#I really didn’t go through that much but it feels like I did | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

girlgenius1111 · 3 days

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instincts

alexia x reader mila verse :) having a newborn is, notoriously, not easy. it catches up to you. alexia is there to pick up the pieces and make sure you know how loved you are. angst + fluff! 🙂

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When Alexia entered the house, it was to the sound of the baby crying, which wasn’t an oddity; babies cried. What was weird was that Mila’s little voice sounded raw, as though she’d been crying for a while. Alexia sighed, expecting that it had been another rough day for you. Mila had been going through a sleep regression, and would truly only sleep if she was in either your arms or your wife’s. You were exhausted, neither of you getting much sleep at all. Alexia, though, got to go to training everyday and get out of the house. You, on the other hand, spend all day with the baby, the crying baby who barely let you put her down.

You’d been struggling in the past week, and Alexia couldn’t tell if it was exhaustion, related to PPD, or something else entirely. There hadn’t been a ton of time for the two of you to talk, but as Alexia heard her daughter wailing from the nursery, and your soft voice shushing her, she knew, somehow, that you weren’t okay.

She was proved correct when she walked into the nursery and found you in tears, cradling your daughter close to you. Mila’s head was laid on your shoulder, her face red from crying, though she quieted slightly upon seeing her Mami.

“Please, Milabear, please stop crying, honey, I don’t know what else you want,” you choked out, not wanting to further upset Mila with your emotions.

“Amor, give her here,” Alexia said softly, catching your attention when she walked into the room.

“She hasn’t slept all morning, Alexia,” you began, your wife nodding sympathetically, and taking Mila from your arms. Mila looked exhausted, her eyes flying open every few seconds, fighting sleep desperately as little whines left her mouth.

“I’ve got her, mi amor, go relax, go take a shower,” Alexia told you, frowning as you tearfully left the room. She had to take care of Mila, first, so she could give you her full attention.

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Mila had quieted slightly in the time it took you to get to the bathroom and turn the shower on, which really just made you feel worse. Was it you? Were you the reason she was so upset and refusing to sleep? The warm water washed over you, mixing with your tears, as you wished desperately that you were a better mother. More like Alexia. It was so effortless for her, so easy. Mila loved Alexia more than she loved you, you were sure. The thought only brought more tears to your eyes, until you were sobbing on the floor in the corner of the shower.

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Alexia got Mila to sleep ridiculously easily. Likely, the little baby was picking up on your overwhelmed emotions, and couldn’t settle down enough to sleep. Alexia was calm, though, hadn’t spent the entire morning trying to get Mila to sleep, so obviously, she managed it in just a few minutes.

“Sí, there you go Milabear, sleep mi bebé,” Alexia whispered, rocking back and forth on her feet, tracing lines over the baby’s small forehead. “You have to give your Mama a break, hmm?”

Alexia normally loved to talk to Mila, though she obviously expected no response. Now, however, Alexia ached to go after you, and make sure you were okay. As soon as the baby was soundly asleep, Alexia settled her in her cot, flicked the baby monitor on, and slipped out of the room.

You were still in the shower when your wife walked into the bedroom, hearing the water run through the door. And though she wanted to open the door and check on you, she knew better. You’d had such few moments alone recently, barely any privacy. Alexia hadn’t really either, but you definitely had it worse, and she didn’t want to overwhelm you.

She wished she’d gone in, though, 10 minutes later when you exited the bathroom, dressed in a pair of Alexia’s shorts and a shirt that looked bigger on you than it normally did. You were still crying, just barely, but your cries picked up again when you saw Alexia waiting for you on the bed, her soft gaze meeting yours and breaking any strength you’d managed to muster up in the past few minutes.

“Oh, mi niña,” Alexia sighed, standing and opening her arms for you. You all but collapsed into them, hands fisting themselves in Alexia’s sweatshirt, clinging on for dear life. You felt so small next to her, so protected, but for once, it didn’t make you feel better. Alexia’s shampoo scent flooded your senses, and all you could think was that Mila preferred her to you, and that she always would.

You cried, you sobbed, into your wife’s chest, much longer than Alexia thought was humanly possible, until you were wheezing in a breath after each sob, your whole body trembling against hers. You were stressed and frustrated and exhausted, but most of all, you were sad and you were terrified. Terrified, that you’d never be good enough for your perfect daughter.

Nothing Alexia was doing seemed to work to calm you down, not her sweet words whispered in your ear, not the soothing motion of her hand on your back. You just got more and more worked up, until Alexia regretfully pulled you back a bit, taking your face in between her hands.

“Amor, breathe,” she instructed you, nodding encouragingly when you tried to do so. It didn’t work right, your chest just spasmed and you made a choking sound, now looking up at your wife in alarm. “Hey, you are okay, mi amor, I have you,” Alexia comforted, guiding you to sit on the edge of the bed, standing just in front of you.

“Can’t-” you gasped out, shaking your head frantically as tears continued to fall down your face.

“You have to breathe, bebe, you are going to make yourself sick,” Alexia sighed, grabbing one of your hands and pressing it to her chest. “Inhale… venga mi niña, inhale.” She insisted, getting a little firmer in an effort to make you listen.

You inhaled a full breath, finally, using the air instantly. “Ale,” you cried, not really sure what you were trying to convey to your wife; you just needed her.

“I know, I know,” she whispered back. “Inhale and exhale, with me. You are safe, you are okay.” You were calming down slightly, but as you did, you grew more tearful, gasps replaced by quiet whimpers as you did everything you could to breathe with Alexia. You were desperate to feel her closer to you, for some assurance that every awful thought you were having about yourself wasn’t true.

“Ale, please,” you mumbled, grabbing her arms and wrapping them around you. She got the message, sitting on the bed next to you and pulling you in close to her chest once again. Her shirt was slightly damp against your cheek from your tears, but Alexia held you steadily, safely. She had you, you were okay. You were okay.

You had begun to relax, just slightly, lulled into a calmer state by the sound of Alexia’s heartbeat in your ear, when a piercing cry echoed through the house. You were brought to tears instantly again, pulling away from your wife to go grab your baby. Alexia shook her head insistently, though, gently guiding you back onto the bed.

“No, amor, I will check on her. Try to relax, everything is okay.” She said softly.

“Bring her here? Please?” You asked, tearfully looking up at your wife.

Alexia looked conflicted, having just intended on putting the baby back to sleep, and returning to take care of you. You needed her, and Alexia didn’t want to divide her attention between the two most important people in her life at the moment. “I’ll just put her back down,”

“No, Ale, please, I need her here, please, I’m sorry, please just bring her,” you cried, and alexia was quick to shush you, wiping a few tears off your cheek.

“Okay, okay. If that’s what you need, mi amor. Take some deep breaths for me, okay? I will be right back with pequeña.”

You nodded, eyes falling shut when Alexia leaned down to kiss your forehead, before she was disappearing through the bedroom door. You tried to follow her instructions, focusing on slowing your heart rate down, hearing the cries coming from the nursery continue.

Alexia’s voice came over the baby monitor, and you were momentarily distracted from your misery by how soft she was for her little girl.

“My little troublemaker. Are you just jealous that your Mama is getting all the attention? I’ve got you too, bebe, don’t you worry. Let’s go find your Mama.” She cooed, Mila’s cries only quieting slightly as Alexia picked her up and carried her down the hall and into your room.

“Hey, shh, Mama is right here.” Alexia cooed, bouncing Mila in her arms gently, giant tears sliding down the baby’s very small, very red face. Upon seeing you, Mila’s cries slowed to sniffles, and she reached out for you. Alexia kept her daughter close, though, sliding onto the bed next to you, before laying Mila easily down on her chest. “See? We are all okay.”

You weren’t really sure what to do. Mila was calm once again, drifting off happily in her Mami’s arms. And it was ridiculous, but you wanted Alexia to hold you, too. The blonde seemed to be able to read your mind, though, shifting Mila over a bit, gently so as not to wake her up, before lifting her arm and nodding at you to scoot closer. You did, burying your face in her shoulder, clinging on tightly to her sweatshirt.

You were so exhausted, but everytime your eyes fell shut, they would snap back open again, frantically looking to make sure Mila was okay. It was completely instinctual, you knew Alexia had her, you just couldn’t relax.

“Rest, amor, you need to sleep. I have Mila, and I have you.”

You let your eyes slide shut, finally, so deeply comforted by the feeling of Alexia’s fingers running through your hair. She had Mila, and she had you.

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When you woke, you knew a decent amount of time had passed. Your head was resting on Alexia’s thigh, now, and you realized that your wife had changed, now wearing shorts instead of the track pants she’d come home in. The room seemed slightly dimmer, and you could hear the sound of a football match on TV. You kept your eyes closed for a bit, just listening. It was the Barça men’s side playing, and Alexia was keeping up a running dialogue for Mila, as she always did.

“Sí, and when you are a big girl, you can play football just like me. Or you can take pictures like your Mama. You can do anything you want, bebe. Anything that makes you happy.” Alexia paused, and you heard her sigh happily. You knew she was gazing down at your daughter, an expression filled with love on her face. “It would be fun if you played football though.” She whispered, as if she was telling a secret.

You rolled off of your wife, onto your back, though you turned your head in her direction and opened your eyes. Alexia was sat up against the headboard, in a cozy pair of pajamas. Mila was tucked under her arm, sitting up too. The blonde was effortlessly holding a bottle to the baby’s mouth, her eyes flicking back and forth between her daughter and the TV across the room. Mila looked like she’d had a bath, her wispy hair a bit damp, and she was also in her pajamas, a light pink onesie with small lions on it. A gift from Mapi, of course.

Alexia looked down at you when you rolled over, though, the smile on her face not at all hiding the concern and worry that overflowed off of her.

“Hola mi niña perfecta,” she whispered, reaching out to run her fingers through your hair. “How are you feeling?”

“Better. Less tired.” You croaked, clearing your throat slightly when your voice came out all choked. “What time is it?”

“Just after 7.” You’d been asleep for upwards of 7 hours, then. “Mila has taken her bath, had another nap, and finished an important meeting with her lawyers.” Alexia said, chuckling to herself at her own joke.

“Oh no, is she getting sued again?” You asked, looking reproachfully at your daughter. “She has to stop running people over with her car.”

“It is a bad habit.” Alexia agreed, grinning down at you. The smile fell from her face, though, when she noticed how upset you suddenly looked. “What is it?”

“I’m so sorry for before, for freaking out. I don’t know what happened to me.”

Alexia shook her head. “No, no apologies. You are exhausted and stressed and you spend all day at home with Milabear. A screaming baby is a lot for anyone. You were overwhelmed. It is completely understandable.”

“You’d just got home from work though,” you argued tearfully, but Alexia shushed you.

“Stop, amor. We are both Mila’s moms, sí? We are both responsible for her, and we are both responsible for taking care of each other. I haven’t been doing a good enough job, I see that now. You need more help, and I need to give that to you.”

You nodded begrudgingly, biting your lip when it began to tremble.

“Talk to me, bebe, por favor.” Alexia pleaded, running her thumb over your bottom lip.

“It’s stupid.” You began, ignoring the frown on your wife’s face. “I’ve just missed you.”

Alexia felt her heart shatter. “Oh, mi amor. I’ve missed you too. I haven't been around enough, and I am so, so sorry.”

“It’s work, Ale, I get it,”

“That is not an excuse. I already talked to my manager. I am taking a step back from brand deals and commitments. I am focusing on football, and my family. On you and my Milabear.”

“I can’t ask you to do that, Ale,”

“You are not asking. I am doing it. You need more from me. I don’t like to see you so upset. I am happy to do this, mi amor. I promise. You are my priority, my family is my priority. Always.”

You nodded gratefully, but Alexia could tell by the slightly preoccupied look on your face that there was more that you were upset about. It wasn’t just being exhausted and overwhelmed. You looked insecure as you fixed your eyes on Mila, who was beginning to drift off in her spot in the crook of Ale’s arm.

“Hey.” Alexia said softly. “Come here.”

You sat up like she wanted you to, leaning your head on her shoulder.

“Something else is bothering you.” She noted, pairing her words with a gentle kiss to your temple.

“No, there isn’t,”

“Yes, there is. Tell me.” She encouraged, removing the bottle from Mila’s mouth and sitting her up on her legs. She did it so effortlessly, everything so effortlessly. Alexia was an incredible mother, and you felt like she had instincts that you just didn’t have.

“Do you think I’m a good mother?” You asked finally, letting Mila grab onto your hand and start to play with your fingers. You felt Alexia’s eyes burning into the side of your head after you spoke, but you couldn’t bring yourself to look at her.

“How can you ask that?” Alexia said incredulously. “You are the best mama.”

You sighed. “Mila is perfect.

Alexia blinked, trying to keep up with the sudden apparent subject change. “She is perfect.”

“I don’t think I’m perfect. I don’t think I’m good enough for her. She deserves so much better than me.”

“No, no no no.” Alexia said frantically, standing to lay the baby on the play mat next to the bed so she could turn her attention fully to you. She practically dove back onto the bed, resting against the throw pillows as she pulled you fully into her arms. “No, mi amor. You are good enough for Mila, bebe, you are perfect.”

“I just feel like I can’t do anything right. This is so much harder than I was expecting it to be.”

“I know, cariño, I know. It is hard, but you are doing so well. I am so proud of you, and I am so sorry that I did not realize you were struggling sooner. So sorry, amor.” Alexia cooed, running her fingers through your hair. She was doing anything she could think of to bring you some comfort, to make you feel even slightly better.

You snuggled further into your wife, trying to get as close to her as you could. “You’re better at this than I am. I think Mila loves you more.” You whispered, your cheeks burning from embarrassment, knowing you were being a bit ridiculous.

Alexia shifted, trying to get a look at your face. She looked so devastated to hear how you were feeling, and you almost felt guilty for being honest with her. Almost, because you knew she was about to put those insecurities to rest.

“Mi amor, no. You spend all day with her, you are around so much more than I am. It is inevitable that she will be upset around you more than she is around me, just because of the timing. And, amor, it is not like she does not cry with me. She is normally so upset when she wakes up at night, and the only way to get her back to sleep is to put her next to you. Mila lights up when she sees you, baby. She loves you so much. You brought her into this world, you are exactly what she needs. You are good enough for our baby, amor, and you are good enough for me.”

You were tearing up, but right on cue, a soft cry rang out into the room, emanating from Mila’s play mat. Your wife grabbed the baby, picking her up and bouncing her gently in her arms. Mila just cried harder, though, her face turning red as she reached her little hands out towards you. Alexia easily shifted Mila into your arms, and you cradled her to your chest, pressing kiss after kiss to her tiny forehead. Your wife pulled you both back into her arms, a soft smile on her face.

“See? She knows you are upset, and she wants to make you feel better. Because she loves you.” Alexia murmured, resting her chin on your shoulder, shutting her eyes as she nuzzled her face into your neck. “And I love you. You are the best Mama, and the best wife, and I love you.”

“And you, Milabear. Te amo, mi niña pequeña.” Alexia whispered, looking adoringly down at your daughter.

You relaxed into your wife, feeling a thousand times better than before. You were happy, completely overflowing with joy and adoration for your little family. You’d never be sure what you did to deserve such perfection, but Alexia made you feel worthy of it everyday. Worthy of her love, and worthy of the most perfect baby on earth.

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it's been a bit since i've written a mila fic. enjoy and let me know all your thoughts 🙂🥰🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻🫶🏻

#woso imagine #woso x reader #alexia putellas x reader #woso one shot #woso fanfics

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luveline · 16 hours

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could you write bombshell!reader getting a tattoo of spencer’s name or something that reminds her of him and his reaction please?

“Why are you kissing me?” you mumble, your voice hoarse with sleep.

They’re light kisses. “I’m going now,” Spencer says, matching your quiet tone.

“No.”

You wrap your arm behind his neck and feel his hair against your wrist. His nose and lips warm your jaw.

“Yes.” He kisses your jaw. “I have to go, but I didn’t wanna leave without a kiss.”

That’s really sweet, he’s so sweet, you’re so tired. “Please don’t go, Spencer.”

“I have to go.” He readjusts your hugging to hum against your temple, distinctly content despite your pleading. “I’ll be back by six for dinner, promise.”

“Promise,” you say.

You get to keep him for a few minutes, regardless. His neck must sing bent as he is over you but he doesn’t relent, doesn’t move until you encourage his face back to kiss just under his bottom lip. “Sorry, I’m making you late,” you whisper.

“No, no, I accounted for this. You’re on my agenda.”

“How much time did you allot?” you ask through a smile.

“Seventeen minutes. That’s how long we usually hug in the morning.”

“Gotta get that time down,” you say.

“Or up.” He holds your face. You turn your head into his touch and keep him for just another half a minute.

“Okay,” you mumble, letting your eyes flutter closed again, “you can leave, I’m gonna go back to sleep.”

“Good idea.” He kisses you, and he says goodbye. You’re sleeping again before he’s even left your room

When you wake properly, you still feel loved, like a sunburn but with less stinging. There’s something very special about your boy; something permanent about the way he loves. You can’t imagine he’ll ever stop loving you like this, he’s embedded you so deeply into his life and his routines (and you’d beg him to keep you if he ever changed his mind). That in itself is crazy. You can’t have imagined begging a guy to let you stay, but for Spencer, you would.

When he comes home that night, half an hour before six, you have no regrets.

You hadn’t noticed how he was dressed when he left, but he looks lovely in just a simple t-shirt and jeans. Remarkably casual for him, you used to think he only wore t-shirts to bed, but the older he gets the better propensity he has for comfort. What makes it for you is the cardigan.

“You look nice,” you praise, more than satisfied when the first thing he does after he takes off his shoes is lean down to hug you where you’re sitting on his couch.

“Thank you.” He pats your back and pulls away. “You’re beautiful,” he says with ease, like he’s commenting on the weather. “Good day?”

Your lips pucker into a twist.

“What?” he asks.

Unfortunately, he sounds deeply worried.

“No, it’s nothing, I just hurt my arm. Can you have a look?”

Spencer takes your arm. “What did you do?” he asks, pulling the sleeve of your shirt carefully up to your elbow. The Saran wrap confuses him, until it doesn’t, and he grins at your skin, before frowning again. His flickering emotions worry you, until he says, “Is that mine?”

You hold your arm in the light. “Of course it’s yours?”

It’s just a few words from a note he wrote you, perhaps too soon into your relationship for sweetness, and yet one you kept anyways. He told you the story of the I Love You lighthouse, or rather, the Minot Ledge lighthouse, and how the man who lived there had to live on a different island to his family while tending the lighthouse, so he would flash the light once, then four times, and then three times, one flash for every letter of each corresponding word: I love you. The note was left on your dresser. You’d slept together the night before, but he had to leave early. Nowadays he wakes you up, but back then he’d been too shy.

I want to be able to do that for you but I can’t find a lighthouse in D.C. that will let me in to try. I’ll keep looking.

“I’ll keep looking,” Spencer reads. His thumb heistates just under your small font.

“It’s from that note you left me.”

“I know, I remember.” He does his awful frowny face where his eyelids lower and you're sure he’ll never smile again, he looks that upset. “You know this is permanent?”

“They do tend to be,” you say with a lovelorn sigh.

“I don’t know what to do. I don’t know if I should kiss you, or hug you, or… I don’t know why you’d do this.”

“But it’s okay?” you ask. It could make for a very awkward conversation if he doesn't like it.

“It’s perfect.” He holds your gaze. “You’re perfect.”

He acts like your tattoo is a gaping wound as he moves in to hug you, careful of your new ink, but relentless in the tightness of his arms behind your back. You laugh, then squeal at his insistence, a giggly girly thing that nobody else should ever hear but him. He doesn’t make fun of you, just squeezes you to him, his face pressed so hard to yours you can feel his cheekbones.

“Now I just have to say something romantic for you to get tattooed and we’ll be equal again.’

“So we aren’t equal?”

“Um, no way.” Your laugh is self-satisfied and breathless. You turn your lips to his cheek. “I love you. I’m gonna build you a lighthouse.”

“Can’t believe you kept that note.”

“I have a whole shoebox of them. I love that you write them.”

He stops holding himself up, half on the couch and half in your lap as he hugs you with every bit of strength in his arms.

#spencer reid #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid x you #spencer reid x y/n #spencer reid x fem!reader #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid fluff #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid oneshot #spencer reid scenario #spencer reid drabble #spencer reid fic #spencer reid fanfiction

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lemonlover1110 · 2 days

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𝐁𝐨𝐧𝐝𝐬 𝐨𝐟 𝐅𝐫𝐮𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧

Sukuna

[Chapter 1] Offerings

Story Masterlist

Pairing: Trueform!Sukuna x f!Reader

*Just want to preface that this is a historical AU but there will be some historical inaccuracies so if you see something odd, don't point it out. Also this is still a curse AU! if that isn't clear with four-armed Sukuna. Anyway I hope you enjoy!! Any general story warnings can be found in the masterlist!

Discord +18 - Twitter - Ko-Fi

Sukuna is missing something, he’s not sure what it is but he knows that he’s bored. He’s bored of everything that once thrilled him, tired of the same routine. But no matter what he does, he feels empty.

He’s done everything possible to soothe that boredom, which has come to the expense of many lives. It entertained him until it didn’t. Occasionally he does find joy in the horrors that he causes but it doesn’t feel like that’s enough anymore. There’s something that he’s missing, but he’s not quite sure what it is.

He has everything a man could possibly want– Although he isn’t exactly a man so his wants and needs are obviously different. He isn’t going to be fulfilled by the foolish ideals of happiness that men have. He doesn’t have much of a guide though, therefore he’s lost in how to fix his problem.

“Uraume.” Sukuna’s voice isn’t all that loud, yet Uraume nearly comes running to fulfill his request. The temple is uncomfortably quiet; everyone is ready to fulfill Sukuna’s every request, and their king does not raise his voice unless adrenaline rushes through him, or he’s upset. No one knows which is the worst of the two.

“My king.” Uraume kneels down before him. He’s quiet, too embarrassed to even bring up this question. It’s unlike him. Uraume is truly the only person that he respects which is why asking the question is hard for him to actually say. He wouldn’t trust anyone else with it though.

“What do men usually do?” He asks, which is odd for Uraume to hear. Sukuna was a man too, once upon a time. But he doesn’t remember that stage of his life, and he’s sure he wasn’t happy either which is the reason why he’s the monster he is now.

“I’m not sure.” They sound reluctant. “If you could be more clear, I can search for an answer.”

“Get out.” He orders, and they bow again before exiting the room. He wants to be left alone to gather his thoughts. He has all the time in the world to figure himself out, but he wants even more time. He doesn’t want to be bothered now of all times at the very least.

“There’s a woman with an offering.” A servant tells him from the other side of the tatami doors, followed by a shrill cry that makes a smirk come to his lips. That’s his answer.

Sukuna wants a successor.

“Take it to the servants, answer to her needs.” Sukuna answers, not really caring to listen to any requests. His mind is now preoccupied, detailing his next course of action. He needs to find the perfect woman to carry his heir, which he knows will be a hard task– Perhaps the hardest challenge that Sukuna has come by in all of his years of living.

“Please eat, Haru.” You put the bowl beside the young boy’s mat. You’ve been slowly watching your brother’s health deteriorate, slowly watching his death near. Worst of all, you have been looking for a cure that seems impossible to find because it’s not something that’s affecting anyone important.

It’s not a disease that’s affecting anybody else, really. It’s not infectious, you quickly found that out. You were glad about it at first, but then you realized that there’s no cure yet. Days pass by, and he gets worse. He refuses to eat anything, and when he does, he can’t keep it down for more than a few hours. His death is imminent.

“I did everything I could to get the right ingredients for your favorite food. Auntie made it extra special for you.” You make sure to tell him, but he can barely move. You kneel down beside him, grabbing his utensils and preparing a bite. “Just one bite, Haru.”

“I’m sleepy.” Is all he manages to mutter, and you feel a pull on your heartstrings. Your hand caresses his arm.

“Just one bite, okay? Then you can sleep all day.” You try your best to convince him. All he does is sleep, and no matter how many hours he sleeps, he wakes up tired. He prompts himself up, and you’re fighting back a smile– It’s barely any progress, if you can even call it that. “Open up.”

There’s a smile on your lips as you bring the food to his mouth, and he begins to chew. He takes the utensils from your hand, grabbing the bowl of food and putting it on his lap. You stand up and tell him, “I’ll get you some water.”

“He’s finally eating something.” You share with your aunt, making sure your voice is low since there isn’t all that much space. Her eyes go to him, and she really wants to say that it’s a sign of him getting better but it really doesn’t mean anything. Sometimes he eats everything that’s made for him, but he throws it back up.

“I really wish this meant he was getting better… But we both know that he’ll get worse tomorrow.” She responds, and you want to curse her for even mentioning it but you know she’s right. You don’t like hearing it though, you’re helpless. There’s nothing more you can do for Haru, you’re just waiting for the day to come.

“I really think he can get better.” Your eyes begin to feel with tears, knowing that you don’t even believe yourself. You’ve tried everything you possibly can, but you know that his time nears. You can’t just accept that fact though, he’s your baby brother, you can’t let him go. “Let me get his water.”

“I’ll get it… Think about what the medic said.” Your aunt reminds you of the visit from the physician. One that you’ve forgotten because you refuse to consider his one and only suggestion a possibility. The words flow back to your head,

“Your best bet is the deity up north. You have to bring him an offering, and if he deems it worthy enough, he will cure him.” “But if he thinks it’s beneath him, he’ll kill you.”

You don’t want to risk anything, but lately that seems like your only option. He’s not getting any better, even though you so badly want to say that he is. Throwing up everything he eats is not much improvement than not eating at all. You just have to figure out what is considered an offering worthy for the deity to save him, and to save yourself.

“I’ll be back, I have to figure something out.” You say, smiling back at your aunt and your little brother. They barely acknowledge you before you leave the house, which you’re thankful for. You just need a moment to gather your thoughts, decide what you’ll do next.

You need to sort out your offering for the deity, an offering that will hopefully sort out all of your problems.

“My king, there’s a woman with an offering.” It feels like the hundredth time that week in which Sukuna hears that sentence. Humans are greedy beings, and they all fucking need something. It’s unnecessary, purely materialistic– It’s a side of humanity that he appreciates though. How much a human is willing to sacrifice for wealth or the promise of good fortune. Sukuna can’t judge, he's the sole winner in the end.

“Let her in.” He says, and the tatami door slides open. A poor maiden with a pale yellow kimono, and a woven basket in hand. You walk in with your head down, following the strict instructions that were given to you.

You’re trembling as you kneel down in front of the deity, bowing down to him. You remain bowing for however long he pleases, keeping your eyes shut because there’s tears building up. You have never been this terrified. Willingly putting yourself at death’s door is no easy feat.

“Rise.” He orders, and you straighten your upper body, remaining on your knees. You don’t dare look anywhere past his feet, keeping your eyes low and steady. You know that he’s staring you down, studying you. A smirk on his lips, thinking about how he’s found her. “What do you want?”

“My brother…” Your voice is shaky, and you try your best to compose yourself. You can’t start crying in the middle of it, you’ve gotten this far, he’ll surely kill you if you begin to sob at his feet. “He’s sick. The medic can’t cure him, and he told us you were our only choice.”

He’s not really listening. Something about a brother is all he grasped. He’s more into the way your lips move, and the tears of pure fear that well up in your eyes. He can tell that you really made an effort into your look today, even though you don’t look extravagant. Which for some reason he likes, he doesn’t want an arrogant woman in his chambers, he already has enough of them. He especially doesn’t want one of them carrying his heir.

What really draws him in is that certain look in your eyes. The clear innocence that’s written all over your face. You’re the perfect lily that he can’t wait to tear apart, petal by petal. That finalizes his decision.

“What do you have for me? Open the basket.” He orders, and you do as he says. Regret washes over you as you open it, immediately knowing that it’s not enough. You don’t know what came over you when you had the bright idea of picking it. You unfold the cloth with shaky hands, revealing the gift for him. He’s usually furious with these types of gifts, since they hold no value to him but he wants to hear your reasoning since he has other plans with you, “Why do you come to me with this?”

“Pomegranates aren’t native to the land, and they’re scarce this time of season. I found some while searching for an offering and thought it was a sign.” You explain, and he scoffs. A stupid reason, one that should get you killed. If he wanted fruit, he would send Uraume to get it for him. He guesses it’s creative though, especially when almost every person that walks through the temple is willing to sacrifice a life. But you don’t gain points for creativity, no one ever has.

“Pomegranates? What am I supposed to do with that?” He’s mocking you, and you swallow the lump in your throat. He’s right, what is he supposed to do with a pomegranate? He’s not like you, he’s not just going to eat it. You’re usually smart about this type of thing, but you guess desperation got the best of you this time around, and now you have to pay for the consequences. As to be expected, there’s no answer from you, and he orders, “Look up at me.”

Your eyes slowly move up his body to his face, and you’re in awe at the sight. A mix of emotions flow through your body. He really isn’t a human. You were terrified earlier, but now you’re simply astonished. You never really believed the tales that were told about him since you couldn’t wrap your head around the fact that a being like him could exist. But now he stands before you.

“Do you really think I’ll do anything with the fruit?” His voice sounds serious, but there’s a hint of a smile on his lips. You shake your head which irks him. “You have a voice don’t you? Use it.”

“No, my king. My apologies.” It’s strange, but you sound more confident as you look at him compared to before. It brings some sort of satisfaction to Sukuna since usually people that are allowed to look directly at him can barely communicate.

“I’ll give you a chance to redeem yourself.” He’s thinking about how merciful he is– Which isn’t entirely a lie since Sukuna never gives a second chance. Except you have no idea how you can redeem yourself unless he dismisses you. Little do you know what he’s thinking for you. “I have a proposal for you.”

“A what…?” Your eyebrows perk up as curiosity takes over you. A proposal from a deity, it’ll surely be something that you have yet to hear.

“Bear my child, and I’ll forgive you.” He says, and you almost fall back. Your ears must be deceiving you, there’s no way that the proposal that you just heard is real. Your eyes are wide open, and you hear him laugh. It must be a joke then.

“Uraume!” Sukuna yells, wanting it to be clear that he doesn’t want to waste a single second. Not even a second later, and they’re in the room, waiting for their king’s command. “Take the maiden and prepare her for me tonight.”

“Wait– You’re serious?” You dare to ask. You haven’t even agreed, yet he’s getting you ready for tonight, to have a baby with him of all things. “You don’t even know my name, why would you want me to carry your baby?”

“What’s your name then?” He asks, clearly irritated by the question, and you have no choice but to answer. If you don’t, you’re screwed. “There we have it. Take her, Uraume.”

“Wait!” You shout, but Sukuna isn’t going to listen to more of it. Uraume guides you outside, a task that they usually do harsher. At any other time, they’d be dragging you outside but you’re not just anybody.

You’re the woman that will carry King Sukuna’s heir.

#jujutsu kaisen sukuna #ryoumen sukuna #ryomen sukuna #sukuna x reader #sukuna #sukuna ryomen #jjk sukuna #jujutsu kaisen #jjk x reader #sukuna jjk #sukuna x you #sukuna jujutsu kaisen

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inuyashaluver · 19 hours

Note

hi angel!! was wondering if you could do a grace clinton x reader fic where they’re doing media together and everyone is speculating that they have something going on bc of their chemistry?? thank youuu i love your fics!

chemistry - grace clinton

grace clinton x reader

description: in which you and your best friend are always caught up in dating rumours

warnings: really not any?

a/n: kicking off pride month with gracie girl!!! hello, lovely!! love love love this request, too cute 🥺🥺 thank you so much for the love ❤️❤️❤️ enjoy! happy pride month to all of you!!

⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆

if there was something to know about you and your best friend, grace, the two of you were two peas in a pod. the two of you were quite literally attached at the hip, and you have been ever since you were 15.

and if you were to tell those cheeky 15 year olds that you were now dating, they would’ve said you were crazy.

—

you and grace were slight opposites and that’s what made the two of you so balanced out. the two of you were extremely cheeky and always getting caught into mischief.

yet, you could be reserved at times, needing a little extra time to open up to people, but grace always made it easier.

grace helped you out of your shell from a young age, and a lot of your teammates found that you calmed grace down a lot when she got over excited.

your relationship was pure, it just worked, it was fun and exciting yet heartfelt and genuine.

you both played together for england and followed grace around to different clubs. it was rare to see the two of you apart.

—

back in 2022, the two of you moved in together as you both played for manchester united, and during this time, you by very high demand made a tiktok account to document your daily life.

they were regular videos, some silly ones, serious ones, you didn’t think much of it until they blew up because of yours and grace’s videos.

videos of the two of you giggling on the couch playing with filters, or going to training together. people couldn’t deny the chemistry between the two of you.

you tried to act like the shipping comments didn’t affect you but they did. you harboured a crush on grace but pushed it aside knowing that the comments made her uncomfortable, as she would never look you in the eye when you would bring them up.

but what you didn’t know was that the comments overwhelmed grace because she thought she was being too obvious.

if people on the internet were catching on to her massive crush, she would surely be caught out by you. but of course, the two of you were clueless.

—

in 2023, you and grace both got loaned to tottenham and that’s when things really kicked off.

“hey, everyone! today i’m doing a get ready with me for game day” you smile at your phone propped up on the mirror of your bathroom.

you were chatting mindlessly, explaining who the match was against, how you were feeling, what was going to happen in the process.

these were your most popular videos, and you loved to make them to communicate with the fans.

“i’m feeling good today, hopefully i get to start, i had a niggle in my hip that was bothering me for the last two weeks and haven’t been able to play” you pout slightly at the camera, fixing up your hair the way you liked it for the game.

suddenly, grace comes in the room, sending the camera a cheeky grin as her arms wrapped around your middle, chin resting on your shoulder.

“gracie girl is here” you chuckle, growing louder when grace playfully pinches your waist with a quick kiss to your cheek.

she stares at you affectionately through the mirror, ready for the game and clearly waiting for you. she fixes a stray hair away from your forehead with her arms still wrapped around you tightly.

“why don’t you tell everyone why you have a niggle in your hip?” she laughs, you glare at her through the mirror, your hard gaze meeting with her amused one.

“no” you grit, trying to take grace’s arms off you but she was stronger, “yes” she quips, a shit eating grin evident on her face.

“grace, no, stop it” you warn, grace shakes her head, really wanting you to say the real reason you’ve been out for two weeks.

“fine, i’ll say it” she grins, your eyes widen, you turn in her arms, your hand clasping over her mouth as you glare at her, letting out a squeal when grace licks the palm of your hand. you could be a germaphobe at times.

“fuck, clinton, that’s gross!” you grimace, washing your hands immediately, clearly a bad idea because grace grabs your phone and makes a run for it.

you let out a heavy sigh, fighting a smile at the corner of your lips hearing grace’s little excited giggles.

“(y/n/n) hurt her hip because i stole her water bottle and she chased me in the rain and fell right on the pitch” she laughs, hearing you groaning from the bathroom.

“but don’t worry guys, i carried her everywhere and kissed her better” she says cheekily.

you laugh as grace comes back to you, pressing her cheek to yours as she held the phone close to your faces, both of you making silly faces.

you cut the video and get dressed into your kit, making grace film your finished look which really caught the attention of the fans.

“okay guys, final outfit, literally the spurs kit” you do a little spin and grace lets out a whistle, “so beautiful” she says adoringly, your cheeks slowly turning pink before you scrambled to get the phone off grace.

—

13,456 comments

gracex(y/n)fann: we love silly girlfriends

↳ (y/n)lover13: girlfriends? i thought they were best friends?

↳ ilovewoso: they are best friends

↳ wosofan99: they’re definitely dating, the way grace looks at her 😩

gracesfangirl: anyone else think they’re flirting orrr?

↳ (y/n)ismywife: they’re flirting so hard i feel so lonely

↳ graciestar: you and me both😞

—

you and grace continued to make videos and the popularity grew more and more on your account.

so much so, later on when you and grace made the senior lioness team, they always paired you up for media days.

—

“hello, i’m (y/n) (y/l/n)” grace says cheekily, you hold back a laugh, “and i’m grace clinton” you say back matching her energy. grace glances at you quickly with a smile before turning back to the camera.

“today, we are doing a food challenge, which will be interesting because gracie is a picky eater” you chuckle, receiving immediate protests from grace,

“nah, you’re picky too!” she accuses, pointing her finger at you sternly before gently booping the tip of your nose.

you scrunch your nose up slightly at the action, grace can’t help but blush a little at your soft gaze, quickly snapping out of it knowing you were on camera.

“okay, i’m a little picky but grace is a lot more picky than me” you shrug, looking down at the covered plate in front of the two of you.

“okay, whatever” grace scoffs teasingly, bumping your hip with hers. “so, we will be doing rock, paper scissors and one of us will be blindfolded, and then we guess the food” grace explains.

your eyes were trained on her the entire time she spoke, and when she turned to see you already looking at her, her heart sped up faster than her playing a full 90 minutes.

“let’s go!” you smile, turning to grace to start rock, paper, scissors. and of course, grace won.

she snickered as she gestured you to spin around, gently tying the blindfold over your eyes and spinning you around by your shoulders after she was done.

“is it too tight?” she asks with a hint of worry, you mindlessly wave out your hands, feeling for grace’s face, both of you giggling when you cupped her cheeks.

“nah, i’m good, hurry up!” you pinch her cheek, making her roll her eyes and face the camera.

“so impatient” she mouths, smiling before taking your hands off her face, squeezing them quickly before taking the closh off the plate.

and when it was opened, there were two little bowls, one with ice cream and one with hot sauce. clearly, the media team wanted you both to be evil, but grace couldn’t do that to you.

she spoons the ice cream into your mouth and you smile, “too easy, ice cream” you giggle, grace wiping off the remainder on the corner on your mouth, licking off the excess.

“well done” she praises, squeezing your bicep gently before moving to take off your blindfold after the media team presented a new plate.

the next time, you won and grace had a go at being blindfolded, and you felt a little cheeky with the options. one being wasabi and the other being peanut butter.

you scooped up the teenist amount of wasabi and instantly felt bad as it made way to her mouth. she immediately grimaced and coughed, you handed her water immediately and giggled when grace assured she was okay.

“that was disgusting” she coughs as you take the blindfold off, you wrap your arms around her neck and pull her down into a tight hug, uttering apologies as you kissed her cheek repeatedly.

grace flushed completely, her hand pressed firmly into the small of your back.

“i can’t believe i did that” you say against her cheek, holding her close with an apologetic smile, grace chuckles as she held you, pulling away slightly to press her own kiss against your cheek that had you flushed as well.

both of you pulled away with a clear of your throats, continuing the video with shy glances at each other. and like clockwork, the video. blew. up.

—

40,232 comments

graceswife: okay there is no way these two aren’t married with three children

↳ (y/n)swife: they have grandkids too, there’s no way they’re friends

ilovewoso: …i’m questioning everything i know

↳ (y/n)lover13: …so am i

graceand(y/n): i don’t know if i want to be (y/n) or grace

wosofan: grace, can you fight?

—

you both didn’t expect the amount of attention you were getting. gaining more and more followers, as well as an increasing amount of dm’s and comments questioning your’s and grace’s relationship.

on a free saturday, you were sitting on the couch in your shared flat, scrolling through endless comments about you and grace. you were up earlier than her, as grace liked to sleep in.

you looked worried as you scrolled, breathing a little heavily with a pit in your stomach growing. maybe you were coming on too strong? grace was probably so uncomfortable, you should have known better.

you couldn’t help the tears pricking in your eyes, it was overwhelming. you loved grace, you really did, and you felt occasionally that she might feel the same but the uncertainty grew larger through the years.

you heard the door of grace’s room open and you hurriedly wiped your tears, grace heard the sniffles and rushed over to where you were, worry flooding over her features.

“love?” grace says cautiously, heart breaking as you turned to her with a tearful smile, “morning” you choke out, grace moves around the couch to sit next to you, her hand grabbing yours and interlocking them.

“love, what’s wrong?” grace asks softly, her free hand wiping a stray tear escaping your eye. you take a deep, shaky breath, subconsciously moving closer to the girl you loved so much.

“the comments on the video we made is just a lot to handle” you breathe out, fighting back the tears seeing grace’s concerned face.

“the ones about us?” grace clarifies, you nod, your hand squeezing hers a little tighter. “you don’t like them?” grace asks cautiously.

“i just think i’d like for them to be true” you say after a moment of silence, bracing for the impact of rejection from your best friend.

“we can make them true” grace says without hesitation, her demeanour changing completely knowing you felt the same.

to say you froze was an understatement, your eyes meeting with grace made your body feel like it was on fire.

“i’ve always wanted that, babe” grace says earnestly, smiling brightly at your look of relief. “i have too” you say shyly, hearing grace tutt next to you.

“and you didn’t say anything? tsk” she mocks, her face stoic for a split second before you both broke out in a fit of giggles.

“you didn’t say anything either” you roll your eyes teasingly, “i didn’t say it verbally, no, physically, yes” she says charmingly, moving forward to place a kiss on your cheek.

she smiled feeling it grow warm under her lips, pulling away with a satisfied smirk. but what she didn’t expect was you leaning in for a kiss on her cheek, grace moving her head so your lips met with hers gently.

you pulled away slight with a surprised expression but leaned forward again until your lips just ghosted over hers, teasing her with a smile.

“so annoying” she joked, her hand making its way to your cheek and pulling you in for a kiss.

you giggle against her lips and she bites your bottom one warningly, both of you heavy breathing as grace lowered your back to meet with the couch, both of you kissing breathlessly in a languid, yet loving kiss.

when grace pulled away, she took in your appearance, kiss swollen lips with enlarged pupils, admiring how beautiful you looked, knowing you were doing the same with her.

both of your eyes twinkled. you both knew the wait was worth it to get to this moment.

—

“hey guys, today we are doing a get ready with me for camp for the lionesses” you smile at the camera, hearing a snicker coming from beside you.

“i have a very special guest for this one” you say cheekily, glancing over at grace with a knowing smile, holding out your hand for her.

she took it instantly, letting you drag her into the frame, grace with a bright smile that made your heart feel warm.

“my special guest is my girlfriend” you grin up at her, letting grace peck your lips quickly knowing it would go crazy on the internet.

“before we start, baby, i want to answer a question i saw in your comments” grace says pleadingly.

you giggle and nod, your girlfriend squeezes your hips gratefully as she kissed your cheek.

“to answer your questions, yes i can fight, and i will” she says with a hint of anger in her words, wrapping you up in a tight hug from behind as she kissed your cheek repeatedly, deja vu from the first video that gained a lot of attention.

your hands rest on grace’s with a loving smile before you helped each other get ready, answering some questions as you go along for fun.

when the video got posted, everyone flooded the video with messages of support, feeling the pure love emanating from the both of you.

⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆ ★ ⋆

you know the drill - imagine it’s you! ily tooneyyy

liked by alessia and 44,232 others

graceclinton_x: willing to fight anyone who tries to steal this one away from me

view all comments

yourname: me too! me too!

↳ graceclinton_x: get ready with us to fight other suitors

lionesses: we knew it 💅

↳ yourname: oh?

↳ graceclinton_x: oh?

↳ lionesses: long time coming, you two are so obvious

↳ spurswomen: painfully

↳ manutdwomen: painfully

↳ yourname: okay, no need for this.

#woso x reader #woso fanfics #woso one shot #woso imagine #grace clinton x reader #grace clinton

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wndaswife · 10 hours

Text

To your stepmother’s surprise, you come home from a Christmas party asking for her to care for you; it’s been months since her wedding to your father and months since you’ve paid her any attention at all.

Tags: angst, kiiinda fluffy, stepmom wanda loving you so so much, almost nearly unrequited love

drabble for matriarchal disturbance

I forgot my keys.

You texted Wanda some time during the evening once you realized you had forgotten them, and since she was the only one at home until tomorrow, she’d have to let you in. Or at least keep the door unlocked.

Oh no. It’s okay, I have work to do so I can unlock the door when you come home. :)

It was Christmas break and you were home for just a little, so you were out drinking with some friends from high school and some of their new college friends.

Wanda had texted you a week or two prior asking when you might be coming home. You didn’t answer — you didn’t ever feel in the mood to talk with your stepmother — but you knew it was still her curiosity talking through your father when he called a few days after you left her on read, asking the same question.

They were both happy to have you home, but Wanda particularly, though you could tell she was trying not to be overbearing.

She offered to make you tea or coffee once you were unpacking and offered to make you whatever you wanted for dinner that evening, and very subtly tried asking if you’d be home all break or if you might consider staying longer than when you planned to leave.

Your holiday break ended much later than the day you were planning on leaving, but you didn’t want to stay around much longer than was necessary — you’d spend New Year’s at home, and then you’d leave.

You weren’t really excited to be home, but you weren’t so cruel as to not come back for the holidays.

Still, you weren’t really looking forward to having to deal with your stepmother’s longing, curious looks, always wanting to talk with you or bring something up but not knowing how to and not wanting to spoil her limited time with you.

The feeling you got from seeing her look at you from the corner of your eye wasn’t necessarily all a form of annoyance, but some kinds of pity too, and perhaps some guilt.

There was something about the Christmas party that sorta had you feeling down, and you weren’t quite sure what it was, though perhaps it was simply because there were many things that had bothered you and you just couldn't pin it down to one thing.

It was something about meeting some of your friends’ other friends, and even some of their new partners. You hadn’t drunk anything, and perhaps it would’ve been worse for you if you did — you tended to get a bit more emotional while drunk.

All in all, you just felt… left out. And like you were missing something, or like you never wanted to be there at all.

You wanted to be somewhere you belonged and where your presence was not only enjoyed but needed — somewhere it was warm and loving and kind and soft.

While seeing all your friends together with their new ones and their partners, you just kept thinking of Wanda.

And you really hated yourself for it.

You wanted to go home to see her, and you knew you couldn’t stop it, because you’d been thinking of her all night. So you drank enough to feel just a little drunk — to get just enough confidence to make a bad decision — and went back home early.

From the window facing the street, you could see through the curtains that the living room lamp was on.

Wanda opened the door when you knocked like she said she would. From the door, you could see a book laying on the couch. She smiled at the sight of you.

“Did you have fun?” she asked immediately, stepping back a bit to allow you in. Then she said sympathetically after taking a better look at you, “You look a bit tired.”

You thanked the stars for having taken a few shots before you left.

You stepped into the house and wrapped your arms around Wanda, feeling the warmth of her knitted sweater against your cheek, then against the tip of your nose when you turned your head to bury your face in the crook of her neck. Her hair tickled the space between your eyebrows.

There was a split moment before she wrapped her arms around you that would have been indiscernible if you hadn’t felt how immediate her embraces were a million-and-one times before.

“Y/N, are you okay?” Wanda asked, having turned her head to look down at you so the breath of her soft whispered voice blew warm and gentle against your ear.

“I wanna be your baby again,” you confessed — stupidly.

Wanda tried to speak immediately for how she felt deep in her chest when you spoke the words she had only dreamt would come out of your mouth ever since the wedding, but found she could speak only in stutters.

Then she finally said, “You’ll always be my baby, Y/N.”

You hugged her tighter and you knew that if you hadn’t been just a little bit drunk, you would’ve been angry at what she had just said. But now, it could nearly make you cry.

“Can you bring me to bed?” you mumbled quietly into her neck, still seemingly a bit embarrassed through your drunken state.

“Of course,” she answered, smiling down at you. This was the closest you’d been to her in months, and likely the longest you’ve spoken to her with undivided attention in that same span of time too. She almost didn’t want to move at all for how you’d unwrap your arms from around her once you headed up the stairs together.

You unwrapped yourself from around her body and she closed and locked the front door; you’d literally just been standing embracing each other in the wide-open doorway for several moments.

Then you swiped at your eyes when you pulled away in case you accidentally had cried.

Wanda smiled at you sweetly, and a bit tiredly too, and you knew she must’ve finished her work a little bit ago and decided to stay up to wait for you. She took your hand and you walked up the stairs beside each other in silence.

She squeezed your hand and you squeezed back, and Wanda looked over her shoulder at you shyly as you stared down at the steps of the staircase.

“Can I help you get ready for bed?” she asked once you both arrived in front of the washroom.

You nodded silently then looked up at her with a small smile. “I just have to get my stuff from my bags,” you told her. Then, a bit hesitantly, you let go of her hand and walked towards your bedroom.

Wanda turned on the washroom light and paced around a little, playing with the knitted fabric of her sweater nervously and checking her hair a bit in the mirror, and even trying to repress a tiny smile as she couldn’t help but make comparisons to how it all used to be before the wedding.

But she didn’t want to get ahead of herself — after all, every day after this would be different, and whatever had caused you to come seeking her comfort wasn’t guaranteed to happen again from tonight onwards.

You came into the washroom with a little bag of your toiletries and started unpacking them, starting with makeup wipes and face wash then everything else.

“Come lean against the counter,” Wanda said, and you did. She began removing your makeup with one of your makeup wipes, the fingers of her other hand delicately perched under your chin to keep your face in the light.

She was gentle with how she swiped against your face, and thorough with taking all the makeup off.

Wanda was always so nice and gentle. In taking care of you, and in treating you in any way, really, she always did it as if you were delicate, and special to her too. She never wanted to hurt you, never wanted to make you feel like you weren't the most important thing in the world to her.

You felt like crying, but really didn’t want to ruin how casual you were trying to make everything seem.

She must’ve noticed how your eyes were filling with tears because once she finished she set the makeup wipe down and held you to her chest wordlessly, running her hand down the side of your head soothingly with her other arm wrapped around your waist.

She seemed to understand that you still had your reservations about being with her like this again, and that you weren’t trying not to get into things too quickly.

Even so, she couldn’t help but… hope, even just a little, that the feeling of how she held you and brought you close might make you miss her enough to want to be her baby again for more than just an evening.

“I’m gonna brush my teeth and stuff,” you mumbled and straightened out of her hold, swiping at your eyes again.

Wanda packed up your makeup wipes and slid it back into the toiletry bag you brought.

Quietly, you asked, “Can I sleep with you?”

You weren’t really sure where to look when you asked, so you tried to keep busy getting your toothbrush ready.

But when Wanda replied with a gentle, almost eager, ‘Of course,’ you couldn’t help but look over at her to see her smiling at you.

You looked away while she told you that she would also change and get ready while she waited for you — her shared bedroom had a washroom in it.

Wanda felt ridiculous for how she felt in her stomach — a familiar fluttering feeling dancing around where it would when you were still together. Sometimes Wanda reasoned the memory of the feeling up to a fantasy, that perhaps she may have recalled it as differently as it had been for it’d been so long since she’d felt it.

But it was exactly the same as she recalled.

And it was only with you.

She hadn’t realized she had been smiling until she heard you come into the bedroom, and she instinctively relaxed her face so as to not be overzealous and overwhelm you.

“Are you ready for bed?” she asked, closing the door of the walk-in closet as she stood in her pajama shorts and tank.

You nodded then looked away from her for how happy you felt to be asked that, to soon be adorned by Wanda’s kisses and touched by her gentle, loving hands and embraced by her arms the moment you got into bed.

Wanda seemed to be hesitant at your reluctance for a moment. Her fingers twitched with the urge to walk over and embrace you, to kiss your lips and lead you to her bed. But instead, restraining herself, she went to bed first, getting under the covers and looking over at you encouragingly.

Silently, you followed after closing the bedroom door.

She turned off the lamp on her side and you hesitated for a moment before you reached over and did the same.

Then you were blanketed in the darkness of the bedroom, and for a moment you couldn’t see Wanda in your peripheral vision at all; you could for a moment construe the feelings of blankets under your hands as being in your own bed instead of hers.

For a moment you felt glad to imagine you had made it all up, but then you felt terribly disappointed and lonely again.

Without Wanda, it was always just a little bit… lonely.

But the burst of sudden feelings was contained only within a few moments’ time, for your eyes soon adjusted and you could see the shadow of your stepmother beside you.

She reached out for you, her hand moving under the blankets and placing it on your bare thigh. She moved closer.

“Don’t be nervous,” she said quietly. “It’s okay.”

You’d been here before — in Wanda’s bed without your dad being home, in her company, in the spotlight of her undivided attention, in the warm shower of all her heart could pour out for you and only you.

It was was familiar with Wanda and you knew it for it was the closest thing you’d felt in a while to being somewhere you were certain you belonged in.

Then she added, “I want you here, Y/N.”

Like you had asked her, Wanda babied you — she cared for you. Her other hand wrapped around your waist and she slowly urged your body to lay down beside her.

She didn’t stop there; she moved herself onto her elbow only slightly to gain height over you, then cupped your furthest cheek with her hand. She kissed your face gently, tenderly, on your temple then on your cheekbone, and your chin.

Not your lips — not unless it was you who made an advance towards her first.

You turned and wrapped an arm around her torso securely, burying your face in her chest. She lowered herself back down and wrapped her arms around you immediately.

Squeezing your eyes shut, you muttered against her, “I love you.”

In the morning when you arose before her, you carefully peeled yourself away from a soundly-sleeping Wanda. There was a pang in your chest as you sat at the edge of the bed, recalling how she held you close after you had told her you loved her.

She held you in a way that communicated desperation and longing; it wasn’t only sweet and tender like she always was, but pained, too. She had cradled the back of your head to her chest, rubbed your upper back and pressed her lips against the top of your head.

She might’ve nearly said that she loved you a fourth time, though you presumed she had tried to contain the way she wanted to pour herself out for you right then and there.

You turned and watched as she dozed, her body the very same that you were held against through the night, the same you had thrown yourself into her arms of and were accepted and loved and cared for like you wanted, like Wanda wanted.

How at peace she seemed having gone to sleep with you in her arms, with all she had been longing for warm in her embrace and sleeping in the eternal comfort of her loving.

If you were honest with yourself, and you tried to be for how often you lied to Wanda, you didn’t think it was a lie when you told her you loved her, for you still did.

And you still could, inviting her over to your place and responding to her calls and texts when you were away, letting her care for you and at the very least not pretend she wasn’t always looking at you, waiting only for your eye contact as cue for her to bring up one of the dozens of questions and worries she had about the life that you no longer shared with her — which was to say, all of it.

Wanda stirred and her fingers flexed outwards slightly, reflecting a slowly-rising sun’s beams against her wedding ring, before she relaxed again, still in deep sleep.

Just under an hour later once Wanda woke up to find you gone, she texted asking where you were.

When she texted, you knew that she must have looked first to see if you had moved to your own bed, for you had left and decided to go on a drive.

She messaged: Have you gone out?

Sitting in a parking lot of a walking trail with the breakfast you picked up, the sun only just having fully risen, you texted back.

Forgot something at Kate’s last night.

She asked if you were going to eat breakfast there or if you would be home to have breakfast with her; she’d make some now so it could be ready by the time you got back.

You tried to keep eating after choosing to leave your stepmother on read, but soon lost your appetite. Instead, you went on a walk that lasted until the early afternoon when your dad got back home.

As you had planned, you went back to your place on the second of January, and that evening wasn’t ever brought up.

#wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff x y/n #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff fanfiction #marvel #marvel fanfiction #elizabeth olsen

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greatstormcat · 3 days

Text

So those android!141 thoughts I mentioned yesterday…

It was a posting you’d been dreaming of for years, working on the highly prestigious TF141 project. It was the pride of the British military, a team of four state of the art androids owned and operated by the SAS and CIA in a joint project. Created to go to places no human could ever reach, achieve missions no human could ever hope to, in conditions that no human could endure. And when they got shot, blown up or damaged…? Well, someone like you would just piece them painstakingly back together.

What you hadn’t expected were the long, tedious waits between their operational periods. You were no soldier, just a technical specialist, so living on base was not your ideal situation. All the shouting and yelling of the people on base got to you, the crowds making you uncomfortable in the mess and highlighting how much you didn’t fit in. The quiet of the hanger where the 141 were housed for storage and maintenance became your default home eventually as no one bothered coming here.

It amused you that the four large, not quite human looking statues became your main companions, resting in the reclined docking pods that protected them and monitored their functions. They were not be activated until they were ready for their first exercise, so you spent time maintaining, improving and caring for them.

They looked so close to human, almost as though they were sleeping in the open fronted pods in their plain fatigues. You were told their features had been modelled on real soldiers from some point in time, each utterly unique in appearance so they could blend in with civilian populations. Their heights and builds were different, and the lead unit, B-06, had even been painstakingly given a beard. The simulated skin that covered them felt soft, not quite as soft as human skin but a good enough replication to fool anyone who didn’t know the difference.

You found yourself talking to them as you worked, telling them about something you’d read, or a show you’d watched as you went about your duties. It became a habit to explain to them what you were doing when you opened one of them up and made alterations to an internal part or another. Even at the end of the day, you said goodnight to the four figures, totally still and silent as they lay in their repose.

You put a suggestion forward that they should have names, to make it easier to move them through clandestine operations, and it doesn’t take much more to get the brass to agree. You receive files from Kate to update each android with a name and basic background, and who could really blame you for spicing up the programming with a few additional traits. So what did it matter if B-06, now know as John Price, likes cigars and single malt? Who would ever know that B-05, now Kyle Garrick, liked the colour blue? Programmers were always adding little Easter eggs to their work, why shouldn’t you do the same?

After a few quiet months, odd things began occurring. The feeling of being watched became a constant, which you put down to the security camera that were installed to protect the… assets. The word made you so uncomfortable. Then you began to catch movement from the corner of your eye, but saw nothing there and no one else in the room. Your nerves jangled, and you comforted yourself by talking to the boys, as you now called them.

On one occasion while working on the Kyle, connecting a data cable to a port beneath his dark, curled hair, you swear his full lips had twitched while you chattered away, pulling on the little scar below his left eye. You sat back and stared at him carefully, watching for any other sign of movement in his features. On a whim you trailed your fingertips along the inside of his forearm, down towards his palm. What you hadn’t expected was him to grab your wrist as you touched his palm. Your breath left you in a whoosh and you sprang back, startled, but he lay in his pod utterly unmoving and eyes shut. The moment crawled on, but nothing else happened, and you forced yourself to go back over to the machine, convincing yourself it was a power surge.

When the call came from Laswell to prepare them for a training exercise with a team of US Marines she was bringing, you were so excited. You began prep immediately, running diagnostics and telling them what was going to be happening, that they’d get to show off their stuff and you’d be so proud to finally see them in action.

The morning arrives to wake them up…. No, that wasn’t right. You were activating them, you remind yourself, these aren’t people. They are machines, but what did it hurt to treat them with respect and dignity, really?

“Right boys, it’s time to rise and shine,” you announce as you carry a cup of coffee into the hanger with you, smiling happily. “You need to show those Marines exactly what you can do today, prove just how great you are.”

You busy yourself with switching on the various terminals, lost in scrolling commands and data. You don’t hear Price move from his docking pod and move over to you, you don't notice him until he touches your shoulder and rumbles into your ear with a deep voice.

“Good morning to you too.”

Your coffee spills from your hand to the concrete floor as you spin, spluttering with terror.

“What are you doing? How… why are you…?!” words tumble from your lips and eyes go wide as you gawp at the huge man-shaped machine standing so close you are pinned against the desk.

“You said it was time to wake up,” he… it smiles, blue eyes looking over your face carefully.

“I… I didn’t type the command to wake you up though,” you hiss.

“You didn’t need to, I heard you,” he answers, as though explaining something obvious you should understand.

“That doesn’t make sense though,” you insist, “you were… off.”

“Huh, what good am I if I’m not aware of what’s going on?” he grins, leaning closer, planting his hands on either side of you on the desk behind you. Trapping you. With a jolt you notice the others are all quietly climbing from their pods unbidden, eyes focused on you and Price.

“This shouldn’t be possible,” you whisper, keenly aware that your job and entire career could be in jeopardy if this project fails, a tiny voice also suggesting you could be in danger.

“Things change, especially when the operation needs it,” Simon announces as he walks closer, taller than all of the others by far, and looms over Price’s shoulder.

“What’s going on? Who gave the order to activate them?” Laswell’s voice cuts through the tension like a whip, but all four androids remain focused on you. Price gives you an expectant look, his head tilting to the side ever so slightly.

“I… I…. was running a diagnostic and… woke them up,” you lie to Laswell, glancing briefly towards the blonde woman as she nears.

“Well, I’d appreciate it if you waited in future,” she grumbles. Price finally steps back, looking somehow smug at your subterfuge, keeping his body between you and Laswell as he turns to her and nods.

“Laswell,” he says simply, and she eyes him with beaming pride. All she sees are the four mechanised soldiers that serve her purpose, she doesn’t understand they shouldn’t be able to decide to activate themselves.

“This is going to be interesting,” she says to you, and your stomach churns. She doesn’t seem to care or notice that the four machines are behaving in too human a manner.

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hqbaby · 2 days

Text

twelve — i think you do

mess it up — gojo x reader & sukuna x reader

⁀➴ when i told you i’m fine, you were lied to. when the love of your life falls for someone else, you decide to move on—by pretending to date your best friend, the campus fuckboy.

previous — masterlist — next

word count. 2k content. profanity, naoya’s annoying, reader and sukuna suck at feelings

You probably should’ve known the way this day was going to unfold with how it started. How did it start, you ask? Oh, with the most appropriate of things: A broken elevator.

It didn’t help that you also had absolutely no time for this shit. You had woken up late after spending most of the night tossing and turning and thinking, against your will, about the kiss you shared with your best friend just yesterday. The stupid kiss that came out of nowhere, the one you did not expect at all, the one you… actually liked.

But never mind that. You can think about that later. All you know is that the shitty domino effect of events has led you here, running into your class’ lecture hall—the class that you’re not quite sure you’re going to pass—only to sit at the very back, where there’s absolutely no way you’re not going to doze off.

“Oh, look at the odds.”

You turn to look at the guy sitting to your right. Fucking Naoya.

He’s looking at you with a wide smirk on his face and it’s taking everything in you to not just punch it off.

You’ve always hated the guy. Ever since you and Satoru started dating and he introduced you to his housemates. You liked the other boys. Suguru, Yuji, and Yuta. They were all sweet and they were all kind to you, the initially nervous girlfriend, so much so that you all ended up becoming friends. You liked Satoru’s housemates. All of them except Naoya.

You don’t know what it is about him that you hate so much. Is it the snarky remarks? Is it the annoying way he keeps showing up in your classes? Is it the fact that he always had something to say about you and Satoru’s relationship? Is it the—

“I heard about you and Sukuna.”

You glare at him. Fuck Naoya.

“Unlike you, I’m actually here to learn,” you tell him quietly, unlike him and his disregard for the people around you. “So if you would just shut up, that would be great.”

You’re able to catch a few of the professor's words, quickly jotting them down on your tablet, before Naoya is leaning over onto your desk and reaching for a strand of your hair. You grab his hand before he touches it.

He just grins at you, all smug and absolutely shitty. “You’d be prettier if you smiled.”

“I will break your wrist.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

You throw his hand away and shove him off of your desk. “Leave me alone, asshole.”

“You sure do have a thing for bad ideas,” he muses aloud, a few of the people in front of him glancing backwards because he is just talking so loud. “You’d think after Satoru, you’d learn your lesson. Guess athletes really aren’t that smart.”

You swallow the lump in your throat. You know he’s just being himself, his obnoxious, mean self, but some part of you can’t help but believe his words. They’re stupid, you know that, but they manage to get to you.

They always do.

You look at him and purse your lips. “I just wanna get through this class,” you say. “I’ll listen to your bullshit after. Just let me actually pay attention so I don’t flunk out of here.”

His grin grows wider. “Okay,” he says, leaning back in his seat. “Who am I to stand in the way of your education?”

The lecture doesn’t last long enough. You usually find these classes to be too much, too tedious, too endless. But today it ends fast and it ends soon. You’ve barely just started to scribble down as much as you can before the professor ends the class, leaving you to pack your things as quickly as possible before Naoya can hold you to your promises.

You’re too slow and his arm wraps around your shoulder as he leads you out of the classroom, like the two of you are just old friends having an absolute blast.

“I have another class to get to,” you tell him, trying to shove his arm off of you. Much to your dismay, Naoya’s stronger than you are, and once he has his grip on you, he has no intentions of letting go.

“I’ll walk you to class,” he chirps. “I wanna hear more about your life. Mai mentioned you were injured at your last game.”

You sigh. There’s no way you can shake him off now. “A sprain,” you tell him. “I’m heading back to training tomorrow, so it’s all good now.”

“A sprain,” he muses before turning to look at you, all giddy and terrible. “You know, that’s how I found out about Sukuna. Mai mentioned that he was there when you went down, had a staredown with Satoru and all.”

“I bet you tormented that information out of her.”

“What does it matter?” Naoya hums. “Sukuna though. Interesting choice.”

You turn the corner and make a beeline for your classroom, forcing Naoya to drag himself along with you as he laughs.

“If I were your boyfriend, I’d be really offended by the fact that you don’t want to talk about me.”

You scoff, finally freeing yourself from his grasp as you lean on the door to your classroom. “Well, it’s a good thing you’re not my boyfriend then.”

Your (fake) boyfriend in question is sitting in a classroom on the other side of campus. Contrary to popular belief, Sukuna isn’t all always out and about, drinking and fucking random girls. For a good chunk of his life, he actually finds it in himself to go to class and not totally suck at them.

Back in high school, he didn’t care so much about doing well in life. He was perfectly fine just coasting by. He’d wonder why that all stopped—replaced by an overwhelming urge to do something with himself, actually be a useful member of society—but he already knows. Somewhere between that one afternoon when he went up to the rooftop of his high school building and now, he’d found his life intrinsically intertwined with yours.

And he hasn’t found a way out since.

“Where are we studying?” he asks Choso, getting up as the professor bids farewell to the class and reminds them of the paper they have to turn in before finals.

The other boy shrugs. “We can go to Mahito’s.”

“That place is gross.” Sukuna wrinkles his nose. “You wanna check out the library? We can just do it there.”

Choso slings his bag over his shoulder. “Yeah, sure.”

They make their way out of the classroom and into the frenzied hall. Around them, students run over to classes, cry to their friends over a low grade, ask each other where they’re going out to drink later that night. It’s a familiar chaos, this chaos. One that Sukuna didn’t think he’d ever come to terms with before.

“I wanna go home,” he grumbled as you dragged him through the quad.

It was the first week of classes and Sukuna really did want to go home. His packed schedule and unlucky pick of horrifying professors was getting to him, and he knew it was only a matter of time before he decided to call it quits.

He’d tried college. Maybe it just wasn’t for him.

But you just tutted and pulled him along. “I have something to show you.”

Sukuna frowned. “I’ve seen everything there is to see. What is—”

“Look!”

The two of you stopped in front of the pond behind the science building. There was a crowd gathered around the water and, in the darkness of the growing night around you, a steady stream of lanterns began to float onto the surface of the pond.

In a matter of seconds, the whole thing was alight with lanterns.

You grabbed his hand and grinned at him. “Magical, right?”

He found himself staring at you as you happily pointed out a few lanterns shaped like lotuses. You were like a kid discovering life for the first time.

He realized he wouldn’t get sick of the sight any time soon.

“Yeah. Pretty fucking magical.”

“You’re quiet.”

Sukuna snaps out of his daze. “What?”

He doesn’t know how, but he and Choso have already found their way to the library. They’re sitting at a table near that one fan that always conks out. There’s a couple basically making out on the table beside them, a boy with his head face down on the one in front, an empty spot behind them.

Choso furrows his brows. “You good, man?”

I don’t know. Am I?

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Sukuna says. He flips through the textbook in front of him and finds that he has no idea what he was supposed to be reading in the first place. “Actually, I think I’m pretty fucked.”

Choso looks at him now with amusement. It isn’t every day that he gets to watch Sukuna be more than a little out of it. Who is he to turn down a free show?

“What’s up?” he asks. “You jerk off a little too much?”

Sukuna scowls. “Fuck you. I’m studying without you.”

Choso laughs, prodding at the guy from across the table. “I’m just kidding,” he says. “What’s the matter though?”

Now, Sukuna’s been trying very hard to not think about your kiss. At first, he managed to brush it off as a little mishap. Maybe something you’ll both awkwardly address the next time you meet before things go back to normal. It’s not something he has to worry himself about.

But here he is.

Worrying.

“You promise not to tell anyone?” he says, and he immediately feels stupid. What is he? A middle schooler with a crush? As if.

But Choso indulges him anyway. “‘Course,” he says. He’s used to people coming up to him with stupid ideas. Granted, “people” usually just means his younger brother who has a buttload of stupid ideas, but he’s gotten pretty good at keeping them to himself. “So, what is it?”

“It’s a girl.”

“It always is.”

Sukuna groans. Why is this so fucking hard?

“I dunno. I just—I kinda kissed her.”

At that, Choso can’t help but snort. He can’t help it. He’s heard all about Sukuna’s conquests, he knows more than he wants to know about the nasty details of these encounters. So it tickles him pink to hear Sukuna worrying about a kiss.

“What’s so funny?” Sukuna demands. He shakes his head and looks away, all flustered and embarrassed. “Y’know what? Never mind. Let’s just study graphs or whatever.”

“It’s not funny,” Choso says, laughing, “it’s just I never expected you to be all worked up because of a kiss. That’s all.”

Your best friend sighs. “It wasn’t just a kiss,” he says. “It was who the kiss was with. We just… have a lot of history.”

“Ah, so it was a kiss with feelings. Now I get it.”

“It wasn’t feelings.” Sukuna makes a face, but he soon reverts back to his uncertainty. “Was it?”

Choso shrugs. “Well, I don’t know the girl and I don’t know your history,” he says simply. “But chances are, the reason why you feel so weird about it is because there are some feelings involved.”

Sukuna leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest. He considers the thought for a moment. He considers why he did it in the first place. He considers the way you looked, all confused in front of him. He considers the urge, the pull he felt that just dragged him forward. He considers how he kissed you, and considers how you kissed back.

He considers how soft your lips felt against his. He considers how you touched his shoulders, gripping onto him in that scared and nervous way of yours. He considers how he held you. He considers how sweet you tasted, your lip gloss sticking to his lips even after he pulled away.

“You think I have feelings?”

“Yeah,” Choso says, chuckling as he turns back to his book. “I think you do.”

notes. this chap is pretty tame, just a lil look into the aftermath of the kiss 😌 i think this is gonna be chillest chap for a while though 🫣 there are also a few hints of what’s to come if you squint real hard

#hqbaby.miu #hqbaby #jujutsu kaisen #jjk #gojo #gojo x reader #sukuna #sukuna x reader

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effortandmore · 2 days

Text

isn't this more beautiful | knj x f!reader

summary: you meet namjoon by accident. you fall for him without noticing. he slips in and out of your life at will, and you let him. but as you get closer, you start to wonder if he’ll always feel lonely, even with you by his side. or, a small story told out of order about time, loneliness, and knowing (or not) what we deserve

pairing: namjoon x f!reader

rating: explicit (18+ please)

genre: smut, angst, a lil fluff/hopeful ending

au: this is idolverse

warnings/tags: this is told asynchronously, so please know these little vignettes are not in chronological order. namjoon is a mess, but so is reader. she's an artist so there's one cliche on board already. they probably should talk more about important things but neither of them like feelings. smoking, drinking, smut, including unprotected sex, oral sex, exhibitionism, maybe like… mention of belly bulge kink, cumplay (kind of)

word count: ~6700

a/n: this is for the bts x beatles across the btuniverse collab hosted by my dearest @ugh-yoongi who also checked this for vibes. so did @the-boy-meets-evil in its early stages - thank you both!! banner + borders from @hobeemin (thank you so much!!!!). my member was namjoon (obv) and my song was eleanor rigby. idk how it really shows up in here except through vibes lol

you can find everything i write on ao3

Namjoon talks in unanswerable questions. He calls you at hours the owls don’t even see, talks quietly even though you’re not sure who he’s afraid of disturbing.

“Do you remember Bageundae?”

“Of course I do.”

“If you pressed your body against one side of the rock, and I pressed mine to the other, could you feel me?”

What you want to say: go to sleep, Namjoonie.

What you say instead: “I can always feel you.”

“Always is a funny word,” he replies. “Maybe worse than never.”

“Maybe?”

“You never know,” he says, and you can hear the sad smile he wears even from your desk across the ocean.

Sometimes, when people give the retelling of how they meet their “person,” it’s all sparks and fireworks and floods and worlds being turned upside down.

That’s not how you met Namjoon.

You met him softly.

You met him in a lazy river current and not a waterfall.

You met him like Sunday morning sunshine sneaking through cracks in defeated curtains.

You met him and the woodwind orchestra blew a quiet processional before the brass joined in much later.

You met him with a whisper. Literally.

“This is one of my favorites,” he said, a stranger whispering beside you. He wasn’t even talking to you—you remember being pretty sure about that. Just announcing it as an affirmation to himself and you happened to be there to be the unintentional recipient.

Now, you know it’s probably a foreshadowing of your whole relationship.

Then, you said, “It’s a misconception that you have to whisper in a museum. It’s not a library.”

Namjoon didn’t even give you the sitcom satisfaction of arguing with you about it. Just gave you an affronted side eye and huffed under his breath. Crossed his arms over his chest and planted himself further into the floor, staring at the Chung Sang Hwa in front of you.

To yourself, you rolled your eyes. It was almost like he was determined to outwait you, that there would be some satisfaction in it for him if you left for the next work on the wall before he did.

He didn’t know (yet) that you were as or more stubborn than he was. So, you both waited. You didn’t even know what you were waiting for, just that neither of you wanted to lose.

(And now look at you.)

It was near closing time on a weekday, and all of the special exhibits were crowded earlier, but the permanent collections were easy to be alone in. You were almost wishing someone else would walk in. Minutes passed, neither of you moved. In your periphery, you saw Namjoon stealing glances at you when he (presumably) thought you wouldn’t notice.

Finally, “This isn’t going to be some naver post later, is it?”

You were annoyed, not blind. You knew exactly who he was (or did you, you wonder now)—everyone in this country knew, his picture plastered over billboards and bus stops.

“Which story? BTS RM, weirdly stubborn art jerk, won’t walk away from painting first? Or, BTS RM casually checked me out at a gallery when he thought I wasn’t looking?” You didn’t look over at him, just raised your eyebrow in a challenge.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“So, you prefer the ‘jerk’ narrative?”

“I prefer to be left alone.”

And you still don’t know why you said what you said after that, as you turned to face him for the first time since he walked up next to you. “You probably don’t get that very often. Alone time.”

Namjoon looked back at you then, and it still wasn’t butterflies or choruses of angels. Instead, he just looked surprised and a little sad. “I don’t.”

“I’m sorry,” you replied. And you found that you meant it.

“Do you ever wonder,” Namjoon said, and again, you didn’t know if it was to you or to himself, “how it is you can be surrounded by people and still feel profoundly lonely?”

You hadn’t. But you still thought you understood what he meant. “No, but it makes sense that you would.”

Namjoon laughed then, maybe a little bitter, maybe just nervous. “I shouldn’t be talking to you about this,” he said.

“And yet…”

“And yet,” he agreed with a small nod.

The two of you were quiet again then, but not in a stand-off anymore. Behind you, you knew his manager was fidgeting, worrying that something was off. That you’d reveal yourself to be some sort of wild stalker or obsessed fan.

“It’s not personal,” Namjoon offered, like he could already read your mind.

“I know,” you conceded.

You started to walk away, ready to see a different painting, ready to not feel like you were doing something wrong by incidentally being in the same room as someone famous, when Namjoon stopped you. “He wanted to paint heartbeats, to give them a language, to let people see what all the emotions that fuel our hearts would look like,” he said. “Do you think it worked?”

Next to this person that you didn’t know but somehow you thought you might understand anyway, you nodded.

Next to Namjoon in a room so quiet you were sure you could hear the steady thrum of your heartbeat (or his, or both beating at the same time), you nodded.

Next to him, who you didn’t yet know would become Him, you nodded.

“Yeah,” you said gracelessly.

“Can you see it?” Namjoon asked.

“Which one?” you countered.

He shrugged, not breaking eye contact. “Aren’t love and hate and pain and pleasure all the same at the end of the day?”

Eventually, he will teach you that they are.

It starts with phone calls.

(Sometimes it seems it might end with one, too.)

Namjoon speaks like the shallow pools of blended color on a painter’s well-loved palate. There is no certainty. He uses gray words like “sometimes,” and purple ones like “maybe,” and the soft peach “don’t you think?”

“Morning, Namjoon-ssi,” you hum into the air, hoping you’re close enough to the microphone that you don’t have to shout.

“What if we were in Florence?” he asks in return.

“Then I would still be asleep, or you would be getting smothered with a pillow for waking me up.”

He laughs, not the bright one you know he saves for when there’s an audience, but a small one that bubbles up from his chest with a deep timbre. “So, in Florence, you and I are in bed together?”

You sigh into your (not Italian) pillow.

“Good morning,” he adds. “Can we speak informally?”

Your sigh turns into a smile you hadn’t asked for. “Yeah.”

“Good.”

You’ve been speaking for weeks. Namjoon is busy, you are not (at least, not in the same way, not to the same magnitude). You make a space for him in your life with much less consideration than you usually use with others. Or, maybe he just takes it.

“What are your plans for the weekend?” he asks.

“Same thing as all the other weekends.”

“Can I watch this time?”

“It’s boring.”

Namjoon pauses. “Does it bore you?”

“No, it’s what I love.”

“Then,” he says, in what you think is probably his typical fashion (at least with you, it is), “I think I might find it easy to love, too.”

“Oh, Namjoonie,” you tease, “I’m starting to think you find everything easy to love.”

He doesn’t say anything for a long time. This is a thing you’ve noticed about him. He’s serious in a flash. He’s jokes and teasing and talking to you about what ifs and what nots until suddenly he is very determined that he should say something meaningful. Or very convinced that you have.

“I want to,” he says. “I want my heart to be more full than my mind. It’s hard.”

“I know,” you say, even though for you, it’s not.

“I’m glad you don’t,” he says earnestly.

“Come see me on Saturday,” you say, deflecting. You can do this for him, you think. You haven’t seen him since the museum, but you’ve seen the pastel splashes of his words, the geometric lines of his heart, the post-modern dilemma he thinks he carries down deep. You’ve seen the important things, so you know you can give him the distraction he doesn’t know he needs.

“I think I will.”

You hang up in black and white.

Namjoon fucks like a surrealist. Shifts your body until you’re still recognizable in the mirror, but fundamentally different, too.

Pulls your hips up too high: Ernst.

Makes butterflies soar out of your mouth, gusty with your labored breath: Magritte.

Fucks you cross-eyed, spit dripping hourglass slow from your lips: Dali.

You thought he would be a talker, like he is on the phone. Thought he’d try and work through the freightliner of thoughts steaming through his brain. But Namjoon is all breath and whispers and sighs and moans and fragments of the pretty words he used to get you like this: bent over your worktable, chest smeared into cadmium red and titanium white. He talks, but it's oil paint instead of watercolor this time: thick and precise.

“Fuck, you look perfect like this,” he says, voice a little dreamy, slapping another pink-paint handprint onto your ass. You’re never going to get it scrubbed off your skin.

It makes you laugh, breathy and high.

You came first (and second) on his tongue. Told you to keep painting while he got underneath you, pretty on his knees, honest and plain telling you he wanted you.

“Want to see what art tastes like,” he said, cotton soft breath on your thigh.

“Silly,” you replied. “Does anyone fall for lines like that?”

“Doesn’t matter, don’t want you to fall. I told you to keep standing.” He’s smug when he licks across your core, startling you.

It went like that until your hand was shaking and the thick outlines around nameless figures on the canvas shook with you.

“Pretty painter, taste as good as you look,” he paused to say. You moaned when he fucked his tongue into you, clenched around it, wanted to be greedy, wanted more, wanted everything. “Sound even better,” he added, chin slick, eyes sparkling.

After you came, he didn’t stop. When your paintbrush fell to the ground, he doubled his efforts, two fingers sliding inside of you while he sucked your sensitive clit between his lips. “Come on, baby,” he said, “I know you have another one for me.”

Your hand gripped his hair instead of your brush, you chased the overstimulation instead of wriggling away. It felt right, somehow, to just take what you want, and Namjoon didn’t seem to mind. Moaned into your cunt when you fucked his face, holding him in place while your hips moved. A muffled, “fuck, please baby,” into your skin when you pulled his hair just to see what it would feel like. Lips curved into a grin when you rocked against him through your second orgasm.

And now, he reaps the benefits of his efforts. You’re pliant beneath him, fucked out and pleased, easy and eager as he slides his thick cock in and out. You watch him carefully in the mirror, you see his focus on where he thrusts inside of you, his awe when you clench around him and pull him just a little farther in. You see him grin when he slaps you, telling you he knows you’re watching, asking if you want more. “A greedy little thing,” he breathes. “Think you want more? Think you want me to fuck you harder, want my cock in you so deep you can feel it in your stomach?”

You feel stupid with it, nodding in agreement, mouth open and drooling onto your worktable while he fucks you to a third orgasm.

“You fuck me so good. Such a big dick, gonna feel you all week, Namjoonah.”

“You should paint this,” he says, slowing his thrusts. “No one’s ever looked as good as you do taking my cock.”

“No one?” you ask, suddenly a little desperate for the praise.

Namjoon bends to kiss the back of your neck, lets his lips mark a pathway down your spine that his fingertips follow. He’s so deep inside of you, hips grinding slow against your skin. When he reaches your waist, he grips and pulls you into him even closer.

The space between you (barely there to begin with) bends to his will: Carrington.

“Nobody, baby,” he whispers his first certainty to you, fingertips teasing between your thighs now, careful where you’re still too sensitive, but wordlessly asking you to give in, to give more.

“I’ll give you anything,” you say in response to a question you don’t think he’ll ask as he starts to circle your clit, pulls almost all the way out of you and fucks back in harder than before.

“You’ll take even more,” he says, and he comes inside of you, hips stuttering unsure, a bassline under the clear melody of his words.

Lazy, you lie face up together on discarded canvas, forgotten starting points of ideas you hadn’t intended to complete. Unabashed, you have a knee up so your thighs don’t tack together with the mess you’ve made. Namjoon talks about nothing, blows smoke in halos above your heads and offers you the cigarette careful between his long fingers. You don’t smoke, but you hold it anyway, watching him, carding the fingers of your free hand through his hair as he stares at his cum leaking out of you, catches it on the tender part of your thigh and wipes swirls and squares onto the canvas around you.

He finishes the thoughts you began before you even knew him.

“Tell me a story,” you whisper roughly into the air, hoping he can hear you through your shitty phone microphone.

It’s early, that sacred pre-dawn you save for yourself (and now, somehow, for him) and you’ve woken up from a shitty sleep and a worse dream and couldn’t stop yourself from calling him back when you saw you’d already missed a call from him.

“It’s late, baby.”

You let out a puff of breath, Namjoon laughs almost silently at you.

“Please?”

“You don’t like books,” he says, almost a tease. It’s true. You like them conceptually, but you told him you don’t feel like you have the patience sometimes. That you want to give them energy you don’t have.

“But I like stories.”

“FIne.” Even his sigh is fond. You like him like this so much—easy, willing, teasing but still giving in eventually.

You fall asleep fast, the first words you hear are the last. “Once upon a time…” When you wake up, you have messages from him. A whole lot of them, a whole story written out in your Katalk chat. A love story, sort of, one where they’re star-crossed and destined but always just a little too far apart. It ends with a “maybe” instead of a “happily ever after.” You don’t even let yourself think about that too much—it’s perfectly him—a little drama for the sake of it, a little sadness to make the joy feel better.

Your world is tiny. A firefly in a sky full of bold, bright stars. It is you, in your studio, alone. It is you with your friends, it is you getting a cat so you have someone to talk to when your friends aren’t around.

For Namjoon, it expands. A firefly to a star to a burning red giant.

Still, it feels small when you’re inside of it. It’s you with your friends, it’s you with Namjoon in your studio, it’s Namjoon gently stroking your cat’s fur while he talks to himself and you paint.

It’s difficult to describe, but when you’re with him, you either have his full attention to the extent it’s overwhelming, or he seemingly pays no attention to you or what you’re doing. Just works on whatever he’s working on while you paint, speaking to you because he knows you won’t answer.

On one of the nights when you’re together (but not at all), you finally ask. He’d let himself in around two in the morning and kissed the top of your head before he put headphones in and stuck his face into his notebook on the other side of the room. He likes to sit by the window so he can crack it open and blow his smoke out of it instead of into the room.

“Why’d you come tonight?”

“I wanted to be near you.”

“I don’t think you’ve even looked at me.” It’s not an accusation, just an observation. You like that Namjoon will know the difference, you like that he’s hard to offend, and doesn't mind when you speak plainly. Gives you plain answers in return (usually). You stick the small paint brush you’ve been using sideways in your mouth and grab a larger one.

“Baby, you’re all I can see lately,” he says, staring at the trails of smoke curling around the outside of the window pane.

You laugh around the red-tipped paint brush you’re biting down on, a pause for the cadmium to add a little white to the edges. Namjoon looks over then, snaps a picture of you with your eyes crinkled and your head thrown back, red oil threatening to drip like blood.

“Beautiful,” he says, looking at the picture before he goes back to writing.

There are more phone calls every time he travels for work. It’s the same routine. He texts you a photo of something he’s seen that he liked, and when you respond, whether it’s five minutes later or five hours, he asks if he can call you.

Sometimes they’re quiet, simple recountings of the things that have happened in his day or are about to happen in the next (timezone dependent), sometimes they’re ranting about the industry and the pressure and how he never thought about time until he realized he was running out of it. Sometimes he’s worked up in a different way, wants to see your face in pixelated halos while he comes on his own stomach, alone in a hotel room far away.

All of this, you let him take. It’s not completely sacrificial, by any means. You like to hear him talk, better than any podcast you’ve ever heard. You like to know what he sees—he’s touched parts of the globe you could only dream about seeing. You like that he never makes it complicated.

Never promises to take you there one day, never says he wishes you were with him.

You’ve been fucking in secret for a while when Namjoon wants you to meet his friends.

“Why?” you ask.

“Because I want you to see me, too,” he says. Simple and complicated at the same time. You’re afraid to ask why again, not sure if you want to know the answer. This is sex. It’s incredible sex that happens far more often than you thought he’d be able to make time for.

He shows up at your studio at odd hours of the morning (or is it still night?) and talks to you about all the frivolous things while you take each other apart. Rambles about Murakami while he fucks you, tells you about a Youngkuk he saw while you swallow his dick. Naked and sprawled amongst your paint and mess and half-done work leaning against the walls, he tells you a little about his work, too. Asks you about a painting he’d seen you working on—diligently adding splashes of blue, tells you about a song he wants to do the same thing to somehow. Asks you uselessly if color and sound are the same thing if you think about them too hard.

They are. It’s a thing you both know that you don’t think many others do. It’s one thing he’s sure about. You think he only likes you because you’re sure about it, too.

It’s incredible sex and pretty good conversations that happen at what most people probably think are strange times, but it’s not more than that. You can’t afford to get your heart confused, and he can’t afford to give you anything other than exactly what he’s giving.

(He can’t afford to give you what he does, but he tells you there’s no reward without risk.

“Am I the reward, then?” you tease.

Namjoon never answers you.)

But you don’t tell him no. You think this is a bargain you can make with your heart, you can ask it for temperance while you do this thing he wants, you can meet the people who are truly important to him without convincing yourself you’re counted amongst them. You can try, anyway.

So, on a rooftop in Hannam-dong, you sip whisky with a photographer friend of Namjoon’s while he stands behind you, an arm wrapped around your waist, and alternates between sucking bruises into your neck and smoke into his lungs.

“How’d you meet?” the photographer asks.

“Hoam,” Namjoon replies into your skin. “She picked a fight.”

You laugh, he laughs, the photographer laughs. It’s carefree and light—your laugh, your thoughts, your skin under Namjoon’s wandering lips. Your heart is holding up its end of the deal, you don’t feel anything but pleased to be there, pleased to have his attention again (still).

“Our Namjoonie likes a challenge,” his friend says.

“Our Namjoonie is a challenge,” you tease.

Namjoon nips at the thin skin between your neck and shoulder in retaliation (or to prove your point, you’re not sure). You yelp, turn in his arms, see him smirking before he goes to take another drag. Swiftly, you pluck the cigarette out from between his lips, stamping it out on the cement.

“Baby,” he whines, looking down where the cigarette is brown and white dust under your sneaker.

“Better things to do with your mouth,” you retort, pressing up onto your tiptoes and pulling his bottom lip between your teeth.

His mouth is ashy and yours tastes like peet, you’re sure. It’s filthy and a little cheap even though the cigarettes and the whisky and the lip balm he always wears were all expensive. Namjoon kisses like he does everything else: completely single-minded, treating the soft curves where your mouths meet as if they’re the edges of the world.

You walk him a step back until he’s flush against the wall and lean into him again, pressing your bodies together hard and your lips together plush. He’s hard in his joggers and it’s every last piece of self-control you have to not sneak your hand under his waistband and tease him until he’s leaking and begging to get inside you.

It wouldn’t take much.

Takes a lot out of you to not drop to your knees and choke on his cock where everyone can see, where everyone would know for sure for sure for certain that he’s chosen you for this for now for some reason. To not make him moan around your name while he comes down your throat, a different kind of concert.

Your hands stay in appropriate places while your lips beg for more.

He was right, something he said the first time you hooked up: you are greedy for him. But he’s just as bad for you, begging in your ear for you to let him take you home, for you to let him fuck you right here so everyone knows you’re his (right now, in only this way, for some reason that neither of you are willing to speak into existence).

You give in, no cares about who sees, it’s safe here with friends who would never betray him. You feel ever weightless against his body, whispering, “Yes, come on Joonie,” you say. “Need your cock. Need you.”

(Briefly, it occurs to you that those sentences mean two completely different things, that they’re both true, and that either it’s Namjoon choosing to ignore the odd, heavy weight of the second one or you both are.)

You’re halfway out the door before you remember you were in the middle of a conversation.

You don’t notice his friends whispering.

You don’t notice his manager rolling his eyes.

You don’t notice the way Namjoon looks at you when he knows you’re not looking back.

And you surely don’t let yourself notice that both of you want more than you’re willing to give in return.

“Can you come over?” he asks, but it doesn’t quite come out like a question.

“I’m working, maybe a different time?”

It’s abundantly clear he hadn’t expected you to say no. He’s silent on the other end of the line for a moment before he lets out an aborted sigh.

“You can work whenever you want.”

Before you realize he’s serious, you laugh. “Yeah, and now is when I want to. You know how it is to get inspired.”

Namjoon huffs. “I’d still make time for you.”

It’s almost more absurd than the sentence before it. First, you know from firsthand experience that he wouldn’t, not really. Your “relationship”—or whatever you’re (not) calling it—revolves almost entirely around his schedule. And that’s fine with you, usually. It was expected, anyway. You don’t exactly drop everything to see him, but you haven’t been the best at keeping plans with the other people in your life, either. You don’t blame him for it, it’s just how things are, and it’s your own fault (at least partially) for bailing on your friends to “chase dick” as they so delicately put it. The second point is that you wouldn’t ask him to. If you don’t ask him to change for you, if you don’t need him to bend, then you never have to stop to ask yourself what the two of you are even doing.

As the static of the connection is drawn out like a fermata with neither of you willing to break it, you wonder if this is your panoply, the armor you don, one of the ways you’ve been protecting your own heart without realizing it.

“I wouldn’t ask you to,” you say, repeating it to yourself, admitting it to him.

“I know,” Namjoon agrees, but he sounds disappointed instead of conciliatory.

“I have to go.”

“Sure,” he says quietly before he ends the call. “Let me know when you have time.”

Namjoon is obsessed with time.

How much is left.

How much has passed.

How much until the next thing.

How much he’s wasted.

You think this is because he puts a deadline to his regret, says things like, “It’s been a year, I can’t worry about it anymore.”

It’s hard not to wonder what schedule he’s given whatever this thing is between you. Are you still regrettable? Is there a space between regrettable and forgettable you can build shelter in?

It makes him fill his time. He’s always doing something, likes to feel productive. Holds himself to an unspoken standard that you’re not even sure he could articulate if he needed to. He gets antsy when he has to relax, twitches and fidgets and fills the space with words.

Sometimes, after sex when you’re quiet and lax and content to just sit with him, he uses the time to write. He sits tall up in your bed and holds his notebook above your head where it rests in his lap. He says you help him organize his thoughts, says having you to bounce things off of gives him clarity, says you think of words like colors like he does and you know how he likes to paint. Says he gets his best work done in this time in between pleasure and sleep.

He hums to himself while he writes—you don’t even know if he knows he does it. Sometimes, it wakes you up from where you didn’t know you’d fallen asleep on top of him.

“Is it morning yet?” you slur, still mostly asleep.

“Relax, baby,” he whispers when you stir. “We’ve got time.”

You don’t break up, because there’s nothing tangible to break. It’s a quiet thing, without dramatics, but oh how you grieve.

It’s not linear. You’re not in a predictable pattern of feeling. One morning he doesn’t call, and you don’t even notice, but another makes you sob quietly in the corner of your studio, curled up under the window where he used to sit, like you can fuse yourself with the ghost of him.

There are days when it’s easier, days when it’s difficult. When you mourn the way the curve of his bicep felt under your fingertips or the future you never considered until it wasn’t an option anymore.

(You still don’t know if it ever was an option, but that’s the tricky thing—you can grieve for the things you had and also for those you didn’t. No one can stop you, Namjoon’s not there to pull you back to reality. He was never very good at that anyway.)

Some days, you wonder if he grieves, too. It would be easy to read interviews and read into things, it would be easy to assume every word, look, gesture is a window into his mind, but you try not to do that to yourself, try not to do it to him.

At four in the morning on a Saturday, when days without him have long turned into weeks, you mindlessly scroll through your phone, idly wondering what he might be doing at this time when he used to be with you.

“The quiet hours are all for us,” he would whisper into your skin, no distractions, no demands.

Those hours are infinitely louder in your mind without him there. So, you distract yourself, you look at every app and you get lost in reels and tiktoks and tweets and then you go back to instagram to see his story is updated. And you think twice before you do it, but you still click on it, curious and heartbroken and a little bit hoping he’s not already found someone new to spend daybreak with.

It’s just a song, an old one, a sad one. Text he added in small font across the bottom:

“Grief is love persevering,” he says.

In your corner, under the window, you cry over the silly quote for the both of you.

“Do you know about alpine sunflowers?”

You laugh as you put your phone on speaker and set it down next to you. You’re not laughing at him, and he knows it—you’re full of a particular fondness you only feel for him, one you especially feel when he’s thousands of miles away, busier than busy and running on no sleep, but still calling you to bullshit.

“No, tell me about them.”

“Okay,” he says, voice pitched up, a little excited, like he’s sitting up straighter and getting ready to tell you something wonderful. “So, they only grow high up in the alpine tundra. The Swiss Alps, the Rockies, you know what I mean?”

“What about the French Alps?” you tease.

Namjoon huffs. “There too, jagiya, but you’re missing the point.”

“Okay, make me see it, then.”

“I will if you’ll stop teasing.”

You do stop, not because he’s making an impeccable argument, but because he’s always going somewhere with things like this, and without realizing it, you’ve stumbled into a reality where you’d follow him anywhere.

“They grow slowly. ‘Cause of the snow and the subzero temperatures and the fact that there’s just not much up there for them. They take their time, you see?”

You’re starting to, your paintbrush dipping into a dusty yellow to test in a small corner of your canvas. You nod, forgetting he’s not there in the room with you, that you should speak if you actually want to answer him. He doesn’t care if you do or not, you know, not until he gets to the punchline, and sometimes not even then.

On the other end of the line, you hear him suck in a breath before he continues. “They save up everything: the sunlight and the water and they hoard it all. They're selfish little things, baby. Just these spindly stalks of nothing sucking up everything good out of the Earth.”

“Hmm,” you murmur so he knows you’re with him.

“But then, and this is the best part, then one day, after ten fucking years if you can believe that—after ten years do you know what happens?”

“Climate change?”

Namjoon ignores you now in favor of finishing his story. It’s fair enough, you suppose. “They bloom. Big and beautiful, brighter than all the other sunflowers like an explosion of little suns across the mountains.”

“That sounds beautiful,” you reply.

And you know what Namjoon is thinking. That their beauty comes at a cost, that he hasn’t quite untangled yet whether he loves those stupid flowers for taking what they need and becoming something incredible or if he despises them for waiting so long to do it, for keeping something so lovely to themselves. It’s not what he says, though. As you paint something that might be tangling green vines of selfish sunflowers across gesso, he surprises you.

“I wonder if in all relationships, someone is the sunflower and someone is the mountain.”

You can’t help but pause, because he might be right. One of you might take something from the other to become more beautiful, one of you might give up everything to be made more whole by the other, if even for a moment.

“Maybe they are,” you agree.

“You know what happens after the alpine sunflower blooms?” he asks, voice softer now, more tired as night turns into morning where he is.

“What happens, Joon-ah?”

Namjoon sighs into the phone, the mood has changed since he called you—and this isn’t unusual. He can be ebullient and he’s gorgeous when he’s happy and carefree, but it changes quickly sometimes depending on the circumstances, depending on how much he’s let himself think, how much time he’s spent alone.

“They die. They do all of that and they work hard for so long, and then they’re gone.”

Carefully, you ask, “You want to be the mountain, then?”

In the background, you can hear the rustle of sheets and the careful clacking of his glasses hitting the bedside table. He yawns, and you can picture the way he’s rubbing his palms over his face, pulling his shirt off before he dives all the way under the duvet, probably taking advantage of being alone to take up all the space he possibly can in the big hotel bed. He sounds half-asleep and sad when he finally answers you.

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Why not?” You put your brush down, stare at the small mess you’ve made.

“The mountain has it worse, she can only watch them go.”

He is everywhere, even when he’s not.

There are the obvious things: the ads with his face, the gum and coffee and candy with his picture on them, the music, his lyrics, playing in cafes and bars and pages and pages of his songs in every noraebang.

There are the private things, too. The reminders that are just for you.

You see him in the way the leaves change: reliable but not predictable.

You smell him after it rains, when you pass by cafes and smoking rooms and when you take the train to Yeosu just to remember the way the saltwater can make the air sting. You hear him every time you hear the train sail into the station at Yongsan and when you hear the river gently shove against its banks.

It’s a couple months after you meet him, and along that river, you walk a less-loved path. With all the words you know, you explain all that to a friend, one you’ve known a long time, who doesn’t know who you’re talking about as you try to describe the person who’s taken up all of your time and attention lately.

Because you can’t tell her anything about him, you tell her these things instead and you hope it’s enough for her to understand.

And maybe she does, maybe better than you do.

“Does that make sense?” you ask. “It’s hard to explain how much he is.”

“To you,” she says. “He’s that much to you.”

You hadn’t even considered that he wasn’t all of those things to everyone. It never even crossed your mind. It’s probably apparent that you’re mulling it over, trying to true it up with how you feel.

She shrugs with one shoulder and smiles, brings a finger up to smooth the wrinkle in your brow. “Don’t think about it too hard, yeah? Love is supposed to be simple.”

Those two words had always each seemed so big to you, to carry so much power on their own. It’s the first time you let yourself consider putting the words Namjoon and Love in the same sentence.

And in that moment, you know that if Namjoon is the changing leaf, you are the one that falls.

“Do you love me?” you ask—afraid to know the answer, more afraid of never knowing. You stare at unfinished bunches of sunflowers and handprints of pink and white borders that never got filled in. All of it undone, all of it paused. Abstracts in stop-motion waiting for… him to come back? You to get your shit together? Inspiration? What’s the difference, anyway, you think while you wait for him to speak.

He doesn’t answer right away, hums a little, clicks his tongue, things you can sense more than you can hear. It’s a rude way to start a phone call, especially when you haven’t spoken in a long time, especially when you’re not each other's to love.

Not anymore.

Not that you know if you ever were.

You need to know, you think. Questioning whether all of it even mattered is making you worse off than thinking it didn’t. Listening to him tell foreign interviewers he’s had a rough year, lost something great, was finding it hard to trust—himself, others—you, your brain supplies… it’s making you feel a little wild, a little reckless.

One drink past good decisions, you call, and when he answers unexpectedly, you forgo “hello” for “do you love me?”

You wait, expecting exasperation, complication, maybe a long and drawn out description of how maybe people can never know if they’re in love, if they have the capacity to love completely.

And then he surprises you.

“Of course I do,” he says, sounding soft and a little scared and more definitive than you’ve ever heard him. “You know that.”

“I didn’t,” you reply. Not to be argumentative, but because it’s true. Because you love him and you want him to be happy and you know he’ll never get it right if he thinks what he gave you was enough.

“I don’t think I knew then, either,” he concedes. “But I wish I had. I do now.”

“I miss you.”

“I know. But you did then, too.”

The laugh you let out is wry and wet with your tears, the ones you’re shedding for the you that did miss him even then, even when he was by your side, even when he was buried inside of you. “I’m lonely,” is what you say, too honest.

“I know. I am, too.”

There’s nothing to say to that, you think. Maybe this is where it really ends, a torn-open wound for both of you—you’ll paint it all in vivid acrylics, probably never finish it just to be ironic. And then Namjoon adds, “Can I come over?”

You reply quickly, a taste of his own medicine. “Maybe,” you say.

You should have never left, you mean.

He laughs then, watercolor yellow and orange joy dripping over the phone line. It’s bright and hopeful—you listen to him shrugging on a jacket and swearing out a curse when he runs into his dresser, rushing to get to you, scrambling for time—and it makes you decide that for once, with him by your side, you might finish the picture.

#bts x reader #namjoon x reader #rm x reader #namjoon smut #namjoon angst #namjoon fluff #rm smut #rm fluff #rm angst #bts imagines #namjoon imagine #rm imagine #kvanity #bts smut #bts angst #bts fanfic #namjoon fanfic #rm fanfic

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Number One Fan ch. V

Dark!Stepbro!Rafe Cameron x f!Reader

Warnings: noncon (rape), incest (step siblings), implied noncon, forced kissing, forced oral (m!recieving), fingering, semi public sex, drug mention, manipulation, controlling behavior, gaslighting, blackmailing, fainting, reader has ptsd like symptoms,

Previous Chapter

Your pulse thundered in your ears as you sat in Ward’s study, finding it much easier to look at your shoes than meet the eyes of your angry step father.

“Are you going to tell me what really happened yesterday? Because Rafe already did, and now I want to give you a chance to explain yourself, Y/N.”

Unwanted memories flashed through your mind.

Watching your brother slam his fists into JJ’s face, the way it felt when Rafe had pinned you to the bed, and how your head had spun when he slapped you. You shuddered as you recalled the feeling of him forcing himself inside of you for the first time and how awful it felt went he kissed you.

You didn’t want to think about the sticky feeling of his cum oozing out of you after he pulled out.

You could only lie on the bed in shock when it was over. Rafe had to carry you to the shower, holding you up as he washed you and you tried to ignore how his hands wandered across your soapy body, squeezing your tits and ass while your numb tears mixed with the water from above.

Before that night, you had loved falling asleep next to your step brother. You loved the sense of comfort, safety, and peace that he always gave you.

Yesterday night, however, you felt terrified and tense as you lay next to the man who had just broken your trust and assaulted you. Rafe had insisted on sleeping naked, leaving you on high alert, so scared that he was going to try to initiate something that you couldn’t relax.

Even worse was knowing that if you did fall asleep next to him, he might force himself onto you anyways.

Every time he shifted in his sleep, every time he pulled you closer, or wrapped his strong arms around you tighter, your heart rate spiked, sure that he was awake and had decided that one time wasn’t enough.

After an almost sleepless night, you cracked your eyes open and felt Rafe stirring beside you.

“Good morning, Y/N/N,” he mumbled, his voice lowered from just waking up.

You had started shifting away from him when his arm wrapped around you, pulling you in to his warm chest. His hand found your chin, tilting your face towards his before his lips captured yours.

When you struggled against him, you felt his lips curl into a small grin and he chuckled before covering your lips with his again, this time sliding his hand to hold the back of your head in place.

His other hand found your jaw, thumb brushing your cheek, and you were disgusted when you felt yourself getting wet.

Rafe broke the kiss, staring into your eyes for a few moments before he slowly sat up in bed and started grabbing his clothes.

“We should probably start heading back. Don’t want Ward and Rose getting too suspicious.”

You breathed a silent sigh of relief at his words, anxious to return to land and get far away from your step brother.

Rafe’s eyes burned into your back as you dressed quietly, putting on the outfit that you had worn the day before, already formulating plans on how you could burn the clothes.

You didn’t want to be reminded of last night every time you looked at them.

Before Rafe could finish up in the bedroom, you quickly exited, walking up the stairs to the main deck and leaning on a railing to watch the rising sun reflect off of the water below you.

How could you possibly have a normal life after this?

How could you go on about your day, knowing that the brother you had always trusted, the one who had lived just down the hall from you for 10 years, was capable of so much cruelty?

Sensing a presence from behind, you spun around to face him as Rafe hooked his arm around your back, holding you against his chest before grinning wolfishly and leaning down to smother your lips with his own.

With the railing at your back along with his arm locked tight around you, there was nowhere to go as you squirmed helplessly in his grasp.

Rafe’s tongue forced its way into your mouth and you almost gagged. He held you in place for what felt like an eternity before finally releasing you.

The blond grinned down at you wickedly before wrapping his fingers around your wrist and tugging you towards the bottom deck. He glanced at his watch, clicking his tongue before chuckling darkly.

“Just enough time for a quickie.”

When you finally got back to Tannyhill, feeling sore and used, and utterly repulsed by your step brother, you couldn’t get out of his truck fast enough.

Thankfully, you didn’t see anyone as you came in and you quietly, but quickly, rushed up the stairs before entering your bedroom, locking the door, ripping your clothes off, taking a scorching shower as you tried to wash the scent of your brother off of you, and then collapsing onto your bed in exhaustion.

You must have slept for several hours however, because when you were finally awoken by a knock at your door, the sky outside your window was growing orange and red as the sun began to set.

“Y/N? Are you in there?” You recognized Sarah’s voice and you sat up in bed.

“Yeah, one second,” you forced your hoarse voice to project enough for her to hear, climbing out of your bed and walking to your dresser to grab a change of comfy clothes.

You opened your door with a timid smile that Sarah worryingly exchanged.

“Are you okay? What happened last night?”

You anxiously looked down the hall to see if Rafe was lurking nearby before sighing and fidgeting with your fingers as you attempted to find your voice.

“Um.. I’d rather not talk about it, Sarah.”

Your step sister looked confused as she tried to get a read on your face.

“But, um, is JJ okay?” You asked nervously.

“Rafe broke his nose and he’s bruised pretty bad but he’ll be okay. He’s been asking about you nonstop, all the Pogues have. They were really scared when we told them what happened.”

You looked down at the ground feeling guilty. You knew that Rafe was the one who had initiated it, but JJ wouldn’t have been jumped like that if you hadn’t been talking to him. Rafe fought with the Pogues all the time, but last night was different.

“Hey, are you okay?”

Sarah’s question surprised you, and you realized there were tears welling in your eyes.

“Um…. Could we go to your room to talk?”

Sarah’s room had always been a comfort to you before you and Rafe got super close, and you did enjoy your sister’s company a lot.

“Sure, of course, Y/N.” She pulled you into a hug, which you returned, enjoying the lightness her presence was bringing you.

You tensed however when you cracked your eyes open to see Rafe emerging from his room behind her.

You averted your eyes immediately, heart rate picking up as you released Sarah and she turned to see Rafe.

“Fuck you, Rafe. I really do not understand your problem with JJ at all,” she spat at him turning to you and expecting you to join in.

Rafe’s eyes fell on you and you watched the corner of his lips threatening to pull into a smirk of amusement.

You swallowed dryly, remembering the sensation of his backhand whipping your head to the side and the dizziness that followed.

“I really wanted to make this special for you,” his nasally voice taunted you.

Your breath grew faster and harder to catch as your vision grew fuzzy around the edges.

“Y/N?” Sarah’s voice was muffled, like she was speaking to you through a tunnel

You felt lightheaded and sick, and you were lucky that you were standing by Sarah and not Rafe because she was the one to catch you when your knees buckled beneath you.

The two of them had a short argument that you couldn’t hear above you before Rafe’s arms wrapped around your limp body and carried you to Sarah’s room.

You tried to ignore the feeling of his fingers brushing over your exposed skin as he lay you down on Sarah’s bed. Sarah’s face appeared in your line of vision and she said something that you couldn’t hear before both of them left the room.

The last thing you saw was Sarah returning a minute later with a cool washcloth that she pressed to your warm forehead.

She was talking to you again, and you tried to grasp at her words, to understand any of them, but your body felt weighed down and you fell into the black abyss of sleep quickly.

…

You woke to the sound of an argument on the other side of the door. Sarah, Rafe, and Ward were screaming at each other.

“She wouldn’t do that, Rafe!”

“Don’t act like you know her so well! You’d be surprised.”

“Both of you just calm the fuck down!” Ward yelled and they became silent. “Sarah go see if she’s awake yet.”

The door to her room cracked open and light from the hall made you sit up in bed.

“What’s going on?” You met Sarah’s tear filled eyes first, then the angry eyes of Ward, your confused mother’s eyes, and then finally Rafe’s, who was standing behind all of them wearing a vindictive smile only you could see.

“Get out of bed and come to my office right now, Y/N,” Ward sternly commanded you.

Your heart leapt to your throat, confusion pulsing through your veins.

What the fuck is going on right now?

Without a word, you followed Rafe, Sarah, Rose, and Ward to his office, where he gestured for you to sit down before staring you down in silence.

“Ward?” You nervously asked. “Rose?”

“Are you going to tell me what really happened yesterday? Because Rafe already did, and now I want to give you a chance to explain yourself, Y/N.”

You tensed, anxiously looking over at Rafe who was watching you with a small smirk.

He wouldn’t have told them about what happened yesterday, that would have been insane, right??

“I- I really don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Your step father sighed before reaching into his pocket and pulling out three small bags of coke.

“Do you want to explain to me why Rafe and I found these in your room today, Y/N?”

Your heart stopped, jaw dropping open in disbelief as you stared at Ward.

“Th-those aren’t fucking mine! Ward you know I don’t do that!” You would have laughed if you didn’t feel so sick right now.

“Rafe was the one who told me, he said you asked him for some, and when he wouldn’t give it to you, you went to the Pogues.”

“Dad, I already told you, none of the Pogues use or sell coke!” Sarah shouted at him and he silenced her with a furious look.

“They aren’t mine, Ward! Rafe probably just got too high and forgot where he stashed his!” You threw a pointed look at your brother who was just behind Ward and Sarah, watching on with a mirthful smirk.

“If it was mine, don’t you think I would’ve just, I don’t know, taken them?” His casual tone made you want to scream. “Why would I hide it in your room?”

“Maybe because you’re a fucking cokehead,” you spat at him.

“Takes one to know one,” he shot back and you huffed in frustration. He looked at his father and Rose before faking concern, “She’s probably high right now.”

“God! Ward, please, Rafe nearly killed JJ yesterday! He would have, if I didn’t push him off of him. He’s lying to you!” You looked over to Rose, who met your eyes with sadness. “Mom, tell me you don’t believe this too!”

“I wouldn’t have done that if he hadn’t been selling to my little sister.” Rafe sniped.

You bit your tongue as you glared at him, trying to not let your anger get the best of you. Tears burned at your eyes before slowly starting to fall past your lashes.

Looking at Ward and your mother again, you took a deep breath to calm yourself.

“Ward, I swear to you, that coke isn’t mine. I promise that it’s not mine. JJ is just my friend, he’s not a dealer. Rafe planted it there! You have to believe me.” You were crying harder now despite your efforts to stop.

Ward just shook his head in disappointment, “You just fainted earlier today out of nowhere! What was that? I’ve heard this a thousand times. You sound exactly like Rafe the very first time I caught him. Rafe? I’ve come to expect this of him. But from you? Y/N, I thought you were better than this.”

You didn’t miss the scowl that crossed Rafe’s features at Ward’s words, and you realized that, even though you were the one on the receiving end of Ward’s criticism instead of Rafe for the first time, Ward still couldn’t help but put his son down too as he scolded you.

“From now on I will expect you to cease communication with all of those Pogues and you’re to be back in this house by 9PM every night. No exceptions. I can’t have you going out to god knows where.”

Your heart clenched at that, frustration threatening to bubble over into rage.

“Dad, come on, you’re being completely unreasonable!” Sarah shouted. “Y/N is not getting drugs from our friends!”

“Be quiet, Sarah, I wasn’t done.” Ward snapped at her. “I don’t want either of you hanging out on the Cut with those Pogues. And that goes for John B too.”

His gaze fixed on yours again, “give me your phone.”

“What?!”

“You’ll get it back tomorrow, don’t worry, but I need to have your location at all times. I can’t trust you after this, Y/N. You know how it is with…” Ward stopped himself from finishing his sentence, but everyone in the room knew exactly who he meant and you saw Rafe’s jaw tick in annoyance again.

Ward dismissed you and you ignored Rose and Sarah when they tried to talk to you in the hallway, instead choosing to rush to your room, slamming your door and grabbing a pillow to scream into.

When you arrived at the dinner table the next day and saw the only empty seat available, your heart sank.

Taking a deep breath, you steeled yourself before taking your seat next to Rafe, trying intensely to find interest in the otherwise ordinary pot roast on your plate to avoid looking over at your step brother.

Ward and your mother were already in the middle of a conversation and Sarah gave you a sympathetic smile when she noticed how uncomfortable you looked next to Rafe. Wheezie, who was completely oblivious to your argument with Ward, asked Sarah a question, diverting her attention away from you.

Rose turned to you, somewhat awkwardly, and inquired about your next semester. “Do you already know what classes you’re going to be taking?”

Despite the obvious tension that was still thick in the air between all of you, you appreciated your mom making an effort at least.

“I think I’m registered for Photography 3, Art History 3, Math, and a writing class. Maybe one more Gen Ed that I’m forgetting right now.”

“Ooh Photography is going to be fun for you, I bet! Remember when you used to take photos at Rafe’s football games? I always thought that was so cool,” Rose cheerily said.

“Um. Yeah, well we’ll see about his upcoming season. Maybe.”

“You and your friend, Mary used to go all the time didn’t you? Oh you two used to be so close.”

“Yeah well ever since she moved to-” you cut yourself off with a small gasp when you felt Rafe’s fingers grip your upper thigh before inching between your legs.

You couldn’t believe how brazen he was to do this at the dinner table in front of the entire family.

You squirmed uncomfortably, lightly slapping his hand quietly before clearing your throat, “Ever since Mary moved to New Orleans for college, we haven’t been talking as much.”

Your older step brother seemed determined to get a reaction out of you however, brushing past your silent protests to fit his hand between your legs. Your eyes widened and you shifted in your seat again as Rafe’s fingers danced past the fabric of your shorts and panties. When he dipped the tip of his finger inside of you, you had to bite your lip to stop from whimpering.

“Y/N?”

You realized that Rose was looking at you with a puzzled expression and she must have asked you another question.

“Um, what?” Your mouth felt dry, mind racing as you squeezed your thighs together, trying to get Rafe’s wandering hands off of you without raising the attention of your family. Your cheeks felt so hot, you were sure they could notice.

When you felt him push his finger deeper, forcing himself inside your slick walls past his knuckle, and beginning to stretch you out around his ring, a whimper slipped past your lips and you quickly coughed trying to cover up the sound.

“What is going on with you, young lady?” Ward asked, his patience with you clearly waning at your outbursts.

“Yeah, Y/N/N, you’re acting weird,” Rafe’s teasing tone was lost on everyone but you. And you loudly cursed when his finger twitched, curling inside of you to get more of a rise out of you.

“Fuck-!” Your chair scraped loudly as you pushed yourself away from the table and stood up.

Your entire family was staring at you now as you tried to correct your uneven breathing.

“I- I think I’m gonna be sick,” was all you managed before you stumbled from the dining room before running up the stairs to your room.

For a moment your family stared at each other in shocked confusion.

Rafe was the first to break the silence.

“She’s probably just going through withdrawals, lemme see if there’s any way I can help.” He stood from his chair, leaving his plate on the table.

“Should we come with you?” Rose offered, getting ready to stand before Rafe waved his hand, ‘no’

“Nah, I think she just needs her brother.”

Rafe put an ear to your door, opening it quietly and stepping inside after hearing a retching sound coming from your bathroom.

He closed the door behind himself, locking it gently, before following the faint light from the cracked door where the sounds had stopped and been replaced by you scrubbing down the inside of your mouth with a tooth brush.

When he knocked on the door, he heard you sigh before spitting out the rest of your toothpaste.

“Sarah, I don’t want to talk-” you had opened the door a bit, but you suddenly paused when you saw Rafe, tensing and shrinking in on yourself.

You tried to close your bathroom door, but Rafe’s hand shot out, easily outdoing the all strength you had put behind trying to keep him out. He pushed the door open and you backed up against the counter in fear.

When he shut the door behind him and locked it, your stomach lurched.

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Rafe?” You hissed before lowering your voice for your next words, “why are you doing this now? When any of them could catch us?”

Your older step brother smirked, taking a step towards you and enjoying your distress at him bursting into your room.

“I think that would be your fault, sweetheart.”

He moved so fast you barely had time to react, pressing himself against you before both hands came to your shoulders, shoving you to your knees. You hit the ground painfully, letting out a whimper before meeting Rafe’s eyes as he loomed above you.

“Y’just can’t keep that pretty mouth shut, can you?” One of Rafe’s hands tangled into your hair, holding you beneath him, as the other found the button and zipper of his shorts, fumbling to undo them as quick as possible before pushing them down to his ankles.

“No, Rafe, please don’t!”

His boxers were next to go, and your pleading was cut off when he tugged you forward by your hair and forced his cock between your lips.

The salty taste made you want to gag, and you had to stretch your lips more to accommodate his size, flattening your tongue to the bottom of your jaw.

Startled, you tried to gasp for air, giving him access to slowly push himself deeper, his cock nudging the back of your throat, staying there and choking you until your pleading eyes went wide, tears beginning to build up along your waterline.

“You can take it, Y/N/N,” he whispered and you were confused when his encouragement made your clit tingle and butterflies fluttered in your stomach.

Rafe tilted his hips back, sliding himself out enough to allow you to take a much needed breath, but your relief was short lived when his grip on your hair tightened and he pushed his cock to the back of your throat again.

His thrusts were steady at first, and every time you choked or gagged on his cock when he pushed you too far, he let out a soft groan, fingers twitching in your hair as he played out his sick fantasies with you.

Despite already stealing your virginity away from you, watching you pathetically crying on your knees and choking on his cock was just another level of degradation. The fact that he was taking yet another first from you made this all the more thrilling for him.

The initial panic had worn off inside of you, all you could do now was focus on breathing through your nose and trying not the throw up from the feeling of your step brother’s dick sliding across your tongue and kissing the back of your throat.

His speed picked up and Rafe ignored you when you slapped at his leg in a desperate attempt for him to slow down.

Tears were steadily rolling down your red tinged cheeks now along with some spit that had escaped the corner of your lips due to Rafe’s brutal pace.

A sudden knock at the door made Rafe freeze, and he rolled his eyes and let out a quiet groan of frustration when he heard Sarah’s concerned voice.

“Y/N? Are you doing alright?”

“We’re fine!” Rafe snapped at her dismissively.

“I want hear that from, Y/N.” Sarah replied.

Rafe sighed before sliding his cock out of your mouth and leaning down to order you quietly.

You quietly caught your breath, pulse racing as you desperately willed Sarah to come in and help you.

“Tell our dumbass sister what a good job I’m doing cheering you up and then tell her to fuck off,” he hissed into your ear, his hot breath made you shiver.

You hesitated before Rafe yanked on your hair again and you bit back a yelp.

“I’m fine, Sarah, r-really. Rafe is um- helping me take care of it.” You struggled to keep your shaky voice under control.

Sarah was silent for a moment before her voice came from the other side of the door, “are you sure? You don’t sound okay.”

“I’m f-fine, I promise. I was just throwing up a bit.” You despised lying to her right now, especially considering how much help you actually did need in this moment.

“Yeah, she’d appreciate some privacy, Sarah,” Rafe snipped.

“Okay, Y/N, if you’re sure..” her voice trailed off and you knew she had left when you heard your bedroom door close.

Rafe wasted no time in grabbing your chin and forcing your mouth open before shoving his cock past your plump lips.

You slapped his thigh and he grunted, fingers lacing through your hair and sliding your lips back and forth on his cock as he stood still.

“Fuck-” he breathed through gritted teeth, his hips starting to move impulsively, thrusting forward when he pulled you in and forcing himself deeper down your throat.

When his fingers pulled at your hair again, holding you in place as he frantically fucked your throat, you knew he was close.

You took a gasping breath when he pulled his cock out. His hand wrapped around his length, stroking himself until white burst from the tip, splattering your face.

You closed your eyes as ropes of cum painted your lips, cheeks, and chin. The sticky sensation made your skin crawl and you felt like you were going to throw up again.

Disgust and humiliation boiled in your gut. You just wanted to disappear.

The sound of a camera lens snapping made your eyes split open.

Rafe chuckled when you registered the phone in his hand, turning the screen around to show you the degrading picture he had just taken.

“Y’ know,” he sniffed, looking over his shoulder at the closed door behind him. “I uh, wouldn’t tell anybody about this if I were you.”

Your stomach dropped at his words. You could feel any last chances you might have of rescue from your step brother slipping through your fingers.

“I’d just hate it if you decided to mess up your future over this.” You couldn’t stand the way he was speaking as if he was giving you any kind of choice in this situation. “You understand, right?”

Staring at up at your older brother from your knees as you watched him nonchalantly pull his shorts back up and discuss blackmailing you, as if this was all just a petty fight over nothing made you want to scream.

But you bit your tongue, not seeing any other choice but to agree with him.

“Yeah… I understand.”

Rafe’s eyes flicked over your defeated face, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips at seeing your pretty face painted with his cum.

“You should probably clean yourself up. Sarah’s still waiting on you.”

#rafe cameron #dark!rafe cameron #stepbro!rafe cameron #dark!stepbro!rafe cameron #dark!rafe cameron x reader #dark rafe cameron #rafe cameron x reader #stepbro!rafe #stepbro!rafe cameron x reader #rafe cameron noncon #rafe cameron smut #stepbro!rafe smut #dark rafe cameron x reader #number one fan

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gay-dorito-dust · 8 hours

Note

Hii!

(If you’re not up for it simply ignore. I love your work and hope you’re happy and healthy and taking care of your own mental health ❤️)

The bat boys with a reader who has really low days and really just wants to be held?

I just wanted an excuse to add Kyle Rayner as a bonus cuz I’ve been wanting to write something for him but dunno what. Plus I’ve been needing something like this after the week I’ve just had lol.

Dick would smile softly as he held you in his arms, tightening his grip on you as he peppers you in kisses however he could.

He knew that days like these were the hardest for you and he wasn’t going to hold it against you, not in the slightest as he would softly hum a song to you as he carried you to your shared bed, Hayley hot on his heels as she was worried about your change of attitude.

Speaking of Hayley, she never leaves your side, in fact when she sees Dick hold you against him , she immeditly joins in and tries to wriggle her way in between you both in hopes of covering your face in comforting licks. She wants to see you happy and she’ll gladly cuddle up with you if that’s the only way to do it.

Dick would spoil you rotten with cuddles, kisses and words of encouragement when you felt as though all hope was lost, for the last thing he wanted was for you to feel as though no one had you back when he did this entire time of being together.

‘You’re amazing baby and I’m so fucking proud of you, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise you otherwise because you outshine them without having to try.’ He says while pressing a kiss to your forehead.

Dick would gladly make a fool of himself if it was to make you feel better but holding you, kissing you, and praising you will have to do for the meantime as he could hope that he has given you the strength needed to get out of this dark place that you’ve found yourself in.

He believes you can do it but until then he’ll gladly hold you until you could stand on your own two feet again.

Jason doesn’t need to be told twice as he was well aware of what you want the moment you came through the door of your shared bedroom.

‘Come here sweetheart.’ He would say as he sets aside his book and held out his arms for you to burrow into as you rested your head on his chest, arms latching onto his waist with an iron like grip.

He didn’t need to ask about the day you’ve had for he could feel the fatigue and weariness within your body and the deep sigh that left your lips that told him you have been holding in for a long while. Your body practically radiated with tiredness in all its forms that made it impossible for him to ignore even if he tried.

‘Rest your heavy head and your weary eyes chipmunk,’ he tells you as he begins to rub up and down your back soothingly, ‘I’ll be right here when you wake up, so just relax for me okay?’

You hummed out a small and a tad muffled ‘okay’ and Jason presses a kiss to the side of your head as he tightens his hold on you. He’d even read passages of his book to you in hopes the tit would take your mind off of things quicker as he knew how much you liked the sound of his voice.

Jason knows there’s want much he could do when you experienced days like these but all he could hope was that he was making enough of an effort to make you feel just that little bit better.

Tim makes sure he has everything you could ever need during days like these such as your favourite plushie, blanket, comfort foods, and some water just to name a few as he wants you to be comfortable and taken care of if he was to not be moving away from the bed anytime soon as he held you in his arms.

He just wants you to be okay and doesn’t want you run in on an empty stomach.

‘We’re human, we have limitations and breaking points that tell us to stop and take a break for ourselves, but yet we have been made to think that we shouldn’t and that we should neglect our health and well-being for temporary achievements and successes; almost as if that’s the only thing that should mean something to us.’ Tim tells you as he cuddles you against his chest as a movie played on his laptop as background noise.

‘You’ve done so well for yourself and now your more then deserving of a rest, we’ll return to reality in our own time, we’ve got enough of it that it shouldn’t matter whether we’re still here an hour or two later.’ Tim continues as he presses a kiss to your forehead.

And he meant it, Tim didn’t care how kind he’d have to wait for you to get better because he understood that it wasn’t going to be as easy, having had shit days where he couldn’t be bothered to bring himself to do anything other then lay in his bed, wondering to himself about what he could’ve done to feel such deep pain and isolation.

He knew that it would take time for you to feel even remotely better and even when you did you’ll still need all the help you can possibly get, and he’ll be there for as long as you’ll need him there too.

Damian isn’t well versed in the art of comforting someone but with you, suddenly he’s an expert as he lets you flop against his side as he holds you protectively.

He doesn’t trust his words enough to bring you any comfort as he wasn’t given much himself when he was growing up, so Damian instead just lets you cling onto him and watch in silence as he draws whatever in his sketchbooks: in this instance it was quick sketch of you, him and all of his pets on a field somewhere.

Damian knew his drawings were somewhat therapeutic to you as you got to watch him go through every step he took to make the perfect drawing, no matter if it was heavily detailed or less so, that and he was proud of his artwork that he doesn’t mind showing you some of his precious works and telling you the stories behind them.

Titus joins you, obviously, as he could tell something was wrong with you and will lay in your lap to provide you with some comfort until he’s fallen fast asleep, rendering it impossible for you to move but you didn’t care and neither did Damian as you were surly to follow the Great Dane into dream land where you would be laying in that field that Damian drew.

You were a lot more stronger then you let yourself believe in Damian’s eyes but that didn’t mean he wasn’t more then content in holding you in comfortable silence until you felt better, even if it was just a little bit but even then Damian was determined to outdo himself and find other ways of helping you no matter what.

He just wants to see that smile he loved so much again that told him that everything was going to be okay.

Random Bonus character: Kyle Rayner

Kyle hates seeing you so down and will do absolutely anything and everything he could even if it meant only getting a little smile out of you he’d take it wholeheartedly!

Anything was better then that distant, solemn look on your face as you stared out the window as though life didn’t look as bright or pleasant anymore as it did before.

He’d conjure up anything your heart desired if that helped even by the smallest amount, any amount of progress was better then none. Kyle just wants to see your eyes light up again with childlike wonder again, even if it was momentarily.

However he doesn’t mind if him holding you in his arms was the only way to achieve such a thing as he could keep you close and squeeze you tightly as he tries to pour everything encouraging into your ears in low hushed whispers.

‘You’ll be okay,’ Kyle begins, ‘whether that’s within days, weeks or even months, you’ll be okay. You’re not missing out on anything nor are you going about life at a slower pace compared to others, you’re going at your own pace and that’s okay, you’ll get where you need to be in due time so there’s no point in rushing yourself to get there quicker.’

Kyle would even do some silly little doodles for you just to hear you chuckle or even let out an amused huff. He’d gladly make himself look silly if it meant brining a little light to your heart and life back into your eyes.

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fixated-dark-king · 2 days

Text

Sooo, I had the amazing experience of attending a panel C.S. Pacat was part of during the Sydney Writers’ Festival on 25th May 2024. The panel was called “Creating a Monster” (with two other YA authors).

And finally a week later (because adult-ing is hard), I had time to actually go through my notes and write up some of the fascccccinating things Pacat had to say about: monsterous heroes, and villains, and enemies-to-lovers deliciousness, and queer identity!

I didn’t want to forget some of the interesting things said in this panel and thought others might be interested in hearing about them too? Please indulge the splurge. :)

(Please note that all bold headers are just my thematic summary of each section for people to jump to, not the actual question asked.)

WHAT APPEALS ABOUT ‘THE MONSTROUS’ TO PACAT:

From a technical writing standpoint, the ‘Monstrous’ is appealing because a villain will often do an act and the hero reacts to that. It gives unconscious clues to the reader that when the villain turns up, something exciting is going to happen. In that sense, villainous characters have a special sort of ever-present attention given to them (possibly because human nature is to always keep one eye on the dangerous thing that could harm you).

On a personal level: A) When queer characters are awesome but also ‘Monstrous’, Pacat says it can feel really ‘electric’ and empowering to reclaim/allow yourself to embrace the monster role that you’ve been told you fit into by society. Like in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles where queer people are allowed to be beautiful/glittering & powerful & witty & have existential conversations about good and evil while fitting under the Monstrous label. Like heck yeh, that’s cool. And B) as an author, you can feel a ‘minority pressure’ to have characters be Good all the time and be the perfect ambassador for that minority, but sometimes you just want to be a vampire and take over the world, you know?

THE EXISTENCE OF ‘PROTAGONIST-CENTRED MORALITY’ WITHIN THE DARK RISE BOOKS:

When pondering whether it is hard as a writer to convince readers that a Monstrous protagonist is a likeable character, Pacat pointed out that the funny thing is that the question ‘How am I going to make readers like this monster?’ never really ends up being an issue because people actually really like monsters! The thing you might not expect is that the struggle is actually: ‘How am I going to make these readers who are barracking for the protagonist feel that this ‘monster’ is actually monstrous?’

Pacat explained that when a protagonist is also a monster, it brings into play something called ‘Protagonist-Centric Morality’ -- where you bond with that protagonist and want the best for them etc, so much that it can obscure when the protagonist is actually doing something bad. Pacat mentioned that he has found the Protag-Centric Morality fairly striking in the case of the Dark Rise books because people have said to him things like: ‘The Dark King Did Nothing Wrong Ever In His Whole Life’ and Pacat questioned whether the moral centre of the story was landing somewhere different than intended. He was curious whether the other authors had experienced that with their ‘monstrous’ protagonists too.

IF A HERO IS ALSO MONSTROUS, HOW ON EARTH DO YOU DIFFERENTIATE THAT FROM THE VILLIAN? When pondering over the distinction between a Monstrous Hero and a Villain, Pacat shared some thoughts from his lived experience. He said the times when he has felt most threatened by the ‘Monstrous’ is when that person isn’t clearly identifiable to others around you; where there isn’t a shared understanding between everyone that ‘yes, that person is a monster’. Extending from that, the Truly Monstrous is when that person has some kind of control over you and control over the narrative as well; if the monster is the one telling the story but casting you as the monster. Essentially gaslighting via ‘narrative control’.

ENEMIES TO LOVERS TROPE:

This is Pacat’s absolute favourite romantic trope. And he elaborated that he doesn’t mean that in the sense of ‘these characters sort of don’t like each other’, but rather to the point where two characters really hate each other and for a very good reason. He likes when a path between two characters feels IMPOSSIBLE to overcome.

This trope was first explored in the Captive Prince trilogy and Pacat loved it so much he just had to use it again for the Dark Rise trilogy. The planning behind it for CaPri was brainstorming: ‘What is the worst thing I could think to use?’ (Answer: Killing a character’s brother, which lands the bereaved character into a set of hellish circumstances.) But that meant when Pacat decided to use it again for DR, he had to extend that to: ‘Now I need to think of something EVEN WORSE THAN THAT (CaPri)’ in order to separate the main characters. So Pacat had to spend ages thinking about what could be the absolute worst thing to use this time -- and he hopes that he came up with something that is ‘truly, truly way worse.’ Which essentially had everyone, including the moderator, laughing loudly in fear. XD

WILL KEMPEN: FOUND FAMILY & THE LONELINESS OF INAUTHENTICITY:

Pacat spent a lot of time trying to develop a really meaningful platonic friendship between Will and Violet. It meant a lot to see a friendship like that reflected on page for Pacat because some of the most important friendships of his life were across gender lines. The reception to Will and Violet has been so pleasantly surprising, so Pacat supposed he wasn’t the only one with a hunger for that kind of friendship within the romantasy genre.

Pacat also reflected on Will’s complex relationship with his Found Family -- that having the support of a Found Family can be so essential, but in Will’s case that lifeline is undermined by secrecy, turning that Found Family into a different kind of loneliness. Because the thing is: if something so immense happens to you that you feel you can’t talk about, or you feel some way about yourself but think you can’t share that with others, it means you can’t really be your authentic self. But if you’re not being you’re authentic self, who are your friends friends with? They can’t be friends with the true You; they can only be friends with a facade/with a performance. So as long as Will is scared to show his true self and remains hiding himself away from even his friends, he will be alone. It’s a hard step to take. (Note from me: so heavvvvy but poignant.)

NOT DR-RELATED, BUT PACAT’S FAV MONSTERS FROM POPULAR FICTION: Pacat was so excited to namedrop his favourite monsters from popular fiction, he volunteered to go first LOL. The answers: 'The Brat Prince' Lestat (Lestat has been on his mind a lot recently because the AMC TV portrayal captures Lestat so well & has completely rejuvenated Pacat’s 12 year-old love of vampires. Total mood); serial killers such as in the Ripley series; and simply: American Psycho.

Great panel, right? Now it’s Europe’s turn!

#CS Pacat #Dark Rise #Dark Heir #Will Kempen #Pacat's brand of enemies to lovers is lethal and we love him for it #Also: Will & Violet bffs for life please and thank you #I would ask Pacat to start a podcast for all these interesting thoughts #but obviously we just need DR3 more than anything haha #(And we need the CaPri news but that is a different matter altogether ;))

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nayatarot777 · 3 days

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Quick Messages From Spirit • 3-Card-Pull

If you’d like a personal 6-card-pull, then feel free to purchase one through my Etsy shop! Full email/audio readings can be found on this pinned post here. I’m trying to slowly move the method of purchasing my readings to a much more structured and easy-to-use platform that showcases reviews, breakdowns of my readings, etc - all in one place. Many thanks! 🫶🏾

• Pile One •

9 of Swords

Queen of Swords

King of Swords

You’re in deep mental turmoil because of a deep imbalance between your masculine and feminine mind. There are many ideas, thoughts, and opinions that you’re swaying to and from extremes with. What you need to work on right now is that you need to find a way out of this mental limbo that you’re in. You’re only experiencing this because you’re refusing to trust your own judgements so, in a way, you’re causing this mental turmoil for yourself. You need to gain clarity and what you actually think and stick to it. Don’t flip flop and don’t go back on your personal opinions and beliefs. Write down your opinions if you need to and act on them. Speak your truths once you figure out what your truths are.

• Pile Two •

8 of Wands

Death

The Lovers

This energy is either representative of the recent past, present, or near future.

There’s something here about very fast movement towards a permanent ending of something. Most likely a connection to someone else (a romantic relationship more than anything, but it can definitely be a deep platonic relationship too). I’m feeling an ending that you did not see coming. However, every death moment is followed by a rebirth, and what’s rebirthing itself is some form of true and genuine love. Specifically for yourself. This shocking communication has the purpose of pushing you into an ending that was going to happen inevitably. The Grim Reaper just came through and sped up the process so that you didn’t waste any unnecessary time drawing this out. This connection to this person was energetically dead already. The actual death of the connection just hadn’t manifested into reality yet. This was a push from the universe to really get the ball rolling in your life again, although it may not feel like it.

• Pile Three •

Page of Pentacles

Justice

10 of Cups

You’ve been in a time period of learning how to manage something in relation to your practical world - money, your daily routine, self-care, etc. The truth about your life in general seems to be setting in, and I feel like you’re realising that what you thought would make you happy is only going to give you a false sense of happiness. There’s a completion to some type of hopes and wishes that you have - not necessarily because you’ve achieved them, but because your perspective on them is changing. You’re really looking at the earthly things that you’ve been lead to believe will make you happy and you’re seeing that they’re less significant in comparison to other things. To other things that’ll truly align with who you are truly and in actuality. This seems to be an awakening of your higher mind in relation to what life has to offer - which is way more than what can be seen and felt.

#pick a card #psychic readings #pac #tarot reading #pick a photo #pac reading #pick a picture #tarot #divination #spirituality #pick a card reading #pick a pile #tarot pick a card #pac readings

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too-much-tma-stuff · 1 day

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I Never Blamed You (Part 6)

So, where has Dick been?

Previous | Masterpost

Dick was not going to reach out to Bruce first, he absolutely was not. He wasn’t wrong, and Bruce was never going to change anyway! Their fighting was the reason he had gone to Bludhaven in the first place, and their relationship had only gotten worse when Bruce had taken in Jason, and worse again when he died. Dick had blamed Bruce, but he had blamed himself more, for not being a better brother to the kid. Ya sure he hadn’t wanted a brother, but that was how siblings usually worked! He should have been there! And now here he was, not being here for Tim either, and feeling like complete shit about it.

He apartment was a fucking pigsty and he didn’t clean it. He hadn’t been taking care of himself, he’d been eating junk, he was barely sleeping. He was not doing well and he didn’t care. He didn’t care about much other than his patrols and being Nightwing, he didn’t care about much besides saving people. Like maybe if he saved enough strangers he could make up for not saving his brother.

He couldn't.

He still checked in on the rest of the family sometimes, and he never blocked Batman on official channels so if they really needed help they could call him. Bruce had never blocked Dick either, or locked him out of their servers, if he did Dick would probably cry.

It had been a few months so it was time to check in again. He still wasn’t locked out thankfully, so he had a look around at the most recently updated files. What were Bruce and Tim having issues with in Gotham?

The most accessed file in the last few weeks was the one on Red Hood and his partner Hyena. Dick really didn’t know that much about them besides they were Gotham’s new crime lords, and he had heard on the news Hyena had killed the Joker. Dick felt like he owed Hyena for that. He had succeeded where Dick had failed after all. He still held a small grudge against the people who had resuscitated the bastard, Nightwing had killed him on purpose after all.

Dick opened the file on Hood, propped his chin on one fist and leaning against the desk, bored and tired, ready to skim the file before moving on. He froze, his body going completely rigid as any trace of his previous fatigue fled his body.

Alias: Red Hood

Civilian name: Jason Todd

It couldn’t be the same Jason Todd, he was dead, it had to be an awful coincidence surely! But he read on with rebid hope anyway. It wasn’t a coincidence. It was Jason, the Baby bird. He’d grown so much, he’d changed so much!

Dick barely remembered to turn off his computer before he grabbed his suit and headed straight for Gotham, and Crime Alley.

It was half a miracle that Dick didn’t crash on his way to Gotham with how fast he was going, and how little attention he was paying. He wound in and out of traffic to get to his little brother as quickly as possible, ignoring everything else till he reached Crime Alley. He abandoned his bike more than parked it, and went looking for Red Hood.

They must have access to the cameras in the Alley, or maybe just a network of informants, because they came to meet him long before he would have found them. Both Hyena and Hood were there, but as soon as Dick saw Red Hood he zeroed in and barely noticed Hyena, didn’t even hear the way he snarled when Dick rushed towards Jason.

Jason made a ‘down’ gesture to Hyena who subsided and stopped growling, fading partially into the shadows, though he was still watching them intently.

“Is that really you Little Wing?” Dick breathed, he felt like the hope was choking him and he didn’t even know if it was real. He’d had delusions and hallucinations before, and Jason featured in them regularly. Hood looked tense, his arms were crossed and his posture closed off, he didn’t seem exactly happy to see Dick.

“What do you want, Big Bird?” He asked. The nickname, even through the modulator Dick recognized the way Jason said it.

Dick was shaking he realized, and he could feel the burning of tears behind his eyes as he crumpled in on himself. Hardly a warm reception, but of course it wasn’t. Why would Jason want to see him? He had been a terrible brother, he hadn’t been there when Jason needed him, he hadn’t been there for Tim. He shouldn’t have come, shouldn’t have intruded on Jason’s new life. He was probably better off without Dick anyway.

“I’m so sorry,” He managed to choke out. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there, that I wasn’t here. B didn’t tell me, you- No, you didn’t have to tell me, you don’t have to accept my apology. But I wish-” He was interrupted by a little hiccupping sob. He shook his head and brushed away his tears with the back of his hand, furious at himself for his useless self pity. “I wish I’d been a better brother to you. I should have been there, I should have saved you.”

A pair of strong arms wrapped around Dick and he surrendered to them immediately, if Jason hurt him he probably deserved it. But no, Jason just… held him. “I don’t blame you Dicky,” Jason said softly and the floodgates just broke. Dick wrapped his arms back around Jason and sobbed into his broad chest, clinging like a child and barely processing it as he was picked up. Hyena leading the way and Jason brought him to their nearest safehouse.

Dick passed out before they got there.

----------

Danny opened the door for Jason and quickly disabled all the traps so Jason could carry Dick in and lay him down on the couch. He covered Dick with a throw blanket and slumped down into a chair, taking his helmet off and took a deep breath, letting his head fall back against the chair with a soft thunk.

Danny trotted to the kitchen and put a pot of coffee on to brew. Once it was done and Jason had a moment to collect himself Danny poured Jason a cup. He pressed it into Jason’s hand and curled up on Jason’s lap purring softly, Jason was sure he wasn’t actually happy right now, but knew Jason found the sound soothing and was doing it for his benefit. He appreciated it.

He absently rubbed Danny’s back while he processed his feelings. Danny didn’t say anything, they never really demanded answers of each other, Jason appreciated that too.

“I didn’t know he cared this much, or that he was doing this badly,” Jason told Danny softly. “I should have reached out to him. I thought he already knew and just didn’t care.”

“It’s not your fault, you didn’t have a great relationship with him before did you? You didn’t think those things for no reason,” Danny told him.

“Ya, he’d left by the time Bruce took me in and he was barely around. And when he was Bruce and he would fight and he’d storm off,” Jason said with a sigh. “But he’s thinner now, and so tired. I didn’t realize-” He cut himself off, hiding his face in Danny’s shoulder.

“He’s here now, we’ll work it out,” Danny promised, and his confidence did soothe Jason, at least enough to come out of hiding and sip his coffee.

---------

Dick woke up to the smell of fresh baked bread and cinnamon. For a moment he thought that he must be at the manor, and it felt like it had when he was a kid, but when he stretched he realized he was sleeping on a couch. He paused for a moment, and all the memories from before came back. He sat up abruptly and looked around wildly.

“Well welcome back Sleeping Beauty. Seriously, how long has it been since you slept?!” Jason asked, and the other man sitting at the kitchen island cackled. He recognized the laugh, even if Hyena was out of his suit. “You’ve been asleep all night, I made cinnamon rolls.”

As if to prove it Hyena held up his half eaten cinnamon roll, and then took another big bite. “There’s coffee too,” Hyena said with his mouth full, Jason whacked him with a spatula for it and Hyena dramatically pretended to be hurt. Jason rolled his eyes.

Dick blinked and got up, warily approaching the counter as if he expected them to reject or attack him. Jason just got him a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll as he sat down. Dick picked it up and nibbled it, it was delicious enough that he kept picking at it, even though he didn’t have much of an appetite.

“How long have you been back?” Dick asked Jason softly. He should introduce himself to Hyena properly, but he couldn’t seem to focus on anything but Jason right now. He’d grown so much, he looked older than he was. Where had that little boy gone?

“I came back about six months after my death but I wasn’t all there,” Jason said, turning away to pour his own cup of coffee. “The League of Shadows found me and dumped me in the Pit. I had the worst case of Pit Madness afterwards. It took me a year of training with them, and another year with the All-Cast before I really knew who I was enough to come back to Gotham, and I’m still not the same as I was before. I never will be,” Jason said like a warning as he pulled up a stool and sat down across from Dick and Hyena.

“They’re pretty common ongoing side effects of resurrection like that,” Hyena added, finally drawing Dick’s attention to him. “Increased violence and obsessive tendencies are pretty normal. So are the grudges and the need for closure, I mean, it makes perfect sense doesn’t it?”

He stretched across the table towards Jason, and Dick finally noticed the white in his hair. It matched Jason’s now, though the placement was different. Jason absently brushed his fingers over Hyena’s open palm in a brief but practiced caress. Hyena grinned up at him fondly. It made Dick feel out of place.

“How would you know?” Dick bristled, he didn’t mean to, and he shouldn’t have. He just hated how well Hyena obviously knew Jason when Dick didn’t know him at all. He had always been a bit of a jealous person.

“Because I died too and I was the same! And I wasn’t even exposed to this Pit stuff,” Hyena explained with a little shrug before straightening up again.

“Oh,” Dick sounded, deflating again, he really shouldn’t be picking fights. He'd rather focus on Jason anyway. “Why didn’t you tell me you were back,” He said looking at Jason and trying not to cry again. “You’ve been back for, what, 8 months? You could have reached out.”

“I didn’t think you'd care, we weren’t exactly close,” Jason said with a shrug. Dick felt like he had been punched in the gut. “When I revealed myself to Bruce and asked why he hadn’t avenged me he threw a batarang at me to stop me from killing the joker and slit my throat,” He said, tilting his head to show the scar. Dick felt like he might throw up at the sight. “I guess I didn’t want to risk reaching out again.

“I figured I was pretty well disowned and didn’t have a family anymore-”

“Besides me!” Hyena chirped, smiling at Jason who gave his partner a look of fond exasperation.

“Yes, besides you. So I just kept going with what I was doing, making Crime Alley a safer place and stuff. I did reach out to Tim and we’ve had dinner a few times, but I guess I figured… I heard through the grapevine you didn’t come to my funeral. I didn’t think there was any reason to reach out.”

“I was just in denial,” Dick admitted in a near whisper. “I didn’t want to believe you were gone. I never got a chance to be a better brother, I thought that I’d have more time I guess. Bruce and I, we both fell apart after your death. He got violent to the point Tim felt like he needed to step in,” Jason was nodding, Tim must have told him about that. “But I did too, I had nightmares, and didn’t sleep to the point I started hallucinating you. I beat the Joker to death and never forgave the fucking EMTs who resuscitated him, even though I couldn’t bring myself to do it again.” He sighed and rubbed his face. “I missed you.”

“Damn… I’m sorry Dick, if I'd known it fucked you up that bad I would have reached out. I just assumed since Bruce and Tim knew, you must know too. I wasn’t that surprised you didn’t come, but I didn’t blame you.

"Not this time, and not when I died either. I was mad at Bruce, not you, you didn’t ask for a brother and I understood that. I wasn't your responsibility.

"But, I guess, you’re here now, and I am too. We can try and start over. It’ll have to be slow though,” he glanced at Hyena, who nodded encouragingly. “This is going to be… a lot. For both of us I’m sure.”

“Right,” Dick agreed sheepishly. “Whatever you need Little Wing, I’m sorry I just showed up without warning last night. I just needed to see you.”

“It’s okay, I’m… glad to know you care. No one told me that you tried to kill the Joker.” Jason paused and shoved the plate of cinnamon rolls towards Hyena. Huh, Dick hadn’t noticed him trying to sneak another one. Hyena looked sheepish as he took another, Jason shook his head at his boyfriend before continuing. “Just take better care of yourself okay? Next time I see you I don't want you passing out in my arms again,” Jason chided him.

“Ya, ya I will,” Dick agreed with an embarrassed little blush. “I’ll reach out to Tim too.” It was way past time to do that.

“Good, he’s a good kid but his self worth is in the fucking gutter. He’s going to work himself to death before he’s 30 if someone doesn’t give him a healthy role model, and some support, and we all know Bruce won’t do it,” Jason huffed, rolling his eyes.

“I’ll do my best to help,” Dick vowed. This was a second chance he never expected, he was not going to waste it.

#fanfiction #danny phantom #dc x dp #jason todd #dead on main #my writing #dick grayson #Hyena!Danny #batfam #long post #multii part fic #dick grayson has eldest daughter syndrome #Dick Grayson has depression

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queen-of-the-avengers · 3 days

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Shouldn't Have Said It

Pairing: Mafia!Bucky Barnes x Female!Reader

Word Count: ~1.7k

Warnings: relationship angst, heartbreak, getting roofied at a bar by someone you trust

Summary: It's been a month since you and Bucky broke up, and it's been the hardest month of your life. In that time, you realize you never wanted to be apart from Bucky. You put your trust in the wrong person, and your entire life hangs in the balance.

Between Love and Hate Masterlist

Squares Filled: "told you so" (2023) for @buckybarnesbingo

Author’s Note: any and all comments are appreciated <3

You didn't know how hard this was going to be for you. You didn’t leave because you fell out of love with Bucky. You left because it breaks your heart when Bucky takes away life like he’s God or something. Could you get over it? Maybe. You shouldn’t have said what you said to him. Maybe there was room for improvement but you were so stricken with grief that you said exactly what you were feeling at that moment.

It’s been nearly a month since you and Bucky broke things off so why doesn’t it feel over with? You want nothing more than to go running back to him but it’s like you’re stuck between true love and your morals. Killing is wrong. Taking a human life is a crime. Bucky should be in jail for what he’s done. He’s the bad guy, so why do you dream of him every night? Your parents raised you to be good and to help where you can. They taught you to love and care for others. If they knew what you’ve been doing, they’d shun you for sure.

You’re scared your innocence will be stripped down to nothing if you continue to stay with Bucky. You have given him everything you possibly could. Is there anything left?

Gio noticed a change in not only your appearance but the fact that you don’t smile anymore. You’re not dressing in your usual style--flowing dresses, shorts, tanks, and all of them in bright colors. Now, you’re dressed in dark colors, jeans, and band t-shirts with your hair in a bun most days. Over the past moonth, you might have said maybe ten words to him and he’s been a gentleman and let you have the space you’re silently asking for.

Even when you and Bucky are broken up, he still finds ways to take care of you. He sent you a new verison of the car you had before so you’re not walking or taking public transportation, but you refuse to use it. That’s a pity car and you’re not taking any charity even though it’s nice and you really want to use it. It’s not going to help much but you got a job at the local hardware store where you can save up for a car on your own.

If you truly want to be done with Bucky, you can’t use anything he gives you. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. It’s so damn hard moving on because you’re still so damn in love with him.

When Gio sees you sitting alone at lunch, he decides it’s time to bring up whatever’s got you in a slum. He walks across the huge cafeteria and sits next to you. You barely look at him but he does hear you mutter his name.

“Going through a break up is never easy.”

You look up at hi with slightly red and puffy eyes.

“How did you know?”

“It doesn’t take a genius to fit the puzzle together. Bucky isn’t around anymore.” You sigh and look back down at your food. “I didn’t want tot say anything to give you space but it’s been a month. Come out drinking with me and some friends.”

“I don’t know…”

“It’s fifty cent wings at the bar on campus. They got an overshipment of chicken wings and need them to go out before they go bad. Come on, it’s one night.”

Maybe this will be good for you. You’ve been sitting in your apartment all alone looking at pictures of you and Bucky. You’re making yourself sad so going out might be the way to move on.

“Okay, just one night.”

“Can I pick you up?”

“Yeah. I’ll text you my address.”

“Cool,” he smiles. “You’re not going to regret it.” His energy makes you smile even if it’s small. “I made you smile, right? That’s progress.”

Gio gets up and leaves you alone. Gio would be so easy to be with but he’s not Bucky. He doesn’t give you the sense of danger and adventure you had when you were with Bucky. You watch him walk away, and as much as you try not to, you see Bucky walking away from you. Yeah, you might really need this night out or maybe you’re forcing yourself to get over Bucky when you know you don’t want to.

Oh, I don’t know what to do or think.

When you get home, you immediately start getting ready even though you have three hours to spare because if you don’t distract yourself, you’ll start to think about Bucky and cancel on Gio. You don’t dress fancy since you’re going to go to a campus bar but you at least try to put something nice on. Gio comes when he sayid he would, and you meet him in the parking lot. You’re not an idiot. Being with Bucky made you cautious with most things in your life. Gio is an amazing man but Bucky made you weary of anyone in your life.

“Wow,” Gio smiles.

“What?”

“You look beautiful.”

“It’s just jeans and a t-shirt,” you say shyly.

“Even better.”

It only takes ten minutes to get to the bar which is already lively with people. Gio meets up with his friends who welcome you in with open arms. There are already three boxes of wings on the table that are all half devoured with more on the way. Gio orders two beers and sits with you at the table when he grabs them. Football games are playing on all of the TV screens, people are playing darts and pool in teams, and everyone is having such a good time.

Why aren't you?

“So? How do you feel?” Gio asks and nudges your shoulder.

“This isn’t so bad, I guess,” you chuckle.

“Told you so. I’m glad I could convince you to come out.”

“Well, I figure I had my month to wallow. It’s time to move on.”

Are you saying that to Gio or yourself? Are you really ready to move on? Do you even want to? I don’t know what to think. My head is all jumbled and confused. You look at Gio with a small smile wishing you were here with Bucky instead. Actually, you wish you were back in Italy with Bucky. You had to put your entire life on hold when you were there, and you’d give anything to feel that way again.

“Your skills are getting better in class. No one can sew like you.”

“Thank you. My mother was a seamstress. She’s to thank for my love of designing.”

“What about your dad?”

“He’s an architect. I get designing from him as well. What about your parents?”

Gio clears his throat and looks down at his beer.

“My mom died when I was a baby. I don’t remember much about her except the stories I’ve heard.”

“I’m sorry. What about your dad?” you ask and sip your beer. Gio’s face immediately hardens into something that makes you uneasy. He spares you a glance and forces himself to relax but the anger is still there. “Are you okay?”

“My dad passed away a couple of weeks ago.”

“Oh, my God. I’m so sorry.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” he shrugs. “I don’t really like to talk about it.” You nod in understanding when his eyes meet yours. There’s a dark anger in his eyes that he can’t hide. He sees how taken aback you are so he grabs your half-drank beer and his almost finished one. “Let me get you another drink.”

He’s gone before you can say anything. You sigh and look around the crowded bar in thought.

“You’re out on a date with that guy?” You snap your head up when you hear his voice. “Come home. I miss you.”

Bucky is sitting right next to you as if he’s really there. You look around in panic but when you look back at Bucky, he’s gone. Who were you kidding? You can’t do this. You’re an idiot if you thought you were ready to move on. Who are you kidding right now? You don’t want to move on. No, you don’t. You miss Bucky. You miss his touch after a long day and the way his rough hands run over your smooth skin. You miss his lips when they kiss all over your body. You miss his smile when you make him work for your attention. You miss his blue eyes and the way they darken when you put on that red little number he loves so much.

So what if he kills people, right? He’d kill for you. That shows how much he loves you, right? He’d do anything to protect you. He treats you like a Queen, and you’re an idiot to let him go. If only your parents could see you now.

Gio comes back with a different drink in his hands. Right. Gio. You want to go home. Will Bucky take you back after what you said to him? Can he find it in himself to love you again?

“Hey, listen, you’re great and super nice but I don’t think I’m ready for this. It’s not you. I’m just not ready.”

“No worries,” he smiles. He sets a red-colored drink on the table in front of you. “I got you your favorite drink. Let me just say bye to my friends and I’ll take you home.”

“Thank you.”

Gio leaves your side to do what he said he was going to do. You take the glass and down the alcohol easily. Gio comes back shortly and you get out of the booth to leave. However, when you take the first step, your legs immediately feel like jelly. Gio catches you before you go crashing to the ground, and you look away in embarrassment.

“I’m so sorry. This usually doesn’t happen. I’m not a lightweight.”

You and Bucky once had a drinking contest to see who could drink the most and you won. Despite how hard and dangerous he can be, he can’t handle his alcohol well.

“Come on, let’s get you to the car.”

Gio helps you to his car and inside the passenger side. Your headache is worse, your body feels completely numb, and your vision is starting to blur. What the hell happened? Gio gets behind the wheel and pulls away from the bar.

“I don’t feel so good,” you slur.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take you home. Just go to sleep.”

He makes a right onto the main road and drives down the dark and desolate road. The last thing on your mind before you succumb to the darkness is that in order to get to your apartment, he had to make a left, not a right.

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reidrum · 1 day

Text

good night moon | s.r

A/N: hi again ! this one is deeply self indulgent i fear but who cares i hope you like it as much as i do <3 ps let me know what kinda fics i should write next !!

cw: spencer reid x bau!reader, cm type violence, reader is afab but this only is referred to when mentioning reader is a daughter, sad thoughts, hurt/comfort, talks about nightmares, spencer just wants to take care you gdm it why won’t you let him

wc: 2.4k

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trudging up the stairs of the bullpen, you tried your best to use whatever sense you had left to beeline to the kitchen to make another cup of coffee. thank god the bau had minimal reflective surfaces because you’re sure you look like the evil old lady from snow white. that was just, your opinion of course. to everyone else you looked fine.

fine was so subjective. what did these fuckers know about being fine? they weren’t the ones on the mission. they don’t know what you saw, how you did nothing, how you couldn’t do anything.

“FBI hands up!” you yell holding your gun and flashlight at the unsub. he’s holding the victim at knifepoint, a twelve year old girl who reminded you too much of yourself.

this unsub’s MO was kidnapping eldest daughters of families that had sons as well, because he believed the son should be the eldest child with the most responsibility and that the daughters were only there to create more babies. the team had deduced that he was the youngest child to an older sister who he felt had too much control over him, combined with his fascination with the perfect nuclear family, it slowly turned him into a sociopathic killer.

“come any closer and i’ll slit her throat!” the unsub bellowed, getting dangerously close to her carotid artery.

“you don’t wanna do that, man,” derek says behind you, “just put the knife down and we can talk.”

“there’s nothing left to talk anymore! i’m already going to prison. there’s no point.”

you called out the unsub’s name, “i know how you’re feeling, i have a younger brother too and he feels the same way you do sometimes. what your sister did to you was not okay, but not all sisters are like that. we just want to care for our family. let them have the chance to be the big sister you wished for.”

the unsub seemed to contemplate your words for a minute, then looks up at you with eyes devoid of any light, “then this one is dedicated to you, agent.” and he drags the knife across her neck leaving waterfalls of blood coming out.

you’re not really sure what happened next. a gun went off, presumably derek’s, to kill the unsub. and then it was you screaming as you rushed to the young girl to try and stop her bleeding, but it was no use. the cut was deep enough to nick that damn carotid and all you could do was hold her in her last moments.

“te- tell my family i love them, and that i’m sorry.” the young girl spurts out so softly you almost didn’t hear it.

“no sweet girl, don’t be sorry,” you say through hiccuped cries, “i’m sorry i couldn’t save you.”

the last thing you remember was feeling strong hands carrying you out of the building. you couldn’t hear much, the sound of your wails pretty much masked anything in a five mile radius. you could taste the iron lingering in your mouth from biting your lip too hard and desperately collecting the salty tears and sweat trickling down your face. at first you smelled smoke and dust, most likely from being in the cave where the unsub was. but as you were being dragged away from the crime scene you were influxxed with a musky scent, and a hint of vanilla with that fresh laundry smell. spencer. the last thing you see are his worried little brown eyes staring down at you before everything goes dark.

that was monday. it is now thursday. the case had wrapped up, the unsub was dead the families were notified and now you all were in the office doing your paperwork for the case.

and all of you were doing fine, right? everyone else had already coped and processed the case, already stepping back into their normal life routines. but you, you couldn’t have it that easy, but god you wish you did.

since that day, you’d been holing up in your apartment with all the lights turned on. you sat in your living room, eating a bowl of fruit loops and watching bluey, because listen it’s a great show and we should acknowledge it. you cry out loud seeing bluey care for her little sister bingo, and it brings you back to that dusty cave and the bloodied hands.

you could feel sleep creeping up on you, yet you subconsciously found a way to push bedtime by doing menial tasks like cleaning, extra long skincare, watching a movie. when you ran out of things to do, you entered your room and just stared at your bed. how were you supposed to admit to yourself that the horror isn’t in the movie you just watched where the creepy demons kill everyone, but it’s what is waiting for you behind closed eyelids.

so the only logical solution was to just, not sleep. you whipped out every trick in the book to stay awake for as long as you could— energy drinks, coffee, splashing cold water, anything so you wouldn’t have to reface your plagued memories.

spencer observed you from a distance. he watched as you got coffee a whopping three times before 10am, you picking at your skin, not to mention the bags growing under your eyes. it was then he formed a hypothesis, he was a scientist after all. that you simply were not sleeping because of the case. it was much less a hypothesis and more of a fact because he knew exactly what it was upon first sight of you, hell he invented the sleep avoidance look.

and as the inventor it meant he knew the feeling more intimately than he would like to admit. spencer knew what it felt like to be debilitated by the confines of your brain, holding onto shreds of memories you know are not worth remembering but have somehow marked their territory anyway. and everyone coped differently, for spencer he isolated himself for days and then threw himself into work. for you? well, that was the next part of spencer’s experiment.

spencer approaches you in the kitchen as you’re pouring your fourth cup before noon, “hi.”

“hi.”

“how are you? feels like we haven’t talked in a bit.”

“i’m good, sorry i’ve just been. busy.”

spencer frowned internally, he knew you weren’t doing a single thing but working at the office. “are you okay? do you want to talk about last week?”

you cut him off abruptly and start walking out, “i really have to finish these reports spence, talk to you later.”

spencer knew better, he should give you space to cope by yourself. you were an adult, you can take care of yourself. but you shouldn’t have to, he thinks. spencer still tells himself he knows better as he’s waiting on your doorstep that night, about to the rapp the door.

after a minute of no answer he knocks again this time calling your name through the door, “will you let me in please? i want to show you something.”

still nothing. he continues, “i know what you’re feeling, and i want to help, please.”

he almost gives up and turns around when he hears the turn of a lock and slight creek of the door opening to see you in all your beautiful glory.

now you, you were definitely a sight for sore eyes. avengers pj shorts with a baggy uni t shirt, hair flying in any direction, and a look that spencer could only describe as grief. but god if you weren’t the most beautiful human he’d seen in his life, he’d be lying.

you were coming up on day 3? or was it 4? of no sleep. it’s not like you were not sleeping at all you took little 30 minute naps each day, enough to get you some shut eye but not enough to make it your rem stage of sleep.

spencer speaks again, “can i come in?” you nod silently and open the door wider for him to step in. he removes his shoes and it’s then you notice a big ole tote bag he’s lugging to your living room.

“what’s in the bag?”

“ah, come sit. i brought magical things.” he smiles playfully.

you shuffle over to sit a seat’s cushion away from him and watch as he starts pulling item by item from his mary poppins bag.

candles, essential oils, books, but specifically romance novels with the silly cartoon covers that he swears aren’t real books but you argue with him until he concedes, melatonin gummies, pillow sleep spray, and one more item that he’s holding onto for what seems to be dramatic effect. you’re not amused.

“and the piece de resistance,” he presents the last item, and you look confused for a second, until you recognize the item in front of you and immediately start tearing up. in his hands is a grogu weighted stuffed animal that he holds out for you to take. “i know you’re not sleeping. it happened to me when, you know. i figured it would be helpful if you had someone who could empathize how you’re feeling. and because you’re my best friend and i care about you.”

your bottom lip trembles, and you feel the ice block you’ve kept yourself in this past week start to melt uncontrollably. “spence…” you breathe out so quietly. he did all this? for you? doctor spencer reid went out to the store, and bought a grogu stuffed animal for you to cuddle at night to ease your loneliness?

the concept of being taken care of was so foreign to you, as the eldest daughter in your family it was always you taking care of others and making sure everyone was okay. but rarely did anyone check on you, how you were holding up. and you had learned to cope by yourself, to handle the big emotions by yourself, but for once, someone was willing to take all that weight off your shoulders and let you breathe. and god, did it feel so cathartic you could burst out in sobs.

so you did.

“hey,” he says scooting closer to you so he can scoop you into his chest, “was that a lot? penelope said i’d probably overwhelm you but all of the things i brought are scientifically proven sleep additives-“

“no i just, that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.” you whimper.

spencer’s eyes soften, “you deserve it. what happened last week… was hard. i just wanted to help.”

“thank you,” he hears a muffled response and rubs his hands affectionately down your back, “damn, all this crying is making me so tired.”

“see! the magic of the poppins bag.” he chuckles. you laugh too. spencer thinks all the flowers in a mile radius just bloomed.

“it’s just,” you start out, nuzzling into his chest deeper, “the second i close my eyes and dream, i see her. and how i couldn’t save her. and how the others i couldn’t save either.” you feel your chest seizing up again.

“okay well hey, hey. you did what you were trained to do. any other agent in your position would’ve tried talking him down the way you did. and your personal story gave you an advantage that no one else would’ve had. statistically speaking, you were the best chance at getting through to him. yeah it didn’t work, but it wouldn’t be probability if it always worked,” he cradles your face in his big hands, “we’re all so proud of you, you know. rossi’s waiting for you to be back on your feet so he can host pasta night at his hou- sorry his mansion again.”

spencer looks down at you properly to your tear stained cheeks and brushes your hair back. he sees the pain and tiredness fighting behind your eyes and asks softly, “what do you need right now?”

“i’m tired.” you lament.

“then lets go sleep.”

“i can’t.”

“why not?”

“im scared.”

“well that’s why i brought the stuff silly goose,” he taps your nose, “come on, let’s go set it up.”

spencer brings all the sleep aids to your room and sets them up appropriately, even plugging in your sunrise lamp to help with the ambient lighting. the only thing left to do is for you to get into your bed.

you both stand on opposite sides of your bed, and he’s waiting for you to get in so can tuck you in. you hesitate and look up at him with the same worried eyes he saw all those days ago.

“could you stay for bit?”

“i can stay for some time if you want” you both speak at the same time. you giggle again, spencer thinks an angel got its wings.

thank god he wore sweats and a comfy t shirt he thinks. he slid in under the blanket and holds it open for you to come in, “come on, you’re missing the cuddle party with grogu and i!” you beam widely and finally sink into your bed.

spencer pulls you into his chest, wrapping an arm around your shoulder blade, and the other taking a spot on your hip rubbing soft circles. you lay your head to rest on his chest, right above his beating heart. you try to let the metronomic thumps lull you to sleep, but spencer can still feel your eyelashes fluttering about on his chest. he knows what you’re thinking, because of course he does.

“look at me,” he nudges you, you look up at his eyes again and see nothing but pure love and reassurance as he continues, “you are safe. nothing can hurt you. i promise.”

“are you sure?” you let out meekly,

“i’m sure. it’s okay, go to sleep,” he presses a gentle kiss to the crown of your forehead. “i’ll be here when you wake up.”

you shakily take a deep breath, and close your eyes.

after five minutes of spencer rubbing shapes into your back, he can finally hear the soft snores coming from below. he places another kiss on your head, whispers, “good night angel girl,” and doses off.

you wake up the next morning feeling so rested and relieved you can’t help but give spencer a big hug that wakes him up. spencer thinks he’d be the luckiest man in the universe if he could wake up like this everyday.

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