#to the people -still-. still fucking figuring it out.

[my-castles-crumbling]

terribly - february 7 - jegulus - @taylorswiftmicrofic - word count: 341

“James,” Regulus murmured, wiggling a bit under the older boy’s arm as they walked to Hogsmeade, “what are you doing?”

It was their first official date, and to say he was nervous was an understatement. He’d been thinking and overthinking about it for days,of course avoiding talking to his friends about it but constantly ruminating about what to wear, how to act, what to do with his hands. He wasn’t sure why he was so nervous. He’d been on dates before. But for some reason, this one felt different.

“Oh, do you not want me to…?” James asked slowly, removing his hand from where it was lightly resting on Regulus’s waist and turning to him with a curious expression.

Regulus paused and frowned. “No, it’s not that.” And it was true. He loved when James touched him, probably a lot more than he should. It was just that they were in public, and an arm around  his waist was so terribly obvious that they were not just friends. “It’s just that…if anyone sees, they’ll know we…”

James bit his lip. “Oh. I…alright,” he said softly, hurt shining in his eyes.

Confused, Regulus grabbed his arm and pulled James to face him before he could continue walking. “It’s not that I don’t want to, James!” he explained somewhat desperately. “I figured that…I thought you wouldn’t want people to know. They’ll judge, and-”

“I don’t give one single fuck if they judge,” James cut him off quickly, his face so sincere that Regulus was struck mute for a moment. “If you��re not comfortable, that’s totally fine, Reg, but if you’re still trying to keep things quiet for me, then please don’t. I’d take out an ad in the damn Prophet if I could: James Potter is the luckiest bloke alive to be taking Regulus Black to Hogsmeade,” he grinned.

“Oh,” Regulus nodded, thinking about how in the past, other boys had wanted to keep him a secret. He slowly slipped his hand into James’s, intertwining their fingers. “Alright, then.”

And they continued walking.

[magess]

Ezra talks more here about the article and what he means with "don't believe him". Part of what he's saying is ideological: maintain the belief that separation of powers is good and that presidents cannot do this. But also practical, Trump is trying to do a lot of things, and he sucks at it! The courts are overturning it left and right.

Example of He Sucks at This Actually: The Drizz.

This is also in the video, but basically, after the FBI director (Wray) resigned, the Trump people put Driscoll's name on the website as acting director by mistake.

They literally listed the wrong guy through incompetence. Then they figured it would look bad to change it, plus they were going to fire him anyway in the purge, so they left it.

Driscoll finds himself suddenly and inexplicably in control of the FBI. So what does he do? He sends out a memo telling people not to resign. He galvanizes the FBI against the purge. He instantly changes the defeatism at the FBI, becomes their folk hero, and he refuses to hand over a list of names of people who worked Jan 6 cases. The Trump admin still hasn't fired him, and all the FBI agents who were going to be fired, like 4000 of them, still have their jobs.

That might change with Kash Patel. But the point remains that they fucked up so badly and so stupidly that this was able to happen.

That doesn't mean they will fail on their own. It means that they're weak and we need to push.

The article is under the cut because paywalls suck

This is an edited transcript of an audio essay on “The Ezra Klein Show.” You can listen to the conversation by following or subscribing to the show on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you want to understand the first few weeks of the second Trump administration, you should listen to what Steve Bannon told PBS’s “Frontline” in 2019:

Steve Bannon: The opposition party is the media. And the media can only, because they’re dumb and they’re lazy, they can only focus on one thing at a time. … All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done. Bang, bang, bang. These guys will never — will never be able to recover. But we’ve got to start with muzzle velocity. So it’s got to start, and it’s got to hammer, and it’s got to — Michael Kirk: What was the word? Bannon: Muzzle velocity.

Muzzle velocity. Bannon’s insight here is real. Focus is the fundamental substance of democracy. It is particularly the substance of opposition. People largely learn of what the government is doing through the media — be it mainstream media or social media. If you overwhelm the media — if you give it too many places it needs to look, all at once, if you keep it moving from one thing to the next — no coherent opposition can emerge. It is hard to even think coherently.

Donald Trump’s first two weeks in the White House have followed Bannon’s strategy like a script. The flood is the point. The overwhelm is the point. The message wasn’t in any one executive order or announcement. It was in the cumulative effect of all of them. The sense that this is Trump’s country now. This is his government now. It follows his will. It does what he wants. If Trump tells the state to stop spending money, the money stops. If he says that birthright citizenship is over, it’s over.

Or so he wants you to think. In Trump’s first term, we were told: Don’t normalize him. In his second, the task is different: Don’t believe him.

Trump knows the power of marketing. If you make people believe something is true, you make it likelier that it becomes true. Trump clawed his way back to great wealth by playing a fearsome billionaire on TV; he remade himself as a winner by refusing to admit he had ever lost. The American presidency is a limited office. But Trump has never wanted to be president, at least not as defined in Article II of the U.S. Constitution. He has always wanted to be king. His plan this time is to first play king on TV. If we believe he is already king, we will be likelier to let him govern as a king.

Don’t believe him. Trump has real powers — but they are the powers of the presidency. The pardon power is vast and unrestricted, and so he could pardon the Jan. 6 rioters. Federal security protection is under the discretion of the executive branch, and so he could remove it from Anthony Fauci and Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Mark Milley and even Brian Hook, a largely unknown former State Department official under threat from Iran who donated time to Trump’s transition team. It was an act of astonishing cruelty and callousness from a man who nearly died by an assassin’s bullet — as much as anything ever has been, this, to me, was an X-ray of the smallness of Trump’s soul — but it was an act that was within his power.

But the president cannot rewrite the Constitution. Within days, the birthright citizenship order was frozen by a judge — a Reagan appointee — who told Trump’s lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.” A judge froze the spending freeze before it was even scheduled to go into effect, and shortly thereafter, the Trump administration rescinded the order, in part to avoid the court case.

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What Bannon wanted — what the Trump administration wants — is to keep everything moving fast. Muzzle velocity, remember. If you’re always consumed by the next outrage, you can’t look closely at the last one. The impression of Trump’s power remains; the fact that he keeps stepping on rakes is missed. The projection of strength obscures the reality of weakness. Don’t believe him.

You could see this a few ways: Is Trump playing a part, making a bet or triggering a crisis? Those are the options. I am not certain he knows the answer. Trump has always been an improviser. But if you take it as calculated, here is the calculation: Perhaps this Supreme Court, stocked with his appointees, gives him powers no peacetime president has ever possessed. Perhaps all of this becomes legal now that he has asserted its legality. It is not impossible to imagine that bet paying off.

But Trump’s odds are bad. So what if the bet fails and his arrogations of power are soundly rejected by the courts? Then comes the question of constitutional crisis: Does he ignore the court’s ruling? To do that would be to attempt a coup. I wonder if they have the stomach for it. The withdrawal of the Office of Management and Budget’s order to freeze spending suggests they don’t. Bravado aside, Trump’s political capital is thin. Both in his first and second terms, he has entered office with approval ratings below that of any president in the modern era. Gallup has Trump’s approval rating at 47 percent — about 10 points beneath Joe Biden’s in January 2021.

There is a reason Trump is doing all of this through executive orders rather than submitting these same directives as legislation to pass through Congress. A more powerful executive could persuade Congress to eliminate the spending he opposes or reform the civil service to give himself the powers of hiring and firing that he seeks. To write these changes into legislation would make them more durable and allow him to argue their merits in a more strategic way. Even if Trump’s aim is to bring the civil service to heel — to rid it of his opponents and turn it to his own ends — he would be better off arguing that he is simply trying to bring the high-performance management culture of Silicon Valley to the federal government. You never want a power grab to look like a power grab.

But Republicans have a three-seat edge in the House and a 53-seat majority in the Senate. Trump has done nothing to reach out to Democrats. If Trump tried to pass this agenda as legislation, it would most likely fail in the House, and it would certainly die before the filibuster in the Senate. And that would make Trump look weak. Trump does not want to look weak. He remembers John McCain humiliating him in his first term by casting the deciding vote against Obamacare repeal.

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him.

The flurry of activity is meant to suggest the existence of a plan. The Trump team wants it known that they’re ready this time. They will control events rather than be controlled by them. The closer you look, the less true that seems. They are scrambling and flailing already. They are leaking against one another already. We’ve learned, already, that the O.M.B. directive was drafted, reportedly, without the input or oversight of key Trump officials — “it didn’t go through the proper approval process,” an administration official told The Washington Post. For this to be the process and product of a signature initiative in the second week of a president’s second term is embarrassing.

But it’s not just the O.M.B. directive. The Trump administration is waging an immediate war on the bureaucracy, trying to replace the “deep state” it believes hampered it in the first term. A big part of this project seems to have been outsourced to Elon Musk, who is bringing the tactics he used at Twitter to the federal government. He has longtime aides at the Office of Personnel Management, and the email sent to nearly all federal employees even reused the subject line of the email he sent to Twitter employees: “Fork in the Road.” Musk wants you to know it was him.

The email offers millions of civil servants a backdoor buyout: Agree to resign and in theory, at least, you can collect your paycheck and benefits until the end of September without doing any work. The Department of Government Efficiency account on X described it this way: “Take the vacation you always wanted, or just watch movies and chill, while receiving your full government pay and benefits.” The Washington Post reported that the email “blindsided” many in the Trump administration who would normally have consulted on a notice like that.

I suspect Musk thinks of the federal work force as a huge mass of woke ideologues. But most federal workers have very little to do with politics. About 16 percent of the federal work force is in health care. These are, for instance, nurses and doctors who work for the Veterans Affairs department. How many of them does Musk want to lose? What plans does the V.A. have for attracting and training their replacements? How quickly can he do it?

The Social Security Administration has more than 59,000 employees. Does Musk know which ones are essential to operations and unusually difficult to replace? One likely outcome of this scheme is that a lot of talented people who work in nonpolitical jobs and could make more elsewhere take the lengthy vacation and leave government services in tatters. Twitter worked poorly after Musk’s takeover, with more frequent outages and bugs, but its outages are not a national scandal. When V.A. health care degrades, it is. To have sprung this attack on the civil service so loudly and publicly and brazenly is to be assured of the blame if anything goes wrong.

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.

But he didn’t. And so the opposition to Trump, which seemed so listless after the election, is beginning to rouse itself.

There is a subreddit for federal employees where one of the top posts reads: “This non ‘buyout’ really seems to have backfired. I’ll be honest, before that email went out, I was looking for any way to get out of this fresh hell. But now I am fired up to make these goons as frustrated as possible.” As I write this, it’s been upvoted more than 39,000 times and civil servant after civil servant is echoing the initial sentiment.

In Iowa this week, Democrats flipped a State Senate seat in a district that Trump won easily in 2024. The attempted spending freeze gave Democrats their voice back, as they zeroed in on the popular programs Trump had imperiled. Trump isn’t building support; he’s losing it. Trump isn’t fracturing his opposition; he’s uniting it.

This is the weakness of the strategy that Bannon proposed and Trump is following. It is a strategy that forces you into overreach. To keep the zone flooded, you have to keep acting, keep moving, keep creating new cycles of outrage or fear. You overwhelm yourself. And there’s only so much you can do through executive orders. Soon enough, you have to go beyond what you can actually do. And when you do that, you either trigger a constitutional crisis or you reveal your own weakness.

Trump may not see his own fork in the road coming. He may believe he has the power he is claiming. That would be a mistake on his part — a self-deception that could doom his presidency. But the real threat is if he persuades the rest of us to believe he has power he does not have.

The first two weeks of Trump’s presidency have not shown his strength. He is trying to overwhelm you. He is trying to keep you off-balance. He is trying to persuade you of something that isn’t true. Don’t believe him.

You can listen to this conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, YouTube, iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

au where pretty much all of gotham knows damn well bruce wayne's small army of children are also the assorted bat and bird themed vigilantes around town (considering they barely cover their faces and their ages, races, heights, and timelines all line up perfectly lmao) BUT. they still think bruce is just their resident sadboy beloved princess like no way he's batman. he's a soaking wet premie kitten of a man. if you raise your voice around him he'd probably startle like a baby deer. one time I bumped into bruce wayne on the street and both of our briefcases spilled open everywhere when we fell and he teared up and gave me his wallet while apologizing for being too lost in his own thoughts. one time I accidentally poured hot soup in his lap at a gala and he just said "thank you😔". he's just a little guy he's depressed and his rowdy-ass kids sap up all the little energy he has so OBVIOUSLY he's not batman. and like this open secret becomes a whole debate about whether or not he knows his kids are doing this, and whether or not someone should tell him about it. like on one hand yeah they're doing great things for the city. but hasn't that poor guy been through ENOUGH? can he handle the stress of knowing his babies are risking their lives? would he make them stop, or does he already know and allows it? he doesn't seem that irresponsible of a parent tho! would he feel pride or horror if he knew they became the type of person he (and his parents) needed when he was younger? for the most part, people leave them to it, seeing as most of the wayne kids are adults anyway, but every now and then little damian saves some older ladies just for them to end up yelling at him about how his daddy has a poor constitution and his heart will give out from all the stress (and he's just gotta stand there like 😡😡😡😡😡 because arguing would essentially be confirming his identity and he Cannot be the one to fuck that up first. there's a betting pool. he Needs tim to be the one who loses.) bruce is completely oblivious to this except for sometimes when he's out as batman people will be like "you're a monster for letting these kids fight crime its so irresponsible" and he's just like "yeah I know but if I don't give them an outlet they'd probably destroy the city themselves🙄" and the citizens are like flashing back to the bruce wayne birthday bash incident of 2019 that ended with a city block in flames, half the kids in jail and bruce checking himself into one of those fake rehabs rich people go to when they need to escape the stress of being rich and an 8 year old acting as ceo for wayne enterprises for two months before the 8 year got accused of war profiteering so bruce had to check out of the rehab early. and they're like "okay yeah that's fair" and figure maybe gotham's sweetest son bruce is at least getting a good night sleep in a quiet mansion while his beloved yet terrible children are burning off energy beating people up all night

[natalievoncatte]

Lena crouched down and carefully undid the buckle, pulling the watch from Lex’s limp wrist. His cold hand fell to the floor with a soft flopping sound and his eyes stared at nothing, unfocused and dull. Lena had once read that a dead man stared as if trying to solve a complex problem, but Lena did not see metaphor in her dead brother’s eyes. She saw only an absence that was a presence, a nothing that was somehow something.

Lex finally had his father’s eyes.

The gun was still heavy in her hand, her palm and wrist tingling from the force of recoil, ears still ringing from the blast. A single hole marked the center of her brother’s forehead; the meat of his genius was splattered across a bank of screens all playing surveillance footage of Kara performing inhuman feats.

(Two to the chest, one to the head, he had taught her, teaching her to repeat the mantra as he held her wrist to guide her aim as she took her very first shot)

The world was starting to come back, sweeping in. She couldn’t be here. She’d have to figure out what to do with the body and the evidence. She had to get out.

The interface on the watch was simple enough. The portal flashed open and she stepped through into her apartment. That could be convenient.

The watch crystal was dotted with her brother’s blood. She threw it and it skidded across the kitchen counter and it fell on the floor. She looked at the weapon in her hand. She would have powder burns.

Looking up, she spotted her reflection in the stainless steel of her fridge, blurred but real. There was red on her.

Lena never wore red.

There was more than she thought. She was covered in blood. In a panic, she ran for her bedroom and began shedding clothes on the tile floor of her bathrooms, wrapping the gun in a towel before throwing it on the bed. Stupid, stupid. That revolver was registered to her in Metropolis, and like all guns sold in-state, the police had a spent shell casing from it, fired and then stored for police records before it was sold.

Fuck.

Hot water blasted her skin. She let her hair fall down around her shoulders in wet locks like streaks of ink smeared across her pale skin.

(Why must you be so pale? You look like a dead fish.)

(That’s enough, mother. Leave Lena alone.)

She wasn’t sure when the tears started, or when she began to sob. She scrubbed at herself with a wash cloth and soap until her skin was raw and beet red. She was still sobbing when she stumbled out of the shower and threw on a robe, choking back tears as she sat on the edge of the bed.

She reached for her phone on the nightstand, but who to call?

Not long ago she’d have called Kara, or perhaps her sister. She could have called Nia or Brainy but they had all fucking lied to her. Even James. James knew while he was… while they…

It was Kara. Kara has asked her boyfriend to spy on her, questioned her motives.

Kara… Kara had lied most of all.

She stared at the phone. There was Sam, but Sam was away from all this madness, busy with her work and her daughter. Lena would just be a burden to her.

She stared at her list of contacts- the only people she knew outside of her employees and associates were in Kara’s circle, except for Sam…

…and Jack.

Lena jabbed the call button and waited.

It rang, rang, rang again.

Finally, he answered.

“Lena?”

“Hello, Jack.”

“I must say I’m surprised- it’s rather late, and we haven’t spoken in a while. What’s on your mind?”

“I shot Lex in the face,” Lena said, shocked by her own hollow, distant voice.

The line was silent for too long a beat.

“Dear God, you’re serious.”

Lena choked out a sob.

“I had to, Jack. She was never going to be safe while he was alive. He almost killed her this time. He would never let her live if he knew how I feel.”

“Lena, darling, please, you’re not making sense. Look- I’m booking a flight out there now, but please, stay calm and try to tell me what happened.”

She didn’t know where to start, so she went back to the beginning, when she had learned how to trace Lex’s portals and followed him back to his lair.

She stopped herself before she gave it away.

“He showed me Supergirl’s real identity. He had proof.”

“I see.”

“I… she…”

“It doesn’t matter who she is. It hurt you, I know that. Listen to me, Lena- I’ve charted a flight and I’ll be there in six hours. Where is the gun?”

“I have it here.”

“Unload it, please. Let me know when you’ve finished.”

Lena flicked open the cylinder and dumped the shells into her hand, three spent and two unfired, then closed it again.

“Now, lock it up.”

Once it was in the safe she said, “done.”

“Now I want you to lie down. Stay in the apartment and wait there for me, I’ll be there presently.”

For once in her life, Lena did as she was told. Somehow, she fell asleep and didn’t wake until she heard the intercom buzzing.

Without thinking she pulled on sweats and a Midvale High Mathletes sweatshirt.

Kara’s.

When she opened the door she found a haggard Jack Spheer on the other side. He was a little older, beard salted with gray, but he was still him.

He swept into the apartment without a word, found the liquor cabinet, and poured drinks.

“Talk to me.”

Lena sat down and downed her two fingers of scotch in one motion. He poured her another.

“Kara Danvers is Supergirl.”

“The Kara Danvers? Your reporter friend? Your best friend?”

He took a drink.

“Your crush?” he added.

Lena stared at him. He met her gaze levelly.

“What you said on the phone before I left. That he would never let her live if he knew how you felt.”

Lena’s throat felt like sandpaper. She took another drink. It didn’t help.

“She’s not… I’m not… I don’t…” The words would not take shape. “She lied to me,” Lena finally choked out. “She did something I shouldn’t forgive and she used her double life to play both side against me. I don’t know what part of our relationship was real now.”

Jack studied his drink for a long time. He picked up the bottle and pretended to read the label.

“The last time we spoke she seemed quite taken with you. I assume that Lex knew all of this, or most of it.”

“He knew the broad strokes, I’m sure. I think he hoped that if he showed me, I’d join him.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No,” Lena said, in a tiny whisper. “I killed him.”

“Your brother is dead.”

“Yes.”

He poured more drinks, another round for both of them.

“Tell me about him.”

“You’ve heard all the stories.”

“Tell me anyway.”

Lena considered that for a moment, then began talking, rattling off whatever popped into her head. She started with the first time she ever met her brother when he and Lionel had come to Ireland to take custody of her, then began jumping around in time from the treehouse he tried to build to the time he told Lillian he’d kill her if she hurt Lena to his college graduation to when he declared to her that he was going to kill Superman, as if it were the most obvious thing to do.

Eventfully she ran out of stories, and they were running out of scotch. There was enough for one more glass each.

It was The Next Day by now, and mid-morning sun filled the penthouse.

“Are you ready to tell me about her?”

She was. Lena began with the first time they met- the mousy little wannabe reporter who followed Superman into her office as he posed as a reporter, how the Man of Steel himself seemed unimportant compared to Kara, how even then her heart fluttered and she felt a hot pressure low in her hips and Kara seemed to feel spending too.

She told Jack all about it- not just Kara but Supergirl too, about the plane and the office full of flowers and the lunches and brunches and movie nights and how this woman had burrowed into her life and made a home there and gave a home in return, about all the times she had saved Lena’s life.

Again the words ran out.

“Do you want my advice?”

“Yes,” said Lena.

“Talk to her. The woman cares for you deeply, that much is clear. Talk to her and see where you stand.”

“But,”

He raised a hand. “I’m telling you this because I think you’ll listen to me. You want my real advice?”

Lena swallowed. “Yes.”

“Your psychopath brother is gone. You own and run a Fortune 50 company. You’re on a dozen lists, 30 under 30, most influential women… you have virtually unlimited wealth and, if I dare say so, a woman who loves you.”

Lena sucked in a breath.

“Take the money, take the girl,” said Jack, “and live your life.”

She looked down at the empty glass, feeling the cold austere minimalism of her stark penthouse around her, and the tears began to flow anew. She wrapped her arms around herself and didn’t flinch when Jack took her in a bear hug.

“I want what’s best for you, and right now I think what’s best for you is ignoring that little voice in your head that’s telling you to blow up your life because you think you can’t be happy.”

“I knew,” Lena finally admitted. “I knew the whole time. I knew she was Supergirl and I knew I was in love with her.”

Lena wept softly on his shoulder for a time. He ended up staying the day and slept on her couch before leaving to return to Metropolis.

She was still wearing Kara’s sweater when she made the call.

“Lena? Are you alright? I was worried about you,” Kara said.

“Please come over,” Lena whispered. “I need to see you, Kara. You can come in through the balcony. The door is open.”

There was a too-long pause, and then the double impact of Supergirl’s boot heels on the concrete.

[slut4thebroken]

mouth cockwarming hcs

Idk I had an idea lol but I couldn’t figure out which character to use so I just decided to do this instead

Bucky Barnes

Dick Grayson, Jason Todd

Spencer Reid

Cillian Murphy, Emmett, Jackson Rippner, Jonathan Crane, Lenny Miller, Neil Lewis, Raymond Leon, Robert Fischer, Tommy Shelby

(Warnings: daddy kink for a few of them (no incest), a little bit of age play ig?, ionno lol)

Bucky Barnes - He’s no virgin, obviously, but cockwarming in your mouth? That was definitely a new one. It’s not his favorite, but he likes seeing you so relaxed and calm. It reminds him that he’s capable of being gentle with someone so delicate. Plus it’s not too hard— he’s had decades to practice restraint, so he can handle sitting still under you while you nap with his cock in your mouth.

Dick Grayson - Honestly, he gets it— he has an oral fixation too lol, but he usually eats pussy instead. Dick prides himself on being a gentleman though so he’s had plenty of practice putting up with a boner for the sake of not ruining an innocent moment with a girl… Usually he just reads a book or watches a movie to try and not focus on the fact that his cock is literally in your mouth.

Jason Todd - He thinks it’s cute. You’re already so tiny compared to him, but when you use his dick as a pacifier? You just look so fucking adorable. If you’re ever in a situation where you can’t cockwarm him with your mouth, usually you’ll settle for suckling his fingers or his thumb— but you don’t like it as much because the calluses on his hands are too rough compared to his smooth, (sometimes) squishy cock.

Spencer Reid - He gets a little antsy to be honest, but if he has a book or some paperwork to go over, he can usually sit still long enough for you to get your fill. He knows exactly why people find comfort in this sort of thing, and he knows exactly why you specifically find comfort in it. So he doesn’t judge or think it’s weird. He likes being the one that you go to for this comfort.

Cillian Murphy - He finds it a little odd, but as long as you’re happy, he’s happy. Plus he likes how paternal and protective he feels when you’re laying on his stomach suckling on the head of his cock while he pets your hair. It’s usually enough to get you to fall asleep too. He thinks it’s cute hearing your soft snores as you droll a little bit around his cock.

Emmett - Makes his daddy kink go wild tbh. His little girl using his dick as a pacifier? Yeah. Half the time, he can control himself. But sometimes (usually after at least 20 minutes so you can have enough time to enjoy yourself) he’ll gently push on your head, urging you to start sucking more. You whine, but end up doing it anyway just to please him.

Jackson Rippner - Doesn’t like it at all. If you do it right after he fucks your face and shoots his load down your throat then he can usually put up with it for a little bit. But other than that, he doesn’t have the patience for it. Sometimes when you’re napping and he sees you sucking on your thumb instead, he feels a tiny bit of guilt very, very deep down... But not enough to get him to change his mind lol.

Jonathan Crane - He thinks it’s weird as fuck. Honestly he wants to delve deeper into whatever thing from your childhood gave you an oral fixation, but he resists (for now at least). He’s usually pretty good about not turning it sexual, unless he’s particularly frustrated or stressed from work or his… extracurricular activities.

Lenny Miller - He doesn’t really mind. Honestly, he finds it a little relaxing too. He likes coming home after a long, stressful day at work and just laying with his little girl, petting your hair while his dick rests in your mouth, feeling you suckle on the tip while you hug him tightly until you both fall asleep.

Neil Lewis - He’ll try it because you want it so badly, but after less than ten minutes of his cock resting in your mouth, he’s already hard and leaking. He ends up whining and squirming, trying to get you to suck his cock properly until you eventually just give in and blow him. If you do it right after an orgasm, he can usually last longer, but if not, you have ten minutes tops before he gets too needy.

Raymond Leon - He feels the same was about this as he does about most ‘relaxing’ things: it’s a waste of time. So he often tries to work while you’re falling asleep. You’ll lay between his legs with your head resting on his hip, his cock sitting in your mouth, and he only complains if he doesn’t have enough space to use his laptop/tablet.

Robert Fischer - He understands… When he’s feeling subby, he’ll sometimes do that on your nipple. So even when he’s getting hard, he’ll try to ignore it and let you enjoy this for as long as he can handle it. He just reminds himself over and over again that you always let him nurse on your tits for however long he wants, so you deserve to nurse on his cock every once in a while too.

Tommy Shelby - He’s a master of self control honestly so he doesn’t mind it. Sometimes you’ll both lay down for a nap and you’ll suck on the head of his cock until you fall asleep, sometimes he sits up in bed and reads or does some work. Either way, he doesn’t really mind it. Plus you always seem extra inclined to reward him for his patience when you wake up from a nap with it still in your mouth.

[kawhh]

I'm aware I'm gonna lose people with this but I really do need to get the thought out of my head (I'm being delusional and this'll make it worse). It's just Jack and blood does something to me. Something magical. Also for the dark!Jack askers.

1.7k words.

Warnings!!!: if you're squeamish, please don't read this. I mean it. There's a lot of blood talk. Him covering you in it. Biting. Me going insane. Being a whore on main. Somnophilia. Jack being feral. If the idea of period sex makes you go ew, this'll make you worse. Him not caring if you don't want him marking you.

You've been worried about him since he got hit - knowing how bad some high stick injuries can be. Stressing until he was shown on the bench, barely calming down seeing all the blood still covering his face. How casual he is about it, not being phased at all, making no effort to wipe it off.

How aggressively he's playing after it, there's more aggression in him when he takes face offs. There's more push behind his skates up and down the ice. More concentration on his bloodied face.

If you're being honest, the whole thing is incredibly hot. Even though there's an underlying beat of concern. You don't like seeing him hurt.

It's late at night, so you're cuddled up on the couch in one of his shirts. Always feels like he's home with you when you're bundled up in his scent.

It's too much for him when he gets home. It's like someone's sucked all the air out of the room. His knuckles white as snow from his grip on the door frame. He doesn't dare move. Feeling like he's one step away from losing any and all sanity that he has left.

His girl.. all perfect.

His shirt on you.. how small you look in it. It's physically stunned him.

He can feel the blood on his face still. He was in too much of a rush to get home to you, he wouldn't take the time to wipe it off. He wasn't wasting time showering. Not when he knows you're all alone at home. He's not phased by it, just slowly dragging his tongue over his lip to prevent it from getting out of control.

He's no stranger to blood in his mouth. Injuries are common and he can't just stop whenever it happens.

He figures you're asleep. Who knows how long he's just been stuck there, trying to piece together the non feral part of his brain. You haven't made any noise, haven't reacted to him coming home.

He's free to just.. observe.

He's salivating over your legs. They look so pure and untouched, unmarked, oh so long looking under the shirt. Fuck.. he doesn't know what he wants first.

He could have them wrapped around his waist, have you scratching your own marks into his back as he fucks you into the wall. Wanting to see the pathetically adorable tears streak down your face until you get noise complaints.

Have you bouncing on his dick, slamming you down to force you to go at his pace, forcing you back down to meet his savage thrusts even if you try and crawl off to escape.

Wrapping them around his head, forcing them tighter against his head, wanting to suffocate against your cunt. Feeling you cry and squirm against him, trying to escape his tongue.

How pretty he'd paint you with the blood that's still leaking from his mouth. What a perfect way to make a point.. show you how much you truly belong to him. It'd stand out so vividly against your skin.. against your cute little cunt.

It's enough to take the final sanity percentage from him. He can't stay here watching you from afar now. He's gone too deep. The chances of him walking by you to shower before coming back.. non existent.

He's like a possessed animal stalking towards you, hair loose, half covering his face. His expression dark, his eyes barely visible. His pupils fully dilated.

If he doesn't get his mouth on you and in you, he thinks he might lose it. He can't even wait for you to stir. He doesn't have the restraint. Doesn't fucking want the restraint.

He's hovering over you before he can even process it, grabbing your legs as gently as he physically can in his state, making room for himself to kneel between them on the couch. Leaning over to hover over your face, staring at how innocent you look under him.

His baby must've stayed up late worrying yourself to sleep, he knows how you get.

His fingers not being able to resist digging into your shoulders, staring at the way that your body doesn't resist him. The slight bruises he leaves, painting you. The way you almost lean into his touch in your sleep, seemingly seconds away from mewling like a cat.

He can't resist pulling your shirt up. He can't get it fully off without waking you up, but he inches it towards your neck as gently as he can. Restraining you slightly as it reaches armpit height.

He's slightly startled as he hears a small sound, like a droplet. Looking down, realizing that some of the blood from his mouth is smack bang in the middle of your exposed chest now. Trailing it with his eyes as it slides down your cleavage, under your bra, leaving a skin stain as it goes.

He can't stop the gulp, processing how it feels to see him on you, in such a different way..

There's nothing more him than his blood. It's so striking against your skin. He can't explain the sudden urge he has to follow it with his tongue. To cover you in him.

He makes a fatal mistake, resting his head against your shoulder. His attempt to control himself only makes the problem worse as he lifts his head, realizing that you're now covered in his blood, your whole left shoulder looks like a murder scene.

He can't resist licking your skin. Just once. Tasting your skin combined with him. He's never felt this possessive before, never felt more sure in the fact that you're his.

Sinking his teeth gently into the skin, just enough to leave a mark. He doesn't fully know what's wrong with him. This need to just.. mark you up. To mark up every single inch of your skin. You're such a little fucking cute bunny rabbit. So adorably small against him. So weak. So fragile. So his.

He can't stop at just your shoulder. He's inching down, nipping and sucking at your skin, occasionally licking at the blood if it pools too much. Making his way down to your chest, watching the droplets drip down your tits, following the perfect curve, seeping into your bra.

He can't resist running his tongue down your cleavage. Slowly folding the cups over enough to get his hot, wet mouth around your nipple. Biting harshly, eyes flicking up to you as your squirm in your sleep. He wonders if you're dreaming about it. If you can feel his body. If you're mentally aware of how deranged he's feeling tonight.

Squirming more as he reaches your stomach. He half entertains spelling his name on your stomach but he truly doesn't have the patience. He's biting his lip more as he goes, trying to agitate it, getting frustrated that the blood's drying up. He doesn't care if it hurts, how much it stings with every single movement. He'll take care of it later. It's not important.

It does rush him slightly. He can't risk running out of it before he gets to his meal. Skipping mostly past your stomach, dragging his parted mouth down until he reaches his meal. Resting his mouth against your cute underwear. Smirking as he realizes there's adorable little teddies on them. Slowly staining them with blood as he keeps his head still, resting his mouth above your clit. The contrast of the blood and your visible innocence, he could moan.

He's just resting there, breathing you in. He can smell you. Feel the heat coming from your adorable pussy. He can't resist gently biting, mostly gripping your underwear in his teeth, letting it smack back against your clit, hearing you let out the littlest moan. He doesn't care to check if you're waking up now. It's not like he'll stop, even if you do wake up and protest. There's nothing you can do about it.

Nuzzling his nose down where your thigh meets this delicious skin, breathing you in. He can feel the dampness of your pussy smearing on his face as he drags his cheek down. Marking himself up with you.

Biting you in a harsher manner on your inner thighs, feeling how your skin melts like butter at his attack. Smearing you in the blood that's drying up faster now, licking up the arousal that's seeping from your underwear.

His girl loves this so fucking much.. as you should.

The little whimpers you let out.. he can't wait any longer. He's teased himself enough. He can feel the fucking precum soaking his shorts. Hell, it's probably even on your legs at this point. The throbbing is so hard for him to ignore, but you aren't fully claimed yet. He hasn't had his fill of your cunt.

Spinning you slightly, dragging you to the edge of the couch. Sinking to his knees in front of you.

He's ripping your underwear off with his teeth, laughing cruelly as he hears your startled gasp. You're awake now it seems. Maybe you're swearing at him. Maybe you're begging him to stop. Maybe you're moaning. He doesn't care. It's time to eat.

Swiping his tongue all the way from your cute hole to your adorable clit. There's only a faint amount of blood leaking from him now, but it's enough for him to slowly watch it mix with your arousal. Only fueling him more to eat you.

Stretching you apart with his fingers, putting weight behind it to make sure you can't move. Can't protest. Sucking every last drop from you, lapping at you like you're water in an oasis. Feeling you clench. Nipping at your clit, not wanting your body to get used to one sensation.

Thrusting his tongue into your cunt, licking against your walls, wanting to consume you from the source.

He's thrusting slowly against the couch, imagining splitting you open with his cock, mimicking the motions with his tongue. You're spasming around him, he can hear your cries getting louder.

Slowly thrusting in with his finger, adding another soon after. Stretching you open, making room for him to shove his tongue further in along with them.

Feeling your legs shake around his shoulders, restricting his breathing. Cumming in his shorts at you getting off on being claimed.

Pulling back, eyes half lidded, running his eyes over your body. Admiring all of the blood smears and marks on your body. He's never felt so in control. So satiated. So utterly dominant over you. There's no doubting that you're his.

And he hasn't even fucked you yet.

[loramystii]

Sevika with bartender reader?

ꜱᴇᴠɪᴋᴀ x ʙᴀʀᴛᴇɴᴅᴇʀ ꜰᴇᴍ ʀᴇᴀᴅᴇʀ

— ���ʏɴᴏᴘꜱɪꜱ; ꜱᴇᴠɪᴋᴀ ɪꜱ ᴀ ʀᴇɢᴜʟᴀʀ ᴀᴛ ʏᴏᴜʀ ʙᴀʀ ᴀɴᴅ ᴏꜰᴛᴇɴ ɢɪᴠᴇꜱ ʏᴏᴜ ᴜɴɴᴇᴄᴇꜱꜱᴀʀʏ ᴛɪᴘꜱ. ᴅᴏᴇꜱ ꜱʜᴇ ʀᴇᴀʟʟʏ ʟɪᴋᴇ ᴛʜᴇ ᴅʀɪɴᴋꜱ ᴏʀ ɪꜱ ɪᴛ ᴘᴇʀʜᴀᴘꜱ ꜱᴏᴍᴇᴛʜɪɴɢ ᴇʟꜱᴇ?

— ᴄᴡ; ᴇxʜɪʙɪᴛɪᴏɴɪꜱᴍ, ʙɪᴛɪɴɢ & ᴍᴀʀᴋɪɴɢ, ᴀʟᴄ ᴄᴏɴꜱᴜᴍᴘᴛɪᴏɴ

You were counting up the money and tips from last night, getting ready to clock in for tonight. Most were regular tips, 20s-50 bills, especially if they were consantly flirting with you. Though, Sevika, your regular, oddly tipped you more than anybody else. You didn’t think much of it, just that she had money and was lonely. And anyways, it was good to be on Silco’s number two’s good side. You moved your hair away from your hair, sighing and placing your hands on your waist as you listened to some random customer’s order. As you turned around the grab the vodka, your thong was visible above your low rise jeans, a low whistle coming from them. Your eyes rolled but a faux smile graced your lips as you turned. Shaking their drink a while longer, you placed it on the counter. “Add it to my tab, sweetheart.” You tilted your head with a nod and a smile.

Customers came in and out, all of them boring you. Yet once the door opened and Sevika’s broad figure was in your line of sight, a shit-eating grin plastered on her face, your eyes lit up. You quickly adjusted your posture and fixed your low-cut shirt, unsure as to why you wanted to impress her so badly. She walked up to the counter, placing her gun down, intimidating others who were surrounding you on the counter. They grumbled yet walked way to the other side of the bar. “There’s my favorite doll,” She spoke throatily. Her eyes darted to your tits and stomach, then to your slightly disheveled hair from working. “Came a bit later than usual, Sev’” You stated, avoiding eye contact and fiddling with the bar supplies.

“I have stuff to do, still passed by to see you, eh?” You chuckled at her bragging, how she was oh so packed in her schedule yet made time in her busy day to eye you and leave you money. “Whiskey neat?” You asked, her usual order, a classy woman if you had to describe it. She nodded, settling down onto a barstool. As you spun to clutch a glass, her wandering eyes landed on the pairing of your jeans and panties, an uncalled for groan leaving her lips. You cocked a brow, only flipping your head to see why she did that. “Just— uh, just a bruise, you know.” You bought it, unaware of the way her thoughts traveled to the filthiest of things. She received her drink, lips placed on the rim to take a sip.

“So, missed me?” She teased, trying to fill the silence. Licking her bottom lip, watching your tits move with your body and hips turn to grab different items. “Not missed, was jus’ bored.” You clarified even though you yourself didn’t understand your desires and feelings towards her. She hummed in acknowledgment, perhaps amusement. “Good, it’s good I don’t bore you.”

Three more drinks later, Sevika was already inebriated. Her words were slurred and her movements were messy. It seemed everybody else in the bar was the same, intoxicated and scattered all over the place. Not many people were asking for drinks anymore, simply dancing, talking, making out, you name it. You were no longer behind the counter but leaned against it beside Sevika. Sevika’s filter was long gone, her heavily lidded eyes shamelessly eye fucking you. “Are you a slut for every customer, or just me?” A surprised gasp left your lips, eyes widening at the drunk words. A slight huff leaves your lips, crossing your arms over your tits. “Seriously? I’m not a slut.” Sevika rolls her eyes tauntingly, hands subconsciously wandering to your waist. Pressing you flush against her, Sevika spoke now, the music still making her hard to hear. “Your damn panties are out for everybody to see and visually ruin you.” One of your legs wrapped around her bottom leg, boot pressed against it. Her condescending tone making heat pool at the bottom of your tummy in need, and this time, you knew exactly what you needed.

A knowing smile came upon your lips, tracing your fingertips teasingly along her facial features. “Maybe I did it for you,” You commented, placing the idea of you dressing up at home in your little panties and bra thinking of what outfit would please her most. Which thong would get her attention. What top would make her wanna fuck your brains out. Which hairdo would make her tip you greatest. It had her eyes rolling to the back of her head, the alcohol making it harder to say grounded. “Though, I think you’re a bit of a coward.” You extended your botton lip, knowing such insults would set her off. She gripped on you tigher, growling besides your ear. “Why’s that?” Sevika questioned, slipping her knee between both of your thighs. There was ultimately no space left between you and Sevika’s bodies. “All you do is give me money and throw sneaky passes at me, why haven’t you just fucked me, Sevika?” She let out a hefty chuckle, licking her dry lips. “Stop testing me, little girl.” She says mockingly, just trying to intimidate you even though you’re not that far in age. “Think you’re the little girl, Sev’, can’t even reach for that zipper if your life depended on it.”

Your endless ridiculing made her grab your ass, squeezing it and lifting you onto the counter. Your back arched against her hands now, arms circling around her neck. Her hand rushed to undo your pant’s buttons, yelping slightly. “Sev’— are you seriously—“ She cuts you off wih a grumble, nipping at your neck. “You fuckin’ asked for it, now you’re complaining, make up your damn mind, doll.” Your hands came to her chest, trying to push her away but failing miserably. “Nobody’s watchin’” She reassured, hands running through your tense frame. She only got the confidence from the drinks in her system, her thumb coming to rub circes on your pulsing nub. Your cunt clenched around nothing, moaning her name into her ear. A few people’s heads turned, observing the slick from your pussy coating Sevika’s hand. A quick glare made them look away, yet you were still worried and turned on from being displayed. “Tell me how to move m’hand, doll.” She demanded, gathering all your wetness on her two digits and ramming them into you. Your legs circled her torso, head hidden in the crook of her neck.

She pumped them in and out of you, watching your every reaction and whimper. She was experienced, you knew that much, yet seeing it in action was different. “Cu-curl—“ Before you ended your request, she curled her fingers into your g-spot, your jaw going slack as she abused that spot. “Sev’, Sev’, too much—“ Her free hand grabbed your throat, ruining your pussy in plain sight. “Close, doll?” You nodded, tears dripping onto her neck from being embarrassed and babbling pleas. A white ring of cum coated Sevika’s fingers, cooing praises, and encouragement, and then sucking a hickey onto your pulse point. “Thought you weren’t a slut?” Her fingers left your sopping pussy with a nasty squelching noise, licking your cum off her knuckles. Your thighs squeeze shut, reaching to zip up your pants. “You’re a bitch.” You spat, legs shaky. “Promoted from coward, it seems?” She leaves 400 on your counter besides you. 150 from her drinks and the rest for.. well..

“I swear to god if you leave—“ you nearly chase after her as she waves her hand walking away. “I’ll be getting myself off in my car till you get off your shift, yeah? Don’ get your panties inna’ twist.”

ʀᴇqꜱ ᴀʀᴇ ᴏᴘᴇɴ 𐙚

[holylulusworld]

How to cure a grump (7)

Summary: You’re losing your job on Christmas.

Pairing: CEO/Boss!Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader

Warnings: grumpy Bucky, mistaken identity, kinda fake dating trope, violence, Walker hate, fluff, mentions of being cruel to animals (no description), idiots in love

How to cure a grump (6)

How to cure a grump masterlist

Walking next to Bucky, you try not to show your irritation. He insisted on driving to town to go figure skating with you. You don’t know why yet.

“That’s a nice little town,” he says while looking around the area. “So, this Walker guy was your fiancé?”

“Can you just not?” You huff. The first moment he gets you alone, Bucky must hit you where it still hurts. “I get it. You had to play nice guy all day, and now you want to do what. Tell me Walker could do better than me?”

“What?”

“I already know that, okay,” you sniff. “He knows it too. No wonder he left me for my former best friend. There’s no need to make me feel even worse. I lost my fiancé, my best friend, and my business not so long ago. Now I lost my job and had no other choice than to admit I didn’t make it in the big bad town.”

“Whoa, doll!” Bucky shows his palms and shakes his head. “I didn’t speak about the asshole to tell you he could do better. I wanted to tell you that you can do so much better. He’s a piece of shit, and his face is ugly.”

“I don’t want to talk about him anymore. He’s in the past.” You wipe your eyes with your gloved hand. “Whatever you want to do tonight, you’re free to do it. I can just tell my mom we got into a fight or something.”

“Hey,” Bucky huffs. “Your mom loves me. And who’s going to hate on Walker if I’m not around?” Bucky grins because he made you laugh. “You know, according to rumors, a new guy in town spread, he’s got a tiny dick too.”

“Let me guess.” You furrow your brows. “It was a guy dressed in all black and with a cocky attitude. You know, the kind of man having it all. Minus manners.”

“Right when I thought we were getting along better,” Bucky laughs before he suddenly wraps one arm around your shoulders. “Play along.” He kisses your cheek and murmurs your ex-fiancé’s name.

“This must be fate,” John says while watching Bucky kiss your cheek. He squares his jaw as you instinctively lean into Bucky’s embrace. “How are the odds?”

“Not very high. Only if you are stalking your ex-fiancee and her new boyfriend,” Bucky laughs, but his voice sounds not amused at all. “If you’d excuse us now, we have better people to meet.”

“Do you think you’re better than me?” Walker accuses. He steps closer to you and Bucky, sizing your former boss up. “Your polished shoes and neatly styled hair don’t make you the better man, buddy.”

Bucky’s features darken before he says, “I’m not your buddy. You are the one not getting the hint. Y/N and I wanted to have a moment alone as a pair. But no. You had to come over and act as if you were not the man cheating on her with her best friend. You’re not even close to being a man.”

“Bucky, don’t,” you whisper. “He’s not worth it. Let’s just go and continue our conversation from earlier. I meant it.”

It’s no use. Bucky is unstoppable if someone pisses him off.

“Do you want to know what I see when I look at you?” He laughs in Walker’s face. “A little boy who threw away the best thing ever happening to him. A beautiful, smart, sweet, and damn sexy woman.”

“Only because she lets you fuck her doesn’t mean you’re better than me!” Walker won’t give in. Not when people stop skating to watch your way, nor when his girlfriend tries to stop him.

“That’s exactly what it means,” you finally found your voice. “He’s a better man in any way. He loves me better. He’s doing business better. He’s fucking me better. And his dick is out of this world.”

“You vicious bitch!” Walker steps toward you and Bucky, eyes trained on Bucky’s arm around your shoulders. He can’t take another scratch to his already bruised ego.

“Says the man with a tiny dick.” You wiggle your pinkie in front of Walker’s face. “I can’t believe I let you poke me with that thing.”

Walker huffs and puffs. He’s about to slap your face, but Bucky is quick to step in front of you. Your former boss takes the slap like a champ. He laughs before slamming his right fist into Walker’s face.

Your ex-fiancé stumbles backward. He staggers as he touches his bruised chin. “If you want to at least walk away with what’s left of your ego, leave and never dare to even look my girl’s way.” Bucky takes one step toward Walker.

“Bucky,” you whisper and tug at his arm. “Let’s just go. I think he got the message. Walker was never the smartest.”

“You’re lucky the lady doesn’t want me to beat you into a pulp,” Bucky growls before turning around to wrap his arm around your shoulders. He guides you away from Walker and into the next side street.

“What has gotten into you?” You mutter. “What if that idiot sues you, huh? Did you think about it before punching him for me?”

Bucky grins.

“What is so funny? You’ve got a fucking ton of money. If he hires a lawyer, he could ruin your reputation and—” You can’t end your speech. Bucky presses you against the brick wall behind you to kiss you again, almost desperate to taste you.

Your hands are in his hair, and his arms wrap around your waistline. He moans against you, close to losing himself in the kiss, as a loud meow stops you from doing something stupid.

“What was that?” You pant, your lips tingling from the kiss.

“I—I don’t know,” he says and steps away. Bucky runs his fingers through his strands, messing his neatly styled hair up. “I just…I…”

“I mean the noise, idiot,” you are quick to reply. There’s another meow, catching your attention.

“I heard that too,” Bucky licks his lips. Again, he doesn’t know what came over him. All the fighting over you with Walker turned him into a caveman.

“There!” You say as the meowing gets louder. "I think it's coming out of the dumpster!"

You try to open the dumpster, but Bucky is faster. He opens the dumpster and looks inside. “What the—” He curses as he fishes something out of it. “What kind of person throws a kitten into a dumpster?”

“Oh my…” You coo, seeing the tiny white kitten in Bucky’s hands. “Give the little one to me.”

“No.” Bucky opens his coat to press the kitten to his warm chest. “Who did this to you?” He looks at the tiny creature looking up at him and smiles. “You’re safe now. No one is ever going to hurt you again.”

Watching Bucky talk to the cat, you wonder again. How can he be the same man firing you not days ago?

Tags in reblog.

[mortalityplays]

thanks for the bad faith reading. you're wrong, btw.

I aready said this isn't a semantic thing, but you if you really want to go there: 'zine' is a shortening of fanzine or magazine and the concept of a 'fanzine' itself is directly derived from a style of independently published magazine that has roots at least as far back as the Harlem Renaissance and arguably the political pamphleteering of the french and american revolutions. but the actual point I was making is that the entire ethos of zine making originates in an effort to broaden access to publication, and we are losing that.

am I saying nobody ever slapped a $20 cover price on a zine before the 2020s? no! am I saying no influential underground publication has ever made the crossing into fully fledged magazine? no! am I saying I will come to your house and punch your teeth in personally if you use the word zine in a way I find objectionable? no! I'm saying the trajectory of commercialisation, professionalisation and lost knowledge is not only stripping foundational meaning from the form but directly harms the viability of low-overhead zine production. just look through the notes of this post for dozens of people saying they'd never heard of the homemade zine before this post, that they'd been burned by high production 'zine' projects and soured on the whole concept as a result. no equivocation: this shit is killing the medium.

but hey, maybe the $15 zine is the norm and I'm just pearl clutching because I don't like genshin impact or whatever. let's look at the cover prices of some historically important zines at launch:

oh sorry, my bad, these aren't 'fanzines' let's try again

mm but of course the very first fanzines ever published would be cheap and amateur, the form was still being figured out. what about the one everyone on tumblr loves to call the birth of fandom:

well fine, but what about zines that deal with serious social issues? that involve research, outreach, even risk on the part of the creators?

believe it or not (or refuse to believe it) but the history of zines is not the history of bag-getters. accessibility has always been the lifeblood of the form, and that includes financial accessibility.

I have zero fucking power to wave a wand and magically exclude everyone whose projects I think are tacky from using the term 'zine', but what I can do is appeal to people to remember that being asked to submit a portfolio for consideration is the exception, not the norm. gloss covers and kickstarter tiers with vinyl keychains and custom wall art is a new and alien graft on a very old medium. being treated like a subcontractor on a 50-person art collaboration that will only be affordable to middle class kids with middle class disposable income runs entirely counter to what used to be the definitional feature of zine making. sure I'm being intractable. I think we should all be a lot more intractable about this. we saw what happened to webcomics.

the whole point of a zine is that it's cheap to produce, amateur and homemade. if you're being asked to apply to participate in a print project, it is not a zine. if the final product is being printed and bound professionally, it is not a zine. if you are being asked to enter into any kind of licensing agreement more complex than "my work can be reproduced as part of this publication" it is not a zine. nine times put of ten if the final product costs more than $5 you have left zine country. im so serious about this.

[steddieas-shegoes]

i hate the way i don't hate you

for @steddielovemonth inspired by 10 Things I Hate About You

rated m | 2571 words | cw: implied sexual content | tags: inspired by 10 things i hate about you but it's so short so keep that in mind, enemies to friends to lovers, time skips, getting together, falling in love, modern au

💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💔💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓💓

“Let me get this straight: you asked him out as part of a bet.”

“Mhm.”

“Because he’s insufferable and everyone in your little misfit group decided it would be funny.”

“Uh huh.”

“And your plan was to stand him up at prom so he would know how it feels to be heartbroken.”

“In a nutshell.”

“And then you fell in love with him.”

Eddie blinks at Robin, who looks like she might kill him with her bare hands. Honestly, he deserves it. He kinda hopes she makes him suffer.

“All signs point to yes,” he says.

She sighs. And then she sits down. And then sighs again.

“This is absolutely bullshit, you know that right?” She finally asks. “Steve’s a good person. He never deserved to be treated like his feelings don’t matter.”

“I know. And I should’ve known that from the beginning.”

“You fucked this up. He’s gonna hate you.”

Eddie knows that’s a good possibility. He hopes Steve is forgiving, but he knows he doesn’t deserve to ask him to be.

“If he does, I deserve it. But I came to you because I couldn’t lie anymore,” Eddie knows his reputation with his friends is on the line. He doesn’t care. “I’m gonna talk to him tonight and let him make his own decision.”

“You’re gonna tell him the day of prom that his prom date is an asshole?” Robin stands up again. “You’re gonna ruin his senior prom.”

“I’m ruining it either way. People are gonna tell him about it at prom if I don’t tell him before,” Eddie argues. “He deserves to hear it from me.”

“He deserves to not be a circus act,” Robin says, but nods. “Make sure you return your tux tomorrow. His card will get charged a penalty if it’s late.”

Eddie doesn’t tell her he already returned the tux. He figures it’s probably not the time.

He knows Steve won’t want to be near him after he tells him about the bet.

****

One month earlier

“You’d never land a guy like that anyway,” Gareth jokes. “Steve Harrington wouldn’t even glance your way let alone date you.”

“He’s so uptight, he’d laugh in your face if you even tried,” Frankie adds.

Eddie watches Steve carry Robin’s books to her locker so she can carry her trumpet case and science project.

“Wanna bet?”

****

Two weeks earlier

“You write music?” Steve asks as Eddie closes his notebook.

“I try,” Eddie smiles at him. “It’s not always good. It’s rarely good.”

“Could I hear some of it?”

“Maybe.” Eddie lights his cigarette, smirking around it as Steve’s cheeks turn a rosy pink. “Do you like metal?”

“I’ve never really listened to it,” Steve admits. “But I’d give it a shot if that’s what you wrote.”

“Come to my band’s show this weekend. I might play an original song as our encore,” Eddie says. “Might even dedicate it to you.”

The blush gets deeper.

****

The night before

“You know I used to wanna be an astronaut?” Steve says as he leans his head onto Eddie’s shoulder. “Still would if I was any good at math. I mean, I get by in class, but I’m in the easiest classes. Probably not astronaut material. Plus, I get seasick.”

Eddie laughs, something he’s done a lot with Steve. Something he never expected to be doing so much, actually.

“You could still work with NASA. Maybe you can’t go to space, but you could help people get there,” Eddie offers. “They’ve got plenty of people working in the office.”

“Yeah, but I think it would be hard to be so close, yet so far, ya know? Like I’m technically no closer to space there than I am right now. If anything, I’d be farther because I’d be stuck in a building, but here I’m with you,” Steve says simply.

Eddie leans his head on top of Steve’s, looking ahead instead of above.

His heart skips a beat when Steve’s hand rests on his knee.

“I’m glad I get to be here with you,” he says quietly.

Eddie swallows around another lie.

****

Present day

“Eddie! What’re you doing here?”

Eddie hates how excited Steve is to see him. It’s gonna make this so much harder.

His chest aches as he gives him a small, fake smile. Steve notices immediately because of course he does. Steve sees Eddie in ways his own friends don’t.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks, and Eddie can hear it already in his tone, the way his body is rearing up for disappointment. Steve’s said it himself before: he’s always prepared for the other shoe to drop because everyone’s got two feet.

“Can we sit?”

“No. You can tell me whatever it is just like this.”

Eddie accepts it because arguing now isn’t going to help anything. Sitting or standing, Steve is going to be pissed at him.

“I can’t go to prom with you.”

Steve is looking at him with wide eyes. “What do you mean? Was something wrong with the tux? It’s not a big deal if you wanna go in jeans. I promise I was kidding about leaving you in a corner.”

Eddie gives an unamused laugh. “No, that’s- no. I lied to you. For over a month now. I only asked you out because my friends didn’t think you’d even talk to me, let alone agree to go to prom with me.”

Steve’s silence hurts almost as much as the tears that are gathering in his eyes.

“I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry I ever even bet them that I could get you to go out with me. I’m sorry that sorry isn’t enough.”

Eddie can feel tears in his own eyes, but it’s not fair of him to cry. He caused this. He’s the reason Steve is upset. He shouldn’t get to be upset in front of him.

“Steven! The tux is pressed!” Steve’s mom yells from the front door. “Come inside so I can make sure the tailor got the sleeves right.”

Steve breathes in slowly before turning to his mom and telling her he’ll be in in a minute. He turns back to Eddie and sniffles.

“I guess I’ll see you at school.”

“Steve, I’m sorry. Really.”

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

Steve walks into the house, leaves Eddie in the driveway.

****

Eddie paces his room.

There’s not a lot of space to do that, but he manages to wear a track in the carpet. Wayne will be home any minute asking him why he isn’t at the prom, why he isn’t with Steve.

Eddie will tell him and he’ll give him that same look he did when he told him about turning a kid away from Hellfire Club. It’s disappointment, and Eddie hates it.

The front door opens, Wayne’s footsteps echo to the kitchen while he puts away his ice pack and leftover containers from lunch, he pops open a can of beer, and then walks to Eddie’s room. He knocks on the door.

Eddie starts crying.

Wayne rushes into his room, sets his beer on the bedside table, and gathers Eddie into his arms.

“What’s goin’ on, son? Thought you’d be getting ready for your dance,” Wayne says, but it just makes Eddie cry harder.

Eventually, he calms down enough to explain.

Wayne keeps holding him because Wayne will always hold him, even when he’s disappointed in him.

“Well, he didn’t punch ya in the face,” Wayne finally says. “You apologized?”

“Yeah, but it didn’t matter. I still hurt him and he won’t forgive me.”

“You think you deserve to be forgiven?” He wasn’t asking meanly, just genuinely inquiring.

“I don’t know,” he admits.

If he’d asked earlier, he would’ve given a resounding ‘no.’ But he knows how sorry he is, and even though Steve probably never will forgive him, he does hope he will.

“If you’re really sorry, he’ll forgive ya,” Wayne settles on.

Eddie shakes his head, wipes his eyes and then his nose, frowning at the snot on his fingers. He wipes it on his shirt and falls back on his bed. Wayne laughs at him, pats his chest, and stands to leave.

“You could do something big for him,” Wayne suggests.

“Like what?”

“I dunno, you showed him that song you wrote about him yet?”

“I can’t show him that! Not now!”

“Why not? It’s about as big a declaration of love you can give.”

Eddie hates when Wayne’s right.

****

He gets Robin on board with bribery. A lot of it.

Money is definitely involved, more money than he really should spend, as well as his best weed (“it’s not for me!”) and free rides for the entire summer whenever she wants.

But she agrees to get Steve to The Hideout on Saturday night. She’s not good at lying, but she manages to tell a half-truth and Steve believes her.

Eddie’s a nervous wreck. His bandmates were read the riot act from him and from Wayne. They all apologized to Steve at school, though he didn’t really accept them.

It didn’t give Eddie much hope at all.

He’s doing it anyway.

Robin put in the effort of getting Steve here, so he’s gotta do it.

“You know ‘em and sometimes like ‘em just fine…Corroded Coffin!”

The guys all go on stage ahead of him when the crowd starts cheering. He takes one more deep breath and follows.

Gareth counts them in and they play.

It’s good, maybe one of their liveliest crowds yet. He can’t see many of the faces, but he knows Steve’s there. He saw Robin’s shirt when the lights dimmed between the first song and the second. She wouldn’t stay if Steve left.

Jeff introduces them after the third song like always, but pokes a little fun at Eddie.

“Sorry about our guitarist being a bit moody. He’s feeling deeply emotional about love,” Jeff starts the next song before Eddie can argue.

It’s a great show.

Everyone’s having fun, even Eddie.

But then the guys all sip on water and it’s Eddie’s turn to introduce his song. The song for Steve.

“Hey everyone,” Eddie starts, awkwardly. He’s not usually like this on stage. “Got a new song tonight. I wrote this for someone who I don’t deserve, but who I care about a lot. I know he’s mad and he should be. It may not fix anything, but I hope he knows that I mean every word.”

Gareth’s drums are soft for this one, just there to keep the beat with Frankie on the bass. Jeff moved out of the spotlight, still playing rhythm, but keeping the attention on Eddie while he sings.

He sings about falling for someone unexpected, wanting to create a love story better than Shakespeare. He sings about the boy who wanted to discover the stars, and the boy who wanted to hold his hand while he did. He sang about not knowing that he was capable of this kind of love, and wanting to have it forever.

When the song ends, the crowd claps, but they clearly aren’t here for the romantic ballad he just sang.

He lets Gareth count in for the next song and they go back to the loud, chest-thumping music they usually play.

He doesn’t see Robin anymore, and he decides then that if Steve left, he did everything he could for now. He can’t be more sorry than he is and he can’t force Steve to think more of him.

“Good show guys,” Jeff says as they tear down the stage. All of them are responsible for their own equipment, but they also help out the bar manager by unplugging the electrical and rolling the wires when they’re done. “And a great job on your song, Eddie.”

“Thanks,” Eddie gives him a small smile as he closes his guitar case. “Don’t know if it worked.”

“It did.”

Eddie turns at Steve’s voice, nearly falling over when he sees how good Steve looks. He’s wearing a plain black t-shirt and ripped jeans, something outside of his norm, probably trying to fit in with this crowd a bit. Eddie wants to kiss him.

“Steve.” Eddie isn’t sure who’s talking, but it must be him because Steve’s looking at him with shining eyes and the same smile he always gave him when he looked like he wanted to hold his hand. “You’re here.”

“Robin insisted,” Steve admits, stepping closer to Eddie. “But then I told her to head home so I could talk to you.”

“Oh.”

Steve’s mouth lifts in a smirk for a moment before he schools his features again.

“So you wrote that song for me?”

“Yeah. Is it too much?”

Steve steps closer again, only a few inches separating them now. He shakes his head. “Not too much, no. Maybe just enough.”

“Enough for you to forgive me?”

“I might be on the path of forgiveness.” Steve touches his chest, palm over his heart. “But can I ask you something?”

“Anything. Whatever you want.”

“What were you hoping to happen when you made the bet?”

Eddie has to think about that. Of all the things he’s thought about, this isn’t one of them.

Steve waits for him, though. He’s patient. One of the many amazing things about him.

“I think I just wanted to be right about you,” Eddie finally admits.

Steve nods once. “A lot of people wanna assume things about me because of who my friends were a couple years ago, and who my parents are, and how I always dress nice and act like a bitch. It’s easier to just think I’m a bad person than think I have any depth at all. Especially in high school. Even though most of us are adults now, no one really acts like it.”

“I’m extremely immature. You should probably know that if you’re gonna forgive me,” Eddie says.

“You’re not as immature as you pretend to be at school,” Steve smiles. “I’ve seen you, Ed. I know the bad boy against the grain guy isn’t all you are.”

“And I know there’s a lot more to you than your pretty face, though that’s a bonus.”

Steve kisses him and the guys all cheer for him. He’s laughing against Steve’s mouth, waving one hand at the guys to make them leave.

“Robin said you were crying when you told her,” Steve whispers against his mouth.

“She’s a traitor.”

“So you were?”

Eddie sighs. “Yes, I cried. I hated how much I knew it would hurt you to find out the truth.”

“You still have to make it up to me a little,” Steve says.

“Oh yeah? How?”

“Well, I remember something in the song about worshiping me on your knees? Or was that a weird religious reference?”

Eddie kisses Steve again, smiling so much that their teeth clack against each other almost painfully.

“I’m an atheist,” Eddie replies.

“We’ve got a long night ahead of us then, don’t we?”

Eddie groans. “I still have to help load all our stuff-”

“Dude. You were forgiven by a guy who definitely could find better than you. We can handle the stuff. Consider it more of an apology for us being dicks, too,” Jeff interrupts.

Steve grabs Eddie’s shirt and tugs him along. “I’m not gonna tell them I forgive them until tomorrow.”

“Good idea.” Eddie looks down at the way Steve’s ass fills out the jeans he’s in. “On second thought, maybe next week sometime.”

[ayumigotabittoolonely]

Baby you are the baddest

Baby you are the baddest, baby you are the baddest girl

✧･ﾟ: ✧･ﾟ: 𝓢𝔂𝓷𝓸𝓹𝓼𝓲𝓼 :･ﾟ✧:･ﾟ✧

𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓 𝒊𝒔 𝒇𝒆𝒆𝒍𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒖𝒏𝒆𝒂𝒔𝒚 𝒂𝒇𝒕𝒆𝒓 𝒔𝒆𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒂𝒕𝒕𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒊𝒗𝒆 𝒈𝒊𝒓𝒍𝒔 𝒊𝒏 𝒇𝒓𝒐𝒏𝒕 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎. 𝒃𝒖𝒕 𝒅𝒐 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒍𝒊𝒔𝒆, 𝒉𝒐𝒘 𝒎𝒖𝒄𝒉 𝒐𝒇 𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒓𝒆 u 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆? 𝒇𝒆𝒂𝒓 𝒏𝒐𝒕, 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒂𝒓𝒆 𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒕𝒐 𝒕𝒆𝒍𝒍 𝒓𝒆𝒂𝒅𝒆𝒓.

Characters - nanami kento , gojo Satoru and Suguru geto

Gojo Satoru

Jujutsu Tech was hosting a huge party for all the students and teachers, and as one of the teachers, you were excited at least, you tried to be. You had asked Gojo to accompany you, but he refused, saying he was the organizer and had things to handle. So, you arrived alone.

You were wearing

Beautiful Right? Right??

But the moment you stepped in, something felt off. The room was filled with stunning people your coworkers looking absolutely amazing, dressed to impress. You knew you were beautiful, you reminded yourself over and over, but tonight… you just weren’t feeling it.

Then you saw her.

Gojo’s ex.

She was wearing blue too, but hers was a deeper, richer shade. Her dress was shorter, hugging her figure in all the right places. She looked effortlessly stunning, drawing attention from every corner of the room. Compliments flooded her way, and with each one, your confidence sank a little more.

Before you could spiral any further, a loud voice echoed through the room.

"ATTENTION!"

Gojo.

He cleared his throat, a smug grin already forming. Then, as expected, he started the program with one of his signature flirty lines something smooth, playful, the kind of thing he always did. Normally, you’d just roll your eyes, maybe even laugh.

But tonight?

Tonight, it just made you feel worse.

Everyone clapped, the room filled with cheers and applause. Lost in your thoughts, you barely reacted until Utahime lightly smacked your arm, snapping you out of it.

“Come on, at least pretend to enjoy yourself,” she muttered.

You let out an awkward snort, forcing a small laugh as you clapped along with the crowd. But no matter how much you tried to play along, that sinking feeling in your chest just wouldn’t go away.

His eyes scanned the crowd as he spoke, but the moment they landed on you his breath hitched.

For a second, his mind went completely blank.

Why the hell were you looking like that in front of them? Dressed so beautifully, so effortlessly stunning, yet standing there with an unsure look on your face? It made his chest tighten in ways he didn’t expect.

And the worst part? He was the one organizing this damn event meaning he couldn’t just walk over to you, couldn’t pull you aside, couldn’t do a damn thing about the way you were making his head spin.

Frustrating. Absolutely frustrating.

With every passing second, the insecurity crept in deeper. No matter how much you tried to shake it off, the feeling only got worse.

Then, between the chatters and musics, you heard a voice that made your stomach drop.

"Satoru was definitely checking me out. He still thinks about me. Maybe I can get him back." His ex..

Absolutely not. What the fuck?

"Hell nah, he has a girlfriend," her friend scoffed.

But she just waved it off, laughing dramatically before saying something that hit you like a punch to the gut.

"That girl? Yeah, she looks good, but be real would you pick a cute girl with a basic look or someone hotter?"

Her friend chuckled, brushing it off like it was nothing. But you?

You stood there, frozen.

And for the first time tonight, a terrible thought crossed your mind.

Maybe… just maybe… she was right.

You couldn’t do this. Not tonight. Not anymore.

Your chest felt tight, your hands clenched at your sides as those words replayed in your head over and over again. Would you pick a cute girl with a basic look or someone hotter?

Maybe… maybe she was right. Maybe Satoru deserved someone better. Someone who could match his energy, his confidence someone who wouldn’t feel small next to him.

Your vision blurred slightly as you turned on your heel.

Hell nah, you were not staying here any longer.

Maybe you'd even

No. The thought hurt too much to finish.

But a small, painful voice in your head whispered anyway.

Maybe you should break up with him.

Gojo was stress-eating sweets.

He had been trying really trying to get you off his mind, but it wasn’t working. Every time he glanced in your direction, he felt that same frustration bubbling up again. Why the hell did you have to look so good tonight? And why did you look so sad?

He hadn’t even noticed his ex in the crowd. Didn’t care, didn’t want to care. As far as he was concerned, she didn’t exist.

He took a deep breath, ready to continue his speech, when something caught his eye you.

You were leaving.

His heart lurched. And were you… wiping tears?

His stomach twisted, but on the outside, he kept his usual grin. Flashing a charming smile to the crowd, he smoothly passed the mic to Geto without missing a beat.

Then, without hesitation, he followed you.

You walked outside, tears streaming down your face as you tried to steady your breathing. Your chest ached, and no matter how hard you tried to push the thoughts away, they just wouldn’t leave.

Before you could take another step, you heard hurried footsteps behind you.

“Oi—”

Gojo caught up to you in an instant, his usual carefree presence feeling different this time. He let out an awkward laugh, but it wasn’t his usual teasing one. No, this one was tense forced. Because if someone had done this to you, if someone had hurt you enough to make you cry, he would fucking hollow them without hesitation.

This was the first time he had ever seen you like this.

And for the first time in a long time, he felt unsure.

His voice wavered slightly as he reached for you, hesitating before speaking.

“B-baby… who got you crying like that? Tell me, what’s happening?” He tried to mask the worry in his voice, tried to keep up his usual playful charm, but it was useless his concern for you was far too obvious.

You swallowed hard, looking up at him, your heart breaking before the words even left your mouth.

“Gojo… let’s put an end to this.”

What.

The.

Fuck.

His mind short-circuited.

What in the world did you just say?

He looked at you like he had just seen a ghost.

For a moment, he didn’t move just stood there, staring at you, his mind struggling to process what he had just heard. Then, without hesitation, he reached out and grabbed your hand, gripping it tightly like he was afraid you’d slip away.

“It’s not time to joke, babe.” His voice was steady, but there was an edge to it something desperate, something scared.

But you only shook your head.

“I’m not kidding, Satoru.” Your voice wavered, but you pushed through. “I looked at myself… and then at your ex… and I realized no, not realized, because it’s the truth you deserve someone better than me. Someone more attractive, someone at your level. After all… you’re the strongest sorcerer.”

You expected him to laugh it off, to tell you you were being ridiculous. But the way his jaw clenched, the way his grip on your hand tightened just a little more

He wasn’t laughing.

He was mad.

Not the kind of playful, teasing irritation he usually had no. This was different.

It wasn’t just anger. It was disappointment. Not at you, but at the fact that you his girl were standing here, crying, actually believing you weren’t enough for him.

His eyes darkened for a split second, jaw tightening as if he was holding something back. But then, just as quickly, he dismissed it, forcing a smile onto his face.

And if you were being honest… that smile scared you a little.

Before you could say anything, he moved.

Swift, effortless he scooped you up into his arms without warning, ignoring your startled gasp.

“Satoru what the hell?”

“Shh, sweetheart.” His voice was calm, but there was something in his tone that made your breath hitch.

Without another word, he carried you straight to the washroom, his grip firm, his expression unreadable.

He gently pulled you inside the bathroom and started to make out with you.

The moment he locked the door behind you, there were no words.

No hesitation.

Just him grabbing you, kissing you, devouring you.

It was rough, desperate, his lips crashing onto yours with a force that left you breathless. First, you had shown up looking so damn beautiful, completely stealing his focus. And then, you had the audacity to say you wanted to break up because you weren’t enough for him?

Enough for him?

Fucking enough for him?

You were everything to him. The most perfect, precious woman in the world. He saw perfection in every flaw you thought you had, and the fact that you couldn’t see it? The fact that you even doubted it?

It pissed him off.

His hands cupped your face, tilting your head up so you had no choice but to meet his gaze. His eyes burned with something unreadable, something intense, before he let out a sharp breath and snorted a quiet laugh.

Then he kissed you again.

Again.

And again.

“Ooo, look at this woman,” he murmured, his voice low and filled with something dark, something possessive. His hands trailed down, fingertips skimming over your thighs inner thighs, to be precise.

Your breath hitched.

“S-Satoru, what the fuck?” Your voice wavered as you tried to gather your thoughts. “What if people-”

“They’re too busy, babe,” he cut in smoothly, lips brushing against your jaw as his fingers traced slow, teasing circles.

“But what if they catch us…” you whispered, your pulse racing. The last thing you needed was for someone to walk in and see this.

A smirk curled against your skin.

“I hope nobody catches us,” he hummed, fingers slipping beneath the waistband of your panties.

Then, he leaned in, his breath hot against your ear.

“But…” he murmured, voice thick with amusement, "I kinda hope they catch us"

You gasped, hands gripping onto his shoulders when his fingers ghosted over the thin fabric covering your heat.

“You wore blue for me, no?” His tone was teasing, but the satisfaction in his voice was undeniable.

It was true. You had wanted to look good tonight. But more than that, you knew blue was his favorite color.

And yet, as his fingers traced slow, deliberate patterns along your waistbandyou found yourself lowering your gaze , feeling shy.

"You are so gorgeous," he hummed against your skin, his lips trailing along your jaw, pressing slow, lingering kisses.

"Baby, you’re the baddest girl… nobody else matters. Not anyone. Only you."

His voice was low, dripping with conviction, and the way he said it like it was the most obvious fact in the world made your head spin.

It was almost like he was gaslighting you into believing you were the most beautiful woman to ever exist.

And fuck it was working.

He gently pushed your dress up to your waist, exposing your soft skin to the cool air. His touch was slow, deliberate like he was savoring every moment, every reaction.

Then, with the same maddening patience, he hooked his fingers around your panties and slid them down, removing them effortlessly.

But instead of tossing them aside, he smirked and casually slipped them into his pocket.

You gasped, your breath hitching as you instinctively clamped a hand over your mouth.

His smile only grew.

"Oh?" he mused, tilting his head, eyes dark with amusement. "Shy now, baby?"

You said nothing your breath caught in your throat as he leaned in, pressing slow, open-mouthed kisses against your neck. Each one sent a shiver down your spine, his lips warm, teasing, possessive.

Your fingers curled into his shoulders, gripping onto him as he moved lower, his kisses trailing along your collarbone.

Then, without breaking contact, you heard the soft clink of metal.

Your eyes flickered down just in time to see him unfastening his belt, the sound making your stomach tighten with anticipation.

Satoru smirked against your skin.

"Still think I don’t want you, baby?" he murmured his voice dripping with amusement as he pulled his belt smoothly.

You swallowed hard, heat rushing to your face as he slowly slid the belt from its loops, letting it fall to the floor with a quiet thud. His fingers moved next, unbuttoning his pants with agonizing slowness like he was giving you a chance to stop him, to protest, to run.

But you didn’t.

You couldn’t.

Not when his lips returned to your neck, kissing, biting, claiming you.

His hands roamed over your bare thighs, squeezing, kneading his touch firm yet teasing, possessive yet gentle. He was so big, his presence alone swallowing you whole.

"Still quiet?" he murmured, voice laced with amusement as his fingers traced the sensitive skin of your inner thighs. "Not gonna fight me on this?"

Your breath hitched when his fingers slipped higher, parting your thighs with ease.

"Satoru—"

"Shh, sweetheart." His thumb brushed against your clit, barely applying pressure, yet it was enough to send a shiver through you.

Your legs instinctively tried to close, but his grip was firm.

"Uh-uh," he tutted, his other hand gripping your hip. "You’re not running from me now."

You let out a shaky breath, fingers digging into his arms as he kept up his slow, torturous pace, his touch deliberate, calculated meant to break you.

His lips brushed against your ear, his voice dropping lower, thick with something dark and dangerous.

"Let me show you just how fucking perfect you are."

And that’s how it was Satoru making love to you in the bathroom, his touch reverent yet desperate, like he needed to prove something to you.

You muffled your gasps and moans, biting your lip, your hands gripping onto him as he moved against you, within you, filling every inch of your senses.

His eyes never left yours, filled with something deeper than lust something raw, devoted.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmured against your skin, pressing kisses wherever he could reach.

“So fucking perfect for me.”

He watched you intently, drinking in every expression, every quiet sound, and when you looked up at him desperate, vulnerable he swore under his breath, leaning in to kiss you again.

As if he could make you feel just how much he meant every word.

He didn’t stop.

Didn’t stop touching you, didn’t stop kissing you, didn’t stop whispering words that made your chest ache and your stomach tighten.

"God, baby… you have no idea what you do to me." His voice was hoarse, filled with something dangerous, something utterly worshipful.

"You’re not just beautiful. You’re stunning. The kind of gorgeous that makes people stop and stare, but they don’t even know the half of it."

His hands slid over your body, tracing every curve, every inch of skin like he was memorizing you.

"It’s not just your looks, sweetheart." He pressed a lingering kiss to your collarbone, then another, his lips trailing up your neck. "You. It’s you. Your smile, your laugh, your stubborn little attitude that drives me crazy."

You whimpered when he thrust deeper, and he groaned at the way you clenched around him.

"You’re so fucking smart, too," he continued, his voice dropping lower. "The way you think, the way your mind works I swear, it���s the sexiest thing about you."

His fingers threaded through yours, pinning your hand above your head as he met your gaze.

"And don’t even get me started on how kind you are," he breathed, his tone almost pained. "You care so much about everything, about everyone but you don’t even realize how easy it is to love you."

Your heart clenched.

"You are everything to me," he whispered, his lips brushing against yours. "So don’t you ever say you’re not enough for me again."

Then, with a smirk, he tilted his head and added,

"If anything, I should be worried about keeping up with you, gorgeous."

After some moments, you heard the click of heels approaching, and before you could even react, the door swung open.

It was none other than his ex.

Her eyes widened in pure shock, and her makeup kit slipped from her hands, crashing to the floor with a loud clatter.

But Satoru?

He didn’t stop.

Didn’t even flinch.

Instead, he smirked, his movements slow and deliberate as he reached for his discarded jacket and draped it over you, shielding your exposed skin.

Then, as if this was the most casual thing in the world, he turned to her and tilted his head.

“Oh?” His grin was lazy, smug. “Didn’t see you there.”

His grip on your hips tightened possessively before he let out a soft chuckle, his tone downright mocking.

“Hope we didn’t… interrupt anything.”

His ex ran away crying, heels clicking rapidly against the floor as she bolted out of the bathroom.

Satoru barely spared her a glance.

His attention was still on you.

His smirk softened into something more genuine as he gazed down at you, his hands gently running over your waist, your thighs, as if grounding you.

“Look at you, baby,” he murmured, pressing a soft kiss to your flushed cheek. “So fucking pretty… too pretty to be worrying about anyone else.”

You tried to say something, but your head was spinning, your body still trembling from everything. Words felt impossible.

Satoru chuckled, tilting your chin up to meet his eyes, his expression dripping with admiration.

“Lightheaded already? Cute,” he teased, but his tone was filled with nothing but warmth.

He kissed you again slow and deep before murmuring against your lips,

“Let’s get you cleaned up, gorgeous.”

Satoru cleaned you up with a level of care that made your heart ache his usual teasing replaced with soft kisses, gentle touches, and whispered praises.

“Still with me, sweetheart?” he murmured, smoothing down your dress and fixing your hair, his blue eyes scanning your face like he was checking for any signs of discomfort.

You nodded, still too dazed to form actual words, and he chuckled, shaking his head.

“God, I wrecked you, huh?” His smirk returned, but his touch remained soft, almost reverent.

Before you could even try to respond, he scooped you up into his arms effortlessly.

“Satoru—”

“Nope, not letting you walk,” he said firmly, pressing a kiss to your temple as he carried you out of the bathroom. “You look too fucked out to stand properly. And besides…” He grinned down at you. “Gotta make sure everyone sees you wrapped up in my jacket, looking all cute and satisfied.”

Your face burned as he carried you back into the party like you were the most precious thing in the world.

Every single head turned.

Gasps. Stares. Murmurs.

Your coworkers exchanged looks, some shocked, some amused.

And his ex?

Nowhere to be seen.

Satoru, on the other hand, was absolutely thriving. He wore his usual cocky grin, his chest puffed out like he had just won the grandest prize of all.

Which, in his eyes, he had.

Because you were his.

And he had just made damn sure everyone knew it.

And in that moment, wrapped up in his arms, surrounded by the warmth of his jacket and the even warmer way he looked at you

As he carried you through the party, past all the stares and whispers, he leaned down, pressing a lingering kiss to your temple before murmuring against your skin

“You know… in this whole damn world, you’re the only one who can bring me to my knees.”

His voice was soft, but his words carried weight, filled with something undeniable.

Because Satoru Gojo the strongest, the untouchable, the man who stood above all

Would willingly fall for you, every single time.

All your insecurities melted away.

[shorthaltsjester]

oh other minuscule moment from the finale that actually gutted me was the moment after the accord were figuring out what cities would welcome the refuges, and matt voiced some random diplomat saying byroden would offer the refugees and laura’s choice to have vex speak up and offer whitestone in response to that but THEN after opal speaking up and being like ! who is from byroden? and idrk if it was intentional on laura’s part but her body language was kind of taken aback like she found the question jarring but then vex still, despite the fact that she hadn’t been the one to speak up for byroden and is acting in her capacity as one of whitestone’s leaders during that moment, does choose to affirm that she’s from byroden. head in hands. twins from byroden save me. save me twins from byroden.

like god it makes me especially insane because vex married the I Live As Long as Whitestone Lives man who cares so deeply about the roots that tie people to the places they come from and the fact that part of percy’s speech to keyleth in that moment points out that the notion of being form nowhere because your home was destroyed is a terrible notion and that vex, who at that point in canon, was from a place that was destroyed always makes me emotional. and then fucking aabria decided to casually mention in exu when they visited byrodin that not only is there a statue to vax and vex but that in their festival there’s a whitestone colourgaurd. and just . listen man. ill start losing it if i think about vex’s growth and the way her role as a diplomatic figure in exandria is sooooo compelling as her like. End Role. bc like. it’s her, this character who struggled with forgiveness consistently, taking on a role that requires her committment to the notion that things can always be repaired if not replaced, and it echoes her personal relationships too; her hometown as a place that holds pieces of whitestone on their celebratory days, syngorn as a place that has seemingly improved its diplomatic role in exandria as vex has also improved her relationship with her father. it just makes me insane man.

[guzmawife]

🍓: he had no job when i met him but now he works at a high school as an errand boy / security (his children attend said school). hes the guy they call in when a real teacher needs to use the bathroom so he can watch the class. or to retrieve some papers from the printer. go get me that thing boy.

🍒: probably just chilling at home with snacks and movies and fast food. or chillen at the beach. 🏝️

🍎: tapu cocoa.. we all know dis.. hot sweet drinks…

🍉: hes not religious other than believing that a higher power exists. hi arceus..

🍑: totally more comfortable giving gifts. hes used to taking care of others so it’s pretty natural for him to be giving. he has no issue receiving but its not rlly a priority since he didnt come from much so hes used to not rlly asking for much.

🍊: i make him peel it. he knows my paws and claws have to stay clean… he’s comfortable with getting dirty and i am not!

🥭: no i domt think so. his dad was a prick and said shit like. Youre not a woman so you dont need those. fuckkkk that guy.

🍍: probably him being mentally manipulated and abused! 😿 killing all the people that taught him he wasn’t anything and made him feel like he had to act out in order to prove himself to others. hhhggffg. he deserves to be loved.

🍌: he likes to be in the dark. das it. no specific reason why.

🍋: he would probably change his hothead nature bc he doesn’t like how quickly he gets upset and makes bad decisions. and his hairline.

🍋‍🟩: he tells people if you squish bugs more will keep showing up. as a joke. heehe. sorry im gonna squish them still im a pussy.. thats probably why they keep showing up though. i have an actual curse. maybe he’s right man…

🍈: he thinks fate is bogus and if you want something to happen you have to make it happen.

🍏: hes bisexual and questioning demisexuality, he learned of his bisexuality through being in denial of liking the same sex and being like. This is ruining my tough guy personality. This can’t be. but then it kept happening and he was like man fuck this whatever. what the hell sure. he became normal. he’s still figuring out the demisexuality, to put it simply he just doesnt want to engage in sexual acts with anyone unless he has a genuine connection to them. it also just feels better for him. sorry for airing out your business Anywayyyyyy. Anyway.

🍐: he’s a nail biter its kinda gross sorry man. his nails are short always so i make him do short nail tasks since my nails are usually pretty long. i think he bounces his legs sometimes too. he knows i hate that shit thou so he tries not to. usually i just leave so he can shake all he wants. then hes like what wait no….

🥝: he would totally let me do his makeup. we’re both pretty lazy when it comes to makeup so we don’t so anything complex. i just do mascara and corner highlights and SOMETIMES lipstick and that’s it. #autistic i cant stand having too much shit ok my face. this isn’t even about me brah. he does simple makeup too since he’s just not super experienced. he just tries things sometimes but he’s not a professional. he just wants to look cool.

🫒: he’s a big hugger he squeezes too tight but it feels good though…. (´ ω `♡) he likes to be hugged too! yey!

🫐: definitely more of an artist he actually keeps a sketchbook. right brained yeah.

🍇: if we never met i think he might still be getting himself into some trouble tbh. he’s pretty stubborn.

🥥: he draws he plays games. he works out. he cooks. i think he would want to get into gardening but his location doesn’t allow for it since it’s always fucking raining.

🍅: i think he would get me testosterone or something that i can’t possibly get safely right now. or like. my own living space. or some rare pokemon card / plush that costs more than an organ online. sigh. or probably 1 billion dollars. muhehw.

🌶️: he drinks ginger ale. ginger ale the ultra cure.

🫚: hes not picky. he cant eat beans bc hes allergic to them. but i dont think hes picky since he has to make sure his kids eat first. so he eats whatevers left from them. leftover amalgamation.

🥕: he didnt like them but he ate them anyway bc his parents were mean :(

🧅: he cries when hes angry like super fuming. and when hes thinking about his past. hes just mad at himself for what happened and how he handled things. Basically. getting manipulated and taken advantage of makes him upset and he cries. he doesnt cry at movies unless he relates to them.

🌽: does bugs counts as animal. He likes dogs. and isopods. and other sea creatures.

🥦: pet peeves are getting called ‘boy’ or ‘kid’. i used to call him boy all the time just by habit and he would Not like that. “I’m not a boy. I’m a man. stop callin me dat…” okaaayyy whatevar. he doesnt have an issue with me calling him dude tho. despite being his lover. which is a little funny. um what else. people not knocking before entering. leaving empty cartons and stuff in the fridge or cabinet. ppl telling him he looks tired. or people calling him old. not that he has an issue with old people (😽) but its like. How did you even reach that conclusion.

🥒: hes afraid of ultra beasts a little.. specifically uh whats its name. nihilego. that bird that i hate. middle finger emoji. hes like. a little more hesitant with UBs than regular mons. he’s also got a fear of getting lost.

🥬: beige flags auumm i hate his ugly fucking sunglasses. and when he says. ya boy (pinches the space between my brows). peeing with the door open. he does that thing where u can feel him looking at you waiting to turn around during the movie so he can kiss you. theres probably more. im very good at complaining.

🫛: he loves to think of new pet names for me to see how i will react. he’d be like. “goodnight honeypie” and id be like “oh…. yeah… 😽” he also likes them too but most of the time i just call him musham or guzma bc i like saying his name. then he’s like. Why dont you call me anything else…. (sad puppy eyes). he likes when i call him mumu or honey. i calll him princess sometimes but its rare. princess is like his top pet name for me. meeooww. sometimes i call him Boss. thats For when. Im teasing Him. That one Makes his Ears turn Red. For special Occasions. meow.

🫑: he’s had a number of near death experiences so he’s pretty afraid of death. he has no lofty life goals. he just wants his family safe. wants to travel too and have good genuine relationships.

🥑: not super niche but cosmetics and nail art. he also likes cooking and insects and drawing. just things he grew to like from being around his family. or trying to distract himself from his own issues.

🍠: he likes to go to the beach and sit listening to the waves (same). he also likes to paint his or others nails when he’s bored. “gimme yer hands i wanna try sumn”. yknow.

🍆: favorite scent is meeeeeee… i kid i kid. probably like. Ugh. baked goods. Sugar smell. Rain smell 👎🏾 i hate rain smell but he likes it. i don’t think he has any specific least favorite smells other than the usual like peepee and caca yknow.

🧄: allergic to beans

🥔: he makes japanese curry a lot. easy to make in large portions for his 75million children. i like rice so he usually makes rice dishes for me. i don’t cook very often but when i do its cultural foods since he doesn’t know those recipes. he likes those. yom. he wants to learn baking but just hasn’t had the chance or motivation.

🍄‍🟫: i think he would wanna be a mewtwo or something. super strong and cool nonchalant. if we’re talking irl mytho creatures, cerberus. that guy cool as shit. #swagger.

this took me three whole days to answer. enjoyable experience rlly made me think. sorry for any typos i used swipe typing for parts of this 😿.

@sylvie-wants-your-dogs hi : )

the ULTIMATE f/o infodumping ask game!

(this is gonna be a long one...)

🍓 - disregarding the career your f/o currently has, what other career would they consider going into, if given the chance?

🍒 - if your f/o and you spend a day doing anything, anything at all, what would they do and why?

🍎 - what's your f/o's favorite drink? any drink, alcoholic or non alcoholic!

🍉 - is your f/o religious? what's their opinion on religion or spirituality?

🍑 - is your f/o more comfortable giving or receiving gifts? why? do they have any preferences on gifts they like receiving?

🍊 - if you asked your f/o to peel an orange for you, what would they do?

🥭 - did your f/o have stuffed animals growing up? do they still have stuffed animals? do they have a favorite?

🍍 - if you could change any one thing about your f/os backstory/character, what would you change? why?

🍌 - does your f/o have a vendetta against The Big Light™? what kind of lighting do they prefer?

🍋 - if your f/o could change one thing about themselves, what would they change and why?

🍋‍🟩 - is your f/o superstitious? is there any habits they follow or quirks they have to follow said superstitions? like not opening umbrellas indoors to avoid back luck?

🍈 - does your f/o believe in fate? do they thing everything is preplanned out by the universe or a higher power, or do they think that the idea of fate is bogus? why?

🍏 - if you have any queer headcanons for your f/o, how did they realize they were queer?

🍐 - does your f/o have any nervous ticks or idle quirks they do? like mindlessly tapping on a desk or fiddling with their hair when they're stressed?

🥝 - would your f/o ever let you do their make-up? what does their make-up process look like? is it simple? complex?

🫒 - what kind of hugger is your f/o? do they give good hugs? do they like hugs? do they like receiving hugs?

🫐 - is your f/o more of a writer or an artist? would you say your f/o is more left or right brained?

🍇 - if you and your f/o never met, what do you think your f/o would be doing right now?

🥥 - what hobbies does your f/o have? is there any hobby they would like to get into that they haven't tried out yet? what is it?

🍅 - if your f/o could buy you any gift in the world, whether it exists or not, what would they buy you? or, if they could make you something, what would it be?

🌶️ - does your f/o have any remedies they follow when they get sick? like taking a shot of whiskey to get rid of a fever?

🫚 - is your f/o a picky eater? is there any foods they will not under any circumstances, gun to their head, eat?

🥕 - when your f/o was little, did they dislike vegetables? do they still dislike them?

🧅 - what makes your f/o cry? do they get emotional at sad movies or books? do they only get emotional under very rare circumstances?

🌽 - does your f/o have a favorite animal? what is it? are they scared of any animals?

🥦 - does your f/o have any pet peeves? things that just really really get on their nerves? what are they and why?

🥒 - what's your f/o afraid of? do they have any phobias? anything minor they're scared of?

🥬 - what are some beige flags your f/o has? so, not bad, but not nessecarily good either. just. "oh. you do This."

🫛 - how does your f/o feel about pet names or nicknames? do they like them? hate them? what are their favorites and least favorites to be called and to use?

🫑 - how does your f/o feel about death? are they afraid of it? is there anything specific they'd like to do before they die?

🥑 - is there any niche topics your f/o is interested in? what are they and why do they like them?

🍠 - what are a few of your f/os favorite pastimes or things that they do when they're bored?

🍆 - does your f/o have a favorite scent? why is it their favorite? do they have a least favorite scent?

🧄 - does your f/o have any allergies? food or otherwise?

🥔 - does your f/o have any food dishes they make often? is there any foods you make for your f/o that they enjoy?

🍄‍🟫 - if your f/o could be any mythological species, what would they be? if your f/o is already a mythological species, would they ever want to be human?

I recommend practicing reblog karma ! people love infodumping about their f/os :) I also recommend sending more than one emoji at a time,,, there are Many here...!!!

[daydreamgoddess14]

What's it take to get your number?

What's it take to bring you home?

Here she is! My first Bucky fic (😬)

From my Valentine's Lovebomb event, this one is for Emily 💜

Bucky Barnes x F!Reader insert, no use of y/n, no applicable warnings - just some cute fluff while I dip my toe into another fandom.

Masterlist

Of all of the things Yelena had talked you into, this was undoubtedly the worst.

And she had, of course, talked you into some truly awful shit.

If she could see you now, scowling into your margherita, she’d probably throw something at you.

Hey! Smile a little, huh?

As it happens, the thought of it does make you smile.

She's been good to you since you met. Being Valentina's PA was often an utterly thankless existence. The way she'd collected up Yelena, Alexei, John Walker and the others had been admirable.

Adding Bucky Barnes into the mix had been a goddamn coup.

They mostly went about their business as instructed and paid you little to no attention, but Yelena had spotted you still working away late into the night just before Christmas. She'd disappeared and returned twenty minutes later with cartons of Cantonese food which she insisted you shared.

Since then, a tentative friendship had blossomed between you both.

At the bar, there’s plenty of small talk going on in the background. Lots of organising.

The tables have been arranged loosely in a grid with plenty of space between them to move around.

Not that you have to move anywhere.

The instructions have been made very clear.

Yelena read them out with such glee, you suggested that she go instead.

So you sit, and you wait… then they ring a bell and the men come in and also sit down, yes? Hmm… says you have five minutes. Seems not long enough? Then bell goes again and you stay in your seat. The men move around and you have more handsome men to talk to! Fun, right?

Oh yes. Great fun. So much fun.

Next time Yelena suggests speed dating, you’re going to drag her kicking and screaming with you.

You steal a glance at the time, only a few minutes until the shitshow kicks off.

You signal the waiter for another drink, god knows you need it.

A couple of deep, cleansing breaths and the bell goes.

The noise and activity around you does distract you.

You glance around quickly at the couple of people around you, the beautiful women in their barely there dresses, poker straight hair and lashes so long they could be used as a fan.

You’ve made an effort, of course.

A certain blonde pain in your ass made sure of it.

This top, this skirt, these shoes.

She threw them at you.

Girl, the skirt has pockets!

The woman at the table next to you looks completely underwhelmed by her first five minute attendee.

Her eyes wide and her mouth in a fixed line.

The poor guy loosens his tie nervously.

A tie? Yikes.

He seems uncomfortable, clearly aware of the unfavorable impression he's making.

You’re almost transfixed by the car crash about to unfold in front of you.

This has got to be more entertaining than your date, right?

This is the shit you could watch all night long.

A low cough alerts you to your own car crash.

You steel yourself, a fake smile already in place.

“Hey,” he says.

The smile begins to slip.

You know that voice.

Why do you know that voice?

How do you know that voice?

By the time you actually look at him, the smile is long gone.

“Oh fuck.” It could be a whisper. It could be a squeak.

Either way, it’s barely audible so of course he heard it.

“Fancy seeing you here,” he grins, slightly incredulously.

“What are you doing here, Bucky?”

“Same as you, apparently.”

“Did you follow me?”

“Why the hell would I follow you?”

“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. Did Yelena put you up to this? I’m going to fucking kill -”

“She didn’t put me up to anything,” he held up his hands in surrender. “And, I’d like to see you try,” he adds disparagingly.

He’s not wrong.

“So, why are you here?”

“Sam thought it would be a good idea. He says I’m too introspective.”

“Nice. He’s such a good friend,” you bite back.

“Right? He’s got enough charm for both of us.”

“So you don’t want to be here either?”

“Does it look like it?” He frowned.

“Fine. So we sit in silence until you can move on.” You tell him sternly, reaching for your drink and taking a long gulp. You signal the waiter again for another.

He scoffed and shook his head.

“I’m not sitting in silence. Sam says I should talk more, so let's talk,” he declares, and you just roll your eyes at his stubbornness.

“What the hell is there to even talk about?” you ask, “you literally have no idea who I am?”

Bucky seems undeterred by your attitude.

“What kind of books do you like?” he asks casually. “What kind of… seriously?” You eye him suspiciously.

“Yeah, you’ve always got your head in a book. You say I don't know who you are but I've seen you. Recommending stuff to Yelena - not to me, though - so what do you like to read?” He leaned forward on the table, making it wobble.

“Anything,” you mutter with a sigh, “everything, really. The classics, fantasy, thrillers, romance.” He nods along as you speak. “What about you?” You ask hesitantly.

“I’ve been reading the classics lately, actually,” he admits.

“Oh sure,” you roll your eyes.

“Hey, it’s true. I just finished Pride and Prejudice.”

“And did you enjoy it?” As you ask your question, the bell rings out.

“Gentlemen, time to move on to the next table please,” the organiser calls out.

“Hold that thought, doll. Guess I’ll see you around?” He stood, waiting patiently for the man in the tie to move along.

The woman at the neighboring table suddenly seems thrilled with her new date. Bucky offers her a smile, and she responds with a giggle.

He takes his seat at the next table, but instead of engaging with his new date, he leans back over to you.

“I loved it. I like the chemistry between Elizabeth and Darcy and the layers of their relationship. It’s probably my favourite romance.”

The woman next to you looks a little put out.

“Your favourite romance? Which others have you read?” You can’t help but ask.

The man directly across from you is growing increasingly annoyed, watching the conversation unfold with a sense of irritation, like he's watching a tense tennis match.

“I liked it more than Jane Eyre, and Wuthering Heights.”

A small, surprised smile curves up the corner of your mouth as Bucky continues to ignore his next date.

“Uhh, excuse me?” she interjected, her voice laced with irritation.

“Sorry ma’am, I’ll just be a minute.” Bucky calmly replies, not breaking eye contact with you.

“I’m not a fan of Wuthering Heights either, I tried to be in my tortured youth.” You admit.

He laughs and it’s… magical.

“Any others you’d recommend?”

“North and South -”

“Gaskell?” He confirms, you nod. He mirrors your nod, a small smirk crossing his face.

“Yeah, another brooding gentleman and headstrong woman.”

“Huh, sounds familiar.”

“It does, doesn’t it?”

Meanwhile, your new date grows increasingly impatient, tapping on the table incessantly, while Bucky's date becomes frantic as she attempts to catch the organiser's attention.

The man at your own table finally interjects, addressing Bucky directly.

“Excuse me, buddy, you're supposed to move on after five minutes, you know?”

“Sorry man, just seeing where this goes,” he shrugs before looking back at you. “Got any newer recommendations? Feels like I’m… stuck in the past sometimes,” he grins lopsidedly.

“Romance, or something else?”

“Let’s stick with romance,” he leans in with his elbows on his knees.

“Try Emily Henry,” you tell him as your new drink arrives.

“Excuse me sir, you do need to move on?” The waiter insists as he carefully places your drink down.

Bucky sighs, turning back in his seat to face his actual date.

“Finally, I might be able to grab a quick minute before the bell goes -” your date starts with a smile.

“Emily Henry, huh? Book Lovers author? I saw it but didn’t pick it up,” Bucky leans over again.

“I’ve got a copy, I’ll bring it over.”

“That’s great, thanks.”

“And North and South, too?” You ask.

“I look forward to it.”

“Excuse me!” Your date interjects loudly.

You look down at the table with a blush as Bucky turns away again.

“So, how long have you been single?” You hear your date ask as the bell goes again.

“And move on again please, gentlemen.” The organiser smiles.

Your date does so, following Bucky with an angry frown.

With another table between you, you assume that’s your additional ‘date’ with Bucky over and turn to greet your next date.

Now, from three tables away, Bucky calls down the row to you.

“Hey, doll, there’s a new bookstore opened by Sam’s place. We should check it out?”

You nod to placate him while disgruntled voices around you mutter and curse his interruptions.

The bell rings again and everyone moves on once more.

From five tables away he asks about the recipe for the pasta dish you made for lunch with Yelena last week.

From seven tables away he shouts to ask whether you saw the last episode of Traitors.

“That is enough, sir. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave,” the organiser says with exasperation at the next bell.

“But we're getting along so well,” he protests as two waiters try to lead him to the door.

Giving up, he gives you a half shrug and a wave.

“See ya later, kid.”

He leaves without further disruption.

You turn back to your latest date but your enthusiasm has left the building with Bucky.

Despite the tedious hour that follows, no conversation manages to match the level of engagement you experienced in your initial encounter.

You had been under the distinct impression that he had no idea who you were. Of all of them, Yelena was the only one who made an effort. Alexei occasionally pulled you into conversation, usually when he needed an additional body on his side in an argument, but Bucky walked past your desk almost daily without a word or a glance.

You couldn't help but wonder why he chose tonight, of all evenings, to engage with you.

He could have ignored Sam's suggestion to attend. He could have ignored you completely.

You'd given him an out, offered to sit in silence.

His casual comment to your second date echoed in your mind: “Sorry man, just seeing where this goes.”

Those simple words had hinted at a deeper curiosity or interest, beyond just passing time at a speed dating event.

It had been both impressive and frustrating to see the usually stoic Bucky calling across tables, asking you questions about your job, how long you'd worked for Valentina, with an animated excitement that seemed to be reserved solely for you.

The organiser called time and you wrapped your coat tightly around you, the mid-February nights were cold and you were ready for bed.

You shot Yelena a brief text, letting her know you had arrived home safe and sound, choosing to leave her hanging when it came to details about the event.

After a fitful night, you arrived at the office the following morning, books safely nestled in your bag.

Yelena is parked at your desk, her feet casually propped up as if she'd taken permanent residency.

She raised an inquiring eyebrow.

“So, did you find the love of your life?”

“I'm never doing that again,” you warn with a pointed finger in her direction.

“Really?” A familiar voice behind you asks. “And here I thought you had a good time.”

You turn around to see Bucky standing there, his gaze fixed on you with a cheeky smile.

Yelena can barely contain her excitement, her grin widening even further.

Her feet hit the floor with a thud as she eagerly joins the conversation, eyes darting between the two of you. She turns first to Bucky.

“Wait, you were there?” Her question laced with disbelief.

Bucky shrugged nonchalantly, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to have attended a speed dating event.

“Yeah, and?” He asked, his indifference only increasing Yelena's excitement.

“You went speed dating?” She asks incredulously. He doesn't look at her as he answers, he looks only at you.

“I went speed dating.” He confirms.

“And all you got were book recommendations?” You add, reaching into your bag to hand him the two books.

“Well I was kinda hoping I got a little more than that,” Bucky smirks, his expression filled with a hint of mischief.

Yelena's eyes widened, her gaze darting back and forth between you and Bucky.

“Wait, what's this? What's with you two?”

“I mean, I did think you were scared of me-” he began.

“You don't scare me,” you cut in firmly.

His smile widened further.

“Good to know.”

Yelena watches the exchange with wide eyes.

“This is so weird,” she mumbles to herself.

“So, you think you'll do it again?" You ask him brazenly.

Bucky grins at your bold question.

“Maybe,” he muses before adding with a twinkle in his eye, “but only if you're there.”

FIN

[hitlikehammers]

Rockstar!Eddie Leaves What He Had With Steve Behind in Hawkins 💔 to Chase His Dreams 🎸

(so why is it that he’s back in Steve’s bed Hawkins every couple months for ‘very pressing reasons’ that are straining Steve’s heart honestly anything but? 🫤❤️‍🩹🥺)

NOTE: this was originally a fill from @eddiemunsonbingo AGES ago, and I’m only bringing it over here NOW because something for the @steddielovemonth is going to be posted soon that is a standalone in its universe, but also very much a sequel to it ♥️

Steve really does try not to think about it in terms of…time.

Maybe that’s foolish. It’s mostly denial. Lots of it isn’t reliable anyway: the score his body keeps isn’t accurate, war-time left over from too many near-misses with a fucking alternate dimension but the popping in his joints and the ringing in his ears and the white hair he pulled out of his scalp and stared blankly at in the sink for a good twenty minutes: those are real things, but they don’t chart the passage of days, of hours, months and fucking years with any real meaning.

It’s been four years. Roughly. Depending on what the start point is. Whether it’s that Spring Break. Whether it���s the first winter. Or the spring after, when Robin begged him to go with her—there’s still time. She still begs, because they still talk given the thread inside them stays tied unbreakable to one another, oblivious to miles between. Maybe it’s measuring from the graduations, the kids—only Erica’s left at Hawkins High, now, though Steve gets calls from the whole bunch of them, Eleven the most, which was maybe surprising, then it’s a good split between Dustin and Will, another surprise. Max calls enough but her calls are calls, with a weight most of the others lack. Lucas’s calls aren’t super frequent but always long, mostly because he talks around the point forever, whatever the point happens to be. Even Mike usually ends up on the other end of the line once a month. It’s…that could be where the time starts from.

Or it could be the summer, that first summer. The one that taught Steve what it was to have a heart just to fucking break it.

Could be that. Impossible to say.

(It’s been 3 years, 7 months, and 14 days. Steve had only counted in retrospect, in the wreckage left behind, because while he’d known there was a deadline in it, to it all, he’d thought he could be enough. That he could change a mind. He’d thought…

Foolish things. Bullshit. Didn’t matter. Could be any fucking date.)

But since the point's come up, and it’s front of Steve’s mind, his least favorite (most favorite) place to find it: he hadn’t expected it. Robin liked to say she saw the signs but. Steve hadn’t watched it happen in slow motion because there wasn’t a single goddamn slow thing about it. Which was…for whatever it was worth, Steve knew falling fast and hard and with everything he was had maybe failed him every time, thus far, but at least he knows that for him?

That means it’s real. He’s all in. He might not be met equal on the other side of the equation—hadn’t been yet, maybe wouldn’t be ever, but he wasn’t having any luck trying to fucking change that fact so, learning to work with what he had was the best he could do. And he had love. He’d never been able to name it to himself so far: not before, and certainly never since. But.

Figuring out the sexuality thing had been a not-bathroom-but-definitely-floor talk on the shitty Family Video carpet sometime around November of ‘85. Slow days, idle comments, and Robin’s suspiciously-but-reliably-gentle-when-the-need-was-dire hand to his shoulder to say no, no: actually wanting to kiss people of any gender wasn’t really…the default Steve had always expected it had to be. How could anyone look at, say, Harrison Ford and not think, oh yeah, I would at least suck his face?

Turned out probably at least half the people on the planet. As in the straight guys and the lesbians. Steve had spent the majority of three days on that disgusting fucking carpet, open to close, popping up to ask Robin if she was sure because what about—

She was sure. And eventually, through a couple of needs for deep breathing and a handful of assurances that it was okay to cry—he appreciated that, but he kept the crying to his room after these long-ass shifts and if Robin stayed for some of those times, that was because she was half his head, half his heart, and she knew what he was going to do sometimes before he did.

They did end up on the floor of his bathroom, a clean one for once, at one point. Maybe because they both held to tradition. Maybe because Steve had largely come to terms with the mindfuck of yet another piece of his world, his self unravelling and rewriting itself, and thought the vodka in his dad’s liquor cabinet was a good way to celebrate. The label was entirely in Russian and Robin had been practicing on hers, said she was pretty sure it was the good shit.

Sometimes you can drink enough of the best shit on an empty stomach, though, and still spew the whole of it up.

Steve sometimes does think he drinks his dad’s best liquor that way on purpose, though. Delightful going down and yeah, it sucks to chuck it up but. The idea that it’s ultimately wasted feels…right.

Anyway: Steve had settled with it all by New Year's, and while he’d hosted the rugrats who could only blabber about their latest campaign with their epic DM, and he’d kissed Robin when the clock turned, well. It felt like a new start, a fresh page.

Something that had the chance at being a good thing.

And nothing much happened in the two-and-a-half-months that followed save for finally catching a glimpse of the D&D god who ran their little club while he was idling in his car to pick up the shitheads, this legendary DM who did not make Steve jealous one tiny bit and who was cool and was edgy and was so fuckin’ cool, Steve, did we tell you got cool he is?! and Steve had said language as monotone as he could before he squinted as out came all the metal and the ink and he’d said your club president dude is Eddie goddamn Munson and he should have kept his mouth shut because the amount of talking that ensued left him with a headache the size of Montana; but.

That was really all that happened until about…mid-March.

Then Spring Break happened.

It could be argued Eddie and Steve grew close enough to pass the acquaintances benchmark, ended up as at least tentative friends on top of necessary battle mates as early as the Upside Down. Whatever reason Eddie gave, he jumped in after Steve. Whatever speech Steve landed on, he didn’t want Dustin orEddie hurt.

It could be argued Steve wasn’t paying attention and didn’t stop in time and landed in the land of Tentative Friends You Wouldn’t Mind Added Benefits With after the…at least after the way Eddie leaned in close and his lips we so red and he called Steve big boy and…

Yeah.

When Steve carries what may or may not be Eddie’s still fucking corpse out of the Upside Down—he can’t tell, every time he tries to check again his own heart's too loud, his own breaths too shaky—but by then, they’re family. Bound in blood. Steve would die for him, like the others. He won’t let him die, if he can fucking help it.

Between him and Max, Steve almost crashes, breaks. Steve’s there when Max’s fingers twitch and he laughs with tears in his eyes and hands over hands and tells her he loves her and he’s sorry and he’s there, tries to talk around the letter he opened and resealed without evidence because Steve knows some tricks too, okay, and her words had broken him but now he could live up to what she thought she was leaving behind, could make sure she had every goddamn thing she thought she was giving up in spades, to roll around in in abundance. He was going to take care of her, whatever she needed. Whatever it took.

Her lips had quirked and the doctors called coincidence, don’t get your hopes up but; Steve knew Max. That was all her.

And there were more tears, he let her fucking feel them; he fucking hoped she’d notice, and remember, and give him so much shit.

Eddie takes longer, pulls out of the woods enough to exhale a few days later, and the way Steve slips out to find the hospital chapel, the only goddamn place he won’t be found by anyone he knows, and bawls his goddamn eyes out?

It’s family, and it’s love because it’s family but…it’s been so quick. It’s been intense, and that probably speeds it along but…

Shit. Shit.

That’s when Steve knows he sets a new goddamn record for himself and falls hard and heavy and stupidin, like, a week and change. Jesus Christ.

It’s in the recovery that they build something though. Something that’s not trauma or terror or the threat of imminent death. Steve spends most of his hours between two hospital rooms listening to progress reports and taking notes and the kids gravitate toward Max—Dustin would have been the outlier but Steve knows he’s not ready, and so he gives his own updates just to his brother when he drives him home after visiting hours—but that means Steve’s Eddie’s most common conversation partner. They talk about bullshit. Steve defends a-ha to the last breath he has. Eddie’s rendered speechless for a second and then frantic when challenged to pick his favorite band. Again when it’s his favorite song, from his favorite band. And again when it’s his favorite song of any song, ever at all. Steve's heart swells in the watching. He’s foolish enough to bask in the glittering of Eddie’s eyes when Steve indulges in talking, scene by scene as guided by the master in the bed beside him, about what his opinions on Star Wars really were. And then guided by no one, just invited to share what his opinions are on the last movie he saw and loved: which was Weird Science, the last movie he watched in a theatre because he and Robin had gone to face their fear or some shit after Starcourt and it was easier than he’d expected. Eddie listens, and nods, and asks if they can rent it when he’s out, before making sure to add  but you should really have a new choice like, eight months later, man, you work at a video store.

Steve was mostly just focused on Eddie more than implying, of his own volition, that he wanted to have a movie night.

Eddie’s released before Max, largely for mobility reasons, so they both go to visit her now. Robin’s put on the night shift when they schedule their movie night and Steve immediately moves to reschedule but she says no, she’s seen it, make Eddie suffer this time. So it’s just them.

They sit closer than they have to, on the couch.

And it’s little things that build from there. Max’s physical therapy is a government secret, like some fancy space-age protocol that has real hopes to put her on her feet again so she needs a ride, and while they could take turns, Steve and Eddie just take turns as to which vehicle they hop into to drive her. They stay when she needs them—not when she asks because she’s Max and she never asks—but it ends up three days a week back and forth and during: together.

And a lot of nights, for a movie or a smoke or a nightmare or a pulled stitch before they’re all taken out: together.

And shifts where Steve doesn’t even bother to bring his own lunch because Eddie Munson, unpredictable and wholly forgetful super-super senior—who Nancy and Hopper and most of all Joyce convinced the School would be finishing his final senior year at home save for tests, and only that once he was cleared by his doctors—that Eddie Munson brought Steve something every single time he worked. A burger, a chili dog, chicken fucking nuggets. A PB&J clearly homemade and cut diagonal.

So yeah. It starts out how it does when Steve’s in trouble. But it builds like…Steve’s never known before.

They kiss in May. Maybe so that it’s not their first, and a total cliche, when Steve kisses him for graduation behind the bleachers.

The sleep together after graduation, high on the thrill of it, and that’s maybe a cliche but Steve could not give a shit less.

And then they're EddieandSteve, only to find out they have been for a while; and this is just something a little deeper, a little bit more.

In ways that mean everything.

Looking back, Steve knows Eddie never minced words about his plan to leave Hawkins in the fall. With a mixtape and a prayer if I have to, Stevie-boy, he’d said once even, and Steve had laughed.

He’d fucking laughed.

So he’d known.

But July bleeds into August and Steve…Steve’s in love, okay, for real in a way that he’s never felt before. Right in a way he’s never felt before. He kinda just…overlooks it. Because Eddie seems to be at least on the same wavelength. Touches him first, reaches for him first: wants him. Looks at him with not just desire or attraction but…something no one’s ever looked at Steve with before.

And so he hopes. More than hopes.

But when Eddie starts packing, Steve can’t breathe.

He buys a set of luggage and goes home to start the same, has half of his not-excessive possessions shoved in when he realizes:

He’s not invited. Eddie’s never asked him to come.

Looking back, he’s afraid he wasted too much of those last weeks. Scared of giving too much away, the hurt from so many sides and the heartache that’s already taking root, but also: the way he clings, but tries not to make it obvious.

Fuck; but of course it was gonna be obvious, and how much energy did he waste, how many opportunities slipped by, because Steve was trying not to give away that Eddie leaving—to get away from a town that hated him, to try and make a real go with his music, to be anywhere without Steve so he could live out the dreams that predated Steve, that Steve had no place in—to try not to give away that all of it; it’d fucking destroy him.

Steve doesn’t know, to this day, how he stood and let Eddie kiss him breathless out the driver-side window, how he waved until Eddie was out of sight. He doesn’t know.

Kind of like he doesn’t know how he fucking keeps doing it.

Eddie throws tapes to every radio station with Van Halen or other top-played bands written on the insert in sharpie like that gives nothing away, and sneaks a demo in every underpaid delivery boy’s hands to record executives as he drives to the West Coast, sends Steve postcards what seems like has to be every goddamn day, filled up with his rambling until there’s no space left, has to draw lines around Steve’s address to make it clear where the damn thing’s going lest it get confused. Like they’re SteveandEddie still. Like only…only the things that changed after graduation are gone.

Steve sobs after about a month of it all, grateful and resentful, hateful and still so goddamn full of love it’s sickening. Literally, it makes him feel nauseous. He…

He keeps every postcard.

When one of them comes to say some idiot in San Francisco accidentally played Corroded Coffin on what’s apparently an important station, and Eddie got a letter in response from one of the labels, he says he’s coming back for the boys, they need to be ready. Steve knows he’s not one of the boys, but.

Eddie wouldn’t have told Steve he was coming if it wouldn’t matter to Steve. And maybe Eddie wasn’t in love with him anymore, maybe never was in love with him.

But he’d be lying if he said he thought Eddie didn’t love him. In a different way. A…you-don’t-get-to-come-with-me-but-I’d-still-want-to-see-you-when-I-stop-back kind of way.

And Steve…Steve’s not a fucking monk or anything. But even Robin doesn’t try to push him when he finally just tells her what he feels, lovesick and pathetic as it is:

I gave everything I had to someone else, and it’d be different if I wanted to back, to give again, but…I don’t.

I don’t want it back, not from him. Not if any part of him, wants to keep any part of it.

And because she’s Robin, she knows he means something else when he says ‘it’. And because she’s Robin? She’d push if she thought it was worth it.

She just holds him, and that’s really the best thing he could ask for.

But it becomes a thing. The boys go with Eddie, and they record new shit to impress...whoever. And they do. They come back for Halloween, because Eddie loves it. The label’s dragging its feet, but they’re not deterred, they’re energized. They come back for Thanksgiving because Wayne loves it—except he doesn’t, Steve knows that, Wayne actually hates trying to make a bird and Eddie had lamented more than once that they ended up with lunchmeat cut into cubes one year when Wayne was particularly frustrated with the process. They go out East, and try a few studios in New York. They come back for Christmas.

Eddie spends most of his time with Steve. Steve doesn’t fucking fight that; wants it…like…

There’s nothing to compare how he wants it to. Nothing exists that fits.

Eddie spends most of the time that he spends with Steve, though?

In Steve’s bed.

And here’s the thing: Steve had a decent amount of experience to compare to, but once they’d fallen into a rhythm, got past the awkward bits, the learning curve? Sex with Eddie had been a goddamn revelation. Not just because he was a man—after he’d left, Steve had forced himself to try, and dispelled that possibility quick as hell—and now?

Now, it’s like they never stopped. Every fucking time, it’s like they never stopped.

Steve’s not surprised in the slightest that he remembers every give and tell of Eddie’s body—of course he goddamn does—but that Eddie doesn’t miss a beat in touching, sucking, licking, worshippingSteve’s? That’s insane. That’s…

Unexpected. Every time it’s unexpected and every time Steve’s shown he wasn’t forgotten when he probably should have been. Eddie’s building a life that doesn’t include him.

He’ll only get in the way.

But Steve is selfish and stubborn and maybe it’s often, like almost strangely so, but it’s only a week or two at a go so he tells himself he’s allowed. He tells himself that it felt like making love in the beginning because Steve was in love, and that it still feels exactly the same because Steve…Steve never stopped.

Steve is still just as goddamn in love.

So yeah. Steve sleeps with Eddie and it’s like…it’s like rationed air. He gets a regular taste and he gets to keep breathing.

And it’s okay. Probably more then. Because he gets Eddie—even a little bit. Even just in scraps. When he has Eddie?

He has him, even for moments that were never made to last.

It’s Easter, this time. The band put out their first record in January. It’s doing really well. Eddie’s over the moon. Someone called about a magazine cover for a publication in Cleveland that’s apparently kind of a big deal, Alt..something. Steve will buy every copy in a fucking 100-mile radius. 200 miles. 500—

It’s Easter. Eddie didn’t lament not celebrating it after Spring Break in ‘86 but he’s back every year now. And if it’s just…come to mean something, or maybe did then and circumstances won out against it? Steve will be here. Steve will be comfort and a reprieve or a hot as hell romp with a familiar body, Steve will…

Yeah. Steve will do whatever’s needed. Wanted. Anything.

Pathetic.

But so much better than nothing.

Case in point: they’re both naked, sweat mostly dried, sharing a joint and it’s comfortable. It’s quiet and gentle and put up against sitting alone on a weeknight, not with Eddie?

It’s heaven.

“So when’s the dream happening?”

Steve looks cross-eyed toward his lips; he hasn’t smoked this thing long enough to have heard wrong. He squints up at Eddie, whose chest he’s laid out on, confused. Offers him the smoke but he waves it away.

“The dream?” Steve asks finally, when Eddie doesn’t seem to want to answer on his own.

Eddie looks at him weird. Not weird for its own sake but like: like he’s staring into him, and then like he’s disbelieving, but then also like he’s seeing him for the first time.

That kind of weird.

“Getting the fuck out of here,” Eddie answers like it’s obvious. “White picket fence. Little nuggets.” He spreads his hands as wide as possible without tossing Steve from where he lies. “See the sights.”

And Steve’s response is immediate. Doesn’t even require a thought.

He laughs. Like, ugly-laughs.

“Man,” he shakes his head as he catches his breath, and passes the joint off this time with purpose, not an offer or a choice as he snorts a little; “that’s not the dream.”

When Eddie doesn’t grab the smoke, Steve finally looks up. Eddie…

Eddie looks like what Steve’s always struggled to understand the word ‘poleaxed’ to mean. He thinks it might be this.

He looks…like something stuck him through the gut. Slapped him silly across the face.

“What d’ya mean?” And it’s just three words, one that’s a cheat, and he says it slow enough to take an age.

Steve breathes out, and then, if he’s gonna be honest, and if he has to keep holding the damn thing anyway, decides to take another drag before speaking:

“Figured out what the dream was, inside the dream,” Steve says, wondering if he’ll get away with the vagary; knowing he won’t.

“All we see or seem?” Eddie jokes a little, but it falls flat, his tone eerily kinda…strained but hollow.

“I like poetry.” Steve smiles up at him, soft, and offers the joint again straight to Eddie’s lips. He takes it this time.

“It was about family. It was about stability, not,” Steve shakes his head, stops talking half-assed around the lungful he’s holding, and lets it out slow; “not in a place, fuck, not in a house, but,” a person he doesn’t say, but he hears it in his head; “it was about sharing it.”

And that's it. That’s the simplest, most straightforward truth. Steve doesn’t think there’s anything complicated, or offensive in it. Hard to swallow. Even if he’s come to terms with it. Is mostly at peace with it.

Which is why it’s weird, that Eddie feels suddenly rigid beneath him.

So Steve turns, and braces his hand on Eddie's chest for balance, and frowns when he doesn’t even have to push down to feel the way his heart’s a fucking riot.

“What?” Steve asks, gentle; Eddie’s face is a portrait of conflict, of distress and Steve can’t fucking figure out why, they just came like four times between them and are sharing some very nice Cali weed—they’re nestled close, they’re together, it’s…

Eddie’s quiet, his breath disconcertingly steady for how his pulse pounds, and then he breathes out slow before covering his face:

“I don’t think I can fuck this up any worse than I already have, so,” he mutters, dejected for reasons Steve can’t even guess, then he laughs, humorless, shakes his head:

“Let me try, I guess.”

Steve frowns, uncomprehending, until:

“I’ve been in love with you forever.”

Steve thinks the world stops. His heart does, at least. Suspended. Silent so he doesn’t miss a syllable.

“And I told myself,” Eddie bites at his lip, worries at the bottom swell; “end of that summer, from the very first, I said: don’t ask him to come with you, even if it breaks your heart,” and oh god, oh god after all this time: Steve doesn’t think he’s projecting to hear the genuinely broken heart in those words for just remembering.

“Don’t ask him to settle, you’re not even in the same universe of what he wants,” fuck, what lies Eddie’s saying; did he believe them? Has he always—“what he needs.”

But Eddie is everything he needs, always was, will always be—

“You’ll never have the picket fence. You can’t give him his nuggets. You should never be trusted to park a Winnebago.”

They could have had a shitty studio apartment. They could have had the kids in college. They could have run the BMW until it died, or sold it to put toward a better van for equipment. They could have—

“You’re selfish, Munson, you’re a rat fucking bastard but,” Eddie’s still going, heart still hammering under Steve’s touch even as Eddie swallows hard and fails to smile, looks ill with the attempt like it hurts to try: “you love him too much for that.”

Oh. Oh god.

“It didn’t break my heart, though,” Eddie clears his throat and glances away, to the ceiling, eyes too bright: oh fuck; “broke my goddamn soul,” and a tear falls, and Steve can’t help but wipe it away, and kiss the track. Even just once.

So he does.

“When I saw you again that first time back,” Eddie starts again, voice rougher and shakier as he reaches a hand for Steve’s. “I could have asked the boys to fly out, the execs offered, but,” and this time, the attempt to grin is more successful, like a weight’s lifted from it: “and you smiled at me, it felt like,” and when he shakes his head this time it’s for disbelief, but the kind that comes with awe; “and when we slotted back together like we’d never been apart, it was…”

Eddie’s voice trails, but it cracks at the end—Steve doesn’t know which does more to stop his words.

He’s grateful, relieved, when they come back. He’s powerless but to give when Eddie touches his cheek so gentle and breathes:

“And I had to tell myself again, and again,” he murmurs, stroking Steve’s skin like he’s precious: “you love him too much to take his dream away from him.”

“What did it matter?” Steve can’t help but ask, no malice in it, just the need to understand. “You had your dream, you have—“

They have a contract. They have an album climbing the charts. They’re not just on their way—they’re there. The only next step is to get bigger, and bigger, and—

“Dreams within dreams, wasn’t it?” Eddie murmurs close to Steve’s cheek, where maybe he’s pressing to be close, or maybe he’s hiding a little, so Steve strokes his hair because he can either way and relishes how Eddie leans, melts into it like always. “Inside the dream?”

Steve nods, more to encourage more words. More Eddie.

“Break my dream open and there’s you with me, every step,” Eddie whispers, his lips warm on Steve’s skin. “Break my heart open, same damn thing,” and that causes Steve to shudder, and his heart to pick up now, too. “Both just kinda crumble if you take out the center.”

Steve can’t quite believe what he’s hearing. Wants to. Doesn’t think they’re lies. It’s just, he…

“Those,” Steve tries to speak but his voice cracks; he clears his throat and kicks his lips while he tucks Eddie into his neck, under his chin: “those would be good lyrics.”

“No,” Eddie shakes his head and nuzzles Steve’s throat with the motion and this can’t be happening.

This can’t be happening, can it?

“No, those words were only ever meant just for you.”

And Eddie kisses the pulse point close to his mouth and holds there, like a sentry and a miser, and holy shit.

Holy shit.

“And I don’t know,” Eddie’s saying more, but it’s pitchy, thready, like he’s barely holding the words together at all; “I don’t know if it’s nostalgia, or convenience, or routine,” his voice breaks again and the sob’s in the word when it comes even if it’s not streaming down on his cheeks: “pity,” and no, no, not fucking ever, how—

“I was never your dream then, and I don’t even know if I can be your inside-dream now, and,” Eddie’s rambling, and he does that when he’s desperate, when he’s overwhelmed and overfull with feeling—and Steve knows that. Steve knows that about him.

Steve knows. Better than he knows himself, Steve still knows him.

“I just want the world for you,” Eddie whispers, stroking up and down Steve’s jaw; “my sweetheart. My sunshine,” he smiles so real and soft and Steve melts, like the heart in his chest starts spilling through his ribs, warm and liquid: “you deserve more than the world, more than fuckin’ me and I,” Eddie shakes his head again, more this time like he’s stopping himself, like it’s a defense mechanism and Steve reaches for his cheeks, broad palms on either side to hold him still because…he doesn’t want Eddie to stop.

Ever.

“Did I ruin it?” Eddie breathes, and barely at that, eyes so wide and swimming and oh, god; “did I—"

And Steve can’t help it. He can’t help but kiss him with all he’s got, even if it couldn’t be all Eddie’s worth in all the world. Steve can’t contain all that Eddie’s worth.

But he can give everything, because this is the man who already has it.

“What the hell was I supposed to be to a rockstar?” Steve tries to talk through his own tight throat, his own growing smile, his own threat of tears bubbling close to the surface. “How the fuck was I ever going to measure up, ever do anything but hold you back when you could have—“

“I come back to you, for you,” Eddie answers immediate; it’s not what Steve’s asking but he won’t lie and say he didn’t want to know, at least a little. “The handful of times I’ve tried,” Eddie shakes his head once now, definitive; “I have always left my everything with you.”

The idea that Steve’s spent all this time feeling empty, and hollow, and missing the best of himself where it lived in the man he loved—the idea he was wrong, that they both were so fucking wrong is…insanity.

“I had a bag half packed.”

Steve doesn’t need to explain further. The noise Eddie makes is pure pain.

“Baby,” he nearly croons, falls into Steve somehow closer, wraps him up tighter; “I wanted to kidnap you in the night.”

“I sobbed in my bed after you were out of sight.”

“I pulled over before the town sign, because I couldn’t see the goddamn road.”

And Steve…Steve doesn’t really have a decision to make about what he says next. What dream he wants; always has.

“I never got rid of the luggage.”

And Eddie hears everything he says in those words, because after everything, Eddie Munson knows him, and…yeah.

Steve’s been kissed in a lot of ways before. By this man in particular, even.

But this: if leaving broke Eddie’s soul, if somehow the lack of Steve somehow did that?

This is…this is the body meeting another body, heart to heart and tasting the way a soul slides back in place. It's Eddie’s hands in his hair like hell never let go and he’s happy about the idea; blissful for it, even. It’s—beyond anything Steve’s ever known. So: yeah.

It’s not a decision. It’s just a fucking given.

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[angstywaifu]

Black Dahlia - 33. An Unlikely Hero

Summary: Celebrations for Reunification Day are well under way. But it's not a day for all to celebrate. Something a certain family member makes sure she doesn't forget.

Garrick Tavis x OC (Dahlia Aetos)

Black Dahlia Masterlist | Masterlist | Support Me

The party was now in full swing, the crowd a mix of pale blue, cream, navy blue and black. The one time of year all the Quadrants interact in celebration of our win over the rebellion. I wave at Austin, Liz and Kai who are with the rest of our squad. I want more than anything to go join them, but I’m stuck with Dain for the evening. Garrick was right, for someone who normally didn’t care about people I sure gave a damn tonight.

”Well I hear you two are excelling in the Quadrant.” A familiar voice says from behind, turning to see General Sorrengail looking at Dain and I. “Sounds like I have some promising prospects for our front line when you two graduate.”

”Thank you General. Hopefully we can serve our nation proudly.” Dain says with a smile I swear he reserves for when he’s sucking up to his superiors.

”I’m sure you will. With signets like yours on our side, nothing can stand in our way.” She says with a smile that doesn’t quite meet her eyes. She almost looks… worried. Why would she be worried? “Anyway, I have a lot of people to see. Enjoy the night.”

I watch her leave, unable to shake the look in her eyes from my memory.

”I see your usual entourage are missing.” Dain notes as he scans the crowd.

I scoff, “Can you blame them? Were celebrating the death of their parents. If you were in their shoes would you want to be here?”

He narrows his eyes at me. “They aren’t the only ones who lost someone on this date.”

Ouch, low blow. And he knows it. I swear I see regret in his eyes before I turn, his hand grazing mine as I walk away, heading for the staircase I know will take me back up to the corridor leading back to the quadrant. I hear him call out to me but I ignore him. He knows I am well aware what today means for us. It had been years since I’d been reminded due to this celebration taking priority. But I still fucking knew.

”Disappointing. Just like always.” His cold voice drawls from behind me as I reach the corridor.

I turn and see my father leaning against the wall, his gaze down on the crowd below. He’d been watching me. Probably waiting for me to sneak off.

”Like I said in that tower, I’m use to being this disappointment. Just another day for me.” I tell him sternly, noting the tick in his jaw at my words.

”And always will be it seems.” He states as he turns his attention to me. “First your mother. And now you fall in with that lot.”

”You know that day wasn’t my fault.” I hiss at him as I bawl my hands into fists at my side.

”It was entirely your fault. If you hadn’t gone running off with those infantry boys, nothing would have happened. If you had been in training like you were meant to, nothing would have happened. And today wouldn’t be tainted by what you did.” He snaps at me as he stalks over to me.

”I didn’t throw the rock!” I nearly yell at him, instantly regretting it as fury washes over his features.

”You might not have thrown it but you were the reason it was thrown. And you chose to throw yourself in with those marked ones. You made those choices, and you will deal with those consequences.”

I shake my head, chuckling nervously at his words. “Trust me, I deal with them every day thanks to you and your lies. But don’t worry, those marked ones you’re so worried about aren’t an issue any more.”

I hated to speak the words, but they were true. I’d already noted how Xaden had been more reserved around me. How much quieter Bodhi had gotten with me. Even Imogen had been around less at training. Either due to me reverting back to the usual cold demeanour I’d had prior to coming here, or due to what had happened with Garrick. Either way, I’d already noted the shift since that night.

”Ah, they finally figured out the disgrace you are. They were going to find out eventually.” He sounds almost pleased by the idea.

”She’s not a disgrace.” Someone calls from behind me, my body going rigid at their voice.

No. Why the hell was he here? He shouldn’t be here. Not today. He should be far away from here. He didn’t celebrate today, and he’d made it clear what he thought of me attending. And yet he was here. Right behind me and…. defending me?

”Please, that’s rich coming from someone like you.” My father shoots back as he narrows his eyes while looking over my shoulder.

”Well aware. But she’s not a disgrace.” Garrick states, his footsteps getting closer and closer.

”And what would you know about her?” My father says cockily, as if he has the upper hand.

”A lot more than you it seems. She’s strong, determined and a hell of a strategist. Hell she’s been running circles around me all year with out blinking an eye.” Garrick rattles off with ease. “And it’s not just me she’s doing it to. She could probably run circles around most of the Wingleaders without a second thought.”

”She’s only like that because of me.” My father lying through his teeth.

”No.” I say loudly, my father shifting his attention to me. “None of that was because of you. All of the was because I was trying to get your approval. When I was young and naïve enough to think if I could do better than Dain that you would love me again.”

”There is nothing you could do to get my approval after killing your mother.”

The words leave his mouth so easily I barely register what he’s said at first. But he said it. He said the words he’s only ever spoken to Dain and I. I look over my shoulder at Garrick who is right behind me, as if standing guard. He doesn’t even seem phased over my fathers words.

”Is that what you tell yourself at night to make you feel better?” Garrick says without missing a beat.

My fathers eyes meet his again. “How dare you speak to me like that cadet. How dare you stand there act like you know better than me.”

”And I will continue to do so, because it’s abundantly clear you know nothing about your own daughter.”

As I look at Garrick, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him this angry. Not even at me. The way he looked at me earlier feels like nothing to how he’s glaring at my father. He was the epitome of if looks could kill. And for the first time since I was a kid, I was actually worried for my father. But I can’t help but feel something else. A feeling I can’t describe because I’ve never felt it before. Not even an hour ago Garrick was pushing me away, being completely shut off to me. And now here he was defending me like I mean something to him.

”And you think you do?” He snaps back at Garrick.

Garrick fucking smirks at my father while crossing his arms across his chest and leaning towards him as he looks down at him. “Definitely. Because if you did you’d realise how amazing she is without any of the so called help you denied her of.”

My father scoffs, taking a step back from Garrick and I. And with a shake of his head he turns and marches down the stairs I’d just come down from. I breathe a sigh of relief as I watch him disappear into the crowd below. Garrick might have won this one for me, but I knew this was far from over. Especially with Garrick stepping in.

I turn and look at Garrick, unsure what I should say. There’s a part of me that wants to yell at him for defending me like that and stepping in. But there’s another part of me that isn’t quite sure how to feel about it. No one had ever defended me like that. Especially not to my father.

”Why?” I ask him finally as I turn to look at him.

Garrick shifts his weight from one foot to the other, his eyes flickering with something I can’t quite place. Hesitation, maybe. Or guilt. “Because it was the right thing to do,” he says simply. “No one should talk to you like that, not even your father.”

His words hit me harder than I expect them to. I cross my arms, partly to shield myself from the sudden vulnerability I feel and partly to keep my hands from trembling. “You don’t understand. It’s… complicated. My father and I—”

“It doesn’t matter how complicated it is,” he interrupts, his voice firm now. “Respect isn’t something that should come with conditions. You deserve better than that.”

I blink at him, stunned. No one had ever said anything like that to me before. The air feels heavy between us, and for a moment, I don’t know what to say.

“I didn’t ask you to fight my battles,” I murmur, though the words feel weak as they leave my mouth.

Garrick lets out a soft laugh, but there’s no humour in it. “You didn’t have to ask. Sometimes, people need someone in their corner, even if they don’t realise it.”

I look away, the knot in my chest tightening. I hate that his words make me feel seen in a way I’m not ready for. “You’re awfully quick to play the hero,” I say, trying to keep my tone light, but it comes out sharper than I intend.

“I’m not trying to be a hero,” he says, his voice softening. “I’m just trying to be… someone you can count on.”

The sincerity in his voice disarms me, and I feel my defences crumbling, piece by piece. I shake my head, letting out a shaky breath. “You don’t even know me, Garrick. Not fully.”

“Maybe not yet,” he admits. “But I’d like to. If you’ll let me.”

I nod, dropping my gaze to the ground as I try to figure out the whirlwind of emotions swirling inside my head. Which wasn’t uncommon in the last few weeks and months since that night in the gym. I look back up, Garrick’s hazel eyes already on me, watching and waiting. There’s a softness and warmth to them I’m not use to seeing and it sends my heart into a chaotic rhythm. The last time he looked at me like this was in that tower after I’d used his signet.

”Garrick….” I start, but I’m unsure what I want to say to him.

”It’s ok,” he says softly, his voice barely above a whisper. “You don’t have to say anything.”

But I do. I want to so badly. But I have no idea how to put into words the whirlwind of emotions I’m feeling. Instead I take a step closer, feeling the space us shrink, my heart now pounding loudly, so loud I’m sure he can hear it. Because it’s all I can hear right now.

He doesn’t move an inch, watching as I step towards him. But his eyes flicker down to my lips for the briefest second, enough to make my breath catch. I swallow hard, trying to stop the slight shake that has started in my hands. Before I can stop my self I raise my shields, closing this distance between us as I grasp his flight jacket in my hands and pull him down to me, pressing my lips to his. Fuck it.

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