lass to yerself. Isnae fair now innit?” He cried.

“Fair? You want the bird all to yourself, then? As I recall, you were balls deep in her most of last week. Nearly had to pry you out of her, you arse!” Gaz tossed back.

It was no secret that the two of them were sluts. Whores, even. John “Soap” MacTavish and Kyle “Gaz” Garrick had a penchant for sleeping around. They’d bedded no less than half their battalion, bedded a fair number of civilians during their leaves, and even bedded each other on a few occasions. Price would be lying if he said he wasn’t impressed. But with these conquests came the inevitable: arguing over shared partners and said partners sometimes fighting over who got to sleep with whom. It was ridiculous, really.

They continued on until Price decided he was actively losing brain cells. He slammed his hands on the desk and stood from his chair. Two of his best and brightest froze in their seats, eyes wide as they stared at him.

“Right then, is there any particular reason you lot felt the need to have this discussion in my office? Clearly you two don’t have enough to keep you busy. Seems I’ll have to change that.”

Soap and Gaz loudly protested, voices overlapping each other’s. Price was gearing up to distribute both a mountain of paperwork and multiple laps around the building when a knock came from his office door. He fixed Soap and Gaz with a piercing stare that silenced them, before calling out for whomever knocked to come in. You stepped in, brows furrowed over the yelling you heard earlier.

“Everything okay in here, sir?”

Price nodded gruffly. “These two were done anyways. Boys, you’re dismissed.”

Once Price declared something there was no pushing back on it. The man was immovable once he made up his mind.

The two sergeants decided it was best to cut their losses then and there and continue their argument back in the barracks. They greeted you on their way out, Gaz gently clapping you on the shoulder and Soap bumping fists with you. Price sat back behind his desk and retrieved a cigar from a drawer.

“I thought you were on leave today?” the captain said.

“Still am,” you replied, “Just wanted to make sure nothing came up before I left out.”

Price shook his head. “You’re all good, kid. See you Monday.”

You grinned and nodded. You were about to move towards the door but paused, turning to face Price. “Captain, I know it’s none of my business, truly, but I overheard what Soap and Gaz were arguing about before I came in. I think I could potentially help you out here.”

Price’s brow furrowed. You continued, “You know how competitive those two get, right? Why not use that against them? Make a bet to see who can go the longest without sleeping with anyone.”

Price ran a hand over his moustache as he considered. It wasn’t a bad plan. It was certainly one that had potential.

“Could work, certainly. But you know they won’t just accept a bet without a good prize, right?”

A smirk crossed your lips. “Of course, Cap, that’s where this gets interesting.” You leaned forward, eyebrows raised. Price indulged you, leaning forward himself.

“I enter this little competition. A third person will ensure they won’t try cheating, since they’ll have to keep themselves accountable. The winner not only gets to decide on whatever weird schedule thing they’ve got going on, provided all partners consent of course, but they also get dibs on the good seat in the chopper on our next mission.”

Price sat back in his chair, mulling it over. “Knew there was a reason we recruited you. Ace, you might have just saved me a weekend’s worth of headaches. I’ll inform those two gits.”

You grinned. This would certainly be interesting, especially since no one knew you had quite the “ace” up your sleeve.

It wasn’t a secret that you were asexual, it just wasn’t something that came up often. You never officially came out to the 141, deeming it unnecessary. When asked whether you were dating, you’d brush off the questions by answering that you weren’t all that interested. When prompted further if anyone on base had caught your eye, you’d respond that you were too busy. These things were true in a sense; being a sniper for the 141 certainly kept you busy and even during your downtime you found yourself preoccupied with whatever hobby you’d decided to indulge in that week or hanging out with your teammates. You lived a full life and considered dating relatively low on your list of priorities. There was also something deeply hilarious about your callsign being “Ace”, though it was referencing just how skillful you were with a sniper rifle. Entering this contest wasn’t anything difficult for you. In fact, you thought it would be interesting to see how your teammates would rise to the challenge.

The first week after Price announced the challenge was probably the funniest week of your life. Soap and Gaz were indignant, which you expected, but they accepted the challenge, nonetheless. When Price revealed that you were also in the running, they made it a point to corner you at the shooting range. You were reloading your gun when they walked in. Soap was the first to approach you, striding forward with his arms crossed.

“So, Price told us yer the one who proposed this whole contest, aye? Fir wye?” he asked.

You placed the gun down and turned to fully face your teammates. “’Why?’” you repeated back, “Because the two of you were causing chaos on base and Price was ready to assign you cleaning duty for the rest of your careers. If anything, you should be thanking me.”

“Well, we’re letting you know that we’ve accepted the challenge. That heli seat is mine,” Gaz said. After his incident from last year, Gaz made it a point to sit as far away from the helicopter door as possible.

“That’s fine by me,” You turned and picked the gun back up, “Though, I’m sure this’ll be easy.”

Gaz cocked an eyebrow at you. “And what makes you say that?”

“Oh, nothing in particular. Just excited to see how this’ll go.” You cocked the gun and aimed it, firing off a round into the center of the target paper.

After finishing at the gun range, you headed towards the canteen to grab lunch. It wasn’t until you’d grabbed your food and began to look for your teammates that you heard laughter bubbling up around the canteen. You ignored it, moving towards the back table where Ghost currently occupied a seat. Ghost didn’t acknowledge you when you sat down, his eyes trained just past your shoulder. Your brows furrowed and you quickly followed his line of sight, turning back towards the door. The moment your eyes locked onto Soap and Gaz you nearly fell out of your chair in shock.

They were dressed as nuns, and from what you could tell, they were wearing legitimate nun habits instead of cheap costumes from Halloweens past. They strode forward, faces solemn and hands folded in prayer. Soap fiddled with a rosary his mother had given him on his first deployment. They approached your table, made the sign of the cross, and sat down. Ghost shot incredulous looks at the both of them.

“What’s all this, then? Halloween come early?” He asked.

“We’ve taken a vow of chastity, Lt. The ol’ Johnny and Kyle are no more. We’ve devoted ourselves to prayer and abstinence. We’re men o’ the cloth now,” Soap replied.

“Shoulda’ taken a vow of silence,” Ghost tossed out, digging his fork into whatever mystery meat the canteen had slapped on his tray.

You and Kyle didn’t bother holding back your chuckles.

“You do realize the nun habits are unnecessary, right? Price never said you had to wear them.” You said.

“Yes, but this shows that we’re serious about this challenge,” Kyle piped up.

You fixed him with a deadpan stare. “There’s absolutely nothing serious about your current get-up. But okay.”

The rest of lunch passed without much else happening, save for the occasional snort of laughter from other personnel.

The second week was just as nonsensical as the first. You knew the terrible two were up to no good when jangling and clanking noises came from them as they walked into Price’s office. The men sat, albeit quite stiffly, and tried their hardest to ignore Price’s hard glare.

“What’s all that ruckus?” Price growled out.

Soap had the nerve to look as though his captain were speaking in riddles. “Ah’ dunno what yer on about Cap, we’ve done nothin’ wrong. Right Gaz?”

Gaz at least had the decency to look embarrassed. You placed down the file you were examining. “What’s all that clanking you two have got going on?”

Soap wasted no time in standing up and yanking down his pants. You were met with the sight of a leather and metal thong with a padlock over the crotch. A chastity belt. The man was wearing an honest-to-God chastity belt.

The room was stunned into silence. Gaz hung his head in shame. It only took you a moment to realize he was wearing the same contraption. Ghost was the first to break the silence.

“Those come with keys?”

“Why Lt? You lookin’ to unlock me?” Soap smirked at Ghost, still a flirt despite the clear restrictions on him.

“I’m lookin’ to throw those keys out the window,” Ghost replied dryly. You caught Price trying to stifle his laughter behind his fist.

“Do those hurt?” you asked.

“Nah, but they do pinch a bit. Mostly awkward to walk around in,” Gaz said.

Price stood from his desk and passed over more files. “If you’re all well and done, Laswell’s got a few updates from last week. Give these a read.”

You had to admit, there was something comical about reading over confidential information while knowing two men in the room had actual chastity belts on. Price soon dismissed you all back to whatever tasks you had on base. You headed to the gym with Ghost right alongside you. Soap and Gaz clanked out the door and down the hall.

“How long d’you think they’ll keep this up?” You asked once you were in the gym, scooting yourself underneath the bench press. Ghost shrugged, adding more weights to the bar.

“Depends on how just how committed they are to this whole thing. Though I’m sure they’ll break soon,” he answered.

“What makes you say that?” Your hands reached up to the bar, readying yourself to lift the weights.

“Just a feeling. Adjust your grip, you’ll kill yourself otherwise.”

“No, seriously, what makes you say that?” You gripped the bar, raising up and lowering it to your chest before raising it back up again.

“On the field, those are some of the smartest men I know. On base? Barkin’ mad, the both of ‘em. Surprised they even lasted this long.”

You racked the weights above your head once your set was finished. “You’re probably right. But you have to admit, this has been a pretty entertaining two weeks.” You looked up at Ghost, who seemed to be deep in thought.

“Why’d you join this contest anyways?” He asked.

You sat up and turned to him. “Because I knew it’d be an easy win. I don’t exactly…ah, well, I figured it’d be fun to see how things played out.”

Ghost grunted in reply. “Fair enough. Now give me twenty more reps.”

You groaned as you made your way back under the bar.

As it turned out, Ghost was right. The third week was when things reached their breaking point. You were on the hunt for a missing knife, one you’d lent Gaz a few days back. Ghost’s words replayed in your mind; were the sergeants reaching their breaking point? Would they soon throw in the towel?

You approached Soap and Gaz’s barrack, fist raised to knock, when you heard a noise that froze your fist mid-air. There was the sound of rustling and grunting. You jumped back from the door.

There was no way…unless?

You stepped forward again, rapping your knuckles against the wood. All sounds behind the door stopped. You were about to knock again when the door swung open.

You came face to face with Gaz, his eyes blown wide and his chest heaving.

“Gaz? You alright? Why are you so flushed?”

Your eyes caught sight of a bruise on the column of his throat. In fact, there were multiple bruises. Before he could raise his shirt to cover them, you yanked down the collar.

“Hold it, what’s this? What’s this, Gazzy-boy?! You get attacked by over-enthusiastic mosquitoes?!”

Gaz swatted your hands away. “N-no, this is just-! I burned myself earlier!”

Ignoring his protests you shouldered past him into the room, where you were met with the sight of Soap trying to pull on clothes as fast as humanly possible. You paused in the middle of the room and inhaled deeply. The air stunk of sweat and lust. Soap, having wrangled himself into pants, tried to approach you.

“Listen Ace, this isnae wit ye think it is. We were just havin’ a chat, Gaz’n ah. ”

You turned to him with a grin stretching from cheek to cheek. “Oh really? Because I think you two were having more than just a chat. And I think I just won the bet. And this-” You whipped out your phone and snapped a picture of the two of them, clothes disheveled, and skin marked with hickeys, “Is enough to prove it!”

With that you turned on your heel and booked it out the door, flying down the corridor and across the building towards Price’s office. Gaz and Soap ran after you, yelling for you to stop. The door to Price’s office nearly flew off the hinges when you barged in, phone held out in front of you. Price leveled you with a glower.

“This better be good, sergeant, otherwise you’re runnin’ laps for the next hour.”

“Oh, this is better than good, Captain, this is great.” You upped your phone’s brightness and slapped it on his desk. Price leaned over, squinting at the screen. It took only a moment for him to register what he was staring at before his eyes widened. Soap and Gaz barreled into the room, out of breath and speaking over each other.

“Cap, isnae wot ye think-!”

“Ace is framing us! We weren’t-!”

Price's face darkened. He stood from his desk, your phone in his hand.

“You fools couldn’t last 3 weeks?”

The room went dead silent, and you swore the temperature dropped a little. For a moment you wondered if you made a fatal mistake.

Price stalked forward, nearly towering over the three of you.

“Ace, you’ve won the bet. But I’ve just realized that we only discussed the reward and not the punishment for this. Any ideas?” He turned to you and handed your phone over.

Gaz and Soap shot you pleading looks, silently begging for you to be merciful. And for a moment you wondered if you should make them suffer, make them writhe. But in a moment of mercy, you decided against it.

“You know, I’m impressed that these two were able to find those nun habits and chastity belts. And such high quality too! You think they can find maid costumes?”

Price’s face lit up with the sick delight. “Oh, I’m sure they’ll manage. And I’m sure they’ll wear ‘em for the next three weeks too.”

Soap and Gaz’s faces were masks of pure shock. It was at that moment that Ghost walked into the office, a cup of tea in one hand and a file in the other. He stared at the scene in front of him, turned, and walked back out.

You were wrong. The weeks during the bet weren’t the funniest of your life. It was truly the weeks after that took the cake.

As per your request, Gaz and Soap procured maid outfits, complete with fishnet stockings and kitten heels. They were met with raucous laughter everywhere they went. The only one with a modicum of shame was Gaz, and even then, you caught him strutting his stuff when he passed you in the halls. Soap was happy to be back to normal. He even claimed that the costume was a hit with his partners that liked role-playing.

You saddled up next to Ghost in the rec room one night, thanking him when he brought down your favorite tea from the shelf. The two of you prepared your drinks in companionable quiet. Ghost turned to you, spoon halting in his cup.

“I would say congrats on winnin’ that bet, but I figured you would.”

You huffed out a gentle laugh. “Thanks, Lt.”

Ghost paused for a moment, seeming almost sheepish.

“You, uh…you never finished what you were saying, back when we were in the gym. Said you ‘didn’t exactly' and then you trailed off.”

“Oh, I can’t believe you remembered that. Yeah, I just…um…basically I don’t experience dating and relationships the same way everyone else does.”

“What d’you mean by that?”

You stopped stirring your tea. A part of you wondered if Ghost would understand, if he’d be supportive. You knew the man well enough that he wouldn’t ridicule you, but not everyone was understanding. It often felt like being asexual was a fringe thing. You sucked in a deep breath. Regardless of anyone’s feelings, you were asexual. It was real and anyone who said otherwise could get a mouthful of your boots.

“I’m asexual. Don’t really experience sexual attraction, y’know? Like, when you see someone others deem “hot” or “attractive” or whatever and want to have sex with them? I don’t understand that, and that desire doesn’t really happen to me. It doesn’t mean I don’t have a libido, its just never directed towards any one particular person. It’s a whole spectrum.”

You ended your ramble with a sip of tea.

“Oh, so that’s what it’s called? Didn’t realize there was a name for it,” Ghost muttered. You stiffened, cup halted in midair.

“When’d you figure that out?” Ghost asked.

“Kinda knew I was different when I began faking crushes on people back in school. And anytime those “crushes” reciprocated, I was weirded out by it. I did have real crushes, but those came a bit later. I’ve dated before, and thankfully my partners were understanding. I even had sex once! Just to try it out. It was…y’know, it was fine but I’m still definitely asexual.” You trailed off with a nervous laugh. “Sorry for the ramble, but whenever people ask, I try to explain everything, so I don’t have to keep answering questions.”

“I appreciate the honesty,” Ghost said. He cleared his throat. He seemed stuck between wanting to ask more and wondering if he was asking too much. In the end, you looked over and said: “I have a few books on it if you ever want to read up more on the subject. They helped me out a lot.”

Ghost said nothing, only nodding. He gently clinked your cup with his before he turned and headed towards the door. He stopped at the door frame and looked back over his shoulder.

“Hey Ace?”

You sipped more of your tea.

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

You smiled.

“Anytime, Ghost.”

#super happy with how this came out; ghost and reader ace realnesssss #task force 141 x reader #kyle gaz garrick #john soap mactavish #simon ghost riley #captain john price #ace! ghost ftwwwww

202 notes · View notes

happytroopers · 1 year ago

Text

Pent Up // Tech x Reader

Summary: After an awkward wake up call from a rather... entertaining... dream. You spend a week trying to distract yourself from your traitorous mind. It doesn't take long for Tech to catch on.

TW: wet dream, brief mentions of erotic things, nothing outright just a lot of build up and tension

somewhere between pg13 and R, originally I was gonna write the smut but then it sat in my drafts for two years so congrats you're getting a fade to black

18+ MDNI for sure tho

A hand shook your shoulder, shaking the last sensation of your dream away and forcing you awake with a start. A whine died on your lips as your bleary eyes snapped open to meet the eyes of the object of aforementioned dream. Your already blushed cheeks went even hotter as Tech looked down at you in mild concern and heavy curiousness. He was put together, as always, still in his armor except for his helmet. Laying in your bunk in disheveled pajamas, the contrast wasn’t lost on you. You were acutely away of how warm you were, how much you had been squirming in your sleep, how your thighs were clenching, and extremely aware of the slick warmth dampening your pajama bottoms.

As your mind reeled from the… riveting dream, it switched gears to run overdrive on how to save yourself the embarrassment of being caught having a wet dream. Caught by the one soldier you were mentally assaulting in your sleep… Under Tech’s curious gaze you wanted to melt- and not in the fun way his gaze usually made you want. How loud were you that you not only alerted the genius, but you drawn him away from his projects- something that usually took an explosion or ship crash to do?

Of course Tech didn’t look uncomfortable in the least, simply waiting for your answer as he removed his hand from your shoulder so you could scramble up into a sitting position, keeping the blanket firmly around your lower half as you batted sleep mussed hair from your face. The only consolation was that while you and Tech hit the rack, Wrecker and Hunter were supposed to be flying while Crosshair filled out his fair share of his share of field reports.

Tech gave you a once over as you collected yourself, eyebrows creasing as you tried to get your breathing under control.

"Are you alright, (y/n)?" He asked slowly, watching you curiously as your knees bowed together under your blanket. If you’re eyes weren’t screwed shut from embarrassment, you would’ve seen his Adam’s apple bob at the sight. You cleared your throat to busy trying not to focus on the way his armor accentuated all of his best features in the dim light of the bunks, hoping your voice would maintain some level of propriety.

"Y-yeah, yeah, Tech, I’m alright. ‘M Fine." You nodded just a little too quick, voice just a hair from being even, so in an attempt to feel out how much damage you did to your dignity in your sleep, you added in false casual airs, "Why do you ask?"

Tech's eyebrow went from creased to quirked, running a hand over his face, "You were tossing and turning, groaning like you were-"

You didn’t think you could take him continuing or the thought of him watching you so you went with the first excuse that came to mind, "In pain, like I was in pain."

Voice rushed, your own eyebrows furrowed at what you were saying. Tech looked confused as well- neither of you knew where this was heading.

"Pain?" He repeated, voice unbelieving but worried, "Are you…injured? Why didn’t you tell me earlier."

Well, that lie wouldn’t work either. Besides your inability to control your brain, there was nothing wrong with you. And if you couldn’t come up with something, Tech would insist on checking you over. You couldn’t look him in the eye at the moment much less let him touch you after your dream. Wait, dream!

"Injured? No, no sir." You cringed, you had never once called Tech ’sir’ since you met him, and judging by his… reaction, now wasn’t the time to start, "I had… a nightmare. Yeah, real bad nightmare. Probably gonna talk to the Civ. Enlistment shrink about it, yep."

Your nodding didn’t do much to convince the Tech, as he just watched your rambling, with a concerned furrowed brow. Running a hand over your face, flung your blanket off your legs quickly as you swung them over the side of your bunk- the middle one. Just high enough that you had to jump, but low enough someone tall like Tech could still look down at you if you were laying down. Too much laying in the dark room with the man (literally of your dreams) had your thoughts spiraling along with your white hot embarrassment- fight or flight was kicking in and you were choosing flight.

Pushing off the bunk, your bare feet hit the cold floor but you weren’t prepared for how jelly-like your legs would be. Before you could even hit your knees, Tech caught you against his chest. He was warm, and the hopeless romantic in you didn’t fail to notice how you fit perfectly against him or how easily he held you steady, and his chest was firm. Oh stars, don’t let him feel how hard my nipples are. Tech was leaner than his brothers, but no less stronger than his brothers, something that slipped your mind occasionally- only now, as your palms were splayed over his chest it wasn’t so easy to forget.

His large hands easily encased both of your arms, images flashed through your mind- but it wasn’t your arms he had been holding in your dreams. Eyes fluttering, you shook your head, backing away from the genius as soon as you were sure you wouldn’t fall over. Tech ignored your stammered apologies though you were sure cheeks were practically glowing in the dim light, "(Y/N), are you sure you’re alright? You feel warm, you might have a fever. I think I should-"

You were pretty sure if you spent one more moment with his hands on you, you would break every single rule about soldier civilian interrelations in the books so you all but wrenched away from him, earning a confused look as you grabbed the first jacket and pair of pants you could find.

"No time, I’m perfectly fine- hey that’s almost a rhyme-" You stammered, snatching your shoes, "Look at the time, things to fix, no fever here."

Tech tried to protest but you were already down the hall before he could even grab a medscanner off his belt.

I’ve been on this ship too damn long.

You thought to yourself, splashing water on your face. If the interaction with Tech wasn’t enough to keep you from sleeping again, the lingering feelings and memories from your dream kept your skin tingling and your mind swirling around one resident genius. So you gave up sleep.

Instead, you decided to work, preferably underneath floor panels where engine parts were thrumming with power - where Tech wouldn’t run into you unless he tried. Bonus points for being far away one of the few places on the ship your dream hadn’t contaminated.

If he can’t see me, I can’t think about- images of lips trailing across skin, pressing into your thighs, thighs over a lean shoulder. You smacked hands on either side of your cheeks to physically halt that train of thought, What is wrong with me?!

The answer was simple, you were the only woman on a ship of five men, one of which you pretty sure you were in love with, had been on active duty nonstop for weeks and you didn’t even have your own room- no action, no breaks, no privacy.

You worked for a couple hours straight, too embarrassed show your face again. Until, you finally surfaced top pass through the fresher. Clean face, clean thoughts, right? Growling in frustration, you ran a dry towel over your face before shoving your arms back into your work jacket.

You were so caught up in your own thoughts, you didn’t even think twice when the fresher door swished open- it was a communal fresher, it wasn’t uncommon for one or more of the Batch to share the space with you at a time. So common in fact, you didn’t even look up from your routine- adjusting your hair, swiping cosmetics on.

As you peered into the mirror, internally giving yourself a half pep talk, half scolding, the last face that you wanted to see appeared in the reflection behind you.

"Kriff!" You yelped, startled, spinning around so quickly you risked whiplash, instinctively your hands flew to balance yourself against the counter, the cool metal grounding your feverish skin. It was Tech behind you, in his blacks with a towel over his shoulder, watching you in confusion as you met his eyes briefly before your face went scarlet, your eyes dropped- resting anywhere but his. "Tech! Good morning- night… afternoon? No time in space, am I right?"

The genius’s eye brows crinkled, which you would’ve noticed if you weren’t so busy staring at the floor. Tech took another step forward, bending slightly so he could look at your face and eyes narrowing. He was close enough to touch, the smell of mechanic grease, GAR issue soap, and something so inherently Tech flooded your senses as he asked, "You didn’t get anymore sleep, did you? Are you sure you’re alright, (Y/N)?"

Another slew of images flashed through your mind, long fingers tilting your chin up, and the last time you were pressed against a counter it wasn’t from this angle, ‘is this alright?’… It was then you realized with his new position, your floor gaze had turned into staring at his abdomen, where his blacks clung to him leaving very little to the imagination. You forced your eyes up to his.

Between his scent and your own traitorous thoughts, your throat constricted, eyes widening and nostrils flaring slightly, "‘m fine. Gotta go, things need fixing."

With that, you ducked away from him and quite literally fled the scene for the second time in a matter of hours. Tech watched you go, head tilting to the side.

"I don’t understand civilians."

——

Ridiculous, You thought. I’m an adult, I should be able to control myself.

The bolt you were tightening popped out of the panel it was supposed to be holding together.

“Dank Farrik!" You growled, snatching it back and attempting to shove it into place. The first time it skewed to far to the left, and next swaying to the right, and the third it was too far up. Irritated, in rapid succession, you slammed the bolt into the metal over and over- despite it never going into the hole.

A certain part of your dream popped into your mind.

Don’t think about slamming- or holes. You quickly corrected yourself, but didn’t stop your incessant sla- jamming.

"I thought being a trained engineer meant knowing how to do something a bit more… technical than that." A drawling voice appeared over your shoulder, the bolt getting plucked out of your fingers and plugged into the ho- opening on the first try.

"Crosshair." You breathed in recognition, irritation still lacing your tone as you looked over your shoulder. The stir in your stomach thinking it might be Tech fading away into not quite relief, but something less… stirring. The marksman was leaning against the wall you were working on, it wasn’t surprising he sought you out. Aside from Tech, you were close with Crosshair- an odd friendship that no one really understood. "I thought you were next on nav rotation.”

“Tech came to the cockpit with a pretty interesting concerns. He switched shifts with me, said he had too much to think about to sleep. So, he’s up top with Hunter." The marksmen shrugged, critical eyes giving you a once over as you blushed- a more and more common occurrence.

"Yeah, we all have bad dreams sometimes." You huffed, a low blow, but if anyone could take a mean comment it was Crosshair. The nightmares were kind of a sensitive spot for most clones, but was there anyone on this ship that hadn’t already heard of your sleep... issues?

You assumed that once he got his odd version of teasing in, he would move along but Crosshair didn’t go any further than the nearest crate so he could sit down and pop a tooth pick in his mouth. You allowed him two minutes of staring before snipping, "Is there something you needed?”

"Not me. Tech wanted you to help him with something about reverse thrust-“

"I’m busy." You clipped quickly cutting off Crosshair’s words, wrenching the bolt so quickly that the metal scraped. Your fingers were shaking as you tucked hair behind your ears, clearing your throat, you elaborated, "Tech can handle them himself, he’s, ah, perfectly adept. I’m incredibly busy here.”

Crosshair lifted a single brow, looking at the squeaky cupboard panel you were working on. Clearly a bottom of the list kind of task, "You are acting weird. He might be oblivious, but he always notices you.”

"I am not acting weird." You snapped but your voice had a quirk to it, what did Crosshair mean by that? You filed that away for later, "Unless you have something to put on my to do list, I’m busy because I’m fine, Cross.”

"Riiiiight, completely normal, I’ll let him know.”

You watched him go before looking at your rather shoddy wrench-bolt job. Sighing, you set to work undoing the crooked bolt, Maybe I am a little pent up.

So started a week of awkwardness between you and Clone Force 99’s resident genius. And it wasn’t long before the rest of the batch began to catch on. Not that you were exactly subtle about it.

Any time Tech entered a room, your eyes would go wide and a flush would creep up your neck. If you were speaking to someone else, the moment you saw him you would start stuttering or just stop all together. Sometimes it was fluttery nervousness, and other times you just got distracted by his presence. But always, unless actively in a firefight, it would only take about five minutes before you’d shake your head and escape the room like a gundark out of hell.

Bright side, you spent so much time avoiding Tech you had made it to the bottom of your prioritized to-do list for the first time since joining Clone Force 99. Down sides, it was getting harder to avoid him, and as mentioned earlier, the others were starting to notice- plus, even if you to do list was getting slim, all the work was shoddy at best. When you weren’t actively avoiding him, all you could do was stare at Tech like a lovesick (re: hormonal) schoolgirl.

Crosshair had caught you staring at Tech on multiple occasions, typically flicking his toothpick at you to get you to stop. He would roll his eyes but at least he was quiet about it. He’d just tease you whenever he caught you alone, constantly reminding you of your embarrassment. If you weren’t so preoccupied with Tech, you’d be glad- his teasing his own way of accepting you into the group. But you were preoccupied, so usually, you’d huff dramatically throwing (and missing) the toothpick back in his direction.

There was the incident where Hunter himself had to order you to go with Tech on a mission, something that had never been an issue before as you usually preferred working with the genius. Subsequently, you were so high-strung that you put your complete focus on rewiring a door panel. So much focus, in fact, that Tech himself had to pull you out of the way of a super battle droid’s fire. He had pushed you against a wall and completely covered you with his body while Crosshair took care of the battle droid. Had it not been for the smoking blaster shot in the wall where you had previously been working, you would have melted when Tech so tenderly asked if you were alright. Like a helpless damsel, all you could do was stare up into the goggles of his helmet for a moment before nodding demurely. Then, so frustrated with yourself you had to walk away from the genius before you could give Hunter a reason to transfer you.

Tech, himself, had decided you were obviously upset about something and spent more time than usual trying to get you alone. He’d sit down across from you while you ate, which resulted in an awkward silence and you abandoning your barely touched food. Find you while you brushed your teeth- it had been embarrassing when you accidentally choked yourself with the toothbrush because you’d been too busy ogling him in his blacks. And if you hadn’t been so focussed on saving yourself from any additional embarrassment, you would have noticed the worried expression start to slip into a more hurt category whenever you’d literally run away from him with a lame, short excuse.

Then there was the time when Wrecker had been speaking to you, explaining how his helmet’s comms unit was shorting out after a hit in battle. You were supposed to be listening to him, figuring out from his description of the sound what the issue was and how to fix it. But over his shoulder, your eyes had landed on Tech and your breath had hitched in your throat as you watched him unfasten his armor. Like a teenager watching a strip tease, you shifted your weight from foot to foot, "Are you even listening to me?"

Wrecker’s booming voice sounded more distant that it should considering you were fiddling with his helmet, but it alerted Tech who looked up from his chest piece. His eyes immediately found yours, and you looked away quickly. After promising Wrecker you’d look into it, you took the helmet before escaping down to the cargo hold, thankful Tech didn’t follow you this time.

You might actually have too request a transfer at this rate.

It was Hunter that confronted you about it. He’d noticed your distraction, your anxious demeanor, the decline in your quality of work, and that’s just the things he noticed outright. He saved some of your pride by not mentioning everything he could smell or hear. Instead taking the role of scolding boss. A role he played expertly, judging by the exceedingly dissapointed way he said your name before pressing further.

"You’re better than this. What’s up with you?" He had asked, having followed you after you slipped away from Tech yet again. He had found you cleaning the brand-new air filters in the cargo hold.

"Nothing’s up with me, Hunter." You shrugged, hoping he would drop it. He didn’t.

"Really? ‘Cause you’ve been making rookie mistakes. You were assigned to us because you don’t do that." The sergeant reminded you, crossing his arms over his chest. You were offended to say he had a point.

"Just going a little stir crazy, Sarge." You sighed. Hunter shook his head, clapping a hand onto your shoulder.

"Do us all a favor and just tell him." He requested, shaking his head as he turned to leave, "It’s a small ship to be stir crazy on, and neither of you are subtle."

You watched him go, first embarrassed at being caught- knowing what Hunter could hear, smell, and infer, that he chose not to complain about- but then your mind fixated on something else.

"Hunter. What do you mean by ‘neither’?"

___

You were grateful for the planet’s scorching sun, some unnamed backwater (despite the lack thereof) planet that simply had been the nearest Republic friendly refuel/ maintenance station after you deduced the Havoc Marauder wouldn’t make it back to Kamino with the navigation calibration malfunctioning like they were, lest you hyper speed into a black hole. After you’d made your deduction, you had almost combusted when Tech had leaned over your shoulder, breath grazing your ear as he checked over your work at Hunter’s request. You would’ve been offended if you weren’t so busy gaping like a schoolgirl at Tech’s side profile so close to your face.

’Neither of you are subtle.’ The sergeant’s words played through your mind for the hundredth tune.

Like, for instance, as you sat in the cockpit, you were supposed to be running diagnostics on the rather shifty new calibrator and modifier Hunter had procured from the maintenance station’s ‘buy, sell, trade’ front room. It didn’t have to be perfect, it just had to get you from dust ball point A to rainy, Kaminoan point B.

But instead, you were distracted. Which should really be the summary of the past week of your life. Specifically, you were distracted by Tech’s legs. Long, armor clad, muscled, his leather side holsters clinging to the white composite as they splayed out from under the Marauder’s dash.

You never exactly forgot how tall Tech was, he towered over you even with his usually hunched posture. But, with his top half hidden underneath the console it was a reminder at just how long his legs were. Your breath caught in your throat as his hips lifted, legs tensing as metal groaned. Something snapped before Tech tossed a rusted piece of metal away from himself. The way his thighs clenched and unclenched with the effort made your entire body tense as well, you hadn’t noticed your straying focus until the electroprod zapped your hand. Fortunately, Tech’s voice drowned out your quiet yelp.

"I have found our problem." He announced, grabbing a tool off of his belt. So preoccupied with his long legs, you blinked slowly at his long fingers as they traced up his thigh to find the right tool.

"Oh? have you?" You breathed, after realizing you hadn’t answered. You shook your head, forcing yourself back to your task. You corrected your own work, the small electro prod in your hand zapped at the calibrator, mostly to see if it could handle any sort energy current. Tech had started rambling about some Acid spitting bugs the ship had picked up on Ethesda IV, apparently the coating on the calibrator was similar to their main food source. Acid spitting bugs should’ve been a turn off, but how his voice stopped and started and strained and grunted as he periodically tore out rusted pieces outweighed the bugs.

“And the calibrator? Is it satisfactory?” He asked, hips twisting as he continued working under the dash. Satisfactory? Nothing about the past weeks had been satisfactory but that wasn’t what he asked. He emerged just enough to hold his hand out.

“It’ll do.” You hummed as the diagnostic ran somewhere between yellow and green. You stood, keeping a respectable distance between you as you handed him the small piece of equipment, “I could use an extra set of hands down here, would you?”

You were digging through your mind for another lame excuse until you saw Hunter peek around the door frame of the cockpit, a look someplace between warning and scolding crossing the sergeant’s face. So, you sighed.

“Of course, where do you need m-e?” You nodded, noticing your words as they caught in your throat. You cleared it and crouched down beside the soldier. He paused for a moment, even his feet halted their slight movement until he cleared his throat as well.

“Beside me, I need you to hold the calibrator in place as I wired it in.” Tech answered you, staying half obscured but twisting his body so his hips stayed flat but he was laying on his ribs. You swallowed around nothing, sighing flatly as you wiggled under the dashboard beside him, “A bit closer, so I can reach around you.”

Stiff and rigid, you slowly inched closer to him until you were close enough for one of his arms to snake under your waist and pull you all the way to him. You choked out a yelp. Just as easily as he’d pulled you to him, he propped you just enough so his shoulder and chest could slot underneath your back.

Under the dash there was barely enough room for this position, so it wasn’t possible to keep yourself propped up unless you wanted your nose pressed to the exposed wiring he was working on. So, you had no choice but to forced yourself to at least half relax against him. Your back to his chest, his face right next to yours so the light on his goggles could illuminate the slot where the calibrator belonged, one of his knees twisted under yours leaving you caged between the legs you’d been staring at for so long. His even breaths were fanning over your cheek, the two of you practically puzzle pieced together. He retracted the arm from underneath your waist and moved himself accordingly so that arm instead went under your neck, further trapping you against him.

“Apologies, though I trust I don’t need to explain to you what happens if this comes loose during light speed travel.” He explained, though you couldn’t see how his analytical eyes watched you carefully as he pressed the calibrator back into your hands and guided them to the correct spot, “Perfect, just there.”

His fingers left your wrist and began the process of wiring the calibrator into place. You were grateful for his armor, even if your couldn’t ignore his scent and warmth all around you, you were positive if you could feel his muscles moving underneath you you’d have to stick your hand in the power source to keep from committing a serious breech of civilian-solider contact etiquette. Just a snap of his hips… placed just under the round of your ass…

“You’re shaking, is everything alright?” Tech’s voice shocked you out of your thoughts. You flinched, almost jerking the half connected calibrator right back out of the dash. You tried thinking of a reason, but your voice seemed caught somewhere between your heart and throat. So you settled for a vague hum.

“Mhm.”

“Would you hand me the microwelder? It’s on the right side of my belt.”

Even your breaths were shaking as you used one hand to keep the calibrator in place, and used the other the blindly reach down between the two of you. Your fingers grazed against the composite of the armor on his thigh, overshooting your aim for his belt. For the first time, he tensed as well. Using nothing but touch, you worked your way up, trying to keep your touch as light as possible as it worked over his holsters and to the tools hanging from his belt. You put all your focus on your mechanical knowledge, deducing the tools by shape- data scomp, electoprod, multitool, electrical tape… microwelder. You almost cried in relief, jerking your hand away as soon as you’d unclipped it. The slight graze of your finger tips against his glove palms felt the same as sticking your fingers in the power source. Tech’s shoulders adjusted, jostling the both of you. Though he didn’t struggle to move you at all, his voice sounded ever so slightly strained as he used the microwelder to hold the wires in place, “Almost there, keep doing what your doing.”

Kriff, what the hell was wrong with this man?

“There. That should do it.”

You wiggled out from the dash so fast that you almost didn’t register his hands on your waist assisting you. Almost. Tech watched after you, the curiosity in his eyes turning into something more akin to understanding as you slipped into the fresher.

—

You had never been so grateful to touchdown on Kamino. After the longest week of your life on probably the smallest ship you could’ve been assigned to, you were ready for some much needed space. And the privacy of the usually empty civilian barracks sounded like the perfect retreat. Kamino was the one republic stronghold that didn’t have a shortage of workers, they didn’t need a civilian enlistments to lighten the load when they could hand the tasks off to Cadet’s and call it a learning experience. Usually you found Kamino to be lonely, only seeing the boys at meal times, but this time you were chomping at the bit, praying to the Force or whatever other entity out there that the bunks would be empty as usual.

As soon as the Marauder touched down in the hangar, you were down the loading steps before it even finishing descending. You finished your debriefs in record time and skipped dinner in favor of returning to the Havoc Marauder to start fixing some of your shoddier than usual workmanship in addition to typical post-mission ship maintenance since your bunk would be the first place Tech might look for you.

"I thought I would find you here.”

You physically jumped when Tech’s calm voice called out from the ship’s entrance, hitting your head on the cockpit’s console you were working under. Cursing under your breath, you scuttled out from under the console. Tech was leaning against the entrance to the cockpit, watching you like a wild animal who might spook. You guessed that wasn’t too far off from the truth judging by the already rising heat to your face and the way your eyes danced around to anywhere but his face.

"You missed dinner." He informed you when you didn’t respond, rubbing your head as you closed the panel you had been working on and pulled yourself up to your knees.

"Oh, did I?" You asked in faux concern as if you hadn’t purposely skipped communal dinner. Suddenly, you realized you were looking up to him from your knees and your nearly choked on the recycled air your were breathing. You scrambled up to your feet, nervously smoothing out your clothes as you momentarily met Tech’s eyes before purposely pointing your own gaze else where- the blinking lights around the cockpit very interesting. In your peripheral, you saw his eyebrows furrow, face hardening as you leaned back against the console.

"Have I done something to bother you?" He asked, suddenly. Moving a bit closer to you, he froze when you leaned even further away.

"Not a thing, Tech. Why do you ask?”

One of his eyebrow quirked behind his goggles, telling you he didn’t believe you for a moment. Tech might be oblivious about somethings, but he always knew when you were lying to him, "You have not looked me in the eye, much less spoken to me since…”

He trailed off, looking to you to finish his thought. Your rose tint flashed ruby, redder than the shield button blinking on the console behind you. Yep, time to escape.

"Listen, Tech, I really don’t-" You chuckled dryly, moving to squeeze past him.

"Have time for this? I think you do." Tech shook his head, sidestepping so his larger frame immediately cut off your exit. Bumping into the composite chest piece of his armor, you stammered something akin to an excuse as you tried to squeeze past you again. The genius repeated his action, this time catching you by bracing his hands on either of your arms and holding them gently to your side to keep you in place.

Now, you were forced to look up at him, trying to ignore how much skin his longs fingers managed to cover. You wondered if he could feel your erratic pulse under your skin. He observed your face for a moment, from the tint in your cheeks, the quickness of your breath, to part of your lips. He muttered mostly to himself but you caught it, "Dramatic dilation of the eyes, heightened pulse, shallow breathing, erratic behavior.”

Once he finished his list- or maybe stopped listing aloud for your pride’s sake- he cleared his throat, releasing his grip one your arms so you could take a hesitant step back. Your mind was screaming at you to create some distance, but your thudding heart made it hard to force yourself to move. Tech wasn’t finished with you yet though, his chocolate yes narrowed on you before softening as he continued, "Hunter informed me that you didn’t have a ’nightmare’, as you said.”

Yep, you were going to spontaneously combust if the ground didn’t open up and swallow you first- either option was preferable to the turn in conversation. Hell, spontaneous separatist invasion would be less painful.

"Listen, Tech, I really-" You started, but silenced yourself when you saw the way he adjusted his stance. Shoulders broader, chin dipping lower, one leg moving forward…. if you were any closer it would be between your legs.

"He also had a few theories about the content of said dream, one in particular that interested me." He continued, voice dipping as he continued to stalk towards you until the back of your thighs hit the control deck, forcing you to half lean half sit on the panel. Your backside pressed a couple buttons, managing to conveniently kill the overhead lights and close the door to the bridge in one fell swoop. Whoever was in charge of the force, you wanted to have a firm talking to because you’re heart couldn’t take much more of this. "You’re in your prime, in multiple adrenaline and endorphin inducing situations, surrounded by 4 men… a healthy drive is nothing to be so embarrassed of.”

Your own voice wasn’t quite a sure, almost choked as you nodded, "Gl-glad we covered that, Tech.”

"I also know, from my research, that the easiest way to resolve this is to act on it.”

Your mind actually went blank the moment the word sunk in. You weren’t sure, but there was a large likelihood you just stood there and gaped at Tech like a fish. He waited, eyes analyzing you from behind the goggles. One moment passed, and then two before you spoke.

"Act on it…" You repeated slowly, butterflies melting from your stomach, pooling elsewhere, "Like.. you want to act on it with me?”

Tech closed the distance, his hands on you again. One at your hip and one gracing your hair, "We really were as oblivious as Hunter said.”

The armor on his hips pressed into your soft flesh, his long diligent fingers trailing down your arm, "You can tell me to stop.”

Your eyes had be following his fingers down, your own twitched and laced into the leather straps that held his holsters to his thighs as if that would tether him to you, "Please don’t.”

A ghost of a smile went across his face before he startled you, picking you up swiftly and depositing you in the pilots seat. You weren’t quite sure of the logistics of this decision until he knelt down in front of you, kissing your lips first and yet not long enough for your liking. You chased his mouth with yours, but he pulled back, focussing down to your belt.

“Now, tell him. How did these dreams of yours go?”

---

as usual half edited so excuse the typos

#love u tech #sorry this sat in my drafts for two years #tbb x reader #tbb tech x reader #Tech x reader #clone wars x reader #tbb tech x you #tech x you #tech imagine

293 notes · View notes

utytimeline · 1 year ago

Text

I might make some people mad, but I'm gonna say it, anyway.

So, Ceroba's reason for choosing Chujin over Star was because she wanted someone more mature. At least, that's my understanding. Star was playing cowboy and role-playing with his friends while she wanted to settle down and raise a family.

And... yeah, Star had a lot of growing up to do. And he did almost none of it until Ceroba stopped him from shooting us.

Star's main character flaw is his ego, but it's even worse than just an ego. Half the reason he set up the Wild East was to help everyone else. He wanted to bring in money to help his family when the Swelterstone's effects caused a drought; he wanted monsters to get a taste of what the surface is like so they don't drown in despair; and he wanted to make Ceroba happy after she lost both her husband and her child. All of this on top of feeling like he was a "nobody farmer" that couldn't do anything or help anyone.

So Star's primary character flaw isn't as simple as just having a big ego. His primary character flaw is trying to fix others as a way of fixing himself.

Sometimes this is a good thing, tho. I often think of Star as the "papa" of the Feisty Five. He's the protective one, he's the one teaching them ethics (reminding Mooch that they're not supposed to be bandits, playing dead to teach Clover about the responsibility of potentially hurting someone), he takes care of the town, he's made ALL his own money from this town that he built himself (enough that Mooch wants his inheritance, so it's a sizeable amount), he even gave his posse a designated nap time, gave Ceroba a home (and possibly gave her his bed while he crashes on the couch), sews his own clothes, set up all the rules and regulations... and I could go on, but I think I've made my point. Star is not wholly irresponsible. He's not perfectly responsible- he, and the rest of the posse, have a habit of breaking and losing Blackjack's weapons, they're all loud and rowdy, and they have a tendency to forget to turn off their boulder machines out in the Dunes.

So, yeah, Star does still have some growing up to do. But he's got a good start.

As for... everything that went wrong... That was entirely due to Star's worship of humanity. Star fell in love with westerns and with the justice and overall sense of romance that they portrayed, so much so that he not only tried to make himself into one of his western heroes, but he then extended this worship to the first human to ever set foot in the Dunes- namely, Clover. And because of this, Star completely threw everything that was good about himself out the window. He sees a human an immediately decides "this is my deputy," without even really giving Clover a fair chance to see if they even are deputy material. He forgot the safety glasses, got so worked up he forgot how to pronounce "duel," became extremely temperamental, apparently forgot that Vengeful Virgil was scheduled for the train mission that day, locked up a Royal Guard against her will (arguably committing treason in doing so, I might add), and just generally began running over everyone's words and emotions, including Ceroba's.

So when it came down to the Showdown... Star blamed Clover. Star's not an idiot. He knows good and well it's not Clover's fault. It's Star's fault- or more precisely, it's his worship of humanity that is to blame. But the problem is, he's taken it upon himself to guard the feelings of other monsters, to make them feel hope and joy. And he just screwed up and stole all that from them. So he's conflicted, not willing to admit that he has done the exact opposite of everything he set out to do. And since it's his worship of humans that led him to this point, he decides to blame the human.

Hence, the Showdown.

But he doesn't want to do it. He says himself, "Monsterkind's Hero is a title soaked in blood." He loves humans. And he sees Clover as a friend. He doesn't want to kill them. He's not a killer, and he doesn't want to be one. He doesn't believe in it. Justice is one thing, but... how is it just to kill someone that did nothing wrong?

So. Here's where Ceroba comes in. Telling Star he needs to calm down and go back to who he used to be. And Star points out that she's changed, too. Even Ceroba says, before taking Clover to the Steamworks, that she doesn't know if she has room to tell Star to go back to the Starlo she used to know.

Ceroba, tho, is no different than Star (this is the part that I said might make some people mad). Ceroba worships Chujin just as much as Star worships humans.

Ok, look. Chujin was a great craftsman. He built so much- furniture for Dalv, his and Ceroba's house, the space heater at the Honeydew Resort, many other items in use throughout the Underground, Kanako's toys (even programmed a video game for her), and so much more. So much that even Star respects him for all that he did for everyone.

However, there is also much that indicates that Chujin wasn't the best at his job. His only award is "You Tried at Engineering," and it took 14 tries for him to build a working robot. In Chujin's defense, I will say that it is impressive that he did build a working, sentient robot without the use of a SOUL, which is how Alphys made both Mettaton and Mew Mew; however, if Chujin is really such a genius, why did it take 14 tries to get Axis to work, when it apparently only took 1 try for Guardener?

And then Chujin didn't just stop with robotics, but went on to SOUL research. Two completely different fields. (And before anyone starts commenting on Alphys, I just want to point out, yet again, that both of the robots she built did use SOUL power; so, realistically, Alphys never was a great robotics genius, but rather, everything she did was a part of SOUL research- hence, the reason Asgore hired her as the Royal Scientist). But Chujin decided to press on with his SOUL research, despite there being no indication anywhere that he had ever done any such research before.

Now, I'm not trying to say that Chujin wasn't remarkable or a genius. I'm just pointing out some things that indicate that maybe he wasn't quite the genius that Ceroba wanted to make him out to be. And... Ceroba's reaction to his "You Tried" award. She's proud of him. More pride than what is warranted by such an award.

Ceroba said she met Chujin when he pretty much rescued her after she twisted her ankle, fell into a ditch, and laid there for several hours, unable to move. She also said that she had considered dating Starlo before meeting Chujin. So... hate me for this if you want to, but I feel like she may not have the best judgement when it comes to guys. Now, that's not to say she picked losers or creeps. Both Chujin and Starlo were/are sweethearts that care deeply about everyone around them. But the fact remains that Ceroba left behind the guy that she'd known all her life for a guy she just met, just because he rescued her from a bad situation.

And I'm not even saying she made a bad choice! By all accounts- including Ceroba's, Martlet's, and even Starlo's- Chujin was a good, kind-hearted, hard-working monster, and a wonderful husband and father. But... he wasn't perfect. And I think Ceroba, even though they had to have been married at least 10 years, just always had stars in her eyes where he was concerned. He was her everything. She believed he could do no wrong. She believed it so strongly, she was willing to do... many horrible things.

Ceroba's drive to kill Clover started with her love for Chujin. She wanted to do anything to keep him alive in her own heart. And when their child begged and pleaded for a chance to help, Ceroba agreed, because Kanako woshipped her father, too. Ceroba's misguided belief in her husband guided her to do things she would never have done otherwise.

Thus the reason for her guilt. It's not just guilt over killing her own child. It's also guilt over knowing that it was her own misguided worship of a monster that wasn't as perfect as she thought he was, that this was what led her to kill, and to kill again.

Ceroba worshipped Chujin. Just as Starlo worshipped the ground Clover walked on, Ceroba worshipped the ground Chujin walked on.

So when people point to Ceroba's comment that Starlo didn't grow up... yeah. She's right. Starlo needed to grow up.

But so did Ceroba.

One of the hardest parts of growing up is realizing that the people you worship are just people. They make mistakes, and you, yourself, are mistaken for believing they can do no wrong.

So, anyway. There's as much Staroba (Starfox, I call them) hatred as there is love for the ship. I've seen both sides of the argument: Starlo isn't mature enough; Ceroba is insane. Yeah. You're both right. And that's why they're perfect for each other. They both made the mistake of changing everything they were in an effort to continue worshipping their idols. They both went nuts. They were both driven to kill. This is the inherent danger of idolatry, believing so much in something that isn't real, that you will do anything to make it stay real to you.

#undertale yellow #starlo #ceroba #clover #my analysis #character analysis #starfox uty #chujin ketsukane #kanako ketsukane

318 notes · View notes

scrubbinn · 8 months ago

Text

_____ HRT: 15 months: “Human”

“Hey Mayday. How's my girlfriend doing today?... I hope you can hear me in there. I'm recording another tape for you in case you forget everything again. I just got back from the doctor, they ran some tests, still couldn't figure out what's up with my knee. I think maybe I'm just cursed, with this broken human body. I guess you don't have to deal with that now huh? Lucky.”

“It just sucks, you know? Not a single medical doctor in Canada can tell me what's wrong and then when suddenly, magic exists, it gets regulated so you can't use it for medicine! Ugh. Rules are dumb, why do we even have them. Also sucks that I have to walk here every time I miss you. Which is a lot. Why does everything have to be so shit?”

“Speaking of shit, you should have heard me go off on that doc when you first started… cocooning? I’m blanking on the word. But I just went off on that man, It felt so good just to throw everything back in that pompous jerk's face! He had it coming, you have no idea how long I've been waiting to go off on a medical professional. He does have his uses, I suppose. You weirdly seem to like him, and at least he can put in enough effort to care about your physical health. But you should have seen how he reacted to you, he makes me so, so, so, AAAAARG! Sorry, you don't like yelling right?”

“You know, when I heard about you passing out nearly half a year ago, I thought, this is it, I'm going to lose her forever. I guess I did, when she decided to forget me. That's not fair, I just, I can't help still being mad about it. After everything we went through, and everything you went through with our friends and family. This really meant more than all of those memories put together? God you're such a dummy. I wish I could understand you.”

“Getting to meet you all over again, I didn't hate it like I thought I would. No matter the memories, it really was still you. Just, a little different. Sorry I kept pushing you to remember something… Maybe it was wrong of me. But every time I saw your face, your eyes looked back like they were trying to remember anything. It made me kind of happy, like I was important enough that some small part of you didn’t want to let go of me. I thought we were making progress. But if we have to do it again when you come out. I might actually start to hate it.”

“...Hey, you are happy right? This is what you wanted, yeah? You know I'm ok with you not being human. When you told me you were thinking about this, I supported it. Though, I'm still having trouble getting used to it. I don't really know how to feel now that you're like this. I just, I want what makes you happy, and I know you want the same for me. It's just been difficult right now. To keep smiling. I… I went to that sushi place we were going to go to. They had really good unagi. I ate so much I could barely afford the bill, haha. I know if I go there again without you, it's just going to taste like nothing. If you're not there with me, what's the point? This moment. The world has color again, I can taste things again when I'm in this room, and it hurts so much because you're not here. I'm sorry I… I'm trying not to cry in front of you hun. I'm sorry.”

* * *

“You don't mind if I stay here tonight do you hun? I don't really feel like walking back home right now. When I’m with you I- um, hello?”

“Oh didn’t realize anyone else was here? You’re Abigail right?”

“And your May’s mom right?” Are you here to see her?”

“Yes, I haven’t actually checked in since I heard the news. Is that. Her?”

“Pretty sure yeah. Unless there’s another girlfriend shaped cocoon that I missed. D- Do you need a tissue?”

“No, I’ll be fine, thank you… Pardon, but would you be able to answer a question? I don’t really understand this whole therian thing. I’m still a little shocked when Mich- Mayday said she was doing this sort of thing in the first place. I’m fine with it, I support her. But, did she need to do this?”

“Huh, what do you mean?”

“Well I mean, did she need to change? Isn’t it just safer to hide? She’s doing such a brave thing but there are so many people that might hurt her. It's my job to worry about her, and I know this city is better and all with this sort of thing, but what if she gets attacked when she visits, what am I supposed to tell my sister if she asks what Mayday is up to. My family doesn't even know her name is Mayday now.”

“...Oh. Oh, this is weird seeing it from an outsider perspective.”

“I'm sorry? What do you mean?”

“It's that you don't get it, I mean I forgot it until now, but you don't understand. It would have been more dangerous if she didn't do this. She's in pain, her gender, Her body, her species. They don't match her brain. It's not like it's a choice either. She's hurting. Her staying human, she might have made worse choices. Ugh, I'm sorry hun. I should have realized how much this means to you, I'll be here, for real this time. I'll be here for y…

Oh my god, it's tearing. G-g-go! Get a doctor!”

“What? Oh! Uh, right!”

“Hun! Can you hear me? It's me! Follow my voice!”

“A…b…i…

Mimic HRT: 15 months: “no longer”

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Start - Prev - Next

Mention list: @a-shramp, @calliecwrites, @be702, @respectfulevil, @hyacinthdoll1315, @aster-is-confused, @bloodandbrandywine

#trans #transgender #monster girl #slime girl #slime hrt #animal hrt #species hrt #therian hrt #otherkin hrt #therian #otherkin #fiction writing #original writing #creative writing #Mimic hrt

55 notes · View notes

rabbitsrams · 2 years ago

Note

Thinking about schlatt x reader who’s love language is gift receiving and gift giving, whose last relationship they never received any gifts and slowly over time stopped giving them as well, completely caught off guard the first time schlatt decides to spoil her.

omg anon i love this sm

i'm def a person who gets so flustered and sentimental if someone gets me a gift and i also LOVE giving gifts too :((((

and i've had my fair share of having my gifts be unappreciated by a partner as well...

in your group of friends, you were absolutely known for gifting the most random things to those you love. whether it be something as simple as a knick-knack from the pharmacy to something super elaborate and pricey, if you saw anything that reminded you of someone you loved, you'd get it for them.

and on the other side of the coin, you loved receiving gifts as well. you always eagerly anticipated your birthday and the holiday season to see what your loved ones got you, and with every gift you were always so happy and appreciative.

your ex never really liked the idea of giving and receiving gifts. birthdays and the holidays, yeah, that was standard. but it was often minimal with little effort being put in, and if you got them a random little gift, it was not met with the reaction you expected.

them saying "oh, thanks!" in that tone. then tossing the object aside and never looking at it again.

the last straw was when you put six months into creating a scrapbook for your one-year anniversary. the scrapbook wherein you had pictures of the two of you, old things from various dates and lots of hand-written captions, was met with one "wow!" one instance where you looked through it together and it sitting on a shelf till the end of your relationship half a year later.

and from that point on, your gift-giving halted aside from the basics on birthdays and holidays. the effort started to decrease as time went on, because never had you felt this unappreciated, much less from a partner. and it was unfortunate that your loved ones had to endure this; they missed getting little things from you and were saddened that you were so unappreciated by that... person.

schlatt was like a breath of fresh air for you. he was kind, he was genuine and he loved you for every reason out there.

you had told him about the incidents with your ex. and he noticed how upset you got when you said it, trying to pass it off as not a big deal but he could tell. he could tell how that piece of shit hurt you.

schlatt called you up in the early hours of the morning, telling you to get up and get ready.

"why? i have work!"

"call in sick, toots. we're going to the mall."

"w-why?"

"'cause you deserve it. no more questions." and he hung up before you could process what happened.

and he went into every store with you, buying you anything you so much as eyed for an extra second.

"baby, why are you doing this? i... i don't-"

"don't you dare. you do deserve it, and that asshole was so wrong for not appreciating you."

your eyes well up with tears and you hug schlatt tightly. he hugs you back, cradling your head with his hand as he kisses you.

and the next morning, schlatt woke up to a little stuffed ram on his pillow, a note stuck to its head saying:

"thanks for yesterday, you're the best, i love you."

and that little ram sits right next to the picture of the two of you he has on his desk where he can look at it every day and smile, because you got it for him.

#jschlatt x reader #jschlatt imagine #jschlatt fanfiction #jschlatt x you #schlatt x reader #jschlatt x y/n #schlatt imagine #jschlatt fluff #schlatt fluff #schlatt x you #schlatt x y/n #jschlatt fanfic #fun fact! the scrapbook thing actually happened to me <3

352 notes · View notes

oqmemphis · 3 months ago

Text

John Gabriel and Mathematical Ignorance

Have you ever watched a flat earth conspiracy video? If not, the usual format is pretty straightforward: the presenter rambles, unscripted and unedited, into a cheap microphone while using some shitty screen recording software to film themselves drawing lines on top of random jpegs in paint.net for five to ten minutes, before sitting back and proudly claiming that their unmatched genius has proven all human knowledge from the last several millennia to be hopelessly fraudulent.

John Gabriel is a flat earther for mathematics.

Mr. Gabriel writes and speaks at great length about an invention which he calls "the New Calculus", a theory most briefly described as an attempt to reformulate all of mathematics starting from (what he perceives to be) the base principles used by the Ancient Greeks. He believes that mathematics as a field of study has been practiced almost exclusively by idiots for approximately the last two thousand years, or nine hundred, or a hundred and fifty (the exact time at which things went to shit seems to vary a lot; he rejects much of Euler and Fermat, but also calls Cantor "the father of all cranks") and claims that only he can understand numbers "properly".

Whenever a popular maths YouTube channel makes a video about infinity (see Numberphile on -1/12 or Vsauce on transfinite ordinals), there are inevitably people in the comments arguing that the video's premise is misleading, wrong, unnecessary or incoherent, or that the concept of doing mathematics with infinite sets is fundamentally invalid. Mr. Gabriel takes this finitist view to its logical extreme.

In his 152-page tirade against modern academia, he argues that any "infinite process" is outright unmathematical and should not be allowed; his definition of "infinite process" includes convergent limits, such as the unending decimal expansion required to express irrational numbers. A significant basis of his work is that irrationals like π and √2 are not numbers, but rather "constants" or "incommensurable magnitudes". Why this is a useful distinction, given that these "constants" behave like numbers in nearly every regard, is never explained. He additionally claims that 0 is not only not a number, but is "not even required at all in mathematics". He spends the entire first half of the book re-deriving all of arithmetic and algebra based entirely on principles of Euclidean geometry, while repeating, mantra-like, that only integer ratios are numbers and that anyone who claims otherwise is an ignorant buffoon. I wonder if he writes RPF of himself throwing Hippasus into the sea.

He has then taken this idiosyncratic worldview as a starting point from which to reinvent calculus.

He is straightforwardly wrong.

Mr. Gabriel frequently complains that his critics mindlessly hurl insults at him without seriously engaging with his work, so as a show of absurdly generous good faith I will engage with it now. Any fellow masochists reading this are invited to take a look at Mr. Gabriel's manuscript - specifically his demonstration of how to take a derivative without the use of limits - and try and figure out where the problem is.

Ignoring Mr. Gabriel's apparent inability to find the subscript button in Microsoft Word, he has taken an nth-degree polynomial (which could contain many terms), and transformed it into a single term of degree n-1. This, you will be astounded to learn, is not the correct result when taking the derivative of anything more complicated than f(x) = x^p. Notably, he never attempts to do this.

In fairness, the above demonstration is not actually the New Calculus. Mr. Gabriel explains that he has helpfully preceded his earth-shattering revelations with a less rigorous, more geometrically-derived formulation. I'm sure we'll get some real mathematics in a minute.

What we get is him complaining that the Encyclopaedia Britannica does not provide sufficient intuition for the work of Newton and Leibniz, before claiming that his New Calculus is "the first and only rigorous formulation of calculus in human history". He uses this exact phrasing (or nearly) at least four other times in his PDF; if he is unhappy with the Britannica, I might politely advise him to try reading Roget's Thesaurus instead.

Finally, on page 120 of 152, we are given an explanation of the epiphany to which the entire monograph has been building.

"Left as an exercise for the reader" is a phrase used by cowards (and to his credit, John Gabriel is not a coward), so I will point out the slight issue here: it is not possible to calculate values for m and n unless you already know the tangent slope. In his example of how to compute the derivative of sin(x), he expresses the function in its Taylor series form (so much for shunning infinite summations), and then simply replaces said series with the one for cos(x) without comment; he then manages to successfully determine his secant intersection values, and then calculates the value of the derivative function he just shoved into his pile of equations a few lines further up. Thus, his bafflingly circular logic is enabled almost invisibly.

This is it. This is all that this book is. John Gabriel's magnum opus, the thing he has been building up to for 119 pages amid paragraphs of bluster about the idiocy of irrationals and his own vaunted genius, is the ability to compute the derivative of a function as long as you know the derivative of the function. And as long as that derivative is not a zero found at one of the function's inflection points, because apparently that doesn't count as drawing a tangent line (for reasons that I'm sure are unrelated to the fact that Mr. Gabriel's secant method fails for such points).

I don't want to go deep into personal insults here - that's John Gabriel's job - but this is not useful mathematics. The logic is circular, the motivation is worthless, and it enables no new insights not already achievable with the current mainstream understanding of calculus. No statement is proven that has not already been shown to be true within the framework of Newton and Leibniz; there are only restatements of existing theorems based on the shaky-at-best logic of these new principles. So what is it for?

This is a question I kept coming back to while reading Mr. Gabriel's PDF. What is this for? What is gained by stubbornly insisting that π and e are not numbers, but rather "constants of incommensurate magnitude"? How does rejecting the usual definition of division as a multiplicative inverse in favour of some guff about "measuring in equal parts of an abstract unit" expand the horizons of mathematical knowledge? Of course, it doesn't.

John Gabriel, ultimately, is not important. There are thousands of other flat-earthers and similar grifters just as laughable as him, and to my knowledge there is roughly nobody who takes him seriously. (And if anyone does, the chance of some random guy on Tumblr convincing them otherwise is vanishingly small.) But I find his writing fascinating precisely because of the way in which he is wrong. He seems firmly rooted in the idea that mathematics is all discovery and no invention; that we can derive mathematical truths out of absolutely nothing. He rejects the notion of logical axioms as a starting point for derivation, instead seeking answers grounded in reality (by proxy, via "pure geometry"), and he is incensed when people ignore his demands.

But mathematics is not physics. Mathematical objects don't exist independent of their definitions, but they do exist independent of the real world. The rules of mathematics are defined by mathematicians only; if we want π to be a number, all we have to do is say "let π qualify as a number"; if we want to define an infinite sum as being equal to its limit, we can. If the rules disallow something, nobody can stop us picking different rules, reality be damned. John Gabriel has in fact done this too, even if he doesn't realise it - it's just that his starting axiom around which the rest of his theory is based is "I am the greatest mathematician in the world, and everyone who has come before me is a moron". I do not exaggerate when I say this; a pinned comment under one of his recent videos reads:

I, the GREAT JOHN GABRIEL explained why calculus works and I defined NUMBER correctly for the FIRST TIME in human history. For this, I am called a crank by your ignorant, incompetent and incorrigibly stupid mainstream math professors and teachers. I shall keep reminding students of your venom and your hatefulness towards me. You are vile, disgusting excuses for human beings. The longer you deny me as the greatest mathematician, the more shit will accumulate in your diapers.

If Mr. Gabriel objects to logical premises that are rooted in fiction, I have some suggestions for ideas he might want to discard.

#oh he's also hideously antisemitic #i couldn't find a place to put that in the post but like.#there are posts of him just shouting “vile jews” in all caps #mathblr #john gabriel #oqm #long post

18 notes · View notes

yuurei20 · 1 year ago

Text

Short translation from the second Twisted Wonderland novel: Jack and Yuuya

"First-year student, Jack, has been selected to play for Savanaclaw. The team that is overseen by Leona Kingscholar.

His appointment drew a lot of attention from other students. Very few athletes have ever managed to earn a place on that particular dorm’s roster immediately after enrolling. Savanaclaw is a powerhouse both by reputation and in reality, and when Leona was selected for the team three years ago, it sent shockwaves throughout the school.

You must prove yourself worthy by being unusually intelligent, magically proficient or physically adept—or all three—within the first month or two of enrollment in order to manage it.

Such a promotion would normally be reason for celebration, but Jack seems to struggle with mixed feelings on the matter, as he knows what Leona is planning.

When Ace and Deuce tease him for it, half in jest, Jack makes a pained expression and responds, ‘Praise from someone so underhanded is nothing to be happy about.'

‘You’re not thinking about dropping out though, are you?’

‘Of course not.’

Yuuya has been worried, but Jack’s expression immediately sours.

‘I don’t run away, no matter what. I’m gonna fight fair and square.’

‘In that case, something’s off,’ Ace says, pointing in the direction from which they’ve come with a puzzled look. ‘The procession is gonna start from the main building, right? Coming over here means twice the back-and-forth. So what are you doing out here?’

‘It’s not as out of the way as all that. I wanted to warm up before the match, so I went for a run. Then I just happened to see you guys…’

‘A run?’ Grim interjects. ‘That’s the same thing ya said this morning.’

Jack stops dead in his tracks.

‘You're overdoin’ it with all this runnin’ around before the match. Sure, you made the team, but this is takin' it too far.’

Grim seems mostly surprised by how Jack never grows bored of exercise, but Yuuya and the others shake their heads. It is unquestionably strange for Jack to have intentionally strayed so far from the meeting point for the procession, and now Jack himself is glancing about with shifty eyes.

Deuce and Ace exchange a sly grin.

‘It’s impressive that you managed to find us with all these people around. You sure it was a coincidence?’

‘And going for a run in your dorm uniform? You expect us to believe that?’

Suddenly flustered, Jack raises his voice defensively. ‘Don’t take it the wrong way! It's not like I came here to see how you guys are doing because I was worried that you might be nervous. It's just a coincidence! Coincidence!’

‘What’s the matter, Jack-kun? Getting all worked up. All you gotta say is, ‘I came to check on you because I was worried.’ Can’t be honest, huh?’ Ace mocks Jack’s obvious displeasure. Deuce chuckles, saying, ‘You’re hardly one to talk about not being honest.’

Yuuya had this same thought this morning at Ramshackle: Jack is good at looking out for others. He has a strong sense of responsibility that manifests in how he acts without thinking—without any hesitation.

He bickers with Ace now, but his usual silent composure always feels just as dependable. He will often say that he doesn’t like moving in herds, but he probably finds others relying on him in classes, too, whether he likes it or not. The scene is reminiscent of when Jack chased off the ghosts this morning, telling them to stay away from him, and Yuuya finds himself laughing right alongside Deuce.

Jack, his faced flushed, looks straight at them. ‘Hey, cut that out!’

‘Ah, I’m sorry.’

Yuuya reflexively apologizes in reaction to the intimidating words.

Jack was perhaps a little louder than he’d intended to be due to being so flustered, surprising even himself. Looking annoyed, he purses his lips.

‘…it’s not like I’m that angry about it.’ His tone is now much more subdued.

Yuuya apologizes again and Jack’s expression remains stiff, though his white ears twitch in response.

‘And stop talking so formal all the time. We’re in the same year. It’s like I’m bullying you or something—it feels wrong.’

’I really didn’t mean to…’ Confused by the deepening furrow between Jack’s brows, Yuuya nods. ‘Okay. Sorry about that.’

Yuuya has been unconsciously using formal speech with Jack in response to the intensity of his first impression, but they are classmates, after all. It must have seemed rather odd, and then made even odder in contrast to how he speaks with his other fellow first-years, Ace and Deuce.

‘As long as you get it.’ Though Jack’s gaze is still sharp, his tightly pursued lips seem to gentle.

Ace smirks, nudging Jack with his elbow. ‘Huh. I think I’m starting to get your vibe.’

‘What now—you mocking me?’

’Nah. Just think you’re funny.’

When Deuce joins in the teasing Jack shouts, ‘Shut up!,’ but the two are used to him now, and not the slightest bit intimidated. And Yuuya, who has come to understand Jack’s earnestness, now finds him interesting instead of frightening.

'Oh my, is that Jack Howl from Savanaclaw?’"

(This connects to Azul's introduction, below!)

#twstnovel2 #twisted wonderland #twst translations #Jack Howl #Kuroki Yuuya

109 notes · View notes

psblooms · 1 year ago

Text

secret proposals

lee heeseung x fem reader smau series

previous - masterlist - next

ELEVEN knowing you (wc: 1.9k)

-37.5519° N, 126.9918° E-

lee heeseung grew up half of his life not knowing how teamwork actually worked. ever since he was a child people encouraged a "fair competition" between him and his older brother; from a young age he understood a lot of the basis of an adult capitalistic society: he learned how far greed and jealousy could take someone.

he acknowledged how human relationships worked when most people would only see you by your last name and your current or future job position. it took him a long time to understand not every single person in the world would like to use him for something and even if that was the case he was wary. he did not trust most people. and most importantly he still did not trust you.

how was it possible for someone who claimed didn't like him to accept a proposal that forced them to spend time with him and most importantly not hope for any compensation? lee heeseung did not understand kang yn, the director of a company that does not care for growing said establishment by associating herself with his name. if she had tried to get on his good side since the beginning (or with any other important people) karin corporate would be twice as big as it is now. but she didn't; she acted all know-it-all in front of people who didn't know her yet and it was only her name and her best friend son jiwoo behind her, not even her boyfriend at the time that took her to her first event and introduced her could help her make the best first impression to uptight people who praised themself in knowledge and status.

lee heeseung was a smart person. but he could not understand kang yn; while she made herself friends with his close people at his office and tried being friendly with him they were not there yet. her job as his pretend girlfriend was time-consuming and not profitable, yet she accepted it and tried to work with him even though they never had any kind of relationship.

they have met five times after their initial secret meeting, and maybe neither of them cared enough but he could not remember a single thing they had in common other than the things they created. but after a conversation with jake (who seemed more invested than himself) where he affirmed the importance of them spending time with each other before his father found a way to get them to sit together in front of him and explain their relationship and convince him of the personal importance of said relationship, he found himself outside yns place all dressed up ready to fake his biggest smile and join her in the fundraiser she organized.

what heeseung did not expect when he knocked on your door was to meet, with someone who wasn't you. he thought you said you lived alone, did he knock on the wrong house? however, before he panicked the lady in front of him talked first "hi! can I help you?" she asked kindly, and before he answered he heard your voice interrupting this unasked meeting "mum who was knocking? you know there is a camera system right?-" and when both of you made eye contact heeseung could see you internally panicking while you rushed to them.

"what are you doing here?" you asked him with a fake smile and holding his forearm and went to look at your mother "can you join dad? I´ll be right there," you said while taking him out of your mothers' viewpoint letting him just smile and wave nicely. "jake told me to pick you up" he explained almost in a whisper "did he not tell you?" he asked.

"he told me someone was picking me up at 6" you answered. it was 4 pm, heeseung had come two hours earlier and he could not understand if jake made a mistake or if he was playing mastermind. "should I leave? I can come back later" he offered while still speaking in a quieter voice but before you had the chance to agree with him your father said from your living room, "are you staying in the entrance the whole visit?". well, out went the plan to get heeseung out of here.

"Just act like we are friends" you murmured before raising your voice "coming!" and with that, you took him to meet your parents. "so…this is my friend heeseung, heeseung this are my parents" and while heeseung was trying to be nice in front of the founders of the company he has heard countless things about he could not help to feel out of place, he was not supposed to be there, he could not blame your parents if they ended up treating him like a stranger because, at the end of the that, he was just that. however he did not expect your parents to act so kindly to someone they had never seen before, heeseung felt like he was having a fever dream, this feeling was so strong he could not remember what they were talking about or even if he was involved in the conversation. that was until you had to answer a call from your assistant that you left them alone with heeseungs face showing a small amount of panic. great, now he had to pretend to be close enough to you for him to be visiting you unannounced while not knowing a single thing about you; at this time, heeseung finally understood why Jake took so much importance in both of you spending time together.

"so, you are the guy that's been in all that news with our daughter right?" her dad asked him while heeseung was probably spacing out thinking of the fastest way to get out of there. "yes, it was a mess, you probably got a lot of people up in your business because of me," he said while straightening himself.

"It's okay things happen and from what I know your team did a great job dealing with it," he said "I've heard good things about you heeseung, so I'm not surprised" he continued the praises "you have?" heeseung asked curiously "oh totally, not only has yn said nice things about your work ethic, but a lot of the friends I have here have said really good things about how you manage your division in your company, I'm actually surprised because you are the same age as yn but I suppose that having a job being chosen for you since you were a child makes you capable, I hope I'm not overstepping with that comment," he said. "not at all, I'm flattered you think so highly of me"

"so how did you two meet? she has not said a lot about you to us" your mum joined the conversation. "oh, we´ve met recently through a friend" heeseung answered simply without a lot of details; he didn't know how much they knew, and that wasn't exactly a lie. "I see, and are you getting along well? sometimes yn is a lot," she said jokingly "I think so, it has not been long since we acquainted each other" heeseung answered trying not to sound so monotonous. "I'm glad our yn is having more friends, please take care of her," she said kindly while he nodded.

"are you driving with us to the fundraiser?" heeseung asked softly trying to avoid awkwardness "Oh no, we will join you there. we are going to see some people before," your father said "its ynie first fundraiser event so we are picking up some stuff for her" your mother whispered softly to him. "have you done a lot of them? she doesn't look stressed for it" heeseung questioned "we do a lot of them back home but this is the first one in Seoul, we hope it works nicely, that way we can cover a lot of scholarships. but she loves organizing these things, so she is in her element" your mum answered him growing heeseungs curiosity, he didn´t know a lot of you company.

"how long have you been doing them?" he asked them "back when we just started we did one in our second year, but now we do them twice a year before semesters applications at universities start." your dad said "thats pretty much why we started it. when yn was a kid she always loved painting but one day when she was 12 she stopped because a teacher told her that artists don't make enough money to make a living unless they were geniuses. she was so sad and resigned and that made us really upset, you know as parents we want the best for our kids and we were doing great financially, so we invested all our money to create the company and to preserve art pieces. we weren't really into art at the time but she was and we started learning a lot of it. that pushed yn to keep painting, so we think we did a great job with the company that will be hers in the future." he continued "sorry, he loves telling that story" your mum finished laughing lightly, making heeseung join with the laugh while pushing their apology aside "don't apologize, I was curious, so thanks for telling me" he added. and just on time you finished your call and came back to them "sorry there is a lot going on" you said to all. "don't worry we are getting to know each other" your father said while heeseung nodded "and we are actually about to leave" your mother said after looking at her phone.

"really?" you said "we have something scheduled but don't worry, we will see you later and we are staying the whole week" "bye heeseung it was nice meeting you," your parents said while getting up "likewise, I´ll see you later" heeseung added while standing up and waving at them.

"so, did my parents bother you a lot?" you asked him after seeing your parents out the door. "not at all, they are quite nice. but there is something I don't really get" he said while looking at you, "shoot your question," you said while picking up the cups on the coffee table. "do they know about our real relationship? your dad said he saw the news but didn't question me on that and you introduced me as your friend" he asked while helping you organize the living room. "not really, I mean it when I said I told them we were friends" you said simply. "so are we also pretending for them?" he kept asking.

"heeseung. my parents don't care about who I'm friends with or who I date, sure they worry as parents but it’s not that deep, don't worry about it," you said before telling him you were going to get changed so both of you could leave earlier.

now that he was on your living room couch by himself he had time to organize his thoughts and finally heeseung understood the saying apples don't fall far from a tree, he took pride in the fact that he didn't take after his parents. but maybe not all parents were assholes, and maybe when they were present in a child's life they could learn great things and not grow up with constant self-doubt and craving unexisting validation, without keeping secrets and actually trusting other people. and maybe, just maybe, lee heeseung was starting to understand kang yn.

taglist: (@enhaslxt , @ddazed-lhs, @nctislifue , @ariadores, @ineedsomezzz , @webjeje , @enhaz1 , @strayy-kidz , @firstclassjaylee , @cupidity99, @heeoao, @trinxt , @lilacnini , @heeswif3y , @woninluv , @erehkinnie30 , @inlovewithasa, @mrmld , @sumzysworld , @eleanorheartschishiya , @simjyunnie, @yizhuotv

#secret proposals ｡ᐟ #enhypen fluff #enhypen imagines #enhypen scenarios #enhypen smau #enhypen x reader #enhypen #lee heeseung #lee heesung x reader #enhypen lee heeseung #heeseung

56 notes · View notes

bung3665 · 1 year ago

Text

Some Dynamics and Character Lore From GGZ

Given the title, this won't cover everything, especially the dynamics that are present for GGZ-only characters, but I thought I'd make a post for Hi3 characters that are present in GGZ for those of you who like to draw fanart/write fanfiction. As well as the fact that I like talking about GGZ.

Fair warning: this is going to be long, I have a bad habit of going into too much detail on things like this, so please bear with me.

For this post in particular, I was going to focus on multiple characters but this ended up being so long I relegated to it just being about Kiana and Mei, and more specifically two versions of them. I might make a follow up post for Bronya/Seele/Sin at another time.

Trigger warning for attempted suicide below. I feel like I should include this just in case.

Short introduction but that's all I have to say before diving into the material.

Kiana/Mei

It shouldn't really be a surprise that Kiana's greatest dynamic is with Mei and only Mei. The two are a lot more blatant with their feelings and relationship in GGZ. However, their relationship is also more tumultuous than in Hi3. They are a good example of doomed yuri, besides the ending to the Reborn storyline, which is bittersweet at the least and good at the most.

The writing of GGZ carries the same theme as Honkai 3rd, fighting against the fate of the world and for all that's beautiful. GGZ tends to explore the darker aspects to this setting, often times mixing in heavier themes while doubling down on the struggles of the characters. At times, it can be almost over the top, but I think its cohesive and still a finely crafted story.

It should come as no shocker that Kiamei is the primary ship of GGZ, it's outright confirmed that they love each other at points throughout the story. Sometimes it is for lesbian bait, but on the whole I think their writing is good and the way they rely on each other for support is nice.

Kiana and Mei are more grounded in GGZ, if I had to word it. They're still incredibly resilient, but there are times where they crack mentally. It happens to Kiana more than it does to Mei (save for the last arc, where it's all about Mei suffering), but seeing them work through these things does deepen the bond they have.

Now with all that said, let's move on to the actual content of this post.

Retrospective

Retro is the story you play when you first start the game, this is the "first half" of GGZ's story in some regard. GGZ's story and setting is divided into separate eras, with the main two being Retrospective and Reborn. Era Zero, taking place before both of them, was never fully completed unfortunately.

In Retro, Kiana and Mei initially start off on the wrong foot. Mei is sort of hostile towards Kiana (a result of her becoming a Herrscher) and Kiana is a bit insensitive to Mei on introduction, but after learning about Mei's past, Kiana manages to get through to Mei after their battle and the two make up.

Will put it out there that much like Kiana in the Hi3 mangas and early Hi3 story, she's a perv here. Yet her crush on Mei is a genuine thing.

Things calm down for a while, but when Bronya enters the picture and Mei begins to dote on her like a big sister, Kiana gets a little...possessive, and jealous. She's quite immature when it comes to romance in Retro. And while Mei is more serene about things she does care for Kiana too.

The two have their own unresolved matters, however. For Kiana, it's finding her dad who went missing when she was young (note: Kiana in GGZ is not a clone like in Hi3, this is the real and original Kiana Kaslana). And for Mei, it's regarding Ryoma's sentencing and his ties to Anti-Entropy. The two bring it up at points and reassure each other that they will find their dads which is sweet.

Things take a turn for the worse when Cocolia attacks St. Freya with the Moonlight Throne battleship. When the ship crashes into the church where the furnace containing the core of the second Herrscher is (yeah they stored Sirin's core there), Kiana somewhat fuses with the core and has a complete mental breakdown when Cocolia reveals the truth about Siegfried and how Kiana murdered him when she accidentally became a Herrscher while young.

This causes Kiana to become a Herrscher due to the rising amounts of Honkai energy in her body. If you're wondering about Cocolia, she dies by heading into the Honkai furnace and gets swallowed up by all the Honkai.

Kiana kills everyone after becoming the Herrscher of Finality (or Herrscher of The End, Final Herrscher etc), and the last person she kills is Mei.

It's a sad scene through and through, and the CGs are great. Even more so because at the end, when Kiana and Mei are floating above the world, Kiana still cries while the world ends.

See you in the next world originates from this scene. Very good piece of music.

So what happens after? The world ends, Mei and everyone die, but what happens to Kiana?

Kiana became a puppet for the Honkai, even after the initial catastrophe that occurred at St. Freya, small groups of people managed to survive the world-wide Honkai eruption. But they too would be wiped out by Kiana.

She didn't move, she didn't think anymore, and she had no emotion. Only when the Honkai needed her to kill whatever remnants of civilization rose up did she move.

This carried on for hundreds of years, or tens of thousands, but by the end Kiana had killed all of humanity.

And then she regained her consciousness and was faced with the reality of how many she had killed and how much blood she had spilled. To save herself from the suffering she tried to end her life, but because she was a Herrscher, she was immortal.

No one could kill Kiana, not even Kiana herself. When Kiana realized this fact she gave up all resistance. She deluded her mind with memories of the past and paralyzed herself on the spear she had impaled herself with, until the day Honkai disappeared from the world.

Quite the terrible end. I won't be covering Reborn in this post, but I thought it would be cool to write about the Fire Moth DLC side story, since their relationship in that story builds off of Retro.

Fire Moth

To understand Kiana and Mei's relationship in Fire Moth, you first need an understanding of the setting. The events of Fire Moth happen during Reborn's story, during the story chapters as a matter of fact.

But Fire Moth itself technically takes place in a stigma space where the world has turned desolate five years after Kiana became a Herrscher and destroyed everything. It should be noted that this is the world contained in the stigma space, so the setting of the story is not taking place in the real world. The backstories and characters are acting upon how they were in Retro (and were materialized by Kyuushou's memories of them).

This is Kyuushou's stigmata space, and she has the stigmata of both Kiana and Mei from Retro. Hence why this world bears so much familiarity to Retro.

Most life on the surface is dead, and the survivors in Nagazora have banded together to form the organization "Fire Moth", or "Moth Who Chases The Flame", under the leadership of an older Bronya.

Houraiji Kyuushou is the protagonist of Fire Moth, and you play through the story as her amnesiac self. Kiana is still the Final Herrscher, and rather than a being who is carrying out the Honkai's will endlessly, or someone who still has enough emotion and humanity to cry, this Kiana has gone deep into nihilism and has become devoid of most emotion.

This is a Kiana who knows what happened thousands of years ago and guilt has eaten away at her and left her with nothing.

CG of Kiana when Kyuushou first meets her in a dream.

To get a good idea of what Kiana and Mei are going through in Fire Moth, how about this short conversation I machine-translated. Might be inaccurate, I don't know Chinese that well! But hopefully it helps. Some of it has been taken from Guns Girl Z Cutscene Interpreter as well, I translated some of the text that was still in Chinese.

(Mei's text is purple, and Kiana's is blue).

Mei…what would you do if the world didn't fall apart?

If it hadn't collapsed...

I would probably have been like an ordinary girl, studying something I like, enrolling in a university I wished to go to, and then starting my own family, and walking through a happy and uneventful life with the person I love.

Kiana, what about you?

For me…as long as I'm with Mei, I'm already satisfied.

Really…don't say such embarrassing things...If it's Kiana then there must be something more worthy of pursuing.

If it's the old me…I do have hundreds of wishes I want to fulfill...

I wanted to attend the same school as Mei, eat our bento together under a cherry blossom tree, and spend our entire lunch break lazily.

I want to travel around the world with Mei, take pictures of us in beautiful landscapes, and keep our figures in a precious photo album forever.

I want to build a small cabin by the sea with Mei, watch the tide rise and fall together, collect seashells on the sand blown by the sea breeze together, and then fall asleep under the embrace of the moonlight.

There are so many more wishes…well there are so many more plans too..

But now…

I just want to stay by your side quietly like this forever.

Mei...please give me your hand.

Yes...

If it's possible, will you stay with me until the end of the world?

Kiana…thank you.

Thank you for loving me so much. For protecting me so much.

But both of us, no, we all, we all understand.

That this is a long-cherished wish that simply cannot be fulfilled.

Because...because all of it...has been destroyed by your hands.

Every promise has been turned into ash... and we can never go back.

I'm so sorry Kiana...I'm so sorry.

It's time for us to say our farewells...

(Kiana alone with Mei's ribbon).

...

I understand.

In fact, I understand it better than anyone.

This is the mistake I made...I've destroyed our future with my own hands.

Such an ending is the best punishment for me.

Alone in a world without you. Even death is too kind for me.

(There's a little bit more to this scene, but it's not relevant to this post).

During the final battle between Kiana and Mei (they're both in the same nihilistic and existential boat here, so naturally they are the two overarching antagonists), when Mei falls in battle, Kiana bids her farewell and calls Mei her "only regret".

At the end of Fire Moth, Kyuushou manages to reignite Kiana's wish from forty-two thousand years ago, which was to bring hope to the world. What Kiana was chasing all this time was a sliver of hope in a world that gave her none.

Kiana relinquishes her existence after their battle, so she along with Mei disappear from the world entirely. No one remembers them and nobody recognizes their names. Kyuushou remarks that Kiana's dream was to live in a world without Honkai, a sentiment echoed by both Kiana and Mei.

Fun fact: if you 100% all of Fire Moth, you get this wonderful CG of the two.

Conclusion

If you made it this far, thanks. I'm a bit out of my element when writing things like this, so if you have any questions on anything I'd be happy to answer them. I appreciate GGZ a lot, so making this was fun and I hope I can do more of it for the others.

I have a nagging feeling this was a bit too long, so I apologize for that. I ended up explaining a lot of GGZ's lore when this was mainly supposed to be about relationship dynamics...oops.

But to summarize, Kiana and Mei's relationship isn't entirely different from what they have in Hi3, but just like in Hi3 they have their own struggles and nuances. Mostly in the formed of doomed yuri but that's beside the point. I like their relationship in GGZ, at times its as simple as a few exchanges before a battle, and at others its the crux of the story itself.

With all that being said, I hope you enjoyed the read!!

#honkai impact #honkaimpact3rd #honkai gakuen #guns girl z #honkai #kiana kaslana #raiden mei #hi3 #kiamei

113 notes · View notes