#you had no idea what political bullshit was going to happen when I was smack dab in the middle of my 30s

[strohller27]

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[cocobutnochanel]

Roommates | 18+

Genre: slight fluff, smut, roommate!Chanyeol

Main Characters: Park Chanyeol x Reader (oc: fem)

Summary: Your brother's bestfriend, the wrong pill and empty threats could never be good news. Your life turns 180 degrees around when you drink medicine impulsively.

Warning: profanity, sex scene, drug intake

Kink List: unprotected sex, bondage, restraints, drug intake, verbal degradation, creampie, aftercare, daddy kink, daddy!Chanyeol, dom!Chanyeol

Word count: 3.3k+ words

You wanted to bang your head against the wall. Integral calculus was so goddamn hard to learn and you hated how it's included in your courses when you majored in political science. It didn't make sense and the book in front of you didn't too.

You let out a huff and try to comprehend it since you aimed for a perfect GPA this semester.

The door swings open "Hey, dumbface." A familiar voice disrupts you. "What do you need, frat boy?" You hiss, not even bothering to turn around to look at him. Even his presence alone annoys you.

"Stay out tonight." He snickers, shutting the door behind him. "Can you not have sex while exams are going on? I'm trying to study." You whip your head and glare at his smirking face.

"Don't test me, I can tell eomma you're dating someone in uni." He was threatening you with bullshit like this again. What more, you know your mom loves him so much and she'll believe him.

You roll your eyes at him. "Eomma? She's my mother, Chanyeol, not yours. I'll tell her you're fucking with the entire population of Seoul instead." You look at him incredulously while he smiles with amusement in his eyes. He loved pissing you off, you had no idea why your oppa and eomma let you share a dorm room with him.

"You wouldn't do that to your oppa." He cooed at you mockingly. "Oppa? You? Fuck off, Yeollie." You flip him the finger while he cringed. He hates his childhood nickname.

He finally heads out of your shared dorm room and you return to reading the book. Park Chanyeol was a rodent who never left your family alone ever since he met your big brother, Jongin, in pre-school. Like Jongin who was his best friend, he loves pissing you off too. He even has his own room in your house and calls your mother 'eomma'.

You finally resumed studying after he heads out. After a few hours of reviewing calculus over and over again, you decide to sleep for your last day of exam tomorrow.

-

You wake up and notice Chanyeol's top bunk empty and unslept in. He must be with his whores, you assume. You hurriedly get ready and head to your first exam of the day.

The day passed by idly, occupying you with three exams and integral calculus being the last. The moment you got out of the classroom, your head ached. Fuck math, honestly.

You get back to your dorm room and see that Chanyeol still wasn't home despite it being 2 in the afternoon already. You shrug that thought off and text him instead. Your headache bothered you more than your brother's manwhore best friend not coming home.

'frat boy do u have tylenol ?' You text him.

'aww, uri dongsaeng is sick xx' He responded in a heartbeat, dying to tease you since exams were over.

'fuck you where are ur meds' You reply as your vision blurs even more. You couldn't afford to deal with his bullshit. Your head was killing you now.

'my nightstand. be home in a sec w/ food' He finally texted you back. You groan as another pang hits your head, telling you to let go of your phone. You curse integral calculus for giving you this pain.

You pull the drawer in his nightstand. You see condoms of different variations and that disgusted you to the core. Safe sex should be practiced but to need this amount of condoms? He sure does love sleeping around.

You see a white bottle with a red label in the far corner. You couldn't read the label but your head throbbed even more, making you grab that bottle out of impulse. You take it and drink a glass of water.

The sound of the door opening reached your ears as you laid on your bed, trying to rest. "Hey, you okay?" Chanyeol's voice was worried but the pain you were feeling made you snap at him. "Don't talk to me. I'm about to die." He laughs about what you just said and teases you with "That's good news."

A few minutes later, you were expecting the drowsy feeling to take over but unfortunately, it didn't. Your head was still in pain and it wasn't letting you sleep. You wince at an intense pang again.

"Are you sure you took Tylenol? You should be knocked out right now." He comments when he sees you still suffering. "I don't know anymore, fuck. All I know is that the pain is going away." You groan but now, the pain was slowly diminishing.

Few more minutes again, the throbbing stopped but you felt kind of hot. "Holy shit." You hear him mutter.

"What now?" You ask him with a grimace, fanning yourself. Heat now taking over the pain you felt earlier. "You took the wrong bottle! You're so fucking dumb, I swear." He shrieks. You never saw him freak out before which is why I was alarmed.

He holds up a bottle and you cover your mouth as soon as you saw it clearly. "It was my horny pills, you dumbfuck." He said with a flabbergasted face. Well, that explains the heat.

You didn't know why or how but you were aroused when he called you 'dumbfuck'. It wasn't the first time hearing this insult from him but it set you on fire right now. The pill made you feel things you don't feel when you're not having raging hormones.

"B-But, w-why do you even have them?!" You tried to distract yourself from the feeling but it only heightened. This was wrong on all angles. He was your brother's best friend! There was a reason why your mother trusted him to be your roommate! You weren't supposed to feel things like these!

You feel yourself get wet down there. "Fuck." You breathed out, his eyes glued on you while you lay in your bed with a defeated face. He sat across you with knitted eyebrows and an angry face.

"Yeol, get out!" You scream at him before you lost your sanity. You were getting wetter by the minute. "Are you sure you're gonna be okay?" Even his concerned voice sent you over the edge.

Without thinking, you stand up and sit on top of him. "N-No.. Jongin's gonna kill me." His voice was raspy and sitting on top of him made you feel the growing bulge between his legs.

"What happened to the brave frat boy?" You whispered against his ear, your hormones getting the better of you. You start dry humping on his thigh as he closed his eyes in frustration. "Y/N, you know we can't do this." Desperation dripping in his voice.

You roll your eyes at what he just said. "Yeollie, be responsible. This was your fault." You purred, the libido inside you growing. He bit his lip in response.

"God knows how much I want to but Jongin will kill me. You know that, Y/N." He pleaded but you knew he couldn't resist seeing you like this, like a thirsty bitch for him. "Please don't make this harder tha-" You cut him off with a hungry kiss.

He was stunned and he couldn't move but your hands travelled down to the hem of his shirt. You took it off, your lips still on his. He was defenseless under your kiss. Soon, he kissed you back gently too.

His tongue ran down on your bottom lip and you moan his name. His erection was now as hard as a rock and you liked it like that. Especially when it was between your legs too.

His mouth hungrily darted down your neck. You knew he was leaving marks but you couldn't care less. He was finally returning the passion you were feeling. This was his fault, all along.

Your hands held onto his locks as he devoured you on top of him. He couldn't meet your eye. He knew he wanted you but it was wrong. Jongin was your brother and he was his best friend. It was wrong but it only made the two of you want it even more.

His hand clutched your thigh as he nibbles on the sensitive skin of your collarbones. "Yeol." You call out to him, desperately wanting for more. You take off the pullover you had on and he couldn't help but stare in awe.

"Beautiful." He breathes out, his face meeting your hot chest. He unclasps the bra from your back and as it fell to the floor, his hands immediately replaced that warmth.

He massaged your sensitive breasts as he let his mouth play with your chest. You could only moan in agreement.

He managed to slip hand inside your miniskirt. His fingers found your wetness, your back arching at the contact. "Yeol!" You scream in surprise the moment he slipped a digit in. "Wet enough.." He whispers.

He gets up and throws you on the bed. He pulls his belt out of the skinny jeans he was wearing. You gasp when he ties your hand above your head, tightening the belt around it.

You were left in your skirt and that turned him on. You and you were good girl ways, he thought. He pulls your soaked panties down with a satisfied grin, his eyes never leaving yours.

He goes down on you, his hot breath on your pussy. You writhe under his warmth as you buck your hips forward to meet his lips. "Nah-uh. Wait." He whispers breathily.

You exhale in frustration. He felt your desperation and flipped you around, positioning your knees on the bed. "I said wait." He growls as you feel his palm smack your buttcheek.

You bite your lip as the impact made you wetter. You were sure you were dripping down there and the pill you took didn't help either.

Another smack hits your bottom and the sting it inflicted made you moan out loud.

"Jesus, Chanyeol, put it in already." You begged desperately. He puts two digits inside which made you hungrier.

You feel your insides clench around his fingers as he scissors his way in. He was a cruel fucker and you loved how he likes you at his mercy.

"Beg for it." He bellowed above you, fisting a handful of your hair.

Pride wasn't your priority right now. Your priority was your need for him inside you. "Please, daddy, put it in." You sigh, letting all your pride go down the  drain. You hated him but now, you're begging while calling him daddy.

You turn your head around to see him but his erection was now out and it tensed at your nickname for him. It was itching to be inside you too.

He finally pulls out his teasing fingers. Positioning his 9-inch cock on your entrance, you moan audibly. "Daddy, please." You beg once again.

He slides it in as you felt your insides stretch at his size. Tears welled up in your eyes as pain intensified down there. “I’m not even fully inside. Wipe your tears, slut.” He hisses, his fingers diving into the sides of your hips out of frustration.

“So fucking tight.” He comments, feeling up every inch inside you. You could only groan in response as the belt on your wrists restrained you from moving.

He pulls out a bit and starts thrusting in a rhythm. “Yeollie.” You moan out loud as he took you from behind. “What did you just call me?” He spat, thrusting stops abruptly.

“I-I’m sorry, daddy.” Your voice was powerless. Just like how you are right now, kneeling as you call your brother’s best friend ‘daddy’.

“Good.” He starts ramming it inside you again. Your eyes deliriously rolled as he thrusts into your G-spot again.

You weren’t a virgin but you didn’t sleep around as well. You only had sex with the guys you were in a relationship with, hence, why you were so tight. Despite lacking experience that Chanyeol had, it was a no-brainer that this was your best fuck.

After simultaneously hitting your spot, you notice his pace quicken. He was about to come. “D-Daddy!” You screech as his hot liquid filled you to the brim, your own juice gushing out of you too.

You were weak as you slump back on the bed. He wipes you down there, making sure you were clean. He was a monster while doing the deed yet he was so domestic when it was over.

He took his belt off your wrists as you lay on your back, bare and sore. He plants a soft kiss on your lips as if it’d make up for how he tired you out today.

You thought you were through but another wave of heat hit you again 10 minutes later. He plops on your side after that and tries to cuddle you but that only ignited your desires once again.

“Yeol...” You moan into his ear as his arm drapes over your bare waist. “Do you want to go at it again?” He asks like a puppy as if he hadn’t made you beg a while ago.

“How long does it wear off?” You ask, referring to the pill. “I don’t know but usually half a day, I guess?” He shrugs, still cuddling you.

“Are you serious?! Does it mean I’m gonna be like this for twelve fucking hours?!” You grit your teeth. “Relax, I’m willing to help as long as you let me. Also, I’m sorry for that earlier..” He says with sincerity dripping from his voice.

“It was the first time I was ever like that. I just got carried away cause it’s you, I guess.” He looks at you with puppy eyes while his hands inch down towards your pussy that was now wet again. For him.

“What do you mean cause it’s me?” You ask him with a shaky voice, feeling his middle finger against your clit now. “You know you’re attractive. I just didn’t make a move cause I know Jongin would kill me.” He chuckles.

“Hmmm.” You hum which makes him look at you. “I guess I’m flattered, daddy.” You mischievously grin as he bites his lip at the nickname.

-

You wake up with sore thighs and a cooking Chanyeol. You lost count of how many rounds you had with him and he had the guts to look like a husband the next morning. He looked so domestic in a plain white shirt and an apron. He didn't look like the frat boy that he was and it was the first time you saw him in that light.

You get up and he whips his head around. "Good morning.." He greets you with a bright smile as if he wasn't the reason you could barely walk now.

Your feet meet your dorm room's cold hard floor and you walk to the dining table. He serves the breakfast he prepared: fried eggs, pancakes and bacon.

"You look so domestic, it's disgusting." You comment on his bright toothy smile when he placed the food in front of you as if he was some husband serving his wife. "You wish. As if you didn’t beg last night to be cuddled." He winks at you, pulling the chair across.

"There's the frat boy I know." You roll your eyes at his laughing figure. "By the way, eomma texted me the train schedule for today. You have to get ready by 9." He reminds you, his mouth full of pancakes.

You only nod at him, sipping the coffee he prepared for you too. You two finish breakfast while bantering about little things. You wanted to ask him about last night but then, you were afraid it'd make things awkward.

You dismiss that thought and get ready for your trip back countryside. Exams were over which meant it was already summer. Suncheon was only 3 hours away from Seoul but you only went home during school breaks.

You change into comfortable travelling clothes. Chanyeol has a designer hoodie on as if he was some idol in airport fashion. "You picking up girls from the train too?" You snicker judgementally.

He lets out a hoarse laugh. "You jealous?" He smirks and runs a hand through his blonde hair. "You wish." You glare at him and head out of your dorm room with a luggage in hand.

He follows you, his luggage with him too. You two head out to the train station nearby and buy a ticket to Suncheon.

You settle in beside him and sleep for the rest of your 3-hour ride. Last night's strenuous activities tired you out. Drowsiness took over you as Chanyeol leaned his head on your shoulders, slowly getting addicted to your natural scent.

-

You wake up to Chanyeol drooling on your shoulder. You were now near so you decide to wake him up. You were reminded of your question earlier too.

"Yeollie, you’re drooling." You tease him but he only hummed in response, trying to rub his eyes. But suddenly, you wanted to ask him about last night. Were you just an easy fuck? Or were you dating him like how you did with your exes? You weren’t really one to sleep around, you remind yourself.

"W-What does last night mean? Should we act like it never happened?" You ask with a thumping heart. You were scared that he'd say you were just another fuck. Despite your denial of ‘liking him’, rejection scared you.

"We're here." He grabs your hand and lets you up when the train comes to a stop. "Wait, Yeol. Answer me." You say in a weak voice while he dragged you out. Instead, it looks like he just shrugs your question off.

You spot your eomma and oppa waving. Jongin was smiling when he saw you and his best friend. You had no idea he was gonna be here but you were happy. You haven't seen him in so long.

"We missed you!" Your eomma runs to you and Chanyeol, hugging you two. You only smile at her and Jongin who was behind him too.

"Dude!" Jongin greeted Chanyeol with a man-hug. You roll your eyes at their bromance. "Dumbass." Jongin ruffled your hair while you only whine in response. “Oppa, cut it out!” You shriek at him.

"Did you eat already?" Your mom asks the two of you, linking her arms around yours. "Nope." You answer timidly, still not over the fact that Chanyeol dodged your question earlier.

"Let's go to Kyungsoo's place! He opened a new pizzeria." Jongin chimes in. Chanyeol could only nod. Did he lose his energy because you asked him that? Was it wrong to clarify whatever it was between you two?

You sensed the tension in the air when you saw Chanyeol walk so stiffly behind you.

"How's my sister in Seoul? Did her dumbass get a boyfriend, no?" Jongin sneers. He knew you had minimum experience in dating and he loved teasing you about it. Chanyeol clears his throat. "She's seeing someone." You and your mom stop walking the moment he announced this. Suddenly, you were reminded of the empty threat he made when you refused to leave for his hook-up. Were you two back at that again? Just.... roommates?

"What? Her? Are you joking?" Jongin laughs at you and you wanted to smack him in the face but you were too busy overthinking. "Yeol, if this is about the threat you made-" You assumed this was about that night but he cut you off with a bold statement.

"She's seeing me." You let out an audible gasp. Your eomma covered her mouth in surprise. "What did you say?" Jongin sounded like he was challenging his own best friend. The danger in his voice scared you but it didn't affect Chanyeol in any way. Instead, he confirms it again.

"Dude, I said she's seeing me." Before you could deny it, your oppa lunged forward and tackled Chanyeol to the floor.

[liighty]

Guzma babysitting Reader’s Niece

(A/N): BACK ON MY BULLSHIT AGAIN! BUT THIS TIME IT’S NOT ALL THAT SELF-INDULGENT AND MIGHT POSSIBLY BE TURNED INTO A SUPER FIC IF I FEEL LIKE IT

In all honesty i’ve thought about making another largeass super self-indulgent Guzma x Reader mega fic, but I’m not sure if I want to? I don’t know if anybody would read it, so that’s what this post is for!!! If you like this and want to see actual Guzma x Reader with plot and not just fluff drabbles lmk!! I have a bunch of asks to address so maybe i’ll get to that too soon

Anyways, back to the fic.

Mini Summary: (Y/N)’s niece needs to be babysat while (Y/N) is interviewed, so they turn to Guzma and crew to help out for a bit. Chaos ensues.

Rating/Triggers: UH drugs are mentioned but not really? THE KID DOES NOT DO DRUGS!!!! but yeah if that makes you uncomfy i’d be careful with it??\

Pairing: Guzma/Gender Neutral!Reader (I used the honorific ‘Titi’ which is gender neutral for ‘Tia’ or ‘Tio’ [extra thanks to Ocha_Bocha for helping me with that one <3] and tried to make it as gender neutral as possible. Originally this was written with a male reader, and then I went female, and ultimately attempted to eliminate gender completely. [Following the footsteps of Splatoon teehee])

Fic under cut!!!!!

"Are you sure this is a good idea, honey?" You clutch your niece's hand as you approach the large walls that separate Po Town from the rest of Ula'Ula Island. It's not that you don't trust the man who you're leaving her with- in fact, those two have been acquainted previously and seem to get along fairly well- It's his friends who you're concerned about.

"..." Her silence is expected, as the kid isn't all that talkative. Recognizing the young girl's silence, you frown. 

"You can stay in the office lounge if you really want to. I know you aren't the biggest fan of crowds, and um- Guz has some pretty loud friends-" Your explanation of what to be expected is quickly interrupted by a blue haired young man decked in black and white clothing. "Yo yo, what's with the kid?!" 

You arch a brow. You knew that Guzma worked with kids, but this guy couldn't be any older than 15! "I could say the same for you. I'm here to talk to Guzma-"

"Ya mean the boss? Why would some random chick want anything ta do with the leader of the Team Skull, huh?!"

A pink haired girl dressed in the same outfit walks up to the boy, crossing her arms. "Shut it, ya clod. Don't you remember the conversation we had with Boss yesterday?"

Hearing this, the blue haired boy's eyes light up in an epiphany. "Ohhhhh shit- Right-"

"Watch yer fuckin' language around the kiddo." She lightly smacks the back of Dansei's head. "She's in good hands, ma'am."

Another pink haired woman, this one being someone you finally recognize, walks in and smacks both of the delinquents in the head once more. "You say that after cussing, Reese?" 

Thank God. Plumeria. "Hey Plumes-" You smile weakly, waving politely with your free hand. Your niece does the same. Another young man, this one much shorter than the first and with green curly hair scrambles after Plumeria, jumping up and down to be seen. "Sorry about these numskulls. I'll lead y'all to the big boss man, yo. No worries at all, so you can chillax!"

I'm regretting this more and more by the second.

The crew starts whistling some hip hop tune as they make their way to the Shady House, the smaller boy beatboxing. You've taken this time to offer a piggyback ride to your niece, who's politely declined. Are all kids like this? Or is it just her?

Once they approach the boss, Guzma immediately jumps out of his chair, his signature shit-eating grin plastered on his face. "Eyyyyyy! (Y/N)!!! Kiddo!! What's up, homeslice?!" He hops down the stairs and crouches so he can get at eye-level with the young girl, offering his fist for a pound-it.

She bumps her fist against his, smiling just a bit. It's more of a reaction than you expected, at least. "S-sup, Uncle Guzma-" 

Looks like his slang is rubbing off on her. That's cute.

"Thanks for droppin' by, Doll. No need to worry about Little Miss Troublemaker over here, I got it all under control." He picks up your niece and walks over to you, pressing a looooooooongass smooch on your cheek. The other Team Skull members all make mini comments, like "Ewwww-", "Grosss-", and "Cooties-", causing Plumeria to once again smack their heads together. 

You roll your eyes, unable to stop the smirk on your face from growing any further. "Not in front of the kids, Guz." "Ah, right, right- My bad." His shades slide onto his face, hiding the bright red blush that had crept onto his cheeks. "Well, you should probably get goin', ey? The Aether Foundation's one lucky company to have you interviewin' for a position."

"Dork." You boop his nose, then your niece's. "Call me if you need me, okay honey? I'll be back as soon as I can."

"Okay, Titi (Y/N)-" You smile at the nickname while the others snicker. 'Titi' sounds an awful lot like 'Tittie', and considering three of the 7 people in the room are immature teenagers, there's definitely some laughing going on in the background. Plumeria looks very tired. How does she deal with these kids all the time?

"Alright, I'll be back. Don't light anything on fire, okay?" You yell as you walk off, feeling a slight hint of unease at the idea of leaving your young niece with so many delinquents, even if it's just for a few hours. It'll be fine, though. Guzma's there to keep them from doing anything stupid.

You laugh at the thought. Who am I kidding? He's probably gonna be the one who explodes something first.

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

The interview itself wasn't all that bad. You're fairly certain that you either aced it or put yourself up for consideration, which in itself helped your confidence just a bit. With the absence of Lusamine and the arrest of several of her chairmen, the foundation was very antsy and in need of someone who could handle the Pokemon Observation department. With your background in medicine and PR, you were rationally on the list of potential replacements, and despite your initial resistance, learning that the company would be run by somebody that WASN'T the manipulative little bitch Lusamine gave you enough comfort to accept the offer for the interview. Was it just an offer or an invitation? You weren't quite sure, but Wick was very insistent on you showing up.

Either way, you're pretty certain you got the job. Good on you. 

You can't help but wonder how your niece is doing, surrounded by so many troublemakers. As you make your way to the entrance of the Shady House, you can hear loud music, causing you to feel a small tint of anxiety. She'll be fine.

You walk up to the door and creak it open, the smell of burnt… whatever the fuck that is flooding your nostrils. Of course. They lit something on fire.

"Guz??" You call out to the empty room. "Plumes? Anybody home?" As expected, there's no response. You start to feel more and more anxious the more ground you start to cover. Where are they? Peeking your head around the corridor, your anxiety comes to its peak when-

"And that's why you should never do drugs, aight?"

H-Huh?

Your niece sits on Guzma's knee as he bounces it up and down, his signature shit-eating grin plastered on his face like usual. Awfully burnt cookies sit on the table, explaining the smell from earlier, and Plumeria seems to be asleep with the other team skull grunts. Are they… napping? Seems like it. 

She nods enthusiastically, taking a bite of a charred cookie and grimacing shortly after, causing the two to both laugh in unison.

"Doesn't matter if it's just for recreational purposes, you could still get hooked, and that's the last thing we want!" Grinning once again, Guzma pokes her forehead.

Hypocrite. You're reminded of the first time you two had kissed, which happened to be shortly after you both had blazed a couple of joints. It's enough to get you laughing, though.

"Huh?! What're you doing here so early? Don't tell me ya flunked THAT bad!" Guzma's eyes widen, a genuine look of bewilderment painted on his face.

"I did not flunk! I think I did great!" You huff, crossing your arms defiantly. "It's suuuuuuuper comforting that you thought I failed, Guz."

"Nononono I was joking!! Right, kiddo??" Your niece quickly nods. "See???? No harm, no foul!"

Arching a brow, you walk up to the two and pick up the young girl. "Mhmmm. Did you have fun, honey?"

She nods again, unable to contain the grin on her face. "Uncle Guzma told me about his Pokemon training! And I got to ride on Golisopod's back!" 

The large bug type pokemon bops up and down upon hearing its name, prompting a smirk from Guzma. "Yeah, I told ya I'd take care of her. She's welcome back anytime, okay?"

"Thanks, Guz." You peck his cheek, and your niece sticks her tongue out, closing her eyes. 

"Icky cooties!!" Where the hell did she hear that? The only people you can think of who'd say such a thing are in the other room snoozing, so- Yeah, actually, you know exactly who taught her that word.

"Well, I'm gonna getchu with my cooties! And my tickles!" You raise a hand menacingly, wiggling your fingers with one eye closed. She immediately curls up, not out of fear, but out of excitement. It's nice to see her so happy again.

After a very long tickle session, you quickly glance at the large grandfather clock, noting the short hand of the clock slowly approaching the number 8. Shit. "We gotta go, kiddo. Your dad isn't gonna be all that happy if we get home any later than 8:30. Besides, it's past your bedtime."

"I bet Uncle Guzma stays up past his bedtime-" She yawns. "Can we stay for a little longer?"

How can I say no to that face? You find yourself incredibly conflicted. Do you tell her you have to leave anyways? Or do you stay and risk getting in trouble by your brother-in-law?

"Eh, as much as I'd love to have you over for longer, kiddo- Look at your Titi (Y/N). They look exhausted."

You smile gratefully at the comment, glad that it doesn't have to be you to tell your niece to go home. "Yeah, I'm beat. We can hang out some other time, okay? I promise." You pat her head and get ready to leave.

"Aww… okay. Bye, Uncle Guzma!! Bye Golisopod!" She holds your hand, and the two of you eventually walk your way back to the car. As you drive away, one thing lingers in your head. You can't think of anything else, in all honesty.

Guzma's great with kids. I should've expected as much, but… I'm glad he gets along with my family.

Your stomach rumbles at the intersection. I'd kill for some malasadas right about now- 

Okay, maybe you CAN think of something else.

[comfyswitcherblanketfort]

Hi Comfy, I loved your last family fic so much. I wonder if you could do something similar but with Vesemir? So. I'm thinking, Vesemir hasn't had a chance to date because hes been too busy bringing up Eskel, Geralt and Lambert. He finally meets his childhood sweetheart, Guxart, and they pick up from where they left off. Only issue is, the witchers aren't too sure about getting a step dad!!!!!

I didn’t forget this babe 😘 however I gotta get up at 3:15 am so we’re gonna hit this one with a headcanon format bc I can crank it out faster.

I HC the boys to be teens (Eskel is 18 and Geralt is probably17- ish and Lambert is 14)

Warnings: mention of the foster system, weed, general teenage shenanigans? 

Ves wants the boys to meet Guxart before they make anything ‘facebook official’ - the boys groan at this. V not cool. Big boomer energy. 

Geralt does the typical ‘middle child bullshit’ and makes plans that he “just can't flake on dad! they need me there or the whole thing will fall apart!” - he’s gonna go snog Jask at the drive-in but don't tell Ves. 

Eskel just sighs and takes a massive bong rip right before Guxart gets there. He knows this is gonna be a shit show. He’s got the ‘oldest kid responsibility’ tho so he’s at least gonna be there. his sense of duty is a lil twisted but he's trying his best

Lambert prepares for WAR

He paces his room fuming, he doe not like new people, nor does he like the idea that his dad gets down. he can't handle it. Geralt and Eskel were the ones to give him The Talk. Thinking about Ves??? having a boyfriend????? oh my god?????

Guxart is old fashioned. He tries to talk sports, which almost works until he reveals he’s a fan of Lambert’s team’s rival. 

He tries doing the whole ‘here I brought candy’ but these boys were from the foster system before Ves adopted them and that just makes them edgy. 

He tries asking about their girlfriends and Lambert just snaps “You’re gay, you shouldn’t assume.” like a dickhead

Eskel is at least amiable, or so Ves thinks. He politely laughs at jokes, nods along to stories, asks interesting questions, until Lambert makes a rude joke and Eskel fucking loses it.

Cat’s out, Responsible Eldest Child TM is baked out of his mind and Ves is furious. 

Guxart goes home a little earlier than planned to “give them family time” - he’s just mildly terrified of the little one. 

Geralt comes home in the middle of them getting yelled at and tries to sneak Jask upstairs and that is its own lecture

In the end, they settle for a second go on neutral turf and Lambert takes a hit beforehand this time, not Eskel. 

Geralt is now ready for battle because of all the exaggerated shit he’d heard from Lambert, but he’s the quiet watching kind so he doesn’t pull anything before he’s sure. 

Guxart mentions he saw a really good musician at an open mic night at the coffee shop - it just so happens to be Jask and Geralt immediately likes him 

“He likes Buttercup’s singing, what asshole could like the sweet things he sings about?” - Lambert smacks him upside the head for this, but mostly because he’s tired of hearing “Buttercup this- Buttercup that” 

Eskel warms up a little talking nerdy shit. 

Lambert is still annoyed but stays civil at least. 

Ves deadass almost cries in the car on the way home because he’s just so relieved that his three little nightmares (whom he loves dearly) didn’t drive someone he thinks he really might love away. 

Lambert kinda feels bad and gives him a hug later, once the other boys had locked themselves away in their room, “Sorry dad. I didn’t think it meant that much to you.” 

Ves squeezes him tight and sighs, “I know. I wouldn’t bring someone home if I thought they weren’t good people.” 

Lambert has that really small voice again from when Ves first brought him in as a foster when he was 8, “I just forget sometimes.”

Cue the tearful father-son bonding moment a-la 90′s family drama

Things go much more smoothly after that

[phoenixyfriend]

Madara and Obito... In SPACE

So the preface to this mess: I don’t know jackshit about Star Wars, so a lot of this went through friends who do know Star Wars (the primary of which does not have a tumblr).

(I have watched Episodes 7&8, and Rogue One. Of the first six movies, I remember watching maybe an hour total. I have not seen more than snatches of Clone Wars. Beyond that, nothing but fic.)

Anyway! Let’s go:

As y’all probably know by now, my favorite form of crossover is what I call “intrusive,” so... I'm enjoying the mental concept of "dump Madara on Coruscant and watch him go." (Prequels, probably.)

Does Madara know what's going on? No. Can he understand a word that's being said? No! Is he going to fight the first person to aim a weapon at him, and every person after that? Yes.

Is Madara fighting fit?

Nnnnnnnnnnnnnno, not really, he’s old as balls. This is "I was on cave life support but I'm getting back up to kick ass out of pure spite" Madara.

[Image description: A screenshot of a panel of the Naruto Manga. Uchiha Madara is old and visibly ‘decrepit,’ with spiky white hair and an amorphous black robe. He is sitting on a pale throne, and there is a scythe visible to the side. He has a speech bubble saying “I am... a ghost of the Uchiha.” End Description]

Two wrinkly old guys, staring each other down: There ain't enough room in this universe for the two of us. [Palpatine and Madara start fighting to the death]

Congrats, Palpatine! Your ass is getting kicked by a geriatric malcontent who doesn't speak any language you've ever heard or feel like literally anything in the Force. You may have Sith lightning, but do you have decades of frontline experiences and over half a century of cave-dwelling bitterness?

Both of them, simultaneously, in completely different languages: Get off my lawn, whipper-snapper.

Palpatine: Behold my mastery of the Dark Side, Foolish old man! Palpatine: [shoots lightning] Madara: Oh hey, you're like the seventeenth most dangerous person who can shoot lightning I've fought. Telekinesis? Fought that. Combat precognition? Fought that, have that, and let me tell you hwat, it doesn't help if you're opponent is just that much faster than you.

Now, I’ll take a step back and acknowledge that several people advised me that Palpatine would stand a chance against Madara, likely even win, if Madara just got hacked off of his life support and is down to one eye.

But. I want a shitpost, and also to clown on Palpatine, so Madara wins easily.

Madara also deserves to be clowned on, but the entire situation is clowning on him because he’s not in his cave anymore, and he really wants to go back to his Gedou Mazou statue.

Maybe Madara and Palpatine go Old Man Fight and then Obito just pulls a Ninja Move and kills Palpatine that way. Madara was ranting and Obito just. Ninjas behind Palpatine and slits his throat like “okay, you’re obviously evil so like... bye.”

(I just love causing "Wait what" reactions in characters that are used to having total control. Like. Have you read "Unexpected Guests"? The Bleach fic? Everything that happens in Hueco Mundo and after. That energy. I want that energy.)

Madara waves his scythe around like a cane. Obito just trails after like “Gramps, no” because it’s still pre-Sanbi, so he’s Mostly Innocent (you know, on the scale of how fucked up Obito is as a person), and just wants Madara to like. Stop.

Palpatine dies but nobody's sure what to charge Madara with since he did kind of expose a Sith? And Palpatine attacked first for [handwave] reasons?

Jedi: Well sir, in lieu of charging you with assassination of the emperor, we have decided to ask you politely to return to the elderly person's retirement home from whence you came. Please leave immediately. You are frightening the senate. Madara: [incomprehensible raving] Jedi: Yes yes, very interesting. Jedi, whispering: Does anyone know his caretaker???

Obito looks increasingly put-upon as events progress. You need Obito there to... well, not translate. Nobody can translate. But to at least poke Madara into being Slightly Less Homicidal.

Anakin seems sad about his friend dying and being evil so Obito challenges him to a spar. Madara and Obito get pulled into the Jedi Temple to help train Padawans? My first thought was "they wouldn't trust someone so obviously Weird, Crazy, and Incomprehensible around the younglings" and my second thought was "well they let Yoda do it and he's all those things so I mean? YEAH."

What if they put Madara in the bacta tank and he just freshened up like a daisy because of hand-wave Hashirama cell reasons (Blame Sir Tiddyface).

From “Decrepit and Reliant on Cave Tube Life Support” to “Will Call Down Meteors With Ease”

How many eyes does he have? Whatever’s funniest. Let’s say one Eternal Mangekyo Sharingan and one Rinnegan, for maximum chaos.

Would "half my body is missing" Obito freak out if Bacta regrew his eye? Can bacta regrow something like that? When characters lose limbs they usually just get cybernetic replacements, but  the person I spoke with said that apparently they saw somewhere that that kind of thing can grow back it just takes a really long time.

I want to imagine bacta would help Obito with the Zetsu integration.

Anyway! Yes. Have Madara help train people despite being... Madara about it. You know... kind of a dick.

(I’d put example gifs but I don’t feel up to it. Y’all know what Madara’s “weakness disgusts me” ass is like.)

Obito had to get his "these fools could never make me sweat" sass from somewhere, after all.

Do you think Obito could fight the baby Jedi that are around his age while recovering? I have no idea what their skill level is at fourteen, but I want to imagine Obito sparring the Padawans.

Obito + Zetsu + Bacta = he still needs physical therapy but he can spar again!

Madara is delighted to have a baby ninja to bully. He's too old to not bully baby ninjas, and Obito is the only baby ninja. TBH Madara just makes Obito his assistant teacher.

Obito: What are we even doing here and how do we get home? Madara: I'm still working on that. Obito: But I want to go home and see Rin and Kakashi! Madara, who was like two days away from triggering the Sanbi plan: I'm working on it.

Something sticking in my mind rn is Ahsoka&Obito, since Obito is still Baby.

I think Obito would be excited to have someone his age that thought he was Cool and Talented for being able to do Chakra Things instead of writing him off as "the dead-last." Like, Rin is friends with him, but she doesn't look up to him as someone more/differently talented.  He'd be excited to get to be "The Mysterious Cool Big Bro" for once.

I feel I also just like the idea of Anakin not knowing what to do with someone Several Years Younger that is also. Ninja Skill.

Miscellaneous thoughts:

Madara is a grouchy old man even AFTER he gets effectively de-aged via bacta dunk, for the record. He's back in his prime and the Jedi have no idea how. They're all concerned about tiddyface*. (When are people not concerned about Sir Tiddyface, really.) The mokuton is a problem.

*Sir Tiddyface is that random Hashirama face that Madara had growing out of his pecs for like... convoluted bullshit reasons.

(Madara doesn't have mokuton, but he has enough Hashirama cells that it interacted very, VERY weirdly with the bacta.)

Obito spends the intervening weeks trying to learn the local language. He's very eager. Not particularly fast. Still doing it though!

I want Obito juggling kunai as physical therapy while he's waiting for Mads to get out of the bacta tank and just gains himself the adoration of a gaggle of small baby Jedi children.

Madara comes out of the bacta tank looking like he did in his prime (which I mentioned earlier but whatever), and it absolutely incites a yelling match of an argument that draws way too much attention.

Someone tries to teach Obito how to access the Force, just to see what happens. He almost turns into a statue because the philosophy behind Force meditation is only a few steps away from Sage Mode Meditation.

Anyway, Madara smacks him with a stick like Fukasaku to make sure Obito doesn't turn into stone.

Madara grumps about the lack of paper and brushes and ink. Bitches about it until someone hits up an antique store or something to get them for him. The day before he and Obito are dispatched on a mission with someone, probably Anakin for plot reasons, Madara very publicly seals things into a scroll and then tells them that no, they can't learn it, because the Force isn't chakra so fuuinjutsu won't work for them, so There.

Obito practices some Teen Rebellion (tm) and like, tries to teach the Padawan friends he's made how to do Chakra Things... but he's so bad at explaining things that nobody can get it to work even if it were possible.

In Obito's defense, language barriers. Not in Obito's defense, he's just really bad at words sometimes.

[alarajrogers]

Is this the latest meme? People jumping on a post that debunks a hoax or a piece of false information to claim that it’s true, with all the sincerity of the Sharks Are Smooth As Hell guy?

I am really fucking suspicious of this, and here’s why.

The degree to which misinformation shapes our political lives, generally in a very negative way, is unprecedented at the moment. You have people who sincerely believed Donald Trump was protecting children from a secret cabal of child molesters who drank children’s blood to stay young. You have people who believe that 570K dead people don’t exist but that a vaccine that has a 1 in a million chance of causing harm is a terrible danger. You have people believing that vaccines cause autism and that the diseases they protect against don’t exist anymore. You have people who believe that socialism and communism are the same thing and literally indistinguishable from totalitarian dictatorship. You have people who believe that a man passing a counterfeit $20 deserved to be slowly murdered in front of an audience of the entire world.

In the 00′s, we had a lot of people playing with edgy, politically incorrect humor. White people using the N word! Hilarious! Can’t you take a joke, you stuffy, too-serious person? Let’s be anti-semitic on main, what’s wrong with you, it’s just a joke? Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we told jokes about women deserving to be raped?

All of these were popular, specifically with white young men (mostly straight, cis and either Christian or atheist with Christian background), and all of them used “it’s a joke” to test out radical right-wing ideology that since then has suckered in huge numbers of people, enough to get a completely incompetent grifter elected president because he was openly racist. That is what bad ideology presented as a joke led to.

The past three days or so I’ve seen this thing going around Tumblr where a really fucking absurd claim is made, and someone debunks it, and a whole host of people jump in and vigorously defend the really stupid claim. Thus far I’ve seen “Joe Biden really did bury a dog” and “The poster’s son really was killed on a ride at Disneyland”.

Now when this was the “sharks are smooth as hell” thing it was funny because there was one guy insisting that sharks are smooth, a lot of people debunking him and being ignored, and it was a new joke... and we hadn’t had QAnon become a serious factor in politics yet, and we hadn’t had misinformation kill literally thousands of Americans. But I’m sorry, guys, this bullshit with doubling down on defending misinformation is not funny anymore, not after COVID and vaccines insert a 5g chip and adenochrome, and it really strongly smacks of the testing-the-waters shit that the white supremacists did with 4chan and PewDiePie and performative racism. Maybe you’re doing it because you think it’s funny, but the thing is, the ironic “reality isn’t real, nothing actually matters because on the internet you can pretend anything is true” stance is literally killing people. Literally. Killing people. Dying of COVID, dying because people would rather believe lies that fit their existing belief systems than accept that the police are corrupt and murderous and that their training makes it impossible for them not to kill people as long as it isn’t challenged and they are not retrained and defunded.

Also, dare I say it: you’re being ableist as hell. Autistic people have a very hard time not going down a rabbit hole of “no! that’s not true!” because we are wired to have a very hard time handling deliberate misinformation. People with high anxiety are likely to be really freaked by photoshops of a little boy being thrown off a roller coaster in the context of a poster insisting that that little boy was their son and it really happened. You’re fucking with people’s heads because you think it’s funny. Some people’s heads are going to get considerably more screwed up than you think, because their neurodiversities magnify the impact of your misinformation.

I have never blocked anyone on Tumblr before. I’m going to start blocking people who participate in this bullshit. I can handle a person with reprehensible ideas; I can argue with them. I can’t argue with people who just laughingly refuse to acknowledge that reality is real and continue to pretend that their son was killed by being thrown off a log flume, illustrated with a picture of a roller coaster and an obvious photoshop. And five years ago I’d have shrugged it off as people telling edgy jokes, but edgy jokes literally contributed to the rise of the alt-right. And misinformation -- which is what this particular set of edgy jokes is playing with -- has murdered thousands of people. Many of whom didn’t believe the misinformation themselves, but were forced to interact with other people who did (tell me, when Republicans went to super-spreader events and got sick with COVID, how many mask-wearing cashiers got sick from them because they refused to wear a mask and kept breathing on the cashier because they thought it was funny, and the companies that employed the cashiers gave them no tools to protect themselves from outright malice from customers?)

So no. Your jokes about Joe Biden killing a dog aren’t funny. Your jokes about a little boy being killed at Disneyland aren’t funny. And your posture that people who take the truth seriously and actually debunk things are people who should be mocked, presumably because who cares about the truth, is disgusting.

[instasiswetrust]

"Holy shit the school bad boy's courting you." Dustin whispered in disbelief as he stared at both the pin and the worn bloodied bat Steve had settled between them on the table.

"Wait, he's what?" Steve frowned, fingers picking up the pin adorned with a creepy smiling face. "No way."

"No, I'm serious Steve. This is like straight-up Jason Todd style courting. He totally kicked the whole baseball team's ass for you."

“That’s ridiculous man, Frank wo-” He ended up stopping mid-sentence because actually, Frank would. He definitely would. Everyone had heard the beating he had given Billy for smacking Hak-Quinn’s ass the other day, it made sense he would go against the baseball team as his way of proving he could provide for him.

Realization crossed Steve's face, lips forming a small surprised ‘oh’ while Dustin just shook his head as if he couldn't believe it had taken Steve this long to realize he was being courted.

"So what are you gonna do?" The younger boy asked, stealing a couple fries from Steve's plate before the other could react.

"What do you mean what I'm gonna do?" He said weakly, slapping Dustin's hand away when he tried to reach for more fries.

"What do you mean, what do I mean?" And it was clear in his tone he knew Steve was acting like this on purpose. "Are you gonna accept his courting, or tell him no?"

The Omega blushes, immediately flustered by the question. Having thought he would be a Beta or an Alpha for most of his life, he had known the whole courting thing would've eventually fallen on him to do it. Now with the roles reversed, he couldn't help but feel flattered by the gestures.

"Look, I don't know, maybe I will talk to him about it or something." Dustin seemed to catch the finality in his words because he finally changed topics, asking Steve instead about how Demo was faring.

Still, he had already made up his mind on this topic.

By the end of classes the next day, he hunted down the self-proclaimed leader of Legion. Steve might've been an Omega sure, but he was also taller and had the body of an athlete. Even so, he believed it wouldn't have been so easy for him to cage Frank against the wall had the Alpha not allowed him to.

"Are you... Are you courting me?" He cut right to the chase, wanting to make sure it wasn't all in his head.

"Been trying my best, yeah." Frank had a jackal grin on his face, looking up at Steve. Not intimidated in the slightest, with a flicker of something in his eye that stirred something up in Steve's gut. Something strange and new and not at all bad. "You like?"

Steve didn't answer with words. Doubts he even could. Instead leaned down and kissed Frank hard. Kissed him until they were both out of breath, Steve's cheeks flushed a pale red. A wide grin stretched his lips when he finally pulled away.

"Friday, 7 pm. I'll pay for the movie tickets if you smuggle in the food. Deal?"

"I got a key to the theater's back door. No need to spend money on me, doll." Frank's grinning again, all sharp cheekbones and even sharper fangs.

"You kick the whole baseball team's ass for me, and I don't get to spend a couple bucks on you? Unfair." And yeah maybe he was pouting, but really it didn't sit well with him not to repay Frank in some way after the way he left the baseball team.

"If you insist, ain't gonna put up a fight. Just thought I'd tell ya if you wanted to trade emptying your wallet for a little thrill." Frank shrugged, grin still solid on his face. Reaches out to cup Steve's face. "Comes with the bad boy package, y'know?"

Steve couldn't help leaning into the touch, eyes never straying from those stormy grey irises. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, dripping with honesty. "I think I would like to find out."

Frank laughed and Steve found himself liking the sound way more than he expected. It was rough and relaxed and shameless.

"Be happy to show ya, doll."

And Steve had to admit the excitement of knowing he had an actual date was enough to keep his mind off the bullying and taunts for the remaining days of the week.

Frank meets him at the theater entrance, right on time. Steve, who had walked the whole way here so as to not have to explain to his parents where he was going, is thankful that he will be able to catch a ride once the movie is done.

As promised Steve pays for two tickets then Frank drags him into another movie after the first movie ends, and another one after that. Steve doesn't feel like complaining, even if the movie genres are all over the place. He's having fun and this is the most he's broken the rules after the whole omega thing.

And really, if they makeout halfway through the second movie and end up missing half the bullshit plot, Steve only has Frank to blame. He kept heckling the cheesy bits under his breath making Steve laugh until he was hiding snorts behind his hand.

It's around midnight when they finally leave the theater, and as soon as they step outside Steve's phone starts ringing. His parents on the other end of the phone, angry because Steve's being careless.

"You should be more careful! What if something happened to you? And shouldn't you be worried about studying? You already lost that baseball scholarship-"

He must've made a face or something because Frank snatches the phone from his hand. Quick reflexes and firm grip. It takes Steve by surprise.

"Hello, Mister .. Missus Harrington -" He starts, and he's determined to take the weight off Steve as best he can and he's no Fairfield and he's certainly not Hak-Quinn, but he can play a part good enough for a phone call. "The movie ran a bit later than expected, but I'll see your son home safe and sound!"

And before his parents have any chance to respond, Frank hangs up.

Steve is stunned for a whole five seconds, blinking at Frank, before what happened sets in and he groans. "Ah shit, now they are gonna want to meet you!"

"I got makeup in my car," Frank says, clicking his tongue as he hands back the phone. "Nothing I can do about the hair."

And Steve looks at Frank dumbly for a second. Confused because, why would Frank need makeup?

"Tattoo. For hiding the tattoo." Frank waves a dismissive hand as he slings his other around Steve's waist. Comfortable. Warm. Close. "Hak-Quinn taught me how."

Steve is dumbfounded. "You would... For me? Wha-"

"... Well duh?" He kinda looks at Steve, confused himself. "I'm not exactly the kind of person people are proud to bring home but it stresses you out so I can play pretend." He raises an eyebrow, grins again, like a feral dog. "Unless you'd rather I show up as is? Full punk?"

"Oh. Oh Frank no, I'm not ashamed of being seen with you." Steve shakes his head, rolling his eyes. "I just know my parents and they will try to prevent me from seeing you. I don't want that to happen, that's all."

Frank looks at Steve. And he's quiet for a moment. And then a softer smile steals across his face.

"You have no idea how you smell right now, do you?"

Steve flinches a little, looks away, but he knows Frank's question is honest, not a jab. "I'm scent blind actually. Doc said it would get better with time but I can't recognize my own scent at all."

"You smell miserable, doll. Not too keen on handing you back to the cause of it, y'know?"

And then Frank scents him. It's light. Polite, even. But Steve knows the action even if he can't smell what it does.

Skin on skin contact and the soft rumbling purr of an alpha.

It kinda hits him then that he's not alone anymore. Frank cares. Cares enough to willingly offer to hide parts of himself just so Steve wouldn't get too hard a time with his parents. It's easily the most thoughtful thing someone that is not Dustin or Nancy, has done for him. Can't help it if he tears up a little.

"Waitin' on your answer, doll," Frank murmurs, probably aware of how Steve is feeling thanks to his scent. "Makeup will take a hot minute and we're gonna have to get you home .. eventually."

Steve ends up shaking his head, surreptitiously wiping a tear or two off his cheeks. "I'm not gonna hide you like you're something to be ashamed of. I'll just deal with them if they get too pushy."

"Cute." Frank's grin returns and he steals himself a kiss before pushing Steve towards his car.

They drive too fast and blast the music too loud. Steve doesn't know any of the lyrics, the music too far off from his usual tastes, but when he tries to somewhat sing along and Frank rewards him with a heart-stopping grin? Worth it.

As expected, Steve's parents are at the door when they arrive. Disappointed face, even more, disappointed scents. Steve's mom is glaring at Frank, his dad is just looking at Steve like he's a lost cause.

"Mister Harrington. Missus." Frank's got a jackal's grin on his face again, and Steve can't smell it, but his scent is twined around the anxious omega like an extra buffer.

It's amazing how Frank doesn't even care about the venom in his parents' eyes, writing him off near immediately with his dyed hair and throat tattoo and grunge aesthetic.

Steve's parents don't even deign to give a response, just march back inside and wait for him to follow after them.

"I had fun, thank you. I will see you tomorrow." Steve murmurs, leaning in to press a kiss to Frank’s cheek before going in and closing the door behind him.

They barely waited until the door was closed before they started demanding answers. Frank probably hadn't even left, but they didn't care and Steve hated it. Hated all of it.

His night had been amazing, maybe even the best night he had had this year, but that call had to ruin it.

Before presenting, when they had still thought he would be a Beta or a late Alpha, his parents wouldn't have bothered calling him for a night out. As long as he was home for breakfast, everything was fine. These days though, they had become protective to the point it was bordering on controlling and it bothered Steve.

Maybe he should be glad that they were trying to show they cared but it was hard to do when their words were “Stop putting yourself in unnecessary danger that will just cause more trouble for us.” and not “We are just worried something will happen to you.”

Ever since the goddamn results came back, it was always about them. How this would be a problem for them. How losing the scholarship meant they would have to invest more money in him. How Steve getting involved with a delinquent would look on them.

They don't bother asking how he is coping with it all. The changes in his body, the bullying at school they know nothing about, how he had to give up the sport he loved because society decided Omegas weren't made to be in sports. For God's sake, he had cried the morning he received the letter notifying him his scholarship had been suspended. But either they didn't know about that, didn't realize, or didn't care.

“Well? What do you have to say for yourself, young man?” His dad demanded, disappointment emanating from every pore in his body.

Steve might've been scent blind, but familiarity and time had allowed him to distinguish his parents' scents and the shifts in their emotions. Because of this, he wasn't spared from the full brunt of disappointment, anger, upset coming from both his parents. It was hard not to reflexively make himself appear smaller but he knew that would just make his dad angrier.

"I don't really see what the problem is, dad." He said, running a hand through his hair and sighing in exasperation. "I told you guys I would be out till late, and that I was going out with a friend. You had the location of the movie theater too. So what really is the problem here?"

"When you said you would be going out with a friend, we thought you meant that nice girl Robin, or maybe the Wheeler's kid, Nancy. You guys made such a cute couple, Stevie." His mom interjected, her tone softer but no less upset than his dad's had been.

"Mom, please. Nancy and I broke up a year ago already, will you drop it? Plus Robin is not even my type!"

"Of course because apparently, your type is no-good delinquents, you have made that clear." His dad snapped, glaring down at him.

Steve frowned, glaring back at him. "Frank is a classmate and a friend. He defended me when the baseball team started labeling me as a slut just because I'm an Omega. I think that's more than either of you have done about this!"

As soon as the words left his mouth, Steve knew he had made a mistake. His dad's nostrils flared and his mother gasped like maybe they were sensing something he wasn't. At least his dad might've because his mother was as scent blind like him, maybe worse. There was a reason scenting was something he didn't know how to do properly.

"Can't believe you needed the help of someone like that to defend yourself. Didn't we teach you to stand up for yourself, Steve? Or do you think just because you are an Omega now you get to play the weak card?" His dad snarked, eyes narrowed.

"Honey-"

"No." His dad shook his head, ignoring his mother's hand on his shoulder. "You are to stop any contact with that delinquent. Now to your room, Steve."

"Wha- Dad-"

"To your room, I said." He didn't yell but the growl was so clear in his voice that Steve couldn't help but flinch and lower his head.

Fine. He would play to their rules while they were watching, but like hell he would give up on what he and Frank had. Not after he had just gotten it.

[wincestisasincest]

Bob Your Head (The Fellowship x Reader)

I HAD A DUMB IDEA BON APPETIT BITCHES.

Summary: You get stopped by a woodland spirit that inhibits you from continuing, before noticing your silky smooth hair. 

Words: 1616 (soz it got way longer than i intended)

Things literally just kept getting weirder and weirder for you. First, you’d fallen into this strange land. Then, you’d joined their crackhead quest. THEN you’d found all of these nerds oddly endearing. AND NOW you were to face to face with this mischievous tree motherfucker. Great.

“Please, I beg your pardon, but our quest is of the utmost sensitivity.” Aragorn communicated with the slender, brown-skinned sprite just as he would a political ally. Big mistake. 

“I am not some king to be courted by you greasy-haired hobo.” As the sprite convulsed, the rest of the trees began to grow around you, and you realized that you were completely trapped in the glenn. Sometimes it’s easy to forget that magic exists in this world, and then it comes back and smacks you in the head like that. 

“Are not the sprites kings of the forest?” Gandalf muttered under his breath. 

“It’s not up for you humans to decide what we are at all, actually.” 

“Okay, well that’s like half of the group, nice.” You said it sarcastically, out of instinct, but the sprite turned to look directly at you. You could feel the leaves begin to touch our arms and legs. Boromir, protector of literally everything he was, put his hand to his sword as the hobbits took a step back. 

“What was that?” His eyes flared with anger. Legolas coughed, looking at Aragorn, Gimli, and Gandalf like he was expecting them to do something, but the just stood watching you in fear. That’s enough fear for one group, though, and you took it on yourself to act at least a little brave.

“I said that’s half of the group, bro. Like, him,” you pointed to Boromir, “and him,” you pointed to Aragorn, “and me are human. Gandalf, I don’t know what he is, but it’s not human, Gimli, well, he’s a dwarf, that long haired guy is Legolas, an elf, and all of these peeps,” you gestured to the hobbits at your side, “are hobbits. So, uh, you got some of it right, I guess?” 

Aragorn facepalmed. Pippin seemed more intrigued by what you were doing, and almost opened his mouth to add something on to it before Merry nudged him aggressively. 

“Is that so?” the sprite raised an eyebrow. You nodded. 

“You’re not from here, are you?” You nodded yet again, suddenly aware of everything on your body that was modern, from your t-shirt under your tunic to your undergarments to your sneakers. 

“What gave it away?” You made eye contact with Frodo, who looked like he was about to cry. You recall that one night at the campfire he had shared stories of sprites that he’d learned back in the shire. He was shoulder to shoulder with Sam, looking utterly terrified. 

“Everything, human. What’s your name?” 

“Y/n” You flipped your hair back sassily. At this point, Boromir had put his sword away, but he still appeared very much on guard. 

“Where does one get a name like that?” You could swear that this man was writing a Wikipedia article on you.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Mr., uh-” 

“Elmwood. Call me Elmwood.” You swallowed the urge to call his name redundant. 

“Well, Mr. Elmwood, I’ll make you a deal. I’ll tell you where I come from, and everything about me, if you let our lovely party pass.” You smiled, pleased with your own cleverness. Thus far, you felt as though you had been more of a burden to the group than anything, but now you were actually contributing. 

“Hm. No.” He put a finger to his chin, looking displeased. Even Gandalf was somewhat surprised, leaning in front of Legolas to get a better view of your conversation, almost as if he was expecting something. 

“Look, all we wanna do is-” You were not about to take his bullshit.

“I know what I want from you, human. You, you woman.” Ah yes. We have a real observant one here. Though some members managed to remain contained, the hobbits, especially Merry and Sam, visibly cringed. They were far more familiar with having unchangeable qualities about themselves being used as insults.

“Well spotted. Well, what is it? I haven’t got all day.” You wondered to yourself if they could smell fear, like dogs. Behind him, you noticed Aragorn reach for his sword and rest his hand on the hilt, while Legolas and Gimli exchanged a glance before getting into a stance that would easily allow them to grab their weapons at any time. Boromir whispered something in Gandalf’s ear, but Gandalf just shushed him. 

“That hair of yours. I want it.” Now everyone, including yourself, simply looked confused. Your hair had grown long and soft since you had come to Middle Earth, as your general lack of upkeep had allowed it to return to its natural state. To be honest, for a while, it was the least of your problems.

“My hair?” You reached up and touched your tendrils. They had dried well in the sun. 

“Stop this nonsense. Y/n, you don’t have to-” Boromir stepped forward. Aragorn placed a hand on his shoulder.

“Calm down, Boromir. Though, he is correct y/n. We can always take the long way round if you would rather not.” The hobbits nodded affirmatively. 

“No, no, it’s fine. It’s not that big a’ deal. Just sorta weird.” You fingered around on your belt before landing on a dagger, a gift from Elrond, that you had yet to use. You slid your finger across the blade. It was mighty sharp. 

“Y/n, are you sure?” Legolas stepped forward, deeply rooted with some sort of concern. 

“Lass, I wouldn’t mind takin’ the long way round.” Gimli nodded. 

“Yeah, we’re durable!” Pippin called from the hobbit group, to which Merry and Frodo affirmatively nodded, while Sam continued to look on.

“I would hate for you to lose your lovely hair, Miss Y/n.” Sam said softly.

Gandalf stayed silent, calmly waiting for you to make your decision. 

“Uh, guys, it’s not that big a deal. My hair is not that important to me, like, it’s fine.” Before any more protests, you pulled your hair back, lifted the dagger slightly under your chin, and sliced, feeling the weight vanish from the back of your head. 

Your hands clutched a fistful of your locks, leaving you a very blunt bob cut. Though there were no mirrors to look at, you ran a hand through your hair, only to feel a wave of adrenaline run through you as you felt the emptiness behind your back. You shook your hair a little bit before making eye contact with the sprite again, who seemed awfully pleased with himself. 

“Well, here ya go,” You offered the fistful of locks to him, which he approached cautiously before snatching from you, “Now can we pass?”

“Sure, just mind where you step.” The sprite didn’t look you in the eye, but was too busy playing with the hair that was once yours. And just like that, he disappeared into who knows where, leaving a vacancy. 

You peered around. All eyes were on you, some with concern, others with pity, and only one, Gandalf, with understanding. You sheathed the dagger and put in back on your belt, before running your hand through your hair once more. 

“Are you alright, Miss Y/n?” Merry, bless him, looked at you with wide eyes. You awkwardly smiled. 

“Yeah, y’all, I’m fine, it’s really not that big of a deal. It saved us a lot of walking, that’s for sure.” You tried to ease the awkwardness as you looked forward.

“Y/n, if you require us to explain to people the situation with your hair, we would be more than glad too-” 

“Situation?” You cut Aragorn off. You didn’t mean to sound angry, but this sort of confusion was frustrating you. 

“There is no need to get angry, Y/n.” Gandalf sagely said. 

“What? No, I’m not angry, I’m just confused. Is there some hair stuff I don’t know about?” 

“I think what they mean to say,” Gimly stepped forward, “is that your hair is far more befitting of a young lad than it is a proper lady.” Everyone else nodded with agreement.

“Wait,” you paused, “Is short hair not a thing here?” Everyone looked amongst themselves awkwardly, but thankfully your own memories were there to ask you questions. Now, pretty much every man in this world, save for the hobbits, had longer hair than you, and the women all had hair down to the middle of their backs, at the very least.

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense,” you said understandingly, “though like I said, I don’t really care. You don’t need to explain it to anyone, it doesn’t bother me, short hair is very common where I come from. Besides, now it can stop getting in my face when I’m trying to do things.” You giggled, and you could see Aragorn and Gandalf adopt small traces of smiles. 

“It’s common where you come from?” Frodo inquired.

“Yeah, like we would call this a bob cut. Cause it bobs.” You shook your head to demonstrate the bobbing effect, and the small crowd of hobbits laughed. 

Legolas, Gimli, and Boromir still didn’t appear to be convinced, but Gandalf didn’t have time for their shenanigans. 

“Well, now that that’s settled, on we go!” He lead with his staff, to which the hobbits quickly trotted behind, followed by you, then a tentative Legolas, Gimli, and Boromir, and finally a patient Aragorn, holding up the back. 

Wherever you went after, you could feel eyes on your short hair, though you didn’t mind. It was the least strange thing that had happened to you so far. 

[bad-bitch-beauchamp]

Songs About Me: Chapter Four

How Claire found herself inside Jamie's bookshop, and what happens when Jamie finally gets inside to watch her perform.

READ ON AO3

The Alleys of Beacon Hill, Boston; Early October, Mid-Morning.

Following a very intense conversation with Joe and Geillis in which Claire repeatedly tried to express that there was absolutely nothing going on with that guy from the night before, peppered with lines like, “Oh bullshit, Claire! Jamie couldn’t take his eyes off ye!” from Geillis and “Seriously. It was disgusting. And romantic. Something’s there!” from Joe, Claire eventually succeeded in getting them to let the topic lie… for now.

Outside in the daylight, Claire felt refreshed. She would find a place to sit and write, and decompress. Strolling down her tree-lined street, breathing in and out slowly, she savored the way autumn here made her feel. The brick townhomes was trimmed in white with shiny red and  black doors, covered in wild ivy and window boxes with trailing flowers. Mums in classic pots lined the front porches, and stone walls raised courtyards and gardens above the worn-brick sidewalks. Tall trees, oak and maple and elm, towered as tall as the buildings and brought a soft green and yellow glow to everything below their canopies. Everything felt old, here. There was a history, here. Under normal circumstances, Claire could’ve never dreamed of living here in Beacon Hill, but because of Lamb’s will, his love, his generosity, she was now able to call her favorite place, home. She was a woman who placed very little weight on material goods, but if the townhouse and her greenhouse were the only things she claimed, she would die happy. Boston was the first place that Claire felt she could create her own history. She wandered through the winding alleys of Beacon Hill, admiring how green changes to gold on every leaf and living surface. She stopped at the coffee house that knew her name, left with an earl grey latte a few minutes later, and was back outside at a wrought-iron table and chair on the sidewalk, her black leather notebook and cheap pen drawn from her purse. She admired this little courtyard, tucked just off an alley. Across the close was her favorite bookstore. She often wished to had more time to visit the physical shop, but with running a business of her own, she didn’t have as much time to peruse all the fellow small businesses around her. When she moved to Boston in 2015, she stopped in the little bookshop, and left with nearly more books than she could carry. The man behind the desk told her she could place orders online as well if that would be easier for her, smirking as the top book of the stack Claire was balancing slid off the top. The bookshop took residence in a historic three-story brick building, with the shop taking up the bottom two floors. An open staircase in the middle of the shop gave way to an open loft filled with shelves and leather chairs. The downstairs was completely open, making it easy to work your way around the shop in a u-shape. For any other type of store, it might seem like a bit much. For the bookshop, however, it was the perfect mix of historical and charming and quaint and magnificent and absolutely beautiful. It had been awhile since she had been able to physically make it in the store, and she missed it and it’s comfortable grandeur greatly.

Today was different though, as Claire had given herself the day off while Geillis worked, and she would spend it adding new books to her collection. She savored the last time of her latte and stood when she glimpsed a man inside the shop putting up a poster in the window.

Local Musician Wanted. Claire approached the sign after the man finished taping it to the window. In smaller letters, it read: Come share your talent, play for the community, and grab a good book when you’re done. Call or inquire within.

She had promised herself to have more fun, and karaoke had turned out to be a blast in the years she and her friends had been going. Music and gardening are what made her feel alive, made her heart bloom… Why not give this a chance when she wasn’t working? Claire’s heart rate sped up and she started to sweat when she thought of going inside and introducing herself as a musician. Deciding she’d call and arrange a time to come in with her keyboard, she started to turn away. The morning sunlight caught the lettering on the window, glittering just at the edge of her vision. She’d never paid much attention to the store’s exterior before -- or really even the name, since she’d long been calling it just “the bookshop” for years now -- but today, the gold paint drew her attention. Fraser Literature. Her breath hitched, her pulse raced, her head lightened. She couldn’t look away from the sparkling name on the glass. It couldn’t be… could it? Her pulse raced, her head felt light, the brick and cobblestone around her began to swirl.

With one shaky step and an attempt at a steadying breath, she pulled open the heavy wooden door.

Fraser’s Literature, Beacon Hill, Boston. Mid-Afternoon.

Jamie stepped through the doorway and tried not to jostle the small crowd that had assembled at the front of the shop. He just wanted to glimpse her, convince himself that she was real, that this, was real. That she was here in his shop, playing her music, just for him. He slowly, carefully, made his way to back of the crowd and found a small bit of standing room directly in her line of vision. She’d play a song with no lyrics, only instrumental melodies followed by quiet chords braided with thoughtful verse and chorus. The sunlight was streaming in the shop’s window now, lighting the crown of her head with rivers of auburn and gold. God, she’s ethereal. After each song, the small crowd would quietly clap and she would politely nod, cheeks turning rosey with shyness when her eyes fell back to the keys -- like she hadn’t even noticed they’d been there. She’d occasionally look up and look around the crowd, but only for a moment. Come on, lass. Look up. Find me. See me. As if she heard his plea, she held a long chord with both hands on the keys and looked up, straight into his eyes. Jamie gulped. She was singing, in French. She was singing, to him. He hadn’t expected it to work, the calling for her. He didn’t expect to be shocked into stillness by the whisky of her eyes and the dark shimmering curls around her head. He didn’t expect to feel this way after one night with a lass he barely knew… But here he was, enthralled by her. A gentle hand cupped his shoulder then and he jumped.

“Ye look completely enamored for a man who just met the lass a single night ago. Like a lovesick puppy,” said Rupert. Claire had gone back to her songs, but both men continued to watch her.

Angus had joined them now. “Ye never want to seem too eager tae please a woman, ye ken? It gives them too much power.”

Jamie watched as Claire finished another piece. He had to physically keep his feet rooted in place when she glanced his way, quirked a corner of her mouth up in a smile, and quickly looked down, tugging her cardigan tighter around her chest to hide the pink bloom erupting there and moving up her neck. “Aye, I’m completely under her power,” he smiled softly at her, “and happy tae be there.”

For the rest of the afternoon, Jamie tried to work, he really did. He refused to work in his office, since it was the furthest place from the front windows, and the furthest place from Claire. He went around with a polishing rag, trying to be inconspicuous with his meanderings until Rupert whispered, “I can practically see ma reflection in that shelf. Maybe move yerself along?” He tried to water the plants, only to remember he’d already done that when the pots started to overflow. He would run his hands through his hair just for something to occupy his time. Eventually, Angus suggested he bide his time making sure the rare and first-edition copies that sat on the highest shelves were dust-free.

“Aye, that’s a good idea! I’ll just be up on the ladder then if ye need me.” Angus laughed and shook his head as Jamie ascended the first rung. “Come get me, will ye,” Angus turned to look at him with a smirk and raised brow, “if she… uh, if anything happens.”

“Yeah yeah, get tae work. I doubt she’ll be leaving without saying hello if her looks meant anything at all -- and they definitely did.”

Jamie placed the last book at the end of the row back into its place and started his way back down the ladder to slide it to the next tall shelf when electricity pulsed up his calf. He lost his footing and came to a crashing halt on his back on the floor.

“Fuck fuck fuck… Fuck! are you okay? I shouldn’t’ve spooked you!” He tried to shift himself up, but couldn’t. “Don’t try to move; here, I’ll try to keep you still. Is your head okay?” It took Jamie a moment to get his bearings. His head smacked the hardwood floor when he landed, and his wrist tried to take the fall. Neither of those things were of much concern to him now though, since Claire was kneeling over him. Not just kneeling over him, he noticed. She was on top of him, a knee on either side of his torso. His brain was short-circuiting. She was in light-wash high-waist skinny jeans, a goldenrod cardigan, and a white tank top and she was on top of him . He couldn’t stop tracing her with his eyes. “Jamie?? I’m going to need you to respond or I’ll have to call the squad. Can you hear me? Can you say something, please? What hurts??” Dear God in heaven, nothing hurts. Nothing a damn thing. Her face came closer to his and he noticed the way her curls fell forward, how the sun was still lighting her from behind, how she was absolutely incredible. He blinked. Her brows knitted and her hands came to his face. Her touch revived him and he remembered how to speak.

“Claire,” he watched her, reverently. She smiled as her eyes glistened with unshed tears.

“Oh, thank god. You scared the shit out of me with that little stunt, you know,” she said as she began touching near and watching his eyes. Touch me again, never stop, he thought to himself. “How do you feel? Any ringing in the ears, nausea, blurry vision, dizziness, light sensitivity? Wait, you’re not bleeding, are you?”

Jamie smirked. “Actually, there’s some pressure on my abdominal region.”

“Your stomach? I don’t understand how that could have…” She blushed when she realized she was still straddling him, right on the storeroom floor. “You mean me.” She climbed off of him as quickly as she could manage and turned a shade of red Jamie hadn’t known was possible. “I am SO sorry about that, I didn’t know if you’d be injured and you wouldn’t stay still so I--”

“It’s quite alright, lass. Thank ye for looking after me. Truly.” His hand came out to hold hers. His thumb brushed her knuckles.

“Are you sure you’re alright? Honestly? I feel terrible.”

“I’m jes’ fine, Sassenach.” He made to stand up then, using his arm to prop himself when he stood. He came crashing back down with a grunt.

“It sure wouldn’t seem like you’re “jes’ fine”,” she replied in her best mocking tone. He smiled, sheepishly. “Is there somewhere we can go where I can have a better look at it?”

“Does up in the loft work for ye? It’s usually quieter, and better light than in the office.”

“Sounds perfect.” She extended a hand to him. “On your feet, soldier.” He looked at her then. How could one woman go from tugging on his heartstrings with soft melodies and French words to making him fall for her with demanding medical questions and authoritative requests. He watched her outstretched hand, her long fingers, her gentle bones. He watched her eyes, watch him. He grasped her hand, and she led up him up the stairs to the loft. She led him. In his shop. Seeing her lead him, he decided he’d let her lead up anywhere for the rest of his days.

She motioned for him to sit in a velvet wingback chair and took his wrist in her hands. He tried to breathe normally as her fingers probed the dips in his palm and traced down the veins in his forearm. Surely, she would feel his pulse. Surely, she would know she was the one that made it race. In the distance, Jamie heard her ask him some questions about pain and discomfort, and he’d nod or not depending on his response. He couldn’t form words. He was still in disbelief she was even there, in front of him, kneeling at his side.

Claire sat back on her heels. “Will you tell me if it starts to hurt? You could have a sprain, you know. That was a pretty nasty fall.”

His mind was working overtime but he finally found words to use. “If ye didna find anything wrong, I’m sure I’m jes’ fine.” He dipped his head to meet her eyes. “Yer a verra competent doctor, Claire.” He grinned. A tear fell from Claire’s face. “Och lass, what is it? Did I do something wrong?” She sniffed. She wouldn’t look at him. “Please, Claire. Please talk to me.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong. I’m not a doctor, is all.” She wiped away a tear with the sleeve of her sweater. “I actually… I quit medical school, a few years back.”

“I’m sorry, I didna know…”

“It’s honestly fine,” she replied hastily. “I’m really happy with the decisions I’ve made in my life, and I don’t have any regrets. Honestly. It’s just… sometimes it hits me that the plans I made my whole life didn’t work out. It gets me sometimes.” Jamie watched her, listening. “Oh my god, I just keep rambling!” She sat back on her hands, legs out in front of her, ankles crossed. “I’m so sorry about that, I really am fine.” She smiled at Jamie, and reached down to hold her hand.

“I understand the feeling of missing things that didna come to pass. I feel it myself sometimes.” Claire watched their hands intertwine. “Ye can always talk to me, Claire. I’m always here.” I’ll always be here.

She laughed then, and looked up at him still sitting in the chair. “Next time, I’d like to see you when one of us hasn’t nearly killed ourselves with a fall.” She giggled, and Jamie followed suit.

“Ideally, that’d lovely,” he replied with a laugh of his own. “What brings ye to the shop by the way, if ye don’t mind me asking? I never expected to see ye here today.”

“Oh, I came here for the first time after I moved, and I try to make my way in again whenever I can but work makes that a little difficult. It’s one of my favorite places in Boston though. It’s so quaint and quiet, but somehow still enchanting, and then today I saw a poster in the window asking for musicians and…” Jamie was absolutely beaming. “Wot?”

He laughed then at her absolute Englishness, and brought his free hand up to join their combined ones. “I’m jes’ glad ye like it here so much is all.”

She looked down at their hands. “To be honest, I was going to come today anyways, but then I saw the poster, and I remembered what the name of this place is, and well, I took a chance.”

Jamie was watching her intensely. “And ye took a chance.” He, too, looked down at their hands. “I’m glad ye did.”

The conversation was heavier than Claire thought it would be. She didn’t expect this. She cleared her throat and asked, “So, how long have you been here?”

“Me, or the shop?”

“Both, I suppose. The shop has been here as long as I have.”

“I moved here from Scotland--”

“Shocking, the accent didn’t give anything away,” she joked, and he pinched her forearm before continuing.

“--back in 2015--”

“Hey, that’s when I got here, too!”

“--and I’ve been here ever since. When I graduated my undergraduate studies, I went back home to the highlands and spent some time with family. Wandering the cobbled streets, the little shops, reading about the history… it was the only thing I wanted to do with my life. Some things happened back in Scotland -- some family things and some ex-girlfriend things -- and Boston seemed as good a place as any with history to start over. So, here I am. I started the shop, hired the lads when they came over a bit after me, and that’s the story.”

“I feel like there’s more to the story you’re leaving out,” she said with a grin, “and I do love a good story, Mr. Fraser.”

“Ye got the Cliffnotes version. Tell me yours,” he nodded at her.

“Well, I nearly didn’t survive medical school. I wasn’t happy, I wasn’t coping, and my mental health was kind of in the gutter,” she looked at him, and he gave her a sympathetic smile. Maybe he understood the feeling better than he let on. “I decided to drop out during my junior year and leave it behind. My uncle used to live here and left me some property, so I moved, and started over. Geillis and Joe came over after they graduated. Joe continued with medicine, and Geillis joined me, and as you said, that’s the story.”

“And where is it you started over at? What is it ye do?”

“Oh, I opened a plant shop here in Beacon Hill. It’s exotic houseplants, non-traditional bouquets, that kind of thing. It’s small, and eventually I’d like to run a greenhouse and garden, but right now, the shop is perfect. Besides, Boston isn’t exactly conducive for having that, is it?” She laughed, and tried to hold her pipe dreams at bay. “Geillis offers zero-waste products, and makes some of the macrame hangers and planters in the shop. It really is the most lovely place. If you ever want to visit and make sure I’m not the one to fall off a ladder, it’s just over on---”

“Garden Street. Aye, I know the place,” said Jamie, smiling to himself. His eyes were positively twinkling.

“You know the shop?”

“Where d’ye think all the plants in this place came from? Aye, I know yer wee shop and believe me, Claire. It’s a dream. I had no idea it was you behind it all.” He paused, watching her. Drinking her in. “We’ve just missed each other for years now, it would seem.”

All she could do was nod. Her mind was racing. How had they been so close so many times, but had never met? How had only two days with the man made her feel like her heart was beating outside her chest? He moved to the floor to sit next to her, his hand on her thigh. Suddenly, he turned to her. “I think yer verra brave, Claire. For starting over like that. For following your dreams.” Her pulse slowed with his comforting words, and her hand rested on top of his. “I could say the same about you, you know.”

They stayed that way for a while, watching the people down below, touching hands, touching legs, moving closer into shoulders and sides. Jamie leaned back into the shelves. Claire sighed.

“Since you own the place, I guess I should let you get back to work.” She stood, smiled, and started down the stairs. Jamie launched to his feet, unwilling to let what happened the previous night repeat itself.

“Claire! Lass!” He reached for her hand and she stopped a few stairs below him, turning to face him. His mouth was dry.

“I dinna think I can’t wait a week to see ye again. I didna think I could stand it this morning and then ye dropped out of the clear blue sky into my shop and ye sang yer songs -- oh, and I didna know ye knew French! I do as well,” Claire blushed at that but Jamie continued on, “and ye showed up and mended my wounds and ye told me of our shared histories, and… and I willna wait to see ye again.” He descended a step. “That is, if ye want to see me, too.”

Claire was overcome not just with Jamie’s declaration, but also with everything that had happened today and the last five years that led them here today. She could only smile at his nervousness, and admire him. You’re beautiful, James. His simple navy t-shirt was pulled taught across strong muscles, the red curls she daydreamed of were just combed straight back with the exception of a single lock that escaped with his chase of her down the stairs. His ocean eyes bore into hers with a plea, with an guarded passion Claire was increasingly desperate to unlock. She reached in her crossbody bag to retrieve a pen and finding no paper, offered up a Dunkin’ Donuts receipt. She brought the receipt up to his chest, just above his heart, and wrote her name and number.

“I’ll be waiting for your call,” she said, and turned back down the stairs, not waiting for a reply.

She reached was reaching for the door when a voice echoed down the stairs, “I promise ye’ll hardly be waiting at all, Sassenach.”

His phone rang then, and a woman’s smiling face shone up at him from the screen. As soon as he could, he would call Claire. He sighed, and hit accept on the call. 

[redhawtriot]

Deprived (MHA x Reader )

Tip Jar ☕- Not expected but always appreciated💞

You try to teach the following boys a lesson, but things don’t exactly go as planned.

These used to be headcanons but they were too damn long, so I made them scenes instead lol

Anywho, that’s why they are in this tense! sorry it’s not my usual writing style!!

Some of these are NSFW...ish.

HnM💕

This wouldn't be the first time that you had resolved to give him the cold shoulder. Now, usually when you would do such a thing, it wasn't necessarily to hurt his feelings, or get him back in some vindictive way. It was usually so that you could calm down yourself.

You would stop yourself from communicating with him as frequently and often avoid him altogether; however, the man never seemed to notice or call attention to it-- effectively giving you the cool down that you needed so that you could continue your relationship as usual

But this time? This time, you fucking meant business. You were sick and tired of you having to spell everything out for him, dammit! Shouto was going to take some damn initiative and treat you like the the queen/king you were!

You would block his number and bail on the plans that you two had to meet up that night. You weren't going to take his bullshit anymore. He is going to come to your house and beg for forgiveness whether he likes it or not! and then maybe, just maybe you would forgive him. 

However.

Todoroki’s ass would just assume that you must have made other plans. Surely you wouldn't just ditch him if it wasn't for something important right? His dissociated mind wouldn't even bother on texting you, because he would think that he just knows you so well. 

He’ll just see you tomorrow. 

Except he didn’t. That kind of threw him off a bit. You always came over, even in your quieter moods. He would try to text you and you wouldn't answer. O...kay... you must be busy still.

About a week would go by before his mind finally gathered up enough common sense to be concerned.  He would text you one final time and express his concern for your well-being before making his way over to your house.

As soon as you heard a knock at your door your heart would skip a beat as you excitedly ran to grab the handle. It fucking took him long enough! You would quickly readjust the hopeful expression on your face and paint a frustrated one on.

Annnnd scene! You nonchalantly opened the door, rolling your eyes at his presence. 

“Are you okay? You haven't been answering my calls or texts,” he would invite himself into your home, calmly brushing past you to take his shoes off and hang his jacket up. He’s got some fucking nerve walking in here like he owns the place. You would only glare at him.

Your silence would startle him, “Did you loose your voice? Does your throat hurt?” he would walk up to you and place the back of his hand on your forehead, checking your body temperature. 

You smacked his hand away as he spoke up again, “Well, you feel okay-- not too warm...” he would trail off. You would only be able to stand there, blinking your eyes in shock at his utter aloofness. 

“N-No!” you would exasperatedly would throw your hands to your sides, “I’m upset with you, you jerk!”

He would only be able to stare at you for a moment, as his mind tried to piece together what he did for you to be mad at him. You gave a heavy sigh as a few moments passed, before you whipped yourself around and stormed away. You would run to your bedroom, slamming the door behind you. 

You threw yourself onto the bed face-first-- prepared to lay pathetically in that position for the rest of the night; however, what happened next would surprise you. Todoroki gently made his way into your bed room, politely shutting the door behind him as he spoke up,

“I’m sorry,” he would speak up, but you wouldn't even drag your face out of the pillows. He probably didn't even know what he was sorry for! You would feel the weight of the bed shift only moments before Todoroki would gently gather you up on top of him.

Your eyes would fly up to his face, shock written across them as he spoke, “I shouldn't have danced with her that night. I just thought that that was the polite thing to do,” he would apologize, staring into your eyes as he caressed the back of your head.

Okay. This totally wouldn’t be expected, but hey, you could do something with this! It was finally time for you to lock down and really make him sorry now! But before you could move away from the man to continue your petty behavior, he would grab the back of your thigh, sitting up with you in one fluid movement. 

“It wasn’t fair for you to see me with someone else like that,” he whispered into the base of your neck, sending chills down your spine as you straddled him. The warmth of your bodies stacked against each other.  He would then lift his hip upward against yours, allowing you to feel a firm heat underneath you, 

“Let me remind you that you’re the only one for me,” he would trail wet kisses onto your jaw down to the sensitive skin on your collar as he tightly gripped your waist. You weren't going anywhere as you began unraveling, melting into him. Okay, fuck a cold shoulder when you can have some cold dick.

TAKE ME, I’M YOURS.

He wouldn’t even notice that you were giving him the cold shoulder for a while, but would immediately recognize that you were upset with him once he leaned in to give you a kiss and you sharply turned your face way. 

His eyebrows would furrow together, “Is.. something wrong?” 

That would piss you off more. How could he not know what he did? Instead of answering him you would simply get up and walk away, leaving him a frozen, stuttering mess,

“Y-Y/N! W-w-wait!” he would snap himself out of his heartbroken trance and shoot towards you with extended arms. He would grab you from behind and bury himself into your neck, “Whatever I did wrong, I am so sorry. Just...” he knew that whatever was wrong must be huge for you to act this way, but he honestly had no idea what it was, “...don’t walk away from me like that. Talk to me so we can fix it, baby.”

Woah... okay.

You had no idea why you hadn't expected this reaction from him.... 

God, he was so adorably precious, and you were... horribly immature.  He obviously didn't mean to hurt your feelings, so what were you doing, hurting him back like that? 

You tried to be a bad bitch, but now you were just a sad bitch.

You would quickly give in and hug him back, placing kisses all over him where you could reach and sending your own flurry of apologies his way.

Your problems would be fixed easily enough.

He would notice your cold shoulder right away. 

He would grab his chin, nodding his head as if he were in very important thought, “Alright, if you feel like a bit of space will make you feel better, then I will be more than happy to oblige to your needs,” He would gather up some of his belongings from your shared bedroom and move them into the guest bedroom.

You would just stand there, shocked at his initiative before gathering up your emotions. Hmmph. Serves him right. 

You would continue on with your day, but it would only last so long.You would miss his touch after only about a few hours. You would pick up your pride and move toward the guest bedroom. 

Only moments after you knocked on the bedroom door where he resided would he abruptly swing the door open just a few inches. He would peek his head out, “Are you feeling better?”

No. But you wanted to be held, “Iida just open the damn door and come back to our room!” you would snap.

He looked at you for a moment before decidedly shutting the door in your face. Horrified, you threw your hand on the handle but heard the door give a loud click. 

That bastard just locked you out! Or.. locked himself in rather... but that bastard!!

“Iida! Let me in right now!!” You would angrily roar as you frantically shook the stiff handle.

“You are obviously still upset,” he would callout on the other side of the wood, “If you need time to cool down, then I suggest you take that time. I’ll wait.” 

Um.. hwhat? 

Did he just... reverse uno you?

But! T-this wasn’t how that is supposed to go. The fuck! 

You would have already tried playing this game with him before. Just a simple cold shoulder would do next to nothing to make him feel sorry for what he did-- his pride was too strong. 

No, you would know what you needed to do. You would have to lower your morals for a moment and reach into your box of tricks to rip out the big guns,

“Katsuki, sweetheart,” you would call out ever so sweetly, “when you come to bed, don’t make too much noise. I’ll be sleeping,” you sang out carelessly. 

You would hear him before you would see him, “What the fuck are you trying to say?!” he would rage out as he stormed towards you, “You callin’ me a loud...” his jaw would instantly slack at the sight of your attire.. or rather lack thereof, “mouth...” he would struggle to finish as he ingested the the sheer black lace that failed to cover you.

“Sorry, is something wrong?” you would ask, slightly puckering your bottom lip in feign concern.

He was about to speak up when suddenly, his eyes flashed a wave of realization. 

Oh, hoh, no. 

He was NOT about to play your games tonight. You can take your sick tricks to sleep with you, for all he cared. The blond narrowed his eyes into slits as he glared at you, “Nothing’s wrong. G’night,” he tried to steady his glare at your eyes, not wanting to give you the the satisfaction of flustering him, but the temptations became overwhelming so he decided to throw his glare to the ground in front of him instead. 

HA! He broke eye contact first. You had won.

“Nighty night~” you sang before skipping to your bed.

Later that night, he would sneak into your bed room and instantly notice the provocative position that you had sprawled yourself into in the bed, “You’re fucking kidding me,” you would hear him quietly exclaim in the dark room.

He would lose his train of thought for a moment as he found himself instinctively crawling on top of your form. You groaned and pretended to be waking up, “What are you doing? Get off, weirdo,” you tried your damnedest to fight a smile. 

He ignored your half-assed request and roughly traveled his hand up your knee, brushing past the heat between your legs, leaving you shuddering. Nevertheless, his strong hand continued to dance up your body until it found a nice, warm home around your neck.

Dammit. You had to be strong. You would look up to him with a smirk, “You must be ready to apologize then,” you bit your bottom lip in an attempt to keep your emotions under control. Instead of answering, Bakugou commanded you to be quiet as he swooped in to deeply capture your lips in his own.

You would suddenly throw your arms out and used them to stiffly shove him away from you, “Then no,” you sternly barked.

He would immediately be snapped out of his trance. Fuck. You had never told him “no” before. The two of you usually couldn’t keep away from each other! 

The fact that you could so easily withhold yourself from your passion would cut deeply into his pride. He would angrily growl to himself, and with an enraged expression, thrash his body away from yours onto his side of the bed and sit glaring at the ceiling for a moment. 

He would roughly groan in frustration before finally forcing himself to face you and pull out the disgusting phrase from his mouth, “I’m... fucking sorry,” he would apologize through gritted teeth. 

You laughed in hubris, “Say it like you mean it,” you teased. 

Instead of answering he would swiftly pull his shirt off, “Don’t push your fucking luck!” he would bark back before roughly grabbing your waist and yanking you toward him so that the heat of his bare chest could press against your loosely covered back, “Now, where were we?” he would lowly growl through a smirk into your ear, pressing his hardened warmth deeper into yours. 

[hunflowers]

Hate Me or Love Me

Word Count: 7.6k

Requested? Yes, and you can too, here :)

A/N: YAY the long awaited arrival of part 2 of Femme Fatale is here :D Thank you all so much for being so patient with me, I appreciate you all so much. The smut itself is 2k so enjoy ya filthy animals. And when you’re done, maybe throw a comment my way! *nose boops*

Everything was different.

In hindsight, this was expected. There was no way everything could simply stay the same and they knew that. They expected things to change, and honestly, they expected it for the worst. But, it was a good different. Everything was good, new, fresh, different.

Three months ago, when Harry visited Y/N at her office, nothing had been the same since. That much was clear when she straddled his lap and kissed him feverishly, losing themselves in a heated make out session, mindlessly dry humping one another until their lips went numb and their bodies felt overheated. She would’ve liked to have her way with him right then and there, but unlike Harry, Y/N liked to keep things in her office professional – besides this, which was a one time thing.

Once they separated themselves – well, once Y/N was able to remove herself from his lap because apparently he was a teenage boy that had no control over his sexual drive – they got to talking. And seriously talking at that because they knew they wouldn’t be able to go about their days anymore normally. They had to situate a common ground, a way they could run their businesses separate but cohesively without any bumps or forks in the road.

For a century, their city had been divided. Now, it was blending back together as a whole. Rough patches were inevitable. That’s why over the course of the last three months, Harry and Y/N dedicated their time to working on the city and its people and their livelihoods, hardly focusing on them as a pair and what this all meant as a step forward in their relationship.

But now, as everything was going smoothly just like they had hoped, they were left with nothing to worry about and were left with no choice but to sit down again and talk about their relationship.

They didn’t see themselves as dating. Dating would be the proper term but the two of them were hardly proper and the word just didn’t seem to fit who they were. Y/N didn’t think calling Harry her boyfriend sounded right and maybe it’s because she’s never really had one so the word was completely foreign to her or maybe it’s because she never expected Harry to hold the title, but boyfriend wasn’t exactly how she imagined him.

They were exclusive, that much was certain. About a month ago they were at a meeting and this guy had come up to Y/N and was all polite and sweet and had the courage to ask her to go out for a drink, but Harry stepped in, not liking the fact that someone had the audacity to come up to her, especially now, as he had these mushy-gushy feelings about her. If he would’ve done this months ago there would’ve been no problem. But, now that Harry got a taste of what liking Y/N felt like, he didn’t want to stop and he wasn’t going to let some random lad swoop in and take his girl.

Something of similar style happened in Y/N’s case too. Two weeks ago, after a long night of bullshit this and bullshit that, they went to their favorite bar. Y/N goes to the bathroom for one minute and when she comes back, she’s greeted not by one, not by two, but three women crowding around Harry. He didn’t look uncomfortable per se, because they were attractive women, but Y/N could just tell he wasn’t enjoying their presence. And this bubble in her gut –she deemed it to be jealousy, swelled the moment she saw one of them put their hand on his shoulder. If Y/N didn’t have any decency, she wouldn’t hesitate to hurt each and every single one of them, but Y/N’s a nice girl, so she went over to them very calm and with the most southern belle smile she could muster and made it very clear they were not welcome to talk her Harry.

Needless to say, they were shaking in their heels.

But, they weren’t dating.

They were simply exclusive.

Right?

Right.

Maybe.

They figured that this night was as a good as any to sit down and hash things out since business was a little slow on both ends, but it seems nothing can ever really go smoothly for them.

At around six, Harry knocked one the door to Y/N’s home, bottle of wine in hand, a kiss to the forehead delivered, and the smell of heavenly dinner wafting up through his nose. The sun was just setting over the horizon, a warm glow radiating through the large windows on the far wall that reeled in the romantic and dreamy atmosphere around them.

Never had Y/N imagined herself to be romantic, wanting to enjoy a candlelit dinner with some wine and with her guy, but she was surprising herself more and more these days, all of her attitudes shifting and changing the more she found herself around Harry. Same goes for him. He would rather be caught dead then settle down with someone, but alas, his morals were taking a hundred-eighty degree turn these days.

And maybe romanticism went a bit more down the sexual path the more they indulged into that bottle of wine. Leaving the remainder of their dinner to sit until Y/N cleans it up later, they moved themselves over to her couch – because that seemed to be their brand – and engaged themselves in another heated make out session. Except this time they moved past the teenage humping stage as Y/N gently shoved her hand into his pants and past his briefs, nails scraping over the patch of hair that trailed to his growing erection, her fingers maneuvering to pull him out and into the open. He hissed at the cool air conditioning encasing his throbbing cock, mouth falling open and Y/N leaned down to press a moist kiss to his tip.

And he knew, he knew he was about to get the best head of his life and she knew was going to give the best head of her life, but then the phone rang. They ignored it at first, letting it ring on as she sank her mouth down and around him, her warm, velvety mouth sucking him in like he was a lollipop. Her tongue flattened against his shaft as her throat constricted the moment he pushed further down her throat, a guttural moan escaping Harry’s lips at the mesmerizing feeling.

Then the phone rang again.

This time it was both of theirs.

Y/N removed herself with a huff, and Harry whined in discomfort, but they both reached for their phones on the table and answered hastily to whoever disrupted them. They both specifically remember telling everyone not to bother them for the rest of the day, yet it seems no one knows how to comprehend simple words.

“What–”

“Y/N I could not care any less if you were in the middle of having sex, you need to get to Central now,” Flo snipped on the other line, although from what Y/N could tell, it seemed like her best friend sounded nervous. And that concerned Y/N a lot.

Then Flo hung up without another word, which sent Y/N into a scramble of pulling herself together and putting some shoes on. Harry looked beyond confused at her while also trying to focus on whatever the person he was talking to was saying and then not another moment passed by before his dick was shoved back into his pants and he was running out the door with Y/N.

“This had to happen the moment I hit the back of your throat,” he scoffed as they waited for the elevator to reach them from whatever floor it started on.

Y/N turned her head to Harry slowly, looking at him with a straight face, and blinked her eyes before smacking him on the chest. “Not the time!”

From what Harry could gather from Will, who was basically the night-shift manager in his office, it seemed there had been a bit of riot down in Central City because God forbid anything go easy. It was no secret people were upset with the merge of the city, because all their lives they’ve grown to hate the other side, and it was understandable because change needs time. But it was fucking tiring having to deal with ignorant people stuck in their ways.

The drive never felt so long, especially with the few traffic heading into Central. It was normally a twenty-five minute drive from Y/N’s house, but this night it seemed everybody and their mother wanted to take a leisurely drive.

Harry and Y/N tried thinking of whatever this could be about, but for the past week there had been absolutely nothing for them to worry about, so this whatever this was really coming out of left field. And it pissed the both of them off to no extent that they had very little to go off of for whatever it was they were walking into.

Y/N tried to text and call Flo numerous times but in the timespan from the phone call to now, she hasn’t responded once. And Flo was always on her phone.

“What the fuck?!” Y/N screamed when her phone went straight to voicemail for the fifth time. It was ringing minutes ago and now there was nothing. Her heart rate had picked up immensely at the thought of something happening to her best friend, and all she could think about is how she would absolutely ruin whoever hurt her. They’re practically signing a deal with the Devil the moment they touch someone Y/N cares for.

They had a general idea of where to drive to because most of Central was occupied by old and abandoned warehouses that mainly housed business meetings and transactions every now and then. Besides that there was the one strip of bars and restaurants right in the middle of Central. Best bet was whatever was happening, was happening in that strip over some pathetic drunken fight. Although that wouldn’t make sense if it was some drunk fight, because Flo would never sound so shaky over drunk people.

Then they saw it.

In the street along the strip, a group of people surrounding others, guns in their hands to keep them on their knees, beneath them as if they were gods. And among the people kneeling was one who was lying on their side, and Y/N could recognize that blonde pixie cut from anywhere.

And then she was seeing red.

Everyone turned to the headlights of the car that was beaming at them, their guns immediately raised and ready to start shooting. Harry and Y/N exited the car with hands raised, knowing not to come off as a threat and risk their lives or the lives of anyone else. Even though it was tempting to go at them because it had been awhile since Y/N got her hands dirty, it was best she kept her cool.

When all of their eyes adjusted to see who was walking towards them, some of them took a breath of relief dropping the aim of their guns before remembering what they were doing in the first place before aiming it back at the group on the floor. Y/N’s eyes quickly scanned over who she was dealing with, not instantly recognizing anybody nor feeling intimidated by any of them. Quickly turning her eyes to Harry, she saw that his jaw was set in a tight clench as his eyebrows furrowed in anger, giving her the feeling she knew who these people were.

When they walked close enough, one spoke up, demanding them to stop where they were, and the way he slurred his words, it didn’t take an idiot to figure out he was plastered beyond comprehension. “Look who decided t’finally show up,” he snarled.

“Pat, what the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Harry growled, dropping his hands down to his sides as his hands balled into fists.

“Could be asking ya the same thing, mate. Last time I checked, we swore on our lives to be the enemy to her yet here you are showing up in the same fucking car. You get one taste of pussy and you suddenly become one,” this Pat guy laughed, swinging his gun around as if it were some toy.

Y/N couldn’t visually recognize Pat, but from the times her and Harry talked about business and who worked with them, she can recall the name Pat being thrown around and from what she could gather, Pat was pretty fucking important on Harry’s side. Guess it didn’t matter anymore because if Y/N knew Harry at all, he had a zero tolerance rate for anyone who goes against his word, and by tomorrow morning, this guy was going to be erased as if he never existed.

And if they weren’t in such a compromising situation right now, the idea of Harry holding such power would turn her on immensely.

Well, it is turning her on immensely she just can’t exactly act out on those feelings at the moment.

Before Harry could get another word in, Y/N stepped closer, gaining everyone to avert their attention to her, a few clicks of their guns to ensure that they were ready to be fired at any given moment. It didn’t phase her though, she was used to that sound more so than she’d like to admit. “You have five seconds to explain why you ruined my night before I ruin yours.”

Then someone that wasn’t Pat stepped closer to her, the nozzle of their pistol now pressed firmly into her temple, keeping her head forward. In her peripheral she could see the pale skin of the guy stretch upward into an open mouthed smirk, and it was then she could smell the overbearing stench of whiskey that masked him.

God, did he fucking bathe in it?

“As your boss, Pat, I’m telling you to save whatever dignity you have left and put down the guns–”

“And as your enemy, Pat, I’m telling you to put down the guns before you make any more regretful decisions.”

“And what the fuck are you gonna do abou’ it?” He laughed, genuinely laughed knees buckling a little as the alcohol consumed his inability to stop laughing. Practically everyone cocked their heads to the side to wonder what was actually so funny, eyes looking around to see if anyone else was laughing.

Nobody was.

Then, all in just a matter of seconds, Y/N stomped on the person’s foot beside her, heel of her boot digging into the toes of his, a high-pitched yelp of shock leaving his lips as she used her arm to knock the gun out of his hand before catching it in her own and smashing the butt of it into his nose, immediately a waterfall of blood gushing down his face and onto his clothes and onto the cement below them. He kneeled over in pain, a scream of anguish sounding in the air as she brought her knee up and into his forehead which knocked him backyard, his body collapsing to the ground in a heap of blood and cries.

That shut Pat up.

His hazy eyes widened in fear and nobody else knew what to do as they swayed from intoxication and cowered in fright. At this point, everyone that was once kneeling on the ground had managed to scurry themselves behind the two demanding forces, because that’s just how dumb these guys were. It made Y/N wonder how the fuck Flo was unconscious–

Right, Flo was unconscious.

Tracing her hand over the sleek black metal of the pistol, Y/N pulled back the slide, aiming the gun right between Pat’s puny little eyes, finger resting very close to the trigger. “Your five seconds are up.”

“Wait!” He pleas, eyes wide with desperation, voice laced with worry as the cool metal pressed against his forehead. “He told me to do it!” He shouted, hand pointing at Harry with a furious nod of his head.

Y/N’s eyes snapped to Harry who looked as confused as ever, but the way his hands rested on his hips and the way his lips were rolled into his mouth, there was some truth, or maybe all of it was true. “What’s he talking about?”

Harry sighed, looking down to his shoes in defeat which made Y/N all the more angrier. Harry pinched his eyes shut, then brought his line of vision to his girl. His girl that he couldn’t imagine wanting to hurt anymore. Yet the past always wanted to come back to bite him in the ass.

“Listen–”

“I’m telling the truth, you gotta believe me! It was all his idea I swear it!” Pat panicked beside Y/N, hands clasping together in a pleading motion, and when she looked to him, she could see the faint moisture buildup in his eyes.

There was a lot happening all at once, yet it also felt like nothing was going on at all. There was the claim Harry set this up yet in the thirty seconds it's been floating around in the air, there’s been no jump to deny it or explain it. And Y/N was feeling a whole lot of everything, and she would appreciate it if something could be explained so she could focus all of her energy on one emotion. And at this rate, anger seemed to nestle itself nice and snug inside her veins.

She’s seen Harry change over the course of the past three months. Honestly, she has, and she knows that deep in her heart he wouldn’t put their blossoming relationship at risk anymore; But something was also telling her this was exactly something he would do. He would use her just to get what he wants, and that’s all of the power. The power to be the sole King of the city.

And that broke her just a little bit.

Harry hasn’t made a move to say anything again, and that didn’t settle well with Y/N. Turning back to Pat, she kicked the shin of his left leg, knocking him down to the floor, keeping the gun against his skin, looking down at him with her nicest smile, hissing out, “Tell me the truth. All of it.”

He gulped, eyes bouncing between the two mafia leaders, before he kept his twitching gaze on Y/N. “He w-wanted to start a war. It’s been his plan for months – to end what his grandfather started and… take you down. Starting with her,” his head gesturing to the girl that still lay unconscious atop the cement.

Then the stressed look left Pat’s eyes, and his original smirk settled back on his greasy skin. “Did you think he actually liked you? Cared for you? … You said it yourself, you’re the enemy.”

“Y/N…” she heard him step closer, his fancy shoes scuffing across the ground. Y/N cringed at the idea of him being closer, so without really thinking about it, Y/N bashed the butt of the gun into Pat’s head, knocking him out, now having it aimed at the guy who’s managed to hold her heart in his hands and then crush it.

She shouldn’t be surprised and she will listen to what he has to say, but this didn’t change the fact that he wanted a war. There was always the tension that a war was bound to happen just to keep everyone on their toes, but Y/N never had the intention to actually start one unless necessary. She figured he thought the same because war meant a lot of unnecessary deaths were bound to happen and a lot of clean up and resituating the city that no one had time for.

Guess she was wrong.

“I would say I’m shocked… I’m not,” Y/N shrugged, looking at the gun in her hand before dropping it to the floor. Even if he wanted to hurt her, she couldn’t do that to him. Not now, not after everything they’ve worked for.

“I said it a year ago when I was drunk off my mind in a brief conversation! I wasn’t going to act on it, c’mon you know this, you know me,” he scoffed, hands never leaving the comfort of his hips. He stood as if he were her father scolding her for something ridiculous, and maybe she was overreacting a little over everything, but she didn’t take shit from her father and she wasn’t going to take shit from him.

“Regardless, your people hurt mine and that goes against the biggest rule of conduct. Fix your shit and get your own ride home,” she rolled her eyes, stepping over the body of the first guy who was still cradling his broken nose in his hands.

Y/N made her way to Flo, gently touching her to see if she would wake within the next few moments. From the way her lip was busted, the small bruise forming under her eye, and the blood drying in her hair, Y/N could tell she didn’t go down easy and she needed to get her out of here as quickly as possible to make sure she didn’t suffer from any long term damage. When she noticed her friend stir a little, eyes squinting open as she moaned in pain, hand flying up to caress her aching head, Y/N went to help her up, helping her walk to her car parked down the road.

Y/N didn’t know how to feel. She really didn’t. She couldn’t be mad at Harry for saying something when he was drunk, because God knows the amount of things she’s said when she her blood was replaced with vodka, so it would be wrong to be a hypocrite. But she can’t trust that one time a year ago was the only time he discussed it. If it were something that was mentioned once on a whim, there would be no way Pat and his men would do something like this without some sort of order. None of it made sense and the more Y/N tried to think about it, the worse her headache got.

But the one bit she couldn’t stop her mind from reeling over and over again, like it was a broken record. Did you think he actually liked you? Cared for you? … You said it yourself, you’re the enemy.

Y/N never, ever got herself into relationships. She didn’t want one, wish for one, crave for one because with her lifestyle, it’d be difficult to keep up with. It wasn’t in her cards and for all of her life she was fine with that. But now that she got that taste of one, taste of something that resembled something of a relationship, she didn’t want to give it up. But did he like her? Or was it all some sort of show just so he could rip the rug right out from under her feet?

This was exactly why she didn’t do relationships. Because now she was getting too much into her own head and didn’t know what to believe anymore. And she would be damned if out of everybody on this fucking planet it would be him to break her heart.

When Harry saw her car speed away, he knew he fucked up. He felt something pang in his chest, in his heart when he saw her cold eyes for the last time. When she said she wasn’t shocked, her eyes looked bewildered yet defeated all at once and for Harry to know he was the cause hurt him. He was used to her being angry at him, it was practically how they lived their lives, but over the past three months, every time their eyes locked, he saw something else hidden behind them, flashing across them, dancing over them, like admiration and adoration. He would give anything to get that look back instead of the icy glare.

Picking up the gun that she dropped, a fit of rage washed over him as he realized he now had to deal with this group of idiots before him. They all looked as if they were going to shit their pants, and rightfully so because they knew what happened when anyone crossed him.

They get a bullet in their skull.

Maybe everything wasn’t so different after all.

❊ ❊

Moments passed by.

Silence.

Seconds passed by.

Nothing.

Minutes passed by.

Not a word was said.

They sat in gruelling quietude, neither of them jumping to break the tension.

It had been a month since they saw each other. That was mainly due to the fact they both had over inflated egos and didn’t want to be the first to cave. She was mad at him and felt it was necessary for him to want to contact her first because he was the one who had some serious explaining to do. And he did try to talk to her. He called her at least ten times a day for the first week, which she declined all of them. So, then he was angry and gave up and didn’t want to beat his already bruised narcissism. Then, when he didn’t call her again, she got even more angry that he didn’t want to try harder for her. So they ignored each other for three weeks after that. And when the silence became too overwhelming, Y/N decided to give him a call back, so it would seem she was taking the higher road and was the better person.

Then he ignored her.

It was all a competition, and it always would be between the two. Even when they didn’t really mean to make things so complicated, there was that underlying rivalry creeping back into their lives. Maybe it would never go away, and that’s okay because being rivalrous was their chivalry, and that’s what drew them together as partners both business and pleasure.

Eventually, they put their differences aside - or rather their similarities, and they finally discussed a time and place for when they should meet and actually talk about things. And they decided on a public restaurant to make sure they wouldn’t cause too much of a scene. Not that that’s ever really stopped them before but it was worth a try.

But, again, it was a battle of who would open their mouth first. This never ending cycle was kind of sickening, but it was also a little funny. They were laughing on the inside, but on the outside they could kill someone with their dirty looks. The poor waiter that had come over recognized who they were instantly and was already nervous from the get-go, but when he saw how miserable and angry they both looked, he was near shitting his pants. When he saw Harry send him a grimace at his presence when he approached the table, he wanted to cry. And if Y/N wanted to lose and break the silence first, she would’ve scolded Harry for being so rude to someone just doing his job.

But she wanted to win, so she kept her trap shut.

Of course, though, they both tied when they spoke the first time, at the same time. If being mad at one another wasn’t angering enough, but to both speak at the exact moment so neither could have the title of being winner or loser was near infuriating.

“I’m not mad y’know-”

“Look, I’m sorry-”

At her words, Harry looked a little perplexed, head tilted in confusion at her confession, a million thoughts now running through his head. If she wasn’t mad, what was with the silent treatment? What was with the icy look before she left him that shot right through his heart? He knows he deserved it so how could she not be angry? If the roles were reversed, Harry would expect a decent apology and to be honest, he’d probably, but he’d never forget.

Maybe that’s why he liked her so much. She amazed him in so many ways because no matter how similar they were, they did also have their differences. One of them being that Y/N would inevitably always be the nicer one out of the two. She had the reputation of being the nice boss. People preferred living on her side of the city a lot more than they did his, so even though it used to be illegal to move to the other side, people always found a way to emigrate. And right now, that much was clear that she’s a better person than him by a landslide. Harry would always admire that about her and could only wish that he matched her.

Taking a sip of his wine, he licked his lips in thought, gesturing for her to continue with her previous statement. Ladies first, after all. And even though she felt it was really his job to do a lot of the talking now, she was going to let it slide. “I did a lot of thinking this… break. I was mad at first, I’ll admit. Thinking after everything we’ve worked through for you to go behind my back and want to hurt me, well, hurt me and I hated that I let myself get to the point where you were able to hurt me. I was mad that I didn’t see it coming yet at the same time I did see it coming and didn’t do anything to prevent it. I was mad that my best friend got hurt because of you and it took everything in me not to put you in the same state she was in.

But, I realized that what I was feeling wasn’t anger, but… pain. What Pat said about you not actually liking me didn’t settle well with me at all and I got a little too into my head, thinking he was probably right and I’m the biggest fucking fool there is. Then I did more thinking and realized he’s fucking wrong. You’re not the same disgusting person I’ve known all my life after these past months, and I know you like me. You like me so much and I know that because I like you so much. So, long story short, I’m not mad. But, Flo is, so you better fucking apolgize to her,” Y/N concluded, reaching for her dry martini, finishing off the remaining droplets of it, observing Harry as he sat very stunned from her rambling session.

That was a lot more to take in than he anticipated.

At least she wasn’t angry. But he still had some apologizing to do and wouldn’t stop until she knew how sorry he was. She was right, he did like her a lot and he needed to fix this to the best of his abilities, because he wants her in his life liking or loving him rather hating him. What a sap he’s become.

“I will, I promise. I never intended for that to happen and I know with our past it doesn’t seem too far off, but I could never do something like that now. I was drunk when I first mentioned it, but I’ll admit the idea of a war had been brought up on a few more occasions past that. But when we first agreed to merge together, I made it very clear to my team that any previous ideas were to be thrown out because this was the new plan, and the plan I intend on sticking to. I don’t know why Pat did what he did, and it pisses me off to no end that he did it.” Taking a breath, Harry took a moment to gather his next thoughts, leaning forward on the table between them, green eyes never leaving hers.

“I know you said you don’t believe what he said, but I’m telling you myself, just to clarify your thoughts, that it wasn’t true. You’re not my enemy… anymore and I want you in my life. What we have is good and I don’t want to risk losing it. So even if you’re not mad, will you please forgive me?”

Y/N has to refrain from smiling brightly, biting her lip to conceal her laughter. The way he still wanted to apologize even if she declared he didn’t really need to, and the way his mouth formed itself into a small pout as he awaited her forgiveness was too cute to not want to smile at. She wanted to pinch his cheeks like a mother to her child and coo at him with all of the love in the world. Not hating him felt so nice and like such a relief that she couldn’t even comprehend how they lasted that long in the first place. Over the months she got to know him a lot better than she used to, and he’s one of the biggest dorks she’d ever meet, so not liking him simply didn’t feel like an option anymore.

Nodding her head softly, Y/N leaned across the table to capture his lips in a soft and quick kiss, ensuring that they’re back on good terms. Harry couldn’t hide the smile that flashed across his skin.

“Now that that’s settled, you’re paying,” she motioned at the checkbook that was just placed between them. He rolled her eyes at her before picking it up to read the total and reaching into his pocket to pull out his money.

They both stood up, pushing in their chairs and exited the restaurant practically different people from who walked in. They didn’t hold hands walking to their cars because that was just a little out of their comfort zones, but they did walk in step, arms brushing against one another as they kept stealing fast glances at one another through their sunglasses.

Stopping in front of her car, they stood chest to chest, goofy smiles planted on their faces that hardly seemed like they were leaving. Then of course Harry had to ruin the cute moment. “Now that that’s over, do ya think you can finish that heavenly blowie? M’practically itching to feel the back of your throat again.”

“Shouldn’t you be the one trying to please me?” She quipped, digging into your purse to get out your keys.

“You’re right, I’m also itching to feel you on my tongue. Sixty-nine?”

Somehow, that’s exactly where they ended up. On her king-sized bed, Harry’s cock down her throat again, her nose brushing against the taut skin of his balls, her dripping cunt resting over his face as he devoured her like she were his last meal.

Crazy how a day could change so quickly.

She gagged as his hips involuntarily thrusted upward into her velvet warm mouth, tears springing to her eyes causing her to rest her hand on his thighs and give herself a moment to breathe. He ushered a quick mewl of an apology, aching to get her back on him, his release impending. He knew she was sensitive and he tried his hardest not to rock his hips harder and more frequently, but when she was moaning around him, sending vibrations up his spine because his tongue delved into her pulsating core, he found it very difficult.

Dabbing at her eyes with her fingers, she took her hair and wrapped it around her fist to keep it out of her as she pushed herself as far down as she could on him. Harry let out a moan similar to that of a pornstar as she bobbed her head faster, his tip constantly pushing against her soft throat, which shook Y/N and had her thighs clenching around his head fiercely when she felt the familiar coil in her stomach begin to churn.

Harry removed one of his hands from the soft skin of her ass, admiring the nail and handprints he’d left in his wake before he took his thumb and focused rubbing fast circles on her clit while his tongue continued to lap up her juices and plunge into her sopping wet entrance. At the attention of her bud, Y/N was a mess, her work on Harry becoming a lot sloppier, saliva trailing down the sides of her mouth and onto her chin, dripping to his balls and onto the sheets below him. Harry could feel her spit travel from her mouth and onto him, and the vision of her mouth stuffed completely of his cock had him twitching in her mouth and he wanted nothing more than to cum in her mouth and for her to come in his.

Removing himself for a moment so he could speak, he placed kisses along her pussy and thighs, words coming out after the smack of his lips to skin. “M’close baby… gonna cum in deep in your mouth – fuck, I know you’re close too… c’mon, princess, cum for me. Want you to soak my face, have your honey, shit – dripping down my chin.”

He always had a way with words.

Holding his balls in her hand and softly tugging on them and massaging them, without using actual words she was also encouraging him to cum down her throat, wanting to swallow every drop he had to offer. She wasn’t going to put all this work in for nothing.

And because these two were so insync these days and never letting the other come out as superior, they both managed to reach their climaxes at the same time. Ropes of his release flew down Y/N’s throat, and wave after wave of pleasure seeped onto Harry’s face, and both wouldn’t want it any other way.

Removing Harry from her mouth and moving her body off his, they both took a moment to breathe, never being so grateful to get a taste of fresh air. But before they relaxed too much, they busied themselves into a good old fashion make out session, enjoying the taste of themselves on each other’s tongue. Y/N separated their mouths to lick up the remnants of her on his chin, this having Harry’s cock practically shoot right back up.

Harry sat up against the headboard of her bed, situating themselves so Y/N was sat in his lap, her slit slowly guiding up and down against his shaft, quickening his recovery period.

“You’re not too exhausted, hm? Need you to fuck me good, H,” she murmured against the skin of his neck, biting on the flesh, planning to make it very evident that no one else had the privilege of touching him again.

He had the same thought process, except he didn’t care about other people, rather wanting to leave marks on her skin so she would remember who put them there and who would be the only one to put them there. Her poor ass was bright red as he kept grabbing and slapping at the battered skin, but he didn’t care. If she couldn’t sit, oh well.

He gripped her hips, forcing her downward to grind against his growing erection, giving her her answer. He would never forgive himself if he didn’t feel his prick nestle into her tight walls after this month of separation. Her pretty pussy is all he can think about these days and if he could keep himself inside of it forever, he would. So, yeah, he’s gonna fuck her good, with a hint of love making because he wants her to know that he’s hers for as long as she’ll have him.

“I’m nowhere near finished,” he replied, bending his head down, latching his mouth around her pert nipple, tugging on it with his teeth as his other hand reached for her other and pulled on it between his fingertips.

He took his time on her tits, paying equal attention to each nipple, swirling his tongue around them, lightly sucking and pinching, all of which was making her moan quietly into the otherwise silent atmosphere.

She kept the slow grind of her clit on his mound going, knocking her head back as she was in euphoria as he continued his assault on every inch of her body. She wrapped her fingers into his curly hair, tugging on the roots like he likes, his moans reverberating on her chest, hitting against her heart that pounded against its cage.

Removing himself with a pop, he smiled up at her with a boyish grin, reaching both hands up to squeeze her tits, pushing them together, imagining himself fucking them now, her chest slippery with spit and precum as he slid between her slowly, enjoying every second of it.

But he’d save that for another time.

“Gonna ride me, love? Can you do that f’me?”

She didn’t exactly want to, because even though she asked him if he was tired, she was a bit exhausted herself. She would certainly try to ride him, bounce on his dick with all of the power she has in her, but she couldn’t count on having energy forever. And something told her he wanted her doing all of the work all the way through.

Y/N wasn’t a pansy though, so she nodded her head and lifted herself onto her knees, feeling him bob up and his head hit against her moisture. Reaching down and taking ahold of his member, she tortuously moved him between her folds before sinking down on him, inch by inch, savoring the moment of connection.

They groaned in unison, electric pleasure shooting up both of their spines as he stretched and filled her to the brink. It took her a moment to fully adjust to his size before she rolled her hips forward, her spongy walls sucking him in.

Harry wrapped his hand in her hair, pulling her head back so her throat was on full display, peppering hot kisses along the skin. “Feel so good, baby. Your cunt was made for me. Tha’s it, fucking bounce on me, get that ass moving.”

She whimpered at his words, mouth falling open as her eyes rolled back the moment she felt him hit that spongy spot inside of her over and over again. Harry couldn’t resist resting his thumb on her tongue, and she couldn’t resist closing around it, sucking on it like a baby. Her tongue circled around it, gently biting on it that had him slapping her ass in response. Y/N cried at the impact, which also had her sinking down on him a lot quicker.

“Faster, Y/N. Act like you’re mad at me… ruin me, c'mon know you got it in ya,” he growled, taking his hand away from her face and gripping her hips again, thrusting up into her harshly to egg her on. He bent his knees which lulled her body closer to his, the angle pushing him a little deeper inside her walls.

Sweat coated their bodies as she worked herself to a faster pace, her hands resting on the headboard behind him. Her clit rubbed against his tuft of hair, sending her into a frenzy as her orgasm approached a lot quicker than before. She would be done for soon but she needed to make sure he wasn’t so far behind, and when she clenched down on him, hearing his whine of delight let her know it wouldn’t be long until he was coming undone.

“Harry… oh my God Harry.”

“We’re almost there, keep going. Harder, Y/N, you can do it.”

“Har–” She cut herself off the moment his hand wrapped her throat, lightly squeezing and causing her to now have to work for her air.

She crossed the finish line. She couldn’t help it as her orgasm suddenly shocked through her body, her thighs clenching and twitching around his, her hands holding onto his shoulders with a tight grip. She rode it out, crying at the sensitivity of her clit as she continued to sink onto him, waiting for him to follow.

Because she came, she felt this sudden wave of extreme fatigue, hardly finding the energy to keep herself upright at the moment and Harry noticed this. So, he pushed her body backwards so her back hit the soft material of her comforter, and now he put the effort in and pounded into her at a furious pace. His hand didn’t leave her throat and because he was a cocky son of a bitch, he attached his thumb to her hypersensitive bundle of nerves, coaxing a third orgasm out of her.

Y/N was crying at the sensation, her legs trembling as she released again, his cock completely coated in her wetness, the sound of their connecting genitalia heightening at the increased moisture between them. Admiring how much of a mess she looked beneath him, her hair a scattered mess, throat and chest littered in love bites, thighs and ass bright red and bruising like a peach, he decided why not add to the collection.

Pulling out of her, much to his dismay, he pumped himself a few times in his hand before he let out his second round all over her thighs, pussy, stomach and chest.

He was satisfied to say the least.

Both of their chests were heaving, their breathing patterns working oppositely, she breathing in and he breathing out. Harry laid himself down beside her, eyes drooping closed in utter contentment, a smile dashing across his face as he and his girl lay completely worn out.

“I need… to get cleaned… but too… tired*,” Y/N murmured in a pant, not finding the energy to wipe off his cum that littered her entire body.

“I quite like the way you look,” he started, flipping to his side and caressing her soft cheek under his palm.

“All fucked out, and all because of me.”

[starkatana]

#BadassJasonPartyIsOver

Jason Todd x Reader

Summary:You and Jason just start dating and the rest of the family finds out.

Cute/fun/fluffy

Note:

Jason has not died and has not become Red Hood yet in this AU

Selina is your godmother. You are the child of Selina’s childhood friend. There is no family relationship between you and Jason even though you live in Wayne Manor. She calls you KitKat a nickname for your hero name: Black Cat.

Inspired by:

@capricornprince118‘s post

@telling-lies-co‘s post

Cass’s Text Section by @fanfic-suspicious-bluejay post

“So, do we tell your family?” you ask. “They’re a bunch of detectives, they can figure it out themselves. What’s going to change between us anyway?” You shrug, “I don’t know.”

The beginning of your relationship felt like the start of any other day. Nothing changed with how you two interacted with each other. You two still went to school with each other every day, you two didn’t treat each other any differently. The public displays of affection; hand-holding, arms around each other, and others didn’t happen until later.

You, Jason, and Roy still hung out as usual. Jason made a post of you three at the beach. Jason asked a stranger to take the picture. The sun was setting in the background, Jason was between you two, Roy had his arm around Jay with a peace sign at the camera, Jason had his arm around you and Roy with a big stupid grin, and you had both arms around Jason trying not to ruin your waffle cone. The picture was cute. Roy went off to grab some food while you sat on the railing of the pier eating your ice cream as Jason stood next to you making a post with the picture:

“Out with my best friend and girl. She really wanted to go to the boardwalk to see the sunset, I thought she was being cliché, but I can never say no to her.” He typed a heart at the end of the caption. Deleted it. Tried a kissy face. Deleted it. Re-read it again and just posted it as a caption.

“Jason.”

“Yeah?” he puts his phone away in his back pocket. Then placing his hand on your thigh, he looks up at you.

“Thanks for this.”

“No problem.” He gives you a soft smile. You smile in return, getting lost in his blue eyes. There was a new sparkle in his eyes. Looking at him, being with him, it made you happy.

You push your hair out of your eyes and your body leans into Jason’s. He rests his head against the front of your shoulder. You place your hand at the nape of his neck, gently running your fingers through his hair. He turns his head and takes a peek at you. You smile at him and stick your tongue out at him.

He lets out a light chuckle, lifting his head, you place a hand on his cheek and he leans into it, while you lean to the opposite side. Slowly your bodies lean into each other, giving in to your bodies’ the magnetism. Sharing your first kiss. Light and sweet, the first of many, forever.

Meanwhile, in Wayne Manor:

“GRAYSON!” Damian knocks open Dick’s door.

Dick turns around form his computer, “Damian?”

“Explain the meaning of this!” he holds out his phone on Jason’s post. “Are Y/n and Jason in a relationship?”

“I don’t think so. This seems like a pretty average post for them.”

Damian takes his phone and stares at it intently.

“Why?”

“Y/n can do so much better than Todd! I’m her voice of reason so she remembers.”

Dick laugh and ruffled Damian’s hair.

“I’m sure we’d know if they were dating or not, it can’t be that hard to figure out.”

Meanwhile, Selina saw the post and liked it.

“Bruce.”

“Hm?”

“Looks like our Little Wing and KitKat got together.”

“I thought they were together.”

“They’re official, darling.”

“Weren’t they before?”

“Oh, Bruce.” She chuckled, “you’re so lucky you’re cute.”

He winks at her, “And that’s why you like me.”

In the Batcave:

“Look at this.” Duke brought his phone over to Babs.

“Good they finally got together. About time,” she chuckled, “I had an idea when we went to the drive-in the other day, but I’m glad my suspicions are confirmed.”

“I give it about a week before everyone else figures out.”

“A week? I give it two, they are pros at keeping secrets.”

Duke laughed, “It’s a bet.”

After your first kiss, every action you two shared had so much more purpose and meaning behind it. It turned into Jason putting his arm around your waist. Where people began to give you curious looks. Then you two would hold hands when you walked together or even in each other’s company. That’s when people began to question if you two were official or not. One day, after school, before you left for dance practice he kissed you on the cheek in front of Tim and immediately went to the family group chat.

On your train ride to the studio, your phone was blowing up.

-Text conversation below-

Timbo: EXCUSE ME! CAN SOMEONE PLEASE TELL ME IF JASON AND Y/N ARE DATING?! DickeryDock: I thought they were acting closer than usual. Baby: Todd with Y/n?! Timbo: Y/n just left for dance and Jason kissed her cheek! Jaybird: Did you guys just figure it out? CassAFass: WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME?! Baby: This isn’t a joke?! The Best Bro: I had suspicions. Babs and I had a bet going on. Baby: HOW LONG?! WE’RE A FAMILY OF DETECTIVES AND IT TOOK US HOW LONG? Stephie: Wait, they weren’t dating this entire time? You: I’m proud of all of you. JayBird: 2-3 weeks? You guys suck.

It was hard to stifle your laughter on the train from the exchange in the family chat. Then you got a tag on Instagram from Tim. It was a blurry picture of what you think is Jason getting tackled by Damian with the caption: “EXCUSE ME! @notjtodd and @yourusername HAVE BEEN DATING FOR WEEKS AND HAVEN’T TOLD ANYONE! Y/N ARE YOU OKAY?! ARE YOU BEING FORCED TO DATE HIM?”

You almost miss your stop from how entranced you are with your phone. You like Tim’s post when you are tagged in another post by Babs. Where you and Jason are asleep together in the backseat of the car. It was from when you, Jason, Babs, and Dick were coming back from the drive-in movie together. Your head was on Jason’s shoulder and you two were holding hands. With the caption: “Went on a double date and never even realized they had made their relationship official. We all knew it was going to happen. #BadassJasonPartyIsOver”

Bab’s hashtag sent the Batfam into a flurry of posts.

Roy was first where it was just multiple pictures of you and Jason snuggling in different areas, the couch in the theatre in Wayne Manor, the back of the jeep when up at lookout point, the floor at a dance competition, and another in the hotel they just went on. Not only did all of the pictures feature you two snuggling but Roy was at the forefront of the picture holding up a peace sign with an exasperated look, your third wheel forever. His caption: “Hello, my name is Jason ‘I don’t cuddle’ and ‘We’re just friends’ Todd, I’d like to call bullshit. #BadassJasonPartyIsOver”

Dick’s picture was of you and Jason hugging at your first dance competition in Gotham. “Let’s never forget the time Jason made me turn the car around in the middle of a busy intersection, made me speed across town, and drive to a flower shop so he could buy @yourusername a bouquet of her favorite flowers so he can give them to her after her dance competition. #BadassJasonPartyIsOver”

Damian’s picture was of you “lecturing” Jason in the Wayne dance studio while practicing your dance routine together. “We all knew they were going to get together when Jason learned that dance routine just to impress @yourusername #BadassJasonPartyIsOver (I still think Y/n can do better. You better not fuck this up, Todd.)”

Cass had a slide show for her post. The pictures were of the family’s most recent winter vacation to Bora Bora. The first picture was of Jason sitting across the table from you assume Cass (who took the picture) with his face turned away. The second picture was you walking away with Babs and you were flipping off the camera with a smile. While the last picture was the chicken SpongeBob meme: “Jason: I just like her so much you know. Me – politely listening because I have heard this 100+ times-: I know just tell her that! @yourusername walks up, “Hey, guys.” Jason: “What the hell are you doing here, leave us alone!” Me: *smacks palm against forehead and immediately whips out my phone to take these pictures* Y/n: flips Jason off and with a smirk and walks off. Jason smirks back and waves her off. Me: “What the fuck was that?” Jason: “What? That’s how we show affection.” I had a red mark on my forehead for hours! #BadassJasonPartyIsOver”

The last post you saw was Jason’s. It was just a picture of you smiling at the camera with a hand outstretched towards Jason behind the camera. The caption was: “Shut up and let me be cute with my girlfriend.”

The post was small but it was enough. Now your family and everyone in Gotham knew, you and Jason are together.

[stones-x-bones]

What A Doll || Rio and Bex

TIMING: Current PARTIES: @3starsquinn and @inbextween SUMMARY: Bex and Rio have a chance meeting outside the local co-op. Only, something else meets them there, too. CONTENT: One wasted sandwich 😔

It was strange, being back in the world, so soon after something that should have made her give more pause. It was even stranger being out without someone tirelessly following behind her, making sure she was okay, that she was being safe, that she was taking care of herself. It was...a little overwhelming at times. Suffocating. Maybe not in the same way as being back home, but it still made her antsy. It was just one little trip to the store down the street for groceries. With Morgan still dealing with the anniversary of her death, and Mina bruised and broken, someone had to do it. Honestly, she’d forgotten what she originally had come to the store for, but the walk had already exhausted her. And so Bex sank onto the bench outside, instead, and leaned back, rubbing her chest, wincing with pain. The scabs were still fresh, and she always had to be so careful not to tear them open. Healing slow was literally the worst. Rubbing her eyes, she tried to motivate herself to stand back up and head into the store, but something out of the corner of her eye caught her attention instead. There was a strange doll-- rather frightening looking, actually (but then again all dolls were frightening to Bex, it was the empty eyes, probably)-- all by itself on the bench next to her. Had that always been there? It was possible, she wasn’t exactly the most attentive right now. Glancing around, all she saw was one other person loitering around. “Excuse me?” she called out to him. A rather scrawny looking boy. She didn’t judge. “Is this yours?”

Instead of buying anything resembling a responsible, normal adult at the store, Orion left the place with a bag full of snack foods and shoveling a deli sandwich in his mouth. Of course he had enough manners to refrain from eating the sub inside of the place, but out on the sidewalk anything was fair game. He had taken a pause, hooking the bags of junk food under his arm to free it enough to take bites from the food. A drink was stuffed under his arm, but he wouldn’t be able to gracefully get to it until he finished the whole sandwich. He knew he wasn’t coordinated enough to switch things around without risking dropping everything. The only people around were a girl and a creepy looking doll sitting on the bench beside her. Rio had moved away from the bench when the girl had come to sit down, it hadn’t seemed super polite to continue eating his food while hovering near her. He had just assumed she had been here before and left the doll behind. That, or a kid had forgotten it and left it behind. Either way, Rio didn’t like making eye contact with it. Instead, he mostly ate his sandwich while staring at the brick wall side of the building. That is, until the girl on the bench started talking to him. “Huh?” Rio asked on instinct, mouth still full of food. He blushed and quickly looked away to finish chewing. “Sorry uh- that was rude.” He finally swallowed the last bit and turned back towards her, “The doll thing? No uh- definitely not. It’s not yours?”

Bex frowned as she watched the boy swallow the bite of sandwich. At least he had the decency to stand away from her while he shoveled it into his mouth. But she was more perturbed by his answer. If it wasn’t his doll, and it wasn’t hers, someone must have left it behind. She scooted away from it and looked back at him. “No,” she answered back, “it’s not mine.” That meant it had to be someone else’s around, right? “Maybe it’s someone’s inside?” she asked, standing up stiffly to look around, squinting into the store. “I was supposed to pick up food for dinner, anyway, I guess I could go check around inside.” But, what if whoever’s doll it was came back and it was gone? Would they be mad at her? For taking it? But if she left it here, what if someone else came by and stole it? “Or, do you think we should just wait here to see if someone comes back for it?” The words were out of her mouth before she even realized. She didn’t even know this boy, and yet she was signing him up for doll duty. “I-- I mean, you don’t have to stay. I didn’t mean to imply that you had to! I just am, you know, worried. What if some child left it behind?” She went to look back down at the doll, but it was gone. For a moment, she just stared, not believing. Blinked slowly as if that would make it magically reappear. “Wh...where did it-- Oh god!” she jumped when she looked up, because the doll was now sitting on the windowsill next to the boy. “How’d it get over there?” 

Though a doll shouldn’t be particularly frightening, Orion didn’t like learning that it didn’t belong to the girl on the bench. There was certainly a normal and reasonable explanation. This was just any other doll, left behind by a distracted kid. That made sense. Automatically jumping to the theory that this was somehow ill intentioned or supernatural was probably a stretch. Right? Regardless, Rio’s mouth settled into a worried line as he stared at the thing and the girl spoke. Soon she had basically suggested that the two foster the thing until its owner came back around. “Oh no! It’s fine. I don’t mind it’s just- do you really think that anybody is going to come back for that thing?” Rio asked, pointing at the thing and cringing at it. It wasn’t particularly well kept. It seemed like something that a parent wouldn’t exactly cry at the idea of losing. And if they were anything like his parents, they probably would have refused to go back for it anyways. For many reasons, Rio hoped that there weren’t many parents in the world like his. Not that it mattered, Rio had always hated dolls growing up. He didn’t like waking up and making eye contact with them. In spite of having no real reason to stay, Rio had his sandwich to finish anyways. He might as well hang around while he finished his lunch. He glanced down at the sandwich to take another bite, only looking back up when he heard the girl freaking out. “Wha-” Rio started to question, freezing mid chew when he realized that the doll wasn’t there anymore. How had she moved it so quickly? He had only been looking down for a second. His head swiveled when he saw what the girl was looking at, jumping when he realized how close the doll sat near him. The drink slipped from his arm and hit the ground, as did a chunk of the lettuce from his sub. But Rio was already jumping backward and sliding closer to the bench and farther from the doll. “Um- so uh- I really don’t like that Is this a bad time to mention I never liked dolls?”

“Oh, yeah, m-me neither,” Bex said, backing away as well. All she’d wanted to do was go to the store on her own for once, and of course White Crest was pulling out some stupid, strange, weird bullshit. She should’ve stayed home. But Mina was hurt as well, and Morgan was being-- well, not Morgan, and Deirdre was at work, and Bex wanted to just be able to do something for them. Like pick up damn groceries. She shook her head, glancing sideways at the boy again as he shoveled more sandwich into his mouth. How could he eat at a time like this? “Well, what should we do with it? Just leave it? What if it--” But when Bex turned to look back at the doll again, it was gone. Her eyes searched frantically until she saw it sitting behind the window of the store. It’s creaky head turned to look at the two of them and one of its little wooden hands raised up in a wave. Bex jumped, stumbling into the boy. “Did you see that? Did that thing just-- you saw that, right? I’m not going crazy, right?”

He shouldn’t have even been surprised that haunted dolls were added to the long list of horrible things that happened in this town. Despite how unsettled and afraid he was of a teleporting doll that had chosen a spot next to him to land, Rio found it oddly calming to keep himself busy by slowly taking bites from his sub. Something about still moving his hands kept him grounded from spiraling completely. The girl asked exactly what he was wondering. Did they leave the thing? The obvious answer was yes, they absolutely turned and ran for the hills and hoped that the thing lost interest in them. But the part of him that clung onto the idea of being a scribe hesitated. Perhaps Rio didn’t know what to do about this, but didn’t his basic knowledge of the supernatural make him uniquely qualified to try to help? That tiny bit of confidence he had was tested even further when the thing disappeared again, reappearing behind a window seconds later and turning to make eye contact with them. To prove that it definitely wasn’t a misunderstanding, the arm began an almost mechanical wave at them. “Definitely saw that. Definitely hate that.” The girl stumbled into him and he just caught himself before steadying the two of them. With no other ideas, Rio raised his arm in a small wave back to the doll. He looked back over to the girl and shrugged, “I didn’t know what else to do. Maybe it’s a… friendly creepy doll?”

The nonchalance with which this boy was regarding the situation was stressing Bex out. Maybe she was just overreacting. If he wasn’t so worried, then she didn’t need to be either. But how was she supposed to not be? The doll was moving on its own! And smiling! And waving! She grabbed his arm when he went to wave back at it. “Don’t do that! What if you make it mad? What if it notices us?” Well, that was silly-- it had clearly already noticed them, hence the waving. She backed away a little further. “Maybe we should just...leave? We should just leave. It was really nice meeting you, I-- I think. But we should just g--” she started, but a thumping stopped her. She looked back at the window and watched as the doll smashed its head against the glass. The window cracked, Bex jumped. “It-- what is it doing?” It smacked its head against the glass again and Bex jumped, again. She moved behind the boy. “D-do something! Make it stop! O-or--” she looked left, right-- no one. When had the street gotten so deserted? “Make it go away!”

Orion wasn’t sure if it was because this girl was freaking out that Rio was forcing himself to maintain some semblance of calm or if this creepy doll had finally been his breaking point. He always figured he would stop being surprised by the crazy things in this town eventually. He just figured it would be… bigger. “Sorry! I just thought maybe not waving would make it mad too!” He wasn’t up to date on the morality and ethics of possessed dolls. Finally, the girl suggested the same thing that Rio had been considering. Leaving. Of course it was the most logical thing to do in this situation, if Rio wasn’t so dead set on making sure nobody else got hurt by this thing either. Though a quick glance around showed him that besides the two of them the area was mostly deserted. That helped ease Rio’s conscience at least a fraction. “Yeah uh, maybe you’re right.” Rio agreed, still not taking his eyes off the doll as he answered the girl. As he was watching, the waving arm froze in place. Rio tilted his head, wondering what had caused it to stop, only to let out a scream when the thing twitched back alive and started slamming its head against the glass over and over again. Apparently that had been the breaking point for Rio, who began jumping back and forth from one foot to the other as he muttered, “Oh god! Oh god! Oh god!” over and over again. “I-I don’t know what to do! I have no idea what it's doing!” Or why it hadn’t just teleported again. Clearly it had a flare for dramatics. The window gave out eventually, shattering as the doll paused from the victory before slowly tipping forward to stand up right between the broken glass. “I’ve decided that waving at it was definitely the wrong choice. I think it hates us.”

The glass shattered and Bex leapt a few feet in the air, scrambling behind the boy. Her chest was pounding and she was ready to simply turn around and go home, no groceries in hand. But then the doll was standing up and looking straight at them-- perhaps through them?-- and she tapped urgently on the boy’s shoulder as he began jumping from foot to foot. “D-do something!” she said, “can’t you do something? What-- where’s the shop owner!?” The alarm began to blare and someone inside began shouting. They ran towards the front and saw the shattered window, glaring the two of them down. “I-it wasn’t us! It was the doll! It was--” she pointed urgently at where the doll was, except...it wasn’t there anymore. “What? No. No! It wasn’t--” but the man didn’t believe them, simply yelled at them to stay put as he went to grab the phone to call the police. Oh no. Bex could not get in trouble with the cops. Her parents would be notified, then. She couldn’t let that happen. She yanked on the boy’s arm. “We have to go!” she said, dragging him away from the bench and down the street. Taking an alley would’ve been the ideal thing to do, but as soon as Bex’s eyes scanned the entrance, she saw the illusion of a wolf standing there, hunched back, eager to pounce. She blinked it away and turned to look back at the other boy. “Hide, we need to hide!” she announced, shoving him towards an abandoned building just as she heard the store manager shouting. She turned to look back at him once they were inside and said, “We’ll be safe in--” but shrieked once again as the doll came into view, hovering behind the boy’s shoulder. “Watch out!”

Of course the store manager wouldn’t believe their story about an evil doll breaking the glass. The doll sure knew when to disappear, but Orion wasn’t as convinced until the girl was physically pulling him away from the bench and away from the store. Added onto being haunted by a doll, now he was a suspected criminal. Though he supposed a broken window wasn’t exactly the worst crime he had committed. He let the girl lead the way, jogging along behind her as she pulled him down the sidewalk. She turned towards the alley, but cut away from it quickly and opted to hide out in an abandoned building instead. Odd choice. He wasn’t sure what about this scenario screamed safe to her, but if they could at least get away from the deal he supposed he could worry about getting an updated tetanus shot later. “Why is this thing so interested in us?” Rio questioned, bending over to catch his breath. He didn’t consider himself special enough for evil dolls to take a liking to him. The girls warning made him jump and spin around. The doll had abandoned physics altogether at this point, floating above the ground at eye level with Rio just feet away from him. Rio fell backwards, his back smacking against the dirty concrete floor as he tried to slide away from the thing. “Please don’t hurt us. I have no beef with dolls!”

The boy tripped and fell over almost the instant he turned to see the floating doll. Bex didn’t know what kind of magic or other was responsible for a floating doll that was stalking them, but she wasn’t about to let it kill them and steal their souls, or whatever possessed dolls did. So she took her purse and swung it as hard as she could, strangely reminding herself of the first time she’d met Mina, whacking the cockatrice her purse then as well. The doll went careening away and slammed into a wall, flopping to the ground. She turned and yanked the boy up. “C’mon, move!” she said, shoving him yet again towards the back of the house now. Floorboards creaked beneath their feet as they ran but Bex was pretty sure they’d managed to escape the thing for now. The back of the house was eerie and cold and she shivered, rubbing her chest as it gave a throb of pain. “D-do dolls usually get possessed here? What do you think we d-did to it?” She couldn’t think of anything. A sudden thumping sounded and she jumped again, slapping a hand over her mouth to not make so much noise. She motioned for the boy to shush himself too if he needed to, backing them up against the wall. God, what would she tell Morgan and Mina if she came home all gashed up from a doll? She wasn’t going to let that happen. She could be strong, right? She could be strong. She gave him the hush motion before leaning to peak around the corner. 

Bad idea. The doll appeared right in front of her and Bex screamed again, leaping back as it flew straight at her. She tumbled to the ground, landing hard on her back, bones rattling as she did. The doll turned and flashed red eyes at the two of them, before its jaw dropped open like a nutcracker and it bellowed a screech. “YOU SAT ON MY BENCH! YOU GOT CRUMBS ON MY BENCH!”

Orion had no idea what this doll was actually capable of, but he took the opportunity that the girl gave when she whacked the thing across the room. Rio scurried to his feet and followed her again, this day turning into more of a scooby doo chase scene than Rio had originally intended. “I can’t say that I’ve ever seen a possessed doll.” Rio shrugged, but he couldn’t say that it didn’t happen either. A lot happened in this town that he didn’t know about. 

The two stayed there for just a moment before the girl peaked around the corner and was assaulted by the doll. When the thing screamed, Rio could do nothing but cover his ears and flinch in pain. It had been so loud and guttural, sending shivers down Rio’s body. “You’re mad about the bench?!” Rio questioned when he could finally force himself to speak, “Can’t we just clean the bench?” But the doll didn’t seem like the particularly forgiving type. He owed it to the girl to help her out the same way that she had helped him. He used the only weapon that he had, the remaining bit of his sandwich and chucked the thing at the doll with as much force as he could. The sandwich could never do much damage, but the hunter strength at least added a bit of power behind it. The sandwich exploded on contact with the doll, sending lettuce, deli meat and bread flying all over the place and sending the doll flying back. Rio bent down to pull the girl onto her feet and did a quick once over to make sure she was fine. “Don’t think that’s going to keep her occupied for long. You got any ideas?”

Bex had never expected a deli sandwich to work as a weapon, but she’d also never expected to be chased by a haunted doll into an abandoned house on the side of the street-- so, really, that was her bad. Anything was possible in this place, wasn’t it? Bex had an idea. She watched the doll careen back to the floor as sandwich garnishes exploded all over. She bit her lip and struggled to her feet, looking at the boy. Make sure you trust someone before you expose yourself. Morgan had warned her very specifically, and so had Nell, but she didn’t much think the doll was going to stop chasing them, and she had to do something. “Can-- can you hold it still for a second? I just n-need a few seconds!” she said to him, looking him in the eyes for the first time. God, he was scrawny. He had bright blue eyes, shaggy hair. She was pretty sure she had more muscle than him. This wasn’t going to end well, was it? “Just a few seconds. Trust me, okay?” The doll was groaning with its effort to stand back up, wooden limbs creaking like the floorboards had under their feet. Bex  scooted behind him and put a broken piece of wall between her and the doll before closing her eyes and gathering her energy in the pit of her stomach. If she could make birds and pots explode, she could make dolls explode, too.

“Hold it still. Got it.” Orion gave the girl a thumbs up, but he was anything except confident. He had absolutely no interest in getting close enough to that thing to keep it still, less than no interest actually. A negative interest. But, perhaps if this girl had an idea than it was worth taking a risk. With a sigh, Rio glanced back at the doll, creaking its creepy little doll body as he twisted and turned to get itself back up. “I just wanted a sandwich” Rio mumbled to himself, shrugging off his denim jacket. He was thankful that he had worn a long sleeve under it today. He crossed over to the thing with an equal sense of purpose and apprehension, haphazardly tossing the jacket out toward the thing. The doll did not like that. As soon as it landed on top of her, the thing lifted into the air. Rio jumped forward, grabbing onto the sleeves of the jacket and slamming it back into the ground, wrapping it up and weighing it down. “Got it!” Rio yelled at the girl, who was now out of view. If he couldn’t hear her he would be afraid she had left him. Though the doll wasn’t particularly strong, it was tenacious and loud. The thing continued to scream as it bounced back and forth under his jacket. Rio wished that he could cover his ears, but instead squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus on other noises to drown out the sound. Whatever idea this girl had, he hoped that she was almost ready.

Concentrate. She needed to focus. She needed to gather all her energy in one place and then focus on what she wanted to do. And what she wanted to do was destroy that doll. If it was in pieces, it couldn’t hurt them, right? Bex opened her eyes and turned around the corner sharply when she heard the other boy yelling that he had it. It was struggling mercilessly under his jacket. She tried to remember what it looked like under there, sending the energy in her stomach out. She thought about the bird exploding and the pot smashing and the sidewalk groaning under Mina’s feet. She thought about the grass she’d decayed and the windows she’d shattered in her own home. The doll began to howl, screaming as if in pain. For a moment, she wondered if she should stop. Could ghosts feel pain? But then it burst from the boys jacket, fissures of cracks all along its wooden body. It was working. Bex bit down on her tongue so hard she felt it splitting. The doll screamed and thrashed, banging into beams, knocking through walls. With one final push, Bex threw everything she had at the doll-- and watched as it shattered into a million little wooden splinters. But so did the beam beside it, and the ceiling and the stairs collapsed. The house groaned around them. Bex fell to her knees, suddenly weak and exhausted. She looked at the boy. A piece of ceiling collapsed between them. “We have to--” she tried to say, her voice horse, “--get o-out of he--” The walls buckled. The house was caving in. Bex shoved herself up and ran towards the boy, grabbing onto him, tripping over pieces of wood, just as the walls came down, and everything else in the house with it.

The first tearing noise was only slightly worrisome. Orion didn’t start actually freaking out into he saw the seam of his jacket pulling from each other. “Uh- Might want to hurry it up there” Rio called out, but he wasn’t sure if he could be heard over the angry doll. He fell backwards when the seam finally split entirely and the doll flew up into the air. “Crap, crap, crap.” Rio repeated quietly to himself as he crawled across the floor on his back and looked up at the thing. It was all cracked. How had that happened under his jacket? He didn’t have much chance to think about it before the doll exploded entirely, along with some other parts of the house. The force pushed Rio back further, hitting a wall with a groan. He could hear everything in the place shifting. Drywall was cracking and the entire foundation shook. He pushed himself up just in time for the girl to run over and grab a hold of him so they could rush to get out. They were so close to the door, but Rio knew that time was running out. If they could get close enough, they might be able to minimize the damage. “Hold still!” Rio yelled, knowing that running at this point might actually be more dangerous. He grabbed the girl and pushed them both onto the floor, flinging himself on top of her and trying to cover as much as he could. Then he tucked his head under his hands and hoped that they had gotten clear of most of the damage. 

It was so loud. Bex didn’t really expect it to be so loud, though, as it all came crashing down on them, she figured that she should’ve expected it to be. The weight on top of her pressed her into the floor-- it was the boy, shielding her from the falling debris-- and she felt her breath wheeze out of her. Black ate at her vision, and then bits of rubble filled the rest of it. Wood and brick and dry wall collapsed on top of them and Bex let out a scream, pain erupting in her body. Her chest was killing her, the world was spinning. She tucked her head in as much as possible and waited. 

She wasn’t sure if she’d passed out, but when her eyes finally opened again, it was dark. She coughed. Dust coated her face, her body, sticking to the blood that was sticky on her forehead. The crushing weight of the was making it harder to breath. She turned as much as she could to try and see where the boy was, make sure he was okay. “We have to...move…” she groaned, shaking his shoulder gently. “Help me...move this…” It was just a doll, she’d just destroyed the doll. Why had the whole house come down? Had she done that? She pushed against the pile of rubble on top of her and heard it shift, felt the strain in her arms, and the pain in her side. Oh, that wasn’t good, was it? She turned to look. It was bleeding. Her eyes went back to the boy. It dawned on her what she had done. She had intentionally used magic and it had worked. Sure, a house had collapsed on them, but she’d done it. She’d used magic. She couldn’t help the grin that spread on her face, despite the weariness in her body. “C’mon,” she said again, shoving against the piece of wall that was blocking them, “let’s get out here.”

As far as crumbling buildings went, Orion was pretty sure that they got lucky with this house. It had clearly been abandoned for a while, no furniture or other added heavy objects to add to the debris. That didn’t stop the pain as each pieces struck his back and legs. He could feel himself being crushed further and further into the girl beneath him. But he kept his knees firmly against the ground and his back arched to try to give her some breathing room. When the sounds finally stopped, Rio let out the breath he hadn’t known he had been holding the entire time. His entire body screamed at him. His head felt like it was swimming and he found it increasingly hard to focus on the pile of debris resting on top of him. But the girl finally shook him back to reality. He tried to ignore the pain and instead pushed upward, lifting remnants of the house with him. “You’re bleeding. Crap” Rio noticed it quickly, the smell adding to the mixture of nausea that he was starting to feel. But it helped motivate him more, pushing his strength into shoving larger pieces away. The girl was working on a piece of drywall and Rio shifted his direction to add his strength, pushing the piece aside and finally opening up a path for them to get out. “Yeah. Getting out of here is good. Do you need a hospital?” Rio asked, slowly pulling himself onto his feet and offering a hand to her. He wasn’t quite ready to take stock of his own injuries yet.

Bex shook her head furiously. Bad idea, though. The world tilted on its side and she felt a wave of nausea take over her. She clutched her head, holding still for a moment. A path finally broke open and she crawled out, taking his hand. Her legs shook visibly as she stood, but she was still smiling. Blood smeared across the side of her face, her hair sticking to it. “Did you see that?” she said in an exasperated voice. “I did that! I did it!” she turned to look back at the collapsed bit of the house. In the distance, she heard sirens wailing. Someone must’ve called 911 when they heard the noise. She pushed against him again. “Crap, we gotta go--” she started, but her voice, and her legs, gave out mid sentence as she fell against him, gripping tightly to not fall all the way down. They were both covered in soot and bits of dry wall debris, they looked a mess, they couldn’t be caught like this. “I’m sorry. Sorry. I’m a little-- tired.” Exhausted. She’d used too much energy. “My name’s Bexley, by the way,” she muttered, trying to stand herself back up. She felt like she could sleep for a million years. She really wanted to shower. “What’s yours?”

The house caving in had almost distracted Orion from the fact that the house hadn't just fallen randomly. It had been blown to pieces beforehand. Before he thought it had was an aftereffect of whatever the doll had been doing, but the girl made him slowly realize that it hadn’t been the doll at all. She actually had had a plan when she told him to hold it still. “Wait- that was you?” Rio asked, abandoning the exhaustion and pain to actually laugh. “Holy crap!” Magic. He wasn’t sure what exactly, but some kind of spell. The sound of sirens only momentarily distracted him before turning back to her. “Besides a building falling on us, that was so freaking cool!” He was almost excited enough to forget how sore his body was. But he was reminded when the girl practically fell into him, sending a whole new wave of pain cascading throughout his body when he caught her. He resituated her, wrapping her arm around his shoulder to try to give her some support. It would be fine as long as he could keep his own footing. “Orion. Or Rio, really. Most people call me Rio. It’s nice to meet you.”

Bex laughed, too. It hurt, but she laughed. Mina was gonna be so mad. Morgan, too. She’d collapsed a house on herself and she felt as if she’d been wrung through a steamroller, but she laughed. And it felt-- good? It felt strange. It felt new. And exciting. Her entire body was still buzzing with the after effects of the magic. Was this what Nell meant? When she said it made her feel connected? Bex looked over at the boy as they started limping their way out of the alley and away from the building-- and the store. And the bench. The stupid bench that had gotten them into this whole mess. Because of a haunted doll. Bex laughed again. “It’s nice to meet you, too.” She leaned into him enough to support herself, but he looked just as banged up as her, and the back of his shirt was bloody with cuts from using his own body to protect her. “You were pretty good back there, too, you know,” she told him, giving a crooked smile, “are you-- do you like, know about all the weird stuff here, too?”

Orion really wanted a shower, but he would focus on making sure that Bexley was safe first. She hadn’t taken to the idea of a hospital, so he supposed he’d have to settle on taking her home instead. He couldn’t exactly argue against it when he had no intentions of going to the hospital himself. There was no point in him getting checked out for wounds that would heal in a couple of weeks anyways. In the meantime, he would just be a bit sore. “I mostly just screamed and lost my sandwich.” Rio shrugged, uncomfortable with taking credit for any part in the eradication of that terrifying, bench loving doll. There was probably more that he could have done. “Yeah I uh- I’m familiar. A bit.” A bit of an understatement, but right now it was a start.

Bex hung on Rio like a lifeline. She was really grateful for him. Honest. She’d probably be a lot more banged up right now if he hadn’t blocked most of the rubble. “No, no. You helped a lot, trust me,” she said with a nod. “Thank you.” And she meant it. It was strange, though. Most of her experiences in White Crest so far had been horrifying. The vampire, the wolf, her own magic. But that-- well, that had felt different. Had been different. She’d been able to do something. To fight back. She didn’t know how, but she’d done it. She’d blown up the doll just like the cockatrice and she’d helped someone. Saved someone. Maybe that meant she could save Mina, too. Next time, she could do something for her. She pressed her hand to her chest and felt the bandages rub on something wet. “Fuck,” she muttered, looking down. Red stains were dripping through her blue-- now brown and black and red-- dress. She frowned and looked over at Rio. “Yeah,” she chuckled softly, “me, too.”

[translations-by-aiimee]

Dig a Grave to Dig Out a Ghost - Chapter 3

Original Title: 挖坟挖出鬼

Genres: Drama, Horror, Mystery, Supernatural, Yaoi

This translation is based on multiple MTLs and my own limited knowledge of Chinese characters. If I have made any egregious mistakes, please let me know.

Chapter 1 Chapter 2

Chapter 3 - Mortuary

There were always one or two friends in your life who you're never afraid will scold you or hang up on you in the early morning hours, even if the reason is because you had a nightmare about potatoes in your home growing lots of hair. Yin Zhou was this person to Lin Yan. He had two long strands of messy hair on his head, always wore unwashed shirts, and the eyes under his glasses could never focus because of how long he had spent gaming.

They grew up in the same neighbourhood, attended the same elementary school, middle school and high school, and they were each that "brilliant other child" in the eyes of both their parents. Since childhood, Lin Yan, regardless of how hard he worked, achieved the high grades that Yin Zhou could have achieved if he didn't skip class every day. No matter how good his grades were, his parents would praise Lin Yan for his diligent and hard work. After the college entrance exam, the two drank a glass of wine as a farewell and celebrated them parting ways. Unexpectedly, Yin Zhou missed half a page of questions while writing the math papers, but he still went to the same university as Lin Yan, so almost two. So the friendship continued with the constant cycle of loving and hating each other.

Later, they were divided by their majors. Yin Zhou studied electronics and Lin Yan studied history. From then on, there was little crossover with the two majors. Without the pressure of competition, the two of them became much closer, playing games, flirting with girls, talking about politics; there was no end to their activities.

The 'regular place' referred to the bar.

When Lin Yan walked in, he saw Yin Zhou shooting his shot with a girl at the bar unsuccessfully. Lin Yan called his name several times before he turned around. Yin Zhou opened a bottle of beer and his eyes widened: " Yo, you weren't responding to any of my calls or texts. Were you on a date?"

Lin Yan drank half the bottle in single breath, and said calmly, "I've got lost and was going around in circles."

"Got lost?!" Yin Zhou stared at him for a long time. Seeing that Lin Yan wasn't joking, he couldn't help but smile and said, "Are you feeling alright? If you're feeling sick, let this brother take you to the hospital."

Lin Yan was in a weird mood because of all the strange events that had happened. Now, his voice wasn't very strong either. He simply put down the beer bottle, put his hands on the table, raised his voice and shouted into Yin Zhou's ears: "I! Saw! A! Ghost!!"

His voice was so loud that most of the people at the bar heard him. They turned to look at him like he was crazy.

Yin Zhou hid his face behind his hand and muttered about how embarrassing it was. After thinking about it, he raised his head and said with a dazed expression: "Was it a female ghost? Was it pretty?"

Lin Yan was at a loss for words and the muscles on his face twitched.

Then Lin Yan explained all the night's occurrences to Yin Zhou in extreme detail, but he started regretting it halfway through. Yin Zhou obviously was eating it up, and a pair of unfocused eyes were shining with an excitement that couldn't be matched in ten thousand years. He rubbed his hands together and stammered when he heard the section of the figure under the street light: "This is too unscientific, or maybe it's too scientific. I'll apply to use one of the labs tomorrow, maybe I can figure this out!"

Lin Yan wanted to smash the beer bottle on his head.

"You seem busy, I'll head out first."

Yin Zhou caught him before he walked away and scratched his head: "Alright, alright. I'm just kidding. Have a drink first and we can go back to my place afterwards."

"Let's be optimistic. If that thing is a guy, then you've got to get rid of him immediately. If it's a woman, then she should definitely get down on her knees to see what is under your jeans."

Lin Yan was actually very grateful to him when he drove Yin Zhou all the way to his house. He thought that unreliable people would have unreliable benefits. No matter how weird things were, he would really listen to them, but he immediately regretted it once they reached his apartment. The reason was simple: Yin Zhou's room was dirty and no living person would ever be found in this room.

The sight that Lin Yan was faced with when he stepped in the door made him scream inside. It's better to go home and be scared to death by ghosts. God only knows how he lives like this. It was a 10-square metre rental with rubbish and clothes littering the floor. There were mountains of instant noodle boxes on the table. Some of them were being used as ashtrays and there were cigarette butts floating in the murky soup. He had no idea how long they were left there, but they were exuded a rancid smell.

The laptop was thrown on the bed, and there was a line of characters moving across the screen. Yin Zhou rushed to take a look, and groaned: "It's been going on repeatedly. The program has to be changed." After he was done talking, he didn't pay any more attention to Lin Yan. He leaned against the headboard, flipping through his notebook and clicked to stop debugging, tapping on his keyboard with his long fingers.

"There is food in the cupboard. If you get hungry, grab something to eat."

Lin Yan opened the cabinet and inspected Yin Zhou’s selection. Various brands of instant noodles, rice vermicelli, pickled mustard greens, a large number of ham sausages that were about to expire. . . If this guy croaks one day, the number of preservatives in him would help him survive for at least thirty more years. If ancient people had eaten things like this, it could've saved conservation historians so much time.

"Do you have any clean clothes? Mine are soaked from the rain. Could you lend me some dry clothes first."

"There's some on the ground. Grab those."

After feeling Lin Yan's murderous glare, Yin Zhou reluctantly got up and slowly opened the wicker basket at the foot of his bed: "Yes, yes, my mother comes to wash my clothes once a week, and the clean ones are here."

After speaking, he threw him a graphic t-shirt.

"You earn so much from your projects yet you live in such a shabby place. You don't even own a washing machine, and that quality of life is catching up with you. Aren't you afraid that your arrogant old man won't give you money to marry a wife in the future? Lin Yan took off his shirt, stretched the t-shirt over his head and put it on. With the shirt over his head, he asked in a muffled voice: "Help me find a pair of pants."

Yin Zhou threw his hands up and said with disdain: "You're being so picky. A person uses so much stuff when they are alive but when they're dead, they only need a coffin. Why are you being so particular about this?" After finishing speaking, Yu Guang looked at Lin Yan with a smirk. : "Xiao Linzi's figure is good, the fitness card is not for nothing."

He glanced at Lin Yan with his peripheral vision and gave a sly smirk: "Little Brother Lin is in good shape, your gym membership wasn't bought in vain."

"Don't you dare call me Little Brother Lin, I'll show you want a real man is!" Lin Yan picked up the electric kettle that was thrown by the bed, wiped off the ashes, and smacked his lips.

Lin Yan picked up the electric kettle that was thrown near the bed, wiped off a handful of cigarette ashes, and smacked his lips.

"Disgusting."

Yin Zhou ignored him and spoke to himself as he flipped through his suitcase. "I remember I had a pair of new jeans, where are they going. . . Huh? What's this? Did my mother leave her clothes in here?"

This was. . .

The body was made of red satin, black lining, with loose sleeves that hung down, and there was heavy embroidery around the wrists. Yin Zhou shook it out curiously. Just as he was about to hold it up to compare it to his body, Lin Yan cried out: "Put that down, don't touch it!"

Looking at Lin Yan's pale face, Yin Zhou also noticed that something was wrong, so he threw the red clothes on the bed.

"These are mortuary clothes. It's for the dead." Lin Yan said weakly.

Yin Zhou's face also changed.

"This thing doesn't belong here."

Yin Zhou looked around his room, as if to relieve the nervous atmosphere, he laughed twice: "Is it wrong? How about I call my mother and ask if she left it."

Yin Zhou looked around his room. Trying to break the tense atmosphere, he laughed twice: "Was this a mistake? How about I call my mother and ask if she put it in here?"

Lin Yan looked at the clothes and said dejectedly: "No need, I believe you."

He was getting angry, thinking that this thing was trying to provoke him no matter what, and now it was involving his friend. He was clearly trying to get a reaction out of him.

For a while, both of them were speechless. The room was silent except for the ticking of the clock on the wall.

Under the light of the bright light, the red clothes were laid straight out on the bed like paper. Despite its bright colour, it was gloomy and had a terrifying appearance. The ancient style and the luxurious fabrics exuded such a cold atmosphere that it was like the sun had never touched it.

Ten minutes later.

Lin Yan picked up the car key on the table. He sighed and said to Yin Zhou: "I'm going back home. This thing is coming after me, staying here will only hurt you."

Yin Zhou spat out: "Don't give me that bullshit. It would be stupid to go back by yourself, just stay here."

What Lin Yan wanted to say was interrupted by Yin Zhou: "We're close enough that you're wearing my pants. Won't I be the one that will have to explain what happened to your parents if there's an accident? Don't mess with me. We'll talk about this in the morning."

After talking, yin Zhou searched under the bed for a while. He found another notebook and handed it to Lin Yan: "Do you think a ghost would be able to scare us to death? Hurry up, let's get some kills on Dota!"

Lin Yan was silent for a while, opened his notebook, and said with a smile: "You asked for it, I won't go easy on you!"

The light flickered and dimmed, and the room became more and more gloomy. Lin Yan knew instinctively that something was staring at him somewhere in the room. Maybe it had a pale face, wrapped in a red mortuary, and said sorrowfully: Your death is approaching.

This must be the weirdest night in his 22 years of life, Lin Yan thought. Once the sky begins to get bright, things will be over by dawn.

The red mortuary was like a long, stiff corpse lying on the bed, the sleeves folded across the front as if to remind him that this was only the beginning.

[tarysande]

Lucifer Fic: Sheet Happens (1/1)

For @thedeckerstarnetwork’s Halloween Challenge. @calia05 asked for “ghost” and “trick,” and said she loved Ella and Azrael. This is the result! <3

Also on AO3

Sheet Happens

Miss Lopez delivered the invitation in typical Miss Lopez fashion: as exuberantly as the world's friendliest golden retriever high on Adderall. Clearly handmade, she’d cut the card into the shape of a cartoonish ghost, white bedsheet and all, and covered it with an absurd amount of silvery glitter. Meaning, of course, that it covered him with an absurd amount of silvery glitter in short order. The sparkles stood out against the black of his suit like snowflakes. Or dandruff. Not that the Devil was in any way personally acquainted with the latter.

“Thank you,” he said gravely, holding the glitter bomb at as close to arm’s length as he could politely get away with.

Miss Lopez wore her every emotion not just on her sleeve, but from the top of her head to the tips of her platformed running shoes. Today’s t-shirt featured a sad ghost with a spilled cup of coffee and the phrase ‘Sheet Happens.’ “So, you’ll come?”

“Ah.” Even as the syllable emerged, Miss Lopez’s face began to fall. “It’s a … popular evening at Lux. I do rather feel I owe my patrons an appearance.”

“Oh,” she said, smacking her forehead with the heel of her hand and leaving ghostly glitter behind. “Duh. I should’ve thought of that.”

The glitter was sentient. He could practically feel it creeping up his fingers. He would have to burn the suit; once infected, recovery was impossible. He could only imagine how infested her home must be. The mind behind the creation of the stuff was truly devious; in the darkest of hellscapes, he’d never come across anything quite so … persistent.

“Would you … prefer to offer the invitation to someone else?” he asked, gesturing slightly with the ghost held between the tips of finger and thumb.

This was, evidently, the wrong thing to have said. She wilted, and when she shook her head, even her ponytail seemed sad. “I made it for you,” she tossed over her shoulder, already fleeing back to her lab as fast as her impractically high shoes would allow.

#

“You’re going, Lou.”

Lucifer blinked. Though the music and revelry, sin and sensation raged around him at top volume, the words reached his ears as clearly as if they were spoken into utter silence. Beside him, Azrael slouched, wearing the form so clearly influenced by Miss Lopez.

Or perhaps it was the other way around? The Azrael of old hadn’t slouched. She hadn’t worn bizarre spectacles or sported bowl-cut hair and t-shirts with sayings on them. When she glared up at him, hands planted on hips, her cloak parted wide enough for him to make out today’s offering. In the same cute-cartoon style as Ms. Lopez’s, it depicted a Grim Reaper, coffee in hand and wearing the exhausted expression Lucifer had so often seen on human faces after too little sleep or too much alcohol, next to the words ‘I FEEL LIKE DEATH.’

Lucifer sipped his whiskey to give his hands and his mouth something to do besides reply.

“Not just for Ells. Literally every one of your friends is there.”

He sighed, stepping aside as a tipsy angel with crooked wings tried to press up against his side. The cloying scent of her cheap Victoria’s Secret perfume wasn’t as easy to avoid. Neither was her pout.

“But you’re the Devil,” she whined in a voice he wished he heard much less clearly. “And I’m an angel. It’s sexy.”

“More like incestuous,” Azrael murmured, catching Lucifer so off-guard he choked on his drink. The smug grin she shot him was entirely the Rae-Rae of old. She nudged him with her cloaked elbow. “Still got it.”

He inclined his head at the disappointed angel, sidestepped a werewolf and vampire with tongues so deeply down each other’s throats that witnesses would convert to #TeamWhoNeedsBellaWhenYouHaveEdwardAndJacob at the sight of it, and swiped a bottle of whiskey he refused to see poured for anyone with such undiscerning tastes as the Borat who’d just ordered it. Evidently the bouncers had forgotten the longstanding no-neon-green-mankinis rule.  

Azrael followed on his heels, and though he bloody well knew no one else could see her, somehow the seething crowds parted more easily for her than they had even for him.

“Why are you here instead of there?”

“I—you see how busy—”

“Uh, I see how you haven’t talked to anyone for longer than two minutes, your piano’s nowhere to be seen, and you’re basically oozing sulking-Devil-do-not-approach vibes.”

“You try my patience, Azrael.”

She shrugged. A trio of sexy nurses—or perhaps maids; it was hard to tell given the lack of fabric—contorted themselves into shapes he should have found pleasing to avoid being too near to her. One attempted to fall toward him, but he slid to the side so she ended up grappling with one of the evening’s nineteen (at last count) Captains America.

“Yeah? Well, you’re bugging me too,” she said, evidently oblivious to the effect her presence was having. “You didn’t even read the card, did you?”

“The … excuse me?”

Azrael’s prodigious eye roll involved every muscle in her face. “From Ella?”

A twinge of something like regret turned the whiskey on his tongue to ashes. He’d dropped disco-ghost into an evidence bag before it could do any more damage and left it at the precinct without sparing it a second thought.

Azrael thrust that same evidence bag into his chest hard enough to send him staggering back half a step. Another angel got partway through a curse Lucifer had a hard time imagining any of his siblings speaking before she realized the Devil to whom that curse was directed. He sensed a new rule for the bouncers brewing.

Of course, the most persistent of the angels presently irritating him didn’t obligingly flit off into the crowd at his glower. He’d no idea how someone so vertically challenged could make him feel small, and yet. The evidence bag and its spectral occupant had fluttered to the ground between them, where it lay like a murder victim bathed in blood glittering red from the overhead lighting. Sheet happens.

He bent from the waist, snatching up the invitation and stalking toward the elevator. The sea of demons and various sexy professionals and animals and … bloody hell, Sexy Donald Trump was infinitely worse than the worst mankinied Borat. Some things couldn’t be unseen.

And then he was in the elevator, and it didn’t matter that Azrael wasn’t with him because she’d be waiting for him with her ridiculous fringe and, beneath it, eyes that always reflected the brother he could have been, perhaps, if he didn’t fail so spectacularly so often.

He scanned the room when the elevator door opened but saw nothing out of place, and when he called out, no one answered. Azrael could creep and hide and lurk as effectively as the angelic purpose over which she held dominion, but rarely from him.

He opened the evidence bag and dumped its contents on the bar, releasing the spirit and its miasma of sparkles. The bloody thing looked so bloody cheerful—and not at all like any of the spirits he’d had occasion to meet over the millennia.

Then again, give the thing a spectral ponytail and a cute t-shirt and maybe—

He silenced the thought by reaching for a bottle. He didn’t, at least for the first burning pull, even bother with a glass.

He poured the second drink. By the third, he was ready to open the damned—ha bloody ha—thing. In the ebullient handwriting so familiar from paperwork and post-it notes, Miss Lopez had written, “My brothers made Halloween more about tricks than treats, usually at my expense. It would be ‘boo’tiful if you could come to my party. COSTUMES MANDATORY.” Instead of her name, she’d drawn a pair of ghosts. One was grinning. It had a ponytail. The other was taller; it held a microphone. It also had devil horns and a tail.

It was grinning, too.

Lucifer closed the invitation and pushed it away with trembling fingertips.

“Why aren’t you there, Lou?”

He gripped the edge of the bar until the moment before the marble would have crumbled. “Surely you know better than anyone, sister.”

The sound she made, caught somewhere between a gasp and a cry, was enough to turn his head. “I’m not—Lucifer, you know I’m not—”

“But you will,” he said. “Because they’re human. Because you’re you. And because you will do as you must. So forgive me for choosing to spend this night of specters and shadows amidst those whose deaths, when they come, will not weigh near so heavily.”

Moments stretched into minutes. Azrael’s jaw worked, and her expression said the words she chewed were bitter ones. Finally, narrowing her eyes, she said, “That’s bullshit.”

Unexpected.

A flush rose in her cheeks and her eyes sparkled not with admiration or sisterly love, but with anger. “You’re sad their time is finite, so you’re wasting what time you do have sitting around feeling sorry for yourself. Listen to yourself, Lou. No, seriously. Like, stop for one minute and actually hear the crap coming out of your mouth.” She glanced down at her hands like she was trying to figure out just how much damage they were capable of inflicting. “You’re so … dumb. Like. Just … dumb.”

And though he wanted to protest, wanted to explain in painful, specific detail just why death and eternity and banishment from Heaven made his situation so much bloody worse … he didn’t.

Because Miss Lopez had drawn them as grinning ghosts. To her, this night was treats and costumes and friends and, as in so many traditions throughout all of bloody human history, defying the coming dark by facing it head-on. Perhaps the current tradition didn’t involve bonfires or sacrifices, but he’d be bloody damned—more damned—if gorging on candy and gathering in friendship and depicting the things humans knew went bump in the night without truly knowing how to name them as cartoons and bad puns wasn’t the very same flavor of ritual.

He released his grip on the bar. His hands glittered.

“Costumes are mandatory,” Rae-Rae reminded him.

When he glanced over his shoulder again, she was gone.

#

He stood outside, listening to the laughter within, for fifteen minutes. He raised his hand to knock eighteen times. He turned to leave at least seven.

“I’m gonna do it if you don’t, Lou.”

Bloody sisters.

He knocked. Moments stretched into eternities.

The door, decorated with glimmering ghosts and glittering pumpkins, opened, revealing Miss Lopez in all her pool-noodle-turned-double-helix-DNA glory.

For a moment, Miss Lopez’s wide eyes were so like Rae-Rae’s—the same belief in him; the same, dare he say it, love—that Lucifer couldn’t find breath for whatever foolish, nonchalant nonsense he’d usually have opened with. And when those eyes filled with glistening tears to accompany a grin no drawing could possibly capture, he was the first to look away.

“You came! In costume!” Leaning forward, she squinted at him, then reached out and plucked at his costume. “Oh my God, Lucifer, tell me you didn’t cut eyeholes in a freaking silk sheet that probably cost like, a month of paychecks.”

“I do not lie, Miss Lopez, so I can say no such thing.” Though she couldn’t see it, he grinned at the way horror and delight mingled on her features. He brushed close, close enough to give the phantom equivalent of the hugs she handed out so enthusiastically, and pretended not to feel a little teary-eyed himself at how tightly she returned the gesture. “Who am I to defy your command?”

She laughed and punched him on the arm. “Have you met you?”

“Ahh,” he replied gently. “But have you met you?”

This time, the laughter he heard belonged not to Miss Lopez but to his sister. And though she, too, was bound to her commands, as he stepped into the warmth and light and laughter of Miss Lopez’s home, Azrael’s dominion was the very last thing on his mind.

[isolctions]

...........so let’s finally talk abt what the actual fucking fuck is wrong with ai’rina rue castillo, huh gang? :-)

(everyone go thank @armsdealing & @durcgs beating the anxiety out of me in order to post this info-dump.)

...before we get into things, now’s the part where i establish a warning for triggers to be discussed in this lengthy headcanon post. there’s gonna be some talks of mental illness, slight alcohol abuse, & breaking down topics of familial abuse, mental abuse, religious abuse, emotional manipulation, and elements of non-con. be warned.

a’ight, so look. i’ve hinted in between threads & development that rue had a not-so-fantastic upbringing that impacted how she perceives herself, how she interacts with others, (in terms of her career, at least) and how she views personal relationships, but i didn’t realize how........severely her upbringing messed with her mental health until i started working through how i wanted to plot out rue’s behavior for her next album release. at first, i had the idea that she decided to take more time for herself & sort of distance herself from the public / media circus plaguing her life so that she can create much more authentic music. then i actually listened to the EP that i’m basing her album off of and thought “...oh.” THEN, i looked over old meme responses & old threads / mentions of her family and how she grew up and thought, not for the last time since piecing everything together: “....oh. oh fucking boy.”

so, that horrible realization dawning on me, let’s talk about rue’s childhood.

i wrote a thing like, two years ago almost (that upon looking for last night, i realized i didn’t actually share it w/ anyone but alex in our discord server & only mentioned a portion of it in rue’s moodboard that i made) that talked vaguely about how rue felt growing up. and it’s worth noting that...she’s the middle of ten fucking siblings. and that’s just the brothers & sisters she knew of that stayed with their mother. and on top of that, not all of those siblings are the product of rue’s father, or even rue’s mother for that matter. and it’s also worth noting that rue not only grew up in poverty, but she grew up never having any actual space that had solely been her own, or even an article of clothing that had belonged entirely to her. so naturally, as a young child, rue sort of became torn between starved for attention & wanting someone to pay attention to her (whether that be her older siblings including her in something, whatever teacher they had for the next six months to call on her for something, for her mother to miraculously show up with her unknown father in tow one day, & for literally anyone to be her friend, pls god Notice her!!!) and for people to simply leave her the hell alone. obviously, this carried into adulthood.

and branching off from the whole “lack of space” point i made, rue wound up growing up to become increasingly more private as time went on because she literally cannot remember a single moment where she wasn’t squished between a bunch of people. driving around in their minivan? rue’s packed in the middle of the second row. nowhere to sleep while on the road? rue’s smacked between gigantic older brothers & clingy little siblings. need to use to bathroom? lmao, she better off going outside!!! gotta change clothes? yeah, good luck with that. it was to the point where, when rue got her first period, she was humiliated by it — not because ‘omg, am i a woman now?? wtf is this???’, but because she ruined the one good sheet that she slept on with her sisters & they were super pissed at her and her mother withheld pay from her for weeks. >:/

already, rue grew up never having shit to herself until the record deal. but she also dealt with literally...so much abuse from her mother. rue thought this was the norm growing up, because all of her siblings faced their mother’s wrath at some point & all of them eventually learned to just deal with the shit and do what she says if they wanted to avoid it. they all compartmentalized and repressed to varying degrees. there’s a lot in which rue has repressed so deeply, she doesn’t even remember if it seriously happened or if she was just making it up bc it was so fucking bizarre for a parent to act that way towards their child, lol?? (and this behavior of “i’m just going to do what you say bc i don’t want to deal with whatever bullshit you’re up to if i say no” also carried into business / personal relationships, which is...very Yikes it’s amazing she didn’t get scammed or worse!) 

so sure, people have complimented her for her exceptional manners & her cleanliness & how quiet / polite she is & how amazing her posture is, bc seriously, this girl will never experience back problems in her life bc her posture is so on par. but where rue typically smiles / responds bashfully, she can’t exactly just up and say: “oh, yeah, my mom used to slap the shit out of me ‘til i bruised if i spoke out of turn or talked back, and if i reached for anything in the store or put my elbows on the table she’d slap a ruler against my palms ‘til i got welts, and she’d make me read verses all night without sleep if i did anything wrong and make me straighten up and kneel on rice if i slouched or took a nap in church and humiliated me in public if i so much as looked at someone of the opposite sex on the street n oh, did i mention i also cleaned houses for rich millionaire snobs from ages twelve to sixteen and if they said or did literally anything to me i wasn’t allowed to defend myself?? ya i’m real proper :)”

(and normal ppl will go: “...................what the FUCK is WRONG with you????”)

but oh man, babe, we’re not done yet!!! rue, being the product of both a highly religious and a highly exploitative household...had difficulty when she started reaching puberty & noticing her classmates. plural, because it wasn’t just boys that she began to secretly have crushes on / fantasize abt, sexually or domestically. she also realized, oh shit, that she started looking at girls differently too. and that literally put the fear of god into her heart, bc if her mother ever found out that she was having non-platonic feelings for the girls in her classrooms, she wasn’t going to be pissed. her mom might have actually tried to kill her. or have her exorcised or something. she knew the shit would be severe, and she wanted no fucking parts of her mother or her siblings inserting the church into her personal life, thank u very much! so rue started suppressing her romantic feelings for people to the point where if adult rue receives intimacy, she’s like “...is this allowed? is this not illegal??????” while simultaneously being like “i will be a slut. just this once. as a Treat to teenage me. :>” regardless, rue learned to molotov cocktail literally any emotion or thought she had, bc she was paranoid that it would give her mother a vision.

now, onto the perils of exploitation...she should’ve been used to it really, what with her mother forcing herself & siblings to lure customers into their shop with promises of visions and palm readings and the wonders of the cards and overexerting their abilities. same with housekeeping, like being of service to people was normal! but when seventeen year old rue decided to sign a record deal and break from home, she wasn’t thinking critically about what the fuck all of this would entail. and as described in this headcanon post abt her discography, her early music was the product of allowing people much older & powerful than you to influence your work & manipulate your values. so rue was very much parading around as someone she wasn’t, someone much more confident and badass and self-assured than she really was, and she was so impressionable back then that it literally makes her sick to think back on it now. she calls it her puppy phase and phrases the eagerness to please execs as ‘tongue wagging’. homegirl hardly even knew her name anymore, bc all she was and all she would ever be was rue, the star, the vocal temptress. not ai’rina, the help or ai’rina, the seer, ai’rina, the weak little nobody. but later on, the subtle manipulation was less about decision making & how they wanted her to sound, and more about how they wanted to present the latest trophy star — because after all, she was pretty. people liked her. she sung really well. suitors weren’t too far off into the distant future. so why not kill two birds with one stone by having a high ranking label artist keep tabloids talking by being seen in public with a few heart throbs? surely, there’s no harm in manipulating an eighteen/nineteen year old’s love life! under the guise of improving her social skills & relations with fellow artists and the media and the like, rue gave into the pressures and let herself be taken out on dates & seen at awards shows with a few guys. no big deal. it was only for a night or so, she could handle the attention. then, one night appearances turned into week long appearances. pretending to date for only a month! completely innocent, positive exposure. :)

(adult rue, looking back @ younger rue: you stupid fucking BITCH-)

yeah, so once her label/management realized that she was turning into a hot commodity, they lost no sleep at allowing their nineteen year old artist to be seen ‘dating’ 20-24+ year old men occasionally. and whatever happened after their public appearances were none of their business. plus, she was good at pretending and being arm candy — so rue experienced her first kiss, her first dates, and her first times with people who she’s almost certain hardly remember their time with her, and really only got involved with her for a mutual career boost. very few of them does she actually remember in a positive light, and the ones that were positive, still depress her bc lmao all of it was fake, even if they were really nice & made it less like a chore and more like they actually wanted to be with her!! even fewer of them were actual relationships. meaning, said person asked her out of their own volition, not bc their managers thought it’d be a decent match on camera. it was evil, really, what her old label made of her. (like, she makes funny jokes that her first time having sex was awkward bc she had a vision halfway through that bummed her out but in reality it was just...really more of a transaction that made her feel icky n progressively worse abt herself until it happened more often and now she just doesn’t care anymore. sex is just sex, u know?? everything’s fake. why you gotta make it personal.) this whole fiasco took over the larger part of rue’s career from like, age nineteen to age twenty-two or so, and she suffered dramatically from this because what is even a genuine, authentic relationship at this point? what do u mean you want to get to know me? did ur manager tell you to ask so many damn questions & try to get to know me? obviously you want something from me bc that’s why everyone gets into a relationship or has sex with me, stop confessing feelings for me u fucking loser. >:/

like...rue doesn’t even have friends. outside of her relationship with marcelo / @armsdealing​ (which, AGAIN, i think was initially arranged to promote her song be honest, how fucking IRONIC), rue does not have any personal relationships with anyone. i mean, she likes her latest management team since switching labels...her hair stylist is rly cool & her make up artist is fun to vacation with...she met a few other celebrities at events that she occasionally texts & has dinner with...yeah, she’s basically a pretty hermit. her family is more or less out of the question — the few brothers & sisters she does still have a positive relationship with (like, four of them lol), they don’t see each other in person often / mainly communicate via groupchat and facetime calls when all of them have time. she tried visiting with her mother over the years, but the verbal & emotional abuse/curses placed on her/accusations of being an imp of satan for singing to the public/memories of being forced to perform psychic shows & clean for chump change keeps her from trying to mend that relationship. like, being gaslit by ur mother isn’t really the vibe, u know? and bottom line, rue simply is a very shy and socially stunted individual who does not know how to communicate like a normal human being anymore. hell, her life revolves around pretending for strangers at this point!

now, onto how...all of That ties into her behavior / state of mind during this next album. so, after riding the wave of success from her third album & the circus that came with that. rue sort of had a fucking existential crisis. came out of absolutely nowhere. (not nowhere — one of her brothers called her out of the blue and called her ai’rina and she literally went “who the fuck is that?”) told her label that she was taking some time in between albums bc she was creatively zapped or whatever bullshit excuse she came up with that somehow worked bc this new label was a little more understanding than the last. vacationed for a little, did some hot girl shit, bought a house, tried to see her mother again for whatever reason then got the shit slapped out of her and finally screamed at her to never touch her again unless she wanted to Throw Hands. cried and got drunk abt it. that took six months. bullshat to her label again, dropped like two songs to smooth things over, decided to focus on magic for a little to ground her, started partying with label mates then going home shitfaced & hungover every other morning. that took eight months. dropped one last song, promptly deleted her twitter, tried to write songs again, got a call from her mother and panicked and got drunk. that took a year. vacationed some more, got even drunker, was bed ridden for like three months because holy shit i’m having so many visions and if i see One More Thing my brain is going to explode, couldn’t separate the present from the future for weeks after that, told absolutely no one about that, cried every day & had an identity crisis, dyed her hair to appease the identity crisis goblins. that took a year and a half.

now, she just chilling. dyed her hair again. scaring her siblings halfway to death bc she keeps going on benders & sending cryptic texts abt the visions she’s getting but they’re so incomprehensible that they’re seriously considering moving in to get her fucking shit together. had a vision that she was married with kids and had a two week identity crisis appeased only by moving houses. (she was in a neighborhood with families...too much Drama and visions. turned into a really cool song tho.) started calling herself by her birth name of ai’rina in private. reactivated twitter to send cryptic tweets that her album is coming. working on said album. trying to drink less but kinda failing bc how is one simply supposed to make a highly personal dual album without alcohol??? prbly somewhere crying in marcelo’s lap or smthn. just vibes.

like...i feel like, in my head, the Theme of her project is wrapped up in identity. her relationship with fame and whatnot. trying to coax her childhood self out of its’ shell so that she can function like a normal goddamn person for once and re-establish her values. like, if someone went to any of rue’s residences right now, it’s just songbooks everywhere and wine glasses and her crystals and shit, bc she still has people’s futures to read for money. (yes, she never really got out of that portion of her childhood, but hey it pays.) it was all very confusing to experience at once while in bed at four in the morning & even though i tried organizing and debated on this, it’s still a Lot. which is why i am once again asking for plots that would allow her to dissect all these Things

so yeah. album four otw, with a side of confronting our childhood & facing our traumas!