#you do not know who’s reading what you post

[arcanefox207]

The Warden.

GameWarden!Joel Miller x F!Reader Explicit 18+ MDNI | 3.8k WC | AO3

Summary: Your hike into the woods doesn’t go as planned when a depraved Game Warden catches you breaking the rules.

Warnings: DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT. Power imbalance. DUBCON (could be considered NONCON). Reader is into it but she still doesn't have a choice. Reader is smaller than Joel and has hair he can grab. Explicit smut. Oral (male receiving). Fingering. Violence. Manipulation. Unprotected P in V. Cum talk. Creampies. Dark!Joel.

Notes: Please read the warnings. HUGE thanks to @joelmillerisapunk for beta'ing (love you, Odi!) Also FYI Game Wardens (also sometimes known as conservation / wildlife / DNR officer) can have broader authority than police and can even search your person / property without a warrant, are expert marksmen and usually work alone.

M A S T E R L I S T | A O 3 | N O T I F S

You saw the sign and ignored it, like you always did, as you walked down your favorite hiking trail. The one that few people knew about. The trail that was always peaceful and quiet and you rarely met another soul. Your hidden secret that you loved to escape to. The one that had been marked as “Trail Closed” for months now for reasons you could never quite figure out.  

As the forest thinned you finally reached the majestic bounty you sought. A quaint pond, nestled in the pines. The waters edge pebbled with rocks and ferns. Water lilies sparsely decorated the surface. What once was a sprawling picnic destination was now overgrown. Serene and abandoned to nature.  

You knelt down and ran your hands over the stones, picking up and admiring their unique beauty of the ones that caught your eye.

You were so preoccupied taking in the comforts of the world around you that you never heard him. Never even considered there were eyes on you, watching you from behind some overgrowth.

“Excuse me, miss,” his voice startles you as you stand quickly and turn around. “You’re in violation of State Park rules and regulations.”

“Huh?” Your words come out sounding dumb and caught off guard. You quickly scan for the source of the voice and see some movement in the bushes, revealing a man. 

He walks towards you, emerging from his hiding spot. A tall and broad man, head to toe in the standard olive green uniform that the wardens wore. A tactical belt and vest and a scoped rifle slung on his back. His toned physique mesmerizes you with each step forward.    

“It’s my sworn duty to enforce the law and enact justice as I see fit.” His words were robotic and rehearsed. 

As he got closer you could see he was an older man and incredibly handsome with some greys in his beard along his jawline. His hair was shorter with wavy curls, pushed back neatly with some silver catching in the sunlight. His skin weathered by the sun. His aquiline nose made his face look even more intense and powerful, matching his words. Broody and serious. This was a man who was in control.

“And you’re trespassing,” he lowers his voice, “in my territory.” 

You were trespassing. He wasn’t wrong. You felt your body flush with a wave of panic, with a hint of arousal crawling somewhere deep inside you. Lurking and waiting with intrigue and fear.  

“Area’s posted.” he says as he now stands in front of you. You are at a loss for words, caught doing what you thought was harmless.

He senses your panic and it rallies him to toy with you. 

“This is a protected wildlife conservation that you’re messin’ with, sweetheart.” He pauses and changes his tone to intimidate you as he leans in close. “And you see, I don’t like that.” 

You feel your heart race. Were you actually getting in trouble for taking an innocent hike in the woods?

“You know who I am?” He crosses his arms in front of his chest while he waits for you to speak. His veiny, chiseled forearms distract you. He looks so scrappy and dangerous. 

“The Game Warden?” You hesitate.

“That's right.” he nods with a cunning smirk. “Name’s Joel, but you’re gonna call me Sir.” He enunciates it firmly.

You feel your body overwhelmed with conflicting emotions. You were scared but also felt a pulsing go through you when he spoke. You didn’t want him to be upset with you. Everything about him was screaming: dangerous, do not piss off.  

“I’m sorry about trespassing. I didn’t know… Sir.” You added his title for good measure.

But you did know. You knew every time you walked past the sign at the entrance telling you not to. Bullshit was not going to fly here and only fueled him more. 

“Lying to an officer too?” He shakes his head as it hangs low. He circles you with intimidation, looking you up and down. Lecturing you with silence and waiting for your reparations to be determined.  

You can’t fight off that lukewarm feeling inside you that grows warmer. Slowly it gnaws away at your resolve. Seeing him with the tactical vest on that snuggly accented his chest and left his belly exposed with nothing but his green shirt covering it. The only spot that was vulnerable and soft. The rest of his body was strong, protected by his excessive gear, lean muscles and mean looks.   

You see his name badge embroidered with ‘MILLER’ and accidentally whisper his name out loud like it's a question. Wondering who this man is and what his intentions are. In the peaceful calm of the woods in the middle of nowhere, your whisper may have well been a shout.

“Officer Miller.” He corrects with authority in his tone as he leans over you. “And I’m gonna have to discipline that mouth of yours.”

You’ve never been in trouble with the law before, and certainly never had a run in with a Game Warden. You knew they were essentially lone wilderness cops with a god complex and few restrictions. Still, you knew this was far from acceptable behavior. Everything about how he was acting was wrong. You open your mouth to protest, but hesitate on his threats. He relishes in how you work it out in your head that talking back isn’t going to get you out of this. You can only bite your tongue so long.

“I’ll report you.” You threaten back, acting like you have some moral upper hand to hang over him. 

“Go ahead. Ain’t nothing you can do about your situation right now, sugar plum.” He scoffs. “Not to mention, s’your word against mine.” He stops circling and leans into your ear as his southern drawl makes the words sound smooth and buttery. Hot and melting on his breath as they drip out of his mouth. 

“Wanna take a guess who wins?” He says deviously and you can feel his patchy beard scrape against your jaw as he pulls away. A shiver pulses through you, right down to your pussy. Beating to his unsought touch. 

Why is this turning you on so much?

“You see darlin’, I’ve been watching you for a long, long time.” He circles again. “And you keep breaking the rules.”

Your heart races. This was getting serious. The realization hits that he can do whatever he wants and get away with it, and that is exactly his intention.

“On your knees, and hands where I can see ‘em.” he barks. 

You obey, folding under his commands. Hoping your obedience would lessen the blow. 

You drop down gently unsure of what exactly he was playing at, treating you like a violent criminal. You stretch your arms out to your sides with your palms up in submission. He stops just in front of you, scooching down so he is eye level. A tiny grunt as his knees bend. Tobacco and leather scents accompany him. 

“I’ll let you off with a warning… if you promise me you won’t be doing it again.” He offers. Sweet words coming out slow and sticky like honey.  

“I won’t. I promise. It won’t happen again.” You quickly plead. Foolishly hopeful this was it. Ignoring the conditional implication of his terms.   

He stands back up with his arms crossed before raking one of his hands through his hair, thinking. He wasn’t buying what you were selling. 

He paces in front of you. The obscene bulge in his pants was impossible not to notice as he parades it past your sightline. Back and forth, back and forth. He was packing more than just a firearm. 

He stops directly in front of you so your eyes are mere inches from it. You look all the way down to his feet in an attempt to hide the red that flushes your face. Trying to dismiss your own arousal that was getting louder and wetter. 

He reaches down to your chin and cranes your neck up to look at him with an urgency. 

“Gonna’ need some convincing, sugar plum.”

Fuck...

He releases you and walks to the nearby weathered picnic table and lays his rifle down. He unsnaps his utility belt that was strapped over his waist and leg and tosses it along with his handgun in tow. It made his broad shoulders look even wider with his waist unhindered by the bulky gear.

The uppercase “WARDEN” embroidered on the back of his green tactical vest serves to remind you that he is an officer of the law. It taunts you as he takes his sweet time laying out his things neatly on the table while you wait with anticipation for whatever was happening next.  

As he turns to walk back towards you, snatched in his vest, he tries to conceal the smirk pulling up from the corner of his mouth. You hate how good he looked, as if it could ever excuse how disgusting he was behaving.  

He stands coolly just a foot in front of you and unbuckles the modest leather belt. The metal clasps clank loudly as he lets it hang down and unzips. He clocks your reaction as he pulls up his shirt enough to show his messy thatch of hair trailing down his lower belly.   

He can’t be serious… 

Reaching a hand inside his boxers he pulls them down slowly as his cock peeks out. Big and fat and leaking. Aching to be touched. 

He is serious.

His eyes are focused intently on yours, watching them widen as you take in his cock. It's just in front of your nose as you look up and sit back on your haunches.

“Go on,” he growls and lowers his voice. “Convince me.”

He reaches his hand around his cock and pumps it. The broad head glistening in his precum as he drags his hand down his shaft. You wonder how long he had been watching you and if he had been stroking himself before he approached you. Maybe this interrogation was all foreplay for him. In fact, you were certain it was.   

The hot feeling surging in your core surprises you. You were actually turned on by this pig. Still, you knew this was beyond fucked up. You hesitate with what to do next, conflicted by his abuse of power and the inappropriate way your body was betraying you.     

“You gonna disobey a warden?” He threatens, getting impatient. 

You wonder what if you refused? What if you didn’t play his game? What would he actually do? It still didn’t feel like there was an option other than what was right in front of you, demanding your obedience. 

This was only ending one way. His way. 

“No, sir.” You swallow and fight back the tears. You place your palms and claw your fingers into his thighs as you sit up straight. You start to open your mouth and look up at him with glossy eyes. Conceding to him. 

You catch that spark of darkness igniting in his eyes. Burning hot and formidable as it spreads through him. Your misfortune was making him harder.

He parts your mouth open with the tip resting on your bottom lip. He teases it in and out, letting you feel the weight as the ridge catches on your lip. 

God he was big.

“Give it a kiss first and be real polite.” 

You close your lips over the tip and appease him with your gentle touch. Polite even. You suckle it delicately, drawing out beads of saltiness as it drips onto your taste buds. You can’t stop your natural impulse to flick his slit with your tongue and it makes him stiffen even more, twitching in response.

“Good girl.” he praises as he tangles his free hand in your hair. You wince as his firm grip pulls you closer to him. He pushes into your mouth. Inch by inch. The hand on his cock held it steady until you were adjusted to his size. He lets go and slides his hand above your nape, letting you take the full weight of his cock as you hollow your cheeks.

He was so thick. 

You decide to give him something he wants without asking, attempting to entice him to be kinder. His roughness was starting to hurt when he pulled at your hair and dug into your skin. Relaxing your mouth he pushed further in without your protest. Nestled tight in your warm and wet paradise. You notice his urgency shift.  

“Nice and slow. No need to rush.” He commands as you take him deeper. This order sounds more like it's for himself so he doesn’t cum too early. You can feel how close he is. He was ready to burst the moment you dropped to your knees. 

You gag as the head hits the back of your throat.   

“Oh, you sound pretty like that.” He moans as he closes his eyes and leans his head back. “Choking on my cock.” He makes a guttural sound as he nudges his cock even deeper into your throat. He was impossibly large as he fights to stuff you full.  

“Hold still.” He fucks into your mouth. Harder. Harder. Harder. Pulling your hair too tight and pushing your head too far onto him as he bucked into you.

With tears in your eyes making your nose run you can hardly breathe. Gasping and choking  and a cock stuffed in your mouth, bruising your throat with each plunge.

He snarls as he looks down to you, locking eyes. Blown out. Feral. Dark and desperate like he was giving in to his wildest, forbidden desires with no regard for you. It was a selfish need he was taking for himself and only himself. You were nothing. A wet hole for his cock to fuck.  

He was coming undone. His moaning and panting echoing across the serene pondscape and tainting your safe escape forever. Even that memory he was taking from you. 

You were waiting for it. Bracing for his hot spend to pour into you but instead he slowed. Thrusting deep into you with a grunt before dragging out his wet, dripping cock. He winced as it popped out of your mouth and you gasped for air.

This sick fuck was edging himself. 

He wanted more. Needed more. 

“Get up.” His haggard, breathy words bite at you.

He lifts you up by your hair. You quickly comply to relieve the pressure on your scalp as you stumble to your feet. A whine escapes you as he lets go roughly. 

“Gonna make sure you learn your lesson today.” He gestures to the picnic table just a few steps away and you shamefully go to it. 

He pushes you to lean over the bench and bends you in an ‘L’ shape. You press your arms against the seat to hold yourself up. He drags his hand down your back and around to your hips, admiring your delicate form laid out before him. He wanted to lose himself inside you.

He drags a hand between your legs and feels your cunt hot and wet against your shorts. He lets out a growl as his fingers get soaked along your seam. 

You hate how good it feels to have him touch you where you ache for friction.

“Mmm…” he groaned as he breathed in your arousal on his fingertips. “Knew you wanted this cock inside you.” He ruts his hardness against your ass. 

He slides his hands over your back. Over your hips. Down the sides of your legs until he stops abruptly. Fingering at something jagged in your pocket. Something you forgot was there. 

“What's this?” 

Your heart stops. You can tell from his tone that he knew exactly what it was.

He slips his hand in your pocket and pulls out two shiny stones you had collected from the waters edge.

Fuck.   

“Caught stealing from the cookie jar.” He clicks his tongue to scold you. He was stacking his case with further evidence to hang over your head.

“Oh, Darlin.” He fakes a sympathetic tone. “You’re in big trouble now.”

It was then you realized he knew all along. He was watching your every move. He was waiting for the right moment to manipulate you to his will. 

“Bad girl. Larceny is gonna cost you more than just an apology.” He drops the rocks carelessly and grabs your waistband, pulling your shorts and panties down to your ankles in one motion. You gasp as he makes you step out of them as he pushes you forward so your knees are on the bench seat. You catch yourself on the edge of the table. Half naked, exposed and totally fucked. 

“Spread 'em nice and wide for me.” He knocks your legs apart with his knee as he stands behind you, his cock notched against your entrance and it sparks an adrenaline surge inside you when you feel his tip press into you. 

“Please!” You beg him. “Please stop. I’m not letting you fuck me!” You spit out with an attitude. This was a line too far. A line he was intentionally pushing to see how far he could go before you fought back. 

Unsurprising to you, he liked playing with fire.  

He reaches out and grabs your neck with his wide grip, roughly pinning you prone against the table so you can’t move. He leans over, and hovers low to your ear as his shaft drags against your seam. 

“Ain’t making you do nothing, sugar plum.” He pauses and breathes in the sweet scent of your shampoo as he prods you gently with his nose. Tantric and hungry with his movements. 

“I can take you now and then we’ll be done with it, or I can take you in. S’your choice.” He loosens up his grip on your neck and sits back slightly. He feels the way you tremble under his touch, and the way your cunt throbs against his heat still pressing against it.

You feel it too. Something you can’t explain. A primal feeling of desire. Surrendering to your most basic human needs. That having him inside you might not be so bad. A rationalizing in your brain that you did wrong after all. It’s only sex. 

Only sex. You’ve certainly done worse with lesser men under the guise of alcohol. 

“I can promise you, they won’t be nearly this forgivin’ at the state prison.” He traces his finger down your spine, being delicate and gentle. Tracing until his finger runs into his belly pushed flush against you. He leans back and grabs his cock. Painfully hard and still soaked from earlier. He presses the head right against your swollen clit and rubs it against you. 

You let out a moan and he knows he has you.  

“Tell me you don’t want this. That you don’t want to cum all over my cock.” He strokes your clit with his head again and again. Knocking at your door and waiting for you to answer. 

“I’ll make it real good for you, sugar plum.” Your clit pulses on his cock. Needy and hedonic. Forsaking any restraint you have left to say no.

You take a deep breath and curse under your breath, curling your fingers around the edge of the table as you sit up and face forward.

“Get on with it.” You concede. 

He smiles wickedly. He was always going to get what he wanted in the end.

With you still sitting on your knees he locks his body against yours, his feet planted firmly on the ground. He pulls you up so your back is flush with his chest and wraps a hand around the front of you, rubbing and pinching at your clit with his rough fingers and dipping them into your hole. Spreading your slick. Stretching you open as he scissors his fingers.    

His body against yours was so much bigger. Broad and strong. You were the mouse and he was the lion about to pounce. His heat piercing through your skin. You felt him line up at your entrance, nudging you with his tip. 

There is no more patience or preparation. He needs to fuck you now. Needs to have that friction choking his cock that has been rock solid for too long. Without warning he thrusts into you again and again and again. Each time a little deeper and harder. His fat head catching on all your ridges as your pussy grabbed onto him.

It felt so fucking good and you hate it. You hate him.  

He stretches you more than you’ve ever felt before. The initial pain subsides as he rubs your clit fiercely with his fingers. The pleasure inside you builds. He kept his word that he would make it real good for you.  

He puts his leg up on the bench for leverage and bottoms out inside you with a grunt as he pulls you down on his cock. Fucking up into you and impaling you with his cock.   

Your moans run away from you, loudly filling the air with obscenities. You feel your climax building up inside you. You’ve never been fucked so hard in your life and you are soaking him. You know he won’t last much longer.

“Please..” you beg him between moans. 

“Please what?” he snarls as he fucks you harder, his cock ready to spill. 

“Please... Sir. Pull out,” you beg him.

He laughs at your ridiculous request and ignores you, wrapping his arms around you to pull you hard against his body. One hand wrapped around and splayed over your belly and the other curled around your breasts and pushing on the front of your throat. He had you held so tightly to him there was no way you could stop him. 

Your climax tears through you. 

“Carry in… Carry out.” He recites the most basic of park rules between grunts while you brace for it. “Leave nothing behind.”

He releases into you. His hot cum coating your deepest walls as he empties into your cunt with the loudest orgasm. He pushes you down prone and fucks it deep inside you before he starts to soften, making sure you know he was deliberately filling you up with his seed.

He collapses on you and you breathe together for a moment. He leaves an unexpected kiss on your shoulder and another on your neck, silently thanking you for letting him use your body. 

“Next time pay attention to the game cams, sugar plum.” he nods up at a nearby tree and he gives a side smile. Mocking your mistake. 

He withdraws his cock from you and lets you fall forward, his cum already running down your legs. He eyes your mess with a smirk, pleased with his conquest. 

“I’m always watching.” He says with a wink.

Tagging some cool people that I love very much and fellow Joel Hole comrades (please note if it’s too dark for your taste it’s totally ok to skip!)

@magpiepills @for-a-longlongtime @milla-frenchy @itwasntimethatdidit40 @youandmeand5bucks

@toxicanonymity @wethairjoel @evolnoomym @almostfoxglove @beardedjoel

@aurorawritestoescape @hellishjoel @lotusbxtch @murder-wife @joelstummy

@pearlessance @pedropeach @tonysopranosrobe @sawymredfox @macfrog

@slimybeth69 @whocaresstillthelouvre @joelsdagger @baronessvonglitter @covetyou

@chronically-ghosted @skbeaumont @yourcoolauntie @yopossum @beefrobeefcal

@sp00kymulderr @moonlitbirdie @wheresarizona @syd-djarin @punkshort

@sin-djarin @guiltyasdave @strang3lov3 @frannyzooey @tightjeansjavi

@cavillscurls @gasolinerainbowpuddles @pedgito @survivingandenduring

@ozarkthedog @mountainsandmayhem @schnarfer @pedrospatch @penvisions

[nanaslutt]

you and i don’t know each other and u and i will not know each other, i am glad u find comfort in my works but me and u reading this—will never be anything other than a person who posts online, and a person who likes what i post online

i am not the characters i write for, pls do not objectify me, i am not going to roleplay with you and i dont want to date u

(i understand this is something the majority grasps, but increasingly people have been getting strange in my dms so i wanted to put this out there officially. i usually just ignore or delete those messages but clearly that isn’t working)

[hollow-prior]

[Image Description: A series of screenshots.

Image 1: A post on r/Ao3 on Reddit by u/EasterKingston. The post is titled "'Netflix of audiobooks' scrapes thousands of fanworks off Ao3 without permission. Yours, likely, included."

Image 2: The preview for a website titled word-stream. The page is titled "You & Me & Holiday Wine - WordStream".

Image 3: A screenshot from the website WordStream. The word "ekingston" is entered into the search bar. There are two results. One named "You & Me & Holiday Wine" and the other named "The Shape of Soup". Both have over 80 thousand views.

Image 4: Another screenshot from the same site. The name "Kara Danvers" is entered into the search bar. There are twenty results from a variety of authors that fill up the page.

Image 5: A sent text reading: "I followed you here from Reddit, where I was made aware of the truly awesome work your project Copyknight has been doing. I just discovered the website/app word-stream.com today-it's a site that's seemingly scraped thousands of works off ao3 and offers audiobook versions of them, presumably for a fee. It looks like it only went live in October, and I don't see much chatter about it (or contact information) anywhere. I was wondering if you'd heard from it/could offer advice on how to go about getting our works taken down?"

Image 6: A screenshot of a contact form being filled out. The form is on transformativeworks.org and appears to be a contact form. The subject is "New app committing grand-scale copyright infringement of works hosted on Ao3". The message reads: "Hello, A new website/app hosted on https://word-stream.com/ has scraped hundreds (thousands?) of works off Ao3 without permission, mine among them. Is there anything Ao3 can do to help us getting our works taken down? Thank you for your response! Easter."

Image 7: A series of interspersed text and screenshots. Text reads: "If you try to click on any of the sites, you get a link to the AppStore app, which is called "WordStream - Audiobooks". There is a screenshot of the app in the app store. The creator's name is Ofek Weitzman. Text reads: "Who is Ofek Weitzman? Apparently he's also known as Cliff Weitzman, the CEO of Speechify, an AI Voice generator app famous for its partnership with Snoop. Also, Cliff Weitzman is named as the copyright holder at the bottom:" A screenshot showing the copyright holder as Cliff Weitzman. Text reads: "If you search for Ofek/Cliff Weitzman, you find his name in the terms and conditions for Speechify." A screenshot showing the terms and conditions including the name Ofek Weitzman as the individual to address a notice of dispute to. Text reads: "Strange that someone with a legitimate company with a partnership with Brandon Sanderson would put their name behind a shady company stealing works from fanfic writers, but it may be worth reaching out to him on X. Best case scenario is that someone has stolen the name for an app, but in that case, it would be good for him to know. Otherwise, it would be good to start a dialogue about how authors can get their works taken down from this site!"

Image 8: A screenshot of a Tumblr post from user fazedlight (Fazed Light). It shows an image of domain registry data for Word-Stream. Text reads: Some investigation so far: 1. I don't see a way to contact them directly. This is probably by design, since they are clearly shamelessly committing copyright infringement. 2. I ran "Who is Word-Stream" in the terminal and this is some of the information that came up. The domain was registered via Go Daddy.com and their nameservers are run by CloudFlare.com. 3. I am NOT a lawyer. My basic understanding is that fanfic authors own copyright on their own fics, and are therefore entitled to register DMCA notices, but I do not understand what the risks are. That said, GoDaddy links how to go about filing a copyright infringement, and so does CloudFlare. My understanding is that DMCA notice information (Your personal information) gets shared with the offender, so please do your research/get actual legal guidance first! It's worth noting: I see no buzz about this website - not on Twitter, or Tumblr, or Reddit, etc. So I'm hoping that very few people are using it. The site itself is pretty new (The screenshot shows it was registered in June this year).

Image 9: An anonymous Tumblr asks that reads: "Re: word-stream - Check out the listing on the Apple App Store which will list the App Developer - Cliff Weitzman. The privacy policy lists the email support[at]word-stream[dot]com. The seller (Weitzman) is associated with a speech to text AI company called Speechify. The domain is hosted by GoDaddy. I have no idea what complaints can be filed. It may be possible to file something with GoDaddy or Apple about the app/site breaking their TOS in some way. The Organization for Transformative Works who have legit lawyers who may be a better resource. Anyway, what a huge insult to writers everywhere. Damn.

Image 10: An email from Rebecca Tushnet to easter.kingston. The subject is "Your message about WordStream". The email reads: "Thank you for reaching out. The Archive of Our Own does not claim copyright in any works posted to AO3 so authors have to submit their own takedown notices to sites reposting their works without authorization. The AO3 does not allow commercial reuse, so we do attempt to prevent large scale scraping, but techical measures are not foolproof. We will look into the site and see if there are further measures we can take. Yours, Rebecca Tushnet."

Image 11: A screenshot showing three subscription plans to choose from: A month long for 93 cents per day or a discounted price of 39 cents, a three month long for 53 cents per day or a discounted price of 19 cents, and a six month long for 55 cents per day or a discounted price of 15 cents. The three month plan is listed as most popular.

Image 12: A Tumblr post by user ekingston. It reads: "Christ". A screenshot of a Tumblr reply by user cliffweitzman (Cliff Weitzman) is below. It reads: "Hey everybody, the person behind word stream here. Please email me if we have a peace of work that is yours you don't want up there and I will take it down immediately support@word-stream.com I am dyslexic and built word stream to help other students like me who have dyslexia, adhd, low vision, concussions, anxiety, who are second language learners, or who also love listening to fan fiction but have a job that makes their hands/eyes busy but ears free. Word Stream is free for anyone to use. The next iteration will also include free text to speech, we have a paid tier for ppl who want to use high quality text to speech which is priced at the minimum amount we can to cover server/gpu costs to power the text to speech." The same user has replied to the original comment. Their reply reads: "I apologize to anyone who saw this and was upset this in no way is our intention. We support all valid take down notices and will always make it right if you reach out to us with the name of your work. support@word- stream.com". Text in the original Tumblr post reads: "This man is asking us to do the work for him, all of us, individually. My man. You had an Al scrape THE ENTIRETY OF ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN to take works without our permission. This is ON YOU. friends, if you feel like spending your day sending individual notices to this man, please go ahead. I do NOT advise you sharing personal information that you wouldn't usually share online though. Also, as a person with a learning disability of her own, and the wife of an elementary teacher who accommodates kids with disabilities like these, using your dyslexia as an excuse to steal people's work without permission is DETESTABLE."

Image 13: Text reads: "cliffweitzman (Cliff Weitzman) replied to your text post." The reply reads: "Hey everybody, the person behind word stream here: I am dyslexic and built word stream to help other students like me who have dyslexia, ADHD, vision challenges, concussions, or anxiety to access fan-fiction, because for us, reading with our eyes can be very challenging and there are no audiobooks for fan fiction typically. Word Stream is free for anyone to use. There is a paid plan for ppl who want to use high quality text to speech which is priced at the minimum amount we can to cover server/gpu costs to power the text to speech. The next iteration will also include free text to speech but with a lower quality bar. I apologize to anyone who saw this and was upset this in no way is our intention. We support all valid take down notices an d will always make it right if you reach out to us with the name of your work. support@word-stream.com Please email me if we have a peace of work that is yours you don't want up there and I will take it down immediately support@word-stream.com. A future release will also add the ability to tip authors so writers can make money not from selling the works but via tips from grateful readers, the ability for authors to build and communicate with an email list of readers, ability for authors to see retention graphs of where users drop off during reading, and abilities to authors to easily manage their works. We are strong supporters of second language learners (non native speakers of English), and of users who love fan fiction but who have a job that makes their hands/eyes busy but ears free. Once again I apologize for a beta product that got more attention that it ha d any right to before it was complete and for the clearly tone deaf wording which we are fixing to make sure communication is better about take down notices. Warmly, Cliff If you can, pl ease upvote or comment on the post so others can see the e mail they should message to have anything they don't want posted taken down immediately Word Stream."

Image 14: A Reddit comment on r/Ao3 by user word-stream. It reads: "Hey everybody, the person behind word stream here: I am dyslexic and built word stream to help other students like me who have dyslexia, ADHD, vision challenges, concussions, or anxiety to access fan-fiction, because for us, reading with our eyes can be very challenging and there are no audiobooks for fan fiction typically. Word Stream is free for anyone to use. There is a paid plan for ppl who want to use high quality text to speech which is priced at the minimum amount we can to cover server/gpu costs to power the text to speech. The next iteration will also include free text to speech but with a lower quality bar, I apologize to anyone who saw this and was upset this in no way is our intention. We support all valid take down notices and will always make it right if you reach out to us with the name of your work, support@word-stream.com Please email me if we have a peace of work that is yours you don't want up there and I will take it down immediately support@@word-stream.com A future release will also add the ability to tip authors so writers can make money not from selling the works but via tips from grateful readers, the ability for authors to build and communicate with an email list of readers, ability for authors to see retention graphs of where users drop off during reading, and abilities to authors to easily manage their works. We are strong supporters of second language learners (non native speakers of English), and of users who love fan fiction but who have a job that makes their hands/eyes busy but ears free. Once again I apologize for a beta product that got more attention that it had any right to before it was complete and for the clearly tone deaf wording which we are fixing to make sure communication is better about take down notices. Warmly, Cliff."

Image 15: A Reddit comment from user Electronic_Dog_9526. It reads: "Word Stream's team have apologize for a beta product that got more attention that it had any right to before it was complete and for the clearly tone deaf wording which they are fixing to make sure communication is better about take down notices. They are trying to make the internet including fan fiction accessible to students with dyslexia, ADHD, and vision challenges, and it is free to use. Anyone can read on word stream for free. There is a paid tier that enables audio mode: this pays for the expensive GPUs needed for making the audio. They share they support all valid take down notices and will make it right if you reach out with the name of your work to support@word-stream.com." The comment has two downvotes.

Image 16: A partial screenshot of a Reddit post. It has 3800 upvotes, 500 comments, and 7 awards. It reads: "FINAL EDIT: I'm turning off notifications for this post, because it doesn't look like many people are reading to the end and I keep getting comments from people who are unable to find their fic or expressing how relieved they are their works 'aren't important enough to be stolen'. I did see reports that the fanwork doesn't seem to be removed, just hidden, which is pretty much what I expected; obviously a guy who would rather make money letting Al and fanfic writers do the work for him wouldn't want to undo the little effort he put in putting the database together in the first place (all those wonderfully disfigured Al-generated covers would go to waste!) so I'll reiterate what I said in one of my comments: I'll be keeping my eye on this, and I think you should too. I hate that we need this kind of constant vigilance but let's face it, tech bros have been looking at fanfic with an envious eye for some time now and even if it isn't this guy, someone else will inevitably pop up with the same new & brilliant idea to make money off of fanwork creators. We'll just have to keep not letting them get away with it. For today, I'm counting the fanwork being made inaccessible as a collective win."

End ID.]

[Plain Text: Text in red reads: "***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS."]

SO HERE IS THE WHOLE STORY (SO FAR).

I am on my knees begging you to reblog this post and to stop reblogging the original ones I sent out yesterday. This is the complete account with all the most recent info; the other one is just sending people down senselessly panicked avenues that no longer lead anywhere.

IN SHORT

Cliff Weitzman, CEO of Speechify and (aspiring?) voice actor, used AI to scrape thousands of popular, finished works off AO3 to list them on his own for-profit website and in his attached app. He did this without getting any kind of permission from the authors of said work or informing AO3. Obviously.

When fandom at large was made aware of his theft and started pushing back, Weitzman issued a non-apology on the original social media posts—using 

his dyslexia; 

his intent to implement a tip-system for the plagiarized authors; and 

a sudden willingness to take down the work of every author who saw my original social media posts and emailed him individually with a ‘valid’ claim,

as reasons we should allow him to continue monetizing fanwork for his own financial gain.

When we less-than-kindly refused, he took down his ‘apologies’ as well as his website (allegedly—it’s possible that our complaints to his web host, the deluge of emails he received or the unanticipated traffic brought it down, since there wasn’t any sort of official statement made about it), and when it came back up several hours later, all of the work formerly listed in the fan fiction category was no longer there. 

THE TAKEAWAYS

1. Cliff Weitzman (aka Ofek Weitzman) is a scumbag with no qualms about taking fanwork without permission, feeding it to AI and monetizing it for his own financial gain; 

2. Fandom can really get things done when it wants to, and 

3. Our fanworks appear to be hidden, but they’re NOT DELETED from Weitzman’s servers, and independently published, original works are still listed without the authors' permission. We need to hold this man responsible for his theft, keep an eye on both his current and future endeavors, and take action immediately when he crosses the line again. 

THE TIMELINE, THE DETAILS, THE SCREENSHOTS (behind the cut)

Sunday night, December 22nd 2024, I noticed an influx in visitors to my fic You & Me & Holiday Wine. When I searched the title online, hoping to find out where they came from, a new listing popped up (third one down, no less):

This listing is still up today, by the way, though now when you follow the link to word-stream, it just brings you to the main site. (Also, to be clear, this was not the cause for the influx of traffic to my fic; word-stream did not link back to the original work anywhere.)

I followed the link to word-stream, where to my horror Y&M&HW was listed in its entirety—though, beyond the first half of the first chapter, behind a paywall—along with a link promising to take me—through an app downloadable on the Apple Store—to an AI-narrated audiobook version. When I searched word-stream itself for my ao3 handle I found both of my multi-chapter fics were listed this way:

Because the tags on my fics (which included genres* and characters, but never the original IPs**) weren’t working, I put ‘Kara Danvers’ into the search bar and discovered that many more supercorp fics (Supergirl TV fandom, Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor pairing) were listed.

I went looking online for any mention of word-stream and AI plagiarism (the covers—as well as the ridiculously inflated number of reviews and ratings—made it immediately obvious that AI fuckery was involved), but found almost nothing: only one single Reddit post had been made, and it received (at that time) only a handful of upvotes and no advice. 

I decided to make a tumblr post to bring the supercorp fandom up to speed about the theft. I draw as well as write for fandom and I’ve only ever had to deal with art theft—which has a clear set of steps to take depending on where said art was reposted—and I was at a loss regarding where to start in this situation.

After my post went up I remembered Project Copy Knight, which is worth commending for the work they’ve done to get fic stolen from AO3 taken down from monetized AI 'audiobook’ YouTube accounts. I reached out to @echoekhi, asking if they’d heard of this site and whether they could advise me on how to get our works taken down.

While waiting for a reply I looked into Copy Knight’s methods and decided to contact OTW’s legal department:

And then I went to bed.

By morning, tumblr friends @makicarn and @fazedlight as well as a very helpful tumblr anon had seen my post and done some very productive sleuthing:

@echoekhi had also gotten back to me, advising me, as expected, to contact the OTW. So I decided to sit tight until I got a response from them.

That response came only an hour or so later: 

Which was 100% understandable, but still disappointing—I doubted a handful of individual takedown requests would accomplish much, and I wasn’t eager to share my given name and personal information with Cliff Weitzman himself, which is unavoidable if you want to file a DMCA.

I decided to take it to Reddit, hoping it would gain traction in the wider fanfic community, considering so many fandoms were affected. My Reddit posts (with the updates at the bottom as they were emerging) can be found here and here.

A helpful Reddit user posted a guide on how users could go about filing a DMCA against word-stream here (to wobbly-at-best results)

A different helpful Reddit user signed up to access insight into word-streams pricing. Comment is here.

Smells unbelievably scammy, right? In addition to those audacious prices—though in all fairness any amount of money would be audacious considering every work listed is accessible elsewhere for free—my dyscalculia is screaming silently at the sight of that completely unnecessary amount of intentionally obscured numbers.

Speaking of which! As soon as the post on r/AO3—and, as a result, my original tumblr post—began taking off properly, sometime around 1 pm, jumpscare! A notification that a tumblr account named @cliffweitzman had commented on my post, and I got a bit mad about the gist of his message :

Fortunately he caught plenty of flack in the comments from other users (truly you should check out the comment section, it is extremely gratifying and people are making tremendously good points), in response to which, of course, he first tried to both reiterate and renegotiate his point in a second, longer comment (which I didn’t screenshot in time so I’m sorry for the crappy notification email formatting):

which he then proceeded to also post to Reddit (this is another Reddit user’s screenshot, I didn’t see it at all, the notifications were moving too fast for me to follow by then)

... where he got a roughly equal amount of righteously furious replies. (Check downthread, they're still there, all the way at the bottom.)

After which Cliff went ahead & deleted his messages altogether. 

It’s not entirely clear whether his account was suspended by Reddit soon after or whether he deleted it himself, but considering his tumblr account is still intact, I assume it’s the former. He made a handful of sock puppet accounts to play around with for a while, both on Reddit and Tumblr, only one of which I have a screenshot of, but since they all say roughly the same thing, you’re not missing much:

And then word-stream started throwing a DNS error.

That lasted for a good number of hours, which was unfortunately right around the time that a lot of authors first heard about the situation and started asking me individually how to find out whether their work was stolen too. I do not have that information and I am unclear on the perimeters Weitzman set for his AI scraper, so this is all conjecture: it LOOKS like the fics that were lifted had three things in common:

They were completed works;

They had over several thousand kudos on AO3; and

They were written by authors who had actively posted or updated work over the past year.

If anyone knows more about these perimeters or has info that counters my observation, please let me know!

I finally thought to check/alert evil Twitter during this time, and found out that the news was doing the rounds there already. I made a quick thread summarizing everything that had happened just in case. You can find it here.

I went to Bluesky too, where fandom was doing all the heavy lifting for me already, so I just reskeeted, as you do, and carried on.

Sometime in the very early evening, word-stream went back up—but the fan fiction category was nowhere to be seen. Tentative joy and celebration!***

That’s when several users—the ones who had signed up for accounts to gain intel and had accessed their own fics that way—reported that their work could still be accessed through their history. Relevant Reddit post here.

Sooo—

We’re obviously not done. The fanwork that was stolen by Weitzman may be inaccessible through his website right now, but they aren’t actually gone. And the fact that Weitzman wasn’t willing to get rid of them altogether means he still has plans for them. 

This was my final edit on my Reddit post before turning off notifications, and it's pretty much where my head will be at for at least the foreseeable future:

Please feel free to add info in the comments, make your own posts, take whatever action you want to take to protect your work. I only beg you—seriously, I’m on my knees here—to not give up like I saw a handful of people express the urge to do. Keep sharing your creative work and remain vigilant and stay active to make sure we can continue to do so freely. Visit your favorite fics, and the ones you’ve kept in your ‘marked for later’ lists but never made time to read, and leave kudos, leave comments, support your fandom creatives, celebrate podficcers and support AO3. We created this place and it’s our responsibility to keep it alive and thriving for as long as we possibly can.

Also FUCK generative AI. It has NO place in fandom spaces.

THE 'SMALL' PRINT (some of it in all caps):

*Weitzman knew what he was doing and can NOT claim ignorance. One, it’s pretty basic kindergarten stuff that you don’t steal some other kid’s art project and present it as your own only to act surprised when they protest and then tell the victim that they should have told you sooner that they didn’t want their project stolen. And two, he was very careful never to list the IPs these fanworks were based on, so it’s clear he was at least familiar enough with the legalities to not get himself in hot water with corporate lawyers. Fucking over fans, though, he figured he could get away with that. 

**A note about the AI that Weitzman used to steal our work: it’s even greasier than it looks at first glance. It’s not just the method he used to lift works off AO3 and then regurgitate onto his own website and app. Looking beyond the untold horrors of his AI-generated cover ‘art’, in many cases these covers attempt to depict something from the fics in question that can’t be gleaned from their summaries alone. In addition, my fics (and I assume the others, as well) were listed with generated genres; tags that did not appear anywhere in or on my fic on AO3 and were sometimes scarily accurate and sometimes way off the mark. I remember You & Me & Holiday Wine had ‘found family’ (100% correct, but not tagged by me as such) and I believe The Shape of Soup was listed as, among others, ‘enemies to friends to lovers’ and ‘love triangle’ (both wildly inaccurate). Even worse, not all the fic listed (as authors on Reddit pointed out) came with their original summaries at all. Often the entire summary was AI-generated. All of these things make it very clear that it was an all-encompassing scrape—not only were our fics stolen, they were also fed word-for-word into the AI Weitzman used and then analyzed to suit Weitzman’s needs. This means our work was literally fed to this AI to basically do with whatever its other users want, including (one assumes) text generation. 

***Fan fiction appears to have been made (largely) inaccessible on word-stream at this time, but I’m hearing from several authors that their original, independently published work, which is listed at places like Kindle Unlimited, DOES still appear in word-stream’s search engine. This obviously hurts writers, especially independent ones, who depend on these works for income and, as a rule, don’t have a huge budget or a legal team with oceans of time to fight these battles for them. If you consider yourself an author in the broader sense, beyond merely existing online as a fandom author, beyond concerns that your own work is immediately at risk, DO NOT STOP MAKING NOISE ABOUT THIS.

PLEASE check my later versions of this post via my main page to make sure you have the latest version of this post before you reblog. All the information I’ve been able to gather is in my reblogs below, and it's frustrating to see the old version getting passed around, sending people on wild goose chases.

Thank you all so much!

[casscainmainly]

A Deep Dive Into Why Cass Threw Dick Out A Window

If you've been here long enough you've probably seen or heard of this moment, which is super hilarious and iconic. It's mostly discussed in reference to Dick and Cass' relationship. However, in my opinion Cass throwing Dick out a window had very little to do with her opinion of him, or even of Barbara; it has more to do with her understanding of romance and love. I briefly touched on this in my gender/sexuality post, but I'm going to explain more in depth my interpretation of how Dick functions in Batgirl (2000) as a whole. (This moment is very open to interpretation though, this is just my opinion!). So let's try to answer Dick's question: what was that all about?

Love, Language, and DickBabs

While Puckett's run is notable for not having Cass date anyone, romantic love does play a role in Cass' early understanding of the world. It's the impetus that spurs her to write: in issue 2, she sees a wife read a letter from her deceased husband, and her reaction affects Cass so strongly she immediately starts trying to write. (She also kisses the husband on the cheek earlier, which may or may not be a crush). Romance, and the ability to communicate your love, is a fundamental part of Cass' desire to learn language.

So we have Cass, who has experienced neither love nor language, living with Babs, who's in a relationship with Dick. This telephone conversation in #4 (the issue where a metahuman changes Cass' brain into understanding language) again links romance to communication. Dick and Babs are talking on the phone, unable to see each other but understanding each other perfectly; Cass and Babs, on the other hand, live together and can't understand each other at all.

"She can't talk, so it's not all that different [to living alone]." Babs is telling an eavesdropping Cass that her inability to speak prevents her from love and connection - a love and connection symbolised by one of the first romantic relationships Cass is consistently around, Dick and Barbara.

Dick as an Ideal

There's a debate whether Cass likes Dick or not because half the time they're friendly, and half the time she's punching him or throwing him out windows. This disparity makes sense if you consider that Cass strongly associates DickBabs with communication, understanding, love - very idealised notions - but she does not associate Dick as a person with them. Her interactions with Dick (sans Babs) are cute and normal - Batgirl #29 and Nightwing #81 feature some very adorable Dick-Cass moments, with no real tension whatsoever.

It's only when Cass sees Dick in a romantic light (as in associated with Babs) that she makes him into a symbol.

Cass often tries to copy Babs, thinking it's the 'correct' thing to do - in DC First: Batgirl/Joker, she goes after Joker because that's what Barbara did; later in Horrocks' run she'll wear Barbara's outfit. In a way, Cass' affairs with Tai'Darshan and Kon - as much as I do think Tai'Darshan was genuine attraction - is another way to 'copy' Barbara. In #42, Cass stares at a picture of Dick and Babs while asking if Babs likes boys. Obviously Cass knows the answer is yes, but see what she asks next, and how Barbara responds:

She shifts from 'like' to 'love', and Babs responds that she 'care[s]' about him. For Cass, whose arc in Horrocks' run is about parsing out the nuances of attraction, understanding the difference between like, love, and care is incredibly difficult. She struggles to separate familial from romantic (Bruce in #50) or romantic from platonic (Kon, and in somewhat the reverse way Steph). In this conversation, Cass comes to associate Dick with like, love, and care - DickBabs becomes not just a symbol of romantic love, but of any connection whatsoever.

The Old Costume

I've discussed elsewhere that Cass wearing Babs' old costume in #45 is a representation of her desire to be 'girly', and how she associates girlhood with someone other than herself, discarding her own costume for Babs'. But putting on a costume is not the only prerequisite for being a 'girl'. In Babs' speech to Cass, she emphasises being sexually attractive to men, with her final comment being about this "particular look Dick used to give [her]". For Cass, visual language is incredibly important; putting on Babs' costume is not about being or feeling like a girl, but about being perceived as one. Dick is symbolic of the perceiver: the one who can essentially 'grant' women their femininity.

But Cass is disgusted when Tim calls her hot, which adds to her confusion - why should Dick being attracted to Babs make Babs happy, but Tim (who's not a sibling at this time) perceiving her like that grosses her out? Cass' inability to feel good - to feel 'feminine' - through the male gaze is another sign, to her, of her failure to be a woman.

Which finally brings us to issue 46...

That Ableist Kon Comment

Cass finds out Dick breaks Babs' heart and then starts hallucinating on a drug. One of the things she hallucinates is Kon saying "who wants to date a cripple? Ain't that right, Nightwing?" and Nightwing responding "not me--at least, not anymore."

For the first time, we get to the heart of why DickBabs mattered to Cass: it was an example of a disabled person in a loving, romantic relationship. It goes back to that phone call in #4, where Babs implies that Cass is hard to care about because she can't speak. The Kon comment suggests Cass has carried that with her all this time, trying to find proof that she can be loved, no matter her disability. DickBabs showed her it could be done - the break-up shows her now that it can't be done.

Dick's hallucination mocks her disability: "look at her--she can't even read!" Attributing this mockery to Dick (whose real-life counterpart, unlike the other hallucinations, has never said anything remotely like this) shows that this 'Dick-as-ideal' is intrinsically tied to Cass' self-worth.

Honestly this whole post stemmed from me thinking about this one panel. There is no real reason, from Cass' view of Dick as a person, for her to think he's brave and noble and kind (more so than anyone else). But it's in the DickBabs context - that Dick seemed to love, wholeheartedly, a disabled woman - that makes Cass think this way. And now that DickBabs is broken up, it shows that she, too, is rotten to the core; that someone like her cannot be loved.

And so when Dick shows up, she throws him out the window.

Conclusion

In this moment, Cass isn't just reacting to Dick breaking up with Barbara, she's reacting to what it means to her. If Dick can't stay with Barbara, then that means Cass, as another disabled woman, is also unable to be loved. This all leads up to #50, which features another Cass punch to Dick's face, but more importantly is when Bruce and Cass reconcile through Cass' first language. It's a confirmation that though her verbal skills may not be fully developed, she still can communicate, and she can love and be loved.

I don't think a lot of the ideas I touched on here are fully developed, or conclude cleanly. For example, how does Cass' 'failure' to be a woman relate to her inability to be loved? Is she able to have a stable romantic relationship? There are lots more questions, but the role Dick specifically plays in Cass' understanding of romance is probably not going to develop further. I just think it's interesting how Horrocks uses the Dick-Babs relationship to explore Cass' identity.

[p0orbaby]

Request😍: y/n and alessia or leah (you decide! find your tumblr side and aaalll the stories of them. It leads to jealous alessia/leah bc of y/n being with other girls (like getting jealous when your partner cheats in your dream). Reader has to handle the situation and in the end manages to make less/leah focus on all the fluffy/spicy stuff there is about them. If you want to make it smutty (what we all love hehe): they eventually get inspired by tumblr and choose another story (you can decide which of all the good alessia/leah x reader smut on here) to reenact. Thank you!!! (If you dont want to write this feel free to repost for another writer, also you can switch the roles who is jealous, i dont care:)

i amended this a little, pls don’t hate me

it would be harsh to call this a crack fic but i honestly giggled the whole time writing it 🤭

-

You find Alessia on the sofa, her face illuminated by the blue glow of her phone screen. At first, you think she’s watching one of those oddly specific TikToks she loves—something about cats playing table tennis or an American teenager ranking their favourite crisps. But then you notice the furrow in her brow, the way her teeth tug at her bottom lip. Her expression is equal parts confusion, disbelief, and mild offence.

“Everything alright?” you ask, setting your keys on the counter.

She doesn’t answer immediately, which is a bad sign. Alessia always greets you the moment you walk through the door, even if it’s just to ask what you’ve brought for dinner. Instead, she tilts the phone slightly so you can see the screen.

“Do you know about this?” she asks, voice clipped.

You lean over, squinting at the screen. The webpage is clunky, its layout straight out of 2012, and the title reads something absurd like ‘Sunlit Smiles and Shadowed Hearts’. Your name is prominently featured in the summary, alongside a few other recognisable ones.

“It’s fanfiction,” she says, answering the question you haven’t asked yet. “About you”

You blink. “About me?”

“And other people,” she adds, her tone sharp now, like the edge of a too-clean knife.

The penny drops. “Wait—what?”

She sits up straighter, turning the phone to face you fully. “Look. This one has you with… God, Tooney. And this one—oh, this is just brilliant—you’re married to Ona. Married! Like we’re just some passing fling”

You bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing, which, given her expression, would be a tactical error. Alessia doesn’t do jealousy often, but when she does, it’s like an overdramatic romcom villain plotting their revenge.

“Well,” you say carefully, “at least they’ve got good taste?”

“Good taste?” she repeats, incredulous. “One of these has you sneaking off with Mary behind my back during a post-match interview!”

“Creative, though,” you offer.

She glares at you, tossing the phone onto the cushion beside her. “This isn’t funny”

“It’s a little funny,” you say, sitting down next to her.

“It’s not,” she insists, crossing her arms. “Do you know how many of these there are? And how many don’t have me in them at all? Like I’m just some side character in your life?”

You try to suppress the grin tugging at your lips, but it’s no use. “Less, you do realise this is all made up, right? None of it’s real”

She huffs, her cheeks pink now. “I know that. But still. It’s insulting”

You reach for her hand, gently uncrossing her arms. “Alright, let’s look at it this way. I’m obviously very popular. Isn’t that a good thing?”

“Not when you’re popular with everyone except me”

“Oh, come on,” you tease, squeezing her hand. “I’m pretty sure there’s stuff about us too. The fluffy, romantic, borderline inappropriate kind”

Alessia hesitates, her gaze flicking to the phone. “You think so?”

“I know so,” you say confidently. “Because we’re the superior couple. Clearly”

That earns a small smile, though she tries to hide it. “You’re an idiot”

“And yet, here I am, fully committed to proving my devotion,” you say, reaching for her phone. You type in a search, scrolling through pages until you find what you’re looking for. “See? Right here. This one’s about us”

She leans over, peering at the screen. Her eyes scan the words, and slowly, her frown starts to fade.

“This is… cute,” she admits reluctantly.

“Exactly,” you say, draping an arm around her shoulders. “So, no more being jealous of fictional versions of me, okay? They don’t get to go home with you. I do”

She turns to look at you, her expression softening further. “Fine. But I’m still not over the Mary thing”

You laugh, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Noted. I’ll make it up to you”

“You better,” she mumbles, but there’s no real bite to her words anymore.

It’s only later, as you’re cooking dinner together, that you catch her sneaking glances at her phone again, her lips twitching with the beginnings of a smile. If she’s reading more of those stories, you don’t mention it. Some battles are better left unpicked.

[zara-renata]

So I had one holiday prompt that I couldn't include in the big holiday prompt fic I posted last week, and I also have been receiving some really sweet and cute ideas that weren't exactly requests, but the ideas were so nice that I wanted to write something for them. I've gathered them into one story that I hope isn't disappointing. I had intended to do separate, cute little drabbles, but I had a bad day the other day and somehow uh, really dark angst happened, and then I used the ideas people sent for the comfort half of the fic? So please forgive me for just... taking it as dark as you can go before including the sweet, cute ideas that people requested. I hope you like the result anyway, although please read the content warnings. Several of the people who sent requests/ideas apologized for doing so, as if sending the ideas was 'too much', but you don't have to apologize for sending asks. My requests are open, and I like seeing everyone's ideas even if I don't end up being able to write for them, or if I tweak them a little to make them work for the story that comes out of my brain despite my best laid plans to stick to an outline.

The river | ao3 | masterlist

It's Christmas Eve, you're at the end of your rope after an absolutely awful year, and you decide to end it all after pushing everyone in your life away. Sylus pulls you from the brink and convinces you to keep going.

Sylus x fem reader, Sylus x mc, hurt/comfort, angst, grief, banter, fluff. CW: attempted suicide, depressed thoughts, NSFW, Sylus penetrating reader (this is not sex ed, do not follow these idiots' example, no discussion of condom or birth control, this is fantasy and we're not going to worry about that in the fic)

Ask #1 You asked to keep sending silly little ideas for you to write so I thought I'd give my own request! After Caleb and Gran (supposedly) die it's pretty much canon that MC refuses help from their friends and isolates themself in certain ways. I always imagine MC sometimes sees Sylus as "the only one they have left" since he is the only one who goes out of his way to check up on MC. But MC kinda grows to resent this and has a moment when their drunk/really going through it and basically ask Sylus why he doesn't leave them be so they can just rot away in peace. Sorry if this is too lengthy or I'm overstepping! Brain worms are getting to me

Ask #2 Okay, so random thoughts here, but do you know that superstition that’s like, “the places where you have moles on your body show where your lover kissed you in a past life”? But like… can you imagine what it would be like if MC had a mole in the exact spot where Sylus bit her during Abyssal Mark (cus I have one there lol) and then that superstition randomly gets brought up, only for MC to show him that mole and Sylus is just s h o o k??? N e way that’s my random thoughts lol (sorry if this is a lot 💀)

Ask #3 I love the way you write the MC and I find myself relating to them at least 99% of the time. Sometimes I just imagine them giving Sylus one of those "Do you like me? Circle yes or no!" Love letters to Sylus because they are terrified of rejection -> i wrote the MC in this story really, really depressed, so if this didn't hit the spot for you in terms of fear of rejection, let me know, and I can include your prompt in another story idea I had before this one that's a lot lighter and sweeter before I got hit by the angst truck that this fic turned out to be. just let me know!

Ask #4 the last holiday prompt! -> idk if anyone sent it yet but from the xmas prompt list, i would love to see what you do with number 8 -> I'm so sorry that this is what I did with it, I hope you like it anyway😭

Thank you everyone who has sent me ideas! If you've sent me a request and I haven't answered it yet, it's because I'm still intending to do something with it.

Here you are. Again.

At the end of a long day. A long week. A long year. 

A long rope.

It’s the dark, this time of year. 

Maybe. 

You’re restless. You’ve passed through the Deepspace Hunters Association doors for the last time this year. Empty days of leave stretch before you.

Normally, it would still be light out, leaving this early. But not now, this deep into the year—it’s already full night, as you leave work early.

The bright lights of the building pour over your upturned face as you look back, just once. You don’t know what for. You’ve successfully severed most of the ties you had built before.

Before everything.

Tara, Xavier. After Caleb, Josephine—they reached out, over and over, and you bit their outstretched hands with your sharp, sharp teeth. 

You snapped enough times that they keep their distance, now. 

They’re still kind. 

Tara still comes, sits on your desk, shares tidbits of gossip during the workday. But she no longer invites you along to karaoke, to after-work drinks with other coworkers.

You and Xav work in sync, as you eliminate wanderers. He walks you to your door at the end of the day. But he no longer offers to lend you books. No longer invites you to the bookstore, or to try new restaurants.

You watch his broad back as he walks away from you, down your apartment building’s hallway. He feels as far away as a star in the velvet night sky.

It’s not their fault. You did this.

You wanted this.

You turn away from the warm light beaming from the Association as you leave early, the Christmas lights glittering in the windows, the holiday party you’re skipping still in full swing in the open, sleek company restaurant area on the ground floor. A division-wide shindig, to celebrate the end of the year, the holidays.

The night is cold. Fairy lights, nets of bright pinpricks in the dark night, cover the trees lining the sidewalk. Decorative light displays stretch across the busy road at periodic intervals, over the canals that parallel the streets, the gondolas and tour-boats festive under their own lights, red ribbons flapping in the cold winter wind.

You think about how they never recovered a body.

Only Josephine’s ashes fill an urn, sitting in a cold niche of a quiet columbarium. Caleb’s urn is empty.

You start walking, fast, along the busy sidewalk. People are out shopping, scurrying to tie up last minute errands before the city shuts down for the holiday tomorrow.

You want to unzip your coat. Unzip your uniform. Unzip your skin, your ribcage. Leave all these pieces of yourself behind, for others to puzzle over. To sweep up with the rest of the refuse left over from festive party goers on the street. You want to dissipate in the cold winter air like your breath with each cursed inhale, exhale.

You settle for beginning to jog to the metro station, your feet carrying you faster, faster, your boots heavy on the sidewalk. You see it lit in the distance, but you can’t stand the thought of being underground right now. Buried alive, with all the other people. You sprint past it. 

You’re graceful enough to duck and weave, not disturb anyone else, until the crowds thin.

You’re running, running, the city is streaming past, like the tears from your eyes. Wet from the cold, because you haven’t cried since waking up, your ears deafening, Caleb’s silver chain glittering in the firelight on the walk up to your grandmother’s burning house.

Tears won’t bring a body back.

You don’t know how much longer you can stand this.

The days, one after another. Alarm, moving through the dark to get to work. Moving through the dark to get back to your apartment at the end of the day.

The pain—your only constant, now. The only thing you expect, have to look forward to, day after blurred day. 

An echoing emptiness, like an urn without ashes. An emptiness that feels so full that your skin could burst with it.

You think about your apartment. The festive city outside its windows. The half-opened bottle of wine in the fridge, the only thing in it.

You veer from your neighborhood. Keep running. You’re sweating under your winter coat, your heavy Hunter uniform. It doesn’t matter.

You run, and run, and run, until you run out of streets, sidewalk.

Just the river, wide and black. There is a bridge, soaring over the water, in the distance. Its lights reflected in the water, along with the urban nightscape. Stars above, stars below.

You could drown in them.

You look at the bridge.

You could drown in it all.

There’s no one left, after all.

Who will miss you?

You slow. Stop.

Your breath is heavy in the quiet air. Fairy lights sparkle here, too. Pretty swooping light displays top each lamppost along the river path. 

You would have gone to identify the body, as you did with Gran. She didn’t look like herself. Not even a sleeping version of herself. They did their best, reconstructing her face. But it wasn’t the stitches, the bruising. It was that she simply wasn’t there anymore. Like a stranger’s body on display. An empty house after the residents have been forced to flee in a night of unimaginable violence. 

But running your hands through her hair, one last time. It soothed something in you. Enough that you could breathe in the cold mortuary air. Could nod. Could watch as they covered her again. As they escorted you out into the bustling hospital hallways, to stand under cold fluorescent lights. To stare vacantly at the wall, until you felt a strange, familiar feeling. You looked up, saw Zayne watching you, at the end of the long hallway. You stared at him, memorizing his beautiful face. His dark hair. His severe, cold loveliness. You let yourself look one last time, and he let you. Through the people filling the hallway, each walking with purpose, they were a blur and he was  across the world, across time, a part of your past that should never have reappeared in your present. It hurt too much, to look at his beautiful, distant face. He left you behind, once. He should have stayed gone. You can’t stand to experience the loss again, the loss you felt every time he listened to your heart, expressionless, a stranger with a beautiful, familiar face from your past, a past in which Caleb was still alive. 

You looked at Zayne one last time, across a bustling hallway in a place full of life, of death, and he let you. You then turned, headed to the reception desk. You switched doctors, hospitals.

You blocked his number, so you’ll never know if he sent you a text, tried to call and ask why, after. He let you walk out. Which is as it should be.

You wanted this.

The water churns under the whipping wind, the fast current. It looks so cold. Cold enough to numb. Cold enough to finally put out the fire that’s been burning in you, ever since you woke up, your ears deafening, Caleb’s necklace shimmering in the flames.

You think of running your hands through his hair. Something the fire robbed you of—it would have been your first time, your last time. He would pat your head. Call you pipsqueak. Ignore your protests to not mess up your hair, to not treat you like a little kid. But he would always duck out of the way anytime you tried to return the favor, tease him, tousle his hair. His pretty brunette hair that always looked so soft. Now you’ll never know how soft it really was.

You look at the water. You look at the bridge. The car headlights meteors streaking along their guardrail-gated orbit.

You think about going home. Waking up tomorrow, Christmas Day. The silence. You think about going back to work. Killing wanderer after wanderer. Wondering which one will be the one to finally kill you.

The days blur. The constant emptiness echoing inside your apartment, inside your ribcage.

You look at the water. You look at the bridge. You imagine running your hands through Caleb’s hair for the first, the last time. A tender goodbye you’ll never have, because they never found his body.

There’s no one left to miss you.

Your phone vibrates in your pocket. You fish it out.

Rafayel no longer calls, or texts you words. He just sends photos, every once in a while. Mundane details of everyday life, rendered extraordinary through his artist’s eye. Paintings he’s working on. A foreign landscape. Leaves glistening with dew. The moon, waxing full.

You haven’t answered in months. You look at each one, tuck your phone back in your pocket.

You look back at the water. Think about taking a photo of the reflected stars, the thin crescent moon in the black waves, think of sending him one last response. But even you’re not that cruel. You don’t want him to realize later, that he was the last one to say anything to you.

You don’t open his text. You block his number. Tuck the phone back into your pocket.

You start to walk toward the bridge. As you walk, you keep your eyes on the path, its edges. Decorative, smooth stones line the walkway along the river embankment. You pick them up, here and there, as you walk. Slip them into your coat pockets.

Eventually you run out of room in your coat pockets, add more to your pants pockets. 

You turn your eyes back to the bridge, looming now.

You think of your empty fridge. Josephine’s empty face. An empty urn.

You’re ready to scoop out what’s left of you, leave it behind on the sidewalk, smoldering as the cold night finally smothers the endless fire, the only thing left inside you. Maybe it will warm someone else, in passing. A last good deed, from you to someone in the world.

A metal staircase, leading up, up, into the black sky, mirroring the dark river, your heavy boots echoing. The cars are loud. If you close your eyes, they could be the rushing waves of an ocean, instead of a river of traffic, above a river of water.

You keep your eyes open. You’re not going to pretend that you’re not doing what you’re doing, now. You’re not at the ocean, its pure salt air drifting through your hair, now whipping around your face. You’re on a busy, exhaust- and oil-stained commuter bridge on the night before Christmas, having cut your ties with everyone you have always known never wanted or needed you in the first place. What’s the difference if a wanderer kills you tomorrow, or if something kills you today? Just empty time, blurry days, photo frames without pictures.

The guardrail isn’t so high as one would guess. It’s an easy step up. An easy step over. You stand, looking back over the city where you were raised. The city that contains all the past versions of yourself, from the moment you were pulled screaming into life from a mother whose face you’ll never know, through to now, an empty shell of a person. If your fellow hunters could see inside you, they’d mistake you for a wanderer and put you down, like the scientists who experimented on you, your own grandmother, did years ago.

Since learning that Gran was one of the people who fucked with your heart, you have often resented that she and her colleagues weren’t successful in finishing the job years ago, when they had the chance.

But now you wonder, standing over a dark, freezing river that reflects what’s inside you now, maybe they did finish it. You just didn’t realize it. Not till tonight, as you look down in the mirror of the rushing water, far below.

Even now, the tears won’t come.

What use are tears, when they can’t bring a body back. When they can’t wash it clean. When they can’t lovingly touch it, one last time, soft strands of hair under your fingers.

Your tears, your heart, your suffering, your existence—useless, for the entirety of a life you can only half remember.

You wonder if it’s the dark, tonight. Why tonight, and not yesterday? Why not six months ago? 

Because it took that long to sever the ties binding you here?

Now you are assured, no one will miss you. It will take days before anyone even notices your absence because of your holiday leave.

You hope that they’ll assume it was a wanderer. Bad luck. Wrong time, wrong place. A modest little plaque on the wall of heroes, even though you know you’re no hero.

In the end, it doesn’t matter why it’s tonight, and not any other night.

No need to be dramatic, pretending there’s meaning in the meaningless.

You put your hands on the guardrail, the metal colder than your freezing hands. You lift a heavy booted foot. Take a deep breath. 

It’s so cold. It will be over before you know it. You’ve read that from this height, it’s the impact, and not the drowning.

You’ve always had dreams of flying. 

You lift your other foot, arms thrown wide for balance, just for a moment. The world feels so big, here at the end. The stars above, the stars below, the doubled crescent moon. You’re ready to drown in it all.

You only have one hope.

I don’t want to be reborn.

You breathe, empty your mind of Tara’s earnest smile, Xavier’s soft laughter, Zayne’s steady hands, Rafayel’s flashing violet eyes. Josephine’s empty face. Caleb’s soft, untouchable hair.

You let yourself fall.

You’re flying. Your heart is soaring. Your heart is seizing. The relief, the terror, mingle. You can’t scream, even if you wanted to.

You’re flying and it’s everything you ever dreamt, until it’s not.

Your body jerks, abruptly. Your hair whips down, lashes your face. You grunt with the impact against… nothing. You’re suspended over the water, drifting in the air. The wind tugs at your stone-weighted coat.

You twist away from the water, craning your neck to look up, up, back at the bridge.

You have withstood the uselessness of tears for almost a year now. But now, you want to cry so badly the pain of the need steals your breath.

You knew he was cruel. You knew he was merciless. You knew that he hated you. You just didn’t realize how much, until now.

You hang suspended over a dark, rushing river, wrapped in scarlet and ink tendrils, looking up into the sneering face of the one person you refused to think about as you made your final decision tonight, at the end of your desolate, half-remembered life.

His evol begins to lift you, away from the merciful impact, the numbing water. You, your past, your heart, the memories and despair and stones filling your pockets seem weightless, wrapped in his power.

His usual mask of bored indifference is gone. He is finally showing you his true face, what he must always feel when he looks at you—fury and disgust.

He says nothing, as he pulls you from the depths, back into the world. As he sets you gently back on your heavy feet on the sidewalk in front of him. His evol evaporates, winter breath in the wind.

He looks at your face with his wine-dark eyes. Looks at the water. Flicks his gaze back to your face.

You will not cry in front of this man. This man who hates you so much he won’t even let you seek the peace of death. Death, which has always been too good for you, but not for the people you loved the most.

You clench your jaw as the fire re-ignites in your chest. The flames you had tried so hard to scoop out, to leave behind.

You don’t want to feel this much anymore.

If you speak, you know you’ll cry. You can’t stand it.

Maybe, with enough repetition, he’ll get bored. He gets bored so easily, after all.

You turn, try to launch yourself over the guardrail again.

This time, it’s not his evol, but his arms that wrap around you, pull you back from the fall.

You struggle, throwing your elbows, kicking, throwing your head back, hoping to catch his perfect nose, break it under the hardness of your stupid, useless skull.

He says nothing, just holds you tighter, wraps one arm around your waist, the other over your chest, his big hand cradling the side of your face, pressing your head back into his own chest, as he hunches over you, an immovable wall of warmth. As you fight to break free of his hold, you are wrapped in his scent—cloves, gun oil. 

Sylus.

Eventually, you tire yourself out—despite all of your strength, it is no match for his. He holds you against himself easily, as you pant, lungs burning with the effort, the sweat warm once again under your Hunter’s uniform. You become aware of a whimpering, the keening of a wounded animal.

It’s coming from your throat. Your eyes burn. You go limp in his arms.

“That’s it,” he murmurs. A voice like warm liquor in your veins. You think he’ll let you go. You prepare, hoping you can get to the guardrail again. Maybe this time he won't be so fast. But instead of releasing you, getting away from you as fast as he can, the arm around your waist moves up, cradling your upper back. He scoops his other arm under your legs, holds you against himself like you’re a delicate princess, if you were anyone else. But because it’s you, he’s probably just holding you like a useless sack of shit that would be too annoying to drop. He begins to walk, his stride steady, brisk.

He looks down into your face. “I bought a dress for you. Silk. A design like stars over a flowing river. That’s the only river you’re allowed in tonight, kitten.”

You stare at him. His breath puffs white in the cold air. The face of disgusted fury is replaced by his usual bored mask.

Why is he doing this to you? He wanted to kill you, just a few months ago. Why not let you do the job for him?

He is the only person in your life who didn’t take the hint. Who kept showing up, after you made it clear that you didn’t want their presence anymore. That you couldn’t handle the ties, because ties become nooses, snapping your neck when the other person leaves you behind.

When he showed up where you were, in a ‘coincidental’ meeting on the street, on a jog, you would turn, move in the other direction. He would match your stride, doggedly pestering you with questions, asking you about your evening or weekend plans, telling you silly stories from the N109 Zone, Luke and Kieran’s latest antics. Sometimes he’d just walk in contemplative silence, thumbs hooked through his belt loops, or jog quietly next to you, never losing his breath, never complaining about the pace.

When you would routinely see him at various restaurants you were headed to in order to pick up takeout, you’d leave your food, immediately turning and hurrying away. When the same food was delivered to your door half an hour later, you’d refuse to answer, letting the confused and irritated delivery man leave. A half hour after that, the same man would be back, yell through the door that he had instructions to leave the food even if no one answered, and then he’d make good on his promise. You were faced with the choice of either letting the food go to waste, or eating it guiltily at your kitchen island.

No matter how many times you told the delivery person of the almost daily packages you received with no return address that you didn’t want to accept delivery, they would always insist that their instructions were to deliver regardless of recipient response. You were welcome to bin the items after receipt, but if you didn’t accept, the packages would just pile so high outside of your door that you couldn’t reach your apartment anymore.

You would accept, and then donate whatever exquisite item was inside to women’s shelters, children’s homes, university museums, soup kitchens, fundraiser auctions. No matter how clear it was that you wouldn’t accept anything from him, Sylus never stopped sending you gifts.

When you were sick, he’d show up personally, barge into your apartment when you were too tired to look at the doorbell camera before answering, a duffel bag gripped in his big hand filled with fever reducing medicine, homemade soup from his home chef, painkillers, hot water bottles, cooling pads, muscle pads, vitamins. He’d lounge on your couch, manspreading, insisting that he wouldn’t leave until he saw you swallow the pills and drink a gigantic glass of water.

He’d wait until you lay back down on your messy bed, until you fell asleep. He’d be gone when you woke again, but your apartment would be clean and your fridge and freezer would be stuffed full of healthy pre-prepared food.

You were half-convinced he was just buttering, fattening his prey before getting bored and mercifully ending its life.

Tonight, you are now fully convinced.

“Did your tongue freeze in your mouth?” he asks, descending the stairs you had just walked up, thinking it was your last time ascending them. “Do you need mouth-to-mouth to warm it up again?”

You scowl at him, at how appealing the idea of Sylus’s tongue in your mouth is, even now. You hate yourself, your traitorous body for being drawn to him, even now. “What’s the point of talking, when you never listen?” you grind out, your throat sore. You hadn’t realized how much your animal wailing had wrecked your throat. At least the tears are no longer so close to the surface that they’re threatening to spill.

“I listen to every word out of your beautiful mouth,” he counters serenely, with that same inexplicable kindness that makes your heart hurt. So at odds with how you know he must really feel about you. “I just listen to more than your mouth in order to hear what you’re really saying.”

“What?” You stare at his beautiful face, the way the lamplight illuminates its sharp features for a brief moment, before the night swallows it again as he moves between lampposts on his way… somewhere. Back the way you just came from.

He spares you a glance. “Your mouth says one thing, while the rest of you is screaming something else.”

You feel the blood draining from your face. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

One corner of his beautiful mouth lifts. “Don’t play dumb, kitten. You’re too smart for it to be convincing.”

You were just falling into the river. You were just about to be free. How did you get here again? In this man’s arms, his smug, roguish smile filling you with the unease of being seen. 

“I mean, it wouldn’t kill you to be a little more honest about the fact that you want people to fight for you, right?”

You begin to struggle again, shame lancing through you, making your body unbearable to be in. You know it’s weak, to have wanted so desperately that the people you were carving from your life would see what you were doing and stop you, place their hands over yours holding the cleaver, gently push it down, down, until it dropped from your grasp—how desperately you wanted them to step into your space, hold you tightly, just like this man who sees right through you is holding you now. You wanted Tara to keep inviting you out with your ridiculous colleagues, to sing your heart out at shitty karaoke clubs, to forcibly drag you to sleepovers and arcade nights. You wanted Xavier to push himself into your apartment, try to bake something horrible in your oven, sheepishly offer to go to the bakery with you instead when the fire alarm inevitably went off. You wanted Zayne to walk through the crowd to reach you at the other end of the hallway after you identified Josephine’s body, to ask to take your hand, to ask how you were doing, even though you knew you wouldn’t have been able to answer. You wanted Rafayel to keep inventing excuses for you to visit his studio, to keep insisting that he needed you to accompany him to expositions and fancy lunches as his bodyguard. 

But none of them did in the end, and that’s okay. You kept pushing them away, because your terror of their leaving was apparently bigger than your need for their presence in your life, and at least if they were already gone, as they inevitably would be, you’d finally be free. 

But the last person you would want to see this utterly humiliating need inside you, exposing you like this, is the one looking down at you right now with deceptively soft, all-seeing eyes.

You know the feeling, this need, of pulling away and pulling away and then being heartbroken when people finally let you is weak, and pathetic.

You may experience weak and pathetic feelings, but you’re not weak or pathetic. Not at your core. You were prepared to do what was necessary, to save yourself from the pain of your emptiness, the fire raging inside your chest. You weren’t asking anything of anyone. You were doing it all on your own. 

Not a burden. 

Never a fucking burden. 

You clench your teeth, buck in Sylus’s arms.

He just holds you tightly, a straightjacket for the insanity that you’re feeling, the insanity of this man, out of all the people in your life, stripping you of your masks, flaying you so that all of your most tender, shameful parts are exposed to both him and yourself.

“Stop that. You’re just going to tire yourself further, when I need you tonight.”

Of course. The quid pro quo. He helped you with the auction, the Aether Core. Now you owe him. He doesn’t give a fuck if you live or die—he just can’t let one of his assets destroy itself before it fulfills his purpose.

You go limp in his arms. Turn your head away from him.

He continues his train of thought. “No, it wouldn’t kill you to tell the truth to your friends, so you decided to take matters into your own hands, huh? Telling the people in your life that you actually need them wouldn’t kill you, so why bother, right, when you can just jump off of a fucking bridge?” His voice sounds like the night you met him. Controlled anger. Disgust. Accusation.

Then there’s something wrong with her.

You thought you had killed everything inside of you already. The yearning for human connection. The kindness of a friend. Family holding you in their arms. You thought you had scooped out most of it, even as some of it rekindled when he pulled you back from the fall.

But the way you’re hurting now, at the memory of his hate, the reminder that the people you love won’t fight for you even if it would be fighting against you, and that this man, for all of his false generosity, never cared for you from the beginning, that his gifts and his visits were all what you knew them to be, all along—a bored predator toying with its prey before using it and consuming it. 

You let your thoughts drift back to the bridge, push your pain away. Feed it to the fire. When he’s done with you, maybe you won’t even have to jump.

“Just shut up, Sylus. I’ll help you with your problem tonight. Just promise me you’ll toss me over yourself, when you’re done with me,” you tell the night, because you still can’t bring yourself to look at him.

He stops walking. The wind is so cold against your face. You wish he’d snap your neck, right now. You’re so fucking tired.

“Look at me.” His voice is low. Menacing.

You watch the water. Wonder how long it would take if you just walked out into it, without jumping. Just walk in with your stone-weighted coat and let the cold paralyze you, the current pull you under.

“Look at me, my heart,” he whispers. The change in his tone, his bizarre endearment, has you turning your head, looking up into his face. “That is one promise I can never make you.” He looks like he’s in pain. You don’t know why. He leans down, rests his forehead against yours, hunching his big shoulders, lifting your body in his arms so he can meet you. His breath is warm against your lips. “Please don’t talk to me like that.”

You want to snort. It’s rich, coming from him—the same man who is telling you not to tell him to shut up, after all the things he said to you as he starved you, strangled you.

“Please don’t tell me to kill you. To hurt you. That hurts me.”

You stare up into his face. See the sincerity in his eyes. The wind whips your hair. He wasn’t upset that you told him to shut up, but that you asked him to kill you? “What does it matter? Aren’t you going to, in the end?”

“Why would I stop you tonight, if I wanted you to die?”

Of course he won’t answer outright. When has Sylus Qin ever answered a direct question?

“Yeah, that’s what I’m saying. Why bother stopping me, unless you just need to use me and then be done with me? I can’t be that irreplaceable. Just get someone else to put on the dress, and let me get on with my fucking life. Someone who you can train to say just the right things, at just the right time, who’ll look good in whatever fancy shit you want to put her in. There’s gotta be easier idiots than me to serve your purpose.”

He closes his eyes, breathes in the cold night air. When he opens them, you have to look away. You can’t handle whatever is in them. “I know I hurt you, when we first met. That I said cruel things to you. I’m sorry.”

You laugh, even as your heart wrenches at this strange apology. Of course he doesn’t explain what offended him so much about your existence at the beginning. Why he treated you exactly how you deserved. Probably just whatever he saw when he used his Aether Core on you. He saw the echoing chambers of your empty, fucked up heart and was enraged that it was you, and not someone worthy, who would absorb the Aether Core. “There’s never been any need to varnish the truth, Sylus. You almost choked me to death the day we met. You should have fucking finished what you started,” you sneer. “Why does no one ever finish what they start?” You think of Josephine, her researcher cronies. Think of Caleb, his promise to return, the last text he ever sent you. Your fucking parents, who you will never know.

You don’t expect an answer.

And yet, you’re surprised when Sylus wordlessly releases his hold on you. Lets you slip from his arms, sets you back on your feet. You settle in your heavy boots, the weight of your coat, the stones in your pockets, grounding you to the earth.

The lamplight shines in his silver-sheened, wind-tousled hair. His cheeks are red from the cold.

Of course. Of course.

No tool is irreplaceable.

You’re not irreplaceable.

You finally said the right thing, to push him away.

This is it. This is it. This is it. 

Your mind returns to the bridge. Your hand is holding the cleaver, dripping with the blood from the last unwelcome tether to your life.

You try to memorize his face, just as you did Zayne’s, but for some reason looking at Sylus’s face hurts you so much more despite having known him for so little time. Just a sigh, in the timeline of your life. The warm glow of his irises. The softness of his lower lip. The pride in his shoulders, his nose. 

Maybe you didn’t want to think of him before jumping because you had fallen in love with him, despite the fact that any affection he offered was counterfeit—the steady way he breathed next to you on a jog, the way he spread out on your couch, his dry humor, his intelligence, his piercing gaze, his kindness that was actually more cruel than if he had just tossed you out and never bothered to look for you again after the auction.

You knew it was fake. You knew it was calculated. You knew that the reality was, because he had told you from the very beginning—

Don’t tell me that you like me. Is this all so you can get my attention?

Clearly you’ve read too many fairytales.

And yet you had believed, in the bright moments of receiving his kind attention, in the fairytale. Just for a heartbeat. A raindrop, splattering on the ground.

You thought that you couldn’t bear to see what it looks like when Sylus finally tires of you pushing him away, and stops reaching out, as everyone else has. 

But with just a few words, you’ve finally managed to do it. He set the burden of you down, and now he’ll walk away, replace you with some other beautiful, breathing tool.

You learn in this moment that you actually can bear it. You can bear anything, as long as you know that very soon, you won’t have to bear anything at all.

“You wanted the truth?” you say, suddenly, the relief flooding through you that the worst has happened, that you’re now actually free. You think of the fabric of the dress, liquid stars over a night river, and wonder whose body it will caress, with Sylus’s big hand on her waist, his gentle fingers drifting across her collarbone, his forehead pressed against hers, for whatever ruse he needs to run tonight, on Christmas Eve.

He grows still. Watches you carefully, as if searching your face for a trick. You look back at him steadily, scooping everything inside you out, letting it splatter onto the sidewalk, here along this dark riverbank.

“Will you give it to me?” he finally asks.

“As a parting thank you gift, for cutting me loose.” You nod. Take a shuddering breath of the frigid air. “Here is me telling you the truth: you should treat the woman who ends up wearing the dress you got with more gentleness than you did me at the beginning. You could have the world eating out of the palm of your hand, if you skip the cruelty at the beginning and just treat people the way you treated me in the last few months. She’ll do anything for you, I think, if you do. Because somehow you made me love you, despite our beginning. I could bear to cut everyone else loose but you.” You laugh, and the sound is like icicles snapping, shattering on the ground. “Thank you for doing it for me, instead. It’s probably the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

You smile at him. 

You don’t know why you’re surprised that he just frowns deeply, brow furrowing. 

Well. That’s okay. You never expected him to be pleased to see your face, smiling or not.

“Good luck, Sylus.”

You turn, begin to walk back the way you came, for the second time tonight. Your thoughts are already at the bridge. You’ve been falling for months now. Soon you’ll finally hit the crystal water and shatter. 

You hope you won’t be reborn.

“You said you love me.” His deep, low voice is carried by the wind.

You stop, turn your head. “Stupid, huh?” you ask, wondering if he wants to pour salt into the wound you just willingly exposed to him.

“Why would you love someone who treated you the way I did?”

You turn fully, face him across the night, one last time. “You’re so fucking funny. I’ve always appreciated men who can make me laugh.” You shrug. “And I’m a pathetic fool. You pretended to be kind, and I lapped it up like the thirsty dog I am.”

He tilts his head, takes a step towards you. “That’s all?”

You take a step back. You don’t need him and his pretty face, his delicious scent any closer to torment you.

You offer him more truth. “Of course not.”

“What else?”

You sigh. “What does it matter? We’ll never see each other again.”

He shakes his head. “Indulge me.”

So salt, it is. You press your fingers into the most tender part of yourself, peel yourself wide open. “Your cleverness. How sweet you can be when you want something—strangely pliant, for such a big, powerful man. The self confidence you have. I could say, do anything and you did so well pretending to never be embarrassed of me. You made me believe, very briefly, that you really wanted to be with me, do anything, go anywhere, just because I was there. It’s quite impressive, really. I can see why you’re so good at business. You’re competent. You’re beautiful to look at.” You pause, shake your head in turn. “But you already know all that. You know why you’re loveable. You made me feel cherished in a way that no one ever has, even as I was pushing you away. But honestly, those are just parts of you. They don’t fully cover what it is about you that makes my heart ache when I look at you. I love you because you’re you. Even hearing your name makes my heart race. Seeing your shoes in my foyer, because they were on your feet. The curve of your wrist, because it belongs to you. I know it’s pathetic, and stupid.” You shrug again. “Can’t help it, though.”

He stares at you. 

You prod him. “Is that enough?”

“How can you ask if that’s enough, when it’s everything?”

You look at him in confusion. “Huh?”

He takes a step towards you, frowning. “Are you only telling me all this because you think I’ve finally given up and allowed you to push me away, because I set you back on your feet?”

You take a step back, as he takes another step forward.“What do you mean ‘I think’ you’ve given up?” You squint at him.

“Did you only tell me all this because you’re going straight back to the bridge to try again?”

You take another step back at the intensity of his face, his question. “What does it matter? You don’t have to worry about what happens to me after this.”

He takes two steps. “You tell me you love everything about me, and then you plan to fuck off and leave me alone again?”

Okay, this was a mistake. You don’t know why he’s mad, but he’s mad again. “I’m sorry.”

You don’t know what else to say. You’ve been sorry your whole life. This is yet another miscalculation. You should have just left. What did you think would happen if you told him how you feel? That he’d be happy about your pathetic heart bleeding pitifully for him?

He strides over to you, his long legs outpacing your own. “If you’re sorry, don’t fucking do it.”

“What?”

He looks down into your face, so close you can smell him again, you can see the fine lines around his eyes as he frowns. “If you’re really sorry for loving me, for ever meeting me—which are the only things you have to be sorry for, then make it up to me by staying. Don’t leave me. Don’t push me away anymore. Just stay, and love me.”

You huff. “Are you really that desperate for help tonight?”

He lifts his hands, places his palms on your cheeks, his long fingers dipping into your hair. “No, I’m desperate for you tonight. It’s Christmas—I don’t give a shit about the holidays, but I know you do. I want to spend it with you. You made me watch you jump off of a goddamned bridge. What would have happened if I hadn’t already been on my way to you?” He sounds so upset. You’ve never seen him like this. The fear is naked on his lovely face.

“What the fuck are you talking about? What does it matter? You said you could get someone else for the dress, for tonight.” You’re so confused. Why is he acting like this?

“I didn’t say any of that. You suggested that I replace you with someone else, I set you on the ground to make sure you were looking at my face, that you were listening to my words when I told you that you’re irreplaceable. That no one else will do. That after watching you almost die, I can’t continue being cautious and trying not to frighten you away anymore.”

“You… what?” 

“You love me. Right? You weren’t lying?” he looks uncertain, like he can’t quite believe it.

You can’t bring yourself to lie. The truth is out. You’re witnessing the fallout. There’s no point in backpedaling. “Yeah.”

He nods, once, decisively. “Okay. That’s enough.”

You sigh in relief. Maybe he’ll let you go, finally, finally.

He checks his chunky watch, the platinum flashing in the lamplight. “There’s still time.”

“Time for what?”

“For my plans tonight. Come.” He closes the distance, sweeps you into his arms again, cradles your body against him like something fragile.

“What plans? Listen—” you start to argue.

“No. Now it’s my turn to speak, and for you to listen.” he squeezes you tightly. “Today was the last day you spend alone. If you can’t live for yourself, then you can live for me, until you remember why you want to live for yourself again. No matter what you say, or what you do to get rid of me, it��s not going to work.”

You can’t even process what is happening. “What are you—?” you begin, but he cuts you off again.

His voice is strained, rough. “You love me. So you have to take responsibility. You have to stay.”

You don’t know what to say. 

I’m desperate for you tonight.

You can’t believe this. He hates you. He has hated you from the beginning. He was so kind to you because he wanted to use you for something he never bothered explaining to you. He needs you for your resonance, your amplification of his powers.

You’re irreplaceable. No one else will do.

Because of your resonance?

I don’t give a shit about the holidays, but I know you do.

He carries you along the wind-swept riverbank, through the frigid night. Stars above, stars below.

You made me watch you jump off a goddamned bridge.

You didn’t think anyone was left to care.

You were so careful, severing ties like arteries, so that you wouldn’t leave the world with more pain than you found it. It was already bleeding so much.

You just were so tired of bleeding with it.

As if sensing the turn of your thoughts, Sylus carries you to the edge of the river’ embankment, where the concrete falls away, drops into the water.

He sets you down again, but doesn’t let you go. His big hands slide down the outside of your coat, dip into your pockets.

He pulls out a smooth stone. Turns it in his hands.

“I’ll never understand how someone so light can weigh so heavily in me,” he murmurs, almost to himself. “But you’re a weight I’ll carry for as long as you let me.”

His ember eyes flick back to yours. He hands you the stone.

“This is your conviction that the world won’t miss you, if you’re gone. You will hold it in your hand, one last time. And then you will throw it in the water.” He wraps your cold fingers around the stone. Somehow, his fingers are still warm.

You grasp it, look up into his face. You see yourself in them. It hurts, to be seen so clearly. You’re so ashamed. “How did you know?”

He closes his eyes, shakes his head a little. Opens them. “I looked into your soul, the day we met. I know you’re too soft-hearted in this life to kill yourself if you thought it would hurt someone else. You don’t carry that spite, anymore.”

In this life.

Anymore.

You can’t bring yourself to ask him what he means. You only know that once again, Sylus Qin has seen inside you, has seen you, in a way no one else ever has.

“But I don’t think anyone would miss me. I made sure of it.”

He huffs. “You’re a fool, if you actually believe that. The people you’ve pushed away still love you. But if you can’t believe that yet, then you can’t pretend to yourself that you’re disposable anymore, if for no other reason than I’m standing here now, telling you that I would miss you.”

You think of Tara, sitting on your desk, nudging a steaming latte she got for you on her way to work toward you, asking if you’ve heard the latest about Simone and Andrew.

You think of Xavier, walking you to your door at the end of a nasty wanderer encounter, reaching out, brushing a bit of mud off your cheek, then smearing it across his own cheek. See, we match now.

You think of Zayne, waiting across a busy hallway, patient, letting you choose to approach him, and respecting you by letting you walk away.

You think of Raf, the beauty he shares with you with every photo, the funny strings of emoji that don’t demand an answer.

“How do you know, that they would miss me?” you ask Sylus quietly.

“I’ve been watching you for a long time, sweetie. Do you think I haven’t seen your friends’ faces when you walk away from them?”

You clutch the stone in your hand. “I don’t think I can change my thoughts, my conviction, just like that.”

“You love me, so you have to try. Throw it. Every time you try to drag it back up, I’ll remind you that you threw it away, and you can let it stay at the bottom of the river.” He reaches up, caresses your cheek with his fingertips.

You want to cry. You want to cry, because you’re so afraid. If you let yourself believe that people love you, you have to stay, for them. You have to feel, every day, the weight of grief, of existence, the pain of being alive, of being inside yourself, your body. The hollowness will return, even with your friends, even with Sylus filling most of it.

It’s like he can read your thoughts as his eyes devour your face, as his fingers tuck a lock of hair behind your ear. “I won’t let you pretend, anymore. You love me, and I will not survive if you aren’t here with me. So you have to stay. We don’t have to accept that life is a curse. We can fight back. Make it something better.”

“I’m scared,” you say.

His eyes are so tender, as he watches your mouth form your biggest truth, set it free in the night. “I will protect you, until you can protect yourself again. There’s nothing to be afraid of, if we’re together.”

You want to believe him. Your heart beats painfully behind your ribs. The moon is a sharp crescent in the sky. 

But you’re a weight I’ll carry for as long as you let me.

“You’ll really stay?”

He finally smiles, a faint Sylus smile that feels like a grin. “I told you. Today was the last day you’ll ever be alone. You can’t get rid of me now, no matter what you do, or say.”

You turn, holding the stone in your cold hands. You think of all the lies you’ve been telling yourself, about your friends, your place in their lives, because you were so tired of living with an unnameable grief, one you carried inside you long before Caleb and Josephine died, but whose loss compounded, made unbearable the original sorrow.

And I will not survive if you aren’t here with me.

You don’t know why he feels this way. Does he love you too? He hasn’t said so. Can he even love you, in the way you love him?

Does it matter? 

It’s enough, that he says he’ll stay. That he wants you to stay alive. That he’ll help remind you, when the whispers drift back in your mind, telling you that you’re just a burden, that no one actually loves you, would miss you when you’re gone. When the hollowness echoes so loudly it’s all you can hear.

You lean back, lift the stone, throw it as hard as you can, as far as you can, into the rushing river.

You don’t hear its splash over the wind.

You turn back to Sylus.

He dips into your pocket again. Pulls out another stone. “Your guilt, for having lived. For having been born.”

You take it from him. Let your mind drift. Feel along the contours of your memories, the jagged, missing pieces, all the way back to when it fades to black. You throw the stone.

You don’t see it sink to the riverbed.

He dips into your pocket again. “Your shame, for needing others. For being human, and imperfect. For not being able to do it all alone. For wanting to be loved.”

You take the stone. “Is it really okay?” you ask, helplessly. There’s no point pretending everything he is saying isn’t true. “To want these things, when I haven’t earned them?”

He steps closer to you. Places his hands on your shoulders, draws you in. “There is no okay, or not okay. There is no crime and punishment, no transgression, no sin. How can it be shameful, to want what you were born to want? Why does love have to be earned, instead of just given?”

You lean into him, press your face into his chest, his thick wool coat soft against your skin.

“I don’t know.”

He reaches into your pocket, places a stone in your other hand. “One for your shame, one for the idea that love must be earned. Throw them.”

You lean back again, and it’s already too far away from him. But you throw each stone, and they disappear under the cold water.

“That’s enough, for now. We’ll take the rest home.” He draws you back into his arms. Lifts you without effort, stone-filled pockets and all. The weight of all of you.  “When you have thoughts of shame, of guilt, of not being loved, we’ll come back. You’ll throw them again. Until they’re all gone. We’ll gather other stones, when other feelings make life unbearable. I’ll come with you, as many times as you need.”

Sylus carries you along the path back to the road that snakes along the river. His motorcycle gleams under a bright lamppost.

He settles a helmet on your head, checks to make sure it’s secure. Puts his own on. You sit behind him, cling to him. Rest your head against his broad back, close your eyes. The motorcycle is loud, and he drives it carefully through the busy, holiday bustling streets, until he reaches your apartment building. He holds your hand as he leads you through the front doors, as he stands quietly beside you in the elevator, his red, warm eyes never leaving your face in the elevator mirrors. He leads you to your front door, waits patiently while you unlock it with your cold finger.

In the hallway, he kneels at your feet, unlaces your tall boots while you look down at him, the soft fall of his silver hair, his big, nimble fingers working the laces.

He then removes his own boots. His coat. He’s wearing a garishly bright Christmas sweater, with prancing reindeer. He hangs his coat on a peg in the wall. He turns, slowly unzips yours. Eyes flicking between the zipper and your face. He gently lifts it from your body, again like it’s weightless, even though it’s still filled with stones. He pulls it from your arms, hangs it next to his.

He pulls you further into your place.

The first thing you notice is the warmth. It’s so warm, like someone came in while you were gone and turned on the heating.

The next thing you notice is the Christmas tree. The one you didn’t get this year, because the thought of the holidays without Caleb and your grandmother was unbearable.

Beautifully, tastefully decorated. Silver and gold, twinkling lights. Its pine scent fills your place.

Sylus moves to a record player on one of the cabinets along your living room wall. A record player that wasn’t here before you went to work today. He fiddles with the arm, and suddenly Joni Mitchell’s River fills your house.

It’s coming on Christmas

They’re cutting down trees

They're putting up reindeer

And singing songs of joy and peace

Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

He walks back to you. “Is this okay?”

I wish I had a river so long

I would teach my feet to fly

Whoa I wish I had a river I could skate away on

The music flows around you, paralyzing you. You stare into his face, into the warm glow of his eyes. How could you have missed this? The way he’s looking at you now? Through all the long months since the auction?

He tried hard to help me

You know, he put me at ease

And he loved me so naughty

Made me weak in the knees

Oh, I wish I had a river I could skate away on

The words wash over you, through you. The scent of pine warms you, memories without form filling you with the sense of home, safety, love.

I made my baby cry

I'm so hard to handle

I'm selfish and I'm sad

Now I've gone and lost the best baby

That I ever had

Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

He takes your hands in his, thumbs across your skin. “Is it too much?”

You think of how cold it was, standing on the guardrail of the bridge. 

You were running toward the bridge, while Sylus was filling your home with warmth.

What would have happened if I hadn’t already been on my way to you?

You think of him spreading out on your couch, as a fever raged through your body. You think of your freezer, filled with food. You think of the takeout boxes, still steaming, sitting in front of your closed door.

You think of him hanging delicate ornaments on a fragrant tree. 

I made my baby cry

You shake your head, the enormity of what almost happened filling you. The enormity of the choice you made, that you enacted, until Sylus pulled you back from the rushing dark.

You start to shake.

“Kitten?”

“It’s not too much,” you say, teeth chattering. “It’s wonderful. Thank you.”

He stares down at you, seems to make a decision. “Shower. Now.”

You nod, moving away from him, but he follows. 

Inside your small bathroom, he takes up the entire space. He peels off your hunter’s uniform, tosses it beyond the open bathroom door. His gaze flicks from your undershirt, your underwear, to your face. “Do you want me to leave?”

You think of the dark water, an impact that never came. Sylus plugging in the record player, choosing a record with one of your favorite Christmas songs on it. Placing it delicately on the turntable.

“No. You promised you’d never leave me alone again.”

He smiles a little. “I mean, leave the bathroom.”

“No. You promised you’d never leave me alone again,” you repeat.

He stares into your eyes. Nods. Lifts your undershirt. He reaches behind you, unhooks your bra with the same agility that he unlaced your boots. He lifts it from your body, watches you as he lifts it to his nose, inhales.

You shiver.

He tosses the bra behind him. Kneels. Pulls your underwear from your hips, down your legs. You step out of them. He stands again.

He leans over, his ridiculous, festive sweater soft against your cheek, as he reaches past you to turn on the shower faucet. As he messes with the knobs until steam begins to fill the small space. He nudges you forward, past the sliding glass door and into the small shower cabin, letting the hot water pour over you. You turn, watch him through the clear glass. He picks up your underwear, watches you as he lifts it to his nose, inhales as he did with your bra. His eyes close for a moment, and then open. He tucks the little slip of fabric into his pants pocket, sits on the closed toilet, rests his elbows on his knees, and continues to watch you.

You let the hot water flow over your tired, cold body. You stare at Sylus’s face, let it fill your vision, blot out the rushing river, the impact that never came, the idea of everything you would have missed, if he hadn’t pulled you out. Everything you would have missed, in such a short amount of time. What else would you miss, if he hadn’t caught you? If he could give you so much within an hour, how much would you have missed in a day? In a week?

What have you been fighting, this whole time? 

Just yourself. 

You think of the stones at the bottom of the riverbed, instead of your body. Your conviction that you’re not loved, your guilt, your shame, instead of you.

You stare at the man who handed you each one, and told you to get rid of them, instead of yourself. The man sitting in your tiny bathroom, filling it with his big body, his even bigger presence, staring at you, staring at him.

You stop shaking.

Reach for the body wash, lather your hands. Run your hands along your body, under your armpits. He frowns, eyes on your hands. You palm your breasts, dip between your legs.

He lowers his head, eyes still on your hands, rests his full lips on his long steepled fingers.

You finish lathering your body, let the water wash it away. He’s too far away, even this close, on the other side of the glass.

As you turn off the water, he stands, lifts one of your towels from the rack. Holds it out for you. You step into it, him, let him wrap it around you. He turns you both, so that you’re looking in the bathroom mirror, which is mostly fogged.

“Better?” he asks.

You nod, soaking in his warmth at your back, the steam of the bathroom. 

You have a question, a question you can’t bring yourself to say out loud yet.

You reach out with one hand. Trace a finger through the fogged mirror.

Sylus watches you, resting his chin on your shoulder. 

Letters, a question.

Do you like me? Circle yes or no

Sylus smiles again, lifts an eyebrow. He reaches out, takes your hand in his. He circles no with your finger.

You frown, heart sinking, but Sylus just whispers, “Patience, kitten,” and flattens your palm across like. Guides your finger again, just above the erased like, drags it through the moisture in an elegant script.

love

He then gently sets your hand down. Lifts his own, circles with one long finger, yes.

He watches your reaction in the mirror.

You had no idea.

This whole time, you had no idea, even though he was showing you, with every ‘chance’ encounter, his pestering you with questions about work, life, his silly stories about the N109 Zone. His packages at your door. Fever medication, a big glass of water shoved into your hands.

You think of the rushing water, what almost happened. What you almost missed.

“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you let me believe you still hated me?”

He looks down at you now, away from your reflection in the mirror. His eyes trail your face, down your curved neck. He palms the back of your neck, his thumb drifting along the side, over a mole there.

“Have you heard of the myth that where we have moles is where someone kissed us in a past life?”

Even if so much has changed between you in just the last few hours, you’re reassured that Sylus Qin still can’t answer a straightforward question with a straightforward answer.

You shake your head. “No, I had never heard of that.”

Sylus smiles, and it looks a little sad. He leans down, presses the softest of kisses against your skin, the mole there. “Like most human legends, it’s a pretty lie. Not quite true.”

You laugh. “I could have guessed as much.” You tilt your neck, enjoying the press of his warm lips on your skin for the first time.

He opens his mouth, runs his teeth over where he just kissed you. Bites, gently.

You shiver again. Press your neck into, instead of away from his teeth.

He bites harder.

You gasp.

“I was afraid I’d frighten you with the enormity of my feelings for you, when in your mind, we’d only just met,” he murmurs against your neck, his saliva, the indentation of his teeth hot on your skin.

He bites again, presses himself into your ass through the towel. You realize he’s hard.

You forget about the last part of his sentence. Had you not only just met?

You lift your hands, let the towel unfurl from around your body, let it drop to the floor.

You almost died tonight.

What have you been fighting this whole time?

Just yourself. 

He tried hard to help me

You know, he put me at ease

You turn in his arms. He’s breathing hard, cheeks pink.

“You love me?”

He closes his eyes. Opens them. Shakes his head. “Love isn’t intense enough.”

“Adore me?” You lift your arms, wrap them around his neck. Pull his face closer to your own.

He shakes his head again. “Still not enough.”

“You won’t survive without me?” You lift on your toes, his soft sweater almost unbearable against your sensitive nipples.

He nods. “You’re getting closer. Can’t breathe without you. When I saw you jump…” He swallows, thickly. “You might as well have pulled me down with you, beloved. If it ever gets to be too much again, take me with you. I’ll never leave you alone again. Promise me the same,” he demands, big, calloused hands running up your naked sides, the fabric of his dark jeans rough against your body, where your thighs meet, as he helplessly nudges against you again with his hips, his hard dick behind his zipper.

I'm so hard to handle

I'm selfish and I'm sad

“I wouldn’t have known, unless you told me,” you breathe against his lips. “Promise that you’ll tell me how you’re feeling from now on, and I’ll promise to take you with me if I can’t leave the stones in the riverbed, even with you here.”

His voice is deep, rough like the fabric of his pants against your sensitive skin. “Deal.” He closes the distance, presses his soft lips to yours. Licks into your mouth.

And he loved me so naughty

Made me weak in the knees

His hands drift down your sides as his tongue dips into your throat, as he swallows your noises of pleasure, just from kissing him, his hands on you. He grips your ass, urges your legs around his waist. He carries you out of the tiny, steaming bathroom, manages not to knock you against the doorway, or into any furniture on the way to your bedroom, even as he continues to kiss you, as your hands in his soft hair probably block his peripheral view. He lays you down on your bed, the puff of your duvet. It’s so warm in your place that you’re not even shivering. You watch as he pulls his cheerful sweater and undershirt over his head, tosses them to the floor. As he unzips himself, hastily yanks down his pants and boxers, his socks. He blankets you with his big body.

You wrap your arms around him, pull him tightly to you, arch your breasts into his chest. He leans down, runs his nose along your cheek, inhales the scent of your hair at your temple. You just feel each other, for a long stretch of time. His soft chest hair against your skin, the silken skin of his dick between your thighs where he just leisurely rubs himself against you, as your palms run down the muscles of his back, the line of his spine. You’ve refused to think of him like this, ever since he wrapped his hand around your throat. You couldn’t bear his beauty, through all the long months that followed. You fled, every time your heart raced at the flash of silver as he approached you, met you where you were, over and over and over.

But now he says he has loved you, through it all. That he’ll never leave you alone again.

You let yourself feel him, under your hands, under your tongue, as you lick into his ear, feel him shiver. As you squeeze your thighs together, offering him a tight, snug space for him to keep pleasuring himself, as you feel your own wetness begin to coat your inner thighs, his cock, the longer you feel him on top of you, inhale the scent of his skin, the ever-present gun oil, the cloves, his clean sweat underneath it all.

After a lifetime, or only a few minutes, he leans down, says softly into your ear. “I want you. Tell me you want me too.”

“Can’t you tell?” you ask, bucking a little, squeezing him with your legs again.

He makes a low, pleasured sound in his throat. “I want to hear you say it. You’ve gone through a lot tonight. I need to know you actually want this. That you’re not just—” his breath hitches, as you move your hips again, as his dick slips between your wet, soft places. “That you’re not too tired to say otherwise, not thinking straight.”

“Use your Aether Core on me. Then you’ll know that my body is telling you what my mouth would, if I said the words.” You smile at him, teasing. 

I wish I had a river so long

I would teach my feet to fly

You had wanted to fly. You had settled for flying for a brief moment, before shattering. 

But Sylus is offering you constant flight, under, over, along his crow’s wings.

You think of the rushing water. The tide of cars behind you, the wind whipping your hair. You almost missed this. You don’t want to waste any more time.

He lowers his forehead to yours, breathes, speaks against your saliva-slick lips with his own. “I don’t want to use my Aether Core on you. I want the words in your mouth, in your heart. I want your free will, your freely given consent. I almost lost you because I tried to force you, at the beginning. You believed I hated you, this whole time. Don’t ask me to force you again, my heart.”

You understand. You accept his request, his demand. “I want you, Sylus.”

He exhales, shifts above you, slips his wet cock between your legs, slides into your body with gentle, firm, graceful waves of his hips.

You whine, the feeling of fullness layering into the pleasure of the warmth of his skin, the taste of his tongue. For once, the feelings inside you threatening to burst out of your skin are so good, instead of painful, so pleasurable, that you can barely stand it. 

He kisses you, his velvet tongue big, heavy in your mouth. You suck, whine again as he lifts a hand, palms your breast, begins to thrust into you.

You are filled with him. His warmth. The size of him.

You widen your legs, wrap them around his thick ass. Urge him with your own body to move faster, to fuck you harder. He gives you everything you want. Just the pressure of his body against yours has you coming, the release bright, sudden—you shake with it.

Your pleasure seems to trigger his. He grunts, roots into you, buries his teeth in your neck, bites where he bit you before, over the mole on your neck. The sting makes you clench, and he whimpers, groans, comes with a jerk of his hips.

He slows, still filling you, still pleasuring you, as he lifts his head to look into your eyes.

You stare at each other, breath mingling, warm between you. 

You smile at him. 

He smiles at you. Nudges your nose with his.

“Can we do that again?” you ask.

He laughs, low and surprised. “Yeah,” he says, kissing you softly. “Just tell me, and I’m yours, anytime, anyplace.”

“I’m telling you.” You move your hips, feel his cum drip drown your ass. Feel him gasp at your movement.

“Now?” He’s surprised again.

“Problem?” you grin at him. 

“Fuck no.” He kisses you, hard. Slips out of you. Flips you over, lifts your hips with one big hand, pressing his other between your shoulder blades.

He presses his cock back between your legs, the slide easy and wet, and fucks you until you come again, until he blankets your back with his sweat-slicked, matted-hair chest.

“Was that enough, your highness?” he teases.

“I’m telling you,” you pant, wondering what he’ll do. 

“As you wish,” he murmurs, before flipping you again. Before watching your face as he slowly, leisurely works himself, his cum into you, makes you come again. 

In the morning, the sky through your windows is heavy, dark, gray. You wake slowly. Turn your head, find Sylus’s sleeping face next to yours on the pillow. He’s lying on his stomach. You take in the dark sweep of his lashes, his generous mouth, slightly parted.

You slip out of the bed, use the bathroom. You wander into the living room, gaze at the Christmas tree, its twinkling lights.

It’s Christmas.

Caleb and your grandmother are dead. 

But you’re still alive.

Your body aches from Sylus’s efforts, but it feels good. For once, it feels good to be inside your body. To breathe deeply.

You think of riverstones, sinking deep in the riverbed.

You know that the feelings tied to them will try to rise, clawing to the surface again.

We’ll gather other stones, when your feelings make life unbearable. I’ll come with you, as many times as you need.

Your eyes drift to the top of the Christmas tree. It’s empty.

“I thought we should finish it together.” Sylus’s warm arms wrap around you from behind. He leans over your shoulder, kisses your cheek softly. “Do you want to do the honors?”

You smile, wrapping your hands over his forearms around your waist. “You’re taller.”

“Use me as much as you like, kitten.” He turns, grabs a pretty golden glass tree-topper from your kitchen table, hands it to you. He lifts you up onto one shoulder, easily, and you fit it gently over the highest point of the tree. He holds you against him, as he lowers you. You slide along his body, until he sets you gently on your feet again.

You both stand, admiring it for a moment. It’s beautiful, like the rest of the decorations.

You hug him, look up into his face.

“Merry Christmas, Sylus.”

He smiles down at you, ruby eyes twinkling with reflected light from the tree. 

You would have missed this moment, and all the moments like it, if Sylus hadn’t stopped you last night. You shudder, hug him more tightly. 

You know your feelings will return. That no one person can solve a lifetime of wounds. But you promised him that you’d try. That you’d stay. You can only do your best.

You hear your phone vibrating, reluctantly pull away from him, head to your coat in the hallway where you thought you left it last night, but Sylus stops you. He points at your kitchen island. Your phone is lying on the counter. You look at him in confusion, but go to check it.

You’re shocked at how many missed texts you have.

From Tara.

Xavier.

Your eyes widen.

Zayne, who you thought you had blocked, months ago.

Rafayel, who you’re sure you blocked last night.

Each one is a response from a text you never sent. Telling them Merry Christmas. Telling them you love them. Telling them you hope to spend time with them soon.

None of them shame you, call you out on your behavior of the last year. Even Zayne simply suggests that you try a new bakery, that you’ve been in his thoughts, that he’s relieved you felt comfortable enough to reach out. Rafayel sends a bunch of firework emojis, suggests blowing shit up on the beach for New Year’s.

You turn to Sylus.

He looks steadily back at you, silver hair sleep-tousled, wine-bright eyes glowing.

Your eyes feel hot, and you realize you’re crying, the tears fat on your cheeks, dripping down your neck. 

This is the first time you’ve cried since you woke up, your ears deafening, Caleb’s necklace bright in the reflected fire.

Sylus walks over to you. Leans down, licks the tears from your cheeks with his warm tongue, one after the other. He kisses you, ignoring your suddenly snotty nose, your morning breath.

“If it’s too much, we can take it slow. We can throw more stones in the river. But please answer your friends. You need them. And you’re a fool, if you can’t see that they need you too, if that makes you feel better about your own need.”

You continue to cry as you wrap your arms around Sylus’s neck. As he gently sways with you, to music that isn’t playing. He hums, and you think it’s Joni Mitchell’s The River, but you can’t be sure. You smile against his chest.

A thought occurs to you.

“Last night, you said there was still time. That you had plans for us, a pretty dress for me. What did we miss?”

Sylus sighs, holds you closer against himself. “Don’t worry about it.”

You stop, look up into his face. “What did you have planned, Sylus? Are you sorry we missed it?”

He smiles at you. “Oh yes, so sorry I got to spend all night fucking you instead of going to a holiday concert featuring the organ.” His voice drips sarcasm. “But we can go tonight, if you’d like to make it up to me.”

You laugh, bury your face back into his chest. “And here I had planned to suck your cock while watching a black and white Christmas film marathon tonight,” you say forlornly. You smile into his chest as he chokes. “Oh well, the concert it is.”

He just laughs, rich and deep, and continues to sway you slowly in your living room.

“Merry Christmas, my heart,” Sylus says against your hair, in your pine scented apartment, as snow begins to fall outside your windows, as your phone continues to vibrate, filled with the love of your friends.

Here you are. Again.

You’re so grateful, to be here, again.

[isa-ghost]

I fully agree with this (/genuine). And I do wish people would stop using it because of the historical-and-still-current context behind the phrase.

But I am curious about what OP's opinion is about a take I see a lot in defense of using the phrase as a quirky (perhaps even cringe) positive phrase. I've seen loads of people say "well over time words/phrases/images can get a new context behind them that overwrites (but doesn't erase) the previous bad one. It takes power away from the people who use [thing] in a derogatory way." Basically the same kinda logic we use when reclaiming slurs, I guess? Maybe that's too extreme of a comparison though, I dunno. Another example I thought of is how Tupperware is (was?) a company, but we call *all* plastic containers similar to that Tupperware, which completely diminished the company's sway over product competition since it became a blanket term. I'm probably oversimplifying that a bit but it was another interesting educational post I read on here ages ago. I tried looking for it on my blog but the only thing that came up was the post about how they went bankrupt.

Anyway, to an extent I agree with the idea of "new positive context," but like with basically everything, I think there's nuance to it. I think there are times where changing the context behind something simply doesn't work and/or shouldn't be the route people go down, period. And of course there are instances where people abuse the idea and use it as justification for shit they shouldn't. Same kinda deal as "death to the author."

But also the internet (and perhaps younger queers in general in this case?) has a terrible habit of completely disregarding important context or at the very least not acknowledging/respecting said context to the degree they should, if they do so at all. And I'm as sick of that as plenty of other people are.

So I guess that is to say I can see both sides of the argument and am curious to hear if OP (or anyone else) has some additional info that I lack? If there's things about this I can be taught beyond "hey this is an ongoing issue, stop enabling the people who seek to use it to harm us by using it like it's something cute and quirky," I'd really like to learn what those points may be. Especially because then I could take those myself and further spread the word by educating people just like OP.

I think once upon a time I was actually a "we can reclaim this with a new positive context and take the power away from the people who use it to do harm" person myself but then I came across posts like this one and actually put some real thought into the topic and changed my mind? (I say that with uncertainty because I don't actually remember ever explicitly agreeing with takes in favor of the positive context use). Which is another reason I'd appreciate further discussion about why this is a case where "new positive context" shouldn't be the way people go about it. The stronger the argument for it, the better or whatever, right?

Also I'd like to provide a precautionary clarification that I'm asking OP/anyone else here if they have additional insight instead of "googling around" or something myself because I personally tend not to trust stuff like that since misinformation is so rampant, especially with how common the use of ai-generated bullshit is. It's also, in my opinion, better to hear things directly from people you Know for certain are from [group] or have experience with [thing]. I digress.

i fear the battle is lost at this point but i still flinch every time i see "gay panic" used as a cute positive phrase. Like let's go on say wikipedia.org for a second and try typing that one in folks

edit: i caved and looked in the notes and my god you people are stupid. Stop talking about this like it's ancient history. The gay/trans panic defense is quite literally still legal in the majority of the US. Look at this map since you apparently don't have wikipedia or like any kind of search engine on your computers

[tra-archive]

Please read this whole post and reblog it, radblr. I don’t want anyone to forget this happened to me and I also don’t want anyone to forget how disgusting the TRA community is.

Next month, it’ll be one year since I was harassed, doxxed, and targeted by a disgusting person and their sick followers. I won’t say their name because they still have a cult following, but if you need a hint, look up the drama with photomatt in February 2024.

On my old account, an anon told me about an account getting banned from tumblr and the ensuing chaos from TRAs. I answered the ask and posted a picture of the person’s new account so radblr could block if they needed to. I had no idea who this person was until I got that anon ask, just to be clear.

The person found the post and reblogged it, accusing me of being the one who led a “targeted harassment campaign” against them and got their account banned, and told their followers “you know what to do” or something like that. Keep in mind, I didn’t know who this person was at all so I obviously wasn’t the one who got them banned. I also *gasp* didn’t use their preferred pronouns, so that was a huge scandal as well.

After that, their followers began to harass me and send violent threats to my inbox. (Edit: oh and this evil person accused me of sending them to myself for attention, which is so fucked up and misogynistic I don’t even have words for it.) Here’s the worst one that I still have trauma from to this day:

My account was then termed by tumblr. I made a new account and called for radblr to report the account for sending their followers to harass me. Well, this made everything worse because the hate I got on this new account was a thousand times worse. This person’s minions created multiple posts about me (look up m3nrbad for proof, that was the account name). There were hundreds of comments calling me misogynistic slurs and calling for me to be doxxed and even lynched. They also found my Reddit account and harassed me there too. I even got a few text messages to my PHONE NUMBER. I have no idea how this evil person’s followers got ahold of it, but I changed my number and my mother took me to buy a new phone just to be safe. Here’s what one of them said about me, encouraging their followers to false report me:

A short while after this, the evil person’s blog was termed again and they were (I think) IP banned from all of tumblr. The CEO photomatt threatened to take legal action against them. It had nothing to do with me, but I can’t lie, it felt so good seeing that happen to them after the hell they put me through. Here’s me reacting to the news:

TRAs on tumblr of course threw a hissy fit and attacked Matt for months because their leader was banned. They also acted like this person was being systemically oppressed by tumblr of all fucking places. Keep in mind this person is white and born male, acting as if they were so oppressed by a website.

I eventually deleted that other blog and made this one. I spent hours and hours blocking every single person who reblogged, liked, and commented on posts about me, as well as blocking almost every one of a big tra’s followers. I was determined to stop being harassed.

Anyway, I know I shouldn’t be dwelling on this because it’s just internet drama, but people still worship this person and act like they’re such a poor victim, and in reality that’s not true. That month was hell for me and my actual safety was threatened. If it wasn’t for some of you gyns being so amazing and funny on here, I would’ve never come back to radblr.

Thanks for reading all the way through.

-Sirona

[wandixx]

"There is only so much you can for the dead" part 2

continuation to this, I should probably make an original title at some point

trigger warnings: graphic describtion of Danny's death

Moments of blissed, deadly stillness felt unfairly short. It was less than blink of an eye, less than a drop of darkness after he asked Team for the last time to leave and before he woke up, in exactly same state that he was when portal spat him out. He could barely perceive his limbs, and what he could, was consumed by agonising pain.

Fuck, he hated Death Days. Absolutely horrible experience.

His nerves were on fire, electricity dancing and burning across them. His veins and lungs and nostrils and ears and stomach and eyes and mouth and every little crevice of his body was filled with ectoplasm, like liquid fire and evaporated ice, drowning him at every attempted breath. He was crushed by an unimaginable weight, at the same time as his body exploded. He was just coherent enough to feel his bones breaking, cells bursting, his very molecules being rearranged and destroyed and rebuilt but not coherent enough to tell if his scream was anything louder than a whimper.

He was in the middle of the crowd that screamed louder than he could handle, as if every person who ever got to Ghost Zone used this exact moment to let out all of their anguish, hands dragging and pulling and squeezing and brushing at every inch of his skin. He was alone like no one was ever before, in silence that was deafening. He could be stomped to death any second without anyone turning his head, and so separate from everything that he could be only existing being.

He couldn’t help but wait for Death, merciless and brutal, whose twisted children invaded his bed time stories since he could understood words, whose corrupted children he was taught to hate. She was hideous and horrifying, but against everything, she was familiar and he wanted, needed, to see one intimate face in the situation that was so wrong, wrong, wrong. He waited for her to rip his last breath away so everything would stop.

If he had a scrap of himself that could feel worse, it’d cry when he felt her getting away from him, slipping between the fingers that were both tense and limp, impossible to control but possible to feel, broken and twitching. She was getting away but pain wasn’t lessening, maybe even getting worse, to the point where it was only thing that filled his brain.

And then it all stopped. No pain, not even any left over typical to how injuries worked, just a moment of weird pressure against his palm (just like the button), that soon stopped too.

He was in his human form, but in the hazmat he wore just before the accident. Something was wrong about it all. Something in his body made it feel like not his. Something in his chest was too light and too quiet and some intrusive thought made him want to claw on his rib cage until he ripped it open and realized what was missing.

Breathing seemed to easy, enough that he got lightheaded. It got a lot harder when he realized.

He couldn’t feel his core.

Before he managed to come to terms with that, there was a gentle pressure on his hand again.

And the pain returned.

*-*-*

Danny didn't wake up abruptly, with a choked scream and phantom burns. He also didn't wake up slowly, not in the nice, relaxed way at least, when the line between dream and reality is blurred beyond recognition. He woke up in pain, feeling like he wasn't even sleeping before, just… somewhere else while his body was destroying itself again for what felt like decades.

It took some effort to connect with his body after he woke up. To be able to move even a finger. Even longer, to open his eyes. Actual ages to sit up without urge to scream.

After seeing the absolute wreckage of the room, he kinda wished it took him longer. It looked like a warzone. Electrical burns on the walls and ceiling, random puddles of bubbling ectoplasm eating away anything they touched like an acid, and what little stuff there was before, was almost all broken beyond recognition, either by whatever force was doing its thing during his death day show or ecto. When he looked at it a bit more, it seemed to go in spiral around him.

It was kinda sad that the cookies went to waste like that. He was curious who brought them in though.

Thank fucking Ancients that Team listened to him and nobody was there when the whole mess was going down. They would probably join him on the other side of the veil otherwise.

He saw it all only because of his ghost enhanced in dark vision (thank Ancients he stayed in the ghost form) because apparently his Death Day shorted out both main electrical circuit and the emergency one. Thankfully, according to his ears, it only reached this and rooms next to him, instead of the whole Mountain.

Fuck. He really hoped Robin gave him some sort of back-up back-up room because otherwise he was dead. Or well, dead-er.

He rolled out of the bed, barely catching himself from smacking on the floor like a sack of potatoes. Though some would argue he didn’t catch himself if only his face didn’t fall to the floor like the sack of potatoes.

Only then he caught sight of big, ecto-green circle that embed itself into the wall right over the bed. It had familiar vibes. Really familiar…

He had to tell the Team about it yesterday.

*-*-*

M'gann was sitting on the needles, just like everyone else. Sure, Phantom asked them to forget about him and essentially ignore whatever was happening to him, but there was no way they'd actually be able to do it. Case in point, first time alarms about shorting out of the electrical circuit in the room. They run there so fast that they had door open to see what was wrong before the absolute onslaught of electricity and ectoplasm and something else turned off the alarms thirty seconds later. Truth be told, they couldn’t do much, not without risking becoming second ghostly member of the Team, they’ve been there and ready. Conner tried to come in anyway, with his invulnerability and such, but they had to drag him out when despite extensive dodging he got hit five times by the time he got two steps into the room. Also, there wasn’t really anything he could do to help.

So they just spent last almost twenty hours alternating between different things to keep themselves occupied enough to not fall asleep and distract themselves from quilt but not enough to not be able to drop it at the moments notice if it was needed. First plan was to nap in shifts if it was necessary but it quickly became apparent that sleep was impossible with how worried everyone was and when M'gann proposed to just shut down their brains with her powers, everyone got really defensive. Well, no was no. So they just sat, at the moment in awkward silence because every topic that wasn't Phantom felt too inane and every topic that was Phantom felt too… just no. No name for why, just no.

M'gann was about to get up to make another batch of peanut butter and oatmeal snacks that took few minutes to make and could be dropped at any second, when Conner practically jumped in his seat, tilting his head to hear better. Robin perked up from whatever he was doing on his wrist computer at the same time.

"Phantom left the room!” they exclaimed at the same time, jumping out of their seats.

This head start didn’t matter by the time everyone ran or flew out to the corridor, racing against clock to the room where they left Phantom. It didn’t seems so before, but now M’gann just cursed their past selves for not waiting somewhere closer. There wasn’t really any place where they could stay instead, unless they set camp right outside his door, but it still. They should be there five minutes ago, like Wally, who obviously run off.

They heard Wally speaking before they’ve seen him.

“Hey, hey calm down. It’s fine, they’ll be there in a second, just chill. They’re right after me, whatever happened, we’ll help you in just a moment, you don’t have to run. You’re barely standing. Phantom, calm down”

M’gann barely made it around the corner and she thought she had seen Kaldur actually smacking into the wall. He brushed it off.

Phantom looked beyond rough. It seemed like Wally, who had ghost’s arm across his shoulders, was only thing holding him up. His feet were firmly on the ground, not in his usual way, when he looked just a breeze away from flying, but in this fully human way, which was unsettling. His face was gray instead of his usual almost tan, eyes wide and terrified.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he muttered, not looking at anyone in particular “I’m sorry, I’m sorry”

“Phantom, it’s fine. It’s fine, we know about the room, it’s fine,” Robin said, trying to placate him. It didn’t quite work. Ghost was on the verge of hyperventilating, which was a bit weird to see on someone for who breathing was voluntary.

“It’s not about room”

“I’m sure it’s fine anyway”

“It’s anything but. I’m sorry-”

“Shut up and tell us what happened if you’re so sure we will be pissed”

“Artemis!”

“Portal”

“What about it?”

“Portal is what killed me.”

M’gann didn’t like how the whole situation looked before, but it suddenly became much worse.

“My Death Day made another one”

[rose24207]

Just a Salesman

Summary: Your perfect world shatters when a furious stranger bursts into your home, accusing your loving, devoted husband of being a monster responsible for countless deaths.

Genre: angst

TW: swearing, mention of death

A/N: Posting sm today wow. English is not my first language. I hope you enjoy it though! Requests are open and welcome!

Masterlist

You always believed in the goodness of people. Growing up in a small, close-knit town had shaped you that way.

You’d been the type to bake cookies for the elderly neighbor down the street, rescue stray animals, and donate whatever you could to people in need. When you met your husband, it felt like a gift from the universe.

He was everything you thought you’d never deserve: charismatic, attentive, and so gentle with you it made your heart ache. He would listen intently to your rambles about work, surprise you with your favorite pastries from the café downtown, and hold you close on cold nights when the world seemed too overwhelming.

You hadn’t known much about his work—“sales” was all he ever said—but it didn’t matter. He always came home to you, and that was enough. You admired how he seemed to understand people so easily, reading emotions and desires with an almost uncanny precision. He was your safe harbor, and you were his soft place to land.

But what made your marriage unique wasn’t just the way he made you feel; it was the way you balanced him. Where he was logical and composed, you were emotional and empathetic. If he brushed off a stranger’s plight with practicality, you’d step in with a warm smile and offer help. He often teased you about your boundless kindness, calling you “his little bleeding heart,” but his tone was always fond.

“You’re too good for this world,” he’d whisper sometimes, brushing your hair behind your ear. You’d laugh, kissing his cheek.

“And you’re my world,” you’d reply, never missing the way his gaze softened.

You were blissfully unaware that the man you loved and trusted so completely was hiding a shadowy part of himself, one that was entirely at odds with the person you knew.

It was a chilly winter evening when your life began to unravel. You’d just finished preparing dinner, humming to yourself as you set the table for two, the flicker of candlelight adding warmth to the cozy living room.

Your husband had called earlier, saying he’d be late, but you didn’t mind waiting.

The knock at the door came suddenly, jolting you out of your thoughts. Expecting it to be a neighbor or a delivery, you opened it with your usual bright smile, only to find a man standing there, his face lined with rage and exhaustion.

“Can I help you?” you asked kindly, though his expression unnerved you.

“You already have,” he muttered darkly, stepping inside uninvited. “Where is he?”

“I’m sorry—who are you talking about?” you stammered, retreating a step.

“Your husband,” he spat, his voice trembling with barely contained fury. “Where is that bastard hiding?”

“I think you’ve made a mistake,” you said gently, though your hands were shaking. “My husband hasn’t hurt anyone. He’s just a salesman.”

“A salesman,” the man repeated with a bitter laugh. He fished a small card from his pocket and slammed it onto the table. You glanced at it, confused by the cryptic design.

“He gave me this,” the man continued. “And because of him, I had to watch people die. Because of him, my friends are dead! You’re married to a killer!”

The words pierced through you like shards of ice. “That’s impossible,” you whispered. “My husband would never—”

“Open your eyes, lady!” he shouted, making you flinch. “Do you even know who you’re married to?”

Before you could respond, the door creaked open again. Your husband stepped inside, his eyes immediately locking onto the stranger.

“Gi-hun,” he said calmly, closing the door behind him. “It’s been a while.”

Your heart sank as you turned to your husband, his usual warmth replaced with a cold, calculating smile you’d never seen before.

“What’s going on?” you asked, your voice trembling.

“Go to the bedroom,” he said softly, but there was an edge to his tone that made your blood run cold.

“No,” you said, shaking your head. “Not until you tell me what this is about. Why is he saying these things?”

The room was tense, the air thick with unspoken truths. Gi-hun’s fury burned hotter as he stepped closer.

“She doesn’t even know, does she?” he sneered. “You’ve been lying to her this whole time.”

Your husband’s jaw tightened. “This isn’t her concern.”

“She’s your wife! She deserves to know the kind of monster she’s married to!”

“Enough,” your husband snapped, his voice firm but not raised. He turned to you, his expression softening just slightly. “Go upstairs, sweetheart. Please.”

You stood frozen, torn between obeying the man you loved and demanding answers. The tears in your eyes blurred your vision as the image of your perfect life began to crumble around you.

Thank you for reading!

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

In Regards To Your 2024 Summary:

Holy shit it’s been another year????? The hell?????

Also! Your art style is gorgeous and that being found in 2023 and then refined throughout late 2023 and the entirety of 2024 really shows, as does your growth in panel layouts, perspective, and — as you said — experimentation. If you ever post your animation or video game art I’m looking forward to it.

As cheesy as it sounds, being able to laugh at funny comics and look at all the details of your art really made my 2024 brighter, even when things were hard. Including looking at your older art— it doesn’t need to be new to be enjoyable! I’m glad your art is well loved and it’s a privilege to have been here since the (near) beginning. I hope you take care of yourself in 2025 and beyond!

You and your art bring a lot of people a lot of joy never forget that <3

Thank you so much for keeping up with my art journey throughout these last two years! Two years!!! I am baffled at how that feels both too long and too short!

Admittedly, my art summary didn't manage to capture the fact that I did a lot of comic layouts that I'm really proud of. I also drew more backgrounds and made some very detailed works (*Dungeon Meshi spoilers for these examples*).

The growth is lot more evident when comparing my 'best' comics of 2023 to 2024:

Sometimes the growth is vertical, sometimes it is horizontal - and damn, sometimes it goes out of sight into the Z-plane. But it is always happening!

[unholybacon355]

What's under my christmas tree?

Shin Ryujin x Male Reader

Word Count: 6 K

TW: Incest.

A/N:

I have to say some important things.

First, they are deeply wrong and damaged. Please notice that.

Second. I was supposed to release this on christmas eve but things happened so I'm posting it now.

And third, this is the continuation of Day 1 of my Kinktober stories. You don't need to read that after this, since is a short story gives zero context to this one. But if you want to read it you can find it on my profile.

And last one. This was supposed to be a one shot, but I thing would be better if I split it in two. So second chapter is coming soon.

CHAPTER ONE

Another family dinner, as the thousand you have had since you’re alive, nothing special about this one that makes it memorable. Just a complete normal family dinner with your dad, your mom, and your older sister. Everything normal, nothing to care about, not at all. Just the usual things like Ryujin making fun of you for being a loser and not getting bitches. She is loving messing with you while she’s rubbing her foot against your crotch under the table. Just a totally normal Christmas dinner with your family.

You’re hard and nervous at the same time. You want to take off your pants and let your sister perform a proper footjob, but for obvious reasons you can’t do that in the middle of the family dinner. She knows that and you can see in her deep brown eyes that that is exactly the reason why she’s messing with you right now.

You can remember exactly how this insane side of your relationship started. Was years ago during one of your vacation that she found you smelling an used pair of panties. You thought it was from one of her friends, Chaeryeong, who was with your family on that vacation. But ended up being one of Ryujin’s used panties instead. That crazy night she maybe had drank more than she should have and one thing led to another so you ended up putting a show from your sister and masturbating in front of her, smelling her pussy aroma from her dirty underwear while she was making fun and encouraging you at the same time. From there things were periodically escalating within days, and by the end of the vacations you two eventually ended fucking.

You seriously think that you should feel bad about the fact that at least once per month you cum inside your sister’s pussy, but seriously she’s so annoying on a daily basis that you believe that is a great compensation.

You aren't getting bitches, as Ryujin always says, and she takes advantage of that by always messing with you. Always rubbing her body against you in the most subtle ways, like for example how she did during the family photo this same evening.

You were sitting on the couch accommodating for the said photo and Ryujin just sat on your lap. The problem was that she was rubbing her ass on your crotch, causing you a massive erection. The almost imperceptibly slow and circular movement of her ass made your shaft stab her, and she was smiling all the time. No one could notice it on the photo but you were holding it to not bend her over the carpet and fuck your sister in front of the christmas tree.

And now you have her foot rubbing your erection while she's making jokes and asking you mom to pass her the salad. Your sister is a truly evil being, but you have to give credit to her for maintaining this charade. She should venture into acting since is too good at putting on that poker face while doing nasty things. 

You know how fast her expressions can change since one of her favorite activities is ruining your orgasm by looking right into your eyes with her most dirty and slutty face, and in the right moment changing to a disgusting or angry face. Your sister could easily be an actress and win an Oscar.

Is incredible how Ryuijin can manage to look like a good daughter while bringing you to the very verge of an orgasm. Her foot works on your crotch pressing and rubbing your erection  with expert and precise movements, as if she had done this countless times. And maybe she did it, since even you know the rumors about her that people tell in her campus. And it is her expert foot that finally makes you cum, but is a disappointing orgasm. Totally ruined by the fact that you can make any noise and have to maintain your composure since you're in front of your parents, still at the family dinner. Ryujin's foot immediately leaves your erection in peace when she notices that you have already cummed. 

Somehow you managed to maintain composure and not moan right there. Only your mom noticed something was wrong and asked you if everything was ok. You were quick to tell her that you have eaten so much because everything was delicious, and that's all. That was just you having a full stomach and nothing more. Deflecting all doubts into a burst of giggles from your sister. At least she helps you with this one. 

After dinner came the exchange of gifts, which you had to go through with your boxer soaked in your cum. It feels dirty and makes you worry that your parents might smell it, or your pants get stained and they could notice it. Luckily for you nothing happens and everything goes right, you even get a pretty gift from Ryujin. Which considering what she just did to you at the dinner was giving you mixed feelings.

After all, family night ended up being beautiful, as a christmas night should be for everyone. All the fun and family games ended sooner than you wish because your parents had to leave to attend a friend’s party and obviously you weren't going to be hanging out with your sister in the living room. So one second after your mom let you know that they aren’t coming back till tomorrow lunch and  leave the house, you're running to your room without giving any chance to Ryujin to mess with you again. 

Hours have passed but you are still awake, being occasionally distracted from your studies by the snow falling at the other side of the window, and for your sister’s steps coming down and up on the stairs. What she’s doing is a mystery for you and honestly you don’t wanna know, maybe she’s sneaking one of her friends in the house to get her guts rearranged. In which case you don’t wanna know, or maybe you want and you will use the sounds of Ryujin getting railed to jack off properly. Since she ruined your orgasm at dinner, that sounds fair. You’re now curious but to your surprise her steps stop in front of your door. 

“Are you still up, loser?” Ryujin asks after carefully opening your door and sticking just her head in the room. For some reason she’s wearing makeup and a christmas hat. 

“Get out, I'm studying. I have an exam next week.” You make her a gesture with your hand to leave the room but instead she blatantly steps inside. Know you really don't know what is happening because Ryujin is dressed like some kind of Santa Claus. The all red costume could be considered sexy in some way because she’s wearing a miniskirt that barely covers more than her ass, thigh highs and a crop top jacket leaving her stomach exposed. All of that topped by a cape, that is actually what is preventing her ass to be seen, and said hat. “What’s going on with you?”

“Oh come on! Stop being a loser. Is christmas.” She’s putting on a show here because is pouting and stepping on the floor as if she were some kind of spoiled child. Which in part she is. “Don’t you wanna watch a movie with your sister and have a nice night? I already settled everything on the first floor.”

“Why are you suddenly being so nice?” You have the right to be suspicious since clearly your sister is plotting something here. 

“Come on Loser, is christmas. I don’t wanna waste my night sleeping, not tonight. Besides you study a lot, you're practically the first in your class. You deserve a rest too.” Well, at least she was right on that. “I already prepared hot chocolate and cookies. But if you don’t want it, all it's gonna be for me.” And recovering her bratty attitude, more or less her true nature, Ryujin sticks out her tongue and leaves your room. Obviously she didn’t close the door.

When you were about to close the door something made you change your mind and instead you shouted to the first floor. “Wait for me, I’m coming down in a minute.” Maybe she’s right and you deserved a rest after hardly studying the entire year. 

Minutes later you're amazed by what Ryujin prepared for your little movie night. She has moved things in the living room, making a big space in the middle. There on the floor she placed blankets and some pillows piled against the big couch, making a bed for you two. There is also a center tabled with what seems to be a thermos with hot chocolate and some christmas cookies, two mugs of that hot chocolate have been already served and are steaming there. All of this is being illuminated by the light of the christmas tree and the big freaking 85 inches tv your dad insisted your family needed. This scene could be romantic if not were because you two are siblings.

"Why are you suddenly doing this?" This seems like too much coming from your sister. “What are you plotting?”

“Can you not be a prick for a moment?” Ryujin seems to be a little offended by your doubts, or maybe she’s acting up again. With her you never know. “Already said it. Just wanna have a nice christmas.”

“Ok, ok. Maybe the Christmas spirit possessed you or something. Can I pick the movie or have you already prepared that too?” You ask sitting in the blankets. 

“No, you can’t.” Ryujin sits beside you and covers you two with one blanket. She puts a mug of hot chocolate in your hand and press play. Your sister had selected a romantic comedy. One of those movies that always happens in New York where a young couple inevitably falls in love, but at least it was a Christmas movie so that’s something. 

The night was so relaxing and for the first time in months you were just there having a good time. The movie ended up being quite good and you were able to enjoy it, you two were having fun after all. You didn’t even notice how or when Ryujin hugged you, this time without trying to inappropriately touch you, or how she was feeding you with pieces of cookies by putting them directly in your mouth. So for almost two hours you and your sister were laying there enjoying the movie and having a lovely night. The fact that at times this seemed more like a date than two siblings watching a movie together flew over your head, you were completely blinded by enjoying the warmth of your sister hugging you instead of fighting with her. 

By the time the movie credits appear on screen Ryujin had her head resting on your shoulder and you were petting her. This was maybe the first time you were like this in years; with no fights, no jokes, no sex, just both of you enjoying a lovely moment. But the spell broke once the movie came to at it inevitable end. That trance that blinded your eyes during the movie wasn’t present now and for the first time you were aware of Ryujin’s body pressing against yours in a tight hug. 

“Was a good movie after all, but it is late now.” You broke the reigning silence in the room, and despiste your word you weren't sure if you wanna stop hugging your sister.

“Did you like it?” She asks with her head still on your shoulder. “Never thought my little loser was into that kind of movie.”

“I’m not into it, but this movie was good. And…” Suddenly the realization that she called you “My” hit you. “Why did you call me like that? I’m not yours. Why do you always call me loser?” Your arms are no longer surrounding her body.

“You have to ruin everything, right?” Ryujin pushed you and stood up. The blanket that was covering you fell to a side, the cold hit your bodies now since each other warm was missing. “You’re my brother and I’m the only one that calls you Loser. Can’t I show some love for you now?” This sudden change in her mood surprised you.

“Ok, just calm down.” You're standing too now. “Maybe I’m suspicious since you decided to give me a footjob in the dinner. Did you forget that?”

“You’re acting as if you didn’t enjoyed it.” Well she was right, once again. “You're always so happy to cum on me and then act like if I were using you or something.” To your surprise she pushed you. That caught you off guard causing you to fall into the couch. 

“What’s wrong with you?” You quickly stand again and grab her hands when Ryujin tries to push you again. Despite being younger you were visibly taller and heavier than your sister so it wasn't too much difficult for you. “Seriously, what is happening with you?” Ryujin tried to escape from your grasp but you didn’t let her go anywhere. “The footjob, the present, the movie, and now this. Are you crazy or something?”

“Let me…” She finally can free herself, or maybe you let her go because you just noticed how tears were forming in her eyes. “ I’m just tired and really wanted to have a nice moment with someone that at least loved me in the past.” She was holding tears.

“Ryu…” You can control yourself and you surround her with your arms in a tight hug. “I still love you. You’re my sister. Yes, you’re annoying most of the time, but I still do love you.”

“Then why do you have to treat me like your sex toy?” She was sobbing now. “ Why can't you be gentle? Why at least you can’t be gentle with me?”

“Ryu, what’s happening.” You really don’t understand what’s happening here, what is this all about. “I don’t know. Maybe because you bully me when we fuck? But I like it, and… And… Maybe I don’t wanna admit that I enjoy fucking my sister.” This is really the first time you say that because it is truly the first time you two get remotely close to talk about this.

Ryujin tries to push you away but your hug is thigh. “Lier, you’re just like the others. You want me because you can fuck me everytime you want.”

“What? Nooo Ryu, no.” Seriously, this is going to a weird place. “Are the rumors true?”

“Yes, they are. I’m campus's easiest slut to fuck as everyone knows, even you had hear that.” She sobs loudly” I’m so tired of people faking that they are close to me because they wanna fuck me. I’m so tired of people trying to get me drunk because in that way is more easy to fuck me.” Your sister was losing the battle against tears because some had dropped over her cheeks. “I’m a person too. I’m capable of more things than getting my holes stuffed and moaning. I just can’t stop, I can’t feel ok if I'm not drunk or messing with you.”

“Ryu stop!” Maybe you said that a little louder than you should have. “What are you talking about?” Now you hold her face with one hand and dry her tears with the other. “You’re more than that to me. Remember, you're my sister. Don’t you remember who pulled me out of the lake that time I almost drowned when we were kids? Did you forget that time when I broke auntie’s Joohyun porcelain and you said that it was your fault so that they wouldn't scold me?” More tears came from your sister’s eyes when she heard your words. “Have you never noticed why I’m always studying so much? Is because of you. When I started college I wanted to have the same good grades as you because you're so smart. You don’t even need to study. Even now that you're drunk almost every weekend you still have good grades. How can you not see that I do care for you?”

“Lier…” Ryujin wasn’t fighting anymore. She was just there crying in silence, grabbing you tightly by your jacket.  

“Ryu, please. I really enjoy our times together… I. “ This is something you don’t wanna admit, not even in your mind, but maybe this is the only moment you could do it. “You wanna know why I’m not getting laid? Isn’t because I’m a nerd or something, in fact some girls have asked me to go on dates with them but I can’t. They aren’t annoying like you, they aren’t as smart as you… I can’t go with them.” Yeah. Your relationship with your sister was really fucked up, and for the things you were saying this was a point from no return.

“You…” Her hands were shaking. “ You really mean it?” Even with the poor light you could see a bright in her eyes when she asked that, and wasn’t the bright of her tears.

“Yes, and you can call me your loser if you want.” Now Ryujin is the one who hugged you, hiding her head in your chest but never stop crying. “But please stop crying. We still can have a good night. We can watch another movie or somet…” You weren't able to finish what you were to say because Ryujin grabbed your face and kissed you.

Was a shy kiss, something different to everything you had ever had with her. Normally your kisses are dirty, furtive, charged with sexual tension and short. This was different, more needy for something that you can’t describe at the moment, but you were kissing her too. Her tears were wetting your face while your lips were dancing together. One of her hands was still holding tightly the side of your jacket. 

After what you said, after what you admitted, this feels so different. Suddenly you're hungry for your sister, you want more from her but you remember what she said and don’t wanna break this moment. You seriously love her for more than her pussy, after all she’s your big sister, but now this kiss is doing things to you.

You don’t need to worry anymore for whatever you should do because it is Ryujin who hugs you by your neck and makes her body closer to yours. Since the blanket isn’t covering you anymore, the temperature on your bodies has started to drop, but this kiss is bringing up the thermometer. The kiss is becoming needy and her hands are playing in your neck.

You grab her by the waist , a shiver ran through her body when your hands meet her skin making her tremble for a moment. Ryujin broke the kiss panting for air. She’s not crying anymore, instead there is this new light in her eyes. Something has changed on her. You try to say something but she muted you with a quick kiss on your lips and start lifting your jacked. You help her to take off the garment and your shirt goes along with it. The cold of the winter didn’t bother you because Ryujin's hands are over your chest, you feel a strange warm coming from where she touch you and spreading across your entire body. 

“Ryu…” But she muted you again with a kiss before taking a step back. Without taking her eyes from yours Ryujin opens her jacket, leaving her cape on, and lets it fall over the blanket on the floor. She’s not wearing lingerie or something fancy as someone would think, instead she’s wearing a normal bra like she would wear on a normal day. In some way you prefer it like this, but at least said garment is red, matching the thematic of her outfit. 

She attempts to take off her thigh highs but you stop her. “No… leave the stockings… Please.” She says nothing but just takes off her miniskirt instead. Ok, she wasn’t wearing lingerie but her underwear matches, even when they were simple pieces they were matching. You found that a lovely gesture because you understand that you weren't meant to see that since she wanted to have just a nice moment with you instead of hooking up. So the makeup and all the prep was just for her to feel better and pretty.

Your sister looks beautiful standing on the blankets, wearing only her underwear and cape. To you, the light from the television and the twinkling lights from the tree don't do justice to her flawless skin. You wish this had been a moonlight night so she could be bathed for the silver light, but instead the snow is falling and pilling outside. 

You both are nervous to make the first move, as if you were a couple having their first time instead of a pair of siblings that had known each other since forever. But it is Ryujin that finally reaches you first. She hugs you and soon her hands are playing with your neck again. You can help but find her lips and share a kiss, more passionate this time. Your hands wander across her skin, caressing her waist and tummy.

Despiste Ryujin exercising regularly, her body is not that toned. It's just on the verge between being fluffy and muscular, and you find that so attractive. You can see her biceps contract when she’s carrying something heavy, or punching you, but also can see her thighs jiggle when she walks around. Seeing your sister half naked like this is like a heavenly vision to you.

By this point you have been fucking around for almost two years, but you never have seen her completely naked. Well maybe that time when you ate her pussy from behind when she was about to take a shower. But that was just for a brief moment, nothing like this where she's yours to watch and touch, even when she isn’t completely naked. Your encounters are always fast, subtitles, hiding and trying not to make a noise so your parents can´t fin their children fucking. But here and now both of you know that you can give free rein to your darkest desires.

Ryujin again is the first to move and reach your waistband making you pant fall to your ankles. Your boxer does a miserable job at hiding the tent that formed where is your dick. But how not to be hard when you’re doing this with your beloved sister? It’s impossible not to. 

“My little loser is already so excited.” Of course she has to make fun of you in a moment like this, can’t be in another way. “Let noona take care of you tonight.” She whispered that into your ear with her raspy deep voice, and made a shiver run through your spine. Or maybe it is because Ryujin is stroking your erection, and even when is covered with your boxer she still can feel your bulge throbbing in her hand when it is being inflated with blood. 

You moan and kiss her again. Maybe the loudest moan you had ever allowed her to cause on you, but is quickly muted by the kiss. Your tongue invades her mouth and she accepts it, but she’s still the one that’s guiding the kiss. After all, your sister is the one with more experience here. You only have kissed a couple of girls before rejecting them, so your sister’s are the lips you have tasted the most.  

She takes off your boxer too and you kick it away with the rest of your clothes. Now you're totally naked and in her hands to do whatever she wants. The imbalance of power is evident here but you don’t care, after all Ryujin said that she will take care of you and you believe in her. So the gentle push she gave you on your chest didn't take you off guard this time, but still made you fall into the couch. 

“Shhhh.” She muted you by putting a finger over your lips when you opened your mouth to say something, and instead of letting you know what she was gonna do, Ryujin just knelt down between your legs. You knew what was coming by the way she was staring at your shaft with those feline eyes, as if a lion were stalking their prey. Ryujin wrapped her fingers around your erection once again and gave you gentle strokes, immediately a drop of precum forms on your tip. 

You feel her tongue on your head collecting your precum, and her warm breath on your shaft. The view you have is amazing and your sister stares back at your eyes, looking to your soul, when she starts engulfing your tip and slowly but never stopping she swallows your meat till her lips touch her hand. A big portion of your erected shaft is in your sister’s mouth, and you feel so comfortable being surrounded by her warmth that you don't even bother on think that this is wrong.

And then, Ryujin starts sucking your dick, but again something feels different. This is not fast, she’s taking her time to give you an actual blowjob and not just some quick blows. She strokes you at a slow pace while her head is going up and dong on your dick, her tongue also is playing around your meat maximizing the pleasure you're receiving. As she said, your sister is taking care of you.

“Relax, loser.” Her voice is so calm, and despiste calling you names you know this time she isn’t making fun of you. All you can do is pet her head and caress her hair while she continues sucking your shaft. The feeling is so amazing, like no other head she has ever given you. Your dick feels so welcome inside her warm mouth. 

Your sister doesn't go really deep, just swallowing half of your dick, but this still is so pleasant. Her tongue dances around your shaft in ways that you even knew were possible. That makes your breath heavy and by the look on her eyes she’s proud of that, she likes what she’s making you feel. But she still gives you more and the blowjob becomes messier and sloppy. Ryujin is now coating your shaft with her saliva.

When Ryujing takes your shaft out of her mouth it is so covered in her saliva that some drops fall into your balls. “Come here.” She makes space for you in the blankets beside her, and you let yourself slide from the couch to the floor. Your sister loses no time and sits on your lap, pressing her clothed core into your wet shaft. 

She finds your lips again, and despite feeling your taste on her mouth you don’t wanna be kissing someone else. Your hands find her ass and knead her plump buttocks. A needy moan is released right into your mouth at the time your sister starts riding you, and her hands are cupping your face. The way she moves over you drives you crazy and makes her underwear wet, you can feel it even with your shaft coated in her saliva, so her pussy must be completely soaked by her own juices.

“Just let me…” Ryujin raised her body a little to slide her panties to the side, releasing her pussy from the embrace of the fabric. Then she aligns her glistening folds over your tip and descends slowly, taking your dick at a tortuous pace. “You feel soooo stretching me out.” Her voice is so low when she talks again, but you still can hear traces of her raspy tone on it. “You’re filling me so well, Loser.” She don’t move, instead Ryujin just kiss your face and plays with your hair. Right now she’s so far from being the bully and annoying sister that she has been this past years.  

When Ryujin moves her hips again, you feel how her walls tighten around your throbbing shaft. That feels delicious, to say it in one way. Her warm wetness is surrounding your hard meat, and her lips are glued to yours in a passionate shared kiss. She rides you slowly, enjoying every movement and releasing waves of pleasure through your bodies. 

Once again, as you have been so many times, you're so buried inside your sister’s cunt. But despite all the times you have done this, this time feels more pleasant. Like if you had unblocked a new level of passion between you two. Something that wasn't supposed to be archived by a pair of siblings. A bonding really forbidden.

You need more of her body, so your hands reach for the back of her bra, but you struggle to get it open. You haven’t done it enough times to memorize the process yet. “Take your time, I’m not going anywhere.” The words are followed by a small giggle. “Another day I'll teach you to open it with just one hand.” Ryujin bites your lower lip and you get nervous causing  your hands to slip from her bra. “Try it again.” Isn’t a order, is most like a petition. “Take off noona’s bra. I want my tiddies sucked.” You finally get the strength and concentration to get the damn clasp of her bra open. She laughs amused and throw her bra way, finally releasing her breasts. 

Her tiddies aren’t big, but are big enough to fill your hands. Her nipples feel so stuffed and you caressing them makes them harder. But regardless of the fact that this feels amazing, this isn’t what your sister said she wants. She was clear on her petition, she wants her tiddies sucked and you’re no one to refuse it. 

As soon as your mouth meets her right tit you feel how Ryujin’s arch her back. By pure instinct your tongue is playing with her hard nipple, and by the moans she’s releasing you think you’re doing good. Your other hand is on her left breast, playing with it as well. Ryujin practically huge your head holding you in place, so you can’t stop sucking her tits, and you do as you were told. From time to time you change what of her tiddies is on your mouth and what is being caressed by your hand, but you never stop sucking and your sister never stops riding you. 

Her movements are now faster and messier. You feel her wetness around you and how her walls embrace your throbbing shaft. The way she makes you feels is so amazing, never ever before fucking your sister has been so pleasant. Apparently she’s having a good time too, because her moans never stop. In fact, they are just becoming louder as she rides you and you play with her tits. 

“You're making noona feel so good.” You didn’t need a confirmation because you already could feel it, but her words are well received. The way she’s moaning, the way you make your sister moan and shiver in pleasure make you feel proud. Despite not being experienced you still can make Ryujin have a good time, and not one of those furtive hook ups you have been having.

“God, those batches don’t know what they’re missing.” Ryujin manages to say between her moans and whimpers. “My little brother's cock feels so good inside me.” Her dirty but affirmative words toward you make your dick throb inside her. 

You redoubles your attacks over her tiddies, sucking and kissing. Rolling her nipples between your fingers and covering them in saliva with your mouth.

 “You want noona to cum over you? To mark you?” You can’t respond because your mouth is busy sucking her left tiddie, but you can suck harder to let her know you want her to reach her orgasm over you, in your arms. Apparently the massage is well received because she changes the pace of her hips.

Now your sister’s movements are slower but conscious, she’s never breaking the pace. Also she’s taking you as deep as she can every time your hips meet, making your shaft completely disappear inside her.

Despite being a cold Christmas night, with snow falling and all, your bodies are warming each other to the point you feel no cold. Plus this is so pleasant that nobody could focus on feeling cold when you have your beautiful sister riding your cock.

“This feel good? Noona is taking good care of you?” She kisses your forehead in a gesture that's way too romantic for the situation, but honestly you don't care anymore. What's the point on denying that you aren't just fucking but you're making love with your sister? There is no worse blind than the one who doesn't want to see, they say. And maybe it is time to open your eyes and accept those feelings. No matter how twisted they are.

Maybe Ryujin needs someone that actually loves and takes care of her too, instead of just wanting to stuff her holes. And maybe you can be that person, or at least you can be there for her till she finds someone. But honestly, who can be better for her than you?

“My little loser is making noona feel so good.” The control she has over her voice even when is so close to orgasm is amazing. You feel how messy and fast her movements are, but nothing of that can be spotted on her voice. She sounds calm, with her deep raspy voice doing things to you. Making you throb inside of her as if you have a second heart down there.

Finally the wetness of her core drench your balls letting you know she reached the precious climax. But not just that, because you can hear how your sister is moaning right into your ear. Ryujin is still riding you, slowly decreasing her pace till she’s sitting in your lap, with your shaft buried inside her. 

She’s practically panting because she did almost all the effort, but hair isn’t what she needs now. All your sister can think is on finding your lips and sharing one of those passionate kisses with you. Ryujin is holding your face, not forcing you but not wanting you to go. She doesn't need hair because she can have that anytime, all she needs now is the only person that doesn't see her as a slut.

Time gets blurry when you are passionately kissing your sister like that. Hungry but also slowly, in a way you have never felt before. No girl’s lips made you feel like this before, is a new hunger that you just found and don’t know if it is right that you are satisfying it. This gluttony may be a capital sin.

“That was good.” Ryujin said before kissing your forehead again and playing with your hair. “Best orgasm I’ve had in a long time.” Your sister hugs you seeking for your body heat on this cold winter night. You are just there, laying on the floor with your sister hiding from the world under her christmas cape and between your arms. 

“What about me having an orgasm too?”

“Don’t know if you deserve one.” Her head is resting on your shoulder. “It's your punishment for making me cry.”

“I thought I made you cry with pleasure.” You joke while lovely petting her black hair, as if your balls were not coated on sex fluids for the second time that night. All your sister’s fault.

“Don’t be that bold, Loser. You are still not that capable. But…” She pauses to ponder whether she should say the following or not. “Maybe noona can give you another lesson. Another Christmas gift.” She said before kissing your jaw and asking with a whisper right into your ear. “Wanna be a big boy and fuck noona in the ass?”

[starfilmz]

THOROUGHFARE | UNSURE FEELINGS, DRUNKEN CALLS

⤷ A JJ MAYBANK SOCMED AU .ᐟ

──── you never expected that swapping socials with your call of duty duo would change your life — whether for better or worse, you're still not sure. friendships are made and something much more begins.

thoroughfare masterlist ──── 05 | 06 | 07

a/n: chap 6 has been a bitch to post bc tumblr couldn’t handle it but VIOLA it has arrived. this chap became a mix of smau and written fic so we doin something here 🤔 ofc it’ll still be social media based do not fret, but i feel like these written ones are needed for this. not betaread obvs so mistakes are everywhere!! lmk your thoughts, expectations, or how u see this fic ending cuz it is soon 😝

john b stood up as soon as he heard the whirring sound of his best friend’s motorcycle. it came to a stop when he stepped out on the château’s porch, leaning against one of the posts with his arms crossed. jj looked disheveled and as much as he wanted to say “as per usual”, the boy walked towards the house as if he ran into several bushes on the way.

he had a frown on his face as he faced john b. “i don’t know what do,” he finally spoke, his expression morphing that tells john b he didn’t want to admit to that. “long distance relationships are weird and, i’ve experienced worst that weird, man, you and i both know that and i—“

“alright, calm down,” john b grabbed the boy’s shoulder before he could go on another self-destructive tangent. “let’s talk about this, okay? pope said he’s on his way with beers.”

jj sighed, running a hand through his blonde hair. “it feels unfair for her that i’m making a big deal about this. it’s the whole rafe thing again! honestly, i genuinely think i overreacted.” he sat on the closest couch on the porch with furrowed eyebrows.

john b followed him, an amused expression on his face. jj noticed this, raising his eyebrows at the boy. “what’s so funny?”

he shook his head, his curls falling slightly to his side as he looked at jj. “when’s the last time you acted this way towards a girl?”

“oh, don’t start, jb.”

“i’m sorry, okay? look, you don’t need to be thinking this hard, man, alright?” the boy chuckled, patting his friend firmly on the back. “yn’s a good person, i can tell, and…” john b looked around as if anyone else but the two of them were around. he leaned closer towards jj, who didn’t think twice to do the same.

“from what i’ve read from sar’s phone, yn’s just crazy for you.”

this changed jj’s solemn expression into a mixture of lovesick, curiosity, and excitement. “i mean, that’s natural, right? she agreed to be my girlfriend so it’s natural for her to like me.” his words sounded defensive which made john b’s eyebrows rose.

“what i’m trying to say, jj, you don’t have to freak out just because you don’t know who’s around her. long distance is weird, i agree, but are you going to be like this every time she hangs out with people you don’t know?”

jj lowered his eyes, a tiny wave of shame washing over him. “no.”

“right, and i’m not trying to say don’t be jealous— you can’t help it, you like the girl,” john b held one of the blonde’s shoulder. “and if i were to give you an advice, man to man, thinking in your shoes, if you find long distance so much, why don’t you do something about it?”

jj looked up at john b, confusion etched all over his face. “what are you—“ and as if something clicked in his mind, john b nodded, confirming his thoughts. “isn’t it too soon?”

“what’s too soon?” both boys visibly flinched as pope made his presence known, beer bottles in hand. “i had to swipe this from my dad’s stack so you guys better fill me in.”

you couldn’t help the smile at john b’s story, giving it a heart as scrolled off the app. you would send a response, something about not leaving him in the streets because you guys still have a game session planned tomorrow, but you decided not to.

they were probably still at the boneyard, a place where they usually throw their parties as you’ve learned previously from jj, and they’ve shared enough stories about those to let you know those parties don’t end easily.

you sighed, sliding further into your bed as you hugged your pillow. was it silly to feel the way you do now?

you aren’t ready to fly out to see the boy you’ve been dying to see, but you want to, and you tell yourself you’re okay seeing them have fun, but as you stare deeper into your bedroom wall, you’re beginning to doubt that.

you took a deep breath, closing your eyes in an attempt to sleep and brush off your thoughts, but as soon as you do, your phone rang beside you. you moved the pillow and raised your phone, seeing jj’s profile picture and username across your screen.

jj was calling you.

you sat up, answering the phone, and placed it on your ear. loud music greeted your first, along with voices you’re not familiar with.

“—you can’t just leave her like that, jayj!” a girl harshly whispered against the speaker and it made you think she was either kiara, cleo, or sarah.

“hello?” you finally spoke, and when you did, everyone on the other side seemed to quiet down. you heard some kind of harsh slap, along with a small ‘ow!’. you didn’t recognize the rest of the voice before, but you were definitely aware someone had slapped jj.

“jj? you there?” you called once more, tone lighter in amusement. “i’m gonna hang up on you if you don’t talk.”

that seemed to catch the boy’s attention as he began sputtering away. “no, no, don’t, hello! look, i’m sorry, i’m being peer pressed right now—“

“don’t say that!” a deeper voice interrupted him.

“—and i just wanted to hear your voice…” from the way jj was talking, you could tell he was drunk, though you did believe that slap before sobered him up a bit. “i missed you, yn.”

“it’s only been a day a whole, jj,” you chuckled, leaning against your pillows. despite your answer, you couldn’t help but feel the same way. “but i missed you too, jay.”

“i’ve been building up the courage to call you all night and, i don’t know, i just wanted to hear from you before my lights go out,” jj laughed at his own words, a drunken expression all over his face you imagined.

“build up the courage? i’m your girlfriend, jay, you could call me whenever you want.” you answered, a small smile on your face.

there was a beat of silence from him and you thought it was a sign that he’s close to getting conked out, but his next words proved otherwise.

“can you say that again?” he whispered, almost like he’s hiding, which was most likely from his eavesdropping friends. “about the girlfriend thing, please?”

you hummed a playful tone, the instinct to tease jj was strong and it almost won if it weren’t the way your cheeks heated up at his voice, the way he sounded so soft and near the phone as if he was saying it directly in your ear.

“i’m your girlfriend, jj maybank. you happy?” you had to roll your eyes despite no one being with you hearing your sappy voice and attitude, anything to keep the butterflies in your stomach at bay.

“so happy, you don’t even know, baby,” the nickname came to you as a shock, but it didn’t felt wring hearing it from jj. if anything, you wanted to make him say it again. “i’m just so— oh my god, so happy. i’m your boyfriend, you’re my girlfriend— oh, bliss!”

you couldn’t help the laugh that bursted from you as jj’s voice doubled in volume. “i have a girlfriend! and she really likes me!” jj’s speaker managed to get the sound of what sounded like a crowd cheering at his embarrassing announcement, making you chuckle even further.

“alright, hands off the phone, okay— john b, take him, please? before he announces more details about yn?” another voice took over the call, and by the way the boy, who you now know is john b, responded with a ‘yes, ma’am’, you assumed it was sarah who came to the rescue.

“hey, sarah,” you greeted her. “having fun?”

“oh, we are, but no so much for jj tomorrow.”

“i can imagine, you’d think he’ll be able to live with that?” you joked.

“babe, he has no choice,” sarah responded with a laugh. “but for now, john b’s taking him back to the château to properly conk out.”

“that’s good to hear.”

“so,” she started and you already picked up the teasing tone in her voice.

“so?” you chuckled, amused at her.

“still unsure of visiting your hopeless boyfriend? was his very public and loud declaration of love for you enough?”

you hugged the nearest pillow, a warm smile spreading across your face. you felt a lot more at ease and mind solely focused on jj. “it’s enough.”

thoroughfare taglist: @yumwhy @beeskisses @callieyanderechan @udpoota @vivian-555 @popesbby @whatisoutside @roryology @readinghoes @mytimeiswaiting @marleymarleymarleymarley @urmotherlvr @fruitcakerafe @bobobellabo @max23b @mirellef2001 @bearbear21 @cassiewritessalot @baocean @ayy1234567 @lmaowhatt @scaroooos @mbella607 @dylsdaily @1mcrazybutcute

big apologies to the peeps that wanted to be tagged but aren’t here cuz i might’ve missed yall bc and for the people that are written on here but weren’t notified pls refer to this post :)

[justhereforthecupcakes]

@rosie-tyler Funny you mention Daniel spitting.

I actually wrote a very dark and sad AU fic in which Daniel spits in Terry’s face during the infamous arm lock moment in the 5x05 fight scene… with tragic results.

I’ve decided to post it below. Please be warned there are VERY dark themes and TW subjects. Otherwise, I hope those who read enjoy.

Something You’ll Never Forget Series

Title: Something You’ll Never Forget (I Know I Won’t)

Pairing: Daniel LaRusso/Terry Silver

Disclaimer: do you really need one at this point, or do you honestly believe I own the franchise?…. Why yes I do, write any checks to me please!

Warnings: N/C, Sexual Assault, Physical Assault, Edging, Forced Orgasm, Obsession, Anti-Asian slur, Terry Silver is his own warning, in fact Terry Silver is flat out delulu

Summary: Daniel makes the mistake of telling Terry Silver to blow him. So he does.

“You really ought to be careful what you ask for, Danny Boy.”

Daniel lay on the floor, naked below the waist, trembling and giving broken little whimpers from both the assault and being kept on edge for the last 20 minutes by Terry’s mouth and hands. He was straining oh so beautifully against the silver silk scarf binding his hands behind his back.

His cock straining even more.

Terry was glad he decided against blindfolding him; it would have heightened the sensations for his boy, but seeing the conflicting emotions of shame and arousal in his expressive brown eyes was far more rewarding.

They had fought, ending with Terry trapping Daniel’s arms with his own, taunting him.

“You never had the strength, did you?”

“Blow me, asshole!” Daniel had spat out, before spitting in his face.

He also never did learn to watch his mouth…

He’d struggled at first, alternating between panic and anger, pleading and cursing at him to stop; then the tears followed. But eight minutes in, the anger and tears subsided as Daniel gave up fighting. Resigned to Terry’s ministrations, his breaths now coming in delicious little gasps, and moans.

He loved the fire in his boy, but Submission was a damn good look for him.

Terry’s pants were definitely much tighter than they were 20 minutes ago. He ignored it, though. That wasn’t exactly easy considering Daniel’s thighs were quivering in the most provocative manner — if he only knew just how badly Terry was tempted to take a bite of his inner thigh and truly mark him.

For now…

Daniel let out a choked moan as he massaged his balls, lips teasingly brushing over his cock.

Oh he was going to enjoy hearing his boy cry out in ecstasy when he finally let him come.

But not yet.

He would make him beg next time - and there would be a next time, giving Daniel this small taste has without a doubt ensured that.

Perhaps he’d even take a hand to his backside for his insolence, as adorable as it was. Administer blow after blow until his cheeks were glowing.. until he was deliciously squirming and writhing in his lap, begging for Terry’s forgiveness… for mercy…

But, he didn’t want to totally break him just yet. Breaking him too quickly would have him running or fighting him even harder.

He knew his boy — he’ll always be his boy, no matter how old he got — and he was a stubborn thing. Regardless of how many years had been lost between them, he knew not to rush him. Daniel would need time to accept his feelings if he was to come to him on his own.

Besides, this was meant to be a gift, an incentive, a little nudge in the right direction…

… Still, his boy did need a firm touch. He needed to learn.

And Terry just couldn’t help himself.

“Do you have any idea how you look right now?”

A gentle kiss to his swollen cock.

“Has it ever been this good with your wife?”

Daniel remained as stony-faced as he could manage in his position.

Admittedly, it was an unfair question to ask — and an irrelevant one.

The one that mattered…

“Has a man ever touched you like this before?”

Because he needed to know. And because he’d seen Lawrence and especially that sl**t-eyed Toguchi sniffing around his boy, like Daniel was a bitch in heat.

Well, he supposed, in a way, he is.

And Barnes… well, he got the message.

The grimace on Daniel’s face was enough to confirm he hadn’t. And the elation it brought him. It meant Terry would be his first in so many ways.

God, it meant he’d stayed faithful.

That alone earned Daniel his reward.

He grasped him tightly then, sealing his mouth over the head and giving him firm strokes; his other hand teasing his perineum — that did the trick.

Daniel let out a strangled cry, involuntarily thrusting his hips and himself further into Terry’s mouth. It wasn’t long until Daniel threw his head back, letting out a guttural moan as he came hard.

Watching him fall apart and completely come undone truly was a sight to behold. Something he’ll never forget.

And neither will Daniel.

Underneath the flush from his post-coital daze, he looks shellshocked.

Understandable; his boy had never experienced this kind of pleasure before.

Daniel was no doubt experiencing the full onslaught of the feelings and desires he had kept buried all these years, the ones Terry had just forced him to confront.

It was long overdue. Terry had accepted his feelings, and now it’s time for Daniel to do the same.

Time for Daniel to come back to where he belonged.

He gently takes his face in his hands and kisses him before he unties him and leaves; pocketing the silk scarf.

It won’t be long before he’ll finally have the pleasure of seeing what his beautiful boy will look like riding his cock.

Until then, the scarf that had touched Daniel’s beautiful hands was now wrapped around his cock. And he imagined his boy would feel just as smooth around him.

So he waited for his boy to come to him.

And waited.

But his boy never came.

No, the next knock on his door were two LAPD officers with a warrant for his arrest.

The charge: sexual assault of Daniel LaRusso.

He made bail, of course.

But to add insult to injury, he was almost immediately served with a Temporary Restraining Order barring any contact with Daniel and his family, and instructing him to stay a minimum distance of 100 feet away for the next 30 days.

How he managed to obtain one so quickly… The judge listed on the order was part of LaRusso’s little country club, no doubt.

He’d have her charged with collusion and disbarred.

GODDAMN LITTLE PRICK!

Even if he wasn’t convicted and placed on the sex offender list, the charges alone would severely hamper, if not totally derail his plans.

LaRusso, you little bastard… you fucking tease!

He planned this.

Somehow he’d planned this and once again Terry had underestimated him.

He would have given him the world.

Okay, Danny Boy. Okay.

Now the real pain begins.

Title: Breathe

Sequel to: Something You’ll Never Forget (I Know I Won’t)

Pairing: Daniel LaRusso/Terry Silver

Warnings: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATHS, murder, strangulation, rape, stalking, obsession, suicide, Terry Silver is his own warning, in fact Terry Silver is flat out delulu

Summary: After the events of “Something You’ll Never Forget (I Know I Won’t),” Terry makes bail… and now… the real pain begins.

He wept softly as he rocked Daniel’s too still body in his arms…

He understood, too late, his boy simply wanted to know if he mattered more to him than Cobra Kai.

This had been a test to see if he would choose what mattered most, and he’d failed.

He’d been waiting for him at Miyagi-Do.

He just wanted to… he doesn’t know… but he needed Daniel to know.

Terry needed Daniel to know that for all the things he’d ever experienced… Viet Nam… the fear… the trauma…

Never had he experienced heartbreak like that at the hands of Daniel LaRusso.

His Danny Boy…

There were moments he was sure Daniel was pure Cobra, more than he or Kreese ever were.

He thought he’d never been more sure than the moment he learned what his boy was capable of: Orchestrating his arrest, the restraining order… setting everything he had worked to rebuild to burn to ash once more.

All of his patience and planning… all his years of therapy… gone with one look from his boy… a single threat of walking away…

But when he came out of the shadows, and Daniel jumped back, and ordered him to leave — screamed for him to get out.

Out of nowhere his anger dissipated; instead, Terry broke down and fell to his knees, grabbing Daniel around his waist, begging him… “don’t make me go, don’t push me away, please”…. never had he willingly shown such weakness and vulnerability in his life…

… and still Daniel tried pulling away… panicking and screaming and tripping them both to the ground with Terry on top of his back…

“DON’T TOUCH ME! DON’T TOUCH ME!”

The cruelty in his boy.

And, God help him, his anger has returned and turned into an all consuming rage. All he could think was how much he wanted him to hurt! To make him suffer for the way he had deliberately made Terry suffer, and break him for it.

Because Terry was suffocating and he couldn’t breathe…

So he wouldn’t breathe…

He wound the silver scarf around the swanlike throat and pulled tight… tighter…

"Terr—" he'd choked out, before his eyes rolled back and he finally went still under him.

And he was done waiting, done drawing this out. No, this was pleasure for Terry and pain for Daniel.

“I told you not to play with fire,” he voice shook in fury, as he undid his belt and pants, before roughly yanking down Daniel’s, “didn’t I?”

He took one moment to appreciate the enticing view, smoothing a hand over the cheeks he could only dream about over the decades; now a reality in front of him. Any ounce of regret he might have felt at their first time ruined by fury and blood was overtaken and consumed by that decades old darkness that had been caged too long.

There was no going back.

He took that one moment before spitting into his palm, and greasing his cock with the barest amount, because he didn’t deserve lube… he deserved every second of the torture he was about to endure…

And he shoved in, uncaring of the damage to delicate flesh and the blood that followed — satisfied even.

“You used me!” thrust “You used me for a trophy” thrust “and then walked away” thrust “without a backward” thrust “glance!”

His hands yanked upward on the silk material, pulling the scarf tighter, while pushing down between Daniel’s shoulders blades. Daniel couldn’t cry out, could barely breathe, body twitching in agony; didn’t matter - he knew he was in excruciating pain, while he was in utter bliss.

He was so very right after all… his boy was as smooth as silk on the inside… Smooth as velvet… He never knew people actually saw stars when they came.

He let his breathing come back under control… but his hands… were still pulling on the scarf around his boy…

… who was laying too still…

NO.

He jerked his hands away from the scarf and turned his form onto his back, and frantically tried to give the breath he'd stolen from him back… mouth-to-mouth… chest compressions… mouth-to-mouth… chest compressions…

BREATHE!

God, Danny - sweetheart - please breathe…

He tried listening for a heartbeat, but the horrible wail that tore from him drowned out the sound that wasn’t there.

He simply dragged his boy up into his arms, silently crying as he rocked him, whispering apologies and begging forgiveness to unhearing ears.

He doesn’t know how long he sat there, doesn’t know how long it was before he was discovered by Lawrence, Toguchi and (regrettably) Daniel’s children.

He knows their presence is the only reason he woke up in a hospital three days later, miraculously still alive… in pain (though it would never come close to what he felt when Daniel’s body was ripped away from his arms)… but he was still alive…

Just another regret.

A regret he remedied when he plead guilty, and requested the death penalty. He’s not the first convicted murderer in history to do so; but it still sent shockwaves through the Valley.

But he didn’t do this out of any sense of nobility… not even because he deserved to die for what he did… no, again he was selfish - he did this to see his boy that much sooner.

The only solace he had found through this tragedy was when he belatedly realized that his name was the last thing the love of his life ever breathed.

And so he was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

But he was given a surprise visit by Samantha on the day of his execution.

She didn’t want his apologies, she wanted to know why.

“Nothing I could tell you would ever make sense, nor should it. All I can tell you is that I wanted to believe I could change. I tried to pretend I wasn’t a monster, but I am. And your father… despite what I’ve done, I love him.”

And he loved me.

But he left that unspoken. She would never accept that. Never be ready for that.

Like father, like daughter.

Predictably she reacted in shock and denial, but he held her gaze and allowed her to see the naked and undeniable truth from him. The rage was still there, but so too was the quiet realization and acceptance of his admission.

“I’ve never felt more pain than the moment I realized what I’d done. I’ll never forgive myself for it.

“You don’t have to forgive me. But, Samantha — don’t let this consume you or your family like it did me.

“For over 30 years I’ve thought of nothing else but all the ways my life could have been different if I had just made a different choice - the right choice. I wanted something beautiful, and I had the chance to have a future with him… but now, if I could go back and change everything, I’d go back to the start of it all… and I’d kill Kreese. And me.”

That surprised her.

“So that you, your dad, and your family could live a happy life. Safe.”

She sat, unsure of how to take that. “But you can’t.”

“No,” he admitted, “But you will be safe from now on, Samantha. I’ll be going soon, and I’m taking Cobra Kai with me. It’s already done. It’s only a matter of time - they just don’t know it. And one day, you and your family can stop looking over your shoulder. It’s the one unselfish thing I can do.”

He watched her, the daughter they never had, leave knowing she would be safe.

He briefly wondered what she would do with the money he was leaving her and her brother… how she would react when they discovered they were among the beneficiaries, but no point in dwelling.

And when the guard came for him, he didn’t cry, he didn’t have second thoughts, he did not beg for mercy. Not even as they strapped him down. Not even when they inserted the I.V.

This was Mercy, unintentional as it were.

Daniel was waiting for him on the other side.

And he would find in death what he could not find in life — Love.

He was still smiling as they depressed the plunger.

Title: The Roots Are Strong

Sequel: Breathe (Third in the Something You’ll Never Forget series)

Pairing: Daniel LaRusso/Terry Silver

Characters: Daniel LaRusso, Terry Silver, Johnny Lawrence, Samantha LaRusso, Anthony LaRusso, Amanda LaRusso, Miguel Diaz, Carmen Diaz, Robby Keene, John Kreese, Kim De Eun, Chozen Toguchi, Mike Barnes.

Warnings: MAJOR CHARACTER DEATHS, death penalty, references to murder both past and present

Summary: Terry is executed, and everyone deals with the aftermath.

Samantha was curled next to Miguel on the couch, Anthony passed out on the other side of her, his head on her lap and a protective hand on his shoulder. He had progressively grown even thinner over the last six months.

Even Johnny had tried to get him to eat more — couldn’t help it. Kid was starting to look as skinny as his dad during his pencil thin days of high school… Always had to fight the urge to shove a sandwich down the little twerp’s throat back then.

Amanda had seemed to age ten years. A heavily pregnant Carmen was by her side doing her best to provide comfort.

The rest of Miyagi-Do/Eagle Fang were scattered about, keeping watch. Standing guard.

It was happening. Right now.

Johnny, Mike, and Chozen were present to make sure the bastard was dead and gone. No tricks this time.

And Robby.

There was no stopping him.

“He was there for me and I stabbed him in the back - I never even got to apologize… I need to be there. I need to see that asshole pay. He’s the reason for all of it.”

Johnny nodded.

“Ok, you’re 18 now. You can decide. But if it gets to be too much, then we’re out. No judgment. And no questions. Ok?”

It was incredibly anti-climatic.

But the son-of-a-bitch still died smiling.

Whatever. Hell will wipe it off his face the second he lands there.

They switched off the monitor once he’d flatlined and closed the curtain.

And that was that.

Afterwards, everyone departed, and it felt like a fucked up version of everyone walking out of a Sunday matinee.

Show’s over… time to go home…

But the son-of-a-bitch was gone.

That was one down as far as Johnny was concerned. There was still a fight left for what remained of Cobra Kai and Kim Da-Eun.

Or so he had thought.

Their demise had been anticlimactic as well.

Kreese met his end in prison the day of Silver’s execution.

A shank to the jugular and no one was talking.

No one cared.

With Kreese and Silver gone, Kim Da Eun had simply packed up and left.

If she planned to continue her grandfather’s legacy, it wouldn’t be in the Valley. And that’s all that mattered.

When Silver’s lawyer reached out the day after his execution, all of them were prepared for a battle beyond the grave. Something they should have seen coming.

No one expected he’d named Johnny and the LaRusso kids among the beneficiaries of his will.

They still expected some kind of trap. A deal with the devil. Maybe a cursed rabbit’s foot or something.

“To Samantha LaRusso and Anthony LaRusso, daughter and son of Daniel LaRusso, I leave a total sum of $200 million dollars to be split equally between both parties.”

He hadn’t counted on Anthony being the one to explode. He had been so quiet and shut down the whole time. But they all knew it was coming sooner or later.

He popped out his chair and almost up ended the desk before Johnny and Chozen were able to subdue him.

“Does he think money can fix this?! NO! I don’t want his goddamn money. I want my dad back!”

Amanda and Chozen had ushered him and Samantha out of the office.

“To John Lawrence, I leave in its entirety the title and brand ownership of Cobra Kai, LLC, to include its dojos—“

The rest he’d left to various charities and anti-bullying organizations, blah blah blah.

Douche.

In the end, they had each taken the inheritance.

Sam and Anthony had no clue where to go from here, though.

But Cobra Kai was now officially his. He knew what had to be done.

He’d retired the moniker and sold most of the dojos — there’d been a lot. He made a decent sized fortune, more than enough to secure a house — a real house — for his family, close enough to the LaRussos… he could afford to send all three of the kids to college if that’s the route they took...

Cobra Kai was gone.

And in its place stood Miyagi-Do — now officially co-owned by Chozen, Sam and Anthony, with Amanda acting as trustee until they reached 18; and with Johnny and Chozen as head instructors.

Carmen and Shannon managing the finances and accounts.

Finally.

The head of the snake had been cut off.

It was over.

For Cobra Kai. For Kreese. For Silver.

For Daniel.

But Miyagi-Do would live on, and be here long after they were gone.

All of them were going to be okay.

Because the roots are strong, so the tree will survive.

A/N: Terry did NOT see Daniel when he passed over. Nope. He woke up in his own Hell Loop losing the 85 tournament and watching Daniel walk away, smiling, over and over and over…

oh, sex? actually, can you just beat me up homoerotically so i can go home and jerk off about it later?

[mortalityplays]

I love the practice of requisitioning, remixing and reworking books, comics, movies etc. through any means you like, but I hate hate hate the way so much vocabulary that used to be rooted in individual creativity has been taken over by this kind of fucked up deference to mainstream publishing and ip.

easy example: everyone calls the characters they work up for their projects 'OCs' now. that genie is out of the bottle, I'm not even going to try and cram it back in. it's universal terminology. but I do want to reflect - why is the default position to assume that when someone says 'my characters' they mean something derivative, unless they specify 'my Original characters'?

similarly, all character relationships are 'ships'. but what's wrong with that? you say, it's just short for 'relationship'. and you would be right, by merit of completely ignoring the fandom ancestry and common understanding of that term in order to win an argument. because you know as well as I do that 'ships' aren't 'relationships', they're hypothetical romances that the speaker is rooting for. so why do I keep seeing people talk about shipping their OCs? why is a hypothetical relationship entertained and enjoyed by the creator of the work described using fan terminology?

I have for real no joke seen people talk about their 'headcanons' for their own characters, in their own stories. that's not a headcanon babe, that's canon!!! that's YOUR WORK. moreover, why are we even talking about the canonicity of your personal original writing? this isn't the star wars extended universe, why are international franchise IPs setting the baseline for the relationship you have with your writing and the terminology you use to conceptualise it?

tbc this is not a 'fandom brainrot' post. because I don't think it's fanwork that's the root of the problem. I think it's the insidious creep of capitalism and the ever more draconian weaponisation of copyright law that has rewritten our capacity for talking about creative work so that it revolves at all times around ownership and precedent. there is a deep learned anxiety about describing fictional works as fictional properties, that echoes in our vocabulary as we constantly make clear what is owned and what is not, what has been established on the record and what exists in the realm of speculation.

the reason 'fandom brainrot' is such a compeling stand-in for this issue is that it's really just one step downstream from all that voracious rent-seeking behaviour by publishers. if the only things you ever read or watch are in the milieu of those franchise copyright lawyers, that is the understanding of fiction-as-property you develop. if you're not exposed to a broader spectrum of art and artists, living and dead, who talk about their work as work - as expression, as experimentation, as a personal process and as a shared space with their audience - you will quickly be alienated from your own creative practice by design.

the point i want to make is this: going off the beaten track, exploring outside the franchises and bestsellers and box office babies, is not just a matter of good taste. imo it is a necessary act of solidarity with artists who still live, work and speak as individuals. it's a healthier environment for you as an artist. you deserve a relationship with your own work, not a ship.

[positivementalaxolotl]

I want to be clear here that sometimes cats that are suppose to be indoor cats escape the house. I have had this issue before *We have broken windows, and he likes to dash out when people crack the doors open. He also knows how to open certain doors and windows as well*

There was a point in time where someone found my cat, and just took him. They drove him out 3O+ minutes away to their house. The only reason why we were able to get him back was because 2 of this persons friends were walking by one of my posters I posted outside my house on a sign. On my way back from posting other missing posters, I saw them and we had a pleasant conversation about him and getting him back. I am not mad or anything about them taking my cat back to this strangers house, I am actually very thankful that had he not been brought back to me, that he would have had another loving home to go to.

Every time I have gone online to try to find my cat on one of the MANY times he has escaped my house, people have assumed that he was an outdoor cat, even when in the same listings I very specifically state that he escaped and is an indoor cat. I have been yelled at, I have been lectured, I have had strangers come to my house and yell at me about how I must not *really* love my cat, and then had people online tell me I am entitled because I do not want strangers to come to my house and yell at me. This is a combination of because of people choosing not to read the posts they are seeing, people thinking that this kind of behaviour in any context is okay, and people being horrible to those in poverty.

I have had people recommend a *low cost* vet that was almost an hour away, and cost more than a vet that I could walk to and from if need be. And then promptly scream at me because I had just lost my job and could not get my cat to the vet that same day to take care of his neuter.

I am VEHEMENTLY against outdoor cats. Not only is it god awful for the cats involved, but its an environmental issue as well. Both of my cats are indoor cats, one of them just has not been neutered yet and likes to run outside the moment hes able to when its warm outside. I know the risks of him being outside. I am fully aware. I am lucky enough to be in a relatively safe area where my cat feels safe enough around the wildlife to use the deer as protection against me. He DOES also always come back within 12 to 24 hours after leaving. The only times he has not was when he was taken by a person, or when it was raining outside, and usually he will hide nearby if that is the case. He does go over to other peoples houses, but its not a thing where he spends more and more time there. He just likes to explore and get the girls.

The point of what I am saying here is that if you want your cat to be a fully or near fully indoor cat, just keeping them inside isnt enough. My boy nearly crushed himself shoving an air conditioner out the window to escape. The BEST thing you can do for any cat to make sure they stay in your area is to NEUTER them. That way they are less likely to run off, and if they do, then they are less likely to travel far or get into fights with other cats. If you see an intact cat outside, yeah it may be a stray. But it is ALWAYS best to make sure that it does not belong to someone who is trying to keep them indoors. If you find the owners keep them outside, then... Cat distribution system. The only cats I would say should stay outside are feral cats, or cats that were raised outdoors and strongly do not do well indoors, but have a safe place to stay outdoors.

*I am planning on getting him taken care of here soon I just need to make everything work first*

I can think of a really easy solution to this problem.