#when it was bad it was bad but it still had good parts!

[beloveds-embrace]

(firefighters!141 x chubby reader… 👁️👁️ )

A friend of yours is a fire chief for your town’s local fire station. They ask you to help the fire station do some training drills for rescue operations. Your friend says it’s because you have acting skills, but you both silently acknowledge it probably has to do with the fact that you are chubby. Not fit, not thin, not easy to carry as evident by all the partners you’ve dated before- whatever you wanna call it.

It’s alright, you are pretty used to it. If they weren’t your friend, you would have honestly refused and saved yourself the inevitable humiliation, but alas. You are used to it, you really are.

You are introduced to Captain John Price, who holds your hand so warm and snug you have to will your blush away, but there’s nothing that can help you as he lays a big hand over your lower back and leads you to the waiting firemen. Three men, though you expected far more but John- Call me John, sweetheart. Captain is just for thos muppets- explains that they’ll be doing it in groups.

You are introduced to the three firemen (a Scot, and two Brits. Johnny, Kyle and Simon respectively. Unlike the other two, though, Simon is wearing a balaclava) and by god, you almost want to say that just for today, there is a different source of water they can use-

“Lay down here, sweetheart.” John’s voice breaks you out of your thoughts, and with a blush, you scramble to obey. The good girl you receive in return might as well be the best thing you’ve even been told in your entire life and the heat between your legs agrees as well.

Though you are quickly reminded that this will probably not go so well, considering your size and everything and maybe you should just apologize and leave already-

Before you can think about leaving, Johnny steps forward with that smirk he’s had since the beginning and a glint of mischief in his eyes. He crouches down next to you, stretching his arms out. “Alright, lass,” he says with a wink, “don’t be shy now. Let’s see if I’m up for the challenge.”

Before you can even process it, he slides his arms under you and lifts you up effortlessly- still mindful of your “injury”. Your face goes bright red as he shifts you in his grip, making sure you’re comfortable and safe. He gives a low whistle as he run around with you in his arms, a teasing grin plastered on his face. “Not too bad, eh? Thought I’d be struggling, but you’re light as a feather.” His grin widens, smug, as he watches your flustered reaction. “Didn’t expect me to be so strong, did ya, lass?”

You mumble something incoherent, trying to avoid his eyes, and he laughs, his deep chuckle vibrating through his chest. When he finally sets you down, you’re left feeling a little dazed, and before you can catch your breath, Kyle steps in and helps you lay back down.

“Alright, my turn,” he says with a gentle smile, his hands warm and careful as he reaches down to lift you. His grip is steady and secure, and he holds you with a tenderness that has your heart pounding in your chest. Unlike Johnny, Kyle doesn’t say much, but he gives you soft, reassuring smiles that somehow fluster you even more to the point where you really, really just want to bury your face in his shoulder. His arms feel solid around you, and there’s an easy confidence in the way he carries you that leaves you a little breathless.

“You doing okay, doll?” he asks, his voice low and soothing, and you nod, struggling to keep from blushing harder. He catches the faintest smile on your lips and chuckles softly, his gaze lingering on you for a moment longer than necessary before he gently sets you back down.

Simon is next. He’s quiet as he approaches, his intense gaze flickering over you. Without a word, he slides his arms under you and lifts you in one smooth motion that leaves you drooling (in more ways than one). His hold is firm, and you can feel the strength in every part of his frame. If you weren’t playing the role of an injured, barely-conscious woman, you would honestly be begging to feel under his clothes.

He doesn’t say much as he carries you, but his steady breathing and the quiet intensity in his eyes speak volumes. You can barely hold his gaze; there’s something about his silent, stoic demeanor that sends your heart racing.

Finally, John steps up, and you realize you’re already blushing before he even touches you. Honestly? You doubt your face will return to normal anytime soon. “Alright, sweetheart,” he murmurs, his tone soft yet authoritative. He wraps his arms around you, lifting you with an ease that leaves you a little lightheaded. The warmth of his embrace and the strength in his arms make you feel small and delicate in a way that you’ve never felt before. It leaves you breathless, but in a good way. John holds you close, his breath tickling your ear as he chuckles. “Not so bad, is it?”

By the end of it, your cheeks are burning, and the four of them are all sharing knowing smirks- you can even see the slightest crinkles of Simon’s eyes.

“Well, I’d say you’ve helped these muppets passthe test alright, sweetheart.” John huffs, his voice warm and full of amusement, and the others chuckle in agreement, each of them clearly enjoying your reactions far more than you anticipated. You can barely meet any of their eyes, your heart still pounding from the attention- and the teasing glances they keep exchanging make it clear that they noticed every flustered look and blushing smile.

As you’re still catching your breath, John tilts his head, an amused smirk tugging at his lips, and continues. “Well, we’ll have to call you back soon for another round, sweetheart. Can’t let the boys get rusty.” he teases, giving you a wink.

Johnny chimes in with a grin, taking your hand and kissing your palm. “Aye, can’t let you off that easy, bonnie. We’ll need plenty more practice to make sure we’ve got it down, yeah?”

Kyle nods as well, his gaze fixed on you. Never before have you had so much attention on you, and you never realized how much you quite love it. “Wouldn’t be proper training without our favorite helper.”

Simon, ever the quiet one, just gives you a small nod, but there’s a glint of promise in his eyes that makes your stomach flip.

You can’t help but smile, feeling a warmth you didn’t expect filling your chest. “I’ll… I’ll look forward to it. I’m glad to be of help.” You manage, your cheeks still tingling from the attention.

As you turn to leave, maybe go and ask your friend what else they could need you for since you are such a gracious friend, John’s voice calls after you, low and steady. “Soon, sweetheart.” The words linger, making you wonder just how soon “soon” might really be.

You hope it’ll be soon enough. Very soon enough.

[clockwayswrites]

Uncle John Part 2

masterpost

Even though Bruce knew what he was opening the door to, it was still almost startling to see John Constantine shielding two teenagers on the other side. The oldest was a redhead, though Bruce could only tell that from the fierce eyebrows. The hair of both teens had been shaved so close to the scalp that it was basically nonexistent. From what little Bruce could see of the second, behind the protective forms of John and the red head, the second teen’s head was also bandaged from what little Bruce could see under the hood of the thick sweater.

Whatever they had been through was clearly no small matter.

“Who’s all here?” John asked as he entered, looking around the foyer as he slunk into the room.

The kids stayed close to his back.

“Just Alfred and Tim. Alfred is in the kitchen and Tim is up in his room, though he was excited to know that there would be other teens visiting,” Bruce said, keeping his personage open and calm.

Excited was at least an honest enough word for Tim’s curiosity that Bruce had tone his bet to tamper. It didn’t seem the time to pry and Bruce was sure to learn far more as he set up the new identities.

John’s frown said he knew exactly what excited meant for Tim.

“He can help us instead if you’d rather,” Bruce offered to keep the peace, “but I thought that the kids might enough just playing some video games and enjoying Alfred’s snacks while we worked.”

“Stop that,” John said.

“Stop what?” Bruce said, blinking guilelessly.”

“Making fuck’n sense.”

The kid in the hood muffled a laugh into the thick fabric. The sound made Bruce smile. It wasn’t so very bad if they could still laugh. It meant that there was still hope.

“Tim is my current foster,” Bruce said, as that was the easiest way to explain things. “I would guess he’s around your ages. And I’m Bruce, a friend of John’s.”

John snorted. “He comes off as a rich playboy, but he’s one of the good ones, if you’ll believe that.”

“Thanks for that rousing endorsement,” Bruce said dryly.

John just grinned back, his smile a little more teeth than normal.

“I’m Danny,” the one in the hood said, still mostly hidden behind the redhead. The voice was scratchy, like it have been overused recently. The fingers that clung to the too large flannel shirt the redhead wore were covered in bandages. “This is my sister Jazz.”

Jazz regarded him with frozen blue eyes. “If you do anything to hurt him, I will find some way to hurt you worse.”

“That’s fair,” Bruce said calmly. “All I want to do is what John asked me to: which is to make you new identities so that you will be safe. Well, I would also hope that you both could relax some and enjoy some of Alfred’s cooking. His cookies especially are something amazing.”

Jazz searched his gaze for a moment longer before almost reluctantly nodding.

“Would you be alright with Tim joining you two?” Bruce asked.

Jazz glanced back at Danny before nodding again.

“Let me show you to the media room then,” Bruce said and started leading the group that way. He kept up idle chatter about some of the games he knew that Tim had been playing just to fill the silence and make everything seem less threatening.

It was still hard to speak of Tim like a son, but easier than it had been when Bruce had been the very broken and irrational man Tim had first come to. If Gotham’s spirit hadn’t thrown a fit, if Constantine hadn’t gotten involved… Bruce hated to think how things might have continued. Bruce hated to think what sort of mentor and guardian he might have been to the boy.

It was hard, but it was better like this.

Bruce opened the door to the media room with a smile. “Make yourself a home. I’ll send Tim down and either he’ll bring snacks with him or Alfred, a demure British man who isn’t a serous as he seems, will bring them in.”

“Right, thanks,” Jazz said and pulled her brother inside with her. She closed the door on them.

Bruce looked at Constantine who rubbed calloused hands over his face.

“Yeah, mate, it’s… it’s rough.”

Bruce reached out and clasped his shoulder in commiseration.

---

AN: This was still stuck in my head so have some more! I'm thinking end game Danny/Jason, because it's me, and Jazz/Steph because Steph deserves to be a disaster bi with her own fierce, magic user redhead.

Obvious canon divergence due to the added ghostliness.

[hannieehaee]

Thinking about doting woozi awakened something in me hnnng something about a tsundere man being soft is so fucking cute like you just KNOW he'd be so awkward abt it at first but as soon as he knows that you like it and even WANT IT from him he'd be the softest man on earth

content: bf!woozi, established relationship, pure fluff, woozi is starving for affection and doesnt know how to react to it!!

wc: 610

a/n: i know this wasnt a request but i had to turn it into a little drabble bc im so obsessed with him and wanna take care of him so badly i just need to manifest that need into writing</3

masterlist

the first time you took care of jihoon was subtle. it barely went noticed by him at first, but when he realized, he couldn't help but recoil to himself. it was odd, really, to have someone care for you in subtle ways. it wasn't expected.

in reality, it had been quite simple. walking into his home studio, he almost missed it due to his organizational habits, but upon closer inspection it was obvious. you had cleaned up.

not only had you done the usual superficial upkeep that he was accustomed to doing, but you'd dusted! you'd moved every figurine, every bit of equipment, every movable object, basically, and dusted it before placing it right back where it belonged. the air smelled clean too, courtesy of your good taste in cleaning products.

the cleanliness gave him a newfound energy, especially due to knowing it had been your act.

next time he saw you, he was a bit embarrassed to thank you, but still managed a hug and a suspicious 'love you' murmured against your lips without any further explanation.

~

cleaning his home studio became a more common occurrence after a while. jihoon had at some point formally expressed his gratitude for it, but also added the lack of need for it. he felt badly having you clean for him, so he shyly stumbled his way into telling you that it was okay! he wouldn't want you to tire yourself with such a task!

this was met with a squeeze at his hip and a giggle as you let him know that you didn't mind. he was rarely at home while you worked from home, so cleaning just became a natural part of your day.

he accepted this with warmth in his stomach. it was nice that it didn't feel like a responsibility to you. you just did it because you wanted to help him. he liked being helped.

this came along with various other acts of service you'd do without question. acts which continued to make jihoon's heart flurry with a mixture of gratitude and bashfulness.

the list was quite long, once he took a minute to really think about it.

you'd drop in with lunch for him and his bandmates every so often (which was quite a feat considering the number of friends he had), you'd brush his hair any time he let it grow a little more (claiming you just had that magic touch — which, granted, you did), suddenly he'd have socks on his feet when he woke up on a cold night, would find a brand newly knitted scarf on his way out the door in the morning, his kitchen would be stocked with his favorite coffee mix. there were too many tiny details to count.

jihoon always tried to return the favor, but would always feel like he lacked. no one in this world could compare to how doting you were, he'd decided.

worst of all was the viscerally embarrassing way in which he'd react at your acts of service.

he'd always known himself to be bad at receiving love, but he had thought that being with you would teach him a thing to do. the reality was, though, that the stuttering and the blush on his cheeks would just become a staple every time you so much as removed an eyelash from his cheek.

he sometimes wondered to himself, did you realize? how affection-starved he was? how much he truly appreciated your affections despite being the worst at verbalizing this gratefulness?

but the answer was found in the kiss pressed to his cheek any time he'd stutter his way through a 'thank you, i love you.'

[thesweetestofdreams]

hey gorgeous! I was thinking abt a reader who is a bit of a gym rat and her and James become friends in the gym and every day after the gym he tells rem and siri abt this girl and then one day they all meet somewhere (maybe like grocers i dont know) and the other boys fall in love and then next time they are at the gym James asks her to go on a date with all of them in hogsmeade or something cute like that and they all start going out!!!! Obviously just ignore if that sounded horrific, love you!!💞💞

poly!marauders x reader

A/N: OMg thank you so so much for your request!! I can’t tell you how excited it made me and you’re so incredibly kind! I really hope you enjoy and I hope I did your idea justice. Also let me know if you’d want a part two. I have some ideas!

You poke your head around the corner, eyes searching until you find him. A brick wall of a human, well more like a Greek god. You wave when James’ eyes meet yours in the mirror. He drops his weights and you try not to look at his arms, his hands. 

"You're going lighter," you tease instead, gesturing to his abandoned weights. 

"And you're late." He smiles at you.

"Ugh, I know." Little does he know you were obsessing over every part of your outfit and fussing with your hair. You were down bad, but you knew you couldn't be blamed entirely. You'd seen the looks of other girls, and guys, in the gym whenever James was around, yet somehow you seemed to have garnered his attention.

It all started when he saved you from an unsavory man at the bench press. You'd asked him to spot you, but apparently, he had taken that as more of an invitation than it was. He'd followed you around the gym the entire time, ranting on and on about aspects of himself that he thought made him attractive. After a half-hour of cold shoulder, he still didn't back off. He kept trying to put his hand on your waist, persistently asking for your phone number. 

"Take a hint dude," James said, pulling the man's hand off your waist. He tried to brush James off saying something about how you wanted him there. James made eye contact with you and the look you gave was all he needed. "Seriously man, shove off." Finally, after a particularly withering look from James, the man backed off cursing you for being a tease. 

"Thanks," you said, a hand pressed to your lips, clearly shaken. The whole thing made him incredibly angry. He watched your gaze follow the man across the gym, nervous.

"I'm at the weights if you want to join." The rest was history. Since then James made the gym a safe place for friendly competition and you wouldn't trade it for the world. Even if you did dream of the idea of having something more. 

James had been pretty transparent from the beginning about his relationship. The way he talked about them you felt like you practically knew his boyfriends. He talked about the two almost every chance he got. The way he lit up each time you asked about them, you could tell he loved them. 

"Oh don't let me forget I have something for you," he said from his station at the treadmill next to you. "I was telling Remus about that book you were telling me about, and he said he had one you might like." 

The idea of him talking about you in his home to his boyfriend made your head swim. "You were talking about me?" you half laugh half puff. 

"Of course," he said looking at you like it was the silliest question in the world. "I talk about them when I'm with you." 

By the end of it you were both sweaty messes, but you still let him hang an arm on your shoulder as you left. 

That night James is cooking dinner, and he can’t get his mind off of you. “I'm telling you guys. She's borderline angelic. I mean how can anyone look that good after a workout for real?” 

“I’ve seen you after a good workout Jamesie,” Sirius says, eyes salacious across the kitchen island. 

Pointedly ignoring him, James continues, “She’s just so nice, the sweetest really. I wish you guys could meet her.” He strains noodles over the sink, the steam clouding his glasses. 

“I’m sure she’s lovely, and probably twice as gorgeous as you described, but Remus and I do not do gyms, dear.” 

“You could always invite her for dinner,” Remus says, stirring sauce on the stove. 

“Oh yeah, come on over to my flat and meet my boyfriends even though we never really see each other outside the gym and I could totally be a murderer for all you know.”

“But you’re not a murderer,” Sirius laughs. 

“And how is she supposed to know that?” James pours the pasta into the sauce as Remus stirs.

“If you’re too shy to ask, that’s fine love,” Remus says, knowing exactly what he’s doing. 

You think the grocery stockers are out to get you. Your favorite granola is always on the highest shelf and this time it’s pushed back ungodly far. You're about to climb the shelves when you hear someone behind you. 

“I can help,” the man says. Of course he has to be drop dead gorgeous with honey brown hair and a worn sweater. 

“Thanks,” you say, trying not to fumble over yourself. 

“Oi Moony, they had your ice cream,” you hear from down the aisle, and to your surprise, you know that voice. 

“James?” you call peering over the shoulder of the man trying to hand you your granola. When you see the dark haired man next to James the pieces start to fall into place. There’s James next to what has to be Sirius and the man in front of you must be…

“Remus, I see you’ve met y/n,” James says walking to the two of you. “He must be putting the moves on you. He would just let us struggle.” James winks at you. Remus, on the other hand, is still reeling from your smile. It was like watching the way he feels when he sees James and Sirius played out right on your pretty features. 

Your almost star struck. It feels like meeting celebrities the way James talks about them. “It’s nice to meet you,” you say, smiling wide, hugging the granola to your chest. “James talks about you all the time.” It’s a funny feeling to have faces to add to all the stories you’ve heard before. 

“Funny, we could say the same thing,” Sirius says, giving James a look you don’t quite understand. 

“Sirius was starting to get jealous,” Remus jokes. 

“Yeah, of James,” Sirius says, winking at you. His flirtatious persona falters for a second when you laugh. He’s caught by the sound, and once it's over he already wants to hear it again. James was right, you're magic. “Who’d have thought we’d find an angel in the cereal aisle of all places.”

“Or the gym.” James smiles. 

They’re flirting with you. It feels nice you have to admit, but it’s starting to make your cheeks burn and your head spin.

“It’s been so lovely to meet you,” you say to them both, “but sadly I have to run.” It’s almost like they deflate. 

“I’ll see you tomorrow?” James asks, expectant. 

“Of course,” you smile, “don’t be late, it’s leg day.” He gives a dramatic groan, but you see his smile never falter. 

As you leave you hear James say, “I told you.” 

James is all smiles the next day, well he’s usually pretty smiley, but he seems particularly bright today. You got there early just to tease him but his expression winds you. 

“How are you?” James always asks like he truly wants to know. 

You set your shoulders, hands on your hips, “ready to crush you.” He answers with a hearty laugh and you fall into the same comfortable routine you’re used to. First is warm up squats. 

“Remus and Sirius were quite taken with you.” You try to stamp down the butterflies in your stomach. It’s not really working. 

“Me? You’re the ones who could be models.” You hope your flustering comes across closer to being winded. You notice James has stopped and now he’s just standing at your side. “Flattery doesn’t get you out of squats James,” you say pointing a finger to the ground.

“Actually I wanted to ask you something,” he says, he looks shy for once, a hand pulling at the back of his neck. You feel your stomach swoop, but you’re not trying to get your hopes up. 

“Of course,” you say, feeling somewhat like a deer in headlights. 

“Well, we were wondering… I mean I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while now, but now they’re really on me. Anyways,” his gaze meets yours, “would you like to go out sometime… with us?” 

“Like a date?” you ask wide-eyed.

“Yeah,” he smiles, “Only if you’d want to though.” You’ve never seen him actually look nervous before. It’s endearing really, charming even.

“Yes,” you say, you’re practically bouncing on your feet, newly energized. “I’d really like that.” 

James smiles wide, it’s a smile he wears with his whole face, crinkling eyes and dimpled cheeks. Just like that James is critiquing your form and things are back to normal, but really they probably just changed forever. 

Hogsmeade is bustling with Autumn. Leaves flood the sides of the streets from where they flutter off stray branches. It’s like a scene from the movies except you’re in it and the scene is yours. You could be floating for all you know. 

Sirius is just as charming as James said. The four of you come upon a wishing well, and Sirius declares that you have to toss it over your shoulder for the wish to come true. After four successful tosses he looks at you conspiratorially. “What’d you wish for?” He smiles at you with a tilt of his head like he thinks he could guess, and you feel a blush burning your cheeks. 

“She can’t tell you, Pads, it won’t come true,” Remus says, shaking his head as he falls into step behind you. Remus asks you about the book he recommended. Bashful, you confess you haven’t finished. He feigns shock but it’s short lived. 

“That’s okay, no spoilers then, for now.” He points a finger in warning. “I can’t make any promises for next time.” Next time, you really like the sound of next time. 

As the night marches forward and the weather grows colder you find yourselves in the three broomsticks, steaming butterbeer warming you from the inside out. Talking to them is borderline dizzying. You’ve never had such undivided attention. Remus listens to everything you say like he’s taking notes, and Sirius like he’s drinking you in, hanging off of everything you say. He has a sharpness to his eyes that would be intense if he wasn’t practically melting into James. James smiles like he has everything in the world.

[sleepincrow]

suguru geto plays with your boobs when hes injured, by the way, just wanna let you know.

its nothing too bad, but suguru likes to sit behind you and draw little circles on your bare hips underneath your baggy shirt.

you had wanted to read to him, pamper him. after all, his leg is pretty much broken right now. so you just wanted to be a good girlfriend.

but the way his overworked hands slide up your sides so gently like you're the most fragile piece of architecture made you stumble over your words.

"baby, what are you doing?" you inquire, almost threatening to close your book.

"shh, just let me feel you, angel, keep reading." his lips are right behind your ear and you swore you could feel the lightest plush of his lips against your skin.

but how could you really? the way his fingers trail closer to your chest makes the plethora of sentences in the book dance on your tongue, refusing to halt their relentless tango.

soon enough, the warm palms of his hands hold your breasts so delicately, ever so gently squeezing them — playing with them. his thumbs rub over your perky nipples, making you let out a shaky breath.

his own chest is connected to the flat of your back, bent a little forwards as your smaller stature curls in the sparks of pleasure.

the book had long been forgotten. your own hands using it as leverage to keep you sat up as straight as you could, without progress, of course.

you knew long before he was skilled with his hands, somehow multiplying your pleasure by tenfold compared to playing with yourself.

suguru's uninjured leg comes to wrap around one of your own, gradually spreading your legs apart. a soft whimper slips between your parted lips when you feel the cold air grazing your barely covered pussy.

now you debate on whether or not just panties to bed was a good idea.

too lost in the wonderland of growing pleasure, lips upon your shoulder going to the nape of your neck accompanied by whispered praises kept you distracted from the fact a hand had left your breast.

"y'so pretty, sweet angel." he cooed into you spit-slicked skin. eyes hungry for the way you contort your face into one of deep pleasure and fluster.

suguru would always find a way to lavish your perfect body. he worshipped you dearly, kissing every part of your skin like it was gifted by gods. he always found a way to praise you in action, even when he could not pin you against the soft silken sheets of your shared bed.

with a flick of a switch, a vibrating sound resonated within the dimly lit room

"be a good girl for me n' just sit still, look pretty, okay?"

not proofread. probably the first smut(?) ive acc posted AHHAH

[fuck-you-too-world]

I have a thought,

Tim is the embodiment of Gen Z and the reason why DC disrespect him a lot is because they saw the potential and how chaotic he could be because he's just so... How do say this, he had the most normal past (as normal as any Gotham kids could get and being a nepo baby) compare to others who had tragic back story.

Tim tragic back story didn't start until he take the Robin mantel, so I think DC is scared of Tim's potential especially with his mentality that is so flexible. Like, this boy is labeled as the coffee addict-sleep deprived-tech guy-that has too much money-too much work-and could drop dead anytime, just like gen Z (except the money part).

Then the chart just made me think of it even more! Tim is literally us as gen Z but he has money, training and no adult supervision! The intelligence is debatable cuz I think he usually has the brain cells but most of the time lost it, he can be as harmless as he is apocalyptic danger level all just because he felt like it. He's mostly harmless cuz he lacks motivation.

Like imagine! (He has so many war crimes I wanted to add more so he can have a special folder with more folders inside dedicated for one war crime saperated based on timeline, planet and dimension)

Tim : Feeling bored, might piss off Luther later cuz his life is too peaceful rn

*proceeds to take over the economic world and become a shadow emperor and open up charities just because*

Also Tim

Tim : Feeling a bit feral and kinda want to have a historical vibe today

*save planets and became emperor of several planets and he rules it really well to the point he has religion that worship him*

Then he's also

Tim : This family (Waynes) is so fucked up, they need help fr fr

*blackmail Batman after he failed to blackmail Nightwing, become a therapist cuz he can't fix his family so fix others*

Near death experience? You wish!

Tim : oh, look it's Jason in- is that a cheap Robin costume?! Ew!!

*got beaten cuz he's too busy thinking about something else instead of focusing in the fight, plus he saw the kid he sort of replaced still alive -a bit murdery- but alive which is good news for his 'fixing Wayne family project'!*

Tim in his depressed and apathic era

Tim : Hm... He said no killing but is it killing if I gave them warning but they choose to ignore me and got caught up in the explosion? No, no it's not. *shrug* Good enough.

*proceeds to bomb Ra's bases and make the creepy immortal rat man loses hair and gain gray hairs at the same time*

Near death experience number unknown? Nah~

Tim : oh wow, I manage to finished all of the assignments and mission right on time! Damn, this is a record! Oh, look at that, the sky looked so clear! Too bad we can't see starts in Gotham, welp, not a bad day to sleep! I can finally sleep!

*sigh out in disappointment when He got caught and land safely on the ground, mourning the sleep he'll never get*

His response is always so relatable and mood to the point I need gen Z artist or something to get inside DC and just let out your chaotic-idgaf-feral-racoon-self so Tim can just be his true self and grow into his potential! I need to see him in his more chaotic nature with flexible moral because dang, he's just so US sometimes.

Or is it just me? Honestly, I saw this post on Pinterest and immediately went to search the original post on timblr -pun intended- just so I can let this out of my head.

Alright, thank your for coming to my Ted talk. Scatter!

i find the dischotomy between the batfam's potential to kill vs their real-world willingness to kill very interesting! so I made a graph because I'm a nerd

[silverb0wties]

Lemonade - Part 2

Lemonade || leah williamson x alessia russo x child!reader

Summary: When something bad happens to your Mummy and Daddy, you end up living with your Aunty Lessi and Aunty Leah.  But is there room for you considering they have a new baby on the way?

Chapter Summary: Your first few days in your new home.

Warnings: reliving of traumatic events, mentions of death, pregnancy

a/n: Will make more sense if you read Part 1 first.

Thank you to everyone for the warm welcome back. I really, really appreciate it 🫶

PART 2

You couldn’t really believe how different your room looked now.  Your Aunties had gone a bit overboard and it had somehow transformed from a very plain and adult looking room, to a soft and colourful squishy bedroom.  You now had a cozy single bed with a purple duvet cover and lots of new stuffies.  You had a bookshelf that was already half filled with books and a desk with drawers filled with all different coloured papers and various drawing supplies.  Your wardrobe was filled with all sorts of new clothes, including brand new school uniforms and a new backpack.  There’s a big fluffy rug on the floor and a small nightlight shaped like a bunny on your bedside table. 

Beside the bunny nightlight there was a picture frame with a photo of you, your Mummy and your Daddy in it.

It made you feel a bit sad, but you still don’t want to cry.  You hadn’t cried since they died.

You didn’t cry when you found out.  You didn’t cry at their funeral.  You didn’t cry when your Nana took you to see what was left of your home.  You just felt an overwhelming sense of nothing about it all.  You didn’t know how else to explain it.

You did however still feel anxious and trembly and on edge about your new living situation.  You of course knew that Aunty Lessi and Leah would never do anything on purpose to hurt you, but you didn’t want to do anything to upset them or make them angry.  You wanted to be good.  You needed to be good.    

So, as you lay tucked into your squishy new bed, you tried your best to just fall asleep.  You’d wanted to read a book like you usually did before bed, but your nightlight wasn’t bright enough.  So once Aunty Lessi had turned the big light off, you had been left to just toss and turn.  You’d tried counting sheep.  Well, you’d tried counting bunnies actually, but that didn’t help.  Then you tried listing off all the different breeds of bunnies that you could think of, and then you tried to list off all the books you had read and at some point you finally, finally drifted off to sleep.

The next morning it’s your birthday and you’re sitting at the kitchen table with your Mummy and Daddy as they sing happy birthday to you.  There are some presents beside you and a big card with a number 8 and a bunny on it.  You make a wish and go to blow your candles out, but instead of blowing them out, you take a birthday candle off your cake and flick it onto the floor.  The whole house erupts in flames as you walk out the front door, not even stopping to look back as you hear your Mummy and Daddy’s scream.

Suddenly you wake up, gasping for air and covered in sweat.  Your sheets are all tangled around you, and you feel like you’re being strangled.  You leap out of the bed, desperate to escape the location of your nightmare.  You just wanted to escape to somewhere far, far away.  Anywhere would do.  Anywhere but the place where your head was currently.

So, you escape the best way you know how.  Looking around the room, you figure out what supplies you’ll need to gather: a sheet, a torch of some kind, Arthur (of course) and a book.  Once gathered, you sat on the big fluffy rug and pulled the sheet over your head before cracking the new book open and diving into whatever world awaits you.  The relief is instant. 

You’re not too sure how long it is before you hear a few footsteps followed by your bedroom door creaking open gently.

“Bunny, what are you doing up sweetie?”

You panic.  You’d been caught by your Aunty Leah.  Surely you were going to get in all sorts of trouble for being up this late when you should have been in bed asleep.

You quickly turn off the makeshift torch (you’d discovered some kind of bouncy ball that lit up when you hit it and was just bright enough) and hurried to push the sheet and book away, before diving back into your bed and getting under the covers. 

“S-sorry Aunty Leah.  I’m really sorry…”

Your voice was trembling.  In fact, your whole body was trembling.

Bad. Bad. Bad.

“Hey, hey… you have nothing to apologise for sweetheart.”  Your Aunty Leah walked over towards your bed.  “Is it okay if I sit with you for a bit?”

You nodded, unsure where this conversation was going.  She sat down on the side of bed, one hand on her big baby belly, the other reaching forward to gently stroke your cheek.

It felt really nice.  You very much wanted one of her hugs right about now.

“Sorry for waking y-you up, Aunty Leah.  I promise I didn’t mean to.  I’ll try to be more quiet in the future.”

“Oh Bun, you didn’t wake me up.  This one did” she poked at her belly and chuckled.  “They’re currently doing star jumps on my bladder and making me need the loo every 10 minutes.  I just thought I’d check on you while I was up.”

A small part of you relaxed knowing you hadn’t woken her up, but you were still waiting for her to punish you for being up past your bedtime.  Not that you really knew what your bedtime was now.  It used to be 8 o’clock, but you were allowed to read in bed with your reading lamp for a little while after that.  Surely it was way, way past 8 o’clock now though.

“Were you having trouble sleeping?” she asked.

“Kind of…”

“Did you have a scary dream?”

You gulped.  That wasn’t exactly how you would describe it, but you also didn’t have any better words to use, so instead you just nodded.

“Oh sweetie, I’m sorry.  You can always come find your Aunty Lessi or I if you have a bad dream or you’re having trouble sleeping.  We’re always happy to give you snuggles in our bed.”

You just nod, afraid to tell her that you couldn’t climb into her and Aunty Lessi’s bed.  Bad things happen when you sleep in beds that aren’t yours.  You would never tell your Aunties, but you had slept on the floor the two nights before your brand-new bed had arrived, too scared to sleep in the big, adult bed in case something bad happened again.

“I’m happy to see you reading the books we picked out though.  We weren’t too sure what you had and hadn’t read, so we just tried to get you your own little library going…”

All of a sudden, the most intense wave of panic hit you, followed by a terrifying realisation.  For the first time since your parents died, you started to cry.  And it wasn’t the gentle, weepy kind of cry.  It was the big, jagged breaths and snotty nose tears streaming down your face kind of cry.

“Oh my goodness… I’m- I’m going to get in so much trouble! They’ll never let me back there again.  I’ll have to find some way to make all the money to pay them back.  It’s- it’s going to take me years.  I- I- I’ll never-”

“Woah, woah… deep breaths, deep breaths.  Copy me, in through your nose, out through your mouth.”

You copied your Aunty Leah and your breathing slowly started to settle down, your panic subsiding a little, but your tears continued to fall.

“That’s it. Well done, Bunny.  Can you tell me what made you so upset just now?” she asked.

“All of my library books were in my bedroom and… and I must have had at least 15 or 16 of them.  And Nana said nothing from my room made it through the fire and Mummy always said if I didn’t treat the library books good or if I lost one that I would have to save up all my pocket money to replace it.  Because if the books get lost or broken then no-one else can borrow them.”

You’re getting worked up again, your voice beginning to rise. 

“But I don’t have any pocket money, coz it was all in my bunny bank, and that would have gone in the fire too and it’s going to take me forever to save up enough to replace 16 books and the librarians will be so mad at me.  They’ll probably never let me back in the library or any library ever again!”

It was the most you had spoken since you had moved in with your Aunties, and you could tell that your Aunty Leah was a bit shocked at your outburst.  Suddenly Aunty Lessi appeared at your door in her pyjamas.  You must have woken her up now too.

Hopeless. Hopeless. Hopeless.

“I’m sorry for being so loud, I shouldn’t have shouted. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

At some point, you’re not really sure when, you’d buried your face into the fur of Arthur’s belly, rubbing the softness across your skin in an effort to calm yourself down.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

The words just kept tumbling out of your mouth, losing all sense and meaning.  You just kept saying them over and over, feeling like both them and the soft fur of your beloved Arthur were the only things keeping you tethered to the earth right now.

But then you were being lifted out of your bed sheets and being pulled into a tight embrace.  You assumed it was your Aunty Lessi.  There was no baby belly and it smelled like Aunty Lessi.  She wore the same perfume as your Mummy did.  You clung to her with all your strength, even though you were still afraid that she was angry at you for waking her up.  She stroked your hair and ran her fingers gently up and down your back as she walked around the room with you in her arms, rocking you slightly.  You felt like a baby, but you didn’t care.  You knew you were a big girl who could and would look after herself, but just for this moment, this one moment, you just wanted to be little again.  You just wanted to be held and comforted and cuddled and loved.

You just wanted your Mummy and Daddy.

And just as quickly as the wave of panic and outburst of tears hit you, the balloon of emotions grew too big, and popped.  Once again, you felt nothing. 

Your tears dried, your breathing settled and your tight grip on your Aunty loosened until she placed you gently back down in your bed.  Your Aunty Leah brushed your hair back from your face, tucking it behind your ear and cupping your cheek.  She looked at you with what seemed to be a mixture of concern and confusion, as if she couldn’t quite figure out how you’d gone so quickly from a shaking, crying little baby back to your previous state of nothingness.  You couldn’t figure it out either, it’s just how it was.

“Bunny, I don’t want you worry about those library books for a single second.  We will talk to the librarians and if there are any fees that need to be paid, Aunty Lessi and I will make sure they are taken care of.  The library isn’t going to stop you from coming to visit because something really, really awful has happened to you.  We will make sure you get to go back and pick out plenty of new books to read, okay?  We will always make sure you have plenty of books to read.  We promise.”

--

The next day when your Aunty Lessi went off to training, Aunty Leah took you down to the library.

She had asked you if you wanted to talk to the librarian or if you wanted her to do it for you.  Whilst everything inside of you screamed to let her do the talking, you were a big girl, and it was your fault the books got destroyed, so you had to do this yourself.  So, you walked up to the counter and with trembling hands pressed the little silver bell on the bench and waited patiently for a librarian to come help you.

A kind looking lady with fuzzy black hair and big brown eyes approached the desk and gazed down toward you.  “And how can I help you today, little lady?”

With a deep breath and a tight squeeze of your beloved Arthur, you began to explain.

“My house burned down.  I had borrowed lots and lots of books because I love to read but they all got burned in the fire so I can’t return them.  So I-I-I know I need to pay loads of money to replace them, but I need to know how much so I can start saving…”

The lady looked from you, up towards your Aunty Leah stood just behind you, who had what you could only describe as a sad smile on her face as she nodded at the librarian.

“Well, it sounds to me like the only thing that needs replacing here is your library card.  I’m assuming you lost that in the fire too darling?”

You hadn’t even considered your library card.  Were you going to have to pay for that as well?

“Oh yeah, I did.  So umm… how much will it all cost all together then, with the library card added on?”

Useless. Useless. Useless.

“Oh no sweetie, what I’m saying is that you don’t have to pay for anything.  We’ll just make sure we get you set up with a replacement library card so that you can keep borrowing from the library and keep on reading!”

You were shocked.  You were certain that the fee was going to be huge.  Absolutely massive.  And even though you knew your Aunties had said they’d pay for it, you’d promised yourself you would save up and pay them back every last pound.

“Really?”

“Absolutely!  Here, you just need pick out which design you would like on your new library card, and I’ll just grab a few details off your Mum here and-”

“She’s my Aunty.  My Mummy died in the fire.  So did my Daddy.”

A tense silence filled the air as you went about looking over the laminated sheet of paper showing you the card design options.

“Can I get the one with the purple ladybirds, please?”

--

When your Aunty Lessi came home from training that afternoon, she had her kit bag on her shoulder and a couple of shopping bags in her hands.

“Hi my loves!”

You watched from your spot on the armchair as your Aunty Leah walked in from the kitchen and gave Aunty Lessi a kiss ‘hello’.  After their kiss, Aunty Lessi bent down to rub her hands over Aunty Leah’s tummy and pressed a few kisses there too.  They were exchanging soft words, but they were talking a bit too quietly and were standing a bit too far away for you to hear.

Your insides felt a weird jumbly feeling whenever you saw the pair of them kiss and cuddle, especially when Aunty Lessi would kiss or talk to Aunty Leah’s baby belly.  A part of you felt this really warm, light kind of feeling that made you want to sing and fly and twirl, but a bigger part of you felt this awful sinking feeling that made want to run and hide.  When they combined, they made you feel like you might be sick.

In an effort not to throw up all over your Aunties nice furniture, you leapt from the armchair and ran quietly towards the bathroom, making sure to close the door gently behind you.

Whilst you didn’t end up being sick, you found relief in the feeling of the cool bathroom tiles against your skin as you lay on the floor staring up at the ceiling.  You weren’t sure how long you’d been laying there, running your fingers across the smooth flooring, before you heard a soft knock at the door. 

“Bunny? Are you okay in there?  You’ve been in there a little while?”

Lifting your head off the cool tiles, you rummaged together a response for your Aunty Lessi.

“Uhh, yeah.  Just a bit of a yucky tummy.  I’m okay,” you replied.

“Alright sweetie, let me know if you need anything.”

“Thank you Aunty Lessi.”

Your head hit the tiles again with a soft thud.

Reluctantly you got to your feet, straightened your clothes and looked at yourself in the mirror.  You made sure to flush the toilet to make your lie seem a little more realistic, and you washed your hands so that they would smell like your Aunties nice vanilla soap.

When you emerged from the bathroom and re-entered the living room, your Aunty Lessi got off the couch where she had been sitting and shuffled on her knees over to you.

“How are you feeling, Bun?”

She looked you over as one of her hands ran over your forehead, checking for a temperature, whilst the other ran soothingly up and down your back.

“I’m fine.  My tummy was just a bit upset, but it’s all good now.  I’m fine.” 

“Do you want some water or some toast or-”

“I’m fine, Aunty Lessi.”

“Okay, well you let us know if you need anything or you feel worse, alright?” she insisted.

You nodded, gently stepping out of her grasp as you shuffled back toward the armchair you had been sitting in, aiming to reunite with Arthur and your book.

There was a brief silence as you got yourself settled, but then Aunty Lessi returned to the room with the shopping bags from earlier.

“I got you a couple of things, Bunny.”

You looked up from your book, confused to find your Aunty Lessi now sitting in front of the coffee table.  She was patting the spot beside her, indicating to you she wanted you to join her on the rug.  You shuffled back down off the armchair, this time bringing Arthur with you, and tentatively sat in the spot she’d gestured at.

“Well, I know you’re not that big on sports or football, but I thought maybe you might want to come along to our game next weekend?  It’s totally up to you and completely okay if you don’t want to come along! Nana has already said she’ll come around and look after you if you’re not interested.  But just in case you do want to come, or if you ever want to later down the track, I got you some gear so you’ll fit right in and match everyone.”

She started pulling a bunch of red and white clothing out of a bright red shopping bag, each one with the same pictures and words printed somewhere on them.  The final item she pulled out was a mostly red shirt with the word ‘BUNNY’ in big white block writing across the back and the number 23 under it.

“I wasn’t too sure what to get on your jersey, but I figured as Aunty Leah isn’t really playing this season, we’d start with my number, 23, and maybe we can swap to 6 next season or on an away jersey or something.  Or you can pick your favourite number, or another player if you prefer…”

Aunty Leah laughed loudly beside you at the last remark.

“The only rule is that you’re not allowed to pick McCabe’s number, because we will never hear the end of that, okay?” she told you.

You nodded, not quite understanding what she meant, but filing that information away for later.  It seemed important. 

As you surveyed the sea of red and white clothing, you felt a strong sense of obligation to attend the game.  You knew that football was very, very important to your Aunties and they spent a lot of their time playing the sport.  And whilst you only very vaguely understood the rules (kick the ball into the back of the big net thing), you thought maybe with your brand-new library card you might be able to borrow a few books on football and learn about it some more.  You loved to learn, and perhaps this could be an opportunity to learn about something completely new.

“Can Arthur come to the game too?”

You watched as both your Aunties eyes lit up with excitement as they both shouted “Of course!”

“Okay, we will come then.”

“Are you sure, Bun?  You don’t have to just because Aunty Lessi got you some gear,” your Aunty Leah was sitting on the very edge of the couch now, her hand reaching out towards yours.

“I’m sure.  And it’s good coz I want to learn more about football because it means a lot to you” you replied as you took hold of her hand before turning to face Aunty Lessi  “To both of you.”

“Well, we will be honoured to have you come along with us.  And I’ll try and score a goal just for you” your Aunty Lessi said.

You like the sound of that.  That gave you the light kind of feeling that made you wanted to sing and fly and twirl, but without the other horrible sinking feeling that made you want to run and hide.

“What’s- what’s in the other bag?” you asked.

“Oh, thank you for reminding me, I nearly forgot with all the excitement about the game,” she reached over the coffee table and pulled a brown cardboard box out of the bag.  “It’s nothing fancy, but your Aunty Leah realised we didn’t get you a proper lamp for reading, so I popped into the shops and picked you up one.  Now you can read before bed or if you wake up throughout the n-”

You cut her off before she finished her sentence, launching yourself at her in the tightest hug you could muster.  You could have cried at the thoughtfulness.  In fact, you think you may have been crying, just a tiny little bit. 

“Thank you, Aunty Lessi.” 

You quickly pulled back and stumbled over to the couch where Aunty Leah was sitting, wrapping your arms around her the best you could with her big baby belly in the way.

“Thank you, Aunty Leah,” you whispered as her hands ran through your hair.

“No more using a bouncy ball as a torch, yeah?”

You couldn’t help but giggle at that.

“Okay.”

“Okay.”

[venusandthestars]

Cherries

The jungle is freezing, especially at night with this rain. You're lucky to be inside the hut, a warm fire on your back, your mate A'Resmoth, under you, the taste of cherries on your tongue.

He had told you he was going on a hunt, only to surprise you with one of your favorite treats: cherries. You had told him about it a few days in a passing thought. He decided right then and there his love was going to get her cherries.

Now here you two were enjoying your night. The rain sends in a cool breeze, now and again. The fire in the middle of the hut sends out a glow, two shadows on the wall.

Your nest, built from branches and leaves, is decorated with multiple furs, different creatures from different planets, all hunted and skinned by A'Resmoth. "You'll have the softest I can find." His mission to keep you happy, comfortable, and fed was his life.

If you're happy, he's happy.

Now look at you two, bellies full, naked, completely relaxed. He loves to take you like this. You, on top of him, his back against the nest, arms spread out at the top.

You've just finished a round of love making, his cum still inside of you as he hasn't pulled out. "Not yet," was all he said when tried to slip off of him. You don't mind when he gets like this. Needy, wanting all your attention. It gives him a break from being your valiant guardian. You start to caress his locs his eyes never leaving you.

"Do you like this?" A tease you are, knowing the answer already. A deep purr from his chest. You chuckle wanting to play with him a bit more. You ghost your fingers across his face to his mandibles.

"Fruit," He mumbles. You lean to the right, plucking a cherry out of the basket bringing it to your lips. The tip of your tongue comes out, licking around the drupe. A'Resmoth watches his pupils dilated at the erotic sight.

Once you're satisfied the fruit is covered with you, you place it into his waiting warm mouth. With his quick reflexes, his left hand grabs your right hand and nips the tips of your fingers. The sweet little moans you left out spurs him on. He tilts his head back dropping your hand, he closes his eyes.

"Please, my mate, use me." A deep voice begs.

How could you say no to that?

You lean back on your hands lift your hips and start to treat yourself. Up and down, you bounce. You moan out, sweet sounds to him, wanting to listen to you forever.

"My love, look at me, please look at me, watch me." A delicious voice begs.

How can he say no to that?

He brings his head down, eyes fixated on the way your pussy engulfs his dick, your first orgasms coating it, a creamy white mix. His grunts lines up with your moans, your souls in sync.

He picks up a cherry, slipping the plump part into your mouth. Once you bite it off the stem, he flicks it away and sticks a finger into your mouth.

"Suck." You do as he says. Sucking and moaning around the digit, you start to swirl your hips clockwise and counterclockwise on him. A'Resmoth grunts feeling his orgasm sneaking up on him. With one hand on your hip, and one hand braced on your back, he gives no warning when he starts to thrust into you.

Your quiet moans turn loud, his big fat dick making you feel so full, so good. You'd live on it if he'd let you.

You're so light to him, he's bouncing you on his lap trying to stall his orgasm wanting to feel you cum on him again. He sneaks the hand from your hip to your neck giving it a squeeze of course minding his strength.

Staring into his eyes you cry out "I wanna come, A'Resmoth, please."

Thats all it takes to set him off, his cum spilling into you.

"Let go my mate, I want to feel you." He grunts out.

The two of you, cumming together. Pure ecstasy.

It takes a few moments to come down from the high. You're out of breath, you smile at him while he looks at you fondly.

You pop another one in your mouth. "Thank you for the cherries my love."

A/N- Pls tell me if the ending was bad it's my first time writing for this universe. I hope you've enjoyed it!

[canihaveacalmtime]

You met a boy back at secondary, you remember he was around your height at the time, heck he was also looking as depressed as you now but we'll get back to that later.

You remember he was being bullied by the popular groups around the school because he looked like a freak that always studies and read books. Though, you saw him as a normal human, not as how he dressed up and on the other hand, you were also a coward at the time so you could only chose to help him after the bullies had gone.

By the last year of secondary, the boy changed into an intirely different person and actually listened to what you suggested him to wear, what type of hair fits him and how he should make his appearance more attractive to others. You really enjoyed the last year with him and not have to worry about those bullies anymore. For him, he thinks that even after this year, you and him can still be friends for the next many years but for you, this is the last year that you will live here as so many things had happened with your family life that forced you to move back to the countryside, you don't even know when you'll move back to the city but seeing you friend looking so happy right now, you didn't even had the courage to tell him anything about your leaving.

But the day he found out about you leaving, it was already too late. As he hold the letter in his hand, trying hard to not tear it apart, a part inside him begin to develop an obsession to get you back, to make you come back and to have you back in his arms again.

.

.

.

You eventually returned back to the busy city streets after 6 years long and for the next 2 years, you've been working under a CEO's assistant so consider that, your rank is just right above the servants and under everyone else.

But more over, you knew who your CEO was the moment you met him for the first time or is it really the first time for you? But to be honest, you didn't knew the boy that's just around your height back then, shy and timid can grow up to become such a man that sits above every one else.

Of course, he doesn't recognized you, you've changed too much either in a good or bad way, it's so hard to say you back then and now are the same but especially, you didn't actually want him to recognize you. You basically left him in the cruelest way possible a friend could do so you can't imagine how horrible of a life he could give you if he finds out about your old identity.

Unfortunately for you, the CEO's second in command one day asked for all the workers' profile to be recheck and your 'friend' learned about who you really are but as a calculate person, he chose to observe first before proceeding any actions. As the more he observed, the more negative details he saw like how you always look sleep deprived and have a habit of hugging your head during a chaotic events like monthly worker training or party arrangements, all of those reminds him so much of his old self.

He tried to approach you, to help you like how you help him back then but a coward will always be a coward as you always intentionally avoid him. The moment you see him in your sight, you act like someone has called you or just simply turn around and walk somewhere else.

.

.

.

The avoiding went on for a long while until one night, you were ordered to come into his office for a talk but when you arrived, the scene in front of you made you frozen in place and not even dare to move an inch.

On the floor was his old bullies, tied up and continuously begging for mercy while your boss, the CEO, just standing there menacingly with his favorite gun in his hand. You hsve seen him using it in the practice ground countless times and even familiar with whenever he use it on someone but that is just hearing from the outside not witnessing it like this.

Before you can react, one of them was shot in the head and was now on the ground. One by one, they fall down upon the CEO's bullets begin shot and the moment the last one was shot, you immediately book it out of there only to eat a bullet straight at your left leg before you can even reach the doorknob and fall down onto the wood floor.

What shock you more was that he still remembered when you told him about how your left leg is much weaker than the other one and is now using your own weakness against you.

"Perhaps you shouldn't have said anything important about you to me."

His leather shoes clanking on the floor as he slowly walk over to you laying on the floor, who is hugging their head trying to figure out what had just happened seconds ago.

"Seeing you laying there so helpless and in pain really make me both satisfied as a revenge and sad but it has to be done, right? Can't have you keep on running away from me forever."

Your vision begins to fade away as he pick up your body in a bridal style and the last thing you feel before completely falling asleep was a kiss placed on your forehead in a very tender way.

"Sweet dreams, the light of my life."

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

I know I barely uploads anything often but as my #1 excuse: life is hard 😔

[angrenwen]

"The rest of the gods however really didn’t have a reason to be this mad. It wasn’t like you were a bad person, quite the opposite in fact! Ever since you had discovered your potential for magic, you had worked on making things better, to brighten lives and help those who needed a bit of a hand to get up again.

You crept down the street, feeling rather like a criminal rather than a person on a mission to help. There was a symbol people had come up so you’d find the houses that were in need of a little bit of help. Some healing here and there, easing the grief of a lost loved one, supporting someone through their own ventures of learning magic, easing droughts and helping prevent floods. You were useful for all kinds of things and it filled you with a deep, ever growing purpose to lend a hand.

You left on your fifth house after easing a newborn’s fever and quietly advising the parents on how to keep the child on its road to recovery, when you felt the familiar presence of one of the gods. One of the Five Founders, in fact, who had shaped the world before the rest of the deities had either come along or had been born.

The goddess of passion and elation, on other parts of the wold also known as the God of Creation, a tall, powerful woman who seemed to be everywhere at once, always watching over artists and warriors who honed their craft, proudly presenting it to her. You had spotted shimmers and shadows of her across the centuries, watching as she helped artists make the money they needed to keep going, how she had stood at the back of a passionate speaker, hands on his shoulders to lend him strength when his voice threatened to shake.

She was one of the most powerful gods and sometimes…sometimes you wondered if she truly was your enemy. There was no way the Goddess hadn’t noticed you lurking about, but she always seemed to consider her work far more important than hunting you down. And even when she found a free moment to join the search party of the pantheon, she never seemed to look too closely. Or, she never seemed to see you, even when your eyes had once met and she had carried on, walking past where you had huddled down.

You crept along the alleyway, keeping a close eye on where she was currently helping a despairing singer regain her passion. You couldn’t hide from the gods for long, not when they were actively looking for you and you were in the same world as them, but you could sense them at the very least when they appeared and run before they could catch you.

You dropped by one of the houses with Brenan’s descendants, making sure they had everything they needed. Still, even if you were welcome you felt like a stranger now after three centuries, more story than person. You would always watch over them, however. You had promised Brenan to do so on his dying bed and no matter how bitterly lonely you were more often than not, you would not falter. As long as people had need of you, you were determined to be there for them.

You were, therefore, all the more surprised when you later saw a temple with your symbol etched into the side of the gate, small enough that anyone else would have overlooked it. You hadn’t set so much as a single toe into a temple after the gods had gotten furious with your continued existence. You missed it sometimes, the worshipping, the hope that if you got tired and worn, there would still be some kind of higher power to at least talk to. Nowadays you spoke to the void in your little pocket dimension, cut off from the rest of the wold.

Sometimes, there was a small seed of resentment within you when you thought of the gods. Why could they not accept you? Why was it so horrible that you lived? You did so much good, could that, at least, balance the scales in their eyes?

You were therefore very wary when you approached the temple, knocking cautiously. Strangely enough, whoever, the faint trace of godly power that usually resided in every temple was nowhere to be found.

A haggard maiden opened the door, but her face lit up a bit at spotting you. "Please, come in," she said, voice soft but carrying and underlying thread of exhaustion. "Thank you for hearing us."

"How may I be of aid?" you asked, edging inside as though the floor might suddenly turn to lava. "I will do my best to help."

The maiden gestured towards the dais at the back of the temple and you realized there were no effigies anywhere, not even any stained glass pictures. There was only your symbol again, etched into the dais and an older woman in pale blue-green robes, almost reminding you of the faintest shimmer of the sea.

You quietly approached the woman who looked up, her tired face easing with sudden relief.

"War is on the horizon, the city doesn’t know it yet, but they will soon," she said and you resisted the urge to wince. There were wars everywhere and as much as you could heal and help and bring laughter to bleak homes, you had so far not managed to stop the marching of an army, to change the minds of those too power hungry to care for the folk ground beneath the heels of their ambitions.

You hadn’t studied destruction magic enough to force someone to stop, how to make the armies bleed and bleed until they were too thin and weak to continue on. You couldn’t even stomach the thought of killing someone just to prove your point, never mind entire battalions.

"I don’t know if I can help," you admitted with great reluctance, fiddling with your dark blue-grey cloak. "I have never prevented a war before."

The woman glanced at you. "We do not ask for the impossible, but when the armies come, there will be injured and the dead and fields burned and salted to destroy our harvest. Our rivers will swim with corpses and our wells will be empty or poisoned."

"I can help with those things." You felt a breath of relief at her words. This, yes, this you could do. You could cleanse water and bury the dead and heal the sick and injured and return the earth to its former state to feed its people again. The deity of nature shouldn’t protest your hand in things either, you had figured out over the years that she was always very upset about wars and argued relentlessly with the god of war.

The woman smiled, her drawn, worried face easing to a true smile. And this, this was truly why you did everything you did. Why you risked your life and studied magic scrolls until late at night, why you didn’t stop searching until you found the solution you wanted. Seeing someone smile after all that worry and fear was like watching the sun rise for the first time. Beautiful and warm and bright and precious.

The sudden arrival of a group of gods made you flinch and startle, eyes wide. That had been far too fast an approach, but it couldn’t have been the temple, there was no god here.

"I fear I must go," you said, pulling up the hood of your cloak and backing up to the door at the back of the temple. You were loath to destroy anything but you would jump through the window if necessary. The one and only drawback of your pocket dimension was that you had to be outside, earth below and sky above and neither obscured in order to open the gate and step through.

The walls shook as the doors blew open and a massive form ducked through. The god of war came first, dressed in splendor and spilling power like a rushing, deadly river after autumn storms. The deity of storms came next, air crackling with soon approaching thunder, feet never touching the ground and winds howling in their hair.

You ran.

Running from gods was about as easy as running from ancient, supernatural beings, which meant you made it two steps before a towering being of world shaping and shattering power stood over you, a glowing hammer swinging down.

Teleportation was, of course, a thing you could do, but you needed a moment to make it work properly, otherwise it could end disastrous. Just because you were immortal didn’t mean you couldn’t be killed.

Dropping low, you felt the sweep of the hammer missing you by a mere millimeter, your clothes dragging in the powerful draft of the deadly swing. You dove forward, rolling between the wide-legged stance the god of war had taken to attack, knowing that behind you there would already be another deity waiting.

Springing to your feet you threw up enough of a disorienting spell to avoid another attack, sprinting for the open doors. Tossing spells over your shoulder, you managed to duck around the deity of storms, avoiding the crackling thunder only because you had invented a new spell to counter it long enough to leave immediate reach.

As soon as your foot met crooked cobblestone and you saw the sky thick with storm clouds, the other deities, some rising from the ground like earthen monoliths, others descending from the sky like birds of prey and more again materializing like fog. You ripped open the pathway to your pocket dimension and went through, just as pain exploded along your side.

The rip had closed immediately behind you, but not before you felt the faint zing of lightning, your body not quite feeling pain but tumbling to the ground in a shaky, paralyzed mess.

By the time you got up to your knees again, you had healed the gash in your side and dragged yourself to a chair, flopping into it, breathing hard and staring up. You could almost hear Brenan, scolding you for being reckless and Liesel would have snarled her fury, would have draped you in defensive spells and would have demanded to be at your side, hurling all her magic at those threatening you.

Gods, you missed them so much.

You took a moment longer to calm down, before you used a spell to get the blood out of your clothes and you mended the rips afterwards. You knew where the gods were now, so you could drop by at another spot in the world.

With a wave of your hand, you were opening another gateway and returned to the world you refused to abandon.

More days and weeks passed until months had gone by and when you cautiously returned to visit Brenan’s children once again, war had hit the lands hard. You barely had a moment to breathe, healing the sick and injured, cleansing water and purifying the earth. Afterwards, even if it was getting more and more dangerous, you stayed to help fix homes. You might not be a gifted builder, but as long as one directed you, you could make stones and wood float. It took you minutes to cut down swathes of trees and turn them into planks they could use to keep building.

When the sky rumbled you were in the middle of rebuilding the last townhouse and you had already used almost all of your magic. Not that you would have gone and fought gods directly anyway, you would only end up pulverized. For all your abilities and immortality, you were still mortal.

The presence of the goddess of creation had been there all day long as usual, a faint trace as she watched over those who called to her, but now there was a piercing slam of godly energy as the heavens themselves seemed to split open to allow them all through.

You couldn’t just drop the levitation spell of the ceiling beams, workers would get buried beneath and you moved them out of the way, grim expectancy of death gripping your joints like fingers of ice.

When suddenly, people stood between you and the gods, faces a horrible mixture of terrified-determined, arms outstretched as they shouted up at their creators to stop.

You had never expected this. The people loved their gods, loved the plentiful harvest the goddess of earth brought them, admired the warriors who followed the call of war and adored the god of sleep, praying for good dreams. They worshipped the sun and moon, the tides and storms, the birth of new life and they prayed for passing souls to have a good afterlife. The gods were loved, still, but you hadn’t realized you had been able to give the people something they hadn’t. Whether they couldn’t or wouldn’t didn’t matter, not when you had filled that void.

With wide eyes you watched the barrier of people, people you had healed and cheered up and helped fix leaking roofs. People you had known since the day they had been born, who had known you as a legend come to life.

You gently set down the beams, the workers safe now and the women of the empty, godless temple stepped up to flank your side, more citizens pouring out into the streets.

"Give up the imposter," the god of oceans boomed, the very air feeling heavy with moisture, making it hard to breathe. "You have all been blinded for too long."

"No harm will come to you," the god of death stepped forward, voice gentle and kind. 

There was an involuntary flinch away from them by everyone around, an instinctive, deeply rooted human desire to not meet them too early. But they had a soft kindness to them, something infinitely patient and deeply welcoming, promising a soft resting place, an easing of any aches and pains, be they of body, mind or soul. 

Death, in your opinion, was the kindest of the gods despite their ire with you cheating them. You knew, when your time came, they would still be gentle with you, would usher your soul on with the utmost care, a soft kind of love for the very fact that you existed at all. 

You weren’t ready to leave, yet, though and maybe it made you a cheat and a hypocrite that you would deny other humans who weren’t ready either, but immortality was a different kind of burden, one very, very few were truly capable of shouldering. You yourself sometimes felt like buckling beneath all the years piling up on your shoulders, all the time passing in your mind.

You eased back a step, gathering what remained of your magic close, a last tendril of it to rip the world open so you could step into your little pocket of safety.

A sudden numbness spread, the gathered magic dissipating again to its dormant hum and your hands didn’t move, your legs felt strangely detached. You only realized you had sank to the ground when the two temple ladies grabbed your elbows, easing your way down. The world was strange, you thought. Sound was distorted and your sight a little blurry.

"Everything ends," one of the gods said and your head lulled forward to see the single, deadly flower blooming at your feet, having wormed its way through the cobblestone. For the first time since the gods had shown up, unprepared for your escape route, you had stayed still long enough for them to try anything this quiet and subtle.

Oh, you thought as your body felt more and more detached, the distorted sound growing duller and the world turned into a strange blur of color, as though an artist had dipped their hand into paint and dragged it across the canvas multiple times. This is what dying feels like.

Warm hands cupped your cheeks and the muffled sound around you changed, a soft, steady chanting. A song, what a sweet thing to send you off on. More voices joined and you sank into the hands on your cheeks, the hands helping you lean against a soft chest, a child’s small fingers finding and grabbing your bigger ones.

Strange, for some reason you had always thought you would die alone. And bloodier. Maybe that was the final mercy of the gods.

The song swelled and grew, words you could not decipher, but the rhythm, the very essence of it seeped into you, brought warmth back into your bones and it wrapped around your heart. That unexpected love and gratitude of these people, who would even stand firm in the face of godly wrath to protect you. 

You were sure you were crying and smiling as your breathing stuttered.

The warm hands on your cheeks left briefly, a necklace being pulled over your head, before they returned. Another set of hands came to rest over your heart, pressing down the necklace while they were at it.

More sound, almost as if from far away and as if it came through some kind of wall, but it was swiftly drowned out by the song. A song which grew to overtake your senses and the last bit of your leftover magic opened up to it, seeking that kindness in your final moments.

It was more than a mere song, you realized as your magic entwined with something that was more, something that was hope and defiance and gratitude and a call to the very foundations of the pantheon itself.

A call your soul answered, heavy with the years of immortality, buoyed by the love you held for this world, a steady, relentless will to do good with your powers. You had sought for something all these years, whether you knew it or not. A new connection after losing Brenan and Liesel and becoming less of a person and more of a fairy tale, a story people told their children so they’d be good and have good things happen to them in return.

And now, now there it was, as human hands held you up the same way you had once pulled them off their knees. And their calls were loud and their song was strong and their souls were hopeful, calling for the very thing you had always given them whenever you could.

Air filled your lungs with a big gasp as you felt the pantheon reach back to touch your very essence, answering the song that was a prayer of the people around you. Warmth bloomed back into your limbs and your heart beat, as strong as ever and your mind began to clear, your vision returning.

You were kneeling on the ground and you knew you there was a part of you that was human, still, but now there was more. You looked up, eyes wide to see the suddenly still and silent gods gathered around, the song of the citizens slowing to a quiet end.

You looked at the gods and suddenly you knew them, you knew all the names humanity had given them over the centuries and the true ones they had come into existence with. You saw their realms and their powers, how they coveted power and feared the loss of it. How their emotions were as wild as those of their creations and they worked for ever greater heights.

You felt your understanding of the world stretched further and bigger than just them, however. You felt, in this brief instance, the entirety of the pantheon, the vast power of the endless sky, the stories caught in stars and you heard the voices of all those who had passed, cheering and shouting and loudest among them Brenan’s voice. You hadn’t forgotten his voice even once, even after centuries and you heard him shout and scream for your victory loudest of all and you knew, suddenly you knew he was within reach again, that gods could walk the realms freely.

And then, there it was, a touch from somewhere far away, from an entirely different world, Liesel’s fierceness and suddenly she wasn’t gone, unreachable. Suddenly all that separated the two of you was just another rip, another gateway. The world had expanded and laid itself beneath your hands and you couldn’t help but breathe it in, breathe in all that lived and died and hoped and dreamed and kept going against all odds.

A sob caught in the back of your throat, a deep, hopeless yearning in you finally coming to rest now that your dearest friends, your long lost family was within reach again. Finally that age-old grief eased its grip.

You looked down on yourself and you saw faintly glowing, pale sea-green robes and a necklace around your throat, the symbol the people had given you dangling from it in simple iron.

Creation stepped forward at last, breaking the stillness, her voice an awed whisper, "A light in the dark," she said and when you looked up, you saw no confusion, no startled surprise in her face. There was nothing but fierce pride, the edges softened by awed adoration.

She had known, you realized. She had known what would happen, because this song hadn’t just come from nowhere. People had planned, had whispered to each other every time you had to flee, every time they saw blood left in your wake, every time they had to hide you from the gazes of the other gods they still worshipped. They had seen and planned and they had started to…to create. Of corse she had known, she was the essence of creation herself.

And she was so very, very proud, of you and of all the people around you for having succeeded in this. Looking at the other gods, you saw they had feared this very thing, had feared this very moment and had hunted you because of it. They had been terrified of you, a mortal, being raised by the others to stand with them as an equal, feared they would all end up being replaced, one after another.

Or maybe, even more than that, they had feared proof that they weren’t enough, that they had fallen short to the point where humanity had to create a god of their own to be held up in their faces.

Creation stepped forward and for the first time you saw her truly and fully as herself. Her wildly flowing, thick hair, her clothes ever changing to display all that artisans across the world and centuries were capable of, countless tools dangling from her belt. She stopped in front of you, none of the humans standing in her path now and she held out her hand, calloused by hard work.

"Rise," she said, her voice ringing clear like temple bells and the grin on her face was still fierce and so very proud. "Deity of Hope and Mercy.""

Ages ago you discovered immortality and then had the time to learn the strongest magics. But the gods were jealous and banded together to smite you. To escape their wrath, you hid in another dimension, coming back for only short, safe periods of time, to help people in their time of need.

[mattsturnioloz]

I found you again: Pt 2.

Summary: Sequel of ‘Then I lost you’, A year after a devastating break up, Y/n finds herself reuniting with the love of her life, Matt Sturniolo, at a mutual friends birthday party. Will they rekindle their love?

Pairings: Y/n x Matt Sturniolo

Warnings: Crying, arguing, angst, uti, cussing, mentions of anxiety.

A/N: (Yall wanted this so bad so i’m about to work on it, hope you guys enjoy😚 Again, If you haven’t, I recommend reading ‘Then I lost you’ first. There’s 5 parts so you have a little more understanding of why they broke up and the story in general, here’s a link :) ‘Then I lost you’)

I feel dread the rest of the way to the party. I know I shouldn’t be upset but I can’t help it. I can’t just throw away the 5 years we had together.

We get to the party and I realize that I need to loosen up. Chris, Nick and I thank the uber as we walk up to Tara’s door and we don’t bother knocking, I open the door and lead us in, seeing all the people, feeling a little self conscious about my outfit since I don’t usually dress this way. I grab Nicks hand as we walk through the house so that we didn’t lose eachother, Chris close behind.

“Y/n, we HAVE to take pictures in a bit I need some for instagram.” Nick says and Chris nods agreeing with him. “Yea sure, you guys look good.” I reply smiling at them, taking in their outfits. They both say thank you as we continue to walk through the crowded house, greeting some friends and we spot Larri, Quen and Tara talking in the backyard.

We walk up to them and I pounce on Larri and Quen scaring them and they both jump. “Holy fuck bitch you scared me!!” Larri yells, laughing as we hug.

All 6 of us talk for a while and we take pictures but eventually I somehow end up alone. Everyone is doing their own thing and I go inside where people are dancing and taking shots then I turn around when I feel someone grab my shoulder and it’s Jake with Johnnie next to him.

“Hi guys!!” I yell over the music hugging them. “Hey, Happy Birthday! are you gonna take shots with us?” Jake asks with shots in his hands and all of a sudden the attention is on us and the whole party is watching and convincing me to take some. I look in the corner of my eye and I see tara, a shot already in her hand.

I nod and drown down a couple of shots and all of us are having a good time. I’m not drunk but I definitely feel a little buzzed. I grab a drink after and I sit in the corner of the house just observing everyone as they dance.

The front door opens and I watch to see who it could be and my heart drops down to my ass. It’s Matt. With a blonde haired girl following behind him as they hold hands. I feel like throwing up. I clutch my chest before holding my mouth and I run to the bathroom dropping to the floor, puking up all of the alcohol.

I stand up and wipe my mouth, going to door and locking it. I look in the mirror, leaning against the sink. I thought he wasn’t coming?? I can’t go back out. I have to pretend to be drunk or something so I have an excuse to go home. Ew no.. I can’t do that.

I can’t say it’s because I don’t want to see Matt with a new girl, i’ll look like an idiot. But here I am a year later, still fonding over my ex who’s clearly moved on. I have to act like I don’t care. Yea, i’ll do that.

I hear a knock at the door and I fix myself up before opening it. I’m already startled when I see it’s the girl Matt came with, his girlfriend.

There’s an awkward silence between us before she speaks up “Can I- uh..” she says, pointing at the bathroom awkwardly, and that’s when I realize I was just standing there staring like a freak. Fuck. I already messed up.

“Oh! yea. i’m so sorry..” I answer, almost jumping out the way. God that’s embarrassing. I walk away and I sit back in the spot I was at originally. That’s when I spot Matt talking to Nick and Chris.

He looks so different. So good.. He has a new haircut and he grew his beard out. He doesn’t have the middle part anymore. He looks better.

He takes off his sweater revealing his arm covered in scattered tattoos and I melt. He has way more than what he had when we were together. I stop staring and look away when I see that his gaze meets mine, his eyes widening in shock when he spots me and I try to act like I didn’t see him. I feel my heart starting to beat out of my chest.

I look to my left and see his girlfriend coming out of the bathroom, making her way over to him before kissing him. I feel like i’m gonna throw up again as I feel a pit forming in my stomach. I make an almost disgusted face but quickly wipe it off. I can’t hate just because i’m jealous.

I look to my right and I see Nick and Chris walking over to me, Chris speaking first. “Nick wants to take shots, but he’s scared.” He says leaning down to my ear since the music was loud. “Why are you scared?” I chuckle, looking over at Nick when he starts speaking. “See, we’ve been 21 for months and I haven’t drank because i’m scared im gonna wake up in a ditch with an agonizing hangover.” he adds, as the 3 of us chuckle.

“I’ll get drunk if you do.” I say to Nick and Chris looks between us back and forth with his jaw dropped while chuckling. “I’m down.” Nick replies, nonchalantly shrugging his shoulders. I’m not stupid. I know I only said that to get Matt and the fact that he has a girlfriend off my mind.

I stand up and we go to the kitchen, brushing past Matt and his girlfriend and I fill up 2 shot glasses for Nick and I when Chris nudges me holding a shot glass. “You too?” I say raising my brows at him and he nods giggling like he’s excited.

I look over at Matt and his girlfriend who are watching us. “You guys want one?” I ask them, specifically making eye contact with Matt. I have to act like I don’t care, right?

“No i’m oka-“ His girlfriend replies but getting cut off by him. “I’ll take one.” He replies with a slight smile at me and I smile back, nodding and filling up a shot glass for him.

I hand it to him before the 4 of us cheers as his girlfriend watches us. Matt only took 1 shot because he’s driving, but Nick, Chris and I keep taking some to the point where I don’t know how many we drank.

15 minutes later the 3 of us are drunk leaning against each other while laughing and messing around. “L-let’s go to the couch..” Nick slurs, laughing as he talks. When we try to walk Chris falls splat on the ground and just lays there instead of getting up, making Nick and I tumble to the ground from laughing so hard. “Nick- Nick I can’t get uppp!” I say cackling pushing on his head trying to get up, Nick still laughing hysterically.

I look over at Chris and he’s still on his stomach in the same position he fell in, giggling to himself, his face squished against the cold wood floors. “Get up you freak!” I yell at Chris, still unable to control myself and I see Matt walking over to help him up. “Alright buddy, let’s get you guys home.” He says to Chris. He takes Chris first while Nick and I are sitting up, slumped against eachother on the wall.

Matt comes back and takes Nick before coming back for me. His girlfriend already waiting in the car with Chris and Nick. “Alright it’s your turn..” He says scooping me up bridal style, putting my arm around his neck. “Me too??..” I slur, my eyes barely open. “What? You thought i’d leave you there? you can’t possibly think that low of me.” He says, chuckling. I smile at him and my hand finds the back of his head and I start playing with his hair.

He looks at my face and smiles at me sweetly, making eye contact with me and I couldn’t help but cup his face and glide my finger across his cheek. I missed his face, the feeling of his touch, his smile, the way he looked at me with his beautiful blue eyes.

He takes my hand from his face holding it in his. “You can’t do that y/n.. I’m with Nancy.” He says, his smile fading. Right. I’m an idiot. “Sorry..” I slur, embarrassed. I know I can’t be selfish though, he’s in a relationship and I need to respect that. It’s not fair to her.

He still smiles at me again as he opens the back door of his car, putting me next to Chris before buckling me in and shutting the door. He gets into the passenger seat and his girlfriend kisses his cheek, getting touchy which pisses me off but again.. I can’t be mad.

I lay my head on Chris’s shoulder, feeling tired. I look over and Nick and Chris are already out like a light, so I close my eyes. We haven’t even moved yet. I feel Matt look back at me a couple of seconds before I start to hear lips smacking. There’s no way they’re fucking making out right now.

I open my eyes and lift my head from Chris’s shoulder to see them macking on each others mouths, I even saw tongue. I feel my body get hot and I feel like I can’t breathe. He doesn’t even have the decency to not do that in front of me. Even if he thinks i’m asleep, I still feel so disgusted and disrespected.

“Are you kidding me right now?!” I yell and I see them both get startled before looking at me in shock. I unbuckle my seatbelt grabbing my small purse and I open the car door stumbling out going back towards the party.

I fall on the grass since i’m still really drunk but I get back up and stumble towards the front door. I hear the car door opening and closing, matt’s voice following behind it. “Y/N!!”

He catches up to me and he grabs my arms. “Y/n, i’m sorry okay? We shouldn’t have done that, I didn’t thin-” he says, panicked before I interrupt him, shoving him away from me.

“Don’t touch me!! what the hell is wrong with you!!” I yell and I feel my nails digging into the palm of my hand from clenching my fists so hard. I could see the anger flush over his face when I shoved him, he grabs my forearms and holds them together firmly.

“Don’t fucking shove me! It’s not my fault you haven’t moved on!” He yells, still gripping my arms. I try to get out his grip but I fail. “I said don’t touch me.” I repeat, sternly. “I don’t care if you’re in a relationship, but you had to do that with me right behind you? I feel so disrespec-“ I add but I get cut off by him.

“You feel disrespected or insecure and jealous?” He snaps, in the same stern tone. Wow. “You’re an asshole!” I shove him again finally managing to get out his grip. “Why? because i’m right?!” He yells, after he stumbles back from the push. “Fuck you.” I slur, since i’m still very much drunk, my eyes watering. I see how my words weigh on him, but I don’t care at the moment.

I take in the night air, barely knowing why this is happening, the tears rolling down my cheeks making the cold air sting my face. He just stands there taking a deep breath obviously conflicted. This is the worst birthday ever. I should’ve stayed home.

1,951 words.

A/N: (this chapter is so long but I was so invested LMAO😭 Let me know what you guys think, it always helps me🙂)

Taglist: @watercolorskyy @chrissfleshlight @realuvrrr @stonermattsgf @pvssychicken @venusbabysblog @kayla-hearts4sturniolo @endereies @imwetforyourmom @starzinasblog @urfavstromboli @sturniqloo @star-yawnznn @h3arts4harry @asherrisrandom @tsturniolo4 @urmom69lol @luzsturniolo @victoriasturniolo @ncm9696 @valkatriee @sturnslut1 @annielolz @sturnlover4eva @luzsturniolo @slxtarchive @anyaa2s @sturnzpro

[sleepyparalysisdmon]

Let Me Hear You Say

The three times that Minghao resists confessing, and the one time it accidentally slips.

Word count: 1.9k

Warnings: mentions of alcohol consumption and being drunk.

This is part of the Three Times series. This one is inspired by this reaction.

One

“I’m here!” You bust into Minghao’s studio, tossing bags, a coat, and half a dozen other things down in a chaotic mess. “Traffic was terrible,” you moan, collapsing onto the small couch in the corner. 

Minghao looks unimpressed with your dramatics as he peers over his canvas at you. “You sure do know how to make an entrance,” he muses. “What kind of trail of destruction did you leave on the way here?”

“Just a few things knocked over, I don’t think anything broke this time.” Some might think you’re joking, but Minghao knows you’re serious. You’re a bull in a china shop on a good day, and an F-5 tornado on a bad day. He secretly thinks of these comparisons affectionately. “What are you working on?” 

“I don’t know, to be honest. I had some colors in mind and I just went with it,” he mumbles, stepping back to see what he’s done. You join him glancing over the canvas. You give him a wide smile. 

“I like that shade of blue.” 

“So predictable,” he chuckles. “Make yourself useful and mix me some more of it then. And don’t waste paint.”

“No promises!” You exclaim, taking his palette from him and going to the work bench that holds all of his paint collection. When you hand the palette back to him a couple minutes later, he examines the color closely. It’s so, so close that it’s nearly imperceptible. Bull in a china shop that you are, combined with the skills in some arts that you lack, he’s kind of proud of you that you’re willing to stand still and focus long enough to get so close. He doesn’t have the heart to correct you. He never does when he can tell you’re really trying. 

But you’re pouting anyway, glancing between the palette and the canvas. “It needs more white.” He holds the palette above your head when you reach for it. 

“No, it’s fine. I told you not to waste paint. It’s so close I barely noticed.” 

You smile, though it doesn’t quite reach your eyes. “You’re just saying that. It’s obviously too dark. Give it here. I’ll add a little more white.” 

“No.” Minghao is already dipping the brush in the color you mixed. “I like this one better anyway. Don’t forget the ratio you used. I want you to write it down.” 

“Okay,” you sing, grabbing a pen and paper from his work bench. Once you’re done, it goes it the collection of Y/N’s Colors, a special little spot in the corner stacked high with little scraps of paper. He wonders if you notice how often those colors reappear in his works. Probably not, which is just as well.

Two

It’s Minghao’s day off and you drag him to the art gallery. You say there’s a new collection that you’re interested in seeing. It surprises him, because it’s usually him that’s dragging you to places like this. It’s usually too quiet and not exciting enough for you, and you bounce on your feet, trailing behind him until he’s ready to go. 

This time, you’re many paces ahead of him on the sidewalk, turning excitedly to get him to hurry up. “Since when do you rush for something like this?” Minghao asks, watching you bounce up the stairs to the entrance. 

“You’ll see.” Your eyes are a little wild. You grab his hand and start tugging him like he’s not moving fast enough. Usually you both would start at the beginning and slowly make your way through the room, but you’re tugging him somewhere in the middle. You come to an abrupt stop and he nearly bumps into you. “This is the one I wanted to show you.”

You point to a photograph. It’s black and white and a little out of focus, but that’s the entire point. He recognizes the style and doesn’t really need to look at the little placard underneath the photo. “You didn’t tell me you submitted something,” he admonished, admiring your work. 

You sort of squeal and shake his arm. “I didn’t think they’d accept it. I found out yesterday,” you talk fast. It’s only because he’s known you for a while that he can keep up with your motor mouth. “I guess someone had to pull out last minute and mine was a back up. It’s small, but isn’t it cool?”

“It is,” Minghao says genuinely. “This is great, Y/N. I’m proud of you.” He pushes you towards the photo. “Come on. Pose for a picture.” 

“Oh, no Minghao. You know I prefer to be behind the camera,” you whine, resisting his shove. 

“I won’t post it. It’s just for me,” he promises. You sigh, standing next to your piece. He snaps a quick photo before you decide to bolt. He lied a little. He didn’t post it on social media, not even his private accounts. But he did get it printed and framed for his studio. He hangs it up high so you won’t be able to reach it and get rid of it easily if you ever notice it. 

Three

Woozi whistles when he flips through the pages. Minghao spins in the chair, waiting for a response. It’s not too often that he presents lyrics for the group’s use. He’s better at other forms of media, primarily visual aspects. Still, sometimes he tries his hand at it and gives it to Woozi to do with it what he will. 

“I could use some of this,” Woozi finally says. “I’ll credit you if I do.”

“Don’t bother,” Minghao waves off. “You know that’s not what’s important to me.”

“I know,” Woozi chuckles. “You make it pretty obvious what’s important to you.”

Minghao raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, my focus is performance and choreography.”

“I know that,” Woozi rolls his eyes. “I meant, it’s obvious who all of these are about. You should really do something about that.”

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about,” Minghao says shortly. “They’re just lyrics. They aren’t that serious.”

Woozi hums, though he looks a little bit entertained. “Denial is a really strong start, but not very convincing though. What’s so wrong with just telling her?”

“Tell her what? She’s just a friend.” 

Another eye roll, and Woozi goes back to his computer. “Fine, have it your way. You can deny that, I guess, but you can’t deny the writing credits you’ll get.”

Minghao leaves the studio before he can be roped back into that conversation. 

Four

Later that night, he agrees to go out with some of the members for drinks. He’s distracted and keeps taking whatever is handed to him, drinking faster than he normally would. He’s busy replaying the conversation with Woozi in his head. He’s never said it out loud, never admitted it, and no one has ever called it out so blatantly either. He’d always preferred it that way, maybe because then it doesn’t feel real and he can shove it to the back of his head to deal with later, or never. Something about Woozi’s direct comments make it hard to ignore, makes it feel real and it’s a little suffocating. 

He’s nearly asleep at the table when he loses the grip on his glass. His eyes snap open, scrambling for it, but it’s not that it’s slipped. Rather, a hand his tugging it away. He recognizes the hand because he’s watched it mix paint for him more than a few times. He releases the glass and puts his head in his hand, rubbing away the headache that’s formed somewhere between his eyebrows. 

You rub his back, voice teasing. “Having fun?” 

“Loads,” he mumbles. “What are you doing here? I thought you had to work.”

“I did. I’m already off. Jun called and said you might need a ride home,” you say lightly. Minghao checks his watch and groans at the time. He’s lost hours dozing at the table, it seems. You laugh, patting his back. “Come on, you can crash at my place. It’s closer.”

He lets you throw his arm around your shoulder once he’s standing and he hopes it doesn’t look like you’re carrying him, though you kind of are. You help him into the car and even buckle his seat belt. If he were sober, he’d never let you do that, but he’s a little overwhelmed by how nice you smell when you lean in close. He must doze off during the drive, because he wakes up to the smell of your perfume again as you’re leaning over him to unbuckle him. 

Inside your apartment, you help him out of his shoes and help him lie down on the couch. “Feel like you’re going to be sick?” He shakes his head and prays it will stay that way. “Okay, be right back.” In what feels like both a spilt second and a hundred years, you reappear with a bottle of water and a few aspirin. “Take these, get a head start.” He does as you say and then curls up into the pillow. A fluffy blanket comes over him. 

“Thanks. Love you.”

You laugh and the sound makes the corner of his lips turn up. “I think that’s the first time you’ve ever said that. Who knew you’d be such a sweet drunk?”

“Just to you,” Minghao mumbles. 

“Aww, am I special?” You chuckle, brushing back his hair. 

He hums in agreement. “Yep. Love you. In love with you.”

You guffaw, standing up. “Okay, honey. Get some rest.” He’s pretty sure he’s asleep before you even turn the lights off. 

He wakes up the next morning to the smell of coffee. It’s strong, mostly because when he opens his eyes you’re waving the mug under his nose. He rears back, groaning at the sudden movement because his head is pounding. You laugh, placing the mug in his hands. “Aspirin is on the table. Take some more. Breakfast is coming up.”

Later, in between bites, you ask, “So did you have fun last night?”

“I don’t know,” Minghao mumbles. “Don’t remember much to be honest. I didn’t do anything stupid, did I?”

“It depends,” you smile, taking another bite. “Does confessing your love for me count as stupid?”

Minghao chokes on his coffee, nearly spraying it across the table. “I did what?”

“Yeah,” you say casually. “I don’t know if it was the alcohol talking, but you said ‘love you’ twice, and then ‘in love with you’ once. It was very sweet. You’re very sweet, even if you didn’t mean it.”

Minghao’s silent for a long time and you let him be, probably thinking he needs a minute to collect himself from the embarrassment. But you’ve got it all wrong. He kind of wishes he had the liquid courage he did last night. He can’t really look at you when he says, “I meant it.”

You stare at him for a few long seconds before finally smiling. “Good.” You’re up on your feet and he never knows how you have so much energy, but you’re bounding around the table and cupping his face, pressing the smallest peck to his lips. 

He’s momentarily stunned before he’s pushing you back. “Oh, come on, Y/N. I haven’t even brushed my teeth yet.”

“I have a brand new one under the sink. You better hurry.” He does, jumping up to run to the bathroom. He can hear your laugh echo down the hallway and thinks this will probably the first and last time he’ll ever be relieved to have gotten drunk the night before. 

[bxnfire]

Lines Blurred || Satoru Gojo

✎ synopsis: Heartbroken after dating “the boy of your dreams” you’re looking towards living a new life, one with new people and possibly new experiences, except the light hearted fun you hoped for became something stronger than that

✎ warnings/content: smut, fluff, tiiiny bit of angst, fingering, oral (both receiving), p in v, fwb, pet names, college!au

✎ a/n: this is my first ever fic!! english is not my first language, so please excuse any faulty grammar. please lmk if you have any suggestions or comments, they’d help a lot ❤️

✎ part 2 here

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ˏ ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ˏMINORS DNI ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ˏ ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ˏ

It had been 3 months since your last relationship ended. You dated one of your closest friends, and tauntingly enough, he was also in your friend group. Having spent your summer heartbroken and trying to move past things, if you were certain of anything it was that you wanted to spend the least amount of time in his presence, something near impossible if you also wanted to be around your friend group, therefore, you decided it was time for a change.

You had been friends with Shoko for a while, but didn’t really know her friends nor hung around her much, and seeing how she got you through your heart ache you decided it’d be a good idea to stick to her.

💬 Shoko ❤️: you comin w us for lunch?

💬 You: sure thing!

You were nervous. Geto seemed so hard to read, you wondered if he’d be annoyed by your presence, and you didn’t know Gojo at all. Would they like you? Would they make you wish you were back with your other friends? Would they welcome you like Shoko did?

All your questions suddenly coming to a stop when you felt someone bump into you.

“My bad! I got caught up playing ball over there, please let me know if I hurt you,” said an energetic but apologetic voice. As you turned to look at the speaker, you noticed you were met with his chest instead, and looking up at him, you realized it was none other than Satoru Gojo.

“No worries! You just caught me off guard, but I’m good,” you said reassuringly.

“Wait! Aren’t you Shoko’s friend? What was it,” he hesitated, then said “Y/l/n, right?”

Surprised he knew about you at all, you unknowingly smiled at his recognition. “Yes, that’s me!”

“I remember her talking about you,” he smiled, “she said you were going through it. Is that true? Are you feeling better now?”

Embarrassment ran through you. As your cheeks turned pinker than usual, you scratched your head and replied “yes, that’s true. Luckily, I’m doing better, but as you’ve probably heard I’ll be hanging with you guys for now. I hope we can get acquainted soon!”

“Sure we will, see ya around Y/l/n!” He said as he ran off back into the field to play once again.

You didn’t know it yet, but in no time Gojo would be your door to a new world.

ˋ°•*⁀➷ ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ ˏ

One month had passed, and Gojo was more than just your friend. It had started innocently enough, sending each other dumb reels, sharing snacks, and even studying together.

You found yourself enjoying your conversations with him more than you enjoyed anyone else’s. He was really easy to talk to, and was always there to lift you up and make you smile whenever you felt down. His easygoing nature making you feel at ease with him, something you realized you were missing more than you originally thought.

It was no secret that he was very attractive, his beautiful blue eyes every girl seemed to fall for surely had similar effects on you. His cocky confidence made him even more likable to you, was there anything this man couldn’t do? His build was also very attractive, not too muscular but still built enough to be easily noticeable whenever he hugged you or took his shirt off, something you found yourself treasuring more and more.

It was all friendly until one night the jokes started to change tone, and after a week of tension, and stolen glances, you finally had enough of his teasing.

💬 Gojo 🍰: y/l/n, do u think u could do this?

💬 Gojo 🍰: *VID*

💬You: oh please, that’s nothing. i’ve fit bigger things than that banana in my mouth before

💬 Gojo 🍰: oh is that so?

💬 You: yes 🤭

💬 Gojo 🍰: what if i don’t believe you?

💬 You: well in that case i’d have to convince you right?

💬 Gojo 🍰: and how would that be?

💬 You: come to my dorm and find out

Gojo was running. Unbeknownst to you, he had been into you for a while, even before you two officially met. He remembers the beginning of your sophomore year in college. You two had ethics together, and he remembers you as the kind girl who helped everyone around you. Anybody could come to you if they didn’t understand something, and indirectly, he’s learned a lot from you. Shit, you were the only reason why he passed that boof ass course. The only reason to keep him coming. In the halls, he’d gotten to see your humor. Playing silly pranks in your friends, hiding phones for fun, having sassy remarks ready whenever the time called for them, and how loudly, although cutely in his eyes, you laughed at your friends’ jokes.

In no time, he found himself easily picking out your voice from others, differentiating your laugh in a sea of noise, and noticing you whenever you were around. But oh, he really disliked your boyfriend. Not hated of course! Never that, he wasn’t a hateful person… Though if he were to be, he’d hate him. Your stupid boyfriend who didn’t do well in class and didn’t care enough to ask for your help, who believed anyone’s opinions about your relationship over yours, and who, in the end, preferred to spend time with anyone else but you.

In retrospective, he didn’t really hate your ex; if anything, he started to like him. After all, after he proved he was too shitty for you, you were smart enough to leave him, meaning Satoru finally had a chance with you. He was more than psyched when Shoko told him you were sticking around for a bit, something that didn’t go unnoticed by her, but she knew Satoru could do you better than your ex did, so she let it slide.

You, on the other hand, were a wreck. Letting your lust get the best of you didn’t let you truly think through what you were about to do. What if this screwed your newfound friendship over? What if he didn’t actually want you? What if…

Your thoughts were interrupted once again by Gojo, but this time it was through a text.

💬 Gojo 🍰: open ur door

Running to your door, you gave yourself a second to shake the nerves off before opening the door. There stood Gojo, so handsome even with his white hair messy from running and his clothes a little rustled, making it obvious he wanted to waste no time getting here. His smile, shy but curious, didn’t go unnoticed by you.

“You’re so goddamn thirsty,” you tell him, finding enough confidence to smile back.

“You don’t even know,” he whispers as he gets closer to you while shutting the door behind him.

Next thing you know, you’re pinned against the wall with his hands all over your body. His kisses are desperate yet gentle, as if he had been waiting for so long he was scared this was just a dream, one he didn’t dare wake up from. Flushing at that thought, you tangled your hands in his hair and pulled him even closer, something that ignited a fire in him.

Until he woke up and stopped. He pulled away for a second, looking into your confused eyes.

“Are you sure you want to do this? Don’t get me wrong, I want to keep going, but I’d rather not make you uncomfortable ‘cause I know you may not be ready yet.”

This makes you smile. Couldn’t he tell how down bad you were for him? You truly found it sweet that he cared, but in that moment all you wanted was to have him down your throat. “I’m as ready as all I’ll ever be, unless you’re scared of course,” you reply, trying to bring back the mood.

“Scared? Baby you have no idea of how long I’ve waited for this, if anything, you should be scared of how desperately I want you,” and with that, he pulls you back in for a more passionate kiss.

Your response gave him the confidence to get bolder. His hands now ran under your shirt, every breath you took making them go a centimeter upper, until he eventually reached the hem of your bra. Shifting from your mouth to your neck, his kisses starting to get slower but more calculated, you started to moan at his touch, and in no time you felt something starting to poke your stomach. This made you even more flustered, and a familiar warmth pooled between your legs.

He picked you up and laid you down on your bed. Kissing your neck slowly, your whimpers get louder and louder as he presses him self against you, giving your soaking cunt well-received pressure.

Wanting to please him, you instinctively changed your positions so that you were on top of him and kissing down his body.

“Take this off,” you commanded.

“Who’s the thirsty one now?” He asked as he took his shirt off.

“Shut up. You came here so I could prove my point yeah?” You asked trying to hold on to you wavering confidence. His bulge was big, bigger than you would’ve thought it to be, but you were ready to take it, you wanted to taste him so bad.

Going over to him and taking his pants off, he stopped your hand from going further. You look up at him confused, wondering if you were doing something wrong.

“I want you to promise me something.” He said, looking deep into your eyes.

“And what would that be?” You asked, trying to guess what he could possibly be asking you.

“If you’re gonna show me your skills, it’s only fair I get to show you mine. Can’t let you one up me,” he said playfully, hoping you’ll let him in a little closer.

“Sounds good to me, but I don’t think you’ll be one upping me in any way,” you say, not wasting any time and going back to what you were doing.

Sliding down his underwear, his arousal sprung out, bigger and thicker than you thought it’d be. Giving it a few experimental strokes, your hand moved along his shaft trying to see what he liked, but to no avail, given that he was very reactive to all your touches, and this only encouraged you. Opting for leaving one hand at his balls and getting closer to him, you lick all over his dick.

Gojo is fucking losing it. He’s gripping the sides of your couch trying not to buck his hips into you. Who would’ve thought that all those late nights hopelessly scrolling through your profile stroking himself silly would eventually lead him to your bed were your mouth would finally replace his hands?

“F-Fuck, yeah, just like that,” he breathed out, lost in the feeling of your tongue deliciously swirling around his tip as you took him deeper in your mouth.

He started bucking his hips into your mouth soon after, gripping your hair and guiding your movements, fucking your face as he noticed how well you were taking it. As he was near the edge, he pulled your head away, once again leaving you confused.

“Why didn’t you let me finish the job?” You asked him almost mad, you wanted to see how he tasted.

“I want to make you cum first, told ya you won’t be one upping me tonight.”

“Oh really? You know I don’t need my mouth to make you cum right?” You say as you sit on his lap and start making out with him and put your hand to work. Since he was close not that long ago, you knew he’d be worked up enough to not take long to cum. Gojo was no longer kissing you as dominantly as before, having to take breaks to breathe and even moan under your touch.

Not even 10 minutes passed until he came all over your hand. Sticky ropes of cum shooting out coating your fingers, his abdomen, and your pants. Moving your hand to your mouth to suck his cum off your fingers, you look at him seductively. He wanted to be a brat and take control, but just watching you do that made him his dick throb once again.

Kissing you, now tasting himself in your mouth, he took your shirt off and tried to take your bra off. Inexperienced, he fumbled many times, which made you both laugh.

“Talk about one upping me and you can’t even take my bra off. What’s next, you won’t be able to find my clit?” You tease, doing the job for him.

“Oh please, let’s see who ends up begging for more by the end of the night,” he challenged, and for the first time, you realized you wouldn’t mind losing at all.

You were about to reply, but you realized he was no longer focused on your little banter. His eyes were glued to your bare chest, scanning every inch of your skin, wanting to remember everything for later, archive it in a special place in his brain.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says.

“You’re so fucking horny,” you reply, knowing better than to believe lust-filled words.

“I mean it! I’ve thought so even before we met,” he confessed, giving you no time to respond as he took one of your tits into his mouth while he played with the nipple in your other tit by rubbing it between his thumb and index finger.

Moans took over the room. Your smart mouth not shut, but rather occupied making progressively louder sounds in response to Gojo’s touch.

“Oh p-please G-Gojo!” You mewl, melting in his touch.

“Satoru.” He responds

“H-Huh?”

“Call me Satoru. You tried my nut, I think that’s enough to be on first name basis,” he joked, and in any other circumstance you would’ve laughed, but you were too caught up in the pleasure he was giving you.

“S-Satoru I-I need m-more!! Please give me more!!” You struggled to get out, but once you did, Satoru got to work quick pulling down your shorts and kissing down your torso to reach your thighs.

He licked, bit, and kissed around them, wanting to test how impatient you could get. It didn’t take you long to tug on his hair and pull him into you, his nose deliciously coming in contact with your soaked cunt, only the thin, wet fabric of your panties between you. Bringing one hand down to jerk himself while the other pulled your panties down to start kissing your sweet pussy, until he goes up to your clit and starts sucking it lightly, making sure you knew he was well aware of where it was and how to treat it.

His other hand reached up to your entrance and one digit started pumping into you. Your moans got louder and louder, and Satoru was wondering just how much longer he had until you were over the edge. Sticking in another digit and matching its curling pattern to the one inside made you start seeing stars, so lost in your own pleasure you couldn’t even manage to tell him you were about to come undone.

Eager to see you cry for him, all of a sudden he stopped, seeing your cute little flushed face with teary eyes look at him enraged.

“Why’d you stop?” You ask, forgetting all your pride and letting him know just how much he worked you up.

“Can’t have you wasting your arousal sweets. If you’re gonna cum, it better be all over my cock.” He said, waiting to see if he had fingered you dumb or if you had a smart remark for him.

“Then don’t fucking waste your time.” You replied, sitting on his dick and riding him to your own pleasure.

“S-Shit! You’re s-so big!” You moan, ecstasy reaching your system once again.

“This dick is all yours babe. Do as you p-please with me,” he replied, having a hard time keeping his composure as he watched your tits bounce in his face and feel you clenching his dick so fucking good.

It didn’t take you long to reach your climax, and seeing that you were unable to keep up with your own pace, Satoru took over and fucked you through your orgasm as he came closer and closer to his own. Pulling out in one quick motion, he came on your belly and kissed you as he did.

You both laid there quietly, trying to process everything that had just happened, not daring to say a word but also make a move away from each other. You were consumed in your thoughts until Satoru snaps you out of it.

“You impressed me sweets, you’re even sweeter than you look, and you take dick like a fuckin’ soldier,” he said as he caressed your face and you laughed with him.

“You’ve fucked a soldier before? Do those uniforms turn you on?” You reply playfully, happy that it’s almost like nothing has changed at all.

“Yes I have, she’s right in front of me, and I’ll need that soldier pussy putting me out of combat often,” he laughed as he said so, returning your energy as he always did.

You lay there naked just basking in each other’s presence, giving the bubble separating you from the rest of the world a little more time before bursting. Satoru ended up spending the night, but since he had a morning class the day after and you didn’t, he bought you breakfast before leaving your dorm.

You woke up to your favorite kind of coffee along with a butter croissant and a note in his unmistakable handwriting.

“Don’t miss me too much!! After lab is over I’m coming right back, so don’t leave juuust yet, I wanna see ya again ❤️

—Satoru”

Giggling, you sipped the drink as you recounted the events from last night, the memories flooding through and clouding your brain, making you genuinely wish he would come back soon.

Even then, after your daze was over, you really sat down to think of it all. Satoru was known for being a ladies’ man, could you just be another one of his conquests? You loved him, but you couldn’t stand to lose yet another friend due to your stupid feelings. Unsuspecting of his feelings for you, you decided to make it clear that you would just stay friends once he came back. Friends that were there for each other, but if the time came, friends that could call each other on those late, restless nights. This would be a sweet deal would it not? Or at least that’s what you told yourself.

Once Satoru came you acted normal. The usual banter between you two never failing to appear, but you could tell something had shifted. High fives or fist bumps were changed to hugs a little too long or kisses a little too intimate. Whenever people couldn’t see you, your usual friendly bickering turned into heated makeout sessions, always testing who gave into the other first.

Even if you placed the boundaries, ones that Satoru adhered to and respected almost religiously, you felt the dangerous beat of your heart whenever his name popped up on your phone or you happened to see him by chance. Once calling each other friends started to hurt, you knew you were screwed.

What you didn’t know though was how hurt he was too. How it pained him to have to hide his love for you all because he was scared you didn’t want to date him after all. He spent an awful lot of time dreaming of what it could be like if you were more than just friends with fucking benefits, if you would let him truly take care of you the way you deserved to be taken care of, if you could only give him a chance to prove that love, when good, is worth it after all. But he knew better than to push your limits, and so, he kept stealing glances, longing for your touch, and clinging to your little fuck sessions in hopes that one day, you’d see he had loved you all along.

[peanutpinet]

Biased - Sylus x Innocent Fem Reader (Under My Care Pt. 2)

Request: Can we have a part 2 where Innocent MC accidentally interrupting a meeting because she was exited about something and really wanted to tell Sylus? ( It can be simply as she got him a special crow plush or she won something but Sylus and the twins forgot to tell her about the meeting?)

A/N: some have been requesting a pt. 2 of Under My Care and one of you made a specific request about it. Just a lil fluff I decided to post for those who are looking for more Sylus fluff. I hope that this fic brightens up your day 🥰

Disclaimer: I do not own the images nor the characters or you (the MC). All images were taken from Pinterest and credit goes to the image's respective owners.

Warnings: fluff, slightly aggressive Sylus (not towards you, his men lmao), possessive and protective Slyus (not in a bad way)

After months of dating Sylus, he finally brought you to his penthouse at the N109 zone. Ever since the night when some of Sylus’ business partners barged into your dinner date, Sylus has shared more secrets of himself with you. But to Sylus’ surprise, you weren’t scared of him. You weren’t scared at the fact that he was the leader of a notorious bad group of people, the number one most wanted person in the N109 zone, the man who everyone practically feared.

Because to you, he’s just Sylus. He’s your first boyfriend and the first ever person to accept you for who you are. To not push your boundaries and be willing to do whatever it is that you enjoy. Knowing that you didn’t care about his title, money, or status made Sylus love you even more.

He would occasionally take you to his penthouse to stay over the weekend before bringing you back to Linkon, where you worked at a local bakery. He would also send you gifts and souvenirs whenever he was travelling. No matter where he was, or what time it was, Sylus would always be there whenever you needed him.

You suddenly got your period and want to cuddle with him? During your phone call, Sylus had teleported himself outside of your room. You wanted to visit a certain country? Sylus would immediately prepare his private jet and take you there, buying you all the things that your eyes lingered on. You want to try new hobbies? Sylus would pay for your lessons. All he asked is for you to stay by him which you had always done since the beginning.

This week, you had the whole week off and decided to stay with Sylus for the whole week which Sylus would tease about is; saying it was practice for when you two get married and settle down together. Despite your good baking and cooking skills, Sylus would still do most of the cooking. As for housework, you tried to be sneaky and do it while Sylus was in a meeting or something but Sylus would always know. He had Mephisto keep an eye on you and when he saw the chance, Sylus would immediately teleport behind you, wrapping his large hands around your waist, having a playful debate before finally coming to a middle ground and doing the housework together.

Today, however, you were determined to impress Sylus. You told Sylus that you wanted to head into town for a moment just to go to the grocery shop. But when you didn’t see him anywhere, you thought that this was the perfect chance to actually surprise him. But first, you tried to find Mephisto because you knew that even if you couldn’t find Sylus, he would always remind you to either text him or at least bring Mephisto with you.

Once you found Mephisto, you invited the mechanical bird who has taken a liking in you and texted Sylus before heading to the nearby grocery shop. You walked to the grocery store with Mephisto sitting on your shoulder, accompanying you as you stroll through the aisle, putting fresh produce, several baking materials, and snacks in your shopping cart.

After paying for the groceries with Sylus’ card; because the man hid your wallet whenever you came to visit him and would always put one of his cards in your wallet. You and Mephisto walked back to the penthouse where you started to prepare a feast for Sylus and the twins, Luke and Kieran.

Aside from Mephisto, you also bonded with the twins, Luke and Kieran, very well. They would often accompany you if Sylus were to have a sudden meeting or if you were bored but the twins were free and it ended up with the three of you playing kitty cards.

But again, today, it was just you and Mephisto. Even though the mechanical bird couldn’t talk, you kept on talking with it and even asked him to help take some ingredients for you as you cooked while you wait for your baked goods in the oven.

You decided to make some of Sylus’ favourite food which were braised beef with a side dish of sauteed vegetables along with some baked good which were brownies and chocolate chip cookies.

Once both the food you cooked and baked goods were done, you decided to plate them neatly and decided to search for Sylus in the penthouse because you know that when Sylus was out, he would always text you but because he didn’t, you were certain he was still in the penthouse.

After sometime, you finally heard Sylus’ voice, excitement surged through you as you barged into the room without thinking, expressing your happiness for making Sylus’ favourite food and some sweet treats for him and the twins.

“Sy, Luke, Kieran, I made lunch and some sweet and…” you exclaimed but didn’t even get to finish as you saw the situation in the room

Sylus was sitting in his chair with Luke and Kieran standing to either side of him, the entire room was filled with men who all wore black just like Luke and Kieran were. They didn’t looked like bodyguards, some were older than others, and you could tell that they were in an important meeting which reminded you of the time where Sylus’ business partner first barged in during your dinner date.

As if Sylus was able to read your mind without his aether core, Sylus immediately called out to you before anyone else could speak of something. “Hi sweetie, c’mere. Show me what you made for me and the twins, hmm?”

Sylus could sense your uncertainty with being watched by everyone in the room whom you didn’t know and honestly it was getting on his nerves because he could see how some of the men were eyeing you like you were a sweet treat.

“If any of you eye her or think about her in any way that displeases me, I’ll have to have an additional talk with you all. Personally” Sylus threatened as he motioned you to come closer to him. “It’s okay sweetie, come here”

You then started to walk cautiously towards Sylus who welcomed you with open arms and helped you sit on his lap as you held the lunch you made for him and the twins. “It’s okay sweetie, you weren’t disturbing anything too serious, hmm” Sylus gently held your chin between his fingers, rubbing it lovingly

You tried your best to seem like you’re okay and nodded towards Sylus who still wasn’t convinced but he didn’t want to push you too far. “Okay, sweetie. Let me wrap up this meeting real quick for you, yeah?”

Sylus kissed the top of your head before letting you lean on his broad chest as he quickly wrapped up the meeting which has gone for over half of the day. By the end of the meeting, Sylus managed to scare everyone in the room except the twins and you who immediately scurried out of the meeting room, not even daring to see Sylus’ eyes or look at you at all.

By the time everyone left, it was just you, Sylus, and the twins in the room. “So, what did you make for us, sweetie?”

Before you could show Sylus, the twins spoke up, apologising for not remembering to tell me that Sylus had a meeting. “We’re sorry boss and miss. We forgot to tell you about the meeting”

You looked at the twins and back at Sylus, worried that the twins were going to get scolded for forgetting but to your surprise, Sylus seemed unfazed and he dismissed the twins’ apology. “It happens. We were all busy. You both were with me during the meeting. I’m not mad that you both forgot or that (y/n) here suddenly came in. I’m more pissed that those fuckers had the audacity to look at her the way they did just now”

“Y-you’re not angry I, I suddenly came into your meeting?” you asked quietly and Sylus looked at you with a smirk, his eyes seemed to be hypnotised by the sight of you looking ever so small in his lap

“How could I ever be angry at you, sweetie? In fact, I much rather you interrupt any boring meeting I have and even accompany me if you’d like. I always love you being close to me and even sit on my lap like this” Sylus smirked, kissing the side of your temple

“You’re so biased, sy. What would your business partners or other men think?” you giggled as Sylus smiled and littered your face with kisses

“Let them see that I’m biased because nothing else matters” Sylus smiled, hugging you closer

“Alright miss, why don’t you just hand us our portion of food you prepared so we can leave the two of you alone” Luke stated making everyone in the room laugh

A/N: if you have any specific requests for Sylus do send me a request or message so I can refer back easily. Thank you for reading and have a great day :) xoxo peanutpinet

[eddiemunson-reader-shame]

My labor of love is finally complete. ❤️

This is a wearable piece of art that I made over the course of months. I meant it to be ready in time for Halloween, but that never manifested.

I tried to make this as screen accurate as possible, mostly because that’s the cosplayer in me wanting accuracy. However, this jacket was a lesson in imperfect perfection.

Being as Eddie Munson himself is an imperfect but still beautiful person, that’s what I went for with my jacket. I wanted to make something that might not be too cookie cutter, but that has history— as well as love and dedication— behind it. I didn’t want to fuck up the sleeve of the leather and put chains on, but I think maybe one day if I find the right kind of chain, I will add them.

The Levi’s Trucker Jacket, the Schott leathers, the Accept button, the Judas Priest pin, and yes, even the Last In Line back patch, are all authentic vintage items I found. I had a mini heart attack with the Dio back patch because I know some metalhead out there is screaming at me for defacing a piece of history, but I had a moment where I thought of all the real metalheads of the olden days who ripped up their shirts to hell in the pit and wore the scraps proudly on their own vests.

And then I didn’t feel so bad when I thought of them, because I knew this item was going to be an art piece that has deep, personal significance to me. I had a Marie Kondo moment where I even thanked the shirt for being part of my art, and for being a significant contributor to something that has personal meaning to me.

I also loved Dio before I liked Eddie, so I’m entitled to make a battle vest with good old Ronnie James’s merch. Bite me.

While working on this piece, I felt so much excitement and pride. Maybe the same feelings Eddie would have felt while making something totally badass. Putting it on feels not only like donning battle armor, but it also feels like a warm, comforting hug. My battle jacket has totally become my new weighted security blanket.

In my delusional little mind, I may sprinkle it with a little bit of Old Spice, have my grass smoking friends blow a little loud on it, and I might even buy a pack of Camels myself just to rub a bit of tobacco in it. Although, that seems a little much, but I must have been a Disney Imagineer in a past life because I dig little details like that.

[weaselandfriends]

The Making Of: When I Win the World Ends

(For my previous Making Of post, see The Making Of: Cleveland Quixotic.)

I. 1999

It was the year of the cubicle movie. It was the year of Fight Club, of Office Space, of Being John Malkovich, of Three Kings, of The Matrix, and of American Beauty. It was the year of suburban malaise, of eternal sunshine, of ceaseless normality. A year of United States hegemony; a year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.

Before the millennium turned and the towers fell, there was an initial challenge to this order, a completely inconsequential one made consequential by a newly minted 24/7 news media machine running out of noise to fill dead air now that people were sick to bursting of the Clinton impeachment. This challenge came not through war, revolution, or violence, but through entertainment. Children's entertainment.

And I was a child. Unaware of any cultural context, I knew only one thing: I loved Pokémon. I really, really loved Pokémon.

I owned Red Version, Blue Version, Yellow Version, Pokémon Pinball, Pokémon Stadium, Pokémon Snap, Hey You Pikachu, a Pokémon Tetris sort of puzzle game, even the Pokémon TCG game for Gameboy. I had ten to fifteen strategy guides for the games, an encyclopedia of the 151 Pokémon, a choose your own adventure book, an I Spy-style book. I had Pokémon figurines, Pokémon plushies, toy Poké Balls, toy Pokédexes. I had Pokémon stamps and Pokémon stickers and a deck of Pokémon cards. Not trading cards, just a standard 52-card deck with Pokémon pictures on it. Of course I also had the trading cards. A complete set of the first three runs, plus a special Mew card you could get from I dunno Toys R Us or something as part of some promotion. I had a guide for the card game that explained which cards were good or bad even though I didn't even play the card game. I had a Pokémon Tamagotchi and Pokémon pencils and Pokémon erasers and Ash Ketchum's hat and I dressed up as Ash Ketchum for Halloween. Of course I watched every episode of the anime, and in notebooks I drew doodles of existing Pokémon and came up with names for new Pokémon. My father had died that year.

My father was a sports fanatic. Traditional sports. He, too, collected. Sports memorabilia, baseball cards, figures of famous stars. When I was an infant, he drove me on a cross country road trip to Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin, where I became a part owner of the Green Bay Packers. He had always wanted me to grow up and pursue professional sports. When I was born, the doctor apparently said to start looking for football colleges, a quote he saved in a scrapbook of baby photos. He had played sports himself, in college; he was a baseball catcher, until a hitter accidentally struck him in the head with a full force swing.

Almost everything I personally remember about him involves him dying. He was sick for a long time, and I remember hospitals and hospital beds and strange smells and gauze. And then one day my mother told me he died.

He was a charismatic man, very social and very popular. He had many friends and a lot of family, all of whom had constantly been around our house. Once he was gone, they stopped coming around. Then it was just me and my mother, who was not a fanatic for anything, except maybe her job as an elementary school teacher, which consumed her time as she assiduously prepared lesson plans and graded tests until late at night. When my father died, she got into some argument with his side of the family, the details of which I still don't fully understand, and afterward they no longer spoke. Her own family lived far away, out-of-state, seen only at Christmas. The house became quiet.

And I… played… Pokémon.

II. The Electric Tale of Pikachu

Toshihiro Ono was a mangaka primarily known for shotacon and futanari hentai. His credits such as Innyou Megami and Anal Justice made him a no-brainer pick for the officially licensed Pokémon manga, Electric Tale of Pikachu, as it too would feature a 10-year-old boy as the protagonist.

This manga would be the foundation for my conception of what Pokémon was, narratively. Though I also had the Pokémon Adventures manga that ran concurrently and which has by now long outlasted it, Electric Tale left a significantly deeper imprint on my memory.

In summary, Electric Tale is a retelling of the first two seasons of the anime. Ash Ketchum is the main character, he's accompanied by Misty and later Brock, his rival is Gary, and Team Rocket harangues him.

What sets Electric Tale apart is its tone, which is far more adult than Adventures and the anime. Obviously, part of this comes from the author's primary area of expertise being hentai. Even in the censored English version, there is a sense of sexual playfulness in how every single female character is an older woman who likes to tease Ash about his romantic interests.

But there are other elements that creep in unrelated to sex, due to the perspective of someone only used to speaking to adults who suddenly has to speak to children. Ono doesn't really get the childish fantasy of leaving at 10 being normal in society, so he introduces an element where Ash can only get a one year deferment from school and will have to return unless he hits it big. Team Rocket are former competitive hopefuls who flamed out and then, with no education or work experience to speak of, had no choice but to turn to crime. The Pokémon are depicted more realistically, often eschewing the toyetic mascot elements of their designs.

And the landscapes are often wistful, even apocalyptic in their presentation:

This more sedate, mature, realistic depiction of Pokémon became what I wanted Pokémon to be, what I projected onto an original Red and Blue version that left everything open to interpretation, and what would increasingly frustrate me with the series as it deviated more toward bombastic villain groups with goofy destroy-the-world plots. (Which was what put me off Pokémon Adventures.)

Amid all this, one panel stuck with me in particular. One panel I would think about ever since I first saw it as a child, that would turn around in my head and keep coming back. That panel would eventually—over two decades later—become the basis for When I Win the World Ends, the seed from which an entire story grew:

III. The Unkillable Demon King

But in the interim, the seed remained dormant. 1999 fell away. I grew up. I played later Pokémon games and increasingly lost interest by around Gen 4 and 5. Then I went to college.

That's when I started playing League of Legends.

I was something of a psychopath in college. I operated on a strict schedule and did not deviate. Wake up, read 50 pages of classic literature, write 2,000 words, go to classes, study, and then by about four in the afternoon all my obligations were done and it was League of Legends until midnight.

I wasn't actually interested in the League of Legends esports scene in its infancy. In 2012, I was actually invited to attend its World Championship in Los Angeles and refused. (When I received this invitation, I had just finished reading Homestuck for the first time, and was caught in a month-long haze in which I could do little but bask within what I considered the greatest artistic achievement I'd seen in my life. It was this month that inspired Modern Cannibals.) I only liked playing the game and watching Dunkey videos.

It wasn't until the next year, when a girl I was interested in recommended I watch, that I tuned in to my first professional League of Legends game, at the 2013 World Championship. It was there that I got to watch this new, hyped, upcoming Korean player who had apparently taken the pro scene by storm that season. That player was Faker.

It has seemingly become essential to the narrative of any sport that there is "the man who always wins." American football has Tom Brady, and the moment Brady retired, he was replaced by Patrick Mahomes. Basketball has LeBron James, picking up the mantle from Michael Jordan. It's as if someone being "the best" validates the skill-based promise of the sport, the fundamental top-down fairness of its premise, the idea that the person who wins is the best and deserved it. Faker would become the backbone of League of Legends esports and his ascendance correlated to that of the sport itself, from its humble roots at small-scale tournaments in places like Jönköping, Sweden, to max capacity arenas in the biggest cities in the world.

It's surprising, though, how the legend of Faker had already begun even before he won his first World Championship. League of Legends was designed as a clone of Defense of the Ancients (DotA), a popular mod for Warcraft III that emphasized competitive play. In its infancy, the competitive scene was mostly dominated by players who had migrated from DotA to League. They were older, winning thanks to a fundamental conceptual understanding of the game that was superior to everyone else, and frankly not very good in the aggregate. As League of Legends esports exploded in popularity from 2013 to 2015, these old pros would get filtered out swiftly, with even the biggest and most popular names retiring after only a couple of years in the scene.

Even once the new generation of League-grown talent ascended, though, careers were nasty, brutish, and short. The best players only remained on top for a season, as game patches dramatically changed viable strategies. Internationally the sport was dominated by Koreans, with the Korean regional league sometimes being seen as more difficult to win than the World Championship, where Koreans often breezed through uncompetitive Chinese, European, and North American squads.

This possibly affected the demographics of the professional scene. South Korea has mandatory military service, and leaving the pro scene to join the military was basically the end of a Korean player's career. This meant that it was rare to see a Korean player older than 25. Retiring in your early 20s was and remains common. Korean organizations, which had an infrastructural leg up on other regions due to the popularity of StarCraft 2 esports in the country, became adept at scouting promising players at 15 or 16, building them into top level competitive pros, wringing them dry for a few seasons with brutal training regimens, and spitting them out.

Faker was the exception. Though he had been discovered young by SK Telecom, a major Korean telecommunications company that did esports on the side, and gone through the training regimen, he refused to be spit out. He simply didn't stop. He won in 2013, then with a completely new four-man squad around him won again in 2015 and 2016 before narrowly losing the 2017 finals in a nail biter. Given League of Legends esports had only existed since 2011, he basically accounted for half of the championships up until that point. Nobody else, except for his teammates, had won more than once. And it was like it was known he would be this juggernaut the instant he manifested ex nihilo. Like it was known, even in 2013, that he would always win.

Then, Faker stopped winning.

By 2017, League of Legends esports was a titan. Venture capital firms, seeing the millions of eyeballs, thought that this was the next NBA in its infancy, and decided to get in on the ground floor. Multiple millions of dollars were pumped into the scene as even mediocre players in weak regions like North America pulled seven-digit salaries. In China, where League of Legends had become the national pastime, the nation's richest oligarchs ran teams for fun and vanity, outbidding Korean organizations for top Korean players in pursuit of a trophy that had gone to Korea every year since 2013. Riot, the studio developing the game, pumped tons of money into creating a professional sports product, with skilled announcers, dedicated arenas for regional leagues, live performances by musicians like Imagine Dragons and Lil Nas X, and all the other bells and whistles one might expect from a program watched on ESPN.

In this milieu, it seemed like Faker had finally reached his limit. He was still good, but not the best. Even as an individual, while everyone still considered him the "greatest of all time," he was considered outmatched by newer pros like Chovy and ShowMaker. 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021 passed with no championships. In 2022, on a team of mostly rookies, he reached the world finals, but was ultimately beaten. Korea's stranglehold over the sport had been shaken by China, which had finally strung together some championships. People wondered if Faker would retire, although he had managed to avoid mandatory military service by representing Korea in the Olympics-esque Asian Games. He'd dealt with wrist injuries and his level of play dropped year over year. He just didn't seem to be that good anymore, potentially holding back his team of talented young players rather than leading them to victory.

Then, in 2023—

And in 2024—

In the end, never count out Touchdown Tom. 11 years of professional play, 5 world championships.

From this longwinded explanation, you might have realized that after watching that game in 2013, I became a League of Legends esports fanatic, fulfilling the prophecy set before me by my father though perhaps in not the way he would have expected.

And the things I become a fanatic about, I want to write a story about.

IV. Modern Cannibals

There's a deleted scene in Modern Cannibals, as Maximillion is driving Z. and her friends through the Utah desert. He starts to talk about Pokémon.

"I bring it up because my university thesis was about Pokemon in particular how Pokemon has basically trained an entire generation of children to think in a completely different way than preceding generations my generation for instance our fad was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles now I don't know how much you know about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but from an educational standpoint we're talking absolute bankrupt complete and utter goose egg but Pokemon now Pokemon you see it's more like there's some substance to it you know that refrain Gotta Catch Em All right?" "..." "Well to most parents it looks like a marketing gimmick you make one hundred fifty-one characters and structure a game around collecting them the merchandising potential is astronomical kids buy one hundred fifty-one trading cards stickers coloring books figurines uh collectable lunchable toys I'm sure you've got some yourself."

He continues:

"But really you look at the game itself before the big toy explosion the game itself the focus is placed less on the collection and more on the catalogue you're given a blank encyclopedia to fill and you fill it by capturing one hundred fifty-one Pokemon but the goal is to create a complete database of each and every one and this is what I argue is the educational core of the Pokemon series." His hands left the wheel to conceive of his idea in the cool air of the car, which remained steady on its ever-forward path. "Our modern era is no longer one of singular isolated knowledge it is one of the catalogue the database which is most clearly personified in the advent of the internet because now all knowledge can be at the fingertips of any one human being all that is needed is someone to go and put the catalogue together and presto whiz bang it's there think about it Z. when you catch a bunch of Pokemon where do you store them?" Z. didn't need to think long to remember the game's mechanics. "In the PC." "Exactly now isn't that odd consider it in real life terms you have real life creatures made assumedly of flesh and bone and yet you store them in a computer how does that make sense you'd expect a farm or a holding pen but no it's the computer and that too prepares the budding portion of the millennial generation to become cognizant of the linkage between the computer the encyclopedia and the database structure of knowledge in a new era." "So," said Z. "So you're saying Pokemon taught kids how to think in the digital age?"

There's also a deleted character in Modern Cannibals. Well, mostly deleted—he still shows up, unnamed, in a couple of pages. He is Cole Coulter, Z.'s older brother, a popular League of Legends streamer. Before I deleted him, his role was to accompany Mrs. Roddlevan and Frederick in an attempt to bring Z. back home. He had POV scenes that gave insight into the weirdness of his cotravelers, but ultimately, I decided he didn't add anything to the story and removed him almost entirely.

Even then, though, I was already considering the future of Cole Coulter as the protagonist of a story about League of Legends esports. Playing under the ID MadKing, he would be a North American professional top laner, once known for his aggressive duelist style but recently forced into playing boring tanks as the esports metagame became more sophisticated and tactics-based.

The story would be simple, something I envisioned as a "sports story" only about esports instead of regular sports. It would start with Cole's team being relegated from the league, only for Cole to get a last chance signing to a new team with two promising Korean imports. One import, the mid laner, would be a charismatic and eccentric player in the mold of Doinb/Ganked By Mom/Huhi, while the other, an AD carry, would be introverted and pissy and elitist, in the mold of Piglet. The team would initially struggle, cultures would clash, then a mid-season replacement to sign a psychopathic Tyler1/Tarzaned style streamer as jungler would revitalize the team, put them on a major run, and get them to the World Championship. Though they would eventually fall after a miracle run, Cole would get a moment to truly shine on the biggest stage when he won a pivotal game by aggressive split pushing rather than tank play.

Thematically, the story would be about two things. First, a counterpoint to the idea of American exceptionalism, featuring a league where Americans are particularly bad compared to Korean or Chinese players. Second, an exploration of what it means to be exceptional at all. Cole would be an all-around mediocre person. Middling at school, at (real) sports, at the various popularity contests of being a teenager. League of Legends, this niche sub-sport, is the one thing he truly excelled at, the one place where he was good, better than 99.9 percent of all players, and yet even within that statistical greatness he wound up, ultimately, in a professional scene where he was once again mediocre, relegated to "tank duty," to facilitating other players to carry.

What does it mean to be the best? How can someone be so, so good, only to reach a level where they were still nothing special? Is there any way to win if you're not "the man who always wins"?

I remembered that panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu. The last people filtered before the final champion. It's certainly no walk in the zoo!

This idea was pretty detailed for a story I never wound up writing, something I mostly blame on the years 2018 and 2019, when a lot of bad things happened to me and in retrospect I consider it a minor miracle I managed to finish Chicago at all. As a human being, I would be decimated for the next three years, and so a lot of stories I might have written in that time never came to fruition.

Meanwhile, League of Legends esports reached a peak, then the venture capital bubble burst as investors realized there was no monetization scheme in place for any interested party except Riot Games. Money hemorrhaged out, Riot shifted resources to Valorant, and a sport that had been overinflated based on projected exponential growth in perpetuity fell back down to earth.

Also, Players came out.

Players was a 2022 mockumentary about a fictional League of Legends team competing in the North American league. Conceptually, it was doing a lot of what I had planned for my story: following a single team on a rags-to-riches run, focusing on the interpersonal drama of the team members, asking questions about greatness and its pursuit. It's a pretty good show if you're familiar with League of Legends esports at all, with a lot of on-the-ground fidelity that gives it an authentic feel, which is exactly what I had been hoping to use my esports fanaticism to accomplish. It completely took the wind out of my sails; it was like my idea had already been done.

So by 2022, the idea of a League of Legends esports story was dead. But there was still a drive to create something with that spirit, that would delve into those themes.

What remained after all these years of sifting the sieve, letting sand slip through, was that one panel from the manga. The number of people pursuing greatness slowly filtering until only one remained. And if I wasn't going to pursue that idea through League of Legends, maybe I could pursue it through another vehicle. Maybe the vehicle through which the idea had originally been exposed to me. Pokémon. It all came back to Pokémon.

V. Everything Evolving Into Crabs

I knew immediately that if I were to write a Pokémon fic, it would be a tournament arc. This was the natural evolution of my esports story idea. Also, if I were to write Pokémon, I wanted it to be a story about utopia, immersed within Pokémon's near-future ideal world, where everything is clean and healthy, where society is neat and ordered.

This idea caused me to remember the novel Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley, which I had read a few years back. A mostly autobiographical bildungsroman written on the precipice of World War II, the novel ends with the young protagonist on a journey to Central America, where he meets an idealistic doctor who believes sport to be a proper substitution for war. He tells the story of two tribes locked in internecine conflict through generations, able to replace that violence with soccer matches.

And wasn't that what the world of Pokémon was, a utopia revolving around neutralizing weapons of war by using them for competitive sport?

This tournament, I envisioned, would not simply be about deciding who was best, but an ideological battle for the future of the Pokémon world. To that end, I imagined a war between an entrenched trainer class, who competed as philosopher-warriors, intense individuals with deep connections to their Pokémon, and an upstart commercialization that sought to replace the ideological underpinnings that made their society so safe and prosperous with economic accumulation. It was from this kernel that the character who would become Aracely Sosa arose: charismatic, appealing, human-empathic, and propped up by a support staff who did all the hard work of teambuilding for her.

I imagined the story having an ensemble cast, focusing on nearly every competitor equally, with the Aracely character not having any especial focus until her improbable rise to the top. I imagined a final round where she faced off against "the man who always wins," and though she would lose to him, she would seem to have won the ideological battle, altering the course of society as major corporations scrambled to employ her formula for success at a much grander scale. The story would end with this realization of the earth-shattering importance behind her run, only for Aracely to sink in disappointment. Because in the end, all she really wanted was to win.

The more I thought about it, though, the less I liked the idea of an ensemble cast. The ensemble cast element of Chicago hadn't gone over very well (though I like it), and I figured it would wind up inflating the length of the story considerably. I was coming to the end of Cleveland Quixotic, after all, and once more wanted to write something smaller, tighter, and denser.

So I oriented my thinking to instead have the story revolve around Aracely and one major rival, to give an interpersonal mirror to the ideological war being waged. Thus, Toril came about as an antithesis to everything I had imagined Aracely to be: gruff, antisocial, independent. Their rivalry would culminate in a semifinals battle, before Aracely went on to fight "the man who always wins" in the finals.

I forget exactly when the gender theme came into the equation, but it evolved as an outgrowth of (once again) my competitive League of Legends expertise, where women are essentially nonexistent despite there seemingly being no biological blocks against them. This dovetailed nicely with Pokémon, a world where women seemingly could be powerful competitors, but where—in the anime at least—none ever are. For instance, look at this chart of every major tournament in the anime:

Every known winner is male. Every known finalist and semifinalist is male. Only a handful of female characters have reached the quarterfinals. What possible in-universe justification could there be for that?

This question was actually far more prominent in early planning and drafting than it wound up being in the final work. Initially, I had Aracely's personal motivation revolve around a drive to be the first female trainer to win; this would increase the ideological conflict between her and Toril, who attempted to ignore that she was female altogether. Over time, this theme would see diminished importance in face of the last piece of the thematic puzzle: cults.

It came from reading Underground by Haruki Murakami, a nonfiction journalistic account of the 1995 Tokyo sarin gas attacks carried out by the cult Aum Shinrikyo under the direction of its leader Shoko Asahara. Japan in the 90s was experiencing its own End of History, one taken literally by those disaffected with modern society's grand narrative. The prophecies of Nostradamus became fashionable among the young, who believed that 1999 would be the final year before the world was destroyed. Murakami interviewed both survivors of the gas attack and members of Aum Shinrikyo, collecting worldviews of people who simply thought they were "different" and who were willing to give everything in their lives to the one place that seemed to accept that difference.

The 1995 attacks were a watershed moment in Japanese culture. In their wake would come pivotal works of Japanese pop media, like the titan of otaku culture, Neon Genesis Evangelion:

(What's scary about Nostradamus' prophecy is that it might not come true. A year whose chief terror was that THIS WAS IT.)

Pokémon, whose first games released in Japan in 1996, also emerged within this post-Aum world where fixation on the minutiae of pop media was becoming a primary pillar of meaning for the youth, and it's hard not to see echoes of cultism in the evil teams that dot the series' landscape. Even Team Rocket, originally more modeled on organized crime than occultism, veers that direction in Gold and Silver, and afterward the organizations and their world-ending plots become increasingly absurd, to the point where it starts to become unclear why anyone would ever follow, say, Lysandre.

As I mentioned earlier, my personal interest in Pokémon was at odds with these clownish, Saturday morning cartoon villain organizations, but Murakami's account of the Aum attacks recontextualized them for me, made them make sense even within the framework of a "realistic" utopian world. The last elements snapped into place, and I knew my main character would be the member of one of these cults. A cult dedicated to, what else? Evolution. A core element of the Pokémon series, a perfect metaphor for the frustrating lack of movement of the End of History 90s. I imagined a cult leader as a surrogate mother figure for Aracely, who would have a strained relationship with both of her own parents, and deciding on that, the idea of making Pokémon's canon evil mother Lusamine the villain was a no-brainer. I imagined a post-SuMo Lusamine, unable to move on from her experience merged with Nihilego, languishing in Kanto after being sent there to consult with Bill, who had his own experience being merged with a Pokémon... It didn't take long to figure out how all these pieces connected.

The full form of the story had taken shape.

VI. Showdown

I knew immediately I would be following Showdown rules for the battles. No alternative even crossed my mind. I had dabbled in Showdown a few times over the years, first in Gen 3 OUs, then later in Gen 7 OUs, and I knew from experience that Pokémon is a monumentally more interesting competitive game when operating at a high level compared to either its depiction in the anime (shounen logic, mid-fight evolutions) or the general playing experience (spam your best move on your overleveled starter). I knew I would use competitive rulesets before I even considered the thematic or worldbuilding aspect I would eventually take in the story itself (i.e., that the specific rulesets prevent battles from becoming bloodsport and enforce order on the world). I simply thought doing battles this way would be far more entertaining.

To prepare, I started playing Gen 9 OUs under the guidance of a few friends who were into the competitive scene. I grinded the ladder for months, eventually getting a good enough grasp on the metagame to reach 1500 Elo on the Showdown ladder, which is not very good but generally higher than someone can reach with dumb luck.

Crafting the tournament format and rulesets used in the story wasn't difficult. I modeled the tournament format on the League of Legends World Championship, with region-based seeds (having been selected due to performance in regional tournaments) competing in four groups before the highest performers advanced to a single elimination bracket. Initially, I envisioned a 32-competitor bracket instead of the 16-competitor bracket that would appear in the final draft, but otherwise the format came quickly and easily.

In terms of the rulesets and available Pokémon, my considerations were made primarily in terms of what would be most entertaining to read. I decided to include Mega Evolutions and not include Z Moves, Dynamax, or Terastallization, because Mega Evolutions are cool and those other gimmicks are not. The bring-9-pick-6 format, while unusual in Showdown rulesets, is similar to the rules in Pokémon Stadium and VGC tournaments, and also adds a level of intrigue to which Pokémon each competitor uses. (It also enabled Red's Zapdos at the climax of the story, which was something I knew I would bring out from very early on.)

With the help of one of my friends who knew competitive Pokémon, I scripted out each battle assiduously before I wrote them. Every battle was tested using Showdown itself, with only a few turns mocked up to account for luck. For instance, in Aracely versus Jinjiao, Slowking is meant to stay asleep for three turns. Rather than rely on luck to ensure Slowking actually slept that long during the test, I could give Slowking a useless move and have him use that instead to simulate being asleep.

The only thing that couldn't be tested in Showdown was the 7 PP Kingambit trick Red uses at the end of the story, because it's impossible to set a Pokémon to have fewer than max PP in Showdown. This led to one of the bigger mistakes of the story, as it turns out that Encore would simply wear off if Kingambit ran out of PP, rather than forcing him to use Struggle like I assumed. Luckily, even if this were the case, it wouldn't change the outcome of the battle, so it's not an error I lose too much sleep over.

Character teams were chosen to thread the needle between a few considerations. The team needed to be competitively viable, reflect the character's personality in some way, and be distinct from other teams for the sake of variety. (Variety is somewhat unrealistic in real top-level competitive Pokémon, where you'll often see many almost identical teams in the top ranks. But that would be boring.) Some lack of optimization was allowed under the conceit that actually training these Pokémon to peak form would take a lot of time in the real world, compared to Showdown were optimization can be determined quickly due to the ability to immediately adjust stats and builds.

I also tried to give some preference for Pokémon that would be more familiar to layman fans, though this was difficult because Gen 8 and 9 have outrageous power creep and many popular early generation Pokémon have been completely phased out. (Using Megas helped with this issue.) It was this consideration that led to Azumarill being Aracely's ace. There was also an innate challenge to imagining what the competitive scene would look like without legendary Pokémon. Zapdos and Landorus-Therian have been inexorable staples of the competitive scene for generations. What happens in a world where they aren't used at all?

In the original 32-person bracket, I imagined Aracely competing against Jinjiao in the first round, then minor characters Adrian da Cunha and Jacq Ray Johnson in the next two rounds, before facing Toril in semifinals. I imagined Adrian da Cunha as a "hometown hero" whose team wasn't great but he was plucky with a lot of grit, and Jacq Ray Johnson as a self-aware heel who liked to use cheesy strategies and gimmicky Pokémon like Smeargle and Ditto. Condensing from 32 to 16 occurred around the same time I had settled on Lusamine as my villain/cult leader, which led to replacing those two with Gladion. I developed full brackets for both the 32-man and 16-man iterations, with character names and regions, just in case I ever needed to mention them.

All that was left to do was write the story.

VII. Unbroken Line of History

I began writing in September 2023 under the tentative title Unbroken Line of History, which I would later change to simply Lines. In the original drafts, I opened the story with a modified version of the panel from Electric Tale of Pikachu detailing how people are filtered over time in their pursuit of being the best, this time starting with all 8 billion people in the world until only one remains. The story then cut to Aracely's perspective in the restroom as she mentally prepared for her final group stage match.

At this point I was more set on Aracely being the clear protagonist of the story, so she had a few facets of her personality designed around that. First, as I mentioned before, there was a feminist angle where she was motivated specifically to be the first female trainer to win the championship. Secondly, I threw in some more generic nervousness/fear of failure. The other major difference is that I did not lead with the cult prophecy of the world ending. I originally envisioned the cult reveal to be a mid-story twist, and only obliquely hinted at it.

The scene still played out with Toril appearing and the two getting off to a bad start. Then, Cely's father tried to talk strategy with her while she ignored him, before the battle transpired in much the same form as it does in the final draft.

I showed this early draft to my friends and most disliked it. My girlfriend at the time told me Cely sounded like an edgy 13-year-old boy, while my neuroscientist friend whose aspirational idol is Bondrewd from Made in Abyss wanted to know more about the oblique hints of a cult, finding everything else boring. Another friend said it was stupid that there were 30 seconds between turns during the battle and that the Pokémon should just go at each other; nobody would actually want to watch a battle that was paced so slowly. (I vehemently disagreed with that take. Basically every popular sport balances between slow-paced moments of strategy and fast-paced moments of action and execution.) Some people I showed it to did enjoy it, though. Gazemaize, the author of Chili and the Chocolate Factory, was especially enamored by the Brittany/Gardevoir reveal and the Bud Light Analyst Desk, and implored me to keep both of those elements at all costs. 7th, one of my friends who helped me with the Showdown stuff, was so into it she drew fan art of all the characters (which I've posted before) and also wrote eight pornographic short stories about them.

I rewrote the same opening scene several times across October and November, though these were minor iterations without significant adjustments. Frustrated with the lack of progress, I decided to take a break from writing to simply think about the story for a few months.

During this time, to fix Aracely's edgy 13-year-old voice, I decided to lean into her being from Pokémon Los Angeles (with her native region, Visia, being a play on "visual" as a reference to Hollywood) and gave her a Valley Girl accent. To prepare for this, I listened to hours and hours of ASMR videos of people speaking like Valley Girls and took notes on their inflection and syntax. It was here where I decided on Aracely's underlining quirk, as a way of capturing the unique style of emphasis Valley Girls used.

This also made me realize I needed to adjust Aracely's personality. Despite the tone of her voice, she was still acting antisocially. She didn't want to talk to her father, she didn't want to talk to Lachlan Nguyen, she didn't even really want to talk to Toril. Toril herself was a lump of coal. My own misanthropy kept leaking into the characters, even when I conceptually didn't want them to have it. I thought back to Cleveland Quixotic, and how what made the Jay and Viviendre romance work was that they actually both liked each other, and figured—even though I didn't have explicitly romantic plans for Aracely and Toril—that I needed to do something similar to make their rivalry truly pop. Rather than avoid people, Aracely would lean into talking to them, even if they were annoying. Although Toril remained frigid, there would be a part of her yearning for emotional contact, a way to coax her out of her shell.

I also thought deeply about the structure of my stories in general, and my inability to come up with good hooks. It was around this time that someone I knew was reading Chicago. They pointed out that the plot of Chicago doesn't really start until Chapter 26; that I was "burying the lede." I considered this. My logic, when writing Chicago, was that the Empire moving to take over Washington would be a twist, something that would shock and excite people and change their perception of the entire story.

But did that make sense, when really the story was "about" that twist? Didn't that just make everything before the twist harder to get into for a reader? Chicago might look radically different if I revealed the Empire's goals immediately, but it would also probably be a more immediately engaging work. I'm a big fan of delayed gratification in storytelling, but had I taken it too far?

This was a major revelation for me, and immediately I understood what I needed to do for my Pokémon story: move up the cult plotline. Place it front and center. Name the whole story after it even. I decided on framing the opening scene from Toril's perspective, depicting Aracely initially more as an alien other, emphasizing the fact that she was in a cult rather than hide it behind foreshadowing. This could also lead to Aracely and Toril having more of a dual protagonist setup, which would make my planned two-half finale (one half where Aracely battled "the man who always wins," one half where Toril got involved in stopping the cult's doomsday plot) work even better.

Confidence resurged. At the end of January 2024, my girlfriend of seven years  and I broke up. A few days later, I started writing the sixth—and ultimately final—draft of When I Win the World Ends.

VIII. When I Win the World Ends

Now it's the part of the Making Of where I actually make the thing I'm supposed to be making, but there's a lot less to say about it. Once I have a plan, the actual writing of the story is the easy part, and most of what I wrote—with a few exceptions—looks similar to the story as it exists now.

There were some oddities. I wrote the first seven chapters (everything up to the end of the Jinjiao battle) and then had to take a two week break to write a short piece for a writing contest I had entered in December as part of an effort to stop overthinking WIW. After this interruption, I returned to WIW writing perhaps a bit more perfunctorily than I usually would, leading to an original version of Chapter 8 (the chapter where MOTHER makes her first real appearance) that was short and abbreviated. Later, in editing, I would rewrite most of this chapter.

A few ideas emerged while writing, like the motif of serendipity/Logos, which I felt tied nicely to the ideas of evolution and history. It was also in this draft that I introduced Cely's friends Haydn and Charlie, as a nod to an earlier work of mine also featuring a fashion-obsessed girl from Los Angeles. (Speaking of nods to earlier works, in the original 32-man bracket, Cole Coulter featured as one of the competitors, but he didn't make the 16-man cut.)

The process went smoothly. I finished the draft at the end of May, a little under four months after I started it. I had envisioned the full story as being about 70,000 words, but the draft ended up closer to 115,000. Underestimating story length is just an essential element of the trade, though.

A few days after finishing the draft I went on a four-day Oklahoma Darkness Retreat where I had access to zero electronics. The goal was to think about my story deeply and how it could be improved in the editing process.

In this time chamber, where I did nothing except complete crossword puzzles and read The Recognitions by William Gaddis, I came to a realization. There was one element the story needed that wasn't already there.

That element was Sabrina. In the original draft, Sabrina was not present during the scene where Aracely meets the Old Man. She was mentioned obliquely a couple of times in conjunction with Aracely's "psychic powers," but it never really built to anything. There was still a scene where Aracely was interrogated due to her relationship with MOTHER, but only by nameless goons, and the scene lacked tension as it was clear Aracely could talk circles around them.

When I returned from Oklahoma, I prepared for my conception of Sabrina as a character by writing an 8,000 word short story from her perspective, which hashed out an entire backstory for her. Then, I started editing the draft.

For me, a lot of editing is just polish. Usually, cutting out needless sentences and fixing clunky ones, as well as emphasizing a few of the more understated themes and motifs. For instance, during editing, I made slight additions to emphasize the thematic connection between Aracely's suicide attempt and the global war that almost destroyed the world, as well as the connection between the moon and cyclical insanity (lunacy, etymologically, being related to the moon). I made the Old Man more of a Walt Disney-esque figure (from my notes: "a dying Disney"), rewriting much of his dialogue to either be direct quotes or to evoke his ideals. I also expanded on several of the scenes where Toril and Aracely interact to make their relationship more complex and nuanced. I gave MOTHER some new dialogue, including her speech in Chapter 18 about loving a child for the potential it promises, while also paradoxically wanting it to remain a child forever.

The largest changes were in the three chapters I almost fully rewrote. The first was Chapter 8, which as I mentioned earlier was overly terse. In the original draft, it depicted MOTHER as more pathetic, more dependent on Aracely. I decided to make her a more threatening figure, and incorporated a few references to the Moloch sacrifice scene from Valle Verde to make her seem more like a false idol. Similarly, I rewrote Chapter 12, which was originally a very short chapter that focused solely on a conversation between MOTHER and Nilufer that ended with the order to kidnap Aracely. In rewriting the chapter to include Fiorella, I gave myself more opportunity to flesh out the respective philosophies of her and MOTHER (including some of the story's most salient discussions about why cults exist), as well as give more of an insight into the inner workings of RISE as an organization. And lastly, I fully rewrote Chapter 19 to include Sabrina.

The last changes I made in editing were to the final chapter. When I finished the final draft of the story, I sent it to several readers, many of whom had looked at the original drafts of the first chapter, as well as julirites, the author of a Fargo fan fiction called London. There was an immediate and minor backlash to the final chapter, which was originally much more pessimistic, from most people who read it. In the original version, Aracely and Toril were not still in communication. (Fiorella was also dying of cancer instead of jockeying to replace the Old Man.) The finale had a much more somber, sedate, tragic note. Juli and 7th disliked this sad ending, while Gazemaize wanted me to cut the final chapter altogether. I felt confident that the final chapter was necessary, though, and revised it to its current version, which was much better liked.

And then... the story was finished, near the end of July. I crunched the numbers and realized that if I posted two chapters to start and then did a twice-weekly posting schedule, I could end the story serendipitously on October 12. So I did.

IX. Names and Special Thanks

In my Making Of post for Cleveland Quixotic, I had a fairly extensive list of where I got all the character and place names from. The list is a lot less extensive here; most names I constructed for the purpose of sounding evocative, rather than taking them from someplace specific. For instance, I chose the name Aracely Sosa because it sounds like whistling with its repeated S sounds, compared to Toril Lund which is a lot harsher with its consonants. You can see a similar rationale behind names like Fiorella Fiorina, Yui Matsui, and even some of the background characters, like Jacq Ray Johnson, Jr., where there is a lot of emphasis on alliteration and rhyme.

There are a couple of exceptions. Jinjiao is the in-game ID of a longtime Chinese League of Legends pro of middling notability. He picked the name (which means "Golden Horn") as a reference to the Golden Horned King, a villain from Journey to the West.

Lutz, Fiorella's cameraman, was named after an extremely minor character from Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance, who is not playable and only appears in a singular cutscene before being killed. They are so irrelevant that despite naming a character after them, I actually forgot their name, which is Lotz, not Lutz.

Haydn is named after the famous classical composer.

Special thanks to 7th and Elick320 for helping me with the teams and battles. Thanks to Gazemaize and julirites, among others unnamed, for reading and providing feedback. And thank you all for enjoying the story.