#xo fuckers

[the-kipsabian]

What is DBru?

death by roll-up! clothing brand by chris brookes :)

[sluttycelestialgoddess]

If you give Sylus a Hunter...

Synopsis. Sylus has a lot of fun making you beg.

Pairings. Sylus x reader(MC)

Content. MDNI. edging, fem reader, praise, crying, mentions use of evol, pet names (kitten, sweetie, good girl, etc), AFTERCARE.

Word Count. 2.2k (damn... pretty good for my first story)

Author's Note. Thanks for reading my first story! Let me know what you think, and feel free to leave me requests! I wrote this while listening to 'Be Quiet and Drive' by Deftones. (also, did you like the title... I thought of 'when you give a mouse a cookie' and giggled to myself) xo, Z/Chaos

MDNI BEYOND THIS POINT.

Sylus had you right where he wanted you. His bed. Again. He looked down at you with his usual arrogant smirk as you whimpered and squirmed. His crimson eyes seemed to be lit with that internal glow they had sometimes when he was excited or wanted something. “Now, now, kitten. Spread those pretty thighs for me. You don’t want me to use my evol again, do you?” he purred sardonically, his left eye beginning to actually glow.

You were almost at your wits end. It had been an hour since he grabbed you out of the hallway of his hilariously (or should you say outrageously?) huge home you were attempting to get to know your way around and all but threw you onto his bed, using his evol to hold your hands above your head as he stripped you bare. He was insatiable. You’d been staying with him for four days at this point and already you’ve had more sex than you had in the last 2 years combined. Which, in the grand scheme of things, you guessed wasn’t much considering you dedicated all your time to becoming a Hunter for Linkon City after the rise of wanderer attacks, resulting in a gnarly dry spell… but his hunger for you was bordering on absurd. Even so, you had to ask yourself… Does he ever get tired?

In this hour that he’d had you at his mercy, he’d managed to edge you to the pinnacle of ecstasy no less than five times, never letting you reach that sweet release. You were a shaking, sobbing, whimpering mess, and he loved it. You were half in the mind to use one of the safe words he declared you use on the first night if you ever found yourself not being able to handle something. But your pride was like a gag, not letting your tongue form the word. “Feather”. How fitting, the smug bastard. 

“‘Feather’ will be to stop. You say that and everything stops. We do not continue. There will be no “break and then get back to it”. Saying that means you’re done for the night. So just be sure that’s the one you want to use,” he had told you. At the time you had giggled, thinking it was endearing, thinking back on it now, you wanted to kick him in the face. No way in hell were you uttering the word “feather” while a trembling, whimpering mess. If only you could actually move your legs to kick him, but nope. Useless appendages. 

You realized Sylus was still waiting for you to comply with his request. Finally having an ounce of control over your legs after they had become jelly sometime in the last 20 minutes, you shakily opened your legs to him, a whimper leaving your lips as the cool air in the room met your soaked lips. I could kick him now… but then he’d keep me like this all night. Fucker.

“Good girl. You’re doing so well,” he praised, not seeing your thoughts, steadily growing fond of the idea of smashing your foot to his face. You internally smiled at your mental picture, but really you were enjoying yourself all things considered. He leaned over to rub soothing circles over your thigh before running a long finger through your sensitive folds. “You remember your safe words, correct?” he asked with a grin and you nodded, glaring daggers. He chuckled and hummed at how wet you’d gotten, and he hadn’t even put his mouth on you. Looking up to watch your reaction, he slipped his finger in, curling slightly to caress over the spot that always made you gasp. You did, and he smiled at the pretty sound, feeling pride at how well he knew your body. However, he was beginning to think he was being just a tad cruel as he watched your eyebrows knit together and the pitiful whimpers run into each other as they exited your lush lips. 

“Oh baby, I know, I know… I’ll let you come soon. Such a good girl… you look fucking delicious right now,” he cooed as he eased a second finger inside you and coated his thumb in your wetness before rubbing circles over your throbbing clit. Goosebumps covered your skin and you whined, your hips bucking up of their own accord. “Mmm, such a needy kitten. Sweetie, I think you could take a couple more, hm?”

You whimpered out unintelligible curses at the remark and he chuckled. “Sylus… I really don’t know if I can,” you say, finally having found your voice in the string of muttered curses and whines. You clenched your eyes closed as he pressed harder on your clit and curled his fingers deeper. That blossoming warmth entered your tummy again. You fluttered around him and he groaned, wanting so badly to see you come apart, but needing it to be while he was inside you so you could milk him for everything he had. 

“Relax, you can handle it,” he chided with a tsk. “I’ve seen you take more than this, sweet girl. You’re stronger than you think. Tell me how badly you want to cum,” he groaned as you clenched harder around him. You were half scared he would pull back and deny you once again, but also half scared he wouldn’t and it would be over. He rubbed at your thighs, admiring how mouthwatering they were coated in your arousal. “Beg for it. Beg for me to let you cum.”

You felt the tears begin to sting the back of your eyes and you steeled yourself long enough to whisper through your moans, “Please, Sylus. Please let me cum, baby. I’ll do anything, just please…”

“Anything, hm?” he questioned, obvious interest in his tone as he leaned down and sucked lightly on your clit, replacing his thumb. You gasped as he rolled his tongue over the sensitive nub. Your legs shook fiercely and you cried out. Pulling back, fingers and all, he stood over you. The damn tease… His eyes never left yours as he deftly undid the buttons on his shirt, then his pants, rolling them both off and letting them pile on the floor. He leaned down and extended himself over you until your lips met in a passionate kiss. “If you’ll do anything, how about you stay true to your word by cumming around my cock?” he teased as he grabbed it and rubbed it through your slickness. 

“Yes, please,” you sighed against his lips, seeing this as him conceding as long as you came wrapped around him. His lips curved into a dangerous grin at your response, pushing inside with agonizing slowness. He groaned.

“Fuck, you’re so tight and wet, I don’t even need to work it in,” he moaned appreciatively as he drove into you with one powerful thrust, no longer able to torture you with slow pumps. Once he was fully seated, he kissed you tenderly as began to move, rubbing his pelvic bone over your clit with every thrust. You whimpered, feeling the tears fall from your clenched eyes as the warmth began to spread again.

Sylus smiled down at your beautiful face, eyes clenched tight with tears trailing down your cheeks. Perfect… She is so perfect. “So beautiful, baby. You’re trembling. You’re so close, aren’t you, pretty girl?” he rubbed your hair with one hand to soothe you and wiped at your tears with the other. You couldn’t form a coherent sentence, so you only answered him through an eager nod and whimpers. “Hm, I know, baby. Cum for me. Cum on my cock.” Sylus sped up, needing to see you lose yourself in pleasure. Lose yourself while clenched so tightly around him.

This was his favorite part, of course. After repeatedly bringing you to that edge, but pulling back before you could fall, you would always be so wound up that when the orgasm finally came, it would make you delirious with pleasure. He loved watching you as you finally crashed over the edge he kept you from and your face would contort in utter rapture, crying out his name and clenching so tight around him he’d have no choice but to follow you. He shook his head to focus on the present and ground against you to help you to reach what you’ve been begging him for. 

You whimpered as he gave his permission. You let go, no longer holding yourself back. The warmth in your tummy became an inferno as his thrusts became harder, rubbing your clit with his pelvis and the head of his cock jutting against that sweet spot inside you. You were so close. Just a little more pressure… “Please…” you begged on a needy sob. Sylus kissed you harder as he felt his own release building. He wrapped his arms around you to pull you up slightly in his arms, holding you so that you hovered over the bed as he pounded into you, holding you both up with his free hand on the mattress. The new angle had him going impossibly deeper, rubbing your clit against him with an intensity that finally pushed you over the boundary he had carefully pulled you from so many times. Your nails raked over his shoulders as you cried out. “Sylus! Yes!”

“That’s my good girl. Cum all over my cock. Fuck, you feel so good, baby… so tight,” he praised with a loud groan, rutting up into you as his own orgasm crashed over him. His grunts filled your ears, and it was his previous words coupled with them and his unrelenting ministrations that made your toes curl. Your body convulsed as wave after wave of pure bliss spiraled over your entire body. Your back arched into Sylus as his cum filled you, his thrusts not wavering as his body shook, ensuring he extended your pleasure as long as possible. 

Eventually, your cries subsided into soft, shuddering breaths as the tremors in your body slowly dissipated. Sylus sat back on his heels, holding you tightly the entire time you came down from your high, rubbing his hands down your back as you stayed wrapped around him. When your shaking stopped, he stood up from the bed. You stayed clutched to him as he walked to the washroom and started a bath. Sylus being Sylus, he added in his favorite epsom salts and relaxing bubble bath as the water filled up steadily. 

“My love, are you okay? I’ll hold you all night if you need, but I want to clean you up and take care of you. You did so well, but I know that had to be draining. Let me wash you then I’ll hold you so you can rest,” he whispered, rubbing his hands down your exposed ribs from where your arms were clasped like a restraint around his neck. He could feel your grip wavering and knew you were going to be out like a light as soon as your head laid down on his chest. You relented, loosening your grip in your legs around his waist as he wrapped his arm around your back and the other under your knees to lower you into the water. You sighed as you relaxed into it. 

“Just relax, I’ll take care of everything,” he said and kissed the top of your head. Methodically, he washed your body, almost like he was worshiping. He took care to be gentle around the sensitive junction of your thighs, kissing your shoulder when he lightly passed over it. He took a cup and filled it with water to run over your hair and began to wash it with his shampoo. She’s going to smell like me… he smiled to himself as he massaged your scalp. After washing it out, he combed through your hair with his fingers coated in conditioner. 

Sylus made sure to take extra good care of you after long sessions like the one today, diligently washing you, feeding you, massaging sore areas, or simply holding you so you know how much he loves you. After fully washing you and drying you off, he carried you back to the bed and laid you down among the mass of pillows and plushies you had “adopted” (as you put it). So beautiful... He smiled down at you, showing you all the love and tenderness he held in his heart for you. You smiled back sleepily and reached out for him to join you. He climbed in and gently pulled your head to his chest, rubbing his hand over your thigh in invitation for you to put it over his to rest. 

You snuggled into him as he kissed your head. “Thank you for taking care of me,” you whispered as you felt yourself beginning to drift off. Your speech slurred as sleep dragged you under. Sylus tightened his arms around you, his muscled chest hugging your cheek. 

“I will always take care of you, my love. You should know very well that I adore you. There is no love purer than mine. I love you, sweetie. Rest.”

[scoutofmymind]

Saw that someone said Luigi’s Reddit had a post where he eluded to a pretty heavy drinking habit in college, which then makes me think about drunk ex!luigi. I’m sorry, but you write angst too well

Unlearn Me — { Luigi x Reader}

Content: SFW, angst, yearning, slight pining, mentions of canon back pain, ex’s reminiscing, heartbreak all over again.

Wc: 4,336 (holy shit)

Notes; Two semesters of carefully crafted distance crumbles at 3AM in the computer lab when your final project implodes hours before the deadline, leaving you with no choice but to seek help from the one person you've been avoiding since the breakup.

Before we continue, I cannot ignore that wildfires continue to ravage Los Angeles, countless families have lost their homes and livelihoods. I urge you to consider supporting those affected through any of these donation links, additionally, Roadogs on Instagram is looking for fosters for mass evacuations of shelter dogs in California.

Foster or donate if you can. xo.

Now, let’s go.

"Mother fucker," you curse, attacking your keyboard with increasingly desperate keystrokes.

Each combination might be the one to salvage this disaster, but deep down you know it's hopeless — your software has corrupted itself into oblivion, taking six months of work with it.

"You can ask for an extension," Emma suggests, her voice carrying the weight of exhaustion that matches your own. Your roommate had burst into the media center still wearing her pink silk pajamas, immediately launching into a nervous tirade about after-hours permissions and potential expulsion risks.

Her constant hovering and worrying grates on your last nerve, and you tell her to leave.

Predictably, she refuses.

"Listen, I'm not just gonna leave you here on your own." She leans across your workspace, her body pressing against your laptop screen until it tilts halfway closed. You freeze, fingers suspended above the keys, terrified of losing what little progress you've made in this digital archaeology expedition. "There's - like - a murderer on campus."

"One girl said she was followed home," you gently remind. Under normal circumstances, Emma's mother-hen routine would be endearing — charming, even. But right now, with your project in shambles and deadline looming, her protective hovering feels suffocating. "Not murdered, Em."

"May as well have been." Emma fixes you with that look — the one that screams why am I the only rational person here? While her nails tap nervously against your desk. "Probably hasn't left her room since. And you know what? Smart girl.”

You scrub your hands over your face, your eyes fixed on the projector's word vomit — an endless stream of error messages and unintelligible code painting the drywall from a tired projector like some twisted modern art piece.

Not exactly what you were going for.

Emma stands mesmerized, "How did you even do this?" She watches the cryptic display crawl across the wall, her eyes tracking each line as if she could decode it. "This reminds me of-" she catches herself, the name hanging unspoken between you. She's learned that lesson the hard way. "This is wild.”

You can't help but notice.

Notice how she almost speaks his name, how these meaningless strings of letters and numbers somehow bridge the gap to memories you've tried so hard to bury — promises whispered under star-sprinkled skies, fingers intertwined beneath the cosmic glow.

Moments that felt eternal then, ephemeral now.

Your gaze drifts to your phone, lying face-down like a surrender.

You blink several times, trying to clear the ghosts from your vision before speaking, your voice emerging barely above a whisper, as if the words themselves might shatter something in the air, "Should I text him?" You ask, offering the idea as if it was something too controversial to be spoken aloud.

Emma shifts her weight, both from exhaustion and the sudden weight of responsibility.

Your night's trajectory now rests in her hands — she who has witnessed every shade of you, from triumph to devastation. Her own memories of him surface: the way he'd raid her ice cream stash only to replace it with a premium pint the next day, how he'd tackle the dish mountain without prompting, those small gestures that made him feel like family.

"He was my favorite boyfriend of yours," she'd told you once, in a moment of wine-honest conversation. "He was a good boy."

A good boy who made a couple mistakes.

But those mistakes had compounded like interest on a debt you never agreed to pay, until the rift between you and Luigi widened into an ocean.

Everything good had been pulled out with the tide — your trust, your shared future — swept away to depths where no light could reach.

"I-" Emma's hand finds the back of her neck, her expression cycling through a slideshow of conflicted emotions. You can see her internal struggle; the desire to crawl into her bed warring with her loyalty to you. And she knows you well enough to realize you'd stay here until sunrise if necessary. "I mean — babe, I love you, but you can't fix this." The admission seems to pain her, as if acknowledging your limitations feels like betrayal. "We aren't techies."

You stare helplessly at your gutted gallery, stripped bare by your own accidental digital vandalism. Your artwork, your portfolio, your future — all reduced to incomprehensible strings of code projected onto an indifferent wall.

"Do you think he'd come?" The question escapes before you can stop it, your eyes magnetized to your phone as if your stare alone could resurrect that old text thread, buried beneath months of careful silence.

"Of course he would."

A soft, defeated whine escapes you as you turn back to glare at your corrupted work, as if you could intimidate it into fixing itself through sheer force of will.

Emma's voice softens, "Hey, he's mature enough to understand you've exhausted your options."

A violent shudder runs through you at the thought of Luigi being your last resort.

You'd managed to exile the visceral memories — the heated arguments that left you gasping for air, the promises that turned to vapor in the morning light.

"Which are?"

Emma looks down at her Pokemon-clad self, then back at you. "Me." She gestures vaguely in your direction, "and you."

The campus sleeps around you, everyone else lost to their dreams or late-night calls home. Just the two of you remain, trapped in this dimly-lit purgatory on a Wednesday night, while error messages mock your existence with their endless scroll.

"Slim pickin's," you mutter as your fingers betray you, finding Luigi's contact with muscle memory that refuses to die.

How many times had you pressed these same digits before?

But this is different.

Different because you haven't spoken since that night in your kitchen, when you stood with your back to him, voice steady despite the trembling in your hands, "So, we aren't going to try to figure this out?" You asked, and he’d responded with some pretentious comparison about your relationship being like corrupted code, fundamentally flawed, destined to fail its own quality test.

The irony isn't lost on you — the very metaphor he used to end things is now the thread that might pull you back into his orbit. Your only connection besides the elaborate dance of avoidance across campus, treating each other's paths like holy ground neither dares to tread.

Opening the thread, you're greeted by your last exchange — your final words to him blazing across the screen in angry blue bubbles: "I want my fucking shit back or I'll make your life a living hell." Such poetry. Your new message hovers in the text box, simpler, desperate in its brevity.

Hey need help with somethin. U up??

You thrust your phone at Emma like it's burning your fingers, watching her eyes widen as they catch on those months-old texts — digital artifacts of your rage that should have been scrubbed before tonight's desperate plea. "Jesus," she whispers, amusement dancing in her expression. "I'd still be licking my wounds if I were hi-"

The familiar buzz cuts through the air, a notification chime that once made your heart leap but now makes it sink.

"What'd he say?" You mumble, gaze fixed on the mocking projection that bathes the room in its sickly digital glow, code continuing its relentless march across the wall.

Emma settles into a chair, hunching over your laptop's makeshift altar. "Said he's at Ruddy's." She squints at a fresh message. "He said 'what do you want?'" She deepens her voice into a cartoonish baritone, making him sound like a caveman discovering text messaging for the first time.

You can't blame him for the cold response — you’d scorched that earth thoroughly.

But a selfish part of you wants to delete the whole exchange, pretend this moment of weakness never happened, go back to the careful choreography of avoiding each other's existence.

But you can't.

The corrupted gallery looming on the wall is a stark reminder that pride is a luxury you can't afford right now.

His icy reception is the natural consequence of your scorched-earth campaign, those venom-laced messages sent in the throes of heartbreak and confusion.

You'd played the role of the woman scorned perfectly, even though you'd written your own tragic script.

"Just send him a picture." You wave listlessly at the wall, where your work continues its digital decomposition, folding in on itself like a dying star. The error messages stretch into an endless serpent of nonsense, each iteration making less sense than the last.

The artificial shutter sound of Emma's photo breaks the silence, followed by the soft swoosh of sending. The wait feels eternal until-

Ding

Emma's attention snaps to your phone resting on her thigh, her eyes widening. "He's typing like he-"

Sorry;m,, I’m fucked uo

Up

I am

fucked up

Emma clicks her tongue and rises, crossing the room to lob your phone into your lap, screen up. "Guess some things don't change." You manage a weak half-grin, memories flooding back unbidden — Luigi stumbling into your dorm in the small hours, wrapped in whiskeys warmth, all soft edges and desperate hands.

"Well, make up your mind." Emma's yawn threatens to unhinge her jaw, arms wrapping around herself like armor. "Are we done here, or are you gonna have him come take a look?"

I’n be there son

I’ll be rherw soo

I’ll be there soon

You stand to wrap your arms around Emma’s shoulders who reluctantly curves her arms upward to squeeze your shoulders. “Go home.” She seems reluctant to listen, staring at your phone screen as if it would take her home itself. “I promise, I’ll be just fine.”

The space between you pulses with that unique warmth reserved for someone who shares your roof, your darkest secrets, and the monthly struggle with Con Edison. "Just don't make any brash decisions."

"Oh, Em." You press a kiss to her forehead. "You think I'm so much cooler than I am."

Emma's laugh follows her as she spins toward the door, collecting pieces of herself like breadcrumbs — the scarf draped over a chair, the coat hung forgotten, the backpack abandoned when the day still held promise.

Each item a marker of how long this digital nightmare has stretched, from sunshine to moonlight.

And as if summoned by cosmic irony, the lab door swings open to reveal Luigi. "Oh - hey, E." The surprise flickers across his face before he schools his features back to neutral.

"Hey, Lu." Her greeting carries the easy familiarity of their old routine, like NPCs in a cozy game exchanging preset dialogue, their paths crossing exactly as programmed.

"You g'na help me with this?"

Emma shakes her head, patting his shoulder as she passes — a gentle handoff. "I did my time." You want to protest, but words fail as you absorb the sight of him, eight months of careful avoidance crumbling in an instant.

"Ahh-" Luigi waves, feigning disappointment through the druken haze. "Need a walk back home?"

Ever the shepherd, guardian of late-night wanderers.

It didn't matter who you were — friend, stranger, ex-lover’s best friend and roommate — his self-appointed mission to ensure everyone's safe return never wavered.

You'd once wondered if it stemmed from some deeper anxiety, his mind unable to rest until every sheep was accounted for in its fold.

Tonight though, the alcohol has mercifully dulled that protective instinct. Emma's potential disappearance into the night ranks lower on his list of concerns than usual, although Emma herself had been the one earlier to warn you of the murderer on campus.

"You still got my location," Emma reminds him — a callback to conversations past, to the day she'd granted Luigi permanent access to her whereabouts, a level of trust you'd wisely withheld.

"Right."

She presses a kiss to her fingers, flashing you a peace sign with the same hand before it briefly lands on Luigi's shoulder. Then she's gone, disappearing into the snow-globe world he'd just stumbled in from. He stands before you now, arms hanging like dead weight, his eyes somehow both wide and narrow.

"Hey," you whisper.

"Hey."

You gesture weakly at the wall where your work writhes in digital agony. "So, uh — remember that time you salvaged Professor Wren’s entire thesis when her drive crashed?"

Luigi's eyes follow your hand, professional interest temporarily overriding the awkwardness. He steps closer, squinting at the corrupted display, "Jesus," he mutters, "what did you do to it?"

"Would you believe me if I said nothing?" The laugh that escapes is more nervous than you'd like. "It just. - it started disintegrating during final checks."

He's already pulling out his laptop, muscle memory from countless late-night tech rescues. The familiarity of it hits you in the chest — how many times had you watched him do this same thing, hunched over his keyboard, bottom lip caught between his teeth in concentration?

"I can try," he says finally, not quite meeting your eyes. "But no promises. When's this due?"

"Tomorrow at nine."

"Of course it is." He drops into the chair beside you, close enough that your elbows almost touch, but enough of a distance to still feel far away. “Okay, walk me through what it's supposed to look like when it's not — uh - whatever this is."

For a moment, Luigi stares at the corrupted display where red pixels bleed and stutter across the wall. His fingers hover over his keyboard, then pause. "Wait. This is your circulatory modeling project? The one you were-“ He cuts himself off, remembering this was before the eight months of silence.

"Yeah." You swallow. "It was working perfectly until an hour ago. Real-time hemodynamics, pressure differentials, vessel elasticity. Everything." Your voice cracks slightly on the last word, feeling more helpless when you verbalize it.

He nods, already typing with uncanny precision despite the slight sway in his posture. "Show me the base code. Did you save any backups?"

"Three. All corrupted." You lean forward, careful not to crowd him as you pull up the mangled files. "It's like something got into the core simulation and just - I dunno - started rewriting them."

"Hm." His eyes scan the screen with that laser focus he somehow maintains no matter how much he drinks, that familiar furrow appearing between his brows. "These values are cascading. One corrupted variable triggering a chain reaction through the whole system." He glances at you, slightly overshooting before correcting. "When's the last time it ran correctly?"

You check your phone. "6:43 PM. I have a screen recording from then."

"Good. That's good." He pulls up a second window, his typing still flawless even as he reaches with his free hand to steady himself against the desk. "We can compare the execution logs, maybe isolate where it started going wrong." His fingers fly across the keys with a precision that seems to mock his clearly inebriated state, and for a moment, it feels like those eight months never happened. "I'm going to need coffee for this." He looks up at you from where he sat, “Or more booze.”

You land on coffee, your feet carrying you down the familiar path to the kitchenette.

The fluorescent lights flicker dimly at this hour, casting strange shadows across the linoleum, the lab's overpriced espresso machine hums to life under your touch, its gentle whirring a counterpoint to the distant sound of Luigi's typing.

Suddenly you're back in that first year, both of you hunched over at 3 AM, him teaching you the proper way to pull a shot: “You're murdering it, stop torturing the beans”, your quiet laughter echoing through empty halls.

"Got it.” His voice carries down the corridor, slurred but triumphant, snapping you back to present.

You return to find him illuminated by screen-glow, his tie loosened and dark hair disheveled. The paper cup lands in front of him — double shot, one packet of raw sugar.

He doesn't stir it, never has.

Instead, he tips the cup back, and you hear that familiar crunch of sugar crystals between his teeth, a sound that used to drive you crazy, until somewhere along the way it became endearing.

Still, the jumbled code taunts you from the screen, though its chaos seems less threatening now. Under Luigi's touch — steady despite the alcohol — your final project is slowly remembering its original shape.

"You should have texted sooner," Luigi murmurs, tilting his head back to collect the last sugar crystals from his cup. The movement exposes his throat, his collar wrinkled where he's been tugging at it all night.

"Well," you say, watching the way his fingers dance across the keys, each stroke precise despite his obvious intoxication, "takes a minute to swallow something as big as my pride."

The corners of his mouth twitch upward, eyes never leaving the screen where broken code is knitting itself back together under his attention.

"Oh," he huffs out a laugh, the sound low and dangerous in the quiet lab, "I've seen you swallow far bigger things before."

It strikes like summer lightning — quick, bright, and leaving the air charged in its wake. The innuendo lands with no real bite, yet you find your jaw slack, a startled laugh shaking loose from your chest.

"Kidding," Luigi says, his eyes flicking from screen to you and back again. There’s a ghost of a smirk playing at the corner of his mouth, softened by the alcohol but still sharp enough to cut. You wave him back to his work, grateful for the blue glow of monitors that hides your flush. "You kinda set that up perfectly, though."

He squints up at the projection where your broken code still bleeds across the wall, letting out a soft grunt of frustration at some digital roadblock. "Just mean — ya know, you could have caught me two beers deep instead of seven."

You shrug a shoulder, watching as the projection slowly crystallizes into something recognizable. "Seems you work better under such conditions."

The lie tastes metallic.

You both know the truth.

Luigi would have come if he was sober as sunrise or drowning in bourbon. Would have come with broken ribs or pneumonia or his heart barely beating. Would have traced these familiar hallways blind, deaf, or dying — because that's what the two of you do.

Have always done.

You've seen him at rock bottom, curled into himself on cold bathroom tiles at midnight, trembling hands pressed against his mouth as if he could physically hold back the pain that wracked his body. Watched him try to explain to puzzled doctors how someone so young could hurt so constantly, the frustration in his voice when they suggested it was all in his head.

You were there through the trials of medications, the nights when existence itself seemed too heavy to bear.

And you've seen him soar; standing tall in that charcoal suit that made him look older, more polished, shaking hands with tech giants who saw in him what you'd always known was there, his future spreading out before him like a golden road, brilliant and boundless.

Now he sits here, seven drinks deep but coding like he's never been clearer, and you realize that maybe both versions are equally true.

Maybe that's what makes him Luigi — the ability to contain multitudes, to be simultaneously broken and brilliant, wounded and wonderful.

He catches you watching him and raises an eyebrow, the gesture slightly delayed, which means you must have been a bit too obvious. "What?"

"Nothing.”

His fingers pause on the keys, and even through the alcoholic haze, his gaze pins you like a butterfly to cork. "No, really. What?" The words have a slight blur around their edges, but his focus is knife-sharp.

You could deflect again, but there's something about 4 AM and code that glows like dying stars that makes honesty feel less dangerous, perhaps you’re finding comfort in the fact that Luigi is drunk, although you’re stone cold sober.

"Just thinking about that time in the Thompson building bathroom." Your voice comes out softer than intended. "When you couldn't stand up, and I had to convince the janitor you had food poisoning."

He doesn't flinch from the memory like he used to.

Instead, his mouth curves into something caught between a smile and a grimace. "You told him it was from the cafeteria." His fingers resume their dance across the keyboard, but slower now. "Got the whole place investigated by health services."

"Yeah, but got us three days off while they checked fucking everything.” you remind him.

"Got me through that week," he corrects quietly, and for a moment, the mask of that brilliant-drunk-techie slips, showing the man underneath who still remembers what it feels like to be held together by nothing but someone else's faith in you.

Then he blinks, and the vulnerability is gone, replaced by that familiar crooked grin. "Though I maintain the cafeteria deserved the inspection anyway."

The projection flickers, another section of code healing itself under his touch, and you wonder if he knows you'd do it all again.

Every bathroom floor, every late-night crisis, every moment of putting him back together - you'd choose it every time.

"Speaking of which," you venture carefully, watching his hands move across the keyboard. "How's the new treatment working?"

His right shoulder shifts in what might be a shrug, but there's a shadow of a real smile playing at his mouth.

Not the sharp, defensive one he wears like armor, but something softer, more genuine. "Six months post-op and I actually slept through the night last week. First time in -“ he pauses, considering, "Fuck, I don't even remember how long."

The admission hangs in the air between you, weighted with the two years of 2 AM phone calls, of nights spent pacing, of pain medications that never quite touched the core of the problem.

Watching him try to code through hands that wouldn't stop shaking.

"Still hurts sometimes," he adds, almost absently. "But it's different now. More like background noise than a scream." His fingers still on the keyboard, and for a moment he looks almost surprised by his own words. "Guess that's what normal people feel like all the time, huh?"

The question carries an edge of wonder, like someone who's lived in darkness suddenly discovering dawn.

You watch him roll his shoulder — a gesture that used to be followed by a wince but now flows smooth and unconscious — and think about how strange it must be, learning to live without constant pain after it's become part of your identity.

"Though I kind of miss having an excuse to drunk-code at 4 AM" he adds, but you both know it's a lie.

The code blurs on the projection as silence settles between you, charged with something that's been building for ages — through bathroom floors and hospital visits, through triumphs and failures, through pain and healing.

The alcohol has stripped away Luigi’s careful boundaries, leaving raw honesty in their place.

"You know," Luigi says slowly, finally turning from the screen to face you fully, "I never thanked you properly. For all of it."

"You don't need to-"

Your diagram pulses back to life, the holographic heart rotating lazily against the wall.

Its red glow bathes the room in a surreal warmth, catching on the sharp angles of Luigi's face, softening them into something almost dreamlike.

The light flickers across his cheekbones, turns his eyes to amber, makes the whole moment feel suspended between reality and imagination.

"I do." His voice is quiet but firm, steadier than someone seven drinks deep should manage. "Because I've been thinking — now that I can actually think clearly without-“he gestures vaguely at his back, at all the years of pain, "I've been thinking about how you're the only constant. The only person who never-“ He trails off.

You lean a little closer, drawn by the vulnerability in his voice. "Never what?"

"Never saw me as broken." He turns himself toward you, and there's something desperate in his eyes, something the alcohol has finally given him the courage to show. "Never treated me like I needed fixing. Just stayed. Through everything."

Your lips part, but the words catch in your throat. He takes your silence as a sign, turning back to the screen with a sharp exhale that might be resignation or relief — you're not sure which would be worse.

"Lu,” you say softly, and something in your voice makes his fingers still on the keyboard. "Look at me."

He does, slowly, like he's afraid of what he might find.

The neon bathes half his face in crimson, leaving the other half in shadow, and you see the moment his carefully constructed walls start to crumble.

"Time hasn’t changed that much about me.” you say, each word deliberate, heavy with meaning.

His breath catches audibly. You watch the impact of your words ripple across his face — surprise, understanding, and something else, something that makes your heart race against your ribs.

"Hasn’t it?” Luigi is focusing on you now, the reason he really came here now practically completed but pushed aside until further notice. “Eight months is a long time to hold onto -“ he gestures vaguely between you, as if he can’t quite say what it was. Hopeless devotion, the right person, wrong time.

“Not long enough to forget.”

“Forget what?”

“You.”

His breath catches again, a sharp inhale that seems to pull all the oxygen from the room. When he speaks, his voice is rough and ragged, “Maybe that’s the problem.” His gaze drifts down to watch as you lick your lips, and back up again. “Maybe you should have.”

[streamafterlaughter]

Soundtrack to Disaster

Chapter VII: Choose Love or Sympathy

masterlist | playlist | pinboard | prev. | diaries coming soon

songs for this chapter: xo by fall out boy, lying is the most fun a girl can have without taking her clothes off, king for a day by pierce the veil

a/n: hear me when i say these two are absolutely in for it it. I'm also a huge fan of italics apparently

chapter tags: angst, hurt/comfort but then... hurt/no comfort (SORRY!), reader is a sensitive baby we love her, mean!Eddie, but also very sweet Eddie. swearing, smoking, drinking, reader struggles with self image / mental health (vague for now) | fic tags: angst, hurt/(eventual) comfort, (eventual) smut, slow burn, enemies to friends to lovers, Eddie Munson x Fem!OC!Reader, Modern AU

DISCLAIMER: I do not consent to having my work fed to AI engines, or reposted in any way, shape, or form on other websites. Unless otherwise stated, this is the only account that features and contains this work, and any replication was done without my consent. Please let me know if you see my work elsewhere. Reblog/comment/like to support the author! Join the tag list!

taglist: @children-of-the-grave @five-bi-five @kellsck @faggotine @xplrnowornever @taccobelle @micheledawn1975 @mewchiili @dreamerjj @losingmygrasponreality |

--

The weekend comes barreling towards you sooner than you’d have liked. You wake up Friday morning with a sense of dread, Robin’s words on a broken loop in your head: what you ‘know’ isn’t the whole goddamn story. Everyone keeps fucking saying that, but no one has actually told you what you “don’t know.”. Chris hasn’t given you a goddamn leg to stand on, speaking in riddles and never once confirming or denying a thing. You’re an adult, and you wish these fuckers would start treating you like one.

On your nightstand, your phone buzzes repeatedly, a string of incoming text messages:

bobbins: so,, ive smoked some weed bobbins: im cool now  bobbins: i still think there’s a lot we don’t know,, bobbins: but I’m sorry for insinuating you should forgive him. bobbins: i cant imagine how you felt that day. bobbins: i love u bb

You scramble to respond before she can get another five messages in,

it’s ok bob, i love u 2

The subject changes swiftly as she tosses questions about tonight at you one after the other. You send her pictures of your outfit choices, hairstyle ideas, personal protection list before finally asking her the question gnawing on your brain. 

What if he doesn’t like me?

Robin responds by calling you.

“Hi?”

“Don’t be stupid.” She starts, not letting you explain. “He asked you out, why wouldn’t he like you?!”

“I dunno! Maybe he’s just looking for a hookup. Maybe he thought I’d be easy?” The suggestion sounds silly coming out of your mouth, and you hear Robin scoff at you. 

“Look, if things start to stink, call me. Steve’s closing tonight, so he’ll be right down the street.”

You sigh into the receiver. “Okay, okay. You’re right, I’m probably worried for nothing.”

“Atta girl! Now go on, go headbang or whatever it is you people do.”

You snort as you say your goodbyes, and hang up the phone. Without Robin to distract you, you turn to the outfits you’ve spread out on your bed. Emo Nite is casual, sure, but you still want to look good. You decide on a pair of Tripp pants, adorned with metal hooks and chains, pairing it with an old Paramore shirt you cropped with kitchen scissors in high school. With your outfit out of the way, you sit at your vanity to do your makeup, extending your winged eyeliner a little further than you would on a normal day. When you’re done, your alarm clock reads 8:30, and you make your way to your car. 

–

9:15.

The lights of the city seem to dance across the sky. Everything is louder here, bustling with nightlife you could only dream of seeing in Hawkins. You’re standing outside the club alone, nursing the end of your last cigarette. Maybe he’s running late? You don’t have a single unread text from Scotty. You type several different messages of your own, deleting each one before settling on “You on your way?” But its delivery is never confirmed. It’s grown cold outside, and you wrap your flannel tighter around you to keep the wind out. You should have brought a jacket, but you weren’t expecting to be outside for this long. You can hear the first notes of an old favorite song, followed by a bunch of 20 somethings cheering. Patrons are dressed in black, clad in leather and fishnets, their combat booted feet stomping into the venue. Emo Nite is a nostalgia cash grab, you know that, but you’re envious of everyone setting foot inside, surrounded by their friends and peers, leaving you abandoned at the door. 

–

9:30.

The time taunts you from your phone screen. You’re waiting outside the club, the air brisk on your face. Every so often, the door swings open as someone enters or exits, and you turn to see if it’s someone for you. So far, none of them have been, and you’re debating whether or not to walk to the record store and ask Steve to hitch a ride back to his place to mope. 

“Hey, Bee!” The voice calling you isn’t the one you’re hoping to hear, but it’s just as familiar. You find its source across the street, Macy waving at you eagerly as her bandmates and fucking Eddie follow behind. Oh, right. Like being stood up isn’t humiliating enough, now Eddie gets to tease you about it. 

“What’re you doing out here, girl? It’s freezing!” Macy is sweet, holding your icy cheeks between her warm hands. You can tell she’s already had a few drinks.

“I’m, hm,” You clear your throat, “I’m waiting for someone.”

“A date? Eek! Hear that, Eds? Our girl has a date!” Her words send static through your veins. Since when are you anyone’s girl, let alone Munson and Macy’s?

“Mhm, okay, honey. Let’s go get you situated, yeah?” Eddie ushers her inside, handing her off to Fiona before returning to where you’re standing. Without a word, he lights a cigarette and offers it to you, and you take it without acknowledgement while he lights his own. After what seems like hours, the two of you choose to speak at the same time,

“How late is–” “Why did you–” “What?” “What?”

“You first,” Eddie gestures to you before pulling from his cigarette.

“Why did you tell Scotty to ask me out?” 

“What in the world makes you think I told him to ask you out?”

“Look, she’s gonna kill me for telling you this, but Robin overheard you in the bathroom talking to Scotty at the bar. She walked in by accident, and you two had come in before she could leave. Anyway, you know she can’t keep secrets for shit, so she told me what you said to him. Why?” You cross your arms, attempting to hold in as much body heat as possible,but to no avail. Eddie notices, and immediately sheds his jacket, not giving you a chance to refuse it as he drapes the leather over your shoulders. 

“I thought he was a cool dude. Thought you guys would hit it off.” His answer does nothing to satiate the hunger for every detail of every single thought that went through his brain up until this very moment. He is driving you fucking insane. “Hey, I bet I could get Macy to put you on the guestlist, so at least tonight won’t be a total waste?” Yet another peace offering from Eddie Munson. Hell must have frozen over.

He doesn’t wait for your approval before reaching into his inner jacket pocket of the coat that you have since put fully on to shield yourself from the wind, to grab his phone. After eagerly punching a few buttons, he holds the device up to his ear, plugging the other with his finger. “Hey, babe. I’m outside with Bee, Scott stood her up.” You can’t hear what Macy’s response is, but Eddie replies with, “You read my mind, honey. We’ll be in in a sec.” He ends the call and turns his attention back to you, his big brown eyes attempting, it seems, to read your mind. “You pissed?”

You shake your head, inhaling another drag of your cigarette. “Not really. Disappointed, I guess.” You pick at your cuticles, refusing to hold eye contact with Eddie, but that doesn’t stop him from boring his own into the top of your head; you can feel them penetrating your skull. “Could’a used the distraction.”

“Fancy me a distractor? Macy’s gonna be busy, I’m practically all by myself tonight.” You look up, and Eddie’s jutting his bottom lip out to pout at you. 

“You don’t mind being seen with me?” You tease, flicking ash onto the concrete. You can’t imagine Eddie actually wants you to agree to this offer.

“Why would I? When have I ever cared what people think of me? Especially these posers.” He gestures to you, and you fake offense.

“Posers?! I’ll have you know I have met some of the most authentic punks at places like this, you dweeb!” You toss your cigarette butt on the ground, stomping out the embers with your boot. 

“Sorry, sorry! I’m used to going to shows where people leave bloody. Not used to this side of the alternative Venn Diagram, I guess.” He flicks his own cigarette, mirroring your movements. “Shall we go inside?” You nod begrudgingly, and he opens the door to the club for you, stopping to give the bouncer your names.

–

The club is dark, expectedly. The lights flash shades of pink, purple, and blue as people dance and attempt to chat over the noise; and the whole scene is set to the music of your childhood and teen years. As Eddie leads you across the floor, you can feel your chest tighten, watching couples surrounding you, dancing or sloppily making out against the back wall. You let it sink in that you've been stood up. The first time in three years you’d even attempted to go on a date, and the guy didn’t even show up. You hum along to the song playing, a desperate plea for distraction from the situation in front of you. Meanwhile, Eddie leads you to a table away from the speakers, and shouts that he’ll be right back. You can only guess he’s off to wish his girlfriend luck.

While you wait, you observe the crowd around you, and it’s full of kids you knew in high school that used to bully you for liking this kind of music, dressed as caricatures with arm warmers and cheap chains dangling off their black skinny jeans. Conventionally attractive girls wear their eyeliner in heavy wings, their lips painted shades of dark red, dancing with boys in all black with long hair. You try not to think about what Scotty would have worn. You wonder if he even likes this kind of thing. Maybe it was a test, and you'd failed.

Just as you’re about to spiral into misery again, Eddie returns with two drinks in his hands. “You like shirleys, right? I wasn’t totally sure. I can go grab you something else if you want?” If you didn’t know any better, you would think Eddie was nervous.

“No, this is good. Thank you.”

“Yeah, no problem!” He has to yell over the music.

“And, uh, thanks for hanging out with me. I know it’s like, the last thing you wanna be doing right now.”

Eddie takes a swig of his beer before responding, “Nah, definitely not the last thing. This is way better than listening to Steve talk about his latest conquest.” You picture the scenario, Eddie slamming his head against a wall while Steve goes on and on about Tracy, or Nicole, or whoever it is this week. The mental image makes you giggle, and Eddie’s smile seems to widen. It makes you uncomfortable, being so close to him. Luckily, though, you don’t get to think about it too long.

“Alright, alright! Thank you guys for comin’ out to hang with us! We have a guest for you tonight, please welcome Macy Miller, frontwoman of Statuesque Dolls!” The crowd cheers politely, these things never have people worth freaking out over. Macy takes the stage, clad in a silky black dress that hugs her form perfectly. Next to you, Eddie is whooping and hollering, “That’s my girl!” It makes your stomach churn. You’re reminded again that you’re supposed to be here on a date. You’re supposed to be someone’s girl. 

“Alright, I got a couple of songs for you guys, but I need all of you up and shaking some emo ass with me, got it?!” You can’t deny Macy knows how to work a crowd. She gets people to migrate to the dance floor, and Eddie offers his hand out. “Can I have this dance?”

“Um,” You hesitate to take his outstretched palm. “What about Macy?” You point lamely to where Macy is killing her cover of Fall Out Boy’s XO.

“What about her? It’s a dance, Bee. I’m not, like, asking you to sleep with me or some shit.” Eddie frowns at you, like you’ve offended him.

He does have a point, though. One dance won’t kill you. You accept his gesture, taking his own massive hand in yours, and hope to god he can’t tell that yours is sweating. He leads you to the dance floor, waving to Macy from the crowd as he does. There’s a burn in your stomach when she blows him a kiss, and he pretends to catch it in his mouth. You’re close to bailing when Eddie turns his attention back to you, clearing his throat.

You stare back at him, eyes wide with fear that he’s going to bail, and you prepare to tuck your tail between your legs and call Robin. Instead, Eddie takes your hand again, and yanks you into his embrace. You bump into his chest, but he recovers the fumble by holding you there, free arm resting hesitantly on your waist. You’re frozen, having no clue where to put your hands, so Eddie takes the lead. He drops the hand he’s holding on his shoulder, and moves your other to meet it on the other side. He then rests both his hands on your hips, giving you enough space between his body and yours to breathe, but barely.

The song continues, melodramatic and overtly horny. That, combined with the warmth of the drink in your veins, plus the closeness of Eddie, makes you feel almost good. It’s difficult not to overthink, though, having him in your personal space, your bodies pressed together on a very hot, crowded dance floor, moving in ways you definitely wouldn't have done three hours ago.

“So,” Eddie muses, looking anywhere but at you as he speaks, but still able to move in sync with you. “How’s your day goin’?”

You snicker at his poor attempt at conversation. “Well, I got stood up, and now I’m dancing with who I would have bet this morning wanted absolutely nothing to do with me. All things considered, I think it’s going pretty horribly!” 

The ice seems to crack as you speak, Eddie visibly relaxing as you sway to the music. “Okay, that’s fair. Are you pleasantly surprised?”

You look up at him, but his eyes are locked over your head, staring where Macy stands onstage, swaying with a few friends in front of the DJ booth. You shrug. “Jury’s still out.”

He snorts, rolling his eyes at you. After what feels like an eternity, the song ends and Macy queues another rock anthem to get the crowd moving again. You’re unmoving as Eddie unwraps himself from you. “We should do this again sometime.” He states, unreadable.

“What, dance?”

“Sure, or just, y'know, hang out. Be civil for once. It’s been awhile.”

You roll your eyes. “You know this can’t be, like, a normal thing. It bruises our reputation as sworn enemies.” A feeble attempt to make it a joke, though you know in your heart you can’t be friends with Eddie. The earth would cave in on itself. 

Eddie chuckles. “Whatever you say, Bee. See ya ‘round.” And he leaves you alone, disappearing into the crowd.

–

It’s 11:30 when your phone buzzes. You’re four drinks deep, stirring another dirty shirley at the bar, observing the people around you having fun.

Scotty A: Hey! Totally meant to text you. Got stuck at work.

An avalanche of thoughts rumbles through you, most of them not safe for work. You don’t even know how to respond. There’s no apology, no groveling for your forgiveness, not a hint of actual, real regret. Like you don’t matter. It exhausts you to even think of what that date would’ve been like had he shown up. You type your response between gulps of liquid courage.

“Are you fucking serious?”

The "..." bubble appears, but quickly vanishes. You gape at your phone, wishing you were home so you could let out the blood curdling scream building in your chest. The anger vibrating through you needs an escape, so you lurch from your seat at the bar, rushing quickly out of the club. Eddie whips his head around as you pass him. You think you hear him call your name, but your eyes have started stinging and he’s the last person you want to see you cry.

The night air hits you hard, bringing separate tears to your eyes. Following your therapist’s advice, you start a box breathing exercise. Breathe in, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Breathe out, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. 

“Hey,” The voice startles you into a hiccup. “You okay?” Eddie has made his way outside after you, leaning against the wall. “Saw you dash outta there like something caught fire. Got worried.” He says it nonchalantly, and it takes you aback. Instead of responding, you flip your phone screen towards him. His eyes scan the page before they focus back on you, shaking his head. “That is so fucked up.”

Your voice breaks with your next question. “Did you know this was gonna happen? Scotty’s your friend.”

Eddie’s face drops into a grimace. “How would I have known? Why would I have told him to hit you up if I knew this was gonna happen?” 

It frustrates you how reasonable he’s being. You want someone to yell at, someone to blame, and Eddie just so happens to be the closest target. “I don’t know! Maybe you did it as revenge, or something equally as immature. Maybe you wanted me to feel the same way you did when–”

He interrupts, shaking his head feverishly. “I wouldn’t wish that feeling on anyone. Even you.” The words are a knife to your chest. You don’t like remembering what you did to Eddie that night, but it’s your fault for bringing it up. “I told Scotty to ask you out because he said he liked you. Crazy concept, I know, but i suggest you stop thinking everyone’s out to get you. I thought it would be fun, hanging out with you and him. I’m sorry it didn’t go how you planned, but blaming me isn’t fucking fair, Bee.”

He’s right, but you can’t bring yourself to back down. “It’s not fair to take someone’s brother away for six years, but you had no problem doing that.”

“Fuck you, Bee. Seriously.” He spits the words before turning on his heel, and heading inside. You are once again left alone, outside, in the cold.

–

[jackactuallywrites]

All Seeing, All Knowing, All Loving Part 12

Warning: Nada, comfy chapter

Summary: Guess who’s not dead?

Notes: it’s a long chapter, ur welcome xo

Word count: 3,759

ao3 link

It didn’t make sense to you how hard Ghost’s death played on your conscience. It wasn’t like you had anything to do with it; you were the most civilian civvie to ever civ.

At least you still had your little Ghost shrine. It was strangely soothing; every time you felt guilty about his death, you would go and sit with the vase with his old ID until you felt better, playing idly with the dried petals as you chit-chatted to ‘Ghost’. Well, you never felt better, really, but it distracted you enough to the point that you could get back to your regular life.

There was a small problem with the shrine, however. You were pretty sure that your quiet dedication to him had brought him back as a ghost. A ghostly Ghost. It felt as though you were revisiting old ground; you’d had this before, thinking your apartment was possessed when it had actually been Ghost sneaking around in your apartment. But, he was dead. So, if there was any sneaking around to be done, it would have to have been done by his ghost; you’d set enough booby traps for corporeal forms that surely even an SAS man like him would trip and wake you up with a clattering of old cat food cans. You imagined he’d be proud of you for improvising like that.

It was always when you’d had a shit day that Ghost would pop into your mind like that. Today, you’d been dealing with a stray colony on the outskirts of town, and they had been in pretty miserable shape, cold, half-starved, without so much as an old pallet to sleep on. You’d did what you could, set up some cheap outdoor shelters, basic plastic boxes lined with straw so they had somewhere to keep warm, and given them a heaping pile of wet food to eat from, as well as set up strategic bowls of water, but it never felt like it was enough. You saw Ghost in those cats. Forgotten about, abandoned, left to die. No big surprise that he was on your mind.

Soap chattered at your feet as you walked through the living room to your little shrine. Roach only watched you warily from the sofa. It had only been a fortnight since you’d brought him home, and he still didn’t seem best pleased about the situation. Perhaps he preferred his old cupboard to a warm, comfy apartment with anything his little cat heart desired. Little bastard. Still, you pet his head as you passed him by; he was a good boy. You’d worried he’d knock as many things over as Soap, but such animal indulgences didn’t seem to appeal to him. The petals in the vase had long since lost their fragrance but not their beauty, still a beautiful array of purples, and right at the top was the ID card. You didn’t feel like you had learned anything more about him since the day you originally read that card.

You went to pick up the card, a rare disturbance of the otherwise untouched shrine, but it felt weird, thicker. There were two plastic cards, the old military one sliding around on top of the old one. Strange, had it split in two? You set the military ID down on the side and looked at the other one.

Christ.

A civilian driving licence. Simon Riley’s driving licence. It must have been his very first one; the man in the photo was barely a man at all, practically a child, a brooding teenager staring morosely out at you. He hadn’t changed much, and it made you sad to think about how, even as a teenager, he had those dead eyes. You’d assumed he’d developed those in the military, hard from battle, but he couldn’t have been old enough to join by the looks of the photo. The address was some shithole on the other side of Manchester, one of the rougher areas. That explained that. Like with the military ID, the birth date had been scratched off, the paranoid fucker.

Had that card always been there, stuck to the underside of the military ID?

No. This was new. You were sure of it. And that presented a whole new bunch of problems.

You checked your email, double-checking your spam folder, but there still hadn’t been anything from Ghost. There were no texts either; the messages in your phone were only from you, endlessly trying to get the slightest sign of life from him. Was this his way of reaching out from the beyond? A crazy idea, but fuck it, you’d passed crazy when you made the damn shrine in the first place. Soap had come to wind around your ankles, and you eyed him suspiciously.

“You know anything about this, Soap?”

He meowed.

“Right.”

Having accepted the absurdity of your situation, you were now pondering how one was supposed to commune with the dead. The cynical side of your mind told you that you’d just not noticed there were two cards, but desperation was more appealing, telling you that Ghost was reaching out to you, something that became more convincing the more wine you drank. You could order a Ouija board off Amazon, apparently, but you weren’t convinced that a spiritual board from a soulless corporation wouldn’t just immediately curse you. You’d already sent him a dozen more texts, and two attempted phone calls, but it only gave a dead dial tone. Hmm. You did have a whiteboard stuck to your fridge. That could work.

What did you want to say to him? ‘You alive?’ seemed like an insulting question to ask a ghost. Fuck it, you might as well get weird with it, the whole situation was bananas.

‘Simon Riley,

Show yourself, Saturday, at 7:30pm.

Love

Me, Soap, and Roach’

That seemed appropriate! Summoning a spirit with your cats. Mm, it really did feel like you were going to die alone at this rate. You watched the clock on your phone, waiting for 19:30 to come around.

You should have known nothing would have come of it.

The time had rolled around and gone without so much of a hair of spiritual activity, and you’d decided to write the whole event off as a slight break in your psyche after a too-long day at work. You kept the whiteboard up regardless, though more out of laziness than anything, even if a small part of you was still quietly hoping he’d turn up someday and sent yourself to bed.

At least that strange event hadn’t been a complete loss.

You’d made a nice new tradition for yourself; on Saturday night, rather than go out and get bladdered with the girls (you’d moved that to Friday), you’d have a night in with Soap and Roach, curled up on the sofa in your pyjamas watching dross on the television. Soap would always take the position of privilege on your lap, but Roach was beginning to warm up to you, lying on the back of the sofa, not touching you, but still near to your head. Roach. What a name. It didn’t come close to describing the beautiful young man he was turning into, a delightfully fluffy tortoiseshell, with a tail like a feather duster. His tail flicked idly out the corner of your eye as you tried to scratch his chin, still not quite on board with you fussing him.

For once, the sound of knuckles rapping on your front door didn’t send him scarpering for safety, but his tail did swish dramatically.

“I know, how dare they knock on our door. The cheek of it!”

Soap was most displeased when you had to move him from your lap, knowing that his place of privilege would be taken up by your dinner, and you apologised profusely, with only a slight amount of sarcasm as you dropped him on the cushions, “I know, Soap, I’m a fiend. You’ll get over it.”

Sweet mother Mary, you’d summoned a ghost.

He was standing there, in your doorway, all six foot something of him, blue jeans, black jacket and all, complete with that skull mask you thought you’d seen the last of. What the fuck were you supposed to do now? You didn’t have any salt, nor any iron, and you were fairly sure the Winchesters were fictional.

Hang on. Spirits didn’t wear cologne.

In an instance, your grief was replaced with rage, an easier emotion to carry, and your body decided to take matters into its control, reaching out to shove at his chest,

“You prick.”

Ghost didn’t move, rooted to the ground, and that irritated you more. You jammed your finger into his chest, scowling at him, “I thought you were dead, Ghost. I mourned you. I cried for you.”

“Sorry to disappoint.”

God, you’d missed his voice.

“You cunt.”

“Aye.”

Would it have been in poor form to kill the man you’d mourned for?

“Fucks sake, come in.”

Even Ghost seemed unsure of you, having shut the door behind him but not taking a single step further into your flat, just standing at ease, his hands behind his back. You eyed him suspiciously; you’d seen this move before. Yep, there it was, the flowers. Yet again, he was presenting you with a beautiful bouquet of flowers, this time a warm yellow, still with shades going to white, the man clearly a fan of an ombré effect.

“These aren’t enough to make me forgive you. Prick.”

“I know.”

You could hear the exhaustion in his voice, and it softened you a little, even if the hurt was still lingering, masked by rage. You huffed angrily, but still threw your arms around his middle, squeezing him tightly as though you were afraid he really was a ghost, resting your head on his chest. He was still for a moment, before his arms came to encircle your shoulders, and his cheek came to rest on your head.

Neither of you moved for a good few minutes, and your racing thoughts began to settle, the rage dissipating into the upset and concern it had covered up. Though, you still had questions. You pulled away first, looking up at him, “You have a lot of questions to answer.”

He sighed, “I’m still limited by the Secrets Act.”

“I know that much. There’s other questions.”

Soap had waited patiently by your feet, but now you’d stopped hugging, he made himself known, meowing loudly, holding the noise for a good long while. Some part of Ghost finally thawed, and he crouched down to fuss Soap, his gloved hands scratching underneath the cat’s chin and on his cheeks, murmuring quietly, “You been taking care of her for us?” You objected, “I think you’ll find I’ve been keeping him out of trouble.”

For once, Roach came to socialise of his own volition, bottle brush tail held high in the air as he trotted over to Ghost. You could see the smile crinkling the corners of Ghost’s eyes as he saw Roach, and he reached out to pick the cat up, holding him in the crook of his elbow as he fussed him, “Roach! Alright, lad? Haven’t seen you in an age.”

You had to protest now, “For gods sake, why Roach? It’s such an unpleasant name for a cat. What, is he a used joint or a cockroach?”

The joy in Ghost’s voice was evident as he spoke, “You can call him Gary if you like.”

“What. Gary? What is it with you and giving cats weird names?”

Roach was purring. He’d never purred with you. Sexist. However, you couldn’t deny that the sight made you smile. Ghost, with his two cats, so clearly happy. It felt like a rare emotion for the man. You allowed yourself to relax a little, “You staying for dinner?”

Ghost looked up from Roach.

“You offering?”

“What does it sound like?”

Ghost actually seemed surprised by your answer, considering it for a moment. “Yeah, go on then.”

You didn’t waste time going to the kitchen and getting yourself a glass of wine, leaving Ghost to his boys as you placed the flowers in a pint glass with some water. Some tight coil in your stomach had finally relaxed, and you felt light, a great weight lifted off your shoulders. Your hand hesitated as you got yourself a wine glass out, turning back to the living room,

“You fancy a glass of vino?”

“If you’re offering.”

Were you hitting on him? You hadn’t decided yet. You think you were just being friendly, after all, you always offered your girls wine, and you certainly weren’t flirting with them. You decided to put that thought to the back of your head as you poured out two glasses, carrying them back into the living room.

Ghost had made himself comfortable on your sofa, Soap curled up on his lap, Roach squeezed up against his legs, both purring so loud they could have been mistaken for a pair of jet engines. Little traitors; you were the one who’d been taking care of them the whole time! Ghost took his glass as you offered it, placing it down on the coaster on the coffee table, and you sat on the opposite side of the sofa, watching him curiously, “You know you can’t drink with the mask on, right?”

There he was. Those eyes could curdle milk with a single look. “I am aware of that. Just didn’t want you freakin’ out is all.”

You laughed, “Come on, I’ve seen your face before. You’re not that hideous.”

“Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.”

Ghost pulled off the mask without much flourish, and now you could see what he had been hiding. Bruises of varying ages swept over his cheekbones and jawline, alongside a pattern of scabs across his cheek, though they did look mostly healed at this point. You could see a thin red line in his hair, a few inches away from his temple, dark amongst the blond hair. It was impossible for your eyebrows not to skyrocket at the sight of him, battered and bruised. “Christ. Who’d you piss off?”

Ghost scoffed as he reached for his wine, taking a large glug, “How long you got?”

“That why you couldn’t reply to a text?”

He shook his head, “Phone was blown up. Didn’t have access to owt.”

The absolute indifference with which he regarded dangerous situations took you aback. It made sense, of course; he was a soldier and a special forces one at that; no doubt he was constantly in danger, but Christ. You gestured to his face vaguely, “That the same explosion that did all that?”

He shrugged offhandedly, “Bit. Not all.”

Now you felt bad for being so irate about the tests. You paused, thinking, “Hang on, when did you get back?”

Ghost scratched the back of his head absent-mindedly, “‘Bout thirty-seven hours ago, I reckon.” He eyed you, an amused look on his face, “Must have done some powerful voodoo with that whiteboard. Wasn’t that far off.”

You’d forgotten about that. Your cheeks flamed, and you scoffed at him, “Come off it. I was drunk, and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

He grinned at you, clearly smug, “Aye? That desperate, was you? Price told us about your little break-in and all.”

You didn’t have a snappy comeback to that.

“That… well, that may have been ill-advised.”

Ghost snorted, a rumbling chuckle in his chest, “Aye, ill-advised.”

You folded your arms over your chest, “I saw an article about some soldiers being blown up! And you know, you technically were, so I stand by it.”

“You stand by breaking into a military base?”

“Oh, fuck off. I thought you’d be there. I didn’t know you were… wherever the fuck you were. Besides, you’ve got no moral high ground; you broke into mine all the time!”

“Only once. Before I shipped out.”

You raised a brow, slightly disbelieving, “Really? Only once?”

It was Ghost’s turn to look a little abashed now, and he ran his hand over his head, “You’ve already got one of my IDs. Thought you’d appreciate another.”

So it had been there forever. Typical. How had you not noticed?

Another knock sounded on your door, and you saw the flinch that Ghost tried to suppress at the sudden noise. You didn’t mention it, though both cats did, starting up their loud purring again.

“That’ll be dinner. I’ll get it; you make sure Soap doesn’t do a runner.”

Luckily for you, you always liked to order at least two portions worth, liking to have enough for leftovers for the next night, so there was plenty to split with Ghost. Soap protested loudly as he was removed from the comfort of Ghost’s lap, licking his paw sulkily as he contended with his new position on the floor, and Roach took his exile silently as per usual, skulking into the bed underneath the coffee table, one of his favourite haunts. Ghost followed you to the kitchen as you divvied up the portions onto separate plates, hovering behind you like, well, a ghost. You took what you wanted, then gestured for him to sort himself out. He looked between you and your plate questioningly, “That all you having?”

He made it sound like you were being conservative with your portion. You didn’t fuck about with curry, you’d piled it up on your plate with a giant naan, and there was still a huge bag of poppadoms to share.

“What d’you mean, that all?”

“Sure you don’t want any more?”

He was being polite. No doubt the man was ravenous, just home from wherever he was getting blown up, and Englishmen really did love a good curry. You rolled your eyes at him, “Fill your boots.”

It was quite impressive how much Ghost could pile onto his plate without risking overspill.

“You spill that on my carpet and you will cop it.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

You put your plate on the TV stand, gesturing at him to help you move the coffee table, and he looked at you questioningly, already shovelling curry into his mouth.

“What, you think you’re eating for free? I’m getting manual labour out of you. Help us move this; the sofas a pullout innit?”

You could see that smugness in his face again, and you rolled your eyes at him, “Give over. It’s my house, we’re doing film night the way I do it.”

“Aye ma’am.”

He didn’t bother putting his curry down, holding it in one hand as he grabbed the coffee table with the other, easily lifting it and placing it down to the side, Roach quickly shifting out the way, going to join Soap in the cat tower.

“Show off.”

With the coffee table out the way, you rolled out the bottom of the sofa, then pulled the handle to bring out the cushions from the storage underneath. Then, you went to your bedroom, grabbing your duvet and throwing it over the sofa, as well as your pillows. You set up the pillows on your side how you liked them, before grabbing your curry and getting comfy on the sofa bed. Ghost wasn’t quite as at ease as you, sitting back on the other side of the sofa, though he didn’t get under the duvet. You pointed your fork at his boots, “You put those on my duvet and I’ll have you.”

“Proper madam you are.”

“I’m serious!”

He placed his curry down and bent over to untie his bootlaces, placing his boots together by the side of the sofa and then lying back, going for his curry once again.

“You planning on keeping that waterproof on all night?”

He raised a brow at you, “Christ, love, you gonna let me keep anything on?” His next sentence was so quiet you barely heard, “That I would dream of.”

You squinted at him, “Eh?”

He just grinned at you, “Don’t stare too much.”

You rolled your eyes at him, grabbing the remote from where it was sitting on the arm of the sofa, “Get over yourself.”

Out of the corner of your eye, you could see him taking off his jacket, and he followed it with the jumper underneath, sitting in just his T-shirt and jeans. His arms were impressively muscled but just as battered and bruised as his face was. You allowed yourself to look as you turned back to him, your eyes flicking over the tattoo that wrapped around his forearm before you looked back at his face, “Any film preference?”

He shrugged, speaking through a mouthful of food, “Whatever you fancy.”

You could have made him sit through a girly romcom just for the fun of it, but you decided to go with something you thought he’d enjoy. “Pacific Rim.”

He smiled at that, “Classic.”

It was strange how comfortable you felt around him; you were quite happy lounging in a pair of old trackies and a dated pyjama top next to him, bullshitting with him about the film as though you were a pair of old mates. When the credits rolled, he took your plates into the kitchen, and you could hear the sound of him doing the washing up as you lounged happily on the sofa, Soap curled up by your side. You could get used to Ghost’s friendship. As he washed up, you flicked through the films on your screen, “They made a Pacific Rim two? I bet it’s shit. You wanna watch it?”

Ghost came back through with the empty containers washed up and in the bag they came in, ready to be recycled, “Bit late, innit?”

You shrugged, already getting the second film up, “So sleep on the sofa.”

He sounded a bit surprised at that, “You want us to stay over?”

You looked from the tv to him, “Why not? Unless you don’t want the cats sleeping on your head.”

He was quiet for a second.

“There a shop round here?”

You didn’t blink at the sudden question, “Uh, yeah, there’s one round the corner.”

Ghost nodded, then sat down on the sofa, pulling his boots back on. You looked at him curiously,

“What you going out for?”

“Beer. And crisps.”

Two hours later, the credits were rolling, but neither of you were awake to see it. You’d fallen asleep first, curled up with Soap, and Ghost had taken the lead from you, settling in for what was undoubtedly the most peaceful night’s sleep he’d end up having in years.

[landwriter]

I WANT LIGHTHOUSES SNIPPETS I AM FERAL FOR LIGHTHOUSES SNIPPETS JFC xo @hardly-an-escape

Then it is feralness you shall receive!! And I notice you said SNIPPETS plural so have a small bouquet of feral moments in this fic, in increasing length and feralness: Hob needing to borrow Dream's shower, accidentally cumming to the thought of your friend's smile, and wanting so bad it hurts your chest

(some NSFW under the cut)

Hob comes out of the shower shirtless with a towel around his neck. His hair is curling wet around his face. He did a poor job of drying himself. There’s beads of water caught like dew in his chest hair. A stray rivulet of water is running lower, down his furred belly. He’s dripping a puddle on the hardwood floor, and still glowing a little with exercise. Dream is certain he’s never seen anything more beautiful in his life.

“Hey, thanks, man. I’ll get outta your hair now,” he says, unaware of the fact Dream is vividly imagining kneeling before him and following that rivulet of water with his tongue. He opens his mouth to speak.

“Naw,” says Matthew, as if Hob had been talking to him. “Stay for dinner and beer.”

Hob looks at Dream. He swallows heavily. “Yes,” he croaks. “Stay.”

Hob lights up. “Well, alright.”

“Right on,” says Matthew.

---

After kicking Hob out, he jacks off with an arm thrown over his face, because he doesn’t want to see anything else. Doesn’t want to be in this room or this life, a coward’s life, a greedy life, hungering after his friend.

If Hob ever saw it, he’d run.

Dream tries to exorcise the buzzing lust, curled sideways on his bed like a parenthesis and fucking into his fist, not taking his time with it like he normally does. He doesn’t want to take himself apart. He wants to tear himself apart. Wants this monstrous black hunger climbing up the inside of his ribs to be satisfied as quick as possible, so he can look Hob in the eye and talk to him without biting his tongue.

He thinks of good fucks he’s had, moments and pieces from them, stitched all together. It does nothing. It’s like purgatory. Limbo. Even as he twists his hand around his prick, crooks a leg and presses up on his hole with fingers, he’s blind with need and he still can’t fucking cum. He groans in frustration and squeezes his eyes shut, thinks of guys fucking him rough, hands ‘round his hips leaving bruises, pretty twinks with big eyes kneeling for him, the bar smell of leather and poppers and piss, hot tongue and spit on his hole, the warmth of another body, of bodies, of beckoning glances and smiles, of one smile, Hob’s smile, his easy grin, clear as day, the heat of him, the brush of his skin, his hands, restless and warm and big, with hair dusting the knuckles, fidgeting with a pencil, stroking the neck of a bottle, holding a cigarette—him him him—smiling and saying us poor fuckers.

And he comes back to himself a moment later, panting. He rolls away from the mess he made across his sheets to stare at the ceiling, limbs loose and soul damned.

He shouldn’t have waited. Should’ve climbed into Hob’s fucking lap instead of the chair next to him that first day, should’ve made a scene, should’ve known. Hob deserves someone who would see him straightaway for the marvel he is, and he didn’t. Didn’t see him until Hob had already seen someone else here.

He wouldn’t regret it with Hob.

---

He’s drank too much. He’s drank too much and this was stupid idea, actually, to bring Dream here. To sit next to him and hear fierce poetry about gay love, and desire, and touch. They’re across from each other now, and still it feels too close. Feels dangerous. He hasn’t been this sort of drunk since leaving home. The kind where he wants so badly it physically hurts. Like kneeling on broken concrete. Like a pulse. His hands itch. He needs a fuck, a fight, anything at all. Anything to stop him from quoting Shakespeare and staring too long at Dream’s lips and thinking of all the lines he heard tonight, coiled around his heart and throat, mocking him.

“I’ll wait,” he says, standing so hard on the knife edge of truth and discretion he thinks he won’t be able to walk away from this, or walk ever again after it. “I’d wait a hundred years for, for him. However long it takes.”

“You’re too loyal, Hob.” Dream looks disappointed with him. He wonders if it’s obvious, how fucked he is right now. He wonders if his want is rolling off of him, like fog, if Dream sees it. Or feels it, clinging to his skin, damp. If he’s repulsed. He doesn’t want to be pitied. Not by Dream. Not for this. There’s nothing wrong, being loyal. Nothing wrong waiting.

“Maybe. Maybe I am.” Hob’s eyes feel wet. He thinks about being a little kid and picking sea glass from the beaches of Sausalito, before they moved to Fort Wayne. He thinks about how the colours got dull by the time he was home, and how he’d put the soft-edged pebble of glass in his mouth, suck the salt off it, just to see it shining and transluscent again. Green, and clear, and amber, and sometimes, rarely, blue.

His head is swimming. Not swimming, no. Drowning. He’s a bad friend. He doesn’t want to be rescued. He wants to pull Dream down with him. Dream’s own lines rise up in his mouth like bile. He leans forward, defiant.

“Yeah. Maybe I’ll, maybe I’ll save every breath in my lungs for him.”

“Don’t,” says Dream, jaw tight. “Don’t do that. Don’t take that from me.”

Hob hears the warning in his voice and wants to dash himself on it, wants to crash up on the rocks of the awful island Dream has made of himself if it means he’ll finally look at Hob with that white-hot attention he reserves for his secret love. “Why not,” he hears himself flatly say.

“I mean it, Hob.” Oh, he’s angry, now. Anger is a kind of heat. Maybe it’s the best he’ll get.

“Why not?” he repeats. He fumbles out a cigarette, lights it. He’ll play Dream’s mystery man for him. “C’mon, huh?” He takes a shaky drag and laughs, and raises his chin. “Why not? Why don’t you take something from me, then, and we’ll call it even?”

Dream, unblinking, sets his glass down on the table with a sharp thunk. A stupid little thrill races through Hob.

Shit, maybe he’ll deck me, if I’m lucky.

Instead, Dream reaches out and pulls the cigarette from his lips and puts it between his own. Hob sways forward. Dream takes a long drag and tilts his head back to blow the smoke past Hob. His throat is pale. Like the fucking moon. His eyes haven’t left Hob’s. Sharp wet seaglass. Fuck, fuck, fuck, he thinks. Dream drops the cigarette in the ashtray between them and leans forward too. His voice is rough. “Like that?”

Hob is dizzy. His chest feels like it’s on fire. Like he’s been running miles too long, too hard. His lips are stuck parted. Soft. Fucked with wanting as the rest of him. He’d buried too much, and it filled him up, it’s all of him now, singing through every fibre of his body. “No,” he says, quiet. “More.” Dream shouldn’t be able to hear it in the noise of the bar. Hob can hardly hear himself over his pulse pounding in his ears, and maybe Dream doesn’t hear him at all, maybe he’s staring so hard at Hob’s mouth that he can just see the shape of the words. His lungs are going to burst.

Dream’s eyes flick back up to look at him. Not sea glass, no, the sea itself, all sunlit bright and unsecretly hungry. Looking at him, really looking at him.

“Who are you waiting for, Hob?” he asks.

Hob exhales.

[enretrogue]

𝗝𝗔𝗡𝗨𝗔𝗥𝗬 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟰 𝗙𝗜𝗖 𝗥𝗘𝗖𝗦

༝༚༝༚ = Black/POC Works ⎢ 24’ Fic Rec M.List

ATTACK ON TITAN (SHINGEKI NO KYOJIN):

Multi-Character

Fluffy HCs Pt. 2 (Porco, Colt, Zeke, Reiner) — @spiteless-xo

‘Cause I Got My Love to Keep Me Warm (Eren, Mikasa, Porco) — @violetarks

Trigger Finger (Levi, Connie, Porco) — @ilyluffy

Their Favorite Body Part (Erwin, Eren, Armin, Porco, Reiner, Levi) — @tonilovessushi

College Majors (Eren, Jean, Armin, Connie, Porco, Reiner, Levi, Zeke) — @scumbagjaeger

Them w/ a Cling S/O (Mikasa, Jean, Connie, Sasha, Annie, Reiner, Porco, Marcel, Pieck, Levi, Hange, Erwin)— @420ruffy

Telling Him You’re Pregnant (Zeke, Eren, Porco, Reiner) — @marsbutterfly

Expecting (Levi, Eren, Porco) — @xokiddo

Poly Relationship (Porco + Reiner) — @vainilla-milk

Porco Galliard

Tired Porco Doesn’t Know Where He’s Laying — @mommypieck

Vacation w/ Porco — ^

Porco and Big Tummies — ^

Suddenly Becoming a Dad ⎢ As a Dad — @spiteless-xo

General NSFW HCs — ^

Make Me a Father — @roseofdarknessblog

Suffering the Consequences — ^

Northern Lights — ^

Everything Will Be Okay — ^

NSFW Alphabet — @scumbagjaeger

Breeding Kink (but make it angsty) — ^

College!Porco HCs — ^

How Do You Call Your Loverboy — @cafedanslanuit

Fitness Instructor Porco Galliard — ^

Blurb — @we-are-so-close

So Happy — ^

Yandere(ish) Porco Smut — ^

Game Over — @yeagerdaydreams

Off to Sleep — ^

Kind Regards, I’m Quitting — @persistent-peach

Red Tape — ^

Dad!Porco — @xokiddo

Protective!Porco — ^

Sugar Daddy!Porco — ^

Halloween Prompt — ^

Fan Service — @thegetoufather

Rugby Player Porco — ^

Pink Shorts — @fierydiamond

You Belong With Me— ^

Precipice ⎢ Ch. 2 — @mochalate

Blurb — @tangerinexwrites

“That’s for acting like a fucking brat today” — @fscottcatsgerald

Brat Taming — @nixie-writes-aot

Photo Album — @vainilla-milk

Porco Comforting You After Seeing Your Ex — @dabilove27

My Princess — @angelsdevils

HCs for Porco — @missmeinyourbones

No Strings Attached — @mvrtaiswriting

Husband!Porco ⎢ Part 2 ⎢ Part 3 ⎢ Part 4 — @lostinwildflowers

Brother’s Best Friend — @oneoftheextras

That’s My Smart Girl — @toorusluvr

Sister Fucker — @ilyluffy

Riding Porco HCs — @ackermansupremacy

Blood ‘n Guts — @luvhotline

BF!Porco Texts ⎢ Part 2 — @plutowrites

Your Daughter Calls Porco “Dad” — @tinyjeanmarco

Worth It — @literaltrashforeverything

Scratch — @whats-her-quirk

Porco Boyfriend Tweets — @re1nerisms

Show Him Who You Belong To — @jean-kayak ༝༚༝༚

Porco Having a Crush on You HCs — @bubbleteaimagine

THE GRAY MAN:

Court Gentry/Sierra Six

Polaroid — @renren-006

His Bonnie on the Side — @wiidvw ༝༚༝༚

Thoughts on Sierra Six as a Romantic Partner — @drivinmeinsane

We’ll Always Have Cuba — @companionjones

THE LAST OF US:

Joel Miller

Live From New York — @cowgurrrl

Beautiful Girls — ^

Love You — ^

Unknown — ^

I’m Still Standing — ^

My Girls — ^

Lucky — ^

Girls on Film — ^

I’m Just Ken — ^

Please Come Home For Christmas — ^

So This Is Love — ^

NCIS:

Leroy Jethro Gibbs

Busted — @writeandsurvive

Babysitting — ^

Birthday Imagine — @kdogreads

Blind Dates — ^

Are You Done? — ^

Ain’t Woman Enough — ^

Annoyance — @lizzyk137

Surprise — @encryptidone

We Keep This Love In a Paragraph — @chiefdirector

You Ain’t Alone — @ash-whimsicalfanfic

[bearsinpotatosacks]

I wrote a snippet of Bones welcoming some new Starfleet medical cadets. I'm not sure exactly how training works for Starfleet doctors, but after watching ER, I get the idea that it works mostly the same. Start training, do your rotations as a third year medical student, but I like to imagine that once you've chosen your area, surgery, psych, etc, you have to do a rotation on each kind of Starfleet vessel. Maybe they start on a starbase, then go to small ships that may or may not need your specialisation, then end up on some of the big ships such as the Enterprise. Enjoy!

Words: 1136

Looking at the group of fresh faced cadets in front of him, he knew that coffee wasn’t going to be enough. He hated when they hosted cadets. Partially because the little fuckers didn’t leave him alone when he was working, anything and everything he did was ripped apart and he couldn’t walk for two seconds without some question that a stupidly simple answer. The other reason was that they didn’t pester him anywhere near enough when they were off duty. It was like they were trying to pack all their questions into their eight hour shift and then were too scared to hold break their silence. 

Part of the journey of being a medical student, at least in his opinion, was pestering your mentors. You had to really get on their nerves because no matter how much it pissed him off, he knew that they had to learn somehow. And the ones who disregarded his gruff exterior, who plucked up the courage to ask him questions ten minutes after he’d woken up, or ten minutes before he was going to bed, were the ones who he answered. Not the fifth one in a row who’d stopped him as he went to go and check on a scan for a patient. There was a time and place for bothering him and these cadets never seemed to learn when that was. 

“Welcome to your rotation on board a constitution class vessel,” he said, not bothering to put any effort into the script they gave him to say. “This is where you’ll learn about the vital part you play, yada yada yada, be on the cutting edge of discoveries, yada yada yada, and face the final frontier.”

He rolled his eyes as he took a sip of his coffee. “Now that the mandatory stuff’s out of the way, here’s your real induction.”

The cadets looked at each other confused. Ah, so naive, they didn’t know about his reputation yet. Good, he wanted them to be shocked when they learnt how he really was. 

“Real induction, sir?” One of the cadets, who looked unnaturally groomed for someone standing in a sickbay, said.

He held up a finger and stopped the cadet before he continued. “First rule of sickbay, no one is sir, especially me, if you call me sir, I will not answer.” They seemed more puzzled. “You can call me Doctor, but that might get confusing fast, McCoy, Leonard, Len, or any number of curse words or well divised nicknames that I have no doubt the nurses will teach you in your time here, will suffice.”

They wrote that down. He almost laughed, but decided against it, he didn’t want to confuse them any further. Seeing them all so fresh faced was rather jarring for someone like himself. Medicine was in his blood, so to speak, it felt like a lifetime ago that he was in their place, all squeaky clean. Yet again, he hadn’t trained in Starfleet. And that was another point. 

“Who can hazard a guess as to why I don’t like being called sir, or by my rank for that matter?” 

Scanning the crowd, he didn’t see any hands popping up. Disappointing, he at least expected one person to be enough of a swot to look into the crew of the Enterprise. None of them were surprised when they saw Jim was their Captain, or Spock was XO, yet none of them did research into the department they were going to work in?

A sigh was on his lips as a cadet, near the back with her hair suitably tied out of her face, raised her hand. 

“Yes, Ms?”

“Cotteril.” She answered. “Is it because you didn’t train with Starfleet?”

“Bingo! I trained in Atlanta, Georgia, and despite the wonders we’ve made in socio-economic policies in the last few hundred years, some places remain rough, and nowhere else is that seen than in large cities. So trust me when I say, I am a doctor more than I am an officer of Starfleet, and I expect every single medical professional who works on this ship to follow that same rule of code.”

He stopped with the half hearted attempts at humour and made sure to stare across the group. A few of them gulped, some were either confused, or others annoyed. 

“My father, god rest his soul, was a doctor in the middle of bum fuck nowhere, so I learnt medicine in the best way you can, the messy way. My first experience in the medical field was helping a horse with a c-section because there ain’t no vet hospitals in the Appalachian Mountains, I can tell you that for free.” His accent was coming out now, it always did when he talked of his childhood home. “And I want you all to understand that when you walk into my sickbay you leave your politics at the door, understand?”

They didn’t reply. 

“Excuse me, I thought I asked y’all a question.”

“Yes, doctor.”

“Good, because if you have Vulcan with a sprain and a Klingon bleeding out, I expect every one of y’all to pick the Klingon,” He gestured at them with his coffee mug, a splash got on the floor. “So, repeat after me, the Hippocratic Oath is my Prime Directive.”

“‘The Hippocratic Oath is my Prime Directive’” The group chorused.

He nodded at them again, “Good, you may now step into sickbay.”

Turning around he gestured for them to follow. He’d never say the q-word, but he was grateful that there weren’t a lot of people in today. The last thing he needed was some part of engineering breaking and causing an overflow of red shirts. They weren’t the best of friends, engineers and those in sickbay, and it wouldn’t be such a problem if they knew some kind of first aid down there. 

“I will give you a full introduction of staff when we do rounds, but first I'll give you lesson number two of serving in the Enterprise sickbay,” he turned on his heel to face them. “Do not disrespect a nurse. Not only because they do some of the most vital and downright disgusting jobs there are to do, they set up the beds, machinery, administer the drugs, take samples and bathe the crew when the replicators malfunction and start spewing rotten fish guts in the mess hall, don’t laugh that happened last Tuesday, but also because if you do you will get doing rectal exams for most of your time here while also, most definitely, getting a mystery hypo that will make your dick turn purple, if you have one, or make you grow one if you don’t, and you won’t even feel it either. Understand?”

Yet again, more confused faces. One cadet was looking down at his trousers, concerned. 

“Excellent, now for the tour.”

-----

Take this an early WIP wednesday, I guess? I'm not sure if this will go anywhere apart from this snippet, but it could. I mainly just had this scene fully written in my head this morning and finally had a chance to write it.

[captain-hawks]

I don't even go here but ur oliver posts are getting me,,,,,, I have to watch blue lock now bc im thinking abt him a worrying amount considering I know barely anything about him

hi hello welcome to the oliver fuckers club. we're so pleased to have you join us.

pls work your way through season 1 post haste so you may get to oliver's arrival in season 2 (the thirsting will only get worse godspeed xo).

[stardate44002point3]

Shaw's Quint speech

Shaw's Quint speech was exactly what we needed to understand where he's been coming from all season. The man was deeply traumatized by the Battle of Wolf 359; not just the terror of all that death and destruction but also the guilt at the sheer capriciousness (and, in his mind, injustice) of his own survival.

It's clear from the comments in the first episode, that he's had a successful career since, he might be a little more conservative in his captaincy style than Picard or Riker would be, but he's obviously a good Captain. He's been in command of the Titan for five years, he has a lot of successful missions under his belt. He has obviously worked hard to put his trauma behind him and move on with his life.

He even selected an ex-Borg XO; recognizing that she has strengths to bring to his command, that he doesn't have. He might have to compartmentalize a little by referring to Seven by her human, not Borg name, but that's a) possibly because that's the name on file for her with Starfleet and b) if she truly had a problem with it (I've seen it described as "abuse" on reddit) then she could request, and almost certainly get, a transfer. There is no indication anywhere that Starfleet would permit a hostile work environment if the victim protested.

All that being said, Shaw has probably spent the last 34 years secretly praying to whatever gods he has that he would never come across Picard in person. If anything qualifies as a trauma trigger, seeing Locutus in the flesh, hearing that voice in person, would qualify.

And, with Picard retired, probably thought he'd succeeded.

And then the fucker shows up on his ship, unannounced, with some bullshit story to get him to ignore his actual orders and head off to the edge of Federation space.

Can you even imagine the kind of trauma response that would generate? No matter how well he has recovered from Wolf 359; no matter how much work he has done on himself - that has to be massively triggering. Hearing that voice, seeing that persona, walking and talking on his ship, even 34 years later.

And does he get time to work through it? Does he fuck.

He gets thrown into a life or death situation, for him and his crew, that he clearly tries very hard to protect; gets injured, drugged and then has to wait for his ship and everyone on it to die.

No wonder he goes off on Picard. And it's not relevant at this point that Picard was a victim too, trauma triggers aren't rational, they are visceral. And Picard is the direct cause of his current predicament (and the incipient death of his crew of 500).

I liked Shaw when we first saw him because he was right; Riker and Picard tried to bullshit him into risking his crew, and he wasn't having any of it (just as they wouldn't have if a retired Admiral and paid-off captain had shown up on the Enterprise 30 years earlier and pulled the same shit on them).

I'm not a fan of protagonist-centered morality (which is something that has always been far too common in ST) and I really liked seeing Picard up against someone who wasn't going to be intimidated by the legend.

The Quint speech just makes him all the more sympathetic.

[brwnbnny]

Nooooo, fuck ringworm! May the little fucker quickly leave you go back to hell where it belongs. Seriously though I hope you get better soon. That sucks. 😭❤️

~Synny xo

2025 has not been dandy! i hope it gets not as poopoo thank u synny! :(

[glass-frogs-and-dragons]

Who would you call if the world was ending?

Prompt 887 by @creativepromptsforwriting (@creativepromptfills xo)

Fandom: DC

Summary: The world is ending and, of all the people he could have called, Jason ends up calling Bruce

Pairing: Jason Todd/ Roy Harper (minor)

Beep beep. Beep beep.

The caller you are trying to reach is occupied or out of service. Please, leave a message.

Beep.

Hey Bruce, It’s… It’s Jason. I’m pretty sure you already know, given that it’s you and all, but… yeah. The world is ending and people are doing jack shit about it! Big surprise there. I… you weren’t the first person I was planning on calling. I mean, you didn’t even make the first fucking ten, but… Look, I didn’t want to tell you about this, but Roy’s also doing it and I suppose I should too. Come clean about shit, I mean, tell you stuff. 

I’m not going to apologise for what I did. We both have different ideas of justice and yeah, I killed, but I killed because those fuckers had too many second chances and didn’t fucking take them. I may have gotten a morbid sorta thrill out of it at first, but I don’t fucking like it. I do it ‘cause it’s what I gotta do now. But, whatever I do, whatever your fucking reasons are not to let me come back home, I’m not the only one at fault here.

Dickface always said that taking care of family is one of the most important things, hypocritical as that may be, and I ain’t gonna be at fault for that. I have taken care of my family as well as I fucking could, and the fact that none of you bats have noticed should give you a hint about the problem, huh? The fact that none of you knew? 

…

Joder, no puedo hacer esto. Esto ha sido un error.

…

I have a husband. I have a daughter too, and they are the best fucking thing to happen to me, possibly in my whole life. I feel the luckiest man to have them, and I honestly don’t fucking get how you could fuck all of us up this badly if this is what having a child feels like. The reason I never told any of you (except for Alfred. You can’t hide secrets from Alfred) is because… well… they’re my family. You would judge and think they’re not enough, or that I’m not enough and drive us apart somehow, even if you don’t mean to.

And that’s without mentioning any bat business.

I- Roy is asking me not to be too mean to you. I guess he’s right, but he can’t really have a full conversation with Ollie without it ending in a screaming match, so who’s winning here?

Okay, he’s telling me now that he can, thank you very much, but Oliver’s a fucking prick so he won’t even try to. And he’s also telling me that daddy issues aren’t a competition, Jaybird. Que se joda.

Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that… yeah, well, the world is ending and there is nothing Roy or I could do about it. I mean, is there anything anyone can do? Arrows and guns? How the fuck would we be useful? 

I know that if you had actually answered the call, you would be yelling at me about duty and shit; asking me to do the fucking impossible like always. Well, guess fucking what? I am doing my duty to my fucking family because they are the most important to me, and I fucking wonder what-

…

Roy’s telling me to stop fighting with you, and he’s right. It ain’t my business anymore. What you decide to do with your fucking dysfunctional family, leave me out of it. I was just hoping, for their sake… Fuck, I’m going to regret this, aren’t I? But hey, the world is fucking ending, so who cares, right?

I miss my dad, okay? I miss the guy who would take me to museums and watch movies with me and comfort me when I had nightmares. Yeah, he might have kinda sucked at it but at least he was trying and he was there and I thought he might have fucking loved me. Because a parent’s love is meant to be unconditional and maybe the other brats and Dickface miss you as much as… as much as I do. 

You can actually be there for them, make me the guinea pig or whatever.

I wanted… I wanted a home and a family to come back to when the world was crumbling down and mira por dónde, now it is! And… and Roy and Lian and I will stay together as a fucking family until we get pulled under. I called to apologise, but fuck that. I doubt you’re even at home with your kids, so right now I don’t owe jack shit to you because you can’t do the bare fucking minimum to be a father. 

I guess… I guess this is goodbye, then.

Seems fitting that the one chance I get for this you can’t even answer the damn phone.

Goodbye da- Goodbye, Bruce.

____________________________

Unread messages: (1)

From: B stands for Bitch

Come home, Jaylad. The whole family is here. Bring Roy and Lian too, they’ll be safe… Read more

Translations:

Joder, no puedo hacer esto. Esto ha sido un error.→ fuck, I can’t do this. This has been a mistake.

Que se joda→ He can go fuck himself

Mira por dónde→ guess what

[shadoedseptmbr]

wip Wednesday, A Tale from the Tokyo AU-

"Anyway, I told him "if there are any monster fuckers among us, it's my guy, Kaidan..." "You have gotto stop telling people that, you ass. I'm gonna get a repu..." "Two words for ya, Kaid." In the background, Kaidan could hear the Euripefes' status alerts start to ring out. "Vorcha gun moll- gotta go, babe. Love ya." The call cut out before Kaidan could respond. "Uh..." He looked up towards the cabin door right into the bright eyes of the XO. "Trouble at home?" what "oh...No. No, ma'am. Chet's my boot buddy, y'know?" "Ah, gotcha- knows everything about you your mother doesn't?" She shot him a grin and it gave him a modicum of hope that all she'd heard was the sign off. "Exactly." "Staff is in five, I figured I'd give you a heads-up." She swung out of the door, but held the lift for him as he tucked his 'pad away into his desk and followed. The gears cranked up before she asked, innocently, "So, do I want to know what a 'gun moll' is?" "Oh, god, I hope not."

[screampied]

Omg I just read ghostface fic, I’m not nanami or geto girlie, but I’m ghostface fucker at heart 💔 Whooo was that bitch in the end 😭😭 Is it gojo’s annoying ass?? I bet it’s him or toji omg 👺 or both again? 🤭🤭

That phone sex part tho >>> 😮‍💨 And yeahhh, not trynna fuck neither nanami or geto, but even I felt something while reading how nice and sweet they were…. Maybe I need them, I fear🧎🏻‍♀️🧎🏻‍♀️

AAAA THANK YOU GORGEOUS FOR READING

so real i love ghostface likeeeee i can make a whole essay ab the lore 💔💔💔 UGHHSJSD. omg you guessed it but i’m not saying who yet 🙊

rightttttt i love phone sex it was my favvv part lwk. AWWW i’m glad even tho ur not a girlie for them you still enjoyed !!!! tysm ⭐️🙂‍↕️ kissy xo

[xo8ball]

this was the motherfucking ME show. WAMS AND XO???????? FUCKERS. MOTHERFUCKEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRR

[cremonamone]

Welcome to my lair!

I’m a monster lover who loves love so my work here will be entirely Monster Fucker style romance and smut. I’m working on a novel now, but here I’ll post the shorter stuff.

I’m a queer, fat, white, cis-woman. I’m happy to write outside of my own experiences, but this is the perspective these stories will be coming from. If you want me to write something else, I’m happy to oblige with a little hand-holding and some sensitivity reading. Always let me know if I cross a boundary or do something upsetting, so I can reassess my writing and keep this a safe environment.

I will post trigger warnings and maturity ratings on each story.

What I will not write:

Scat, paedophilia, Incest/stepcest, age regression, race play, non-consensual sexual situations, knotting

MINORS: This is not the place for you. Please don’t interact with my posts/stories. If you’re reading this, go find one of the other millions of accounts that I’m sure cater to your interests.

Once I get a handful of stories posted, I’ll offer commissions to anyone who is interested (should anyone be interested).

Thanks for reading! I hope my stories make you feel something.

Cute butt.

XO, MONA

Story Masterlist

Commission Info - Coming Soon!

Requests Open! Shoot me a pairing/perspective/and prompt and I'll write something for you