#I read about this several years ago and I wanted to be sure none of my information was out of date

[sophieswundergarten]

Hello! Following Milk's idea, any other topics or fun facts you want to talk about? I hope you're having a good day!

Oh hoh hoh!! Another change to spit out random facts I know? Thank you very much, Moth!! (I hope you are having a lovely day yourself! *hugs you*)

The topic today is statocysts, specifically those of cephalapods!

Secondary fun fact to start us off: translated literally, "cephalopod" (Squid, octopi, nautilidae, cuttlefish, or other members of the molluscan class Cephalopoda) means "Head-feet"! Which, if you've ever looked at an octopus, you can understand:

So. Cephalaopods live in the water, right? This means they don't hear the same way humans, or indeed most vertebrates do. Humans hear because the sound hits the eardrum, gets passed on through middle and inner ear, and then is sent up the auditory nerve to the brain.

Cephalopods have two sacs near the base of their brain called statocysts. They're filled with fluid and lined with hair cells that connect to the brain via nerves. This makes them similar to human ears, except that statocysts have a little piece of calcium carbonate inside them called a statolith.

When the cephalopod moves, the statolith moves around too, which allows the hair cells, and therefore nerves and brain, to process the movement. This is a little like how the human vestibular system detects balance and equilibrium. (How you know if you're upright or leaning to the side, laying down, etc.)

However, since cephalopods have these statocysts instead of vertebrate ears, they do not exactly "hear" sound, but instead sense how fast particles are accelerating due to the vibrations that a human might hear audibly.

This became a field of study partially because of an abnormal amount of dead squid washing up on beaches in the early 2000s. It was discovered that certain human equipment, such as sonar or air guns used to search for oil, were damaging the statocysts in nearby cephalopods. The sounds caused lesions, swollen nerves, and other injuries that would have caused the squid to lose their ability to orient themselves.

This spurred on a more direct look into how human technology is affecting marine life, as well as the vastly unknown field of cephalopod sensory processing.

Here are some sources for those who are curious:

>1

>2

>3

#I'm sorry this took me a while #I read about this several years ago and I wanted to be sure none of my information was out of date #I hope I didn't make any mistakes in this summary #(And my deepest apologies if I did) #I just think it's interesting #We don't know a lot about the head-feet so there's a lot of neat studies going on #Going to shut up now #not mbs #asks

[elodieunderglass]

the first chapter of Moby Dick rewritten in tiresome modern idiom

CHAPTER 1. Loomings.

Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - it's none of your business how many - being mostly broke, and bored with the land part of the world, I thought I would sail around a little and look at the watery part of the world. I'm probably the most mentally healthy person you know. Whenever I feel my face getting grim; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself accidentally reading the ads in the window of funeral homes, and following funeral processions through traffic; and especially when I'm hangry, and only my extremely strong moral principles stop me from deliberately going out in public and methodically slapping people's earbuds out - then I know it's high time to get to sea, ASAP. This is my substitute for getting in fights. I'm too mentally healthy to kill myself; I quietly and considerately put myself on a ship and sail myself away instead. There is nothing surprising in this. Everyone feels exactly the same way, and if they don't, they're lying.

You think I'm lying? Exhibit A: a city. Go to your local coastal city. Everyone is looking at the water. They drive over from other neighborhoods just to come to the water. They make a day of it. They're not doing anything, they're just staring at the ocean. Why? Is it because they all work office jobs? No! Here come more of them! They cram themselves up to the edge of the water and stare at it. WHAT DO THEY WANT? WHAT ARE THEY LOOKING AT. Perhaps the ships themselves all packed together, each one with several compasses on it, creates some kind of critical mass - all of the small compass-magnets on all the ships in the harbor combining into one really big magnetic field - and the people get sucked into the field and trapped there. That's science.

Exhibit 2: the countryside with lakes in it. Every path you follow in the countryside brings you to some water, such as a stream. There is magic in it. If you take your standard fool with ADHD dissociating in the middle of a supermarket and put them outside and give them a shove, they'll automatically lead you to water (if there is any nearby) (try it). Another good experiment to try is to get lost in the great American desert in a caravan supplied with a metaphysical professor! Try it in the great American desert at home!

Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are a match made in heaven. Married forever. That's science.

Here's an artist who wants to paint you the dreamiest, most enchanting landscape. What does he put in it? Trees, meadow, cows, a cottage with smoke coming from the chimney, obviously. He will probably put a path in it and make lots of triangular mountains in rows and have them be different shades of blue (naturally.) But there's gotta be a stream in it. Go visit the prairies in June, and wade for forty miles through knee-deep through tiger lilies. What's missing from this picture? Water!

If Niagara Falls was made of sand instead of water, would you travel your thousand miles to see it? Why would a guy given a handful of cash have trouble deciding whether to buy a coat (which he needed) or go to the beach? Why are all the best, healthiest, sexiest and most mentally healthy people obsessed with the sea? (You get me.) When you were first on a boat, did you not succumb to VIBES? Consider ancient Persia. Consider ancient Greece. They understood about vibes, and also gods.

SURELY ALL OF THIS IS NOT WITHOUT MEANING.

And still deeper the meaning of that story of Narcissus, who because he could not grasp the tormenting, mild image he saw in the fountain, plunged into it and was drowned. But that same image, we ourselves see in all rivers and oceans. It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life; and this is the key to it all! You get me! You understand it now.

Now, when I say that I am in the habit of going to sea whenever I get weird, don't you dare imply that I buy a ticket and get on a boat. I have never had money in my life. How dare you. Anyway I don't go as a passenger - that's bougie, and something boring people do. Passengers never have a good time. And although my C.V. is incredible - I go to sea SO MUCH, you guys, I have lots of experience - I don't go as a boss, or a cook. That sounds like far too much work. Hard work. Disgusting, respectable, bougie, and far too responsible. I can literally only look after myself. Do not ask me to look after ships or shit. In fact, I have only a vague idea of what a ship is. There's so many different kinds of ships - don't get me started and DO NOT GET INVOLVED. Also, I'm allergic to glory.

It's kind of attractive to go as a cook. I mean, I'm allergic to glory and there's some glory attached to the position of the ship's cook, but, like, you're not management-track and so it's still credible. But I don't really want to cook (say) roast chicken. I really fucking love to eat roast chicken. I'm one of the best at doing it actually. I really appreciate when people go out of their way to butter, season, baste and roast a chicken for me. Picture a roast chicken and I am Looking Respectfully at it. Maybe something more, maybe I'm worshipping it. Don't make this weird. If you want to get weird about my relationship with roasted chicken, why aren't you getting weird about the ancient Egyptians? They ate roasted hippos (look it up) and the pyramids were basically pizza ovens. So it's pretty hypocritical to think that I'm being weird about roasted chicken when I've never made mummies out of chickens or built a religious pizza oven dedicated to honoring them: check and mate, haters.

Anyway - I like to go to sea as a manual laborer. A simple sailor. Salt of the earth… er… sea. Yeah, true: as a job it sucks. They make you jump around, order you around, treat you like shit. They expect you to jump around the boat like a grasshopper. And yes, at first, this sucks. It's degrading, especially if you come from a middle-class family. Worse, it's awful if you've already had some kind of professional job before signing on to be the dirt on the boss's boots - like, if you went to college and worked as a teacher and actually got kids to pay attention to you, really feeling this connection to work/teaching/identity or some shit, and now you are just literally the scum on this captain's boots, in the lowest possible job in the world. It hurts! It hurts your dignity. But the hurt, and also the dignity, both wear off in time.

So what if some old bastard sea captain orders me - ME! - to get a broom and sweep down the decks? What does that indignity amount to, compared to the shit in the Bible, compared to the shit in the news, compared to the shit everyone else has to take. Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old hunks in that particular instance? Who ain’t a slave? Tell me that. We're all just serfs under capitalism, right, so why not just be honest about it: I prefer the honesty. Anyway, however the old sea captains may order me about - slapping and punching of course - I have the satisfaction of knowing that it's the same experience everyone else on Earth has, but more honest. Everyone else in the world is being served the exact same way. Either in a physical or a metaphysical way - sometimes people get the shit beaten out of them in person, sometimes online, sometimes emotionally, it happens to you in EVERY JOB, you sign on to get pushed around and slapped in the teeth: so the point is that when you're a sailor, it's a clean and honest slap. All the workers of the world share the same universal slap to the face that gets passed round, one slap passed all 'round the chain, like paying it forward, but it's a slap; and we should all accept this Universal Slap as the price of living, and then offer each other healing back massages, brother to brother, and slap each other and then kissed the places we slapped, and be happy.

I could examine that but I'm not going to.

Anyway: I always go to sea as a sailor. I've said that already. You're welcome. BUT THE POINT IS, they pay you. If you're a passenger, they don't pay you, at least, not that I've ever heard of [citation needed] (do they pay passengers?? Is there a job I can get where I can be a passenger and get paid?? Look this up.) Yeah so passengers have to pay. And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. (That's Adam and Eve. You get it.) But BEING PAID. GETTING PAID IS THE BEST. NOTHING COMPARES TO GETTING PAID. EVERYONE LOVES THAT SHIT. Which is surprising, since we also apparently believe that money is the root of all evil, and isn't there something in the bible about "no rich people can get into heaven," right? And yet it's universal, literally everyone loves payday. Ah! How cheerfully we send ourselves to hell.

Finally, I always go to sea as a sailor (I've said this already) because it's FRESH AIR AND EXERCISE. Okay so think about ships. Normally, bosses stand on the "bridge" thing, and because we're sailing a boat, the nose is going into the wind and the butt part of the boat is at the back. That's how wind works. But if you think about it, winds usually go in one direction more than other directions (unless the men have been eating beans and farting: it's Pythagoras, look it up) SO if you're a boss standing on the boss-deck, the wind is blowing FROM the sailors TOWARDS you, and YOU ARE ACTUALLY BREATHING THE AIR THAT SAILORS ALREADY BREATHED. The boss THINKS he breathes it first, but he doesn't. He gets the air at the BACK of the boat and sailors get the air at the FRONT. So it's better to be at the front of the boat (sailor) for health reasons. This is a metaphor for life and work, etc.

But I have smelled the sea lots of times as a paid sailor and WHY I should decide to go on a whaling expedition - ok so you know how there's an invisible police officer of the Fates who has me under constant surveillance, who secretly dogs me, and influences me in some unaccountable way? YOU get me. You know him. "The poor FBI agent tasked with reading my search engine history" YOU GET ME. Anyway, "Ishmael, why, after having a perfectly well-reasoned, and very smart of you, part-time job as a spontaneous random sailor, did you decide to escalate that to joining a WHALING EXPEDITION, which is worse in every way?" Well, ask my fucking secret FBI agent, he can answer better than anyone else. Including me. You get me. Also, obviously, this was predestined, part of the Universe's Grand Programme for its talent show, which was all scheduled way before our time. The concept of sending me on the whaling voyage comes in as a kind of interlude or solo between the main performances of the Universe's great talent show. I bet it was advertised llike,

"PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF THE UNITED STATES EMBROILED IN ONGOING LEGAL DISPUTE.

Whaling voyage by some guy called Ishmael.

BLOODY BATTLE IN AFGHANISTAN."

Like a commercial break in between the big acts. A filler episode. Lightens the load for everyone else. Though I can't explain why the stage managers - the Fates - chose such a shitty role for me, a WHALING VOYAGE of all things, when it feels like others were given magnificent parts in high tragedies, and short and easy parts in genteel comedies, and jolly parts in farces - it seems a little unreasonable at first. Why doth Ishmael get shat upon, etc. But then I think about all the circumstances, the plot points and motivations that were cunningly presented to me under various disguises - FBI agents, bouts of random hanger, gay awakenings, you get me - and you can see that actually, I was set up. And worse, between them all, these Fates and Circumstances conspired to make me believe it was all my own choice and good judgment. Is Free Will an illusion? Are my decisions bad? We will NEVER know because I, Ishmael, am just a little guy that the Universe plays head games with.

One of the ways the Universe tricked me into starring in this performance and then mocking me for it was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself (whaling expeditions usually contain whales.) Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then of course, if you have a whale, you have the wild and distant seas where the whale rolls around with his body-the-size-of-an-island; the dangers and nameless perils of the whale; whales are also found in interesting places I haven't seen; this all tipped me over the edge. Maybe normal people could've resisted, but I am tormented with an everlasting itch for obscurity. I hate everyone else's oceans. I want the forbidden seas.

You know The Horrors? Of course you do. You might be surprised that I, the most mentally healthy person you've ever met, a person who is self-aware enough to go to sea when they're at their fucking limits, a guy who likes fresh air and manual labor and normal things, is familiar with The Horrors. Well, you'd be surprised. I know what's good, I'm an extrovert. But I'm still quick to perceive The Horrors. And how I deal with the horrors is a very extroverted thing: I'm social with them, if they'll let me. It's smart to be on good terms with The Horrors. You should always be on good terms with your permanent neighbors. That's how extroverts deal with The Horrors, and I recommend it.

I think that's enough explanation for why I welcomed the whaling voyage. The great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild figments of imagination that pushed me into doing it, the whales came marching two by two, hurrah, hurrah. They marched into my innermost soul in endless processions and occupied it, you see, I was quite helpless under this occupation - I consented to the haunting and the whales marched in to haunt me - and amidst them all was one grand shrouded white phantom, like a snowy mountain in the air.

You get it.

You know how it is, with whales.

(read the actual first chapter of Moby Dick here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2701/2701-h/2701-h.htm)

#mody bick

[satan-plundered-our-oceans]

★。／can i be a hero too?＼。★

ask: "I have a really cute request, Bakugou from Bnha with a little sibling reader. They weren't able to get a babysitter and Bakugou bring his little sibling to school, the reader is the complete opposite of him though"

pairing: bakugo x gn!sibling!reader

fandom: boku no hero academia

word count: 1,196

tw: none! purely some platonic, wholesome fluff. of course, a bit of cussing from bakugo but that comes with the territory

notes: thanks for being one of my first requests anon! it was really fun to get back into writing fanfic, and bnha is one of my favourite animes so writing this was a lot of fun - i just hope i did it well and you enjoy reading! i used primarily they/them pronouns for the sibling just in case ;)

! this is a repost from my other blog !

‘Can’t we just hire that old fucking neighbour?!’

Mitsuki doesn’t even bother smacking her son this time, too busy fixing up the bento box she has already begun making in the kitchen. Rice and egg and soft pretzels which [Y/N] always insisted on. The same thing everyday, which Katsuki found increasingly frustrating. Their name is painted on the lid, which sits on the sink.

It’s one of the only memories that Mitsuki repeatedly brags about to her mom friends. How her son eagerly decorated a bento box for his anticipated sibling, and how he ended up despising them when born. That’s what it looked like anyway

‘She’s too old for [Y/N], you know this.’ Mitsuki snaps, snapping on the box lid. ‘They’ll get bored if they have to sit in her living room all day.’

‘The place smells like shit too.’

‘Katsuki!’ This time she does hit him.

‘It’s just one day. All you have to do is keep them busy for a while, and they’ll find a way to occupy themselves for the rest of your classes.’

Mitsuki packs the bento box and several colouring books and pencil sets into a tiny school bag that’s been sitting open on the dining room table. Just as [Y/N] comes skipping into the room in an All-Might tracksuit that they demanded they ‘had to have’ when they saw it at a convention a while ago.

‘Aren’t you so pretty, hun?’ Mitsuki coos at - arguably - her favourite child. ‘Guess what?’

[Y/N] mumbles something around a mouthful of a soft pretzel. Where’d they even get it from?

‘You’re going to school with Katsuki today!’

Oh shit their face got a fuck ton more bright when he looked down again. Even the mention of U.A on any given day made them bounce around while babbling about how they’d love to be a hero when they got their quirk. 

‘Really?’ [Y/N] attaches themself to his leg, bouncing up and down to make sure they’ve heard Mitsuki just right.

She glares at him when [Y/N] looks away.

‘Yeah, yeah, whatever.’

* *

No one’s expecting anything entirely different when Aizawa starts class that morning. The only thing that seems slightly out of the ordinary is Bakugo being late. Kirishima is counting through the minutes and soon enough a whole half hour passes without him being there to yell at anyone. Even Midoriya is having a particularly stress-free morning!

However, no one was expecting for him to parade into the class an hour later with a six year old sitting on his shoulders, because (as he said) “they didn’t want to use their damn legs”. 

‘Bakubro,’ Kaminari is already laughing his ass off in the back corner. ‘Ya got a hitchhiker there.’

Bakugo is almost fuming by the time he drops off the child at his desk, standing by Aizawa to demand - or ask - that he ignore the situation. Number one, [Y/N] got a day off school because of a downtown villain attack, and Mitsuki couldn’t find a babysitter after their current one caught the flu. With no other options and both of his parents going to work early that morning, he had no choice but to drag them along as long as, and quote:

‘You don’t make a damn noise, and no questions, and no playing around, you sit down and shut up.’

Did [Y/N] listen? Nope. Not really. 

Halfway through the first lesson of the morning, and little [Y/N] is sitting in the lap of half of his classmates, messing with Hagakure’s invisible hair in utter curiosity, and playing heroes with Midoriya and Kirishima. At which point they all stand on their desks and put their fists in the air yelling ‘Detroit Smash’!

Katsuki just stands and watches as [Y/N] jumps from person to person, playing with quirks and planning out their future hero name. Kaminari is the most excited to stand on his desk and create a fake hero mask out of tape and paper, and theorise all the new quirks that could be made for [Y/N].

‘[Y/N] sit down for God’s sake!’ he growls at them, and they do so as they nestle themselves into a corner of his desk. Katsuki squeezes on with her. ‘No more talking to these... damn extras during class, ok?’

Mitsuki would skin him alive if he even thought about swearing properly in the same room as her “precious angel”.

‘But why?’

‘’Cause it’s annoying.’

[Y/N]’s eyes widen a bit, but then they beam at him and nod again, picking up a pencil as if they actually are a student and begin doodling a picture while others begin homework. Aizawa doesn’t collapse into his sleeping bag this time, instead keeping an eye to ensure he isn’t sued later for the death of an unrelated child. Midoriya and Iida are the first ones to finish of course, followed by Katsuki, who has to steal his pages when [Y/N] isn’t looking, handing it across the teacher’s desk with glitter flowers and stars in the margins. 

The bell goes to signal the beginning of their hero training, and [Y/N] clutches Katsuki’s hand as they shyly approach the scary-looking racoon man to hand him a (“professionally signed”) artwork by [Y/N] Bakugo. A misshapen house with a cat and a very dead looking racoon. 

(Aizawa does frame it later, like a dad of course.)

(Katsuki does call his teacher roadkill exactly three times after that.)

For hero training All-Might stands with his hands on his hips with [Y/N] at his side to help conduct the lesson. Together they order drills and [Y/N] gets to practise their hero voice and pose. The class ends with the whole group playing games and kicking a soccer ball around so they can pretend that [Y/N] has to save it from various situations. Which they do so successfully - “a top-rate hero” in All-Might’s words.

* *

For Katsuki, he’s glad to get home and die in bed when 8:30 rolls around. It’s been non-stop questions and poking and prodding even though he told [Y/N] not to, but they wouldn’t listen! And when they got home Mitsuki hounded him to make sure they hadn’t done anything stupid while at school. 

But 9 rolls around and [Y/N]’s socks cast shadows over the door frame, and the door handle jiggles. Katsuki waits and doesn’t move to help them with it. They come padding in with a stuffed Midnight plush, and crawls onto his pillow. 

‘Kat, can I come to school with you everyday?’

And god-fucking-dammit, they look so damn excited to go to school with their big brother that all he can do is turn off his lamp and pull the covers up and pat their hair. He can feel his chest swell with pride, because his sibling wants to come and watch him become a hero.

He can’t help but wonder what kind of hero [Y/N] will be. What would their quirk be? 

Oh, Mitsuki would kick his ass if he even thought about surpassing his own sibling.

He smirks at the thought. His sibling would be the best hero at U.A, not like those fucking extras. 

‘Yeah, whatever.’

i really enjoyed writing this!

let me know if you want to request anything, and i'll try my best to get to them as quickly as possible.

#bnha #mha #bnha x reader #bakugo x reader #katsuki x reader #mha x reader #midoriya #izuku #iida #uraraka #tenya #ochako #kirishima #denki #kaminari #hero #my hero academia #boku no hero academia #detroit smash #writing #fanfic #fanfiction #x reader #x sibling reader #sibling reader #sibling #gender neutral reader #platonic #wholesome #bnha fluff

[scorpioriesling]

May I please politely beg for a fic based on the Eris bc post you did? It was so good and I’d love to see him confront Rhys + co and taking care/loving reader

I’m the “Bad Guy”

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *

Pairing(s): Eris x reader

Warnings: some graphic-ish injury

Summary: Eris Vanserra; he was your… what? Enemy? Ally? Both? Sort of — at least, that’s what Rhysand says, and whatever your High Lord says, goes. But, Eris saw you for more than anyone in your court ever could, and deep down you knew he had one more title, reserved for just you: true love. What happens when you’re in danger, and he’s the first and only one you go running to?

SR’s Note: Yes you absolutely can have a fic based on Eris’ HC in this post. No need to beg — I’m happy to oblige. Here it is, I hope you like it. xoxo

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *

The fire crackled and burned in the fireplace, embers creating a soft glow in the darkened sitting room. Eris was alone, lounging on the sofa in the Forest House, his newest read in hand. He liked spending his time this way — alone, reading, warm. He felt… content.

Little did he know, you’d quite enjoyed your evenings the same way.

Sure, he knew you shared an interest in reading. That’s where he usually found you when he’d visit the Night Court — shelf combing in the library of the House of Wind; curled in a chair, a different book to read each time he would see you again; sometimes, you’d even be caught talking about your favorite ones with Nesta. You quite enjoyed her, as well as her company and character, as she was very honest and real with you.

Yet, another thing in you’d shared in common.

On this particular evening though, the sun had already long set and the stars were sprinkling the sky when Eris felt his body tense on instinct. He had suddenly lost interest in what he was reading when he heard a commotion coming from outside. Well, not a commotion, but rather some sort of… crying. Whimpering, rather. He straightened in his chair, straining his ears to hear what was happening beyond the windows of the Forest House.

Usually, when this happened, it was the work of Beron — some cruel or unusual punishment that Eris had learned long ago to stay out of. Recently, tensions were running high with the Night Court; though Eris was still secretly meeting with them, it didn’t change that his father wanted to sever all ties with the solar court completely.

But this… this time, it was different.

“Please… please…”

Eris’ heartstrings pulled in his chest as he strained to listen, wanting to make any excuse or reason for his ears to be deceiving him.

But, he knew in his heart, they were not.

In an instant, he’d snapped his novel shut and was racing toward the front door. He threw it open, rounding the corner of the house and bolting for the enormous hedge maze in the backyard of the grounds. He wasn’t sure exactly what had come over him; on any other day, he’d leave you to suffer as he would the other Night Court Inner Circle members. But the squeeze of barbed wire around his heart propelled him forward.

He knew you were here. He knew it was you that needed him.

It was an odd feeling, tearing around corners in search of the one woman he’d thought over and over about torturing. He’d thought of you crying. He’d thought about how he could hurt you. Did that make him a bad person? Maybe. So be it. You weren’t perfect either. Over the last few years, he’d even thought of how he’d kill you himself — just, once, he’d thought of this. It was during a meeting with the entire Inner Circle, of course; Eris was present. He’d arrived early and heard you, again, talking to Nesta about your ideas on strategy and negotiation. Though you were speaking of ideas that would affect him directly, he didn’t care — the ideas were good. Nesta wasn’t shy to give credit where it was due, either.

But, none of that mattered because during the meeting, you hadn’t opened your mouth once or said a word about your ideas. You’d tried to interject, actually — but Rhysand was quick to silence you.

But how did you handle that?

Like a good pet would. You sat, and stayed silent. Just like you always did. You’d never challenge your High Lord, oh Cauldron no — he could just simply use you as a doormat, and it wouldn’t matter.

Maybe that’s what pissed Eris off so badly.

He knew what you were capable of, what you had to offer, and what you were worth; but it seemed that most of the Inner Circle didn’t bat an eye at you, especially Rhys, whom you bowed to and that was that. Your talents could be used for so much more, but you always stayed within the guidelines in which you were allowed.

“Please… Eris…someone help me…”

Eyes straining in the night, Eris followed your pained cries until he found you in the middle of the maze. You were slumped against the large marble water fountain, breathing unevenly as blood stained your neck. Drying crimson flakes dirtied your usually vibrant tendrils, and your hands braced over your abdomen, hot tears creating tracks down your dirtied face.

"Oh my Gods..." He rushed to you, and you peered up at him in desperation. His heart split in two, seeing you crumpled and hurt in front of him as he took in your appearance in full.

But, his sadness turned very quickly, to anger. You laid, panting and in pain, in his court, on his grounds. No explanation, no one coming to help you. He felt... violent.

He knelt down to your level, leaning in and stretching a hand out to trail over your face, registering the blood pouring from inside your lip. He then reached up to move your hair from your forehead -- a huge gash the cause for the ever growing maroon pool you two were in.

Well, one of the causes. Your hands still covered your stomach.

He was fuming, hands trembling as he tried to stay gentle with you, but absolute rage filled his every vein at how this could have happened to you.

Who could've let this happen to you.

"Eris, I..." you coughed, a few blood-tainted drops landing on the stone pathway below. "I... I didn't mean to... this is the first place I thought of..." another loud sob wretched from you, and Eris cupped your cheek, his thumb stroking over the bone. You relaxed a bit at his touch, though he usually appeared so tense and malicious. When he looked into your eyes again, his whiskey irises were dulled to a deep bourbon, and his jaw was clenched tight.

"Come with me."

He stood then and wrapped his arms around your knees and lower back, scooping you up and carrying you as carefully as he could back to his wing of the Forest House. You let out a few small yelps here and there as the searing pain in your stomach was getting to be too much to handle.

"Please, stay with me Y/N," he pleaded, looking down at you sorrowfully. Your usually soft eyes met his, and his wire-wrapped heart strained once more. He’d felt as though he was carrying a small, injured deer -- that is what you were in his eyes. A gentle, wise, little doe. His little doe.

Whatever he’d been feeling before, it was long gone. The only thoughts clouding his mind were ones of keeping you safe, helping you in every way he could, and providing you with everything you could need.

Little did he realize, you just needed him. Wasn’t that why you were there in the first place?

When Eris had finally made it inside, he sat you gently on the sofa in front of the fireplace, and ran to the washroom. It wasn’t long before he’d returned, presenting a small wet cloth in one hand and taking your chin between his fingers kindly in the other. He began to wipe away the trailing stains all over your delicate skin, trying so hard to stay gentle with you; trying to replicate the softness you'd always offerred others. He felt better seeing you relax into his touch a bit as he continued to work.

But, that's one thing you didn't have in common. He wasn't soft, or sweet like you. It was one thing he pretended to hate; he “hated” your kindness to everyone, even his father, of all people. He “hated” your soft voice, one he wasn’t used to hearing all that often. He also “hated” your gentle loving nature — so, so much he “hated” it.

He tried to steady his breathing, gazing into your round, watery eyes to attempt to ground his senses and avoid thinking about punishing whoever hurt you like this. It only caused him more agony, watching as you tried to hold back your tears. Wiping away the last of the blood from your hairline, he dropped his head for a moment, raking a hand through his hair.

“I can’t stall for you any longer, love.” He said softly. Your stomach muscles continued to tense under your palms, and you watched as he rolled a clean cloth between his hands.

"I’m going to put this,” he held up the rolled cloth.

“In here," he tucked it into your open mouth. You closed your mouth over it, so usually defiant towards your “sworn enemy”, but, really...

You'd do anything he asked of you.

His hands moved to cover your bloody ones, still clutching at your stomach.

"Y/N... you’re going to have to move your hands." He says. Your eyes screw shut as you groan, fresh pain raging from the wound in your abdomen. Eris sighs, looking to you with pleading eyes.

“Please, Y/N… you have to help me help you.” His thumbs stroke over your knuckles, now covered in your blood — and you begin to remove your hands shakily. He breathes a sharp gasp as he sees your laceration in full, and shakes his head slowly. He sits back on his knees, positioning himself between yours.

"Hold onto me." He says. You look to him in confusion, and he places your clammy fingers on his shoulders. One of his hands lingers on yours for a moment, and he pressed the inside of your wrist to his lips. He looks back to you, eyes already asking for forgiveness.

"I'll be honest,” he begins. “I've thought about hurting you before, as you've hurt me," he says, voice deep with ... something. Something you couldn't place. You could barely focus on his words as your mind started to fog over, your vision clouding with black spots. "...but never like this."

He sighs one last time, a hand coming into view between your knees, his fingers ablaze with his gift of fire. You immediately sit up, or try to anyway -- a sob racks your chest, muffled by the cloth, and Eris holds you down, hand splayed over your sternum.

"Hold onto me." He says again, his tone warning. His fingers meets your bubbling would, flames searing the skin as a scream tears through your dry, cracked throat, only quieted by the cloth you’re biting down on. Your eyes blow wide, and you squirm under his hold. He looks at you with regret, pulling back for just a moment — only to press heat onto your would again within seconds.

Your hands claw at the collar of his white button down, red already smeared over most of it. He huffs an apologetic sigh, continuing to carterize your open would, flames stinging and burning your sensitive flesh.

Over. Over. Over again.

You tilt your head back, the familiar weightless feeling becoming all too apparent. You felt it coming; you were going to black out. His once-white collar begins to slip from your fingers, and your eyes meet his one last time before glazing over as you slink into darkness.

: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ

Soft streams of sunlight bathe the room in a golden glow when you open your eyes again. You register the feeling of comfy, loose-fitting pants amid the cool, mahogany silk sheets you’re enveloped in. You blink a few times, and reach a hand up to rub the sleep from your eyes.

When your eyes adjust, you realize what’s so different; everything. The sun is illuminating the room from a window. A window across this… bedroom, with a stoked fireplace and four poster oak bed. A bed with mahogany sheets, a stark contrast to your usual lilac ones at home — as well as the teakwood bookshelf along the far wall. At least those are familiar, most of the titles. One novel is laying on the window seat; it’s one you’d just finished last week.

Then, the realization hits you; you were in Eris' room.

You try to sit up, but wince in pain and end up laying back down, head flopping against the plush pillows under your head. Your hands instinctively reach toward your stomach, tugging at the hem of the tank top you donned. A thick bandage was wrapped around your midsection, concealing your abdominal injury. Your mind wandered to last night, what you'd endured, winnowing to the Autumn Court, the burning...

Within moments, Eris appeared in the doorway, concern threading his brows together as he looks you up and down.

"Is everything alright?" In three steps, he’s made it to the bed, taking a seat on the edge of it. He pulls the covers up, tucking them around you in comfort. You shake your head in honesty, silver lining your eyes as they meet his.

He knew you’d be honest with him. Yet, another thing he “hated” about you.

"I... they took me last night." You manage to choke out. Eris readjusts to face you, scooting closer and reaching out a hand to stroke through your hair. He bites on his lower lip, eyes searching yours.

"Who. Who took you Y/N." He says. It sounds like more of a demand than a question.

You shake your head, a tear slipping free as you remember being kidnapped from your bed and tossed onto the mountainside. The feeling of freezing snow under your knees, the jagged rocks slicing into your palms would only be the beginning of the pain you'd endure before somehow winnowing away.

"It was... they wanted me to partake in the..." you swallow, the lump in your throat only growing as another tear slips free. Usually, he’d be the type to taunt you for crying or appearing so weak, but Eris only brushes his thumb against your cheek, wiping your tears away.

"The fucking Blood Rite?" He bites out. Anger radiates off of him, the small fire in the fireplace near the window growing with each passing second. The muscle in his jaw feathers as his eyes train on yours, and you nod in confirmation. His other hand rests on yours clasped atop the sheets, and you can’t help but register the heat he is emitting, even from the small touch.

He sighs, hanging his head low and shaking it slowly. When he makes eye contact again, he takes your hands reassuringly in his. “Y/N, I’m only going to ask you one more time. Who. Did. This. To you.” You can practically see the flames dancing in his irises, and you lean forward an inch, almost nose to nose with him. His strong scent of cinnamon and burnt timber wafts through your senses, and you feel a small tug on your heartstrings.

“Eris, look it’s not anyone’s fault, okay? I mean, well, it is…” you begin with a sigh, sniffling and wiping at your eyes. “I was sleeping over at the House of Wind with Nesta and Gwyn and Emerie, and… oh, the guys were there too, for most of the night. Cassian and Azriel.” You explain. He nods for you to continue.

“Well, we were just having a nice time and when we went to sleep, I don’t know I just… one minute I was asleep and the next, I had a mask on my eyes and someone was… uh…. mm… uhm covering my mouth and… Nesta was screaming-“ you hadn’t noticed your hands beginning to shake, until Eris laced his fingers with yours. You took a steadying breath, but the shaking only subsided a little as you still remembered the horrors of the night prior.

“So… Cassian and Azriel. They were supposed to be watching you.” Eris says evenly. You look at him incredulously.

“Watching? Oh, hardly. I mean, we’re not eight years old, Eris.” You explain. He nods, biting the inside of his cheek and contemplating your words. You can practically see the gears turning in that beautiful little head.

“It seems a little chat is in order.” He chides. Your eyes widen, and your hand braces on his bicep. He glances down at your touch, then back to your face again, nose still just inches from yours.

“No! Uh… I mean, no. Please.” You say. “They haven’t done anything wrong, and-“

“I’d hardly say allowing for you to be kidnapped for the damned Blood Rite is an inexcusable offense.” He interrupts. You narrow your eyes at him.

“Andddd, I shouldn’t have been allowed to winnow at the Blood Rite. Anyone found using their powers or plotting to escape the rite once it’s begun is…” you trail off. He nods. He knows; it’s an executable offense. Bringing any of this to attention could perhaps put you in more danger.

He didn’t care. He was prepared to do anything to save you, just as he’d done the night before. He definitely wouldn’t allow some dirty Illyrians get their hands on you again, either.

“How were you able to winnow, anyway? I thought powers weren’t able to be used on Romiel during the Blood Rite,” he asks, quirking a brow. You shrug, wincing and regretting the movement.

“I don’t know… maybe, since no one knows I am capable of winnowing, they didn’t think it’d be necessary to shield those abilities from me? I don’t know Eris, I don’t know how all this works.” You say exasterbatedly, absentmindedly wiping at your nose again. Eris only seems to become more troubled by your response.

“So… they didn’t teach you to winnow, you just… did it… and they didn’t think you could do anything with your powers, so much so that no one bothered to remove them?” His voice pitches, and you nod in agreement.

“I suppose.” He slips his hand from yours, standing and straightening his shirt. He moves toward the door, not uttering another word.

“Eris, where are you-“

“Y/N, trust me; I’m only doing you justice. You’ll thank me later, dove.”

: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ

“What are you doing out of bed?”

You hear him before you see him. When you slowly turn from your spot at the stovetop, Eris is leaned against the doorframe, a cocky grin on his lips, brow raised in question. You roll your eyes, the only movement you can do at normal speed without tensing in pain.

“Well, smart guy,” you say. “You ran off and left me for half the day, and didn’t feed me. So, I forced myself up and… went on a little scavenger hunt. To the kitchen.” You say simply. He scoffs and strides over to you, stopping to lean against the counter behind you. You turn to face him, and he glances at the bandage peeking out from below your top.

“How are you feeling?” he asks, no tone or condescension evident in his voice. You cautiously take his hand in yours, and his eyes gaze at you in silent question. You press his palm to your side, and smile softly at him. All those years thinking he was your enemy; all those years thinking he would truly hurt you; all those years suppressing what you knew was true all along. Maybe he wasn’t the bad guy that everyone made him out to be. You knew he was a good male.

“I'm stronger than you thought, hmm?” You say with a wink. His eyes soften, and a little smile plays on his lips as his other hand braces your other hip bone. He pulls you close, so close your pelvis is touching his upper thighs. You peer up at him through your lashes as he leans down to whisper in your ear.

“You’ve always been the strongest woman I’ve known.”

You blush at his words, finally accepting what you’ve been running from all along; you care for Eris. Truly, you did. Why else would you winnow here, of all places? Why else would you feel a familiar tug on your heart strings when he was around?

You cared.

And, Cauldron behold; he did too.

“And… you had to show me how strong you could be today?” You ask, your tone dipping low. Eris rolls his eyes and scoffs.

“All I did was go over there, and demand to know why the hell they’d allow for you to be kidnapped in your own home-“ You gasp and swat his arm lightly.

“Eris!” You scold. He grins down at you, taking your face in his hands and looking at you lovingly.

“Maybe I should irritate you more… look at you, taking initiative and putting me in my place.” He chuckles. Your face reddens, and you stare at him wide-eyed as he runs his knuckles down your jaw, his cool silver ring easing the burning hot you felt beneath your cheek.

“Maybe you should do what you're suppos-“ Eris cuts you off with a tsk tsk tsk, pulling you in close and finally pressing a soft kiss to your lips. You part your lips, fingers caressing his jaw and threading through his hair as his lips dance with yours. His fingers trail from your cheek down to your waist, holding you close as one hand runs up and down your side; grabbing firmly when your teeth graze his bottom lip. He pulls away, breathless as he supplies you a feline grin.

“Now, where is the fun in that?

✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:* ✧･ﾟ: *

#a court of silver flames #a court of thorns and roses #acotar smut #acotar #lucien acotar #acofas #acosf #a court of frost and starlight #lucien vanserra #lucien x reader #eris vandaddy #eris acotar #eris vanserra #eris x reader #vanserra brothers #high lord rhysand #rhys acotar #rhys x reader #rhysand #cassian smut #cassian #night court 2023 #night court #azriel smut #azriel fanfic #acomaf #azriel acotar #acotar series #acowar #azriel

[perotovar]

baby, i'm-a want you — (ch 1) "session one"

gif by me

pairing: joel miller/dieter bravo (just this time. main pairing is still javi/joel) rating: E (18+) mdni word count: 3.5k content: swearing, joel and tommy's southern accents being cute af, dieter being a menace, joel being awkward af (but it's cute), cringey porn dialogue, male masturbation (briefly), one (1) handjob, one (1) blowjob (it's messy), lmk if i missed anything! dividers: @saradika-graphics beta: @qveerthe0ry (ily ♥)

summary: javier peña has been doing this a long time. he's really good at his job. joel miller? not so much. he started doing this to get some extra cash to support his daughters. what happens when they're supposed to do a scene together? aka, the au where most of the ppcu boys are gay porn stars~

(read this first ->) prologue | series masterlist

Joel never would have guessed he’d do something like this ten years ago. Hell, not even five years ago. He’s not even totally sure how he got here, if he’s honest with himself.

He just remembers an, admittedly shady, business-looking man coming up to him and shoving a business card in his face. He asked if Joel had ever slept with men before. Joel was taken aback and thought he was coming onto him in a really bizarre way. He had, but that was none of this man’s business as far as he was concerned.

“There’s no pressure, I promise. Here, my website is on the card. If you see what you like, you gimme a call, okay?” The man had winked, grabbed his coffee, and left. 

Joel was left sitting in the middle of that coffee shop stunned into silence.

Later that night, sitting in front of the laptop Sarah nearly forced on him, he clumsily typed (using only his index fingers) the name of the website from the business card into the search bar.

Love Bites

The name and the man, Max Phillips according to the card, and his invasive question should’ve told him everything he needed to know, but Joel wasn’t prepared for the absolute onslaught of nudity he was met with.

“Jesus–” Joel mumbled to himself, slamming the laptop closed. Not that that would take it away, but he could hope. He sighed and looked up at the ceiling, shaking his head to himself. “The fuck you get yourself into, Miller?” He grumbled.

Slowly, and with one eye closed, he opened his laptop again. Once he got both eyes on it again, the website wasn’t… too bad. Well, it was still a porn site, but it wasn’t anything he hadn't seen before. He started looking around some more and didn’t bother turning it down. He lived alone now, both girls having moved out within the last year or so. He missed the hell out of them, and frankly, found himself bored more often than not. He and Tommy still owned Miller Contracting, but Joel stuck to the delegating and organizing part now. He had too many knee and back problems to keep up on the actual building part.

His finger rolled over to the “profiles” section of the website. He raised a brow and clicked on the trackpad hesitantly. There were several headshots of the men that made content for the website. He felt his cock twitch in his jeans and cleared his throat awkwardly, exhaling heavily. Well, it… had been a while. What could it hurt, right? 

He did have a lot of options…

Dark eyes trailing over the men on the site, he smiled softly. They all had little biographies that explained what their sexualities and preferences were. He snorted a little at seeing two different cowboys; one gay and a little older than himself, the other bisexual and perhaps around the same age. The younger cowboy had a prominent mustache and had a preference for “tying people up”. Bit on the nose in Joel’s opinion, but there was something for everyone. The older cowboy tended toward more amateur-style, “romantic” videos. Joel’s heart softened a little, but decided he wasn’t really in the mood for that sort of thing. 

In his search, he found just about everything; a messy haired, self proclaimed “adventurous” sort, a masked man that liked to roleplay, a clean cut looking man that considered himself a “romantic”. You name it, they probably had it. But his eyes landed on a particular man…

He had deep, intense eyes and a thick mustache. His hair was styled like he walked out of the 80s and he was wearing a thin gold chain. He had a bit of a Burt Reynolds thing going on, and normally that wouldn’t be something Joel was into, but this time, well… 

Joel clicked on his – Javier’s – page and started browsing the videos he had available. His bio said he was “fluid and polyamorous”, but Joel didn’t know what that meant. Wow, he was… popular. That didn’t surprise Joel at all, but his eyes landed on one of Javier’s “solo” videos. It looked like it was filmed in his apartment, but it probably wasn’t from how well lit it was. The video started off like Joel guessed all of them did; a fancy graphic with the words “Love Bites” in the center of the screen before the sound effect of someone taking a bite out of something, and a faint moan. The tips of Joel’s ears warmed, but he pressed on, watching Javier walk onto screen and sit in the middle of the couch that was in frame. 

Javier’s jeans were very tight, but maybe even moreso because of how fucking hard he looked to be. Joel swallowed a lump in his throat, his cock twitching again. Javier had an easy smirk on his handsome face, but he seemed like he didn’t have the cockiness that Joel expected a pornstar to have. The video seemed like it was personally sent to Joel and that thought made Joel’s cock stand to attention almost comically quickly. Unzipping his own jeans, he groaned at the constriction leaving, allowing him to breathe easier. He squeezed his cock and looked back at the video, Javier already getting started without him. He was stroking his own cock slowly, almost teasingly, biting a plump bottom lip. Joel moaned and shut his eyes for a quick second as he took himself in hand–

Ring, ring.

Joel groaned, squeezing his cock harder, and dug his phone out of his pocket. Tommy. He sighed and paused the video on Javier’s blissed out face and big hand wrapped around his–

Ring, ring.

“Christ, Tommy, what is it?” He grumbled, pressing the too-new-for-his-liking phone to his ear.

“Jesus, who pissed in your oatmeal this mornin’?” Tommy’s easy voice filtered in, a chuckle wrapped around his words. “And why are ya outta breath? Ya okay?”

“What–? Yeah, ‘m fine, Tommy. Why y’callin’?”

“Wonderin’ if ya could stop by tonight. Maria’s makin’ meatloaf and I know ya like it.”

Joel did really like Maria’s meatloaf. He sighed to himself and shut his laptop, his cock having softened considerably since hearing his brother’s voice. “Yeah,” he cleared his throat, trying to subtly zip up his jeans while he held the phone against his shoulder. “I’ll come over in a little bit, just gotta… gonna make a phone call.”

“Ooh, ya finally have a date, old man?”

“Can it,” Joel grunted. “‘M forty-three. Ain’t that old. And no, I was gonna call Sarah. See how her classes are goin’.”

“Send her our love, will ya? ‘N tell her she’ll have a cousin soon. Maria’s ‘bout to pop any day. ‘M scared to death,” Tommy sighed. The happiness was clear in his voice, though. Joel was happy for him, and smiled to himself. “How’s Ellie doin’, by the way?”

“Good. Think she said somethin’ ‘bout joinin’ a… roller derby team? Don’t rightly know, but,” he shrugged to himself. “Sounded like somethin’ she’d like, way she was describin’ it.”

Talking on the phone with Tommy always went the same way. He’d find a way to chew up a couple hours of your time, but Joel never minded. Once they said their goodbyes and their I-love-yous, Joel picked up Max Phillips’ business card and sighed, rubbing his thumb over the phone number.

What could it hurt, right?

That was two years ago. He’s been working for Love Bites for two years and had been avoiding Javier Peña as much as he could.

Joel’s never been good at… initiating conversations. Ellie would always give him shit for it. She usually went up to whoever had caught Joel’s eye and slyly made it her goal to get them to come over to him. 

But Ellie wasn’t here and she never would be. His girls knew what he did and even if they were a little concerned for him at first, they saw how much happier he’d been since joining. He was healthier, gaining a bit of “chub” as Sarah called it, and a healthier glow to his skin. He was on camera more often now, so he had to eat well and work out a little more. He didn’t do anything too crazy, and the audience that watched his videos had a lot of positive opinions and comments about his physique. It made him blush to think about it for too long, so he tried not to.

What was he saying?

Oh, right. Avoiding Javier Peña.

He’d had a huge crush on him ever since that first video he watched, and frankly, didn’t want to make a fool of himself if he talked to him. He’s filmed one video with him and it was the best Joel had felt in years. He almost came too quickly, and the video was supposed to be twenty minutes long. They had to pause so Joel could calm himself down, but Javier was patient and lovely with him. Javier had been doing this a lot longer than Joel had, so he wasn’t worried, which made Joel feel better. Just a little embarrassed. Afterwards, he had to leave, making up a story about seeing his girls for dinner that night.

“Javi!”

Joel’s eyes snapped up from his phone. He was in the middle of texting Sarah, saying that he’d call her when he got home from work. He had a scene with Dieter today.

And there he was. God. Joel’s cheeks flushed at the sight of Javier standing in the hall in his robe. He must’ve just finished his scene with Shane, the new kid. He couldn’t hear what he was saying, but the sound of Javier’s deep, commanding voice was enough to send a chill down Joel’s spine. Before he knew it, Javier was talking animatedly with Steve, another actor, as they walked off down the hall and disappearing around a corner.

He knew, realistically, relationships between porn actors could happen. Silva and Jake had been together for years. Joel’s problem with that was, well… Joel. His last real relationship was with Sarah’s mom years ago, and when the girls were in high school he had a relationship with this guy, Ezra for a while.

Smack!

“Jesus–!” Joel jumped, holding onto one of his ass cheeks protectively. Only one person would have done that.

“Hey, handsome,” Dieter grinned, sticking a hand down the back pocket of Joel’s jeans and squeezing. “Getting lost in Javi’s eyes again?” He winked.

“N-no! I am not,” Joel grumbled, finishing off his text and shoving his phone in his pocket.

Dieter snorted and rolled his eyes, then removed his hand to hold it out for Joel to take. “C’mon, big guy. You get to cum on my face today,” he smirked.

Filming with Dieter always felt good. He was a bit wild for Joel’s personal tastes, but he always made sure Joel was comfortable, and today was no different. 

Joel was playing a “plumber” that needed to work on Dieter’s “pipes”. This of course led to Dieter offering to “pay” in his own way. 

“Oh, come on, big guy like you doesn’t need money, right?” Dieter recited his lines expertly, running a hand down Joel’s t-shirt covered chest. “Bet it gets lonely doing this sort of work, huh?”

Joel had gotten a lot better at the acting part of things over the past couple of years. He was super stiff (and not in the right way) in the beginning, but now, he easily plastered on a smirk, eyes glued to Dieter’s lips. “Sometimes,” he shrugged, a big hand hovering over Dieter’s shoulder. Dieter saw the hand out of the corner of his eye and grinned, curling his fingers around Joel’s thick wrist and moving it down to his ass.

Joel smirked, squeezing the plump flesh appreciatively. “Bit forward o’ you,” he rumbled.

Dieter visibly shivered and bit his lip. “Sexy guy like you, of course I am,” he breathed. He leaned forward and kissed Joel messily, the hand on Joel’s torso moving down to unzip his jeans. Joel was already painfully hard and grunted into Dieter’s mouth when his pants were opened and lowered enough to pull his cock free. Dieter moaned and curled his fingers around Joel’s shaft, pumping rhythmically.

They stayed like that for a while; open mouth kisses, heavy breathing from Joel, and Dieter’s moans being picked up by the mics. 

Dieter pulled away to look down at the thick cock in his hand and bit his lip at the sight. “Fuck,” he groaned, his own cock twitching in his sweats. “Can I suck your cock?” He looked up at Joel demurely, eyes big and nearly black with desire.

Joel forgot he was supposed to be acting for a minute and grunted, hips bucking into Dieter’s grasp. “F-fuck, yeah,” he nodded, eyes glazed over. Dieter smiled and guided Joel over to the couch on the set. Technically, Dieter was supposed to get on his knees in the “kitchen”, but he knew Joel wouldn’t be able to stand for that long with his back problems. Sometimes Dieter’s improv classes came in handy. Max couldn’t complain too much, as long as Dieter sucked Joel off, then the video was still following the script.

Joel grunted as he sat, hard cock swaying slightly. Dieter giggled a little and happily got down on his knees, hands traveling up and down Joel’s thighs appreciatively. “Such a pretty cock,” he hummed, licking his lips as he watched it twitch in front of him, a drop of pre-cum gathering at the tip. 

“Why dontcha put that mouth to use, then?” Joel smirked, gripping the base and tapping the head against Dieter’s cheek. “Want your discount, right?”

Dieter smiled and opened his mouth wide, eyes shut in pure bliss. Joel gripped Dieter’s messy curls and held him still as he hit the head of his cock against Dieter’s tongue. Dieter moaned and opened his eyes, watching Joel’s face for any cues to stop. They never came, but it was something they all had to keep an eye on. When everything seemed to be going well, he happily wrapped his mouth around the head of Joel’s cock and started bobbing his head up and down.

He moaned, the vibrations traveling down Joel’s cock and up his spine, making Joel groan in return. “Mmm, knew you’d be good with your mouth,” he grinned, holding the back of Dieter’s head to set a pace Joel liked better.

Dieter heard a cameraman move to his right to get a better angle of his mouth, so he amped it up a little. He got messier, saliva dripping down along the sides of Joel’s shaft. Joel moaned weakly, resting his head on the back of the couch, but keeping one of his hands tangled in Dieter’s messy curls. Dieter started bobbing his head slower, eyes locked on Joel’s face as he moved further down his shaft, taking as much as he could down his throat. He choked slightly and pulled off, pre-cum and saliva covering his mouth and Joel’s cock. He smiled up at Joel and panted heavily, curling his fingers around the base to pump the thick cock.

Joel’s eyes rolled back and he grunted, hips bucking off the couch. “C’mere,” he breathed, heavy work boots landing heavily on the set floor as he stood. “Gonna fuck your face.”

Dieter shivered at the low timbre of Joel’s voice and nodded happily up at him. He pulled his sweats down and gripped his own cock in hand and started stroking himself rhythmically. Dieter opened his mouth for Joel obediently and nearly choked again when Joel shoved his cock down Dieter’s throat. He moaned weakly when Joel’s hips started moving, his heavy balls slapping against Dieter’s chin.

Dieter just had to take it, the lewd sounds of Joel fucking his face filling the otherwise quiet room. He fucking loved it because Joel was subtly massaging Dieter’s scalp and it sent shivers down his spine. His fist was almost a blur over his own cock and tears leaked out of his eyes, a blush high on his cheeks.

“Mmm, bein’ such a good boy f’me,” Joel grunted, biting his lip to rein it in a little. Dieter moaned at the praise, eyebrows downturned in pleasure. “Yeah? Like bein’ my good boy?”

Dieter whined and nodded as best he could, eyes completely glazed over. Joel slowed down his hips a little and let Dieter breathe for a minute. Dieter panted hard, a near-dopey smile on his face. “Come on my face,” he breathed heavily, extending his tongue for Joel. “Please.”

It was Joel’s turn to shiver as he slapped the head of his cock against Dieter’s face again. “Gonna have to earn it,” Joel smirked, reciting his lines as well as he could. 

Dieter whined and pouted up at him, his own hand slowing down a little. He didn’t say anything, letting Joel continue.

“Make me come, and I’ll paint this pretty face o’ yours.”

Dieter’s face lit up and he curled his fingers around Joel’s shaft. He watched Joel’s face while he wrapped his lips around the head and bobbed his head. His free hand held Joel’s hip and subtly moved to his ass and squeezed. He moaned around Joel’s cock and shut his eyes briefly before obediently looking up at him, big eyes wet and innocent. 

“Atta boy,” Joel grunted, cupping Dieter’s face lovingly. Dieter removed his mouth to kiss down his length as he stroked him, attaching his lips to one of Joel’s balls. “Mmm, fuck,” Joel breathed, tipping his head back. 

The hand on Joel’s ass moved slightly until one of Dieter’s fingertips prodded at Joel’s asshole. Joel grunted in surprise and smiled down at Dieter. “Really want me all over ya, huh?”

“Yes,” Dieter nodded, sucking one of Joel’s balls into his mouth. “Please.”

“Keep talkin’ like that and– ooh, fuck – Jus’ might get your wish,” Joel panted, shutting his eyes. He felt the build up in his lower stomach, his cock twitching violently in Dieter’s hand. “C’mere, baby boy,” he grinned, taking his cock back to stroke himself over Dieter’s face.

Dieter was buzzing, lifting Joel’s t-shirt to lovingly caress his hairy tummy, mouth open wide and obedient. 

Joel felt his balls draw up and his hips buck until– “Fuck–! Shit,” He moaned, thick ropes of come spurting out from the tip of his cock and landing on Dieter’s face and mouth. He caressed Dieter’s hair, thick fingers massaging his scalp while the other hand stroked himself until his balls were completely empty. 

Dieter happily licked his mouth clean, and hid his face in Joel’s stomach, whimpering into the sweaty skin. He moaned weakly, his entire body trembling as he came, completely untouched. Dieter was the only one in the cast that could do that, and he loved showing it off as much as he could.

“Shit,” Joel smiled, petting Dieter’s sweaty curls back and out of his face. “Ain’t you a sight.”

“Cut!”

Dieter deflated, a huge grin on his face. He started giggling into Joel’s stomach and smiled up at him. “Fucking love your cock, Joel,” he hummed happily.

“That’s what you always say,” Joel snorted, helping him up onto his feet. Dieter was a little wobbly still and cuddled into Joel’s side. He always got a little clingy after a scene, but Joel didn’t mind. As different as they were, Joel would probably consider Dieter one of his closest friends. It always worked in their favor, their natural chemistry and closeness coming through the cameras.

They were handed a couple towels and some water, the both of them taking them gratefully. Max came up to them, his usual shit-eating grin on his face. Joel always thought Max reminded him of a vampire, with that mischievous glint in his eye that always seemed to be there.

“Great show, boys,” Max started. “Dieter, d’you mind if I steal Joel away for a second?”

Dieter whined and clinged onto Joel tighter. Joel grinned and hugged him back. “Sorry, boss, looks like he ain’t leavin’ anytime soon.”

Max rolled his eyes, but continued anyway. “Fine. Meant to tell you earlier, but things got rolling, you know how it is–”

“What is it, Max?”

“You’ve got a scene with Javier tomorrow.”

If there were a record player anywhere, Joel would probably hear it scratching right about now. Dieter paused too, and looked up at Joel with worried eyes. He knew all about Joel’s crush, and was always telling Joel to just go for it. Joel froze briefly, but tried to school his emotions as best he could.

“O-okay, um. What time?” He asked shakily, gripping Dieter’s fluffy robe tighter.

“I’m thinking around noon? That way Javier can prepare, y’know?”

Preparing was always done before a particularly intense scene. Joel tried really hard not to think about Javier wearing a plug for a while before coming to set. 

“Right,” Joel nodded, cheeks going a little pink. “I’ll be there.”

“You’re the best, Joel!” Max snapped his fingers and walked off, talking to a couple of assistants. 

Dieter tapped on his chest and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “You really gotta say something, Joel,” he said softly. 

Joel sighed and nodded. He knew that. 

He just didn’t know what.

#joel miller #dieter bravo #joel miller fanfiction #joel miller fic #joel miller smut #joel miller series #dieter bravo fanfiction #dieter bravo fic #dieter bravo smut #dieter bravo series #pedro pascal characters #pedro pascal cinematic universe #ppcu fanfiction #oaksfics

[charliedawn]

Can the slashers meet Eddie Gluskin? I am just curious you don’t have to if you do not want to. And have a good day or night😊

Warning: MY KNOWLEDGE OF EDDIE GLUSKIN IS ALMOST NONE EXISTENT AND THIS IS AN INTERPRETATION OF WHO I THINK HE IS. PLEASE. DON’T COME AT ME.

Eddie Gluskin AKA "The Groom"

- 46 years old

- Patient with OCD and post-traumatic disorder. Obsessed with finding himself a wife. Abused physically and mentally as a child.

- Very tall and muscular man, middle-aged, with a black slicked back disconnected undercut hairstyle which is neatly combed down and light blue eyes.

- Eddie's face is covered with red scabs, skin peelings and he has a severe case of subconjunctival hemorrhage in both eyes, the right more so than left.

Face claim for him: Cillian Murphy.

VERY DANGEROUS. APPROACH WITH CARE.

Once you read his file, you frowned as you learned that Eddie Gluskin had been abused at a young age. You already felt bad for him. You knew that the first thing that man would need once entering St Louis was to have his personal space as patients with post-traumatic disorder needed to be handled with care—especially the first few days. Hence, you decided to keep his arrival a secret from the slashers at first, as to not frighten him. You were walking towards the entrance with General McCain and a couple of his men when you were made aware he had arrived.

"Be careful. He has already killed two guards in Mount Massive Asylum not a week ago. He is a tough guy."

You chuckled and shook your head.

"Don’t worry, James. I know how to handle tough guys…"

James nodded with a small smile on his face before he opened the door for you and you entered the room where a handful of policemen were waiting. They were surrounding a man who was chained down to the bench he was sitting on. The man was quiet and his eyes were facing down to the ground. You took a few steps forward before making your way through the policemen to reach the patient.

You stood before him.

"…Eddie Gluskin I presume ?"

The man remained silent for a while before he slowly raised his eyes to look at you.

"…"

He didn’t speak a word. He just started staring at you before you smiled and decided to introduce yourself.

"Y/N L/N. But, you can call me Nurse Y/N. Pleasure to meet you." You extended your hand forward and Eddie Gluskin stared at it for a moment. You chuckled awkwardly as you realised he couldn’t really shake it as he was chained up.

"Oh. Right. Sorry about that. I—" You were cut short when you felt a pressure on your knuckles and your eyes widened as you realised that Eddie Gluskin had just kissed your hand.

…

He then looked up at you with a smile and finally replied.

"Pleasure shared…"

You blinked twice in astonishment before you quickly retreated your hand and Eddie simply smiled at you. Little did you know…You had just unintentionally became Eddie Gluskin’s next 'wife'.

———————————————————————

First time meeting the slashers:

Freddy *appears wearing a wedding dress* : "Heard you were looking for a wife ?"

…What did you expect from the simp master himself ? Of course he would shoot his shot. Eddie is hot. In the way that he is tall, muscular and could rip Freddy to shreds…Of course Freddy would simp for him.

Eddie likes him, but only because he finds him amusing. Eddie chooses his wives upon various very strict criteria. Unfortunately, Freddy wouldn’t make the cut.

Freddy *looking at Author* : "Hey ! What’s that supposed to mean ?!"

When Brahms met Eddie, they both did not really talk much. However, after Eddie spent a little more time around Brahms, he started finding his company enjoyable…

Let’s be honest here.

Brahms would be the perfect bride for Eddie. Brahms is sweet, attentive and touch-starved. So, Eddie would surely like him.

But, I think Eddie would also see him as a child so maybe he wouldn’t try anything, but they would hit it off pretty quickly as two very distinguished gentlemen.

Alpha male standoff.

Eddie Gluskin is the same height and bulk as Michael, which means in Michael language: danger. Michael is like the daddy of the slashers. He protects them. So the first thing that would go through his head would be:

Should I be worried about that guy ?

And the answer is yes.

Eddie Gluskin also noticed the chain of power around St Louis and immediately noticed that all the slashers respected or didn’t mess with Michael. And you—his precious future wife—dared to spend a lot of time around Michael.

So, they wouldn’t really like each other.

Pennywise once pranked him by pretending to be you and Eddie kissed him. Eddie genuinely thought it was you and was so happy…until he opened his eyes and saw it was Pennywise.

…

He punched Pennywise in the face so many times that it took 6 nurses to get him off Pennywise.

Penny bit Eddie Gluskin’s arm because of what he did to his brother.

…

He liked the taste.

Jason met Eddie Gluskin when he was tending to his frogs. He was in the garden near the pond when Eddie came and sat down next to him. They started spending time together and Eddie even started helping him with his frogs.

They became friends—which is quite a feat considering Jason’s trust issues.

…Father Paul’s face after Eddie Gluskin came to him for the 11th time to ask him to officialise his marriage to you. (Give the poor man a break. 🤣)

Even though, A: You’re not aware of it.

B: Eddie Gluskin is mad.

And C: Father Paul is obviously no longer a priest.

But he still does it every time because A: He is bored, and B: Eddie doesn’t leave him alone unless he somehow convinces him that he would so…

#fandoms #imagine #fanfic #pennywise 2017 #pennywise 1990 #slashers #pennywise x reader #michael myers x reader #freddy krueger x reader #jason voorhees x reader #eddie gluskin #eddie gluskin x reader #brahms x reader

[beingsuneone]

Part Two!!

Memories & Delusions PART TWO!!

PART ONE | PART TWO | PART THREE

SYNOPSIS: You know Jason is alive know, you aren’t sure how just yet and you aren’t how exactly you’re going to keep his cover and also still see him regularly. There’s still too many complications to deal with.

FANDOM: DC

PAIRING(S): Jason Todd x fem!reader

RATING: G

MENTIONED: Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Alfred Pennyworth, Barbara Gordon, Joker, Ra’s Al Ghul

GENRE/AU: Uhhh a little bit of fluff I guess. It’s pretty subtle on the romance, mostly plot following I guess. Nothing overly angsty. Mentions of being committed to Arkham (just a joking conversation) and Jason is trying it get over the Lazarus pit.

WORD COUNT: 4.4K

WARNINGS: swearing, slightly graphic descriptions of Jason’s murder from him. Not proof read

A/N: jjjajsjakkskskshdhshjsjsis brain

DEDICATIONS: my dumb hyperfixating brain for coming up with this concept at least three years ago. And putting it into words only recently.

CREDITS:

“Why are you being so dodgy lately?” Dick asks skeptically, eyeing you up.

You shrug, trying to play it cool. Jason doesn’t want them to know yet so they won’t. “What do you mean?”

He narrows his eyes at you. “Last week you were losing your mind and now you’re just… fine.”

You take a deep breath in and sigh. “I guess I realized that I was being delusional. I was just missing Jason.” Dick is about to say something else but you wave him off. “I have to go to meet my friend, so I’m heading out.”

Your ‘friend’ was Jason.

You stop to look at yourself in the mirror by the door, toying with your hair and smoothing out wrinkles on your clothes.

Somewhere behind you, Dick mutters: “See, Bruce, she’s being Dodgy.” And Bruce hums in agreement.

You’re apparently not as convincing as you’d like to be.

…..

“How do you plan on breaking the new to Bruce?” You ask, fidgeting with your fingers while he goes through some stuff on his computer. He shrugs in response. You continue. “Or is it that you don’t want to tell him at all?”

Jason's eye twitches subtly, something that you’re surprised you catch. He shakes his head. “I don’t know, Y/n.” He pauses, chuckling dryly. “It’s not like he’d care much to know.”

You recoil. Is that really how Jason thinks Bruce feels about him?

All you can recall is Bruce kneeling in front of his grave, sobbing like you’d never seen an adult sob; or the way he would walk into Jason’s room and stand in the doorway with a forlorn look mocking his features.

You remember the way he’d stare for several minutes before sighing deeply and walking away; he’d usually proceed to lock himself in the batcave and would snap when anyone disturbed him.

“Jason…” you say reluctantly. “You don’t think that Bruce would care if you were alive?” Jason remains silent, so you continue, missing the way his fists clench. “Bruce was… heartbroken for months after your death— we all were.”

Jason stands abruptly. “And yet, none of you were willing to kill the man who brutally murdered me!” He snaps, his voice raised. You flinch a little but try to retain composure; bite your tongue when you have the urge to remind him about your goals when he first died. He continues with a strange expression on his face. “Do you know what it was like to feel a crowbar splitting my skull open while I was still alive?”

The thought makes you sick. Makes you so utterly devastated for what he’s been through. “No, Jason, I—”

He cuts you off by holding his hand up. “If Bruce was ever going to kill someone, it should’ve been Joker; and if he’d really loved me so much it should have been for me.” His tone is much calmer but there is still a chilling effect in his voice that makes your spine straighten.

The look behind his eyes is flurried with an internal battle you can almost see. “Jason, I shouldn’t have—”

“Just go.” He says, finally sitting back. He doesn’t bother looking up at you.

“What?” You stammer, your eyebrows furrowing in confusion.

“Just get out, Y/n.” He snaps once more and that’s all it takes for you to turn on your heels and walk out the door.

…..

You’d been moody and upset for the past three days— you knew you were. You were upset at Jason, upset that he had so much sway or your emotion, and even upset at yourself for bringing something up that obviously triggered him in some way.

Jason was complexities locked inside other complexities, and you were beginning to learn that; what was once simple and easy with him, was now difficult and anxiety-inducing:

You weren’t sure where you laid in his eyes now.

Were you still the same teenage girl in his mind, or, were you the grown version of the girl he liked that had betrayed him.

Did he see you the same way he saw Bruce and Dick? Or even Tim? Was he just holding on the bond you used to have despite his bitter feelings for you now?

And, what made him this way? You know he must have gone through a devastating trauma, but, how far did that really go?

What were the details that Bruce never told you, and just how gruesome were they for him to lock the knowledge away and not let anyone else know the details.

He told everyone that Jason had died, and he had died by the Joker’s hands; when you or Dick had pressed for more information, Bruce had simply told you it was ‘Brutal’ and ‘Something you should never have to know’

But Jason's little outburst must’ve only told the smallest of details about his horrible, horrible death. If that was just the beginning, you couldn’t even imagine the depths of Joker’s cruelty.

You’re brain won’t stop trying though, even as you sit at the kitchen’s bar with a soggy bowl of cereal. You’ve been sitting there for an hour, pushing the stuff around in the bowl but you haven’t actually taken a bite.

“I think we need to send you to Arkham.” Tim says from the other side of the island, breaking you from your Jason-induced trance. You know he’s joking, but you’re pretty Bruce is genuinely considering committing you for your behavior these past few weeks.

You’re more hot and cold than faulty thermostat. Hysterical, and then Happy, and then violently depressed and introspective.

“I do not need to be locked up with a bunch of criminals, Tim. Rehabilitation is clearly not actually happening at Arkham.” You say back, appreciating his giving you something to banter about.

He’s the only one that didn’t know Jason, and that makes him refreshing to be around.

“They aren’t stupid, Y/n.” Tim says, completely unrelated to your response. “Bruce knows you’re still losing it over Jason, you can act fine all you want but Red Hood clearly got into your head.”

You shrug. “If anyone knew him as intimately as I do— uh, did, they’d lose their mind too.” Your eyes drop to the bowl in front of you and scrunch your nose in disgust. You push it away from yourself.

Gross.

Tim shrugs back, because, what else can he really respond with? “I didn’t know him at all.” He pauses, looking out the kitchen's open door. “Wouldn't Bruce have known him as well as you did?”

You shake your head. “No, Tim, me and Jason were… different, I guess. I had a crush on him when we were teens.” You shift in your seat and instinctively reach for the pendant around your neck. “And Dick was doing his whole Titans thing at the time, so they weren’t as close.”

Your sadness subsides and that familiar warmth runs through you as you imagine yourself and Jason laying on the roof, reading your favorite scenes from the book and enjoying the cool summer air.

In the winter, you would go out with a few blankets and huddle extra close; eventually, when your hands would get to cold to read, it would end in the two of you huddling close for warmth (something that Jason had always produced a lot of) and staying there until Bruce would start calling for you.

Your lips twist into a soft smile.

Tim stares at you. “You need help.”

“Speak for yourself, Mr. Force Batman To Have Another Robin.”

….

A tapping at your bedroom window stirs you from the near-sleep state you had been in; your heart pounds as you shoot up and look towards the window. Your heart slows only a few beats per minute when you see a familiar red helmet through the window.

You stand up and unlock your window, letting Jason climb through one side of the double doors.

He sighs through his helmet as he goes to remove it; you hear the familiar series of click and whirs and then he places the helmet on a chair in your room.

“Nice Pajamas.” He says, in a playful sort of way. There’s a healthy dose of something else though, that you can’t quite place.

You look down at yourself. You’re wearing a very thin tank top and some comfy PJ shorts. Not exactly appropriate in front of other people.

“Uh, thanks?” You say as you grab a hoodie from beside your bed and throw it on.

Once you’ve covered up a bit more, you turn back to Jason. “Why are you here?”

He stares at you, his eyes traveling your body for a few moments before they meet yours. “I just wanted to apologize. For the other day.” He takes a step closer.

You cross your arms. “I want to know why.”

Jason cringes. “I snapped yesterday because I’m just not right in the head yet. I still lose control and say things I shouldn’t. My perception of things is so fucked up sometimes I can’t tell what’s real.”

You nod slowly. “But why, Jason? How are you alive, why is your brain messed up?”

He sighs deeply. “I did die.” He says simply, like that really explains anything. You wait for him continue. “I died, and Ra’s Al Ghul threw me in the Lazarus Pit because he owed a favour to Bruce.” The words are spoken so plainly but you understand the pain behind them. “I’m only alive because of a favour.” His tone is so downtrodden, devastated.

You’ve heard about the Lazarus Pit, how it could drive someone to madness— you guess that must’ve happened with Jason.

It was the theorized reason for Gotham’s problem, after all; or rather, theorized by Barbara Gorden.

You supposed that made sense. “My God, Jason, you’ve been through so much.”

Your heart aches for him, for all the things you should have prevented.

“I’m sorry, Y/n.”

“It’s okay.”

…..

The morning light shines brightly through your window, usually your curtains are drawn but there are quite a few unusual things about this morning.

First and most importantly, you have a suited up Jason, sleeping at your side; his arm is wrapped protectively around you.

He looks so beautiful when he’s sleeping; you’re not sure if he ever has restless sleep, but he seems so peaceful and at ease— relaxed, even. It’s nice to see his face unplagued by any of his troubles.

However, according to your clock, it’s almost the time when Alfred would come to wake you for breakfast, meaning Jason had to leave— and fast.

“Jason.” You say his name softly, nudging him awake. He stirs, and his eyes shoot open.

He looks panicked for a moment before your face processes in his mind, then he visibly calms down.

“I fell asleep.” He states, disentangling from you and laying into his back.

You hum, still looking at him. “Yes, you did.” The air is thick with some sort of easy tension, a fading smile, a far-off laugh— a general sense of mundanity that you want to keep forever. “But you have to leave now, if you don’t want anyone else to know your identity.”

“Right.” Jason gets up from the bed and stretches slowly, causing you to do the same.

He turns to grab his helmet— or rather, you see him stop, stare at it for a moment, and then spin back around.

Before you can process it, he’s caging you on your bed. Your eyes close as he closes the gap between the two of you, a swift movement that leaves you barely anytime to think.

When he pulls back, off the bed, and flashes you an easy smile, you think you very well might swoon like you were right out of a 60s television show.

Jason slips his helmet back on and closes it before unlatching the window and stepping out. “Bye, Y/n.”

“Bye.” You stare at the spot where he was standing for a while longer before laying back down in your bed.

…..

“Hey.” You say nonchalantly, coming up behind Bruce.

He’s working on the Batcomputer right now. “Hello.”

“What’cha Doing?” You scan the contents of the screen, and it just looks like feed from the Manor’s many cameras. You aren’t too worried about Jason being seen on them, because he always hacks the cameras and scrubs himself from the data.

“I’m just doing the weekly camera check, Y/n.” Bruce looks back at you momentarily, and then returns to the feeds.

You screw around behind him for a while before you hear a small hum. You look up at the camera, trying to see what has caught Bruce’s attention. The timestamp says it’s from a few nights ago.

You watch as he replays a specific moment.

He replays it a few more times before you finally see it. A familiar flash of red, and then a motorcycle driving away from the manor.

Worse, the flash of red comes from right outside your window.

Bruce enhances the footage and zooms in on what you’re sure is Jason.

“Red Hood was at the Manor three days ago.” He states, looking back at you. “He appears to be leaving your bedroom, did you know about this?”

You pause for a second but shake your head. “No, of course not, I was sleeping.” You pretend to shudder. “That’s creepy to think that he was in there while I was sleeping.”

Bruce eyes you suspiciously but doesn’t protest or question any further. “We’ll have to heighten security in your room. Red Hood obviously chose it for a reason.”

You freeze. “That’s not necessary, Bruce, he didn’t screw with anything, obviously.”

“Even if he isn’t intending to hurt any of us, Y/n, there are several very bad things that could happen as a result of his being able to get into our house. Not to mention, I’ve noticed several discrepancies in our camera feeds over the past month or so.” He gestures to another frame, showing what looks like normal footage, but it’s the same five minutes replaying, according to the timestamps. “If you watch carefully, every minute, on the dot, a bug flies in front of the camera. It’s the same bug and the same flight pattern. If that’s Red Hood’s patch job, he’s not very good at this.”

Your lips purse, and you chew on the inside of your cheek. “That is weird.” You can’t really say anything else without making yourself look suspicious. You’ll have to let Jason know before he thinks about coming around here again.

He goes back to the previous footage, of Jason at your door, and enhances it even more— your window is clear now, and the floor behind it. Bruce rewinds it to the moment that Jason reaches the window. He presses play again, and lets the video play slowly, analyzing Jason’s every movement.

You cringe when you see Jason knock on the window a few times, and you’re terrified for Bruce to see what you know is coming next.

“Bruce!” You blurt, just before you’re about to come into view. “Tim just texted me and said he needed you to come upstairs right now.”

Bruce turns to you, confused. “Did he say what about?”

You shake your head. “No, he just said it was urgent.”

Bruce nods and leaves you alone in the batcave. You have maybe ten minutes until he comes back, knowing that you lied.

You try to fiddle with footage and delete that part that incriminates you, but without Bruce’s password you can’t do that.

Fuck. You don’t know it.

You panic for a minute and then abandon your mission to delete the footage, instead you race upstairs and into your bedroom, throwing together a bag of clothes and other essentials, as well as some sentimental items.

You’re about to sneak out the window when you see the old worn book. You snatch it quickly, along with your phone and car keys.

Bruce’s voice comes from down the hallway, calling your name; it doesn’t matter, you don’t stop until you’re outside and in your car.

You know he’s watching as you speed off, tears welling as you disable the tracking devices in your phones and car. When Bruce finally watches that footage, he’s going to think you betrayed him and you’re going to lose the one place that you’d ever felt at home in.

You’ve never felt so low before.

…..

Tears fall pitifully from your cheeks; you really shouldn’t be this upset.

Jason watches uncomfortably from his chair in his office; you knew he never liked you crying, and he was never great at dealing with it.

All he ever needed to do was be there, though.

“Please stop crying.” He says gently, as he walks over to you. “What happened?”

You shrug, which makes no sense because you know exactly what happened. “I can’t go back to the manor.”

Jason scrunches in confusion and a hint of anger at the conclusions you know he’s jumping to. “What did he do?”

“Bruce didn’t do anything.” Wiping the tears from your eyes, you pull back from him. “He was going over security camera footage and found a camera you forgot to wipe… he hadn’t watched the full thing when I ran out of there but he’s watched it by now, I’m sure.”

“And that matters…why?” Jason obviously doesn’t understand what you’re implying.

You absentmindedly drum your fingers against your wrist. “I very clearly let you in the window in the footage. You didn’t break in, I let you in. Bruce knows that now too.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Jason looks around the office, like there’s something that would help on the walls. There isn’t. His eyes settle back into you, but you’re not looking at his face. “You can stay with me.”

He says it so easily, like it’s only natural— you suppose it is. Nothing had ever been more natural than being with him.

You also think you’d probably like that. “Do you live in this building or…?”

He laughs and then shakes his head. “No, I hijacked one of Bruce’s warehouses a long time ago and have been living there. We can go now, I’m done for today anyway.”

You step out into the hallway and he takes your hand in his; you think that he feels protective around his lackeys, because he doesn’t really like them. He would rather they all fell off the face of the earth, but he knows that won’t happen so he’d rather control where their product is being pushed.

Or that’s what he told you, anyways,

You go down a different set of corridors than you’re used to, and it leads to a garage.

The unsettlingly beautiful woman is standing at the door, she says nothing when Jason pushes the door open and leads you through.

It’s not her job to ask questions, you suppose.

“Do you want to take your car? You can follow me in mine so you know where we’re going?” He suggests, raising his eyebrows at you. “Or I can drive it over for you later and we can just use my car for now.”

“I don’t really feel like driving right now.”

He nods. “Okay.”

…..

“When you said warehouse, I was not expecting this.” You gape, looking around at his ‘apartment.’ “It looks more like a pent-house.”

He chuckles. “Yeah, well, that's kind of what it is.” Jason runs his finger along the surface of his counter. “I believe it was catalogued as a safe house and a warehouse.”

You shrug. “You wiped it from the system, so I wouldn’t know.”

There’s a sort of awkward reluctance dancing around the two of you, like you aren’t sure what to do with yourselves now that it’s just the two of you alone. You haven’t been truly alone with him in such a long time.

“I guess there’s not a whole lot to do here.” He starts again, looking around. “I’m not here much. I usually just end up passing out on the couch in my office.”

You laugh dryly and look around; the whole apartment looks clean and modernist— you personally can’t stand this type of decorating but you don’t think Jason cared much to change how the place had looked when he found it.

There’s a TV, which you’re pretty sure works but it’s gone unused. There is a short hallway with three doors down it right off the living area. It’s mostly open concept besides that small hallway. You lift your gaze upwards, following the tall in-wall bookshelves; you find that there’s a small loft above the two of you and a ladder that leads there.

“What’s up there?” You ask, walking over to the ladder.

Jason gestures up the ladder. “I’ll show you.”

The two do you climb the ladder and you pull yourself onto the loft, feeling a little unsteady.

You notice immediately that the roof looks a little strange just above the platform.

Jason clears his throat and walks over to one of the walls. He hovers in front of a small silver panel. “You know, there’s a reason I chose this one.” He presses a button on the panel while he looks over at you.

A few creaks sound and then some loud mechanical noises sound before the roof panels recede to reveal the setting sun. The sunset is so beautifully visible from the sunroof.

“Jason.” You breath, dumbfounded.

He picks a book off of the floor of the loft. “I used to try to recreate our moments on the roof, but it just wasn’t the same without you.” He flips the book a few times in hands. “And this wasn’t quite right either.”

“I couldn’t handle the rooftop without you.” You whisper, not sure if he even hears you; you try to speak a little louder. “The first time you showed up at the house was the first time I had done it in years.”

“Huh.” Jason responds, sounding nonchalant but you know it means something to him.

“Wait here.” You rush back down the ladder and grab your book, and then head back up. Jason stares at it for a while. You hold it up, and pass it to him. “For Old Times Sake?”

…..

You had sat there with him for hours that day, you watched as the day melted into night and felt as you slowly fell asleep. You and Jason were tangled together, cuddled so close it was like you had never really been apart in the first place.

At some point, you’re drifting in and out of consciousness. Your hands twitch gently and you adjust yourself a bit but you don’t open your eyes.

You’re pretty sureJason still thinks you're asleep because he presses a kiss to the top of your head and then quietly speaks. “I want to do this with you for the rest of our lives.” He pauses and sighs a loaded sigh. “Not just for Old Times Sake.”

You decide it’s probably better to just try to fall back asleep, despite the way your stomach churns. You wanted to respond, and tell him that you wanted to fall asleep like this every night.

Tell him that you wanted to spend every day with him too.

…..

“I just want to know where she is, Red Hood.” Bruce’s voice comes through a little speaker in Jason’s office— it’s a line that Jason had hacked into and clearly Bruce knew that.

Jason scowls and you can’t help but think about Bruce when he does.

When nobody responds to him, Bruce continues. “I want to talk to her.”

You gnaw your lips, wanting to pick it up and say you’ll talk to him but dreading confirming his suspicions.

Jason slips his helmet on and picks up the microphone. He presses the button and says, cooly, “Where would you want me to bring her, Batman?”

You can hear Bruce’s sigh of relief. “The abandoned warehouse near Arkham. You know which one I mean.”

Jason hums. “The one that Joker blew up last month.”

Bruce confirms and then Jason looks at me. “Anything you want to say?”

You shake your head, and Jason picks up the mic again. “Give us a time and we’ll be there.”

And just like that, you were going to see Bruce again.

Great.

…..

“I just don’t understand, Y/n.” Bruce says immediately when he lays eyes on you, despite the fact that he wraps you in a tight hug. “Why would you work with him?”

You pull back and look back to Jason, who’s all suited up, of course. “I—” you have no idea what to say in your defense. “I wasn’t working with him, Bruce.”

Bruce gives you a sort of ‘disappointed dad’ look. “I saw the footage, I know that you let him into the manor.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“So you were working with him.”

“No! It’s not like that!”

You’re starting to get irritated because you know Bruce has absolutely no reason to believe you.

“First, you lied about Tim needing me, and then you tried to delete the footage and then I saw you wildly speeding away from the manor. Do you understand how suspicious that looks? Obviously, you are working with him, Y/n. You don’t have to lie.” Bruce sounds sure of himself. It makes you want to tear your hair out.

“Fine. I was working with him, since you’re so sure.”

Bruce looks between you and Jason, and you can see realization dawn on his face. “Unless… don’t tell me you fell for him just because he reminds you of— Y/n, please tell me I'm wrong.”

Jason steps in this time. “Don’t worry, you’re wrong. Just not in the way you think you are.” Your head snaps back to look at him as clicks his helmet open and pulls it off.

This was the moment. He was finally showing Bruce.

You look frantically between the two of them, trying to decipher the moment.

Bruce stands frozen for a good long while, just staring at Jason’s face before he suddenly locks his arms around Jason's shoulder/neck and hugs him tighter than you’d ever seen Bruce hug anybody.

Jason looks thoroughly disturbed and taken aback. This wasn’t the reaction he was expecting, and honestly, it wasn’t what you were expecting either.

“I didn’t fall for him because he reminds me of Jason.” You say quietly. “I fell for him because he is Jason.”

Bruce pulls back and nods slowly before turning back to Jason. “I’m so sorry, Jason.”

All content belongs to @beingsuneone , do not repost, copy or post on other platforms without my permission.

#dc #dc x reader #jason todd #jason todd x reader #jason todd x you #jason todd x y/n #batfam #batfam x reader #batfam x you #batfam x y/n #red hood #redhood #red hood x reader #red hood x you #red hood x y/n #redhood x reader

[endless-ineffabilities]

Anti-Hero

Daemon Targaryen x f!Reader

It's me, Hi, I'm the problem, it's me

At teatime, everybody agrees

I'll stare directly at the sun, but never in the mirror

It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero

An imagine loosely based on the song Anti-Hero of off Midnights by Taylor Swift ▪︎ read more Daemon & Aemond midnights imagines here: masterlist

themes: reader is Rhaenyra's younger sister (aged 18+), Daemon is not married, incest, fluff

Growing up, attention has never been directed to you, but rather, to your older sister, Rhaenyra. Beautiful, intelligent, the heir to the Iron Throne. The Realm's Delight.

Whereas you... well, you tried.

Years ago, Rhaenyra's betrothal was a serious matter, for it befell upon her find the most beneficial match for the sake of House Targaryen. And she indeed found it, in your dear cousin, Laenor Velaryon.

You knew of Laenor's specific proclivities, and you were thankful everyone let him be, including Rhaenyra. He deserved his happiness, after all, despite being saddled with the duty of arranged marriage.

As for you, as much as you thought of yourself lucky that your father, Viserys, wasn't forcing anyone's hand on you, sometimes you wanted him to at least care.

You are a Targaryen in the end, albeit not the heir, so you thought of yourself valuable in forging an alliance with a great house in Westeros. But the subject was only mentioned in passing. Granted, you didn't favour any of the prospects your father presented.

Nevertheless, you wanted to be seen as someone of value.

You sit in your quarters, staring at your reflection in the mirror. Was your silver hair not as radiant as Rhaenyra's? Perhaps, if you were prettier, you would be more noticeable. Wasn't there a saying about Targaryens? Whenever one is born, the gods toss a coin, and it determines whether the path is to greatness or madness?

Well, Rhaenyra was surely set for greatness, whereas you felt you belonged in the grey area, in the middle. The area for those who don't belong in the stories, who don't get songs written about them.

Simply there.

A knock resounds from your door.

"Come in," not bothering to turn around.

You wait for whoever it is to speak. Was it the handmaiden, the kingsguard? Rhaenyra?

"Hello, dear niece."

You freeze, then run quickly to hug the visitor, "Daemon!"

He chuckles lowly, the sound reverberating from where you have your ear pressed to his chest.

"I had no idea you were returning today."

"I wanted to surprise my dearest girl," he says, tucking a lock of hair behind your ear, "Have you grown taller? Last I saw you, you were this high." He hovers his hand at around waist-height, in jest.

"That's not true," you punch him lightly in the chest, "you saw me just several months ago."

He laughs, "All the same, I wanted to come see you. Your father tells me you've barely left your quarters as of late. Is something the matter?"

"No," you sigh, and plaster on your best neutral smile, but he sees right through it. He knows you like the back of his hand, by heart.

He simply stares at you, and raises his fair eyebrows.

You relent, taking a seat, with him settling close beside you.

"I suppose I haven't been feeling well recently."

"Are you ill?" Daemon worries, pressing his palm to your forehead.

"No, no," you shake his hand away, feeling silly now. Maybe you shouldn't even mention it.

"I just don't feel like I'm enough, and I feel like it's all my doing," the words rush out of you, barely coherent, but Daemon had been listening intently, concerned for you.

"What nonsense is this?" he moves closer, his arm resting behind you.

But then you stand, pacing in front of him, letting everything out, "I just... I will never be as important as Rhaenyra, I will never be the eldest daughter, I will never be the heir."

"None of that matters, and you know it," Daemon leans forward, trying to catch your eye.

"Maybe I just don't try hard enough. Rhaenyra diligently attended her lessons with the Septa, whereas I prefer to play swords in the courtyard like a savage little boy. Rhaenyra is very well-trained, suited for the atmosphere of court and nobility, whereas I am more brash, careless with my words. I'm more likely to trip on my feet, rather than twirl like a princess. I can no longer count the instances where father chastised me for saying something unbecoming of a princess."

Daemon smiles, slight as first, then it widens greatly.

"It's not funny, uncle."

"Well," he shrugs, clearly pleased about something.

"You think me childish. Silly."

"No, no, I don't," he stands in front you. You turn away, but he pulls you back, taking your hands firmly.

You look down at them, joined together, perfectly. You immediately feel calmer, much to your surprise.

"You and I are much alike. The second child, more rogue and rebellious, never quite fitting in. And I do find it strange how someone as radiant, as unique, and as clever as you, could ever think so little of herself."

"Daemon," you get flustered, and you want to tell him that he doesn't need to comfort you.

"Listen to me," he tilts your head upward, "all those things you said are true, yes. You are brazen, outspoken, different. But that is precisely what I love about you."

You finally meet his eyes, as he draws closer, holding your face with both hands now, "You are as splendent as dragonfire, if not more."

You stand there, letting his words sink in, and they work their magic, breaking apart any doubt that had settled within you.

A thought passes, one that may be trivial, but it makes you smile all the same. As much as Rhaenyra may have tried to get Daemon's attention, especially in the past, it was only ever fixated on you.

He was the person you felt closest to. The one in whose arms who feel at home in.

Daemon looks tormented, as if noticing the admiration in your eyes, unsure of how to proceed. The dragon in him acts, claiming what he wants. He runs his thumb over your lips, and leans down slowly.

He kisses you. Warm, and... and like home.

He pulls away, and he looks taken aback by his actions. His eyes meet yours questioningly, studying you. Were you okay with this?

Your lips gently lift in a soft smile, and his heart soars at the sight. You keep your hand on the back of his neck, holding on for dear life.

In line with your outspoken, sly nature, you say, "Us Targaryens do have some queer customs, don't we?"

He laughs heartily, before he nods, and draws you even closer, arms wrapping around you, "That may be true, but to hell with it."

And he captures your lips in his once more.

🖤🖤🖤🖤🖤

Daemon taglist: @sirlovel @paprikabadger @goawayimreadingbeach @moonmaiden1996 @caspianobsessed @sebastian025 @iilsenewman @padfootsvixen @naelys-the-aster @dreaming-for-an-escape @avalyaaa @loveandlewis

I've missed writing for Daemon! (Not me torn for a deranged uncle and his equally deranged one-eyed nephew)

The midnights imagines continues! I've already thought of specific lyrics from the songs, but feel free to make suggestions!

Taglists for Daemon and/or Aemond works is open!

#daemon x reader #daemon targaryen x y/n #daemon targaryen x reader #house of the dragon #house of the dragon imagine #daemon targaryen imagine #daemon targaryen #midnights #anti hero

[meimi-haneoka]

Report of CLAMP's Twitter Space - April 1st, 2024 (part concerning Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card)

As it was quite predictable, CLAMP sensei opened a Twitter Space on April 1st to celebrate this important and special day, which they consider their "birthday" as a creative group. ✨

It is also the birthday of quite a number of characters in their works, but it's hilarious they mentioned later in this Space how April 1st is actually only CCS!Sakura's and TRC!Sakura's birthday, as all the other characters have "ambiguous" situations going on. 😂 I'll delve into this part later.

You will find the full report under the cut, since the post became considerably long once again - it was inevitable since they kept bringing Sakura things up and the Space was almost 50 minutes long! 😅I also wanted to feature as many info as possible, and where I could, I wanted to translate their conversations directly rather than making a summary of it.

CLAMP celebrated April 1st going to a beloved cafè in Kyoto (they later revealed in their IG stories it's called Mont and there's always a cute dog there), spending some nice relaxing time drinking something all four together. That's when they got the idea to open a Space to celebrate with their fans too. CLAMP reiterated several times during the Space how grateful they are for being able to do a creative job like this, even after 35 years. A job none of them really imagined when they were little, as "to become a mangaka" wasn't a specific dream any of them really had.

And then, Ohkawa introduced the part of the Space where they talked about CCS Clear Card, starting by the mention of the release of volume 16 (which happened precisely on April 1st)!

Ohkawa: A serialization that lasted 7 years and a half, isn't it? Mokona: So long, right? Ohkawa: Yeah, quite long! Satsuki: Elementary schoolers have already graduated by now. Ohkawa: Yeah, the readers who were in the first year when the serialization started have graduated elementary school long ago. We had decided that Sakura would start middle school when Clear Card Arc began, and readers of her same age reached adulthood by now. Satsuki & Mokona: Ah, it's true! Ohkawa: They've stayed with us for long time, right? And now the final volume is out. *they all applaude* Mokona: It's quite a happy end, isn't it? Ohkawa: Uh? Mokona: a happy, happy, happy end. 🥰 Ohkawa: 😨...you mean, an APPEALING end, right? (Nekoi echoing her: right?) (note: happy and appealing start with the same pronounce in Japanese) Nekoi: 😅(to Mokona) What are you talking about? Ohkawa: What do you mean, Mokona? 🙃 *Mokona laughs nervously* Nekoi: Is that your headcanon or something? Ohkawa: Is this okay to say? Nekoi: Or rather, is this your conspiracy? 😂

Of course they all joked like this because they wanted to avoid spoiling how the story ended 😂 Ohkawa thanked all the readers for sticking with this story for such a long time. Long time after Sakura Card Arc, when the right opportunity came, they were able to draw this "Clear Card Arc". In that regard, Ohkawa mused that she can't even recall why the previous arc is called "Sakura Card Arc", despite no one actually calls those cards as "Sakura Cards" in the story itself (she said the characters do call them "Sakura's Cards", but not "Sakura Cards"), and Mokona seemed to agree with her, but here sensei was simply forgetting that it was Tomoyo herself the one who named them that way in volume 7 😅(in the beginning she wanted to call them "Sakura-chan Cards", then she settled for "Sakura Cards"....unforgettable Sakura's comment: "It sounds like the name of a credit card..." 😂) It was long ago, we can forgive them. 😉And they made sure to repeat the same thing with Clear Card Arc, since in this story NO ONE ever calls those as "Clear Cards" but actually just "transparent cards" or "new cards". 😂

Ohkawa added that middle schooler Sakura grew up a bit more in the last part of the story, and people who have already read the last chapter can understand what she means by that. She also said that she'd like to leave a more in-depth talk for another time, when they get the right opportunity, but the biggest reason why they decided to open this Space was to talk about unknown "behind the scenes" trivia that the fans could ask about using the hashtag of "CLAMP day" and those of the campaigns organized by Kodansha (in particular, the one to win the big A4 size clear bookmark). She also said that she wanted to give this opportunity to Satsuki and Nekoi to say something about Clear Card since the last time they all talked together, they didn't get the chance. Ohkawa also brought up the last CLAMP Kanbukai podcast, where she talked about the trivia of Fujitaka's iron kettle and that shocked both her colleagues, cause they didn't know about that detail! 😆

Ohkawa: The story I'm about to tell you is something me and Mokona know very well, since there's a precise reason behind this trivia. In Clear Card Arc there's a "key character" called Akiho. Akiho's last name is "Shinomoto" and that was decided ever since the very beginning, but her first name was originally Sairi! Her full name was Sairi Shinomoto. Mokona: It gives off a different vibe, right? Ohkawa: Indeed. I had already decided the kanji for it and all, but at some point, before we even started to draw chapter 1, whenever I talked to Mokona...(to Mokona) please explain what happened. Mokona: Whenever I tried to write the hiragana for あいお (aio) in our conversations on Line, the autocorrect on my phone would change it to 秋穂 (Akiho). (Note: another reading of the kanji in Akiho's name is indeed Ai'o) Whenever I tried to write those hiragana characters, the autocorrect would change it to akiho once the message got sent, and I was like "what's that akiho?? I didn't want to write that". I couldn't understand, because it's not like I had ever used that word with other people (note: she means the autocorrect didn't learn it from other conversations). Ohkawa: The first 2-3 times it happened I was just perplexed, but then as this "akiho, akiho, akiho" kept happening every time, I just asked her "Mokona, are you doing this on purpose??" and she was like "no, not at all!" 😂 She told me "Look what (the phone) converts this into!", but when we tried to do the same on our phones, it didn't come out to any of us! Mokona: But I did show it to you, right? That it came out like that to me. Ohkawa: Yeah, you did! I found it strange cause she said she doesn't even have any friend who's called Akiho-chan, she even tried to recall if there was a character of any series that's called like that... Mokona: Right, but I didn't know any! 😅 Ohkawa: So we started to think about it...Akiho seemed like a really cute name, it combines the characters of "autumn" (秋) with the ear of rice (穂), we pondered about it for 0.02 seconds and then I said "Let's use 'Akiho' for her name". And that's how she became Akiho Shinomoto. Satsuki: You thought that the ear of rice was a nice "opposite pole" to Sakura's spring. Nekoi: What were Sairi-chan's kanji? Ohkawa: Well, it doesn't really matter now but initially, I had designed for her name to bear a kanji only for the "ri" part, and leave the "Sai" part in hiragana. In CCSakura all the characters have their name either in hiragana or kanji, and there isn't any character who's got a name that mixes both. So I thought to do that for her. Ohkawa: Speaking of Sairi-chan, it's a good moment to mention that there's this morning drama show on NHK starting right today, called "Tiger with Wings" where Sairi Ito is starring. I really love her as an actress and I think Sairi is a really cute name, so I had decided for Akiho's name to originally be Sairi, just like hers. It's not like I created the "Akiho" character in Sairi Ito's image, but I just thought that Sairi was a really good name and there was a time when I thought that it would be better for her to have a name closer to Sakura's one, so I had initially decided for that one. But thanks to Mokona's fated intervention, she became Akiho.

Many fans who were listening started to try to type "aio" on their phones and uploaded the screenshots of how their autocorrect would suggest "Akiho" as a conversion! Ohkawa and Mokona looked at the screenshots and commented that the same result can be obtained both on an iOS phone and on a Mac computer. Mokona felt relieved that it wasn't just happening to her! 😆 Ohkawa: It might be that Mokona-san unilaterally changed her name for us, but...😆 Mokona: it's not like I was scheming for it or anything! 😆 A fan also brought up the fact that in the prefecture of Yamaguchi there's an onsen facility called "Aio Onsen" written with the same kanji of Akiho's name, and CLAMP were quite surprised to find that out.

Ohkawa: If you look at the story you'll know what I'm talking about, but in the finale Akiho reveals her true name as a 'final move', and I did think in the past that the spoiler about her true name would show through the fact that we gave her an autumnal name, but Mokona writing that 'Akiho' all those times was just so guided by fate, to the point it shocked us. And it came from writing something trivial like "Yo!" (note: Mokona wrote "ai" as a colloquial way to say "yo", "hi!") 😆 Mokona: It seems like it's quite an unusual name but don't worry, it's not like I was scheming for it! 😅

Then, Ohkawa asked Nekoi and Satsuki if there was a particular scene or part of the story they liked or if they had a fun episode to tell about...while she was waiting for their answers, she said they received lots of praises for the cover of volume 16, with many comments saying how beautiful it is, and for them it's already enough if people can even just look at the cover on the internet.

Ohkawa: By the way, you said the tone used for Kaito-san after his eyes changed was quite bothersome to you, right? Nekoi: Yeah, because I kept forgetting it! Satsuki: I wonder if people will notice...his eyes are so tiny, right? Ohkawa: Were his eyes huge, before? Satsuki: No, I mean, when turned into a tankobon his eyes look so tiny... Ohkawa: Ah, I see, I see. Nekoi: it's because we're used to see it on a screen. Ohkawa: Lots of stuff happened to Kaito-san in volume 15, and....lots of stuff happened to his eyes too, as a result. Because of that, we added a tone finish to his eyes, and it would make me happy if people noticed it. Mokona: There's quite a non-human feel to his eyes, now. Ohkawa: Indeed, indeed.

Ohkawa then asked Satsuki for her own tidbit about Clear Card, and she mentioned a color spread she really liked was the one of chapter 55, with Sakura and Akiho seemingly springing out of water, each on a side of the spread. Satsuki commented it's "a pose quite common in our artworks". Ohkawa recognized it and said the spread was actually two pieces drawn separately (as it's quite deducible by how the spread is composed). Satsuki added that in general all the art of the last volume is quite cute.

Ohkawa: What about you, Mokona? Mokona: As for me.... As you know, right in the middle of the play written by Naoko-chan, they end up in the world of the book. Well, it's not like they really go to another world. When we reach the part of Syaoran's action, both Sakura's POV and Syaoran's POV progress simultaneously...and I think if this were a video, there would be a way to portray it smoothly, but when we were working on it, Nanase told me "I want you to find a way to portray it that is fitting for a manga". So when I've got down to draw the storyboard, I've arranged the panels in a way that was quite understandable to me, but I started to have doubts whether people would be able to get easily what was going on...💦 I could understand it completely because I knew the story, but what about somebody who was seeing it for the first time...? Would it be okay...? I was quite worried about that. Ohkawa: Ooh, I see. I think somehow they were able to understand it.

After this, Ohkawa mentioned Motoko Kumai (Syaoran's, Sumomo, Nataku's VA)'s quote-retweet of their announcement of the Space, where she wished them a happy CLAMP day and said all of the meetings with those characters are a treasure to her. She added "Thank you for pouring your heart in everything you do". It was very funny to hear Ohkawa say "I wasn't the right person to read this, I get embarrassed with these praises! 😳But no, really, thank you very much." ✨

Ohkawa then said "We've been told by Kodansha that they've never had a single manga that continued for two volumes after the end was announced...well, this is our volume 16 that was extended twice 😁"

Ohkawa: I say this every single time, but in my heart, this was the story where Sakura-chan acted as a proper main character, till the very end. I think this is the story Sakura painted for herself, following her own feelings. Sorry, but this is how I feel. Of course I think it's possible to not see it this way and you're absolutely entitled to it, but we think our Sakura-chan really did her best. Mokona: She truly did. Ohkawa: Also, we got lots of comments saying that Touya used too many cheats 😆But I would like to remind everyone that Touya was a "cheater" since long time ago. Mokona: Despite not appearing often, we stacked on him many strong points. Ohkawa: He was really a cheater all along. (note: of course here with "cheater" they're meaning his abilities that allow him to do unexpected and powerful things in the plot, in order to help Sakura at the most convenient moment) I'm talking about Clow Card Arc right now (note: this is a part concerning Sakura Card Arc, actually), but to have a magical power that allows you to transfer all of it to a magical being created by Clow is already a cheat to begin with. Satsuki: he can also see (non-living beings). Ohkawa: Sakura-chan was refusing to do so, but she's also someone who can see them.

While looking at the hashtags, I can't understand if this was Nekoi's personal comment or the comment of a fan, but she said "It's good that it wasn't Touya the one finding the Cards", mocking the way he would've said the incantation to capture the Cards, and Ohkawa replied "Well, he would probably be 'Cardcaptor Touya' now. But he was an high schooler! Feels a bit off..." and Nekoi along with Satsuki mused even more on the possibility of him having a transformation scene like shoujo heroines or if he would just go capturing cards in his school uniform 😂 Mokona: I don't really think Tomoyo would put that much effort in creating costumes for anyone other than Sakura-chan 😂 Ohkawa: Yeah, Tomoyo wouldn't make a costume for him. Therefore, despite it would be quite troublesome because I don't really think Yukito is particularly skilled in sewing, what I can think of is that he would make for him some kind of awkward outfits that don't even look like cosplay costumes. Satsuki: He'll make them by himself. Ohkawa: Well, it's not like Touya would make them... Nekoi & Mokona: There's no reason for him to do it, after all. Ohkawa: He wouldn't be doing this with a serious spirit. Nekoi: So he wouldn't feel a particular reason to change clothes. Mokona: What if he wants to hide his face? What do you think? Ohkawa: Ah, you mean a mask? Nekoi: Well, it's not like Sakura-chan herself had ever any eyewitnesses, after all... Nekoi: He gives me the vibe of someone who would go and capture cards swiftly like he just dropped an item...and hey ho! It would end immediately like a yonkoma (note: four panel manga)! Mokona: He might just pay attention to not get his school uniform dirty. Ohkawa: Then, if Sakura was in Touya's place, she would just go like "Oh, I think I've heard a noise" Satsuki: "There's some rustling" Ohkawa: But I don't think Touya would try so desperately to hide it from her, like she did with him! 😁

Then, Ohkawa tried to bring the topic back to the theme of the day, Clear Card and the release of volume 16.

Ohkawa: it was the first time we happened to draw again for one of our series after almost 20 years. Of course there's been a change in the design, it was impossible for us to keep it the same. I'd be happy if you could enjoy nonetheless. Moreover, at the end of the story, the front and the back of all the Cards changed. We were able to show the back of the Cards when the special chapter was published on Nakayoshi, after the story was over, but as for the front of the Cards themselves, we have just shown a peek. Mokona: Right, and just a few of them. Ohkawa: Truth to be told, we have modified all of the Cards in their manga version. (to Mokona) It was hard, right? Mokona: Yes. Ohkawa: Mokona has rewritten all of their names, too. Because the design is different. Mokona: Yeah. I had colored them too. I thought I would die. Ohkawa: Nekoi and Satsuki worked really hard on them too. Despite that, the truth is we have no opportunity to show the new designs of all the Cards in their manga version! Mokona: It would be good if we could show somewhere the colored version of even just one Card... Nekoi: Since we worked so hard...

Many people in the "CLAMP Day" hashtag suggested for them to show them at the CLAMP exhibition of this summer. Then, back on the topic of volume 16:

Ohkawa: I know there might be people who won't think in that way about volume 16, and everything we're talking about might be a spoiler for others, but I personally think that both Sakura-chan and Syaoran-kun matured little by little during this last volume, and I'd be happy for you to see it. Eriol ended up being that kind of character, as usual... (note: she impersonated him saying something, but unfortunately I can't really understand that line) Mokona: Beside him, the "camera" of the story focused properly on all the other characters, including the Kinomoto family. Ohkawa: This is something I wanted to do since long time ago, but...Fujitaka himself didn't have any powers, and although he didn't understand very well what was going on, he trusted Sakura-chan and in the end told her something like "I knew you were going out of the house at night!" 😁 I'm really glad we could draw that scene for him. I've always wanted to portray at least once what the characters of the "parents generation" did inside the story, it's not like Fujitaka-san was spacing out in a corner oblivious to everything...and I'm glad I could portray that in the story. Satsuki: He's collected lots of suspicious books too, right? Ohkawa: Yes. There's something I asked my three colleagues to depict long time ago, and it's connected to what happens in the end. Akiho-chan in the end says something like "I want to aim for a job like this in the future!", but not only that, she also looks for rare books while travelling to many countries around the world. The first time I wanted to portray what kind of rare books she would be collecting was in a scene of long time ago, when the girls visit Fujitaka's library. I asked to please put an homage to Cthulhu over there. Mokona: It's true! Please look for it! If I remember correctly, they were some kind of grimoires that appear in the Cthulhu mythos. We have included them clearly so please everyone, have fun looking for them! Ohkawa: We have intended all of those as homages, so I'd be happy if you could look at them. (note: the chapter they're talking about is the 26th one)

Mokona: It looks like something terrible is going to come out at any moment from a corner of Dad's library....💦 Ohkawa: Yeah. But Fujitaka is like "any kind of book is welcome here!", even with books like those ones. Ohkawa: And then, there's the matter of the chocomint. There have been questions like "why do you keep bringing chocomint up?" before. Among CLAMP, the ones liking chocomint are Nekoi and Satsuki. Mokona, what about you? Mokona: I've recently started to be able to eat the chocomint ice cream from Häagen-Dazs. Ohkawa: You didn't really like it before, right? Mokona: Yes. People from the "chocomint side" will probably think it's pretty mild tasting, but...😅 Ohkawa: As for me, I can't really eat it. 😅But I feel like when a person you love eats it so eagerly, you can't help but wanting to try it too. That's the reason why we employed chocomint in the story. Maybe people who like chocomint will disagree with me, but to me it's quite a divisive kind of food, you either love it or hate it. Mokona: Its color is so overwhelmingly cute too. I always end up wishing to eat it. Ohkawa: Are you like "ugh! This was a mistake" or "well this is quite good" when you actually try it? Mokona: If I do my best, I can eat it till the end. Ohkawa: Well, we have Lilie, an older character appearing in the story, whose person she fell in love with started to like chocomint precisely because she likes it too. That's something that can happen too, right? Mokona: Indeed. For Syaoran it was the same. Ohkawa: Uhm, right, didn't Syaoran dislike it? Nekoi: Yes, but when he tried it he actually started to like it. Mokona: He could eat it because it was something Sakura made for him! Ohkawa: Isn't that amazing? Mokona: It is 🥰

After this, CLAMP started to read some messages from the fans, and also mentioned that the word "Sakura-chan" ended up trending on Twitter. Ohkawa: We have realized it today for the first time, but among our characters, Sakura-chan is the only one whose birthday is TRULY on April 1st! Satsuki: The double Sakura-chan, right? Ohkawa: Right. First of all, I'm not sure we can consider as a 'birth day' what happened to the existence of xxxHolic's Watanuki. Then we have the birthday of Tsubasa's Syaoran, which was decided deliberately by princess Sakura, so even in his case it's ambiguous. Another one is Seishirou from Tokyo Babylon, and in his case the birthday is a lie. So that leaves us basically with just Cardcaptor Sakura's Sakura and Tsubasa's Sakura as the only characters who are truly born on April 1st? Mokona: In the case of Sakura from Tsubasa, I wonder if we should consider her calendar the same as ours. Ohkawa: Ah, right!! Because she lives in another country, right? Mokona: And another world too.

After reading some more messages, Ohkawa said that she's very happy even just with fans of the old Clow Card and Sakura Card Arc loving the new arc too, but what makes her the happiest is to know there are people who have discovered the CCSakura series thanks to Clear Card Arc, and will keep treasuring it from now on. They also mused over the fact that they've been in activity as authors for more than half their lives and the time they've spent working together is far longer than the time they've lived at their parent's home. All four of them are extremely grateful for being able to do this artistic job as a creative group for such a long time.

Taking the opportunity of a fan mentioning the CLAMP Exhibition in July, Ohkawa gave a warm suggestion to try to visit the exhibition if possible, because judging by the current condition of their original artworks and the difficulties they're having moving them around, they don't think there is going to be another opportunity to do this again in the future. 💦

Then, a fan sent them a particular question: "Do you have plans for another arc of Sakura and Syaoran from CCS? Maybe about their wedding?" Ohkawa: Hum, in my idea it'd be best for everyone to imagine Sakura and Syaoran's wedding in their own hearts, but if there's the possibility of a continuation after the events of the last volume, we will certainly let you know.

The person asked about an xxxHolic continuation too, which of course Ohkawa re-confirmed (they're currently preparing everything to resume the serialization) and asked us to wait just a bit more for the announcement from the editorial team of Young Magazine!

After some more messages from the fans, CLAMP gave their final greetings on such an important day!

Nekoi: We only have you to thank for reaching this anniversary on this day. Thank you very much. (they all clap their hands) There will be lots of things to enjoy ahead, and I invite all of you to gaze at the pink color of Tokyo Tower. Ohkawa: It seems we'll be able to watch it from Youtube too, so please don't miss the chance. Satsuki: I want to thank everyone for your support. Just as Nekoi mentioned, we have plans for more things ahead, there's the return of xxxHolic too, and...I wonder if there'll be a new work too? Ohkawa: (laughs) Well, more than anything, there's the Clear Card anime adaptation too. I think it will take some more time but surely, without fail, the announcement from Kodansha will come, so please stay tuned. Mokona: This one volume marks the end of Sakura's story. (note: the term Mokona uses, 区切り, seems to not be a "definitive end", but rather seems to be indicating more a point of "break", a "delimitation", a "place to stop"; there's still a marked sense of "end" - whether it's just to an arc or the entire story is not clear, so I chose that translation but I wanted to point out the other nuances in the term). I am extremely grateful to everyone who watched over Sakura-chan's growth and even those who grew up along with her! We look forward to your continued support. Also, I would like to add something that is probably a bit off topic, but there are also some anime projects we have created character designs for. Ohkawa: Oh, right, of course!! That's very important. Mokona, I knew I could count on you, thanks for reminding me. Netflix announced the "The Grimm Variations" series, then Code Geass, which we've been making character designs for long time, will have a new series: "Rozé of the Recapture". Moreover, the new season of the Vanguard D anime series was announced too. Please watch those too. 🙏 And then, as a leader, this is my turn for the final greetings. I truly feel like you've been watching over us in many, many ways for the past 35 years. Whether you've liked us before and now you're taking your distance from us, or on the contrary you weren't interested in us before but now you're following us, please know all of you are still very precious to me. If you stopped reading our works, it's all right. I hope we can be reunited with you again one day through another work that you'd feel like you want to read. For the moment, I would like to thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for all of your efforts, your strength and lots of energy that allowed us to carry Cardcaptor Sakura Clear Card Arc to the final act. I'm sure Tokyo Tower will shine with a bright pink color tonight! Please make sure to listen to our podcasts, and to other Spaces we'll open when we can. Thank you very much! ✨🙏

#cardcaptor sakura #card captor sakura #clear card arc #ccsakura #clamp #clamp space report #akiho shinomoto #sakura kinomoto #yuna d. kaito #syaoran li

[aydaptic]

I’m curious to know, have you seen the reed900 movies?

I take it you want my opinion?

Although I'd ask you to be more specific -- pretty sure there are several Reed900 fan films out there -- I'm gonna assume you're referring to the Oct*punk ones. I haven't heard/seen any buzz about anything else in the fan film category.

The director used to follow me on X/Twitter many years ago. I've seen one of the actors liking my works, too. So I'm aware of them. I think I was one of the creators who inspired her fan films as she included some very specific things (speaking lines, concepts) that I haven't seen used anywhere else outside of my fic A&E. I could be wrong, but it caught my eye. It's always nice to hear that my works inspire.

That said, I personally don't like those fan films.

For anyone who can't handle constructive criticism, stop reading now.

It's a love story that's Reed900 in name and setting only considering that it directly contradicts canon. Niner is canonically described as "not likable, not sweet, but intimidating and scary." Maximilien's portrayal is none of those things.

I don't think we knew Niner's canon personality when these fan films were made -- most ppl still don't know Niner's canon personality, and frankly, most ppl (sadly) don't even care -- but that doesn't change that it directly contradicts the source material. I never vibe with works like that. Respecting the source material is my no. 1 priority in fan creations whether I'm creating them myself or engaging with others' works. If I published an original work, and someone contradicted it in their fan creations, I'd be livid. I want my vision of my works to be respected (...and I know I'm among many creators who feel that way.)

I have several other criticisms, but that one is the main reason.

(If anyone involved with the production reads this... know likes/dislikes are subjective. Considering the majority of the Reed900 fanbase seems to love your stuff, my 1 voice means practically nothing to you, so there's that. Your work is simply not for me and that's my right.)

#dbh #reed900 #gavin reed #rk900 #900gavin #gavin900 #900reed #g9 #detroit: become human #nines rk900 #Q&A #anonymous #*aydaptic

[seramilla]

Ohhh Vaggie learning she's really Carmillas daughter who never made it!!! Wait wait though. We can make this worse. Vaggie wasn't just any miscarried baby. What if Carmilla was pregnant when she died and Vaggie was that baby? Like Carmilla knew she was pregnant but had no clue what happened to her unborn third child, not until Vaggie is registering as her daughter...

"Will you leave us alone for a minute, Charlotte?"

Carmilla's strong hand comes to rest on Charlie's shoulder, where she's leaning over Vaggie's hospital bed. Charlie seems surprised at first, like she wants to protest, or say she doesn't want to leave her girlfriend's side. But something in Charlie's eyes says she knows it's for the best. The princess squeezes her hand, says, "I'll be right outside, baby," and gives her one final look before she exits the room, shutting the door quietly behind her.

Carmilla rolls the doctor's chair over to Vaggie's beside, taking a seat, and crosses her arms protectively over her chest. Vaggie's not sure if she's just contemplating, or if the crossing of her arms is a self-soothing behavior. Vaggie is normally exceptional at reading body language, but this woman has always been a mystery to her. At the very least, Carmilla seems particularly uncomfortable with this situation. She opens her mouth as if to speak. Several times, in fact, but nothing comes out, until Vaggie offers her an olive branch.

"It's okay, Ms. Carmine," Vaggie says, trying to sound as casual and non-threatening as possible to the disgruntled woman. "You seem like you have something important you want to tell me. I'd rather you not sugarcoat it and just say it."

Carmilla breathes deep, bending forward and putting her large hands behind her head, laughing under her breath. "Okay then..." she starts, sitting up again to look Vaggie straight in her one curious, golden eye. "What has Heaven told you about Exorcists?"

"Umm, nothing," Vaggie admits, not sure where Carmilla is going with this. "Just that we were 'specially selected' to serve under Adam, whatever that means."

"Do you have any recollection of your life on Earth before that point?"

"Again, no...none of us did. Why? Where are you going with this?"

Carmilla sighs again, visibly fighting with herself over how to phrase this next part.

"Lucifer informed me that the process for selecting Exorcists is quite...different than I had initially understood. I thought you were trained to be warriors; while that's true, you weren't selected for the role because of your ability. It has more to do with what you are."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Vaggie asks, getting visibly annoyed and even a little angry at that statement. What she is? She's not anything special. She'd been an angel, and a strong one, and that's why she'd been chosen. She's a little more cocksure than other angels, but all the Exorcists had to be. There hadn't been anything that different about her. She's just Vaggie. Charlie had said so.

Carmilla moves on to a seemingly unrelated topic, which only frustrates Vaggie more.

"Let me, um..." Carmilla says, trying to think of a different angle from which to approach this topic. "How do I put this?...Years ago, my daughters and I were killed in an accident. It was stupid, and entirely my fault. When we showed up here, I didn't know what was going on. I only knew that I had to protect them at all costs. It took a while, though, for my memories from my life to come back to me. But when they did...I suddenly remembered that when I died...I had been pregnant."

Vaggie is...perplexed, to say the least, about where the current conversation is headed. She feels sorry for Carmilla, sure, but she's not certain where the older woman thinks she's going with this.

"Umm, I'm sorry," Vaggie says, infusing her voice with as much sincerity and empathy that she can muster. She's still not sure what this has to do with her, but she's not an unsympathetic monster. "What...what happened to your baby?"

"I never knew," Carmilla said, and Vaggie can tell she's trying to hold back tears. "I assumed I...lost it, when we ended up here. As some sort of punishment. I was pregnant before I came here, and then when we manifested in Pentagram City, my child was just...gone. Like I'd never been pregnant in the first place."

"I'm sorry for your loss, Carmilla," Vaggie reiterates, but starting to get a little antsy from the tone of this conversation. "But what does that have to do with me?"

Carmilla stands, pacing the room back and forth, chewing lightly on one of her nails, obviously in distress about what she's going to say next.

"I tried to move on. I always hoped my baby was spirited away to Heaven. They were an innocent. They didn't deserve any of this." She gestures to the entirety of Hell with her strong hands, as if the reason should be obvious. "I made that assumption, and I chose to believe it. But then you showed up at my doorstep...fighting for freedom, for justice, for some kind of retribution for what you'd done to Charlotte's people. I didn't want to help at first. But something inside me told me I needed to."

She moves back to Vaggie's bedside, taking Vaggie's un-bandaged hand in hers, and squeezing it tightly.

"Then Lucifer called me, and said you were injured. You had lost a lot of blood, and the clock was ticking. Charlotte was trying desperately to find someone who was a match, anyone at all. I figured it couldn't hurt to see if me or my girls would be a fit...and Vaggie, the thing is...all of us were."

"So?" Vaggie responds, wishing Carmilla would just get to the fucking point. "Odds are someone down here would be, right? It's not that uncommon?"

"Vaggie..." Carmilla starts again, taking both of her hands in her large claws this time, squeezing them until they almost hurt. "Lucifer told me why. And also about what the Exorcists really are. What you really are. You're all children, Vaggie. Infants! All the Exorcists, every one of them, are souls that were never truly born... They never got to experience life on Earth as autonomous beings. That's why none of you remember. There's nothing to remember. For that, Heaven treated you wrong."

Vaggie's eye is wide. She's looking at the woman in front of her, hearing every word coming out of her mouth, but not able to focus, and not understanding any of it. No, that can't be true, she thinks. She'd been a person. She'd had a life. A family. Hadn't she? Why can't she remember?

"No," Vaggie says, shaking her head, refusing to believe a word of it. "That's not true, Carmilla!" She yanks her hand away from Carmilla's, covering her head with her hands, refusing to look at the grieving woman in front of her. "How dare you," Vaggie continues. "How dare you say such a thing. We were people! You don't get to take that away from me!"

"Vaggie, listen," Carmilla tries to place her hand on Vaggie's shoulder this time, but Vaggie pushes her away. Carmilla tries again, desperately needing the young girl to listen to what she has to say. She grasps Vaggie by the shoulders, and Vaggie fights it, but Carmilla forces her to sit still, forces her to face her, and not look away.

"Let me go!" Vaggie shouts. Carmilla doesn't.

"Listen to me, mija. Lucifer wasn't a match. He's always a match for the other fallen angels. But he wasn't for you. Because you're different. Yes, you're mortal, but you're different. You never tasted Earth's food, never walked on the same ground as other SInners, you are blameless. So you're different. Belphegor ran additional tests, to figure out why, and it's because..."

Carmilla lets her go, turning away from Vaggie, suddenly unable to look at her.

"Because why?" Vaggie shouts. "Fucking Hell, because why?! Just spit it out, Carmilla!"

Carmilla does, and when she turns to face Vaggie again, her face is soaked with salty tears.

"Because you're mine!"

#hazbin hotel #carmilla carmine #vaggie #charlie morningstar #lucifer morningstar #belphegor hazbin hotel #ask #anon #fan theories #vaggie carmilla related au #chaggie #y’all made me do this #it’s all your fault #adam hazbin hotel

[bcacstuff]

Anon that wrote to me, quoting several parts of a post about MPC on another blog and asking my view on it.

Sorry to keep you waiting as you wrote to me last week already. I actually wrote the majority of this (very long) post already last Friday in answer to what you sent me but given the events this weekend and I wanted to check and tweak the post still a little before publishing, I held of until now.

I chose to not post all the quotes and the link you gave me. I don't read that blog, but I took a look at the post and I can conclude that for someone bragging about her legal background (a lot) and values the legal facts, it's quite odd how she makes a number of assumptions and guesses of which most if not all, are incorrect. So I will note and correct them below. Sit tight and pour yourself a cup of coffee, or rather keep the pot at hand, as this will be a lengthy and detailed answer to your question(s).

Before I do however; A disclaimer: This post is in no way intended to criticize MPC, the organization nor the people involved. I merely try to answer my Anon with the facts that can be searched out and are, or have been, in the public domain. I do acknowledge the positive effects people have encountered from the program and surely appreciate a good deal MPC has done for charity and the health of their members. Putting here and there some side notes to it, doesn't make my appreciation less. They're merely side notes, while most of this post is about putting things in a historical context and perspective in the most correct way possible.

First of all, may I remind you of a post I posted 2 years ago. You can scroll along the hateful Anons I answered (actually triggered me to write that post) and read where I based my personal skeptical view on both businesses, MPC and GCC upon. It also shows how much of this post was already researched by me years ago.

In that post you can already see how intertwined both companies are. MPC and GCC both share the same officers as you can see from the screenshots on that post. The certain blogger only posted the initial registration of MPC in Delaware, but the corporation branched out first to California and consequently to Nevada. Nevada being the last and active branch, where the Californian branch is inactive. The initial filing will (must) always stay active as the original filed home company, being branched out means, and I quote from the opencorporates website:

A branch company is an out-of-jurisdiction registration of a company (in the US it is often referred to as a 'Foreign Corporation')

This in simple words means, My Peak Challenge LLC Nevada is a branch of the Delaware registration currently falling under jurisdiction of Nevada (the active branch). The screenshot this blogger shows is therefore outdated, blogger notes there's only one officer listed but not named and tells her Anon, and I quote:

pay away from your wallet to find out it's very probably SRH: I am not doing it for you.

Too bad she didn't pay away herself, or didn't look any further. As said, the company snapshot is outdated, Nevada is the current branch as you can see in this snapshot, see the Annual list (25 January 2024).

It also shows not ONE but TWO officers available. And I can tell you for sure without the need to log in or pay a fee that none of them is Sam R. Heughan, like this blogger claims. A 'very probably' assumption doesn't make a fact.

The Opencorporate Database made some changes to the website requiring to log in to access some data. Though this wasn't the case when I took a snapshot 2 years ago, clearly showing that not SRH is one of the officers of My Peak Challenge

Note: Exactly the same ones that are the officers for GGC!

(side note: AN being a managing member and Jennifer Zischke being the agent assisting taxpayers and small businesses with taxes in Boulder City NV and the surrounding communities)

If you do a search on Linkedin (I heard this blogger likes to analyse people this way) you can also find out that some employees are employed by MPC as well as GGC over the years

So I can understand the sentiment the Anon showed, and I quote:

Your statement of knowing what he's doing with his MPC, is questionable, post corporate change of MPC. It's not just his alone. MPC has sketchy history, since Alex's involvement, and the rumors, look more as truths that a good portion of the administrative costs go to Alex pre-whisky, for a working, guaranteed salary before sales came in.

As shown the businesses are visibly intertwined and there is no transparency as I noted in my initial post 2 years ago. As an LLC they have no obligation to open up finances, though not proven it sadly gives room for rumors and skepticism.

Blogger also fails to research the true history about My Peak Challenge, which Anon refers to as the post corporate change of MPC. Blogger states (quote):

Like it or not, Norouzi's involvement in MPC is a reality since at least its creation.

Like it or not, this is pertinent incorrect, and can be proven as incorrect statement.

The history or My Peak Challenge

The first mention of My Peak Challenge dates from at least before 31 December 2014, as a collaboration between the Welsh brothers Andy and Gareth Shears of Bear Strength, clothing company, and Outlander actor Sam Heughan. This tweet shows already in September 2014 the partnership between them

On 27 December 2014 this video is posted on YouTube

On 1st January 2015 an article in the Daily record is posted:

More Youtube videos were posted on 18 and 27 January 2015 by Everyday Athlete Gym, also mentioning My Peak Challenge

This clearly has been the first initiative for the My Peak Challenge project and program and there is no mentioning of AN, even more Sam didn't know AN by then. (as I will show later on her met AN only end 2015)

Also note the transparency here how much of the welcome pack will be donated. A clear figure we can rely on.

The initiative being repeated the next year in the same way and the same partners involved. You can find several articles online about it

In this article from 2 March 2016 we can read:

Note that the website is British (co.uk) and not an org or a US based one.

There's also a first flag for MPC - via Bear Strength and MPC on Twitter and FB, the public group page.

And there is a video posted on 28 January 2016 on FB

Note how still the same partners (Fight Camp and Bear Strength) are mentioned.

But here we can see a first involvement of AN, if you take a scroll on AN's IG, you will find this post from 14 February 2016

Involved in the production and directing the video. The picture shows them on the same couche the video was recorded for MPC 2016.

As we know Sam met AN through an interview and photoshoot for the magazine The Box, published in the January/February issue.

Some now very familiar names are listed in the colofon of the magazine

Also see the left bottom corner, the photographer we know now

All people Sam didn't knew before then, and all related to AN!

But not involved (yet) in the 2016 MPC program as you can see in this snapshot where he tells about MPC and it is even clearly shown how it started in 2014. Sam is wearing the Bear Strength T-shirt as well

So this is where it all began and AN learned about MPC from Sam.

So then it all changed for 2017 as we read on this blog from obsessivesassenach

Yes, this is where AN took over and the first registration of My Peak Challenge as a corporation was filed in Delaware on March 20, 2017

And from here we don't see any mention of Bear Strength anymore, as you can read above 'they changed shirt company to a US based one'. Fight Camp isn't mentioned anymore as well, though John Valbo stays on as a coach as we all know.

SRH was not an officer of this corporation, never was, this has been AN from the start of filing the corporation as a 'Managing Member'. (It's also possible to do a search on OpenCorporation Database on officers, here you can find Alexander Norouzi as officer of MPC, GGC and Latha Ur). Even more Sam has stated multiple times he doesn't get paid for MPC, it's even noted in the FAQ on their website. So the one making comments about how Sam can be free to invest his MPC earnings in his whisky business doesn't have a clue what she's talking about, not to mention other uneducated assumptions and comments.

On the same FAQ we can read:

How much of the membership fee is donated to charity? Fifty percent of net membership fees (after payment processing, membership gift, fulfillment and admin fees) is donated directly to our charity partners.

Note the 'net' membership fees. Yes, 50% and not 59% as Anon wrote, but it is easy to figure that this is just a typo by the Anon as the 9 and the 0 are next to each other on the keyboard. (e.g needlessly a bit very insulting to call Anon out for an 'uneducated bigot' and 'like a demented Asian astrologist suggestion') if I dare say so.

Quoting more of the Anon on this bloggers post:

it's on Sam, who according to original members, basically sold MPC control, in 2017.

Though the wording of the Anon can not legally hold, the sentiment however is very plausible. One can argue and make guesses why Bear Strength all of the sudden was out of the loop. Especially as it was a successful program and it's not really likely a company like Bear Strength would bow out that easily and totally voluntarily. This tweet clearly looks like Bear Strength surely would have liked to be involved for another year

It leaves enough room for the sort of sentiment (not a fact, but a sentiment) the Anon makes. As curiously Bear Strength completely disappears from the stage as soon as AN gets involved and MPC turns into an LLC registered in the US with just AN's name on it.

From here on we know the history, MPC turned from a project into a business based in the US with gradually more paid employees (of which a number are employed by GGC as well), donating to charity partners they choose each year.

It's also notable how MPC since then has employees, before in this post I showed Joshua C. linkedin profile shows being involved since 2018, Jordana B. has been involved from the start of the US LLC and Cheryl A (AN's (ex)wife) since 2021. On FB we see the magazine's last post dates from November 2019.

Last but not least, to put things just a bit more in 'context', another interesting quote from the obsessivesassenach blog is

My Peak Challenge and MPC were officially registered trademarks. No one, not even Peakers, could use those two terms in any public way. Not even for fundraising or naming their little private facebook groups. If a Peaker wanted to raise money for Bloodwise, UK, great, awesome, wonderful, but don’t use the branded and registered and trademarked MPC/My Peak Challenge in your pursuits. It belongs to the business.

Not entirely true, but yes, from there on My Peak Challenge and MPC were officially registered trademarks. But not owned by the business! The trademarks 'My Peak Challenge', MPC', and 'PEAKER' are all surprisingly owned by Sam Heughan as an individual for the US and European market (including the UK)

Note that the first filings dates of My Peak Challenge and MPC are February 2016 and the first use date of the mark is stated at least as early as 12/31/2014

An example of the earliest use date is given as specimen where we can still see the Bear Strength MPC T-shirt

The attorney filing the trademark is the known attorney involved in other trademark filings from GGC

So it doesn't leave us much room or thoughts on who told Sam to file these trademarks. Though I'm glad he still is the sole owner of the trademarks.

Ergo, the answers this blogger gave to Anon are based on, to say it mildly, sloppy and incomplete research and incorrect assumptions presented without the context. I do not intend to attack her in any way though, but I dislike rewriting history based on assumptions and felt the need to put out the correct version.

#Youtube #my peak challenge #mpc #history #anon ask #answered

[seasonsbloom]

bad habit part iii (hangman)

part i, part ii

pairing ; hangman x female!reader

synopsis ; the moment you meet hangman, you know you hate him. and then suddenly, you’re not so sure anymore.

wc ; 23k; yes you read that right you can’t be more confused than me idk either and i wrote it in six days

warnings ; angst, explicit language, mentions of alcohol consumption, mentions of previous character death, explicit sexual activity (Explicit sexual content (oral f and m receiving, p in v, like one sentence about choking but not rlly, some dom/sub elements, a little bit of degradation and praise kink), age gap, inexperienced reader, more angst, sappiness, feelings so many feelings all the feelings

note ; i don’t know what to say, this is literally INSANE i’m feeling INSANE this was a fever dream i wrote 8k words today none of this makes sense but it’s OVER IT’S DONE IT’S FINISHED anyways this isn’t proofread but i love you all besties and girlies and babes pls don’t hate it

also this would never have been possible without sol aka desertsagecelestial the best lines in this whole thing are credit to her sol i love you hand in marriage NOW

Hangman doesn’t lose.

And people call him cocky, arrogant, conceited… but the thing is, it’s the truth. He’s not exaggerating. He just really is that good.

When Hangman wants something, he gets it. Promotions, missions, girls, difficult to obtain first editions of Spiderman comic books… Hangman figures out a way.

Of course, it wasn’t always like that. Back when Jake was younger, when he was the invisible kid at the back of the class who nobody wanted to play with, he had to fight tooth and nail for everything. When his father said he’d never amount to anything, it took Jake years to push back, to say no, you’re wrong. But he did, eventually, joined the Navy, graduated top of his class at Top Gun, became someone people knew, someone people looked at, someone who wanted to be seen.

So Hangman doesn’t lose because Jake learned how to fight.

This situation, then, is a complete novelty.

Jake rips his helmet off, ears still ringing with the roaring of the engine, heart still hammering the way it always does after a landing. He’s half adrenaline, the highest of high, half jitters. Head still firmly stuck in the clouds. Only this time, there’s the unfamiliar, bitter taste of failure on his tongue. 

He doesn’t know whether to be embarrassed or surprised.

Captain Mitchell, having climbed out of his own plane, approaches with a frown. Just a few steps away, by the entrance to the hangar, where the Californian sun is flooding the asphalt with golden light, a throng of the other pilots has formed.

If Jake even sees Rooster, he might start throwing punches. He’s toeing a precarious line here - ascension or plummeting.

“What was that?” Maverick wants to know, fiddling with his helmet’s clasp. “You flew straight into my line of fire, Hangman.”

So, yeah, maybe Jake just got shot down in less than a minute. So, yeah, maybe he made a rookie mistake. So, yeah, maybe Jake is having a really bad day.

“I still maintain that he got dumped last night,” Coyote says. There’s no malice to the words, but Jake wouldn’t be surprised if he and Payback had some money running on this.

“I did not get dumped,” Jake growls for what feels like the fiftieth time. Seriously, his tongue is starting to go numb.

“Oh,” Phoenix says, “you totally got dumped.”

Now that might be actual malice. Phoenix decided last night that whatever had happened between you and Jake was clearly his fault, and she was therefore firmly and squarely on your side.

In Jake’s opinion, there are several things wrong with that assessment.

First of all, there shouldn’t even be any sides. It’s not like your circle of friends has to pick teams in a divorce. Secondly, even though she constantly complains about him, he’s known Phoenix for years. She met you less than a month ago. Shouldn’t she be in his corner? And then lastly and most importantly… Jake has no idea what the hell he did wrong.

It’s all pretty unfair.

“I told you that I didn’t get dumped,” Jake repeats, forming the words slowly and carefully in the hopes that they will sound more convincing than he knows them to be. “We weren’t dating.”

And he can’t explain it, that clenching in his stomach, that lump in his throat. He can’t explain any of it, except that it hurts in a way that’s unfamiliar, in a way that’s unwelcome.

Man. He really needs a drink.

“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”

That’s Rooster, definitely. Jake tilts his head back towards the high, high ceilings of the hangar to avoid catching the other pilots’ eyes. 

Lord, give me strength, he thinks.

“Don’t quote Shakespeare at me.”

“Wow, you know Shakespeare?” Phoenix says immediately. “I didn’t know you could read, Bagman.”

Before Jake can retort something, Maverick steps between them.

“Hangman,” he says, and something about his voice is severe enough that Jake snaps to attention. “Is that true?”

“Is what true?”

He’s one hundred percent playing for time here. Sue him. He needs to come up with an excuse.

“Did you mess up because you were thinking about a girl?”

And the thing is, Jake wants to say no. He wants to say, No, Sir, I had a bad night. He wants to say No, Sir, the sun was in my eye. He wants to say, No, Sir, I was dodging a bird strike.

But every word turns to vapor on his tongue. He can’t get anything out.

And so he just stands there, blinking like an idiot at his instructor.

Because the truth is, Jake can’t for the life of him remember what he was thinking about as he went up on the plane. Considering you’ve been on his mind pretty much non-stop since you met, and it’s only gotten worse since you stormed up to him at the Hard Deck last night, it’s not unlikely that he really was knee-deep in a train of thought revolving around you.

You’ve been haunting him. A specter squeezing into the cockpit with him. A ghost sneaking into his bed. Riding shotgun in his car.

You’re everywhere, at the bottom of each glass, soaring in the skies, under his skin, in his bloodstream. He can’t shake you.

There’s real disappointment on Maverick’s face, and Jake’s stomach drops. The older man sighs, running a hand through his hair.

“You guys…” he says softly. “This isn’t a joke. Up there, you can’t be distracted, not by girls or boys or anything juvenile like that. You can’t be distracted by anything. This is life or death. Death, do you get that? I won’t have it. And this goes for all of you.”

He makes sure to let his pointing finger wander over all of them before he storms off, the door slamming behind him.

An awkward silence spreads among them, punctured only by the shuffling of feet and somebody clearing their throat.

“Well,” Rooster says finally, slapping Jake on the back with enough force it almost buckles his knees as he makes for the door. “Thanks for that, Hangman.”

Jake should probably say something, but his mind is wandering again. He’s thinking of you, standing in a sea of broken glass, Mojito staining the front of your shirt, eyes shuttered and forlorn in a way he hadn’t seen before… 

He gets the feeling now.

“Jesus,” Coyote says, stepping up beside Jake. “The way Captain Mitchell is talking, you’d think he isn’t hooking up with Penny on the down-low.”

Something about Coyote’s voice tells Jake he feels bad for him. He doesn’t like the idea of that, not one bit, but he also can’t really find it within himself to do something about it right now.

“Mitchell and Penny are hooking up?” Jake asks, genuinely surprised.

Bob, passing by them, frowns. “Hangman, you really aren’t very perceptive, are you?”

It’s so out of character that for a moment, Jake considers if he’s somehow managed to go through a black hole and ended up smack dab in a parallel universe where Bob, of all people, goes around insulting others. Where Jake, eternal bachelor, famed ladies’ man, messes up flight maneuvers because he’s too busy thinking about a girl.

“Did… did Bob just shade you?” Coyote asks.

For a moment, Jake seriously considers hitting his head against a wall.

So, yeah, maybe Jake is having a really, really, really horrible day. So much for never losing.

+

Something’s off.

First of all, Penny’s never invited you to dinner. Second of all, this is decidedly not the kind of establishment you were expecting.

Penny seems like a burger and fries in her car sort of girl. Maybe a few bottles of beer or a couple of milkshakes to wash it all down. The little restaurant twinkling golden on the beachfront is entirely out of character. 

Narrow round tables are covered in red and white checkered tablecloths, fairy lights are strung to the rafters, and behind the floor-to-ceiling windows, boats bob up and down on the waves. It’s a tiny place, cramped but charming. Upbeat Jazz plays from invisible speakers, and a smiling waitress leads you past what seems to be only couples on anniversary dates.

“Here you go,” she says as she seats you at your table, right at the glass front, and hands you each a menu. “I’ll come to take you guys’ order in a minute.”

You sit in the plush chair, frowning. Penny is perusing the menu like nothing’s wrong.

“Oooh, Lasagna al Forno… that sounds good, doesn’t it?”

“Penny,” you interrupt, not even opening your own menu. “What’s going on?”

Penny barely glances up at you. “You needed to get out of the house, sweetie.”

And she’s not wrong. You spent the last week since your… altercation with Hangman curled up in your bed, letting the anxiety eat away at you. The walls of your room closing in on you, the weight on your chest pushing you down until it practically molded you to the mattress.

Everywhere you looked, the world had grown teeth.

“I’m fine,” you say, but the words sound empty even to your ears.

Penny doesn’t indulge you.

“No, you’re not,” she says, voice firm. “You’re miserable.”

When you ended things with Hangman, you didn’t think much about whether you were making the right decision. You just wanted out. You wanted it to end, so scared of what would happen if it didn’t, if you let it continue, if you dipped even deeper into that pool. So scared that it might start meaning more than what it already did, that you would put your heart on something that was bound to end anyways.

Because guys like Hangman… handsome guys, confident guys, guys that hang around bars with toothpicks in their mouths… guys like that break you apart without a second thought.

And you’re already broken enough.

“I’m fine,” you reiterate and finally open your menu, staring at the entrées without seeing a thing. “I’m glad things are over between Hangman and me. It’s better this way.”

Penny is quiet for a moment, then she says, “Sweetie, you need to talk to him.”

“No, I do not,” you answer immediately. This is not the first time you’ve had this conversation. “What could I possibly have to talk to him about?”

“Oh, just… maybe you could explain to him just why you decided to break both your hearts, I don’t know.”

You purse your lips. “Penny. Hangman doesn’t care. He said so himself. This didn’t mean anything to him.”

And it’s so stupid. But his words replay in your mind like a broken record, like an endless loop, again and again. This was nothing. The cold upward turn of his mouth as he said it. Calm, collected. Unfazed.

You’re an idiot. You spent a few weeks flirting with a guy who wanted to get into your pants, and you made it into something it never was - made it big, made it important, made it matter, when really, to him, it had only ever been a game from the very beginning.

And now he’s off, somewhere, flying his planes, living bigger than you ever will, dreaming better, and you’re left on the ground, scrambling to pick up the pieces of yourself.

It’s pathetic.

But Penny looks at you from across the edge of her menu and says, “Pete says he’s been fucking up majorly during training. He’s distracted.”

It gives you pause for a moment and your heart - that stupid, incorrigible thing that never learns, never lets go, that latches onto everything - stutters in your chest.

“Huh?” you ask eloquently.

Penny jerks her head. “This wasn’t nothing to him.”

The smiling waitress returns with a notepad, and Penny orders lasagna and a bottle of wine. You settle for some kind of risotto, mainly because it’s the first thing your eyes land on.

After she’s left, you take a deep breath.

“It…” You hesitate. It’s so difficult to say it, to admit it, but you think if you don’t get the words out now, you never will. “It didn’t, Penny. I’m not… I’m not really someone people remember. I’m just… I don’t know. I’m just me. This didn’t matter to him. I didn’t matter to him.”

And Penny’s face softens. All her irritation of the past few weeks, the constant nagging when you came over for the tutoring session, the stream of texts asking you to come over for drinks, when she knocked on your door earlier, uninvited, and forced you into the shower, into a dress, into her car, it all just melts away. There’s nothing there now, not even pity, nothing there but genuine, real compassion, and you think you’re going to cry right here, in the middle of this restaurant…

“Oh, sweetie,” she says, reaching across the table to cup both your hands in hers. “You’re worth so much more than you think. When will you finally realize that?”

And it’s like this: since your mother’s death, you’ve just been so horribly, achingly lonely. The sort of loneliness that goes bone deep, that burrows into your bloodstream. You’ve drifted through the world unmoored, untethered, not belonging anywhere. Sure, you met people, but they disappeared from your life as quickly as they entered it. You let yourself become invisible, see-through like cellophane.

But with Penny, it’s like she sees you. Really sees you. In a way you don’t think anybody except your mother ever did, right down to your insecurities and flaws.

And somehow, with Hangman, it was the same. He saw something there with you, saw what you needed and what you wanted before you even really knew it yourself. And you don’t know if that’s just something about him, something he can do with any girl, or if it’s something special, if he understood you, all you know is that it terrified you half to death.

There’s something reassuring about remaining in the dark.

It’s a good thing the waitress comes back with a bottle of wine and a bread basket because you’re pretty sure you would have started sobbing otherwise.

You think you’re going to thank Penny, eat your food, try and enjoy the evening, and then maybe crawl into bed at the end of the night and cry a little more. Just… make the best of it.

But Penny glances over your shoulder, and something mischievous passes over her features. Suddenly, you feel a little sick.

She rises from her seat, and by the time you’ve glanced over your shoulder, they’re already at your table.

“Hi, Pete,” Penny says, grinning. “Hi, Hangman.”

You’re doing your very, very best not to look at him. Your stomach is turning. Perspiration builds up lightning-quick on the inside of your palms.

“Hi, Penny,” the older pilot you’ve never talked to but have seen hanging around the bar several times echoes, giving her a soft smile. He greets you by name, and you’re so stunned, so excruciatingly uncomfortable, that you can’t even react.

Pete manhandles Hangman into Penny’s vacated chair with two hands on his shoulders, and then you don’t really have a choice but to stare at him. He’s right there, in your line of sight.

Hangman looks as shocked as you feel, but there’s something else, too. He’s still handsome, of course, still tanned and blond and perfect, but something seems to have shifted. His hair is just a little less tidy, the bags beneath his eyes a little more pronounced. For the first time ever, you see him in civilian clothes - a t-shirt and jeans, something softer around the edges that makes your insides clench.

All initial instincts of flight bleed right out of you. It’s half hope, half fear, that keeps you rooted to your chair.

“You said this was a lesson,” Hangman says to his superior, looking, for lack of a better word, desolate.

“It is,” Pete answers, patting his shoulder before withdrawing.

And Penny says, “Listen, I know the owner. If you guys leave before finishing your dinner, there’ll be hell to pay.”

She points at Hangman. “I know your boss.”

Then she points at you. “I am your boss.”

And that’s final. Penny has a way of getting what she wants.

Before she leaves, she leans down to hug you and whispers softly, “Sweetie, you don’t need to go out of this evening dating him. You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to. But I think he deserves an explanation, at the very least.”

She draws back, smiles at the two of you as if she’s just performed some great, benevolent act, and then disappears with Captain Mitchell.

You half expect Hangman to get up and leave the moment the two are out of earshot. You half expect yourself to do the same.

But you both stay where you are, at that table, actively avoiding the other’s eyes.

The waitress comes to drop off your food. Hangman pours both of you a glass of wine and then downs his in one go.

Finally, he sighs like he just lost some internal fight and says, “I can’t believe they totally just parent-trapped us.”

“Parent-trapped?” you repeat, a little dumbly.

“Yeah, like… tried to set us up. You know, like in the cinematic milestone with Lindsey Lohan?”

You nod.

For a moment, there’s nothing but silence. The gears in your head are turning on overdrive. You feel near frantic with nerves.

“Personally,” you say, your mouth moving before you’re really aware that you’re speaking, “my favorite bad matchmaker is Emma Woodhouse.”

Hangman frowns. “Who’s Emma Woodhouse?”

That has you gaping at him. 

“You don’t know Emma? By Jane Austen?”

“Jane Austen?” Hangman takes a sip of his water. “Is that the one with the Pride & Prepaid something? Where everybody goes to each other’s houses and just talks for hours?”

You’re going to have an aneurism. 

“Emma,” you say, now having trouble controlling your voice, “is one of the greatest pieces of literary fiction ever created. And you mean Pride & Prejudice.”

“Really?” He leans back and looks at you. “So what’s it about, then?”

“Well,” you launch into an explanation, jumping at the chance not just to fill this horrible silence but also to talk about one of your favorite books, and the words just seem to flow from you now, “Emma Woodhouse is this really pretty, really rich young Lady, yeah? And she decides that she’s not gonna get married, so instead, she tries to find a husband for her poor friend Harriet. So she wants to set her up with Mr. Elton, only it turns out Mr. Elton is actually into Emma, and at some point, they’re alone in a carriage, and he proposes marriage to her, and it’s super awkward, but then Emma thinks she’s in love with Frank Churchill who also turns out to not be for her and in the end, she realizes she’s really been in love with Mr. Knightley all along, who’s like a really close family friend, only now Harriet might be in love with Mr. Knightley, too, and they have a bit of a falling out and….”

Much too late, you stop yourself. The embarrassment comes belatedly, but it settles all the stronger.

Hangman is looking at you with a somewhat dazed expression. You can’t believe you just said all that.

You drag your fork through the mess on your plate, cheeks hot, and round it off by saying, “Anyway, it’s really about Emma realizing the errors of her ways and becoming more considerate of others, and it’s a commentary on class and privilege and all. It’s pretty good.”

“Okay,” Hangman says, and you have never wanted the powers of teleportation more than you do at this moment.

The embarrassment is going to eat you whole.

After another moment, Hangman says, “That just sounds like the plot of Clueless.”

You freeze, fork halfway to your mouth. 

“You… you know Clueless?”

One of Hangman’s eyebrows raises nearly to touch his hairline. “Do I know Clueless?” he repeats. “Is Cher Horowitz one of the best cinematic characters ever created? Of course, I know Clueless, I’m not a barbarian.”

You stare at him until a big blop of risotto rice lands on the tablecloth.

“Oh, I…” you stutter, moving to mop the spilled food up with your napkin. “Clueless is like, one of my favorite movies ever.”

“Yeah?” He grins, seemingly relaxing just a little bit. “Mine too. So, did Jane Austen steal the plot?”

You can’t help it - it punches a laugh out of you.

“No, it… Clueless was based on Emma. The novel came out like… 180 years earlier, I think.”

“Right.” Hangman nods. “Well, if it inspired Clueless, it must be a pretty good book then.”

You’re almost sure this is the longest conversation you’ve ever had without Hangman trying to get into your pants. It also might be the longest conversation you’ve ever had about your interests without someone shutting you down.

You’re developing a headache.

“Listen,” Hangman says suddenly, leaning forward in his chair. Something in his face has gone serious. “I understand what happened. I was pushing for something you didn’t want, and I pushed too hard, and you put a stop to it. That’s fine. It’s good, really. I respect it.”

And that’s not it at all. But you don’t know how to tell him that he’s got it all wrong, that it’s not that you didn’t want it. It’s that you wanted it too much. Wanted him so much it felt dangerously close to falling for him. Wanted him so much you knew you were giving him the power not just to see you, but to leave you.

He takes a deep breath.

“That doesn’t mean we have to avoid each other. Let’s just… let’s just be friends, okay?”

You feel like somebody punched you in the face.

“Friends?” you repeat softly.

“Friends,” Hangman confirms. He’s nodding his head.

Penny told you to explain it to him, made it seem like an imperative, but as you sit there, you realize she was wrong. You realize it doesn’t matter. Not to him, at least. Those words in the bar cross your mind again. It was nothing. His indifference to all that emotion you carry everywhere you go.

And you’re so angry with him, even if you know that you’re the one who brought this down on you, you’re the one who decided to end it. So angry you want to take him by the shoulders and shake him until that mask he carries finally slips off, until you get to see what lies beneath that.

Because the truth is, beneath the anger, beneath the frustration, you’ve spent the past week thinking of him. In bed, in the shower, at the gas station. And you missed him, even if that doesn’t make any sense.

And if you don’t tell him the truth, if you just let him believe his sexual advances were just a little too much for you instead of revealing the real depth of your feelings… well, then maybe you can at least preserve the last shreds of your dignity.

Besides… maybe, you think, it’s better to get any piece of him than nothing at all. Better to be friends than never to see him again. At least this way, you’d be safe.

“Yeah,” you say, and your voice sounds far away. “Yeah, friends. Okay.”

Hangman smiles, and it’s a real, genuine smile as opposed to his usual smirks. His eyes go all crinkly, and you clutch your fork tighter.

And after that, it’s… nice. You find out, to your own horror, that you actually do like Hangman. He’s funny and witty, and when he isn’t trying to fuck you, you realize you actually have things in common.

Together, you empty the bottle of wine and have another glass each, finish your meals, and share a plate of tiramisu that seems to melt on your tongue.

You squabble about the bill, but finally, Jake concedes and lets you pay, even though he looks like he’s about to start muttering in anger.

You like it. It kind of feels like finally being on even ground after weeks of fighting an uphill battle.

When you step out of the restaurant, leaving the Jazz and the smell of pasta behind, you pause. It’s a bit of an unsettling realization to come to, but you don’t want the night to end.

Hangman stops a pace or two behind you, tipping his head back into the breeze.

He looks younger like this, out of his uniform, with a blush painted on his cheeks by the wine, with the wind tousling his hair. All his edges blurred into something almost gentle. Boyish.

Calling him Hangman seems wrong.

Jake, you think, and something deep inside of you aches. Jake.

Smiling, he turns to you. “Do you need a ride home?”

You don’t trust your own voice, so you just nod.

“Alright.” He starts towards his car, then immediately stops. “Actually… do you mind taking a walk on the beach? I think I should sober up a little more.”

No, you don’t mind one bit, and that’s the danger of it all.

“Fine,” you agree. You mean for it to be clipped, but instead, it comes out like a squeak.

Jake, who doesn’t seem to notice your tone, smiles and leads the way down a trodden path that takes you by the restaurant’s trash cans and then onto the sand of the beach.

It’s colder here, enough that you wrap your arms around your torso to leech off your own body warmth.

Jake is already halfway out of his jacket before you begin protesting.

“Come on,” he says. “I know you don’t believe it, but my mother actually did raise me to be a gentleman. I keep telling you.”

So you let him drape the jacket over your shoulders, and suddenly you’re enveloped in his scent, and your mouth is dry, and your stomach clenches.

“Thank you,” you say quietly.

You walk along the beach for a while in perfect silence. The wind dances through your hair, the air smells crisp and fresh and salty, and the waves roll in from the sea, white foam that nearly licks at your feet.

It’s peaceful. Serene. It’s dangerous because it feels so much like a date, and you want to hold Jake’s hand so bad, and he’s almost devastatingly handsome in this light, but you ignore it. Look straight ahead and pretend you’re not feeling it.

Finally, Jake stops and sits down in the sand. Hesitantly, you follow his example, pulling your knees up to your chest.

“What did you want to be when you were a kid?” Jake asks, staring out at the waves.

You frown. “Seriously?”

“What? That’s a normal question people ask their friends.”

You don’t know about that, but you do answer, “I don’t know. I don’t really remember?”

“Not at all?”

You pause. It’s almost too easy to be truthful with him, and with a start, you realize that you trust him.

God, you must be an idiot.

“I used to…” You clear your throat. “Well, there was this house on my street back in Seattle. A house with a blue door. I used to dream about buying it one day and living there with my husband, and my kids, and our dog.”

You half expect him to laugh at you, call you childish or naive, or a romantic. But he doesn’t. He just listens, face utterly void of judgment, and your stomach swoops.

“Do you still want that?” he asks.

“I don’t know,” you answer truthfully. “But it was the first real dream of my life. I don’t know if you ever really grow out of those.”

Jake nods. “Yeah, you probably don’t, right?” He’s quiet for a moment, and then he continues, “Mine was becoming spiderman. Honestly, I’d still give my right arm for it.”

And it actually makes you laugh. An honest, genuine sound that echoes across the beach.

Jake’s smile is brilliant in the night. 

“I like that sound,” he says softly. “Do it again.”

To cover up the feeling rising up in you - something you’d describe as bashfulness, if that wasn’t so disgustingly ridiculous, something that warms you inside out - you feign nonchalance, say, “Well, tell me something funny, then.”

“Something funny, yeah?” He leans back in the sand with a sigh as you nod, balancing his weight on his elbows, and turns his head up at the night sky like he’ll find inspiration up there. “I thought Star Wars was real for like… an embarrassingly long time.”

“What?”

“Yeah, like, full on.” He nods, face almost solemn. “I looked Han Solo up in history books and shit, I got so confused when I couldn’t find him. I was just like, do people know about this, like, they have to know about this, like about little green Yoda guys and….”

You can’t help it. You start dissolving into laughter halfway through, and Jake looks up at you, grinning.

“Are you serious?” you ask through your laughter. The thought of little Jake thumbing through history books frantically as he searches for Han Solo - who you just know was his childhood idol - is almost too much.

He shrugs. “That’ll be my secret. Did make you laugh, though.”

“Yeah, you did,” you admit, and then you let yourself fall into the sand beside him. It’s cool, grains catching in your hair, and you’re pretty sure you’ll spend the rest of your week trying to get them out again, but it’s worth it for the view. 

The night sky stretches endless above you. You’re close enough to the sea and far enough from San Diego that the light pollution has bled out here, that you can see the stars twinkling up there. A million miles away, yet so close you think you could pluck one if you just stretched out your arm.

“Maybe I should be a teacher,” you say, and then freeze up. Because, what the fuck? Where did that come from?

You’ve never even thought about that, but it just burst out of you, like something you’ve been carrying in your chest your whole life.

Awash in the surprise, you can do nothing but blink for a while.

“A teacher?” Jake repeats. “What subject?”

“English,” you say immediately. Okay, well. Guess we’re having epiphanies about ourselves then. “It’s just that… well, I… I like tutoring Amelia. It’s my favorite time of the week, I think. And I… I love all those books other people are forced to read. I even like Catcher in the Rye, can you believe it?”

“Even Catcher in the Rye?” Jake says, mocking you by letting out a scandalized gasp and slapping a hand over his mouth. You laugh and shove at his shoulder. 

Grinning, he says, “I think you’d be a great teacher.”

And your heart beats faster. “Yeah?”

He nods. “I think you’d be great at anything you put your mind to, really. But I saw you talk about that book earlier… it’s like you were glowing. You love that. People are always best when they do what they love.”

It’s unexpectedly wise. It knocks the wind right out of you.

You need to take a moment to collect yourself, avoid the intent gaze of his eyes that makes it feel almost like he knows you.

“Have you always wanted to be a pilot, then?” you ask.

Jake shrugs, a movement you feel more than see, his arm moving up where he’s pressed against yours, shoulder digging a deeper furrow into the sand.

“Maybe. I guess.” You think he won’t say anything else, but after another moment, he goes on, “My father is a general, you know? It’s sort of a family tradition.”

You didn’t know that, but it sort of makes sense. Another shade to color Jake Seresin in with.

“He must be really proud of you,” you say, thinking of your own father, who hasn’t called in months.

Jake is quiet for so long that you glance over to check that he hasn’t fallen asleep. His eyes are open, though, and his throat bobs as he swallows.

“Not really,” he says, finally. “My father always thought I was a disappointment. I remember one time in middle school, there was this boy… He was a real bully. He liked to slam me into lockers, and one time he broke my nose. My dad just said it was my own fault for not fighting back.”

His jaw moves as he grinds his teeth.

“Nothing I do ever really… is enough for him.”

There’s something in his voice you never thought Jake capable of: defeat.

Your chest aches with it.

“Not even when you graduated Top Gun?” you ask carefully. “You were top of your class, right?”

Jake shrugs again. “He didn’t come to the ceremony. Mom said he was sick, but… I don’t think that’s true.” He exhales, and it’s a shaky, fragile sound. “Sometimes… sometimes I think he’d only ever be proud of me if I got shot down. If I died in combat or something.”

Your reaction is visceral. Heart plummeting, stopping, arm jerking against him.

“Don’t…” you begin, then shake your head vehemently. “Don’t say that, please.”

He glances at you, looking almost surprised at your outburst.

“It’s not…” You hesitate. “It’s not worth it. Not if he doesn’t recognize it already.”

“Recognize what?” 

And Jake won’t take his eyes away from you. You feel like you’re going to fall apart.

“That you’re… that you’re a good pilot.”

You swallow, immediately embarrassed by your own words. You can’t even look him in the eyes.

Jake raises an eyebrow. “You’ve never even seen me fly.”

“It doesn’t matter,” you say, and mean every word, “I know.”

It’s not enough. It’s way too much.

It doesn’t say half of the things you want to tell him, at the same time as it reveals much more than you want it to.

And you remember: It was nothing. Shrugging off everything he made you feel. Laughing as if nothing had happened. Telling you without as many words that you were just another conquest, just another girl in a line of girls, nothing special about you, nothing important, nothing relevant.

You want to hate him, yet something about Jake makes it impossible. Something about him keeps drawing you back. Even after everything that’s happened, wanting him is like a bad habit you can’t shake.

You can’t explain that.

But Jake reaches out to you and slots his fingers into the spaces between your own. Squeezes once.

Your fear got in your way. Even now, it chokes all words from you.

But that’s fine. You think, somehow, Jake understands anyway.

He’s quiet for a while and then says, “Why are you here, then? In Fightertown, I mean.”

It’s a good question, one you don’t know how to answer. 

Finally, you say, “My mother died.” 

And then you freeze. It’s the first time you’ve ever said it out loud, and suddenly it’s real in a way it wasn’t before. 

Haltingly, almost shell-shocked by it, you continue, “And it… it made me realize that I’d built my whole life around her. And when she was gone… well, that life was gone, too. Like that dream about the house with the blue door… It didn’t seem to matter anymore. So I just left. I just… drove until I got to Fightertown, and then I decided to stay because… I don’t know. There was nowhere else to go, anyway.”

Tears pool in your eyes, and you concentrate hard to blink them away.

“And do you like it here?”

You’re so grateful. You’re so grateful he doesn’t tell you that he’s sorry about your mother, that he doesn’t judge you for not having had a life apart from her. That he doesn’t ask about your father or your friends. So grateful that somehow, again, he seems to understand what you need: Not the past, but the present.

“Yeah,” you say and are surprised to find you’re telling the truth. “Yeah, it’s not so bad.”

Then you glance at him. “Unless the most obnoxious naval aviator in the history of the world almost knocks you over in a bar, of course.”

Jake laughs, a carefree, bellowing sound that has you feeling a little bit like you’re soaring.

“Only because you’re so pretty, sweetheart,” he says, winking at you.

And it’s toeing the line. Not really friendly, not really platonic, but so Hangman, so Jake, that you don’t even mind.

You smile back, and then you turn your eyes up to that sky, to those stars, and listen to the whisper of the waves, holding tight to Jake’s hand.

+

The thing about fear is that it’s not a one-time situation. Overcoming it once doesn’t get rid of it - it just goes stagnant for a while, lulls you into a false sense of security, and then it pounces again.

So walking into the Hard Deck is a little easier, but the rest of it is just as hard. Reassuring yourself that you’re wanted here, that you’re not intruding, that nobody will look at you weirdly.

Hangman and Phoenix invited you. Separately, you tell yourself. You know the owner. You’re gonna be okay.

You can’t spot any familiar faces when you finally get the courage to make it from the front porch into the actual bar. It’s all just strangers mingling.

Mostly looking for a little bit of liquid courage and something to occupy your time with until the others arrive, you make your way to the bar and flag down one of the unfamiliar bartenders to order a cocktail.

After, you turn to people watch. They’re everywhere, laughing and flirting, people lining up shots in neat rows on bar tops, people knocking back shots, people playing darts and pools and footsie, people laughing with their friends or at their friends. It’s almost shocking, all that display of life. It makes you think of yourself, alone in your room for days, weeks, years. How much did you miss?

“Can I buy you another?”

The guy is handsome. That’s the first thing you notice. Not Hangman-level handsome, but… that’s not the sort of thoughts you should be having anyway. Curls, kind eyes, a dimple on his cheek. Cute. The kind of guy you might have stared at in the supermarket a few months ago, would have lost your mind over if he had smiled at you in the frozen foods section.

“Oh,” you say as he slides up to you, folding and bracing his arms on the tabletop. “Uhm…”

“No strings attached,” he promises, holding up his hands like he wants you to check that he’s not carrying any weapons. “You just looked lonely.”

You laugh, feeling a little bit out of your depth. “Did I really?”

He nods, eyes twinkling, and says, “Yep. I could tell all the way from the other end of the bar.”

That’s probably not a good sign, you think. Gotta start working on my poker face.

“I’m Jason, by the way,” the guy introduces himself, offering you a hand.

This feels a lot like a precipice.

Part of you knows you should give in. Let this guy buy you a drink, let him flirt with you, let him take you home. Get an ego boost and have a nice time. This, you think, was what Penny meant all the time she talked about getting the sexual frustration out of your system. 

Not whatever the fuck that twisted thing you and Hangman had going on was. Definitely not that, because it didn’t get a single thing out of your system. In fact, it only ended up injecting more into your system. More worries, more insecurities, more pain.

And it’s over, you know it is. He listened when you asked him to stop, and he’s made it abundantly clear he’s not interested in you, that you were less than a fling, that you were just a possibility that never came true. That you were nothing. And yet… you’re not ready to let it go. To let go of whatever sliver of hope you’ve held onto.

But then you think of Jake at the restaurant, how easily he’d brushed it all off, how he’d said friends. He hadn’t wanted to talk about it, not really. He’d just wanted to get it out of the way. And he’s so confident, so sure of what he wants, and if he wanted you… then he would have gone after you by now.

You know he would have.

So you smile and say, “Are you a naval aviator?”

Jason seems surprised by that, but he nods his head. “Yes, Ma’am. Just graduated Top Gun a few weeks ago.”

“Oh no,” you say. “That’s not good.”

Jason laughs. “Not the reaction I usually get. Are you not a big fan of pilots, then?”

“Not particularly,” you say. “I don’t think they’re good for my mental health. Or the environment.” 

And then he laughs, and his dimple distracts you, and it’s light and not heavy, and it feels simple in a way you’ve been missing.

So you let him buy you a drink. And you let him flirt with you. And you try, try, try your best to forget about the anxiety gnawing at your bones, about the voice telling you it’s wrong, about everything that’s holding you back.

You just want to be normal. You just want to have fun. You just want to be free of the ghosts haunting you.

And in a way, it’s easy. Jason isn’t aggressive like Jake was, isn’t so handsome it seems like a miracle he’s even looking at you. He’s nice and funny and a little bit boring, and that’s good, boring is good because boring is normal, it’s trivial, it’s safe.

Hesitantly, you place a hand on Jason’s arm and bask in the way it feels when he smiles at you.

And then the intrusive thought comes, unbidden, unstoppable, bleak: If Jake were here…

You banish the idea as soon as it crops up.

It was nothing.

If Jake were here, he would not care.

+

Jake is having an aneurism.

That’s the only logical explanation for any of this. He feels like somebody is peeling his skin off like he’s an orange.

“Yo, Hangman!” 

A hand starts wiping up and down through the air right in front of him rapidly, and Jake blinks against the blur of colors it leaves on his vision.

“There you are, dude,” Payback says, laughing. “I’ve been trying to get your attention for like 5 minutes.”

“Yeah, well,” Jake mutters, turning back to his friends. “You’re just not that interesting, Payback.”

Way less interesting than that scene unfolding near the bar, at least. But also decidedly less prone to provoke Jake into committing arson, so probably the safer choice.

“What are you looking at anyway?” Payback inquires, getting on his tippy-toes to look across everybody else’s heads.

Jake just manages to catch him by a shoulder and force him in the opposite direction. The last thing he needs is to get shit for this, too. He’s already got enough to deal with by just trying to untangle the thicket of his own emotions.

“I’m looking for Bob. We shouldn’t leave minors unaccompanied,” he lies, forcing a nonchalance he doesn’t feel into his voice.

From where she is leaning against the vintage Pacman machine, Phoenix gives him a look like she isn’t buying anything that he’s putting down. But she doesn’t point it out, and Jake sort of feels like weeping in gratitude.

He takes a seat at the table next to Coyote and starts playing with the label on his beer bottle, mainly so he doesn’t feel the urge to start looking for you in the mess of the crowd again. The paper is soaked through by the condensation, crumbling into tiny balls that stick between his fingers when he rubs too hard.

“So, day after tomorrow, huh?” Fanboy says. “Gonna know our fate. You nervous, Hangman?”

The worst part is, Hangman - Hangman, of all people, whose life for the past ten years has revolved around little more than the Navy, than his plane, than his performance up in the air - has pretty much forgotten that the day after tomorrow they’d announce who was about to go on the mission that could potentially become the most important of his career. It’s just that there are much more imminent, pressing things happening right here, right now. Like some dude chatting you up with what are probably the sleaziest lines you’ve ever heard just a few steps away.

He clears his throat. “Why would I be nervous?” he asks, but it lacks his usual edge. “I’m going anyways, no question about it.”

“I don’t know,” Rooster interjects. “You’ve been flying sort of shitty the past week.”

Jake’s fingers clench around the neck of the bottle.

“No shittier than you, Bradshaw. You fly like you’re trying to let senior citizens pass through traffic.”

Payback frowns. “You okay, Hang? That barely made any sense.”

Truthfully, Jake is so distracted he can’t even concentrate enough to come up with something that’ll really piss Rooster off. Not when you’re right there, and he’s not the one making you laugh. Not when he asked you to be friends while really all he can think about is you underneath him with that glazed look in your eyes he’s put there once before, you moaning his name, you in his shirt, you with your mouth wrapped around his…

“Hangman!” That’s Phoenix, now sitting next to Rooster, looking like she’s about an inch from slapping him over the head with her beer bottle. “I asked you a question.”

“Huh?”

Everybody’s staring at him. He’s still trying not to look at the bar.

“I said,” Phoenix repeats, speaking deliberately slow like she’s scared he won’t understand otherwise, “that I don’t want to see any physical fights. So we’re all going to accept the decision tomorrow. Get it, Bagman?”

He shrugs. Right now, he’s so decidedly uninterested in who goes on that mission he can’t imagine even getting upset about it.

“Fine by me,” he mutters and moves to take a sip of his beer. Only, when he tips his head back, it brings the bar right into his line of sight.

And there you are, sitting almost in the exact same spot you were the very first night he approached you. Back in one of those dresses, the ones that drive him insane, the ones playing much more prominent roles in his late-night fantasies than he’d ever like to admit. Legs crossed primly and tucked to the side, all that smooth, soft skin, and Jake can’t stop himself, can’t not imagine getting to run his mouth down the line of that leg, can’t not imagine taking that dress off you, can’t not imagine making you whimper for him, again and again and…

A pale hand lands on the small of your back, just half an inch from where the dress drops low to expose that skin he was just thinking about, and Jake feels like somebody sucker-punched him.

“Okay, somebody switch seats with me right now,” he says, and his voice has climbed to unprecedented heights. It just bursts out of him.

It startles Bob so much he almost drops his beer. Liquid goes sloshing all over Coyote’s lap, who yelps, jumps up, and dumps half his whiskey over Payback in the process. In the ensuing mayhem, everybody seems to forget about the culprit.

Everybody. Everybody, except Phoenix.

She looks at him with the sort of knowing, accusatory eyes that make him think he should be on his knees begging for forgiveness or something.

Discomfort makes him shift his weight in his seat.

And then a hand ghosts over his shoulder, fingernails painted a delicate pink, and for a second, he hopes, thinks he’s going to turn around and find you there, smiling at him, eyes shining, but it’s a different face that greets him. His heart, soaring for a moment, plummets to the ground.

He’s seen the girl around the bar a few times before. She’s pretty. The type he’d go for usually, the kind of pretty thing he’d fuck and leave and never think about again.

“Hi,” she says, smiling in a way that makes the corners of her painted mouth curl up like the lower half of a heart. “I’ve seen you around. Can I buy you a drink?”

It’s the sort of straightforward behavior he prefers usually. Hangman has never been much for playing it coy, for insecurity. He likes someone who goes after what they want, who knows what they want. At least he’s always thought he did.

For a second, he can see it: a little bit of flirting, some coy touches, letting her take him home, getting his rocks off, then disappearing forever.

But his heart just isn’t in it. The whole thing feels empty. Useless. Wrong.

So he shrugs her hand off, gives her a polite smile, and says, “Maybe some other time.”

The girl is drunk enough that she doesn’t care much, just shrugs and saunters off to find someone more accepting of her advances.

When Jake turns to face his friends again, Coyote is gaping at him with his mouth hanging open.

“What?” Jake asks, for the first time in his life actually uncomfortable with the amount of attention he’s receiving.

“Are you like… sick?”

“Why?”

“Cause you just…” Payback looks seriously concerned. “You just turned down a pretty girl, man. Are you feeling okay?”

And that’s when Jake realizes what just happened. With a dawning sort of horror, he sets his bottle down on the table and stares at the condensation rings, the crumpled napkins, the half-eaten bowl of peanuts. His head is spinning.

So, like… what the fuck?

Since Jake finally got to move out of his parent’s house, since he got out from under the gaze of his father - always judging, always finding him lacking - since he joined the Navy and found out that he’s one of the most talented pilots they’ve ever had, he’s had a pretty good idea of who he is.

Arrogant, sure. Cocky, even. Abrasive, at times, calculated, cunning. But with enough skill to back all of it up a hundred times. He knows he’s handsome, knows he can get any girl he wants, and he enjoys that. Basks in it. Based half his personality on it.

So Hangman knows who he is. Knew it perfectly well, right up until the moment he met you.

And just like that, he’s going not just after an inexperienced girl but a girl who might not even like him, and he keeps telling himself it’s just about the chase, just because you’re the prettiest thing he’s ever seen, and there’s something exciting about getting someone who doesn’t make it easy, but it’s starting to sound like a bad excuse, because then why did he ask you to be friends just so he could stay close to you, why did he tell you things he’s never told a soul, why did he feel like the earth was shattering beneath him when you said he was a good pilot? Why can’t he stop thinking of you?

“Hangman, are you having a stroke?” 

Even Rooster sounds genuinely concerned, but Jake doesn’t hear him. Not really, at least.

Because up at the bar, the guy has leaned in even closer, leaned all the way into your space (and Jake just knows he stinks of beer and sweat, and his palms are probably damp where he’s groping your waist), and is whispering something into your ear and you’re giggling, and Jake sees full-on, deep, deep scarlet.

He’s out of his seat before he can register it, halfway through the bar before he remembers moving. Elbowing people out of the way and probably spilling more than one drink in his path. He doesn’t care. In fact, he doesn’t even notice.

All his attention is laser-focused on you and all the places that dirtbag is touching you.

“Alright,” he says much too forcefully when he finally reaches the bar and slaps his hands onto the countertop with a noise so loud it almost has you jumping out of your seat. “I think I told Penny all her drinks are on my tab. Like perpetually. Eternally. Whatever, pick one.”

The poor, unassuming bartender stares at him. “I… Who are you, Sir, like I…?”

Jake ignores him. He turns to face you and the douchebag, both of you staring at him with wide eyes. 

“Hi,” he says, aiming for casual and missing by a mile. Now he’s a little concerned his smile might look like a serial killer about to woo his newest victim.

“Uhm,” you say slowly, glancing at the guy behind you, “Hangman….”

“Sweetheart,” he interrupts before you can even get out a complete sentence, “I told you you can call me Jake.”

You pause. Then you start again, “Jake….”

“I don’t think we’ve met.” He leans around you, offering a hand. “I’m Hangman.”

The guy blinks. “Yeah, hi. Jason. Nice to meet you.”

Jake nods, shakes his hand, then turns to you. Bends down to press a kiss to your cheek, lingers for too long. Draws back and basks in the stunned look on your face, the wide eyes, just for a moment.

“You sleep well after last night?” he asks. “You must have been exhausted.”

And he’s laying it on thick, he knows he is. Leaves his hand resting on your shoulder for too long, lets his thumb stroke over your collarbone in a slow, drawn-out movement just for the hell of it.

He can’t explain it. It’s just… it’s just that he can’t forget the guy’s hands all over you. It’s just that he can’t forget your face last night, bathed in the moonlight, your laughter that made him think his chest was caving in. It’s just that he feels if somebody else makes you laugh like that, he may never be happy again.

“I don’t…” You blink up at him, face almost entirely blank. “What?”

One of his hands lands on your thigh, just above the knee, half on the fabric of your dress, half on the warm skin of your leg. And it’s pushing it, he knows that, but it’s not like he decided to touch you. It’s more of an instinct, a reassurance to himself. You’re there. You haven’t left.

Not yet, anyway.

He can see the way Jason looks at you. He knows that look, knows exactly what he wants to do, and it lights a fire inside of him, something pathetic and possessive and uncalled for.

And all he can think is: That guy won’t treat you right, I can do it better, I know what you like, I know it, I see it, I know you…

But apart from his own ego, apart from the cocky part of him that knows he’s got you pegged, knows he could set you off and have you coming on his tongue, his fingers, his cock quicker than you could make sense of, there’s something else there too. A strange, unfamiliar protectiveness. Something that makes him think: What if this guy hurts you?

Not because you’re fragile, not because you don’t know yourself, but because Jake knows you. Has seen you. 

Knows this runs deeper than anything else, even if he doesn’t know what that means. Even if it scares him shitless.

He can’t let some other guy take you home. He just can’t.

“Hangman,” Jason says, leaning across you and giving Jake a small, almost shy smile. “Man, you’re a legend.”

“I…” Jake was prepared to hit him with something else bordering on rude, but this throws him for a loop. “What?”

“At Top Gun. Everybody talks about you all the time. It’s an honor to meet you.” 

The guy’s eyes are positively glowing, his cheeks ruddy with alcohol and excitement. Jake, who was hellbent on hating him, suddenly doesn’t know what to do with his hands.

Between them, you’ve gone very still.

“Oh,” Jake says, “well…”

“I’m sorry, by the way.” The guy - boy, some spiteful part of Jake things - gestures in your general direction. For a second, Jake feels indignant on your behalf before he realizes he’s the one responsible for this. “I didn’t realize this was your girl. Backing up right away. Sorry.”

With raised hands, he disappears into the crowd, blending seamlessly into the sea of uniforms.

Jake’s triumph is short-lived.

You’ve slid half out of your seat, gathering your bag from where you’ve draped it over the back of the chair by the strap.

“Where are you going, sweetheart?” he asks, reaching out to help you but withdrawing his hands immediately when you whirl to face him.

There’s something on your face, something he’s never seen before, and with his stomach dropping down to his knees, he wonders suddenly and belatedly if he may have miscalculated severely.

That night at the bar, when you’d walked up to him and told him to leave you alone, it had been a little like somebody had pulled the ground right from beneath his feet. Like that magic trick with the tablecloth, only this one had been bad and botched and bungled, all the china and the glasses and the cutlery falling and smashing.

And yet the way you’d looked at him… He could have sworn you weren’t telling the truth. 

Jake isn’t dumb, fuck what Phoenix says, and he’s been with enough girls to recognize desire when he sees it. So he was almost entirely sure you were lying when you told him to leave you alone.

But then… what if that had just been his own hope? Building nothing into something. Wanting you to want him the same way he wants you.

In the end, what he thought you wanted didn’t matter. All he had to go off were your words, and those were clear enough. The choice needed to be yours, or it meant nothing.

And Jake was a lot - bastard, asshole, fuckboy - but he wasn’t going to push you into something you didn’t want. Never.

So he’d let up. He’d listened to you. He’d tried to pull back. Even as it had hurt him in a way he could not explain. Even as it had broken him apart.

And then Maverick and Penny had to meddle, and he’d gotten to know you in a way he hadn’t planned for at all. Had learned that he didn’t just want you, he liked you. Wanted to keep listening to you as you rambled on and on in intelligible loops about books you liked. Wanted to read them, wanted to talk to you about them. Wanted to make those dreams come true: buy you that house with the blue door, give you that dog.

He can’t understand it. He can’t explain it. All he knows is he wants to be close to you.

But with the way you’re looking at him right now, pure, unadulterated anger on your face, he realizes you might not feel the same way at all.

“What the fuck, Hangman?”

“What?” he asks, genuinely confused. “What did I do?”

This is not his day at all. Or his week. In fact, he’s not sure it has been his month.

You frown at him for a moment, completely silent, and it unsettles Jake in a way he can’t explain. 

He’s always known who he is, has been so sure of it, but now, with you… It’s like you make him question everything.

“I’m going home,” you say, pushing past him and heading for the door.

He’s too dazed to move for a moment, and then he’s chasing after you, trying to recapture his earlier speed but failing. It’s gotten even more crowded in here, every available inch of space occupied with sweaty bodies. He calls your name, but you don’t turn.

By the time he catches up to you, you’re out in the parking lot.

“Sweetheart!” he calls.

You whirl on him with a murderous expression on your face. He stops dead in his tracks.

“Don’t call me that,” you say. “Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Since you first met, the two of you have been exchanging sharp remarks. You have teased, you have taunted, you have circled around each other like wild cats around prey. Always toeing the line between flirting and fighting. Always toeing the line between foreplay and sparring. A tightrope act.

But this tips the scales decidedly. There’s nothing coquettish about it, nothing good-natured. The words have teeth, have fangs, have claws. They sink into his heart with perfect precision.

“I…” he begins, but you don’t let him finish.

“What the fuck are you doing?”

“I was…” He clears his throat and straightens his shoulders. Tries to grin but thinks it might end up as more of a grimace. “I was saying hello.”

You shake your head before he’s finished his sentence. “No, you weren’t. You were ruining my night. You always… you always have to ruin my nights.”

And wow. Okay. That one hurt.

“I just…” Jake realizes he might have to explain this to you. Or at least attempt to, since he doesn’t even know what his explanation would be. “That’s not a good guy.”

You glance back at the bar, and an incredulous expression spreads across your face. 

“That?” you repeat, voice rising. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah!”

“You don’t even know him.”

“You don’t either!”

“So? I wasn’t… I wasn’t about to marry him.”

Jake’s chest feels tight. He’s breathless when he asks, “What were you going to do with him, then?”

“I was…” You shake your head suddenly, breaking off halfway through the sentence, changing course. “That’s none of your business!”

“Yeah, it is!” he protests, but he knows he’s in the wrong. Still, he can’t stop himself. “He’s not a good guy.”

“Oh my god!” You throw your hands into the air, and he’s never seen you so upset. Everything that came before now seems only like a crude imitation. This, though… this is true, genuine anger. “Stop it. He’s… he’s just a cocky pilot, you’re not that different….”

Somehow, the comparison has Jake clenching his teeth. He amends, “He’s not good for you, then.”

For a moment, your face goes slack, and he knows he’s just said the wrong thing.

“That is notyour decision,” you say, voice suddenly quiet and all the more dangerous for it. “That’s no one’s decision but my own.”

And God, if Jake doesn’t know that. 

You’ll always make your own choices. He hasn’t had a shred of an illusion to the opposite even for a moment, hasn’t even wanted it any other way. You will always go your own way.

You’re so much stronger than you realize. Going on after losing your mother. Giving up a whole life. Starting over a million miles away without family, without friends, without anything but yourself.

It’s what he admires. It’s what drives him insane.

“I don’t want you to get hurt,” he says because it’s the truth. “You’re my friend.”

Something on your face shatters. 

“Friend,” you whisper dispassionately. “Sure.”

You rub your hand over your face, and suddenly you look so tired. All he wants is to wrap you in his arms, tug you closer, take you home. Make sure you’re okay.

“Hangman,” you say softly, almost gently. “I think this was a mistake. I don’t think I can be your friend.”

And it’s fear coursing through him. Naked, unmistakable fear.

If he can’t see you again, what will he do? This new Jake, the one who’s unsure about everything unless he’s right next to you, that new Jake… what will he do?

How can he go back to how he used to be when it’s like slipping into a costume that doesn’t fit anymore?

“My name is Jake,” he says because he doesn’t know what else to do. Because he needs to hear you say it. “I want you to call me Jake.”

“Stop it!” Your voice is louder again, an edge of desperation creeping into it. “Everybody else calls you Hangman, who cares if I….”

“You’re not everybody else!” It just… slips out. And then it’s out in the open, and he can’t believe he said it, doesn’t know where it came from, only knows that it’s the truth. “Not to me.”

You’re staring at him. Chest rising and falling rapidly, fingers tangled in the straps of your bag.

And you’re so beautiful, even in this empty parking lot, even in the unflattering light of the street lamps. Even with the sweat pooling at your hairline and the anger in your eyes.

“Hangman,” you say, “don’t.”

But he’s shaking his head. He let you go once, but now… now he has to… he has to…

“You’re special,” he says, even as you’re shaking your head. “You are to me, sweetheart, you are, you….”

“You said it meant nothing,” you blurt out, then shut your mouth with an audible click of your teeth as if you wish you could clamp the words back in somehow.

Jake blinks. “What?”

He can see your throat move as you swallow.

You take a moment, teeth sinking into your lower lip, and then you say, “That night when I told you to leave me alone. You told Coyote that this… thing between us. That it was nothing.”

Jake inhales. Exhales. His mind is blank.

“I… I did?” he asks, words slow, sluggish, like he’s thrusting them forward through the mud.

Your face falls. You say, voice almost a whisper, “You don’t even remember, do you?”

He wants to say no, I do, of course, I do. He wants to protest.

But if there’s one thing he can’t do, it’s lie to you.

Truth is, he doesn’t know at all what he said. The moments after your confrontation in the bar are shrouded in a fog of confusion for him. He was just trying to make sense of what you’d said, untangle the mess of his mind. He was just trying to save face.

It’s not nothing, he should tell you. It was never nothing.

But then, if it’s not nothing… what is it? This thing between us, you’d called it.

Jake doesn’t have an answer. He doesn’t even understand why he can’t just let you go the way he usually does. He could just turn around, go back inside, find some other pretty girl, but something keeps him rooted to the spot.

I think of you when I go to sleep and when I’m touching myself, and I can’t stop thinking about you. I carry you with me up into the plane, into the sky, into the clouds. I want to sit with you in bars and in restaurants and on beaches. I want to hold your hand. I want to kiss you. I want, I want, I want…

There’s pain on your face, something raw, something real.

Jake can’t breathe.

“I’m leaving,” you say, and then you just stand there for a moment, looking at him almost like you expect him to say something.

He seems to have lost all ability to speak. You purse your lips, your eyes waterlogged, and then you turn on your heel and walk to the car.

Jake stands in the gravel of the parking lot until the headlights of your car have faded into the dark of the night. Then he trots back into the bar blindly, finds their now mostly deserted table at the back, and slumps into a chair.

He feels empty.

Phoenix’s face appears in his vision after what could have been five minutes or five hours, almost comically large.

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” Jake says, but his voice sounds like a stranger’s.

Immediately, Phoenix squats down to look at him better. “What?”

He points at his chest, where it feels like a tiger is on a rampage. “It hurts.”

“What hurts?”

“My chest.” He’s quiet for a moment, and then he says, “Phoenix, I think I fucked up. Like… big time.”

Her face goes from mildly annoyed to honestly worried. She asks, a tinge of panic edging into her voice, “Did you drink too much? Hangman?”

He shakes his head. “I think I hurt her. I don’t know, I… I think I fucked it up.”

She searches his face for a moment, and then she’s straightening up, taking Hangman by the arm and pulling him out of his chair. Her grip is like a vice around his wrist, and he yelps.

“Alright,” she says, “you’re coming with me. Now.”

Jake would have protested, but the look Phoenix gives him shuts him right up. If there’s anybody he’s ever met capable of coldblooded homicide, it’s Natasha Trace.

So he lets himself be tugged into the last corner not yet wholly occupied by people past the halfway point to intoxication.

Phoenix lets go of his wrist in favor of stemming her hands into her hips. He’s pretty sure he’ll find bruises on his skin come morning.

“Don’t,” she says.

“Don’t what?” Jake asks, even though he has a pretty sure idea where this is going.

“Don’t… meddle, okay. You had your chance, you blew it. Let her move on.”

“It’s not…” He struggles. “It’s not like that. We’re friends.”

“Friends,” Phoenix repeats. God, she really is capable of violence, he knows it, and she’s not far from resorting to it. “Are you stupid, Hangman?”

He opens his mouth, but she’s already plowing on.

“Friends don’t look at each other like they’re about to rip their clothes off and go at it in crowded bars, Jacob.”

Jacob. The last time somebody called him that was when his mom caught him trying to sneak out of the window at sixteen to go see a band with his first girlfriend. He got grounded for three weeks.

Somehow, he thinks Phoenix won’t be that merciful.

“Like… obviously you have some kind of feelings for her, but….”

He doesn’t even hear the rest of what she says. Her mouth keeps moving, but none of her words reach his ears. All he can hear is a high, whistling noise cutting clean through his eardrums.

“Hold on,” he interrupts, “I don’t have feelings for her.”

Phoenix pauses for a moment, staring at him like he’s trying to convince her the earth is flat.

“Jake,” she says - not Hangman, not Bagman, not even Jacob, and hoooh boy, he’s in for it now - slowly, “don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying,” he says.

Phoenix blinks. Takes a moment. Another. Then she says, almost carefully, “Jake, you can’t be that stupid. Please tell me you’re not that stupid.”

It’s not the first time she’s called him stupid, but it might be the first time she actually means it.

And Jake would protest, only he feels pretty stupid right about now, too.

“Please…” She touches her forehead like she has a headache and exhales loudly, slowly. “Please tell me you’re not honestly stupid enough not to know.”

“Know what?” Jake asks, and he’s never felt less like himself.

He’s in control of things. He takes risks gladly, but they’re always calculated. Things don’t just… fly under his radar.

But right now, he feels like he missed something profound.

Phoenix looks at him with what could be either pity or actual hatred.

“Jake,” she says, enunciating each word with perfect precision, “you’re in love with her.”

“I don’t know her,” he says, almost automatically, and he’s so dizzy.

Phoenix waves his words away with a quick jerk of her hand. 

“There’s a difference between loving someone and being in love with someone, Jake,” she tells him. “When you’re with her, how do you feel?”

“I feel…” And he can’t believe he’s talking about this, but in a way, it makes sense. Maybe Phoenix is the only person he could ever tell this. Phoenix, who has always seen through him and all his bravado. “When I’m with her, it’s like… like I can just be myself, you know? And I want… I want to know her. Everything about her, even the bad things, but I want her to know me, too. Not just Hangman but… Jake. And I want to… I just want to be with her all the time. I want to tell her about, like, everything, even the little things that I’d never tell somebody else, and I…. When I’m with her, it doesn’t feel like I need to prove anything. It’s like I can just be. I’ve never… never felt that before.”

His voice trails off.

The irritation has bled out of Phoenix’s face, making way for something softer, smoother, something almost tender. She puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Bagman,” she says, voice halfway to affectionate, “you know what that means.”

For a few moments, he just breathes.

And yeah, he does. In a way, maybe he’s known for a while now, at least since the set-up, and he just didn’t want to admit it to himself. That it’s more than just wanting to fuck you. That it’s so much more than nothing. That it’s so much, it scares him.

It wasn’t quick, it wasn’t instantaneous. It crept up on him. You permeated his life in stages, and now you’re everywhere.

At first, he just thought you were pretty, thought he could get into your pants and out of your life in the span of a night. But you gave as good as you got, kept pushing back, and suddenly it was like a personal quest to get you to give in. You looked up at him on the beach behind the Hard Deck through eyes as scared as they were determined, and something shifted. Not profound yet, not significant, but the first domino to drop in a long, long, long line.

And somewhere, at some moment, he could no longer pinpoint, the game he’d played had ended, and he hadn’t even noticed. The last domino had toppled.

It was real now. Real and scary and over.

“I’m in love with her?” he says, almost a question with how his voice rises towards the tail-end of the sentence.

Phoenix nods, smiles gently at him. 

“Oh God,” he says. “Then I… then I really fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Phoenix agrees through a breathless laugh. “Yeah, I think you really did.”

+

It’s the hottest day of the year, and the aircon at the gas station breaks down.

The heat is unbearable. You stripped off your employee vest hours ago, but it barely helps. The single fan you found in the back oscillates stale air through the room.

You’re counting down the minutes until the end of your shift, until you can drive aimless circles through town just to bask in the cool of your car. Until you can drown in your own self-pity and another family-size serving of pasta and the dark thoughts swirling around you like storm clouds.

Your boss has disappeared into the back room, and it’s only five more minutes until you’re off, so you trek towards the cold drinks section and wonder if you should spend the few extra dollars on an iced tea. When the bell rings, announcing the arrival of a customer, you’re still standing undecided in front of the opened fridge, letting cool air caress your face.

Phoenix is in civilian clothes, her hair released from its tight bun for the first time. It falls in glossy waves down to her shoulder blades as she smiles at you warmly.

“Hi.”

“Oh.” The sight of her makes something in your stomach clench uncomfortably. Couldn’t she have come in five minutes later? You’d have been gone by then. “Hi…”

“Penny said you’d be here.”

You blink. “You… were you looking for me?”

Phoenix nods and steps up to the register to look at the cheap sunglasses on display.

“I wanted to talk to you,” she says casually.

The fear of it all creeps up on you, and then it envelopes you. You’ve been trying and failing to push it to the very back corners of your mind for the past day, keeping your hands busy in hopes it would keep your head idle. Pretending you weren’t constantly replaying last night in your head - the bar, the parking lot, the anger, and the ridiculousness of it all. Jake saying you’re special, and then not even remembering the moment he’d broken your heart. Looking helpless in a way you’d never seen before.

In the rearview mirror, growing rapidly smaller and further until he disappeared completely, Jake looked almost like a little child.

“You and Hangman had a fight,” Phoenix says, and it’s not even a question. Just a statement.

“Yeah,” you agree because it doesn’t feel like there’s much sense in arguing. And no reason to, either.

Phoenix nods and watches as you round the counter. For some reason, you feel it’s not a bad idea to get some distance between you and her for this conversation. The counter is like a barrier.

“Hangman is…” Phoenix hesitates. “Hangman is an idiot.”

“No, he isn’t.” The words are out before you can stop them, and then frustration almost makes you bite your tongue. “He… he’s actually a pretty smart guy.”

Phoenix raises an eyebrow. “I’ve been told you hate him.”

You swallow, look away. Shrug your shoulders. “No, I… I don’t know.”

None of this matters. After last night, you’re never going to see him again.

For a long, long while, Phoenix is silent. And then she says, “He’s in love with you.”

And it should be earth-shattering, world-stops-spinning, music-stars-playing. But they’re just words.

Your heart is racing.

“He…” You shake your head. It’s a cliff, the plummet beneath you, your fingers gripping the edge for dear life. You want to believe her so very, very badly, but your common sense tells you it can’t be true. “He barely knows me.”

“That’s what he said,” she says, chuckling, then shakes her head. “I know, but… you have to understand… This is something special. I mean, this is Hangman we’re talking about… he doesn’t open up to people.”

You think about sitting side by side out on the beach. Sharing secrets before you let the waves carry them out to sea. Spilling your heart into his hands and trusting him with it. Realizing, suddenly, that he had done the same.

“I think…” Phoenix’s voice has gone very gentle. “I think you’re very similar. You and him.”

A week ago, you would have laughed at her. Just five minutes ago, you wouldn’t have believed her. And now…

You fall.

When you think about it, it’s not so far-fetched. Jake, up in those clouds. You, down on the ground. In the end, you’re both lonely. In the end, you’re both afraid.

“Anyway.” She smiles at you and pushes off the register. “I just thought you might want to say goodbye.”

Something inside you stumbles. 

“Goodbye?” you repeat slowly.

“Yeah, we’re shipping out tomorrow morning.”

“Shipping…” Suddenly, it takes tremendous effort to breathe. “What?”

Phoenix pauses, furrows her eyebrows. “Didn’t Jake tell you? About the mission?”

“What mission?”

Phoenix groans, shaking her head. “See, I told you. He really is an idiot.”

+

Jake looks like he didn’t get a wink of sleep. The dark bags beneath his eyes have bloomed into purplish bruising overnight, and he blinks at you almost owlishly.

 “Why weren’t you going to say goodbye?”

That’s the first thing you say to him, and it’s not at all what you were planning in the car on the way here. It slips out the moment you see him, and your voice isn’t firm or strong at all, it’s a small, fragile thing. A teacup teetering on the edge of a moving tray, about to shatter.

He looks at you like you’re an apparition. “How did you get here?”

“It… Phoenix gave me your address.”

Jake has rented a place on the second floor of a modern apartment complex off base. It’s so much nicer than the house you’re living in, with stairs that don’t creak, no mildew in the hallway, and locks that look like they actually work.

“It doesn’t matter,” you say, and you sound out of breath. It’s not even because of the stairs you just took two steps at a time. “Why weren’t you?”

Jake exhales audibly, nods once, and opens the door wider. “You wanna come inside?”

Only now do you notice that he’s shirtless, wearing nothing but gray sweatpants slung almost as low as his swim trunks were that day on the beach. Hastily, you snap your eyes away, head already spinning.

You push past him and into the apartment, careful not to touch any of his skin. Who knows what other unhinged things that might drive you to do?

His apartment is neat, tidy, clean, but that doesn’t surprise you much. It’s also obviously a rental, lacking any personal touches except for a few shoes kicked off haphazardly by the door and his Top Gun diploma and plaque displayed on a dresser. Of course Jake travels with those, you think, almost grinning. He’d never miss out on a chance to show off.

There’s an aircon blasting somewhere, and you almost crumble to your feet with gratitude.

“Do you want something to drink?” he asks, heading towards what you suppose to be the kitchen. “I have… water? I’d offer to make you a Mojito, but I don’t think I have any limes. Or any rum. Or any mint, so…”

“Can you…” You falter and watch as he pauses in the doorway, one hand braced against the wood. “Can you just explain it to me?”

His shoulders lift and lower with his breaths. After a moment that feels endless, he turns to face you.

“Explain it to you?”

You nod. “Why you didn’t tell me. Why you weren’t going to say goodbye.”

He shrugs, unperturbed, but there’s something affective to the movement, something almost performative.

“After last night… I didn’t think you wanted to see me again.”

“That’s not what I mean.” You’re shaking your head, jaw clenching. “Why didn’t you tell me before then? That you’re about to go on some, some… stupid top-secret mission, that you might die, that….”

He interrupts you, “I didn’t tell you because it shouldn’t matter. I’m not…”

“Of course it matters!” Your voice is shaking. “It matters! It changes… everything.”

He squints at you. “How could it change anything?”

“It… it changes things because….” You stumble, try to find the words that elude you. “Because I thought we’d have more time.”

“More time?” Something about his voice is almost hopeful. “I thought you… I didn’t think you wanted to see me again.”

He’s right. You didn’t. At least you thought you didn’t. You thought the best thing you could possibly ever do for yourself, for him, was to stay as far away from Jake Seresin as possible. In a change-your-name-and-leave-the-country kind of way.

And then Phoenix walked into that gas station, and losing him had suddenly seemed so real, had gone from a distant fever dream to reality, and you didn’t have much choice anymore. All you wanted was to see him again. All you wanted was for him to call you sweetheart, smile and flirt and tease. Even if it drove you crazy. Even if it was the last time.

“Hangman…” You shake your head, correct yourself, “Jake, I… Do you like me?”

He looks at you, really looks at you, for the first time since you knocked at his door, and something in his expression changes. Without hesitation, without a slither of doubt in his words, he says, “Of course. Of course, I like you.”

You have to sink your fingernails into your palms to keep yourself grounded, to keep yourself from jumping several paces ahead. In your chest, your heart speeds up.

“And not just…” you pause, the word carnally already on your tongue. “It’s not that you just want to fuck me?”

He’s shaking his head before you’ve finished speaking. “No. Not at all. Yeah, sure, that’s what it was about in the beginning, but then… I just… It started changing, and I’d never felt that, and I… I think I got scared.”

“You got scared?” you ask, not unaware of the note of disbelief in your voice. It’s hard to imagine someone like Jake could ever be scared. Someone so confident, so brilliant.

He raises an eyebrow, and it’s a glimpse of the Jake you know, the one who drives you to the brink of insanity, “I’ll take that shock as a compliment.”

It’s a white-hot relief to find that he can still joke with you. That not all of the relationship you’ve built has washed away in the torrent of the last few weeks. 

“It’s just…” You look for a way to explain it. “I don’t know. You just always seemed like you had everything figured out.”

That makes him laugh, and you stare at his face scrunching up, his eyes shining. He says, “I’ve got nothing figured out. I haven’t even figured out what to eat for dinner tonight.”

You laugh. Even through all of it, he can still make you laugh. Even though nothing is resolved, even though you don’t understand any of it, he can always, always make you laugh. Even when you don’t want to. Even back when you still swore you hated him.

Jake settles down, and something darker crosses his expression. When he speaks next, his voice is almost hesitant.

“I’ve never… I’ve just never done something like this?”

“Like this?” you ask softly. 

Neither of you has ever defined this thing between you. You’re scared now, scared he has a different idea about it. Maybe you don’t want to hear his answer, want to live just a moment longer in this fantasy where Phoenix is right, where he likes you, where he wants you the same way you want him.

Carnally, romantically, wholly. Just… all of him. The good, the bad, the worst. The parts that drive you insane with anger and the ones that drive you insane with lust. The way he can break you apart and put you back together.

If he calls you his friend again now, if he says it was nothing… You don’t know if you can handle it. You don’t know that you won’t just break apart.

“Like this,” Jake repeats. “Something real.”

And your heart soars.

“Real?” you whisper, voice so quiet you think he can’t possibly have heard it.

Jake nods. “Real.”

“So it…” You trail off, shake your head, try again, “So it wasn’t nothing?”

He lets out a breathy, quiet laugh. And there’s none of his bravado, none of his cockiness. The armor is discarded, the mask is off, and there’s just Jake beneath it, not some hotshot pilot who’s got it all figured out, but a man, one who’s a dumbass at times and broken in so many ways and just as scared as you are.

You’ve never felt the way you feel about him before. Not once in your life.

“No,” he says, “it was never nothing to me. I’m sorry I said that. I know I hurt you, and it’s not an excuse, but I just… I just said it because I got scared. Because you dumped me, and honestly, I was hurt, and I liked you so much, I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I had all of these doubts, and I didn’t understand it, but… It was never nothing, sweetheart. It was… everything.”

He shrugs, something on his face that tells you he’s embarrassed by his own earnestness, uncomfortable with it, but your ears are ringing with that word. You can’t stop the smile from spreading on your face - broad and genuine and a relief after all these days in that prison of your room. Like stepping into the light after all the darkness. Like setting foot into airconditioned climates after hours out in the Californian heat.

And Jake smiles back, like a reflex, like a magnet. If you move, I move.

He’s made a step, and now it’s your turn.

So gather all your courage, that slithery, dodgy thing that’s been eluding you for months, and you grab it by the neck and thrust it forward, say, “Jake, I think I’m in love with you.”

His face goes completely blank, and with a sudden, horrid lurch, you think that maybe you’ve miscalculated, maybe it’s too much, maybe…

You backpedal, “I know it’s way too early, and I don’t really know you, and maybe in a month I find out you don’t like peanut butter, and I can never speak to you again, but this has never happened to me before, Jake, and I’m terrified, I’m so scared, but I just know I wanna be with you, I wanna figure it out together, and I hope you feel the same way, because, because I… I think I…”

“I like peanut butter,” Jake interrupts you. When you blink at him through the haze your rambling has plunged you into, he’s grinning from ear to ear. The sort of grin you have never seen him give to anyone but you.

“You.. you do?”

“A lot,” he confirms.

“Well, that’s… good then.”

“In fact,” he says, moving closer to you, “I love peanut butter.”

“Yeah?” 

Your voice is a little breathless.

He nods, hands going to cup your face. 

“Sweetheart,” he says, as you tip your face up, as your heart pounds, as your vision blurs, “I think I might be in love with you, too.”

And you don’t want to start crying, but you can’t help it. They just well up, like all those emotions you’ve been swallowing down for months now, longer than you’ve known him really, have finally ballooned into something too big for your body to hold, looking for any way out.

Jake frowns, wiping at a teardrop from your cheek like he’s trying to get an annoying stain off his laptop screen. Only like… a little gentler.

“It’s not that horrible, is it?”

You laugh, a water, bubbling sound. “No, it’s… it’s not… it’s fine.”

“Fine?” he asks, looking down at you with his eyebrows raised way too high for it to be anything than exaggerated. “I confess my love, and you think it’s fine? Jesus, romance really is dead.”

“Oh, shut up and kiss me already, Bagman, or I’m gonna strangle you, I swear I will, I’m not….”

You don’t get to finish.

Kissing Jake isn’t at all like you imagined. He’s soft but firm, and yet you can tell, underneath it all, that he’s almost nervous. Unsure. Like he doesn’t know at all how to proceed now that it’s actually real. That it means something.

All that cockiness melted away.

It’s so strange, but suddenly you realize that maybe, just for a moment, you’re going to have to take over. So you wrap your arms around his waist, draw him closer, draw him in, open your mouth beneath his and sigh into it all.

Jake comes willingly, follows your pace easily, smoothly, casually. The way he does everything. Ready to take anything you throw his way.

Finally, something inside of you seems to whisper. There’s an ache, a yearning, something that swells inside of you, grows bigger and stronger by the minute. You’ve never wanted someone this bad. It’s finally happening.

All that waiting, all that wishing and hoping and dreaming… It was worth it, you think. All of it.

His hands are warm on your cheeks, and they feel large, in a way that makes you clench your thighs. His lips are a little chapped, but he tastes sweet as if he’s been eating chocolate. He angles your face back a little more, his tongue running along the seam of your mouth, his fingers clenching into your hair, and your heart seizes as you think, suddenly, how close you came to losing this, to never having it at all, to missing out on it, and it’s so… it’s so…

You pull back when the intrusive thought inserts itself into the moment, when the anxiety makes your bones itch, look at him and say in a voice that seems to come from miles, worlds, universes away, “You’re not going to die, are you?”

It’s all you can think about - your mother fading away, flowers raining on an open grave, and being alone, alone, alone…

But Jake just smiles, rubs his thumb once along the line of your cheekbone, and says, “And miss out on getting to kiss you, sweetheart? Not a chance.”

And you haven’t belonged anywhere in so long. Have been so lonely, so broken, for so long you thought you’d never feel any different again. But here, right now, with him solid before you, with the knowledge that it’s real, it’s true, it’s not a game, and it’s not in your head, it doesn’t feel so horrible.

Because Jake knows you. Not just the pretty parts, but the ugly ones too.

How you push people away. How your fear paralyzes you sometimes, makes you mean and closed-off, and makes you lie. To him, to yourself, to everyone.

Jake has seen it, and he’s wanted you regardless.

And maybe that’s just it… how he can calm that anxiety with a word. Not banish it, not erase it, but silence that nagging, gnawing, horrible voice you’ve carried with you for so long. Make it bearable.

You’re going to die if you don’t have him. And yeah, maybe that’s dramatic, but who cares? If the past few weeks have shown anything, it’s that you and Jake aren’t just good with the dramatics… you excel at them.

“I did it,” you blurt out, and then immediately regret the words, clamp your mouth shut and feel the blood rush up into your cheeks.

Jake draws back a little to get a better look at you. “Done what?”

And you could kiss him for taking it all in stride. For not pushing you, for letting you set the pace.

Actually, you could kiss him just for… well, existing. But his ego is big enough already; he really doesn’t need to know all that.

“Well, what… what you asked.”

Jake stares at you blankly. 

“Care to be a little more specific, sweetheart?” he says gently. “I think we’ve established I don’t have the best memory.”

“I…” You hesitate, fingers going to trace a constellation of freckles on his shoulder, and there’s just so much of him, so much golden skin and so much muscle and so much confidence, and you’re going to fall apart, you know you are, you’re not going to survive this. “I touched myself. The way you asked.”

Your voice is barely more than a whisper, an exhale, but you know he heard you. Because the reaction is visceral - fingers tightening where they have slid from your face to your waist, chest undulating with the sharp intake of breath, shoulders stiffening.

Nerves make it impossible to look at him. What if he doesn’t like it, what if…

But, as always, somehow, Jake seems to know what you need. Seems to understand without ever having to say it that now, you want this to be something else. 

“Sweetheart,” he says, fingers hooking beneath your chin and turning it upwards, “look at me.”

And you do. It’s not like you have a choice, your body reacting before your mind even registers the words.

Right now, you think, Jake could tell you to jump off a bridge, and you’d go find the nearest one for a dive.

Somehow, his eyes have gone darker, hodded, an intent shining in them that scares you as much as it excites you.

“You touched yourself?” he asks quietly.

You nod, too scared your voice might fail you to try and use it.

“So, are you ready to answer my question, then?”

You know what he means right away, which is just a testament to your memory being decidedly better than his.

Instantly, the words ghost through your mind again, wrap around you like vapor. Have you been a good girl?

“I don’t…” You clear your throat as Jake steps even closer, walks you backward until your back hits the wall, until his hips are inches from yours, until he’s crowding against you like he wants to climb into your skin. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He’s so close now, and it’s different, the whole air is different. Charged now, darker. Hot even with the aircon running.

Maybe you’re going to faint. You feel like you’re going to faint.

“I think,” Jake says, voice lowered into a mumble, “you know exactly what I mean.”

He braces both hands on the wall by your head and cages you in. It’s so reminiscent of the night out behind the shack that you would have laughed if you hadn’t been scared to move even a muscle.

Not trusting your voice, you just shake your head. And it’s an act because by now, even you have understood that that’s half the fun in this game of power Jake and you have been playing from the very moment. But you also just want to hear him say it again, have been dreaming of those words on his lips for weeks now.

Jake hums, and his breath washes over your face. There’s barely an inch between the two of you now - you can’t even think anymore.

“I know you’re smarter than that, sweetheart.”

“No,” you whisper, shaking your head. “I don’t know what you mean.”

He smiles, just for a moment, and it’s sweet, a little dopey, and so decidedly out of place that you realize he knows just as well as you do that you’re pretending. That he appreciates it as much as you do.

“Alright,” he whispers finally, leans closer to run his mouth over the arch of your jaw, lips barely a whisper of a touch as you strain into it, breath catching in your throat. “Sweetheart… have you been a good girl for me?”

It’s the rasp in his voice and those words and the agonizing whisper of separation between your bodies. It’s the lack and the promise and that tight, hot coil of want that writhes in the pit of your stomach.

With a gasp, you clench your thighs together in search of relief.

“I don’t know,” you say because, truthfully, you don’t. You don’t even know your own name anymore.

Jake raises an eyebrow, and all your pretense shatters.

“Yes,” you say, immediately, voice almost a whine, head spinning, “yes, Jake, I’ve been a good girl for you.”

He acknowledges it with a nod, entirely unaffected, face blank as he moves to card a strand of hair behind your ear.

“What did you think about?”

He asks it almost casually like he’s asking about the weather or your shopping list and not just which sexual fantasies you got out of the spank bank the last time you got off.

“I…” And his hand begins tracing a long, long line from your cheekbone down to your mouth, dragging across your jaw and onto your jugular. And there, just once, he presses his thumb into your pulse point. It’s the barest hint of pressure, the illusion of the rest of his fingers wrapping around your throat, but your eyes almost roll into the back of your head. 

It draws the truth right out of you.

“You,” you gasp, “I thought about you.”

Jake acknowledges it with a nod, but there’s something to be said about his eyes flicking to your mouth, about the hand still braced against the wall by your head clenching.

“What part of me?”

You want to answer, but he leans forward to press his lips to the side of your throat where his hand had been just a moment ago, and for a second, you lose all ability to speak.

“I… Your mouth?”

“My mouth?” Jake repeats, words muffled against your skin.

Pressed flat against the wall, unable to move, with your heart pounding a patter against your ribcage, you can do nothing but nod. “Yeah.”

Jake hums, and the sound vibrates through your body. By now, you must be soaking through the front of your shorts, you think.

“And where did I put it?” he asks softly, drawing back to look at you.

And there’s such… hunger on his face, his pupils blown wide, his mouth slack, and it’s going to kill you, death on impact, you’re not going to make it.

But that’s fine. What a way to go, anyway.

“On… on me,” you whisper.

Jake laughs, and it’s so… mean. You like it.

“Come on, sweetheart,” he drawls. “Be specific.”

“I don’t know.” 

It’s all you can say. Who cares what you thought about that night? He’s here right now, so can’t you just do it for real instead of talking about your fantasy like this?

Jake clicks his tongue and shakes his head.

“You can do better than that,” he says. “You’re not that dumb.”

And it could be crossing a line - should cross a line, maybe. You never would have thought it possible that you could be into something like this, but you are. It sets you off in a way you wouldn’t have expected, makes you weak in the knees and dizzy, and you want him on you, want him everywhere, want him more than you’ve ever wanted him before.

Besides… you feel pretty dumb right about now.

When it came down to the wire, you know you’re the one with the finger on the lever anyway. The moment you say no, stop, he’ll listen. So you’ve always been the one with the final decision.

Maybe that’s why this whole thing works.

“I…” You have to close your eyes, swallow against the lump in your throat. “You put it between my legs.”

He squints.

“Here?” he asks, and his hand lands on the inside of your thigh, about two inches off from where you want him.

It startles you enough that you jump, a sound of surprise falling from your mouth. And then he applies pressure, squeezes the meat of your thigh once, and you’re moaning, eyes widening with the sensation of it all.

Jake grins.

Bastard, you think, but then that thought goes out the window too, disappears in the fog that has descended on you.

“You imagined my mouth here?”

You shake your head, whimper, tip your face back and open your mouth like you can compel him to kiss you just like that.

“Be a good girl and tell me, yeah?” he whispers, but there’s something strained to his voice, something glazed to his eyes.

“No, I…” But you can’t say it. Not like this. It’s still too much, and it frustrates you, makes your eyes burn, makes your breath hitch into a gasp like you can’t get enough oxygen into your lungs. You whimper, “Jake.”

“Shh,” he whispers, leaning forward to press a kiss to your cheek. “I got you, sweetheart. Don’t worry.”

And then finally, because in the end, he always does, Jake takes pity on you.

“Did I put it on your pussy?”

The sound that escapes you is pathetic, barely more than a whimper, and before you know it, you’re nodding as you slump against him.

“Tell me,” he says into your ear, hand still on your thigh, mouth still against your cheek, his breaths fast and loud, “I want her you say it.”

And if you weren’t sandwiched between him and the wall, if he weren’t holding you up, you know your legs would have given out.

“You…” You swallow and take a deep breath, stell yourself, say, “You put your mouth on my pussy.”

And he groans, a loud, sudden sound that seems to burst from him unbidden like he just couldn’t hold it back. 

You’re almost stunned by it, by the discovery that he’s just as affected by all this as you are, that he wants you, too, and it does your head in, makes the world spin, makes you clutch at him a little tighter.

“You like that?” he asks, something almost frantic to his words now. “Having your pussy eaten? Does that get you off, having a tongue in your tight little cunt?”

You can’t help it. You mewl, drop your head into the crook of his neck, and wish you could stay there. And you’re so wet, can feel it pooling in your panties, feel it soaking through the fabric. Every move has the seam of your denim shorts pressing against your cunt, sends shocks of lightning through you, but it’s not enough, not enough, never enough.

Your heart is beating in your throat, and the embarrassment takes a moment to set in amidst the chaos of your sensations, but it comes. Eventually, the way it always does.

“I…” You falter, squeeze your eyes shut, push your face further into his neck, so grateful he can’t see you, and then you whisper, as if speaking it out loud could somehow make it more real, “I’ve never… you know… no one’s ever….” 

Instantaneously, Jake’s fingers tighten against your thigh, and then they tangle in your hair, and he pulls your head back with enough force that you can feel it, that it travels in shock waves through your scalp, all the way down to your toes.

He’s looking at you like he wants to devour you.

“Honey,” he says, and there’s something serious to the word beneath all that desire.

And you have trouble concentrating because honey, he called me honey, and your chest is so full of that feeling you only get with him, the one that makes you feel that everything will be alright, that nothing will hurt you, that you’ll be just fine.

“Honey,” he repeats, “do you trust me?”

And you don’t pause. Don’t think about it. Not even for an instant.

“Yes,” you say, and mean it. Mean it like you’ve never meant anything.

And Jake smiles, smooths your hair back, rubs his nose against yours. And then he said, “Would you let me? Would you let me put my mouth on you, would you let me eat your pussy until your legs are shaking? Would you trust me with that, my gorgeous, gorgeous girl?”

You’re going to disintegrate. It can’t be possible for one person to want another so much. It just can’t be possible.

“Yes,” you exhale. “Okay. Jake.”

He makes a choked sound, and then he steps back suddenly, tugging you with him by your wrists, and you stumble against his chest, let him guide you through the apartment blindly. It’s a wonder your knees don’t give in as you stumble against him like a fawn, as he pulls you like a ragdoll.

“Where are we going?” you ask, head spinning in rapid circles. Like you just got off a merry-go-round.

“I’m not going to eat you out against a wall for the first time,” Jake says.

And it would be almost romantic if it weren’t so filthy, such a quick turn-around that it could give you whiplash.

“Oh.” You blink as he pulls you into his bedroom. “I thought the wall was sort of hot.”

He laughs. “Don’t I know it?”

But then he turns, lets go of your wrists, leans down to press a quick, soft kiss to your mouth that leaves you chasing after him.

Affectionately, he brushes his fingers over your cheek and says, “I’ll do it right, honey, I promise I’ll make it so good, you’ll wonder how you ever went without it. I’ll have you coming for days.”

The thing is… you don’t even doubt it.

Jake has always been able to back up all that talk. It’s one of the things you hate about him. It’s one of the things you love about him.

“Now,” he says, “take off your top.”

It’s so much harder when he makes you do things because that’s when the anxiety gets behind the wheel, when the doubt creeps in. But in the end, that strange instinct to listen to him, to trust him, always wins out.

You pull your shirt over your head, and you can’t look at him.

“Shorts, too,” he orders and then, almost like an afterthought, adds, “and your bra.”

Your hands are shaking so hard that you struggle with the clasp of the bra, the button on the shorts, but finally, you free yourself of both, and then you’re standing in the middle of his bedroom, naked except for a pair of panties so wet you think you’re probably gonna have to throw them out come morning, and you’re shaking even though you feel like you’re burning up, like a fever in your blood, like a yearning in your bones.

It’s exhilarating and terrifying, and you want to cover yourself, but you can’t move, can’t do anything but stand there as you feel his eyes on you like hot irons, as you stare at the cologne bottles on the dresser.

What if he doesn’t like me? you think, mouth dry. What if I’m ugly.

And then Jake says, “Sweetheart. You’re the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

You’re going to cry.

“Now get on the bed and spread your legs so I can get my mouth on that gorgeous cunt.”

You’re going to have a stroke, and then you’re going to cry.

You do as he says, scooting backward on the mattress until you’re far enough up the bed to put your head on one of the pillows. Jake’s sheets are a dark blue, soft cotton, and they smell like him, like his cologne. Cinnamon and spice. The scent wraps around you, envelopes you. You clench around nothing.

If this is what his smell alone does to you, how are you going to survive his mouth on you?

The mattress dips under his weight, but you can’t look at him, keep your head on the ceiling instead. It’s all too much. It’s not nearly enough.

And then his face appears above you, and his smile is almost goofy as he leans to kiss you once, twice, three times. They’re just soft pecks, but you open your mouth and pull him down to you until you’re chest to chest, until you can feel the weight of him.

He slides his tongue into your mouth with a groan, pulls you closer with a hand on your hip. And it’s skin to skin, his palm hot and heavy, and you want him all over you, want to cover yourself in him, every inch. It’s very wet, very warm, too much spit in both your mouths, but you don’t even care, not when his teeth nip at your lower lip, when he pants against you, when it makes you feel like you’re going to fall apart right here, right now.

Finally, you get your hands on him too, on all that skin, let them run across his chest because you’re so drunk on the feeling of it all you forget even to think if you’re allowed to do this. His heart is racing beneath your palm, just as quick as yours is, and that’s a reassuring thought, that he’s affected by it all too.

Jake does something with his tongue, something that has your insides twisting, clenching like a fist, and you moan into his mouth, wrap your legs around his waist and buck your hips up, desperate for some kind of friction, of relief, not above humping him if that’s what it takes.

You feel it immediately - Jake is rock hard against your center, against the quick but firm pressure of your cunt, and it makes you squeak the exact moment it makes him choke.

“Jesus,” he grunts, fingers wrapping around your wrists and pushing them back into the pillow, pulling you off him and forcing you down into the mattress with a force as gentle as it is firm. “Stop distracting me, sweetheart.”

He draws back until he kneels between your legs, looming above you. All the lamps are off, but the blinds aren’t drawn, and moonlight spills like liquid mercury across the bedroom floor, across his skin. Inevitably, you think of that night out on the beach behind the Hard Deck, the light tangled in his hair, a study in blue.

“I think I remember telling you to spread these,” he says casually, tapping a single finger against your kneecap.

You want to tease him, want to say something about how his memory seems to be working pretty well of a sudden, but your brain won’t cooperate.

Instead, you do as you’re told, even as you feel like it might kill you, and spread your legs further.

Immediately, Jake’s eyes go to what lies between them.

“Fuck,” he whispers, voice gone husky, “you’re so wet, honey.”

If you look at him, you think your heart is going to fail, so you just keep your eyes on the ceiling. Unlike your own, it’s completely free of water stains, and that’s just about the last coherent thought you have.

Jake leans forward, maneuvering around until his chest is pressed to the mattress, one hand on your thigh, the other spread on the sheets, and then his mouth is on you.

And okay. No more teasing then. Straight to business.

Over the fabric of your panties, his tongue moves against your center, and you can’t do anything but close your eyes, open your mouth even as no sound escapes. He just mouths at you for a moment, inhales deeply like he’s trying to smell you, and the thought sets you off, has you clenching your teeth, curling your toes. Then he presses a kiss to your clit through your cotton, and you’re seeing stars. 

“Oh,” you say, and he laughs, moves away to hook his fingers beneath the elastic of the panties, pulls them off unceremoniously, helps you lift your hips. They become another piece of fabric added to the pile of your clothes when he throws them over his shoulder without looking, eyes focused only on your center.

And then he leans forward, and you’re bracing yourself, steeling yourself, but nothing could ever have prepared you for the first stroke of his tongue through your folds. It has your hips rising, hed rearing back into the pillow, mouth shaping a word that never escapes it.

Jake’s fingers tighten on your thigh, and he moans once, and then he really goes for it. Burying his whole face in it, opening his mouth like he wants to devour you, tongue wet and wide and hot on your cunt, teeth just grazing your clit as he licks broad stripes from your hole up to the apex. He sets a leisured, moderate pace like he’s got all the time in the world, but you’re pretty sure yours is running out. Five more minutes of this, and you’re a goner, and it’s all too much but not enough, and you want to get away at the same time that you want him closer, and your head is spinning, your heart stuttering, your fingers tightening in the sheets.

He wraps his lips around your clit and sucks, and you all but keen, fingers flying to his hair, his shoulders, your stomach. You can’t settle, can’t stop jerking, have no control over your own body anymore. All over the place, all over him, mind a mess and heart a mess and body a mess, and you can’t believe nobody’s ever done this to you before, and how have you ever lived without the feeling of Jake’s mouth on your pussy and you’re going to rip your own heart out and…

And then he catches your wrists in one hand, forcing you to look at him where he’s barely lifted his head from between your thighs. And you freeze, all the world narrowing down to nothing but his face, his voice, just him, right there with you.

He says, “I got you. I’m taking care of you, pretty girl.”

Above the sheets, by your hips, he laces his fingers through yours.

When his mouth meets your cunt again, there’s no restraint left. He fucks his tongue inside of you shallowly, your eyes rolling back, your legs straining to spread even further, to the point of pain when your muscles protest, but you need him closer, deeper, harder, and you’re so empty, aching with it. The only thing grounding you are his hands, the only point of you that seems connected to reality as the rest goes floating into space, reduced to nothing but a conduit for pleasure, for want, for yearning.

His tongue goes from your hole to your clit, one hand untangling from your death grip so he can slide a finger into you. He’s gentle about it, careful almost, but there’s no point, you’re so wet he goes without resistance, not an ounce of tension in any of your muscles. You couldn’t tense up if you tried, everything gone liquid and loose and lax. 

And it’s good, so good, so…

Jake pulls off you for a moment, breath panting and hot against you, just to check, “Did you do this too? When you thought about me, did you fuck yourself on your fingers?”

And it takes you a moment because you can’t remember if you have a mouth, can’t remember how to use it, and when you finally do, anyways, your voice is like a foreign sound, something from a different planet.

“I… tried, but it… I can’t… angle’s all wrong, it doesn’t….” He crooks his finger, and you sob, moment of dubious coherency gone, and then there’s only one word left in you. “Jake.”

And he grins, always so cocky, always so sure, adds a second finger, and buries his face into your cunt again. You keen.

It’s so wet, all of it. Your pussy and his tongue and his fingers fucking through it, fucking in with squelching sounds that should be embarrassing but make you burn hotter instead, your bodies slick with sweat, and you’re pretty sure there’s saliva dripping from your mouth, but you can’t stop it, can’t help it, can’t do anything but hold on and take it. Everything he’s giving you.

And you remember your ex trying to finger you in that bedroom covered in Twilight posters, eons ago, nothing but discomfort and awkwardness, and god, if this is what it should have been like that you want a refund, you think you’re owed compensation from the universe because that’s not fair, people were feeling this while you were telling yourself five minutes of rutting against your own finger on your clit was enough to satisfy you?

“You taste so good,” Jake groans into your cunt, “could eat this pretty pussy all day. Could stay right here forever, with my tongue in my gorgeous girl.”

And it’s almost scary, the way it builds, how high it goes, how tight it winds you. The precipice gapes below you.

“Jake,” you whimper, gasp, thrash, “Jake, wait, I’m gonna….”

“It’s okay,” he whispers, pupils blown, cheeks flushed, voice vibrating down into the darkest parts of you. “I’m here, honey, you can let go now, come on, sweetheart, I wanna see, I wanna taste….”

And you’re crying, cheeks and chin and neck wet with the tears, and you feel pathetic, but you can’t help it, free hand going to tangle in his hair, holding where you want him as he moves his fingers just so, grazing something inside you, tongue circling around your clit with just enough speed, just enough pressure.

“Please,” you sob, terrified he’s going to change up, and it’s going to get away from you, terrified he’ll stop. “Please. Please.”

It becomes a mantra, a litany, and then he squeezes your hand and plunges his fingers deep, curls them, and you’re toppling over that edge, hurtling, spinning, falling.

It’s bone-deep. It curls around you, it breaks you apart. A rope snapping. A coil unraveling.

You feel it everywhere, in your core and your toes and your fingers. A tightening and then the breathless, heart-stopping release of it all racing through you. It has you arching off the mattress, fingers tightening in his hair, legs trembling with tremors you can’t control, howling his name.

It seems to go on forever, his fingers fucking you through it, his tongue stroking you through it, and there’s nothing in your head, nothing but that blinding, strung-out pleasure.

Jake just keeps going until you push his head away with force, overstimulated to the point that pain shoots up like tiny pinpricks. You try to close your legs, but he keeps them open.

“I don’t know who those guys who didn’t eat your pussy were, sweetheart,” he says from between your legs, mouth still slick with you, eyes still dark, voice still breathless, hands still on your thighs, “but they must have been the biggest idiots in the history of mankind to miss out on that.”

You can’t answer. You’re afraid you might never be able to speak ever again.

Jake crawls up the bed until he can stretch out beside you, and finally, you can close your legs, draw them up to almost to your stomach and angle them away. You’re still pulsing, clenching around nothing, more exhausted than you’ve ever been.

“You okay, honey?” he asks softly, leaning in to kiss you. You can’t even reciprocate, just stare at him.

“Uhm,” you say.

He laughs at you, and if you could move your arms, you’d hit him. As is, you just blink at him, dazed, confused, still caught up in the intensity of it.

“That good, huh?” He grins like the cat that got the cream and wraps an arm around you, pulls you against him. There’s something reassuring to the feel of him, the slight damp of his skin and the solid muscle against the mush of yourself.

And then, voice suddenly so much softer, he says, “You did so well, honey. My best girl.”

Maybe you shouldn’t like it so much, but you can’t help but beam, cling to him.

“Next time,” he says, voice back to the levity of his pride, “I think you should sit on my face.”

You can’t help it. You gape at him.

“Your… face?” you repeat, hesitantly, unsure if you’ve misheard.

Shameless, he nods. 

“Don’t worry about suffocating me or any of that shit, it’d be an honorable way to go down.” 

“Oh my god,” you say, and then you laugh, and he laughs with you, and it’s like somebody poured liquid sunlight into your chest.

But then you shift against him, trying to get comfortable, and suddenly you’re not just aware that you’re lying in a puddle of what is essentially your own slick and Jake’s spit, that you’re still completely naked, but even more pressingly that he’s still hard.

Almost immediately, something inside of you seizes up again.

“Oh,” you whisper.

Jake, who has stilled your movement with a hand on your hip, clears his throat. He has a look of pure concentration on his face.

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll just… go to the bathroom.”

And he means it, is about to get out of bed when you hold onto him, wrap yourself around him like an octopus, shove your face into his chest, so you don’t have to look at him as you say, “No, I… I want it.”

Jake freezes.

“Sweetheart,” he says softly, “you don’t have to….”

“I want to,” you interrupt. And it’s clumsy rather than sexy, but you reach for his sweatpants, palm at him through the fabric, breath catching when you notice the dark stain of pre-cum on the front. “I want you inside of me.”

It’s so much more forward than you’ve ever been, so out of character, but it feels good to be honest, to tell the truth, to articulate what you’ve been dreaming of for months.

Jake groans loudly as you begin to rub at his length, drops back against the mattress without any protest.

“You want it?” he asks, searching your face as if he’s looking for any trace of a lie, of hesitancy.

Well, he won’t find any.

You smile and nod.

“I want it,” you confirm.

Jake clenches his eyes shut for a moment, exhales a shaky breath, and then he nods, leans over to open a drawer on his nightstand, and gets out a condom.

And he’s saying, you’re driving me crazy, sweetheart, but you barely hear him.

Because there it is, right on his nightstand. Front cover up, a gas station receipt shoved as a bookmark between the pages about a quarter into it.

Emma by Jane Austen.

“You… you’re reading it?” you say, interrupting whatever other filth was pouring from it, and Jake blinks, follows your gaze, pauses.

And then he has the audacity to blush. 

“Well,” he says, “you said it was your favorite, and I wanted to… I don’t usually read much, so it’s… a lot, but I think I get it, why you like it I mean, and….”

You pull him into a kiss, and you pour all of yourself into it. All the gratitude and the longing and the love. Everything you feel for him, right there, condensed into the slide of your mouth over his.

When you pull away, his eyes have gone dark again.

“I like you,” he says, and it should be bumbling, awkward, but it’s beautiful instead. “So much.”

You giggle. 

“I like you too,” you say.

From the first moment, Jake and you were planets circling each other. And now, finally, you’ve locked into orbit.

Jake rolls over you, kisses you again, only it’s even filthier this time, reminiscent of what he did between your legs, and within moments it’s gathering in your stomach again, growing once more, and you’re wet and wanting and pliant beneath him.

He pulls back to finally get rid of his sweatpants - how weird that he was still wearing them this whole time, you think - moves to roll on the condom, and you look down at his cock, open your mouth and… falter.

“Jake,” you say, “that’s not going to fit.”

And the moment you’ve said the words, you regret them. God, you sound like somebody hired you for an extremely low-budget porno, but you’re just honestly concerned.

Jake laughs, and you can’t believe you just fueled that ego even further.

“We’ll work with what he can. But sweetheart…” And he leans down, presses the tip of his cock first to your clit, then your entrance in a way that makes your vision blur, and his voice drops to a whisper, right in your ear, “Personally, I think you can take it.”

You can’t even answer, can’t do anything, because he starts pushing inside of you. And it’s excruciating, so slow it’s almost impossible, the stretch just the right side of unbearable. Jake braces a hand by your head, face scrunched up in pleasure, mouth hanging open, one hand guiding himself. And you just tip your head back and moan, a sound that rips free from the very core of you.

“I’d like to think I did a pretty damn good job at warming you up,” he grounds out, jaw clenched with concentration, “but- god, you feel so fucking good - we’ll take it slow, yeah? Just… tell me if you want to stop, honey.”

Stopping is the last thing on your mind. You just want him in you, want more, more, more, had it once, and already you’re so greedy.

The slide seems almost endless, stretching your walls further than you thought possible, and you can’t hear anything, not even Jake’s voice spilling endless praise in loops that make no sense, not your own heartbeat hammering away, only the rushing of your blood in your ears.

And then finally, when you think you can’t take it anymore, he bottoms out with a grunt and just stays there for a moment, pelvis pressed to yours, breathing in the same rhythm.

“How you feeling, sweetheart?” he asks gently, one hand moving to brush the hair matted to your face with sweat away from your forehead.

“I…” And you can’t think, doesn’t he know that you can’t think, why does he keep asking you questions when all of your brain is currently occupied with reminding you to keep breathing. “… Full.”

Jake’s face crumbles like he’s in pain, and then he drops his head against your chest, his breath hot where it hits your skin, and moans. Inside you, his cock twitches, and you gasp.

“Sweetheart,” he grits out, “can’t just go around saying shit like that. So I’m trying my best to hold on here, yeah?”

And it makes you crazy, thinking that you’ve made him like this, that he’s riding that edge because he buried his face in your pussy, and you can’t help it, hook an ankle over his thigh and tug him forward, force him to move.

“Fuck,” he groans. “You sure.”

And you nod, so far gone you don’t care anymore, can’t even remember to be embarrassed. 

“Yeah. I want it, Jake, please, please.”

It really doesn’t take all that much. He immediately complies, moving back, drawing almost all the way out before plunging back in. And it’s more than you can take, and not enough, it’s too slow, and too fast, it’s too hard, it’s not hard enough, it’s everything at once, and above all else, it’s good, so good you can’t put it into words, can’t believe it’s real, can do nothing but hold onto him and hope you make it out at the other side.

Jake keeps it even, keeps it slow even as you can see the muscles in his stomach rippling with the effort of keeping still, even as his face is tight.

“Okay,” you whisper, looking him right in the eyes only to find he’s already looking back, “give it to me, Jake.”

It sets him off. He goes from measured, collected to focused, thrusting harder, reaching deeper, and your eyes roll back into your head. He’s fucking you with enough force that it rattles the headboard against the wall, that you feel it reverberate all along your bones.

“Jake,” you whimper, and he groans, grasps one of your thighs, and bends you nearly in half, and it should be uncomfortable, but like this, he reaches even deeper, grazes that spot that paints stars in your vision. You can’t describe the sound you make as anything but a strangled scream, and it should be embarrassing, maybe, but you can’t bring yourself to feel anything but the pleasure of it all.

“Fuck,” he whispers against your neck, “fuck, sweetheart, you’re so… fucking… wet….”

The sounds are obscene. His cock plunging into your wetness, the headboard slamming against the walls, your own whimpers, and Jake’s moans, all of it mixing into what could possibly result in a noise complaint from several neighbors. And you don’t care. Not one bit.

He leans down to kiss you, barely more than your mouths slotting together, breath on breath, then his hand wanders down toward your pussy, and the other clasps yours, fingers slotting together. He’s thumbing at your swollen, sensitive clit, and it throbs, and things get even wetter, and you make a sound like you’re going to die right now, wrap yourself around him, arch into him, tongue stroking against his, his moan slammed against your teeth.

“Sweetheart,” he whispers, rubbing tight, concentrated, purposeful circles on your clit, “come for me, I wanna feel your pussy clench on me, you can give me that, yeah, honey, you can be a good girl for me, can’t you?”

It’s been pretty clear from the moment he slid inside that neither of you would last very long, but that undoes you.

You’re saying yeah yeah yeah please please please jake jake jake, and he sinks his teeth into the side of your neck, sends his tongue after to soothe, and then it barrels through you, more intense than the first because it’s closer to pain, fingernails digging into his back, his palm, mouth ripping open around a sound that would have been his name had you had the breath, that dies before it leaves your lips, world-shattering, ground falling out from under you, and if you didn’t know any better you’d swear you black our for a moment, everything fading away.

When you return to it, Jake is saying, “… fucking, I can’t, god, pussy so wet and tight, so pretty, my gorgeous girl, my best girl so good, and you’re so, you’re so….”

You never do find out what you are because he goes from focused to frantic, hips undulating wildly, fucking into you at a shallow, quick pace, and then suddenly he freezes, shudders, his cock jumps - and then he’s groaning, arching over you as he empties into the condom.

He tries to roll off you immediately, but you wrap both arms and legs around him and hold him to you, in you, stay like that with your hearts thundering against each other like they’re knocking up a storm against your ribcages in an effort to embrace. Even like this, you still wish you could get him closer.

If I could, you think, I’d live inside your chest.

That’s a stupid thought.

For a while, you just lie like that. You’ll have to get up and go pee in a minute, but you don’t want to think about it yet. For now, you just want to lie here.

After an eternity, Jake says, “When I leave tomorrow….”

There’s something like hesitancy in his voice. Worry.

Into your hair, Jake whispers, “Will you wait for me?”

And that’s the thing about Jake. He’s always, always given you a way out. The decision was always yours.

So you could still walk away. Turn your back on this and forget about it. Rebuilt those walls and go back to the routine of your life before him.

But his heartbeat is quick and uneven against your chest. His voice is familiar.

You think of that house with the blue door back in Seattle.

Maybe, you think, it was never so much about the house as what it stood for: Sitting with your mother on the couch and listening to the rain. Laughing in Penny’s kitchen with her and Amelia. Watching the waves roll in that night at the beach with Jake.

Home, you think and blink the tears away. I’ve finally come home.

“Yeah, I’ll wait for you,” you answer, tighten your arms around him, press your face into his chest. “In fact, I might never leave you again. You got air conditioning.”

+++

“Jake,” you say, “this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done.”

“Wrong.” He turns the car left, and you hold onto the door handle for dear life. “The dumbest thing I’ve ever done was the time I almost let you go.”

“Jesus,” you mutter, “you’re getting so sappy.”

But when you stretch your hand palm-up over the middle console, and he takes it immediately, you’re smiling from ear to ear.

“Will you let me take this stupid blindfold off now?” you ask, the fingers of your free hand reaching up to trace along the line of the old bandana Jake tied over your eyes earlier before getting you into the car.

“Nope,” he says, sounding cheerful. “Don’t ruin the surprise, sweetheart.”

In reality, Jake isn’t the best at surprises. You’ve been together for four years now, and in all that time, you don’t think he’s managed to pull a single planned thing off. You knew about every surprise birthday party, every surprise anniversary dinner, every surprise homecoming. 

It’s a testament to his love for you, though - you’re the first person he wants to share things with, even the ones he should be keeping from you.

(And you indulge him, every time. Pretend to be shocked. Pretend he pulled it off. 

You’ll do it even when he finally decides to get out that ring box you found in his sock drawer last week. You know he’ll ask. Soon. 

You’ll wait.)

Maybe this one will actually work, though, because really, you have no idea where the hell he’s taking you.

“We’re here,” Jake says, and you hear the rhythmic thumping of the turn signal.

Jake parks the car, and you wait in silence until he’s back to open your door and help you out, one hand holding yours and the other on the small of your back. Then, carefully, he maneuvers you around.

The feeling in your chest catches somewhere between excitement and trepidation. God, you hope he didn’t do anything stupid.

Then, his voice is low in your ear as he says, “Ready, sweetheart?”

You’re not exactly sure if you are, but you say, “Ready.”

When he takes the blindfold off, you blink into the bright sunlight.

There’s a house in front of you. A beautiful place, the kind you always point out to him when you’re taking strolls through your neighborhood. White wood paneling, a front porch that wraps around the whole ground floor. Balconies with wrought-iron railings for the second stories. Flowerboxes before every window.

From behind you, Jake says, “It’s ours.”

Your heart is in your throat. Your eyes burn.

“Ours?” you repeat, voice so soft it almost gets carried off by the breeze.

Jake nods, then swallows and scrambles to say, “I didn’t sign the contract yet, of course, I’m not crazy enough to do something that big without talking to you first, you know that. But if you want it, then… it’s ours.”

The tears are hot on your face. You feel like your ribcage is going to splinter apart. Behind it, your heart has grown to three times its previous size.

“Oh,” Jake says, spotting your tears, and the hands that were wringing the bandana suddenly fall along with his face, “you don’t like it. That’s okay, we’ll just….”

“Shut up, Bagman,” you say, laughing even through the tears, a bubbling sound, fragile as glass, fragile as you feel, “I love it. Of course, I love it.”

He grins, eyes all crinkly and luminous, and fuck, you’re so in love, so far gone, it feels like you could hug the whole world. 

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“God, I’m so whipped,” he says, laughing like he’s trying to rival the sun, reaching for you. “My gorgeous, brilliant girl.”

He pulls you against his chest, and you wrap your arms around him and press your smile into his neck, and it’s 84 degrees in the shade, but you don’t mind because you love him, and he sees you, and you’re home, you’re home, you’re home.

The door to your new house is painted a tender baby blue. Kind of like the ocean. Kind of like the Californian sky. Kind of like your dream.

#hangman fic #top gun maverick #hangman x reader #hangman #jake seresin #jake seresin fic #jake seresin x reader #mine #f: bh #goodbye

[skyeet-the-writer]

The One With the Bagel

uhhh this is super overdue but here it is for the new year!! i hope you guys like it!! also hope you guys have had a happy and safe holiday season! x. chandler bing x female!reader summary: after making plans, chandler bing shows the cool, alternative girl from canada around the city word count: ~2.9k warnings: none <previous next>

Chandler made good on his promise to show you around. Of course he did, how could he not? You gave him your number. Chandler may be stupid, but if he turned down the opportunity to hang out with you, he’d have Joey check him into a mental institution.

He didn’t call you right away, he figured it would be best to wait a few days. He wanted to wait at least three days, but he caved at two and a half and left you a voicemail on his lunch break.

He had rehearsed it many times and written it down several times. He wanted to get the words just right.

“Hey, y/n. Sorry to bother you, but if you still want to, I’m still open to showing you around the city. Or, well, parts. Um, yeah. I’m free this weekend, we can get coffee too or something if you want. But just let me know. Bye.”

When he hung up, he felt like the air had been pulled directly from his lungs and he immediately wanted to shoot himself. Why did he stutter so much? He knew why, but why? Why did he say ‘but’ so many times?

He did his best not to think about it for the rest of the day.

When he got home from work, exhausted as all hell, he had managed to forget about the whole phone call for at least an hour. But the moment he walked through the door, Joey called his name with a smirk and a strange look in his eyes.

“What’s with you?” Chandler asked, loosening his tie and finally being able to breathe again.

Instead of answering right away, his friend pointed to the phone and said, “She left you a message, man!”

His stomach dropped to his toes and he felt dread creep up his fingertips. Oh, God, what if you didn’t want him to show you around anymore? What if his quick reply freaked you out? God, if you never wanted to see him ever again Chandler couldn’t live with himself.

But still, he made himself walk towards the answering machine. It was blinking, so it was clear Joey hadn’t read it, but Chandler wasn’t sure if that made him feel better or worse.

He looked up at his friend, who seemed excited, the opposite of how he felt.

Swallowing, he pressed play and your perfect voice sounded through the apartment.

“Hey, Chandler! Great to hear from you, I was wondering if you’d call.”

He blinked at the phone. Were you waiting for him to call?

“Sorry about not answering, I was at work and then the bartender was sick and I had to do it. Real cool to make the new girl bartend by herself after she finished her training.” You laugh and Chandler feels the corners of his lips quirk up. “Sorry, I’m rambling. But, uh, yeah, I’d totally be down for Sunday. And coffee sounds great. Just call me back when you can and we can figure out the details or whatever. Bye, Chan.”

The machine clicked, signaling you had hung up, and Chandler stared at the white box with a smile on his face and a warm, somewhat foreign feeling in his heart.

Joey shook his shoulders, a grin plastered across his cheeks. "You got it, man, you're in!"

"Yeah, yeah, okay," he said, shrugging Joey off of him. "So, like, should I call her back now or wait?"

Glancing at the time the message from you was received, Joey answered, "I mean, she called a couple of hours ago. Do it now, man, she's probably off of work."

He nodded, feeling his heart rate pick up again. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

But instead of grabbing the phone, he just stared at it. He stared at it for so long that Joey had to touch his arm to get him to look at him.

"You want to order a pizza first?"

Chandler nodded. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea."

And so, forty-five minutes and two-thirds of a pizza later, Chandler mustered up the courage to call you.

It only takes two rings for you to pick up.

"Hello?" Chandler has been waiting to hear your voice again for days and nothing can describe the pure amount of euphoria that rushes through his veins at your tone.

He keeps calm, however, and says, "Hey, y/n, it's Chandler."

Your tone lightens and he can practically hear the smile in your voice. "Oh, hey, Chan!"

A smile paints itself across his cheeks and heat rises up his neck and he tries to ignore Joey's excited looks. "Hey."

"You got my message, right?" For a moment, he hears some noises from your side of the call, almost like you're closing a plastic container, and he hopes he didn't catch you in the middle of eating. "I'm free on Sunday, is that cool?"

"Yeah, that works." He suggests meeting up at nine and when you laugh a little, his grin widens at your nervousness. "What is it?"

You laugh again and elaborate. "Okay, so, actually, I work the night before and we don't close until, like, one. So maybe ten? Instead?"

Chandler would hang out with you at three in the morning if you asked him to. "Yeah, that's fine."

"Awesome. So, around ten at Central Perk? Since it's really the only place I know in the city?"

A teasing smile pulls at his lips as he waves his roommate away before he embarrasses himself. "For now."

"For now?"

"Yeah. I'll show you around to all the good places."

"Even the Empire State Building?" Your voice is teasing and it makes his organs do gymnastics.

He chuckles and nods even if you can't see it. "Even the Empire State Building."

"Sick! See you then, Chan."

"See you then, y/n." He needs to come up with a nickname for you.

"Bye."

"Bye."

And then you hang up and Chandler places the phone back down. There's a beat where he makes eye contact with Joey before they both erupt into celebratory cheers and jump up and down together like they always do.

"Go Chandler!"

"Go me!"

~*~

Sunday comes both sooner and later than you expected. It's sooner because you worked a double the day before but it's also later because you've been looking forward to it ever since the two of you scheduled it.

But, eventually, ten o'clock rolls around and you're sitting at a table in Central Perk patiently waiting. You haven't been here for long, but since you always get nervous meeting up with new people, you grabbed a newspaper and started to do the crossword to calm your nerves.

You like Chandler, a lot. He's very sweet, funny, and he's pretty cute, too. You share a lot of similar interests, but since you've only had one encounter and a couple of phone calls, you still get anxious.

You're sure it will go away when you both make conversation.

Chewing on the end of the pencil, you rack your mind for the solution to this one question, but you can't quite remember the name, though it's on the tip of your tongue.

The bell above the door rings and you look up, smiling when you see Chandler. You wave him over and he quickly spots you, casually walking over.

"You do the crossword, too?" he asks with a small smile.

You nod. "Sometimes, yeah. Hey, I need your help with one. What's a prehistoric beast with a large bony frill?"

He tilts his head and asks, "How many letters is it?"

Glancing down at the paper, you count the little squares and answer, "Eleven."

He mouths some letters, and counts with his fingers, before saying, "Triceratops."

"That's what it is!" You quickly scribble it down in messy handwriting. "I knew that, I just forgot the word for it."

"Yeah, sure." He gives you a teasing smirk as you stand up, stashing the newspaper into your bag.

You raise a brow at him. "Wow, rude, Chan."

"I'm messing."

"I know." You smile at him. "So. You promised to show me where the good coffee is?"

He nods and moves towards the door, holding it open for you to go out of. "I did. You like bagels?"

"Of course I do, I'm not a monster."

Your humor always gets to him and he jerks his head down the street. "Come on. I'll show you a great place."

"Lead the way."

~*~

An hour later, you stand beside Chandler with a bagel in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other.

“Okay,” you say, walking past a couple holding hands. “It might have been a long wait, but you say it’s worth it?”

Chandler nods and smiles. “I promise you, it is.”

He leads you to a little bench by a flower shop and you take a seat laying the bagel across your lap.

“Coffee first,” he says to you.

“But you said the bagel is the best part.”

“Best for last?”

“I always do best for first.”

“Okay, well, drawing out the tension makes things better.”

You roll your eyes and hold out your coffee cup. “Clink me, Bing.”

A smile creeps onto his face and he can't help but say, "Is that a euphemism?"

Mirroring his teasing smile, you reply, "You wish."

He does.

But he doesn't say that and instead taps his disposable coffee cup against yours and takes a sip at the same time as you do.

Taking a sip, you immediately flinch back at the searing burning sensation on your tongue. Chandler does the same thing and you both laugh.

"He did warn it was hot," you mutter, referencing the kind older man who cashed you out while you run your front teeth over your tongue.

Chandler smiles. "Yeah, he did."

After blowing on the liquid for another moment, you both clink your cups again and you take a sip. Chandler recommended the latte and you trusted his opinion. Sure enough, as soon as the slightly-cooled down liquid touches your tongue, you're glad you trusted him.

"Woah," you say, looking at Chandler.

He's smiling. "Right?"

You smile back, taking another sip of the delicious beverage. "This is so good."

"I told you it would be good."

"It's not just good, it's great."

"Exactly. None of my other friends think it's very good."

You frown just a little. "Really? I mean, Central Perk is good and all, but this is amazing."

He just shrugs. "It's okay. I have you to go with me now."

You smile at him and a strange and warm feeling flutters in your chest.

But before you can even think about it, Chandler is putting the coffee down beside him on the bench and picking up his bagel. "Okay. Try the bagel now."

Nodding, you place the coffee down and carefully unwrap a small section of the bagel that you can eat. You had gotten a bagel called an 'All-Nighter', which had two eggs, bacon, cheese, and some kind of chipotle aioli on a cheesy bagel. It sounded like actual heaven considering you hadn't eaten all day and your mouth waters as the delectable scent wafts up to your nose.

Once again, you and Chandler clink your own bagels--he got one called the 'Santa Fe' with egg whites, sausage, and salsa on a plain bagel--and take a bite at the same time.

You're not one to groan at food, but this sandwich is so good you almost do. It's messy and you're glad for the double layer of paper around it. It's cheesy, it's warm, and it's a little spicy. It's everything you've been craving.

"Holy shit," you say, mouth still a little full. "This is so good, Chandler."

He just nods, already taking another bite.

Licking a stray piece of sauce from your lips, you hardly swallow before you go in for another bite. Together, you and Chandler eat in silence, too busy consuming your own individual meals like it's the last meal. Honestly, you would want this bagel to be your last meal.

You finish first, licking your greasy fingers before using a napkin to wipe them. Carefully, you shove all your trash into the bag and take a couple more sips of your latte before it gets cold.

Chandler is soon finished and while he's wiping his hands, you say, "That was the best sandwich I've ever had in my life, Chan."

"I told you it would be life-changing."

"I'm so sorry for doubting you," you tease, smiling and stretching your legs out in front of you and taking in the scene. It's almost noon on a Sunday in Manhattan and the streets are, unsurprisingly, crawling with people, but everyone seems a lot more relaxed and chill on Sunday rather than a busy Friday morning when you're running late for work.

You and Chandler lapse into a pleasant silence where you both just people-watch for a few minutes while your meals digest. You watch the people go by and wonder what they're doing today and what plans they have. You wonder if they've ever had a life-changing bagel as well, you wonder how many of them are new to the city like you and how many know it well like Chandler.

He speaks up. “What do you want to go see first?”

Looking at him, you know the first thing you want to do. “Empire State Building.”

He smiles and stands, offering you a hand. “Come on, then.”

Taking it, you let him haul you up before dropping his hand almost immediately. For a second, disappointment fills his chest before he pushes it away. Together, he leads you to the Empire State Building, talking about everything and nothing all at once.

~*~

By the time it was getting dark, you had both wandered halfway around Manhatten. You had seen the Empire State Building, walked by the National Museum—where his friend Ross worked, which you thought was interesting—you had walked around Times Square, and by the Rockefeller Center.

“Is it true that at Christmas they have a huge tree?” you ask as Chandler walks beside you.

He nods, smiling. “It is. And they have an ice rink.”

This makes you stop in your tracks and you turn to him. He blinks and stands next to you, completely aware that there’s a giant smile on your face.

“Are you serious?” you ask.

Chandler nods slowly. “Yeah, I’m serious. What, do you like skating?”

“Uh, yeah.” You laugh and roll your eyes. “Chandler, I love skating. You know I did hockey for, like, years right?”

“No, I didn’t.”

You widen your eyes at him. “Oh. Well, I did.”

“I didn’t know you liked hockey.”

“I’m from Canada,” you say, starting to walk once more. “It’s a requirement. I got my first stick on my fifth birthday.”

“That’s so cool,” your friend says. “I love hockey.”

“What’re the teams in the city? I know there’s the Rangers, I just can’t remember the other one.”

“The Islanders,” he tells you. “But the Rangers are better. Joey and I go to the games a lot, but if I have an extra ticket, you can come too.”

“Thanks.” You smile at him, this cute little half-smile that makes his chest squeeze.

But he doesn’t think about it and smiles back, nods, and listens as you explain how you were the best defender on your team in primary school.

Eventually, you make it back to your apartment. Hell’s Kitchen isn’t as sketchy as it used to be and Chandler walks you up to your apartment building. It’s well past sunset, but the streetlights are bright enough.

“This is me,” you say, gesturing behind you to the building. “Thanks for walking me back.”

“It was no problem,” Chandler says, completely aware that you both walked right past his own apartment building twenty minutes ago. “I’m not far from here. Besides, I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t get mugged.”

“Considering I have three dollars in my wallet, I don’t think that’s a problem.”

Chandler laughs and you laugh too and you realize how much you love his company. He’s funny and he gets you. He’s fun to be around and he’s nice, something a little uncommon here in the city.

“We should do this again,” you hear yourself say. “I had a lot of fun.”

“Me too,” he replies. “Call me?”

He doesn’t mean to say it. It slips out and his eyes widen the words leave his lips but you just laugh gently and nod.

“I will.” Taking his hand, you shake it twice. Your rings are cold against his hand but he’s quickly distracted away from that when you lean in and press a quick kiss to his cheek. You have to lean on your tiptoes to do it and you’re already pulled away when he realizes what you’ve done.

Releasing his hand, you watch his neck heat up and panic rises up in you for fear you’ve gone too far. But then a small smile crosses his face and the knot in your stomach loosens.

Before the silence becomes awkward, you say, “Goodnight, Chandler. Get home safe.”

“You too,” he blurts out before cursing. But you just laugh that sweet laugh of yours and buzz yourself in, propping the door with your foot.

“Don’t get mugged on the way home, Chan.” And with another wave, you walk inside and let the door close behind you.

And Chandler is left standing alone in the streets of New York with a cheesy smile on his face. He scratches his chin but the grin doesn’t leave his face the entire time he meanders his way back to his apartment.

And his smile only grows wider when Joey mentions the lipstick stain on his cheek.

#x reader #chandler bing #chandler bing x reader #canadian reader #ross geller #rachel green #joey tribbiani #monica geller #phoebe buffay #don't be fooled #this is a slow burn

[norwegiankafka]

Since requests are open, some Seong Taehoon angst please any scenario is okay.

hi anon! filled my first request hehe, hope you liked it.

You're losing me [Seong Taehoon, angst]

Synopsis: Taehoon lied about not getting into fights again, to you, and he comes back, being almost dead, and called you to come over.

I recommend you to listen to this song while reading!

I bring the first aid kit to the living room.

The house is silent. There's no one except Taehoon and me. It's late, and I should have been home since an hour ago. But here, I am, bandaging his wounds because he called me to come over.

I peeled off one by one, torn clothes' fabric that he used to close the wounds temporarily. Dried blood and wet blood mixed, making the fabrics wet along with sweat. I wiped each one of the wounds with antiseptic, careful not to hurt.

"Ack! Do it slowly!"

"This gonna hurt, y'know. Be still." I said, not even staring at him.

After I carefully cleaned all the wounds, I wrap almost half of his upper body with gauzes in several layers. Little scratches with bandages, all done. I picked all of the things I used before, tidying up all the mess, and stood up. But Taehoon grabbed my hand, tried to stop me.

"Hey. Can we talk for a minute?"

"What?"

"Look. I'm sorry, I lied."

"You're not even sorry, Taehoon. Why? Why do you kept lying? Have you ever trust me?"

"I just don' want ya worried, y'know."

"You don't want me worried, but you always come home for being almost dead. So many occasions yet you learnt none. I don't expect a sorry from a person that never feels sorry for their partner." I clenched my fists, yanking my hand back from his strong grips.

Taehoon covers his face with his hands, slowly carding and grabbing his own hair, seemingly frustated. "If I do things the way you wanted me to be, will you stay? We can start over. Don't leave!" Taehoon's voice raised a little by the end of his words, reaching a pitch I never heard before. Maybe he's about to cry, but whatever.

My mind races by almost every memory that I had with him. A year sure feels short, especially with him. Recently, prior and during their so-called mission of catching Lee Jinho, he got really distant. And it's not that I know something was up, he was just saying that he trains a lot to perfecting his moves. Silly me, believing all of the lies.

All the chats left unreplied, late dates, missing calls, etc. And one night, when we were about to go on dates, he called me and asked me to postpone the date because he felt kind of funny and not in the mood for going on a date. Funny for me, I can hear the faint sounds of the taekwondo car he and his friends usually use to go for missions, and Hobin's voice who was talking to someone else in the car. I said yes, and hang up the call. Best believe, Taehoon didn't even think I would knew it was all lies.

I'm trying my best to hold my tears. My voice started to crack, and suddenly breathing is so hard. The air is thick with loss and indecision. All the pain that I felt was all just an imposition. It's a burden. He didn't felt sorry for it, he felt exasperated for it.

"If we had to start over to feel okay, I guess maybe we weren't meant to be. This is final, Taehoon. I learnt my lesson, you don't. Hope you find someone that.. understands you, better than me. Sorry."

I can feel his gaze on my back. Walking out the door, I inhale the cold air the night serves for me. This might feel rough for days ahead, but I'll be okay. I'll be alright.

I close the metal fence behind me, and stared at the crescent moon. So pretty, yet alone. I hope the moon knew, they got a company tonight.

#how to fight #viral hit webtoon #seong taehoon #seong taehun #seong taehoon x reader #taehoon x reader #viral hit taehoon #how to fight taehoon

[hillbillyoracle]

What Made My Life Better in 2023

One of the things I'm thinking about a lot as I get ready for 2024 is what actually made an impact for me in the last year. It was interesting to think through because it was neither what I expected nor what I had always heard would help me. Instead it was often small changes that stacked into something much more helpful and interesting when put together.

I wanted to share them in case it's helpful for anyone else.

#1 - Adaptive Cleaning

While I still use elements of other cleaning systems, the base of what I do is firmly rooted in Sarah McGlory's Adaptive Cleaning ideas. I started implementing it about halfway through the year in earnest, though I stumbled upon it a year or two ago, and it's made a huge difference. This is the cleanest my space has ever been and the fewest flares I've ever had and I genuinely do credit her ideas for being a big reason for that.

#2 - My Care Kit

About halfway through the year I also threw together this care kit that I keep by my bed. It has everything I need to do my skincare, brush my teeth, and do my makeup - all without leaving my bed. While I've felt embarrassed at just how much it's done for me, I think it's a great example of "do what works." I just don't like get up once I've sat down for the evening. And it's easier to get up if I already have all that stuff done. Not only have I kept up with skincare and other habits probably the best out of any point in my life, but the mood and self esteem boost it gives me has allowed me to do more of what I want in other areas too.

#3 - 750 Words

I start using 750 Words on a whim. I had liked doing morning pages but could never really keep up with them, especially on days when I was really struggling with my hands. I wound up really taking to it and have only missed a few days since I started in November. I wound up paying for a year of it because I'm that certain of it's benefit. I've written way more for my zines, my mental health is a little better, and it serves as an anchor habit for several others. I love the simplicity of it. I can usually crank out my freewrite for the day in about 10 minutes - I like 10 minutes being my new minimum versus the zero it was.

#4 - Laundry Day

This might seem obvious or silly to you but as someone who has tried a lot of cleaning routines, I was so used to the a load a day rule that I never questioned it. That is until I read Dana K. White's book How To Manage Your Home Without Losing Your Mind. She talks about her laundry system and it just completely changed my perspective. Laundry day has given me so much of my time back and I more regularly do more of our laundry. I'm sure other people were aware this was an option but I guess I needed someone to tell me.

#5 - Connecting with a Sangha

I'd been putting off connecting with a Sangha for a while. I knew I wasn't going to be in a place to go in person (I'm about an hour and a half any moderate sized city) and only meeting online felt like a pale imitation. But I was wrong. I got connected with the Furnace Mountain Zen Center based here in Kentucky and started attending more of their weekday meditation sessions and at home day retreats as I was able. It really deepened my practice and has remained a touchstone to return back to when I got through times life pulls me away. I wish I would have done it sooner. If you're Buddhist leaning in any way, I really recommend finding a Sangha - even if it's online.

I hope this sparks some ideas for other people. None of the "productivity" stuff I tried this year "worked" in the sense of sticking or allowing me to do more. The closest was probably pomodoros on a visual timer, which are genuinely helpful. But mostly it was acts of nurturance, curiosity, and care that really elevated my life this year.

May 2024 be even better!

#2024 #new years #self improvement #self care