#i don’t understand why i liked the patent leather….

[treecakes]

i’ve worn oxfords nearly every day since middle school lol. can’t escape it.

#….. i still fit in my oxfords from middle school #but they’re kind of ugly to me know they’re patent leather and have foam soles and they’re not my style anymore at all 😭 #i don’t understand why i liked the patent leather…. #now i opt for more casual ones but i have a couple fancier pairs. which i enjoy greatly ^_^ this time of year sucks though i don’t like #wearing them in the rain and it’s always rainy….

[riverdale-retread]

Riverdale S7 E 15 (Chapter 132) Miss Teen Riverdale

Betty’s idea about giving a forum to the young women of her high school to air their grievances was a huge hit immediately, as we saw at the end of the last episode. The first letter she gets is from Veronica. We know it’s from her, but Betty doesn’t immediately scream “Oh this is Veronica!” even though Veronica basically outs herself wholesale: “I’m sick of living in a world that doesn’t take me seriously as a young business woman.” Who else talks like this or thinks like this or runs her own business in the entire high school? Nobody but V. Lodge! However, Veronica says she can’t open a checking account and I’m confused because then how does she own things? What? Also, I do understand that this is supposed to go towards women not having access to full adulthood by being denied participation in financial life, but nobody should ever take a high school student seriously as a business person. This… is not… a real problem.

Toni also outs herself in her letter: “I’m Black, I’m bold, I’m beautiful” and wants to be celebrated for those things. The only other black girl who gets to talk in Riverdale High School, Tabitha, is out of town and has been for weeks (months). First, I don’t understand why Toni doesn’t have any sort of feminist/ gender consciousness. If she’s presented as so smart, why is she dumb enough to want to fuck with fashion magazines of all things? I thought she was so off the beaten path? Secondly, she keeps pretending that her real issue is racial justice but she does not give two hoots. What she wants is to be celebrated not for being Black, which is a political stance and a still (sadly) radical one, but celebrated for being pretty, which has never not happened in the history of men objectifying women. You see, I think Toni’s real problem isn’t that Black women are not yet, in 1950, a large enough spending demographic for glossy magazine advertisers to target via fashion magazines. It’s that she’s decided to be the prettiest of the Beats or the Outsiders or whatever, but actually that she is super square and super mainstream and very very boring. What she wants is to be a cheerleader, and thought just as hot as a blonde cheerleader. She’s a stolidly normcore provincial pretty girl pretending to be an outsider. In short, being Black was and remains the main framework of oppression and injustice for millions, but it is NOT TONI’S ACTUAL ISSUE.

Cheryl, being in the closet, manages to actually not out herself except in her very formal way of writing “forever worried that I will reveal myself.” She posted this letter - in an abundance of caution - from the post box downtown when she was on a fake heterodate with Kevin. She is wearing a marvelous outfit. Navy coat with red collar, and perfectly matched red leather gloves and patent leather red handbag which has a very very 2023 fashionable shape (it looks almost exactly like Prada’s reissue of the 1990s bags, and I suppose if we posit a 25 year fashion cycle, these bag shapes and materials really were de rigeur in the 50s??). OK so this really is a problem. Cheryl is the first girl with a real problem here. Her dad and mom are psycho, and she’s gay.

Next up is the pregnant Midge, who - pardon the pun - has the mother of all problems. She’s pregnant, inexplicably determined to keep the baby and marry Fangs and also has not told her parents about this. I’m so sorry, but Midge is so dumb. I’m shocked that she knows the word “stigmatizes” and also apparently how it’s spelled.

Evelyn is so annoyed at the poster that was shoved into her locker that she sends Betty the first hatemail. “Should I say Little Miss Busybody? What makes you think that you have all the answers anyhoo?” She is not wrong. She is not wrong! Why is this show making me agree with goddam Evil-Lyn Forever-Never. Also sidebar to gush that the cream sweater navy skirt 1950s cheerleader uniform, worn with the bright red lipstick everyone sports, is SO FLATTERING on all of them. I wonder if some lucky souls nabbed one of these at the Riverdale going-out-of-business sale.

Then comes Ethel. Ethel is sketching a long legged thin woman with a tiny waist, wearing a swimsuit and sash. She says that she’s finding it difficult to be grateful because she’s surrounded by beautiful people and the world “constantly reminds her” that she’s not. Betty, looking not coincidentally exactly like the imaginary beauty queen Ethel is sketching, arrives just in time to see it. She says, “That’s a beautiful sketch.”

It turns out it’s not for art class, but for the sign up sheet for Miss Riverdale Teen Queen Pageant. The person who conveys this information is Alice Cooper. The very strange echoing of clothing that’s going on between Ethel and Alice in this scene creeps me out. Ethel is wearing a yellow inner top that matches the gold-ish tone of the Cooper sofa, and over that, an unadorned magenta cardigan. Standing right behind her, Alice is wearing a blue inner dress or top, and the exact same shade of magenta cardigan, except hers is bedazzled all down the front.

Ethel is so polite. She says that Alice has ‘asked her’ to be the assistant for the pageant (instead of, you know, made it clear that Ethel is in no position to refuse Alice Cooper anything if she doesn’t want to be sent back to the 19th century insane asylum). Betty finds the entire affair an “embarrassing cattle call” but Alice is extremely proud that it’s going to be broadcast live on national tv from the RIVW studios. Betty is not interested in participating, even though Alice lays it on very thick, saying it’s “glorious, and wholesome, and all-American.” She tries to manipulate Betty into participating by dangling the prizes - a new car, Hollywood screen test, or a scholarship.

OK that last one is huge. I mean the US college tuition inflation has been extraordinary, but this is from a Time Magazine article I just googled: At the University of Pennsylvania, students were charged $600 in 1950 (nearly $6,000 today) (This article is from 2016, and $6,000 in 2016 has the same "purchasing power" or "buying power" as $7,642.05 in 2023). $30,000 is not anything to sneeze at!

Betty is very enticed by this scholarship money, as Alice knew she would be. Apparently this is the first time this particular pageant is giving an actual scholarship. Riverdale is 10 years behind Miss America, by the way, which made itself a scholarship program in 1945.

While Betty is thinking about it, Ethel is trying to hide her bitterness at Alice’s assumption that she wouldn’t even want to try out.

At school, Betty runs into Veronica giving a speech to the other girls about how Edith Head wants to design something for her to wear that would be perfect for the pageant. What is it with Veronica insisting that these very ancient people born at the end of the 19th century (Edith Head was born 1896, a few years after Cole Porter) are all about Veronica Lodge. Is there a chance she’s lying? I mean, that song that she sang with Betty which she insisted was written by Cole Porter didn’t sound like his style whatsoever. Betty is very disapproving, but Veronica says that if she won a beauty pageant it would be great publicity for her movie theater business. It’s a business decision.

Her saying this doesn’t seem to ring any bells for Betty in terms of the letters she’s read, but maybe she’s fixated on the one singular hate mail she got, which okay, fair.

Betty says that the pageant objectifies girls. Cheryl is very defensive of this pageant, so she attacks Betty. She brings up the fact that Betty flashed Archie from her bedroom that one time and also that Betty flashed her underpants on live television. This is very interesting though, that Betty outwardly pushes back against her mother while Cheryl appears to defend the family against any and all attacks (while insisting on being herself to much higher risk of peril).

Anyway, Veronica agrees that pageants are objectifying to women but since she “loves being beautiful” she enjoys participating in a game that she can win. Cheryl rolls her eyes at hearing her say this as Veronica leads the way to the In Group Sofa. Ahead of her is Midge and behind her is Toni, who is wearing a really very odd outfit. All the other girls are covered up right to the collarbone but Toni is wearing a super low cut, like, barely covering her nipples low-cut, top with extremely thin spaghetti straps. She looks like she forgot to put on a shirt. Veronica’s logic gets very very twisted up. Even though she is going to be participating in a pageant in which “old fuddy duddies will decide” - this is literally what a pageant is - she says that in the end, she “decides if I’m beautiful or not. And I am, as are we all.”

This is something I find myself between a rock and a hard place about. In my country & culture (I’m not born or raised in America, I just sound like I am, because cultural softpower of the US is immense) there is no such thing as ‘we are all beautiful.’ Exactly one type of body is beautiful, exactly one shape of face is beautiful, and they will tell you down to the last cm and kg what beautiful is, and you can see how far you are from beautiful using the metric. The inability to meet this standard means all sorts of indignities happen to you, ranging from people being mean and dismissive of you all the way to being unemployable regardless of your qualifications. This sucks.

HOWEVER, this same shit is reported to exist in the US (fat women are underpaid by factors more than thin women are, even though all women still lose vis a vis comparison to men doing the same work) but the American cultural norm is to tell this stupid fucking lie about it, which I find insulting to my intelligence. Every time I hear this idiotic “we are all beautiful” bullshit I want to holler NO I’M NOT AND FUCK YOU FOR LYING.

If you aren’t the ideal, I think it’s just more efficient to know you’re not and flunk out of that race and do something else with your time. This is our way. The American way is to keep insisting that being beautiful is essential to being allowed to exist as a woman, which I find truly offensive.

Plus, it’s only standard issue pretty girls who are thin (like Veronica Lodge and the actress that plays her) that say bullshit like this. Are all men tall? Do all men have good hair? No, right? So it can’t be true that all women are beautiful.

Now, in the context of the show, Veronica is saying this to Betty, Toni, Cheryl and Midge, who all of them have perfect skin, lovely hair, symmetrical faces,perfect teeth, huge doe eyes and very narrow waisted shapely figures soooooo - Veronica is correct that “we all” are beautiful if you limit it to these five people.

And this is the point at which I started to truly, deeply, genuinely despise this episode. I hate this even more than the very strange Racism Against Koreans is Bad episode with Reggie.

Veronica says that the way to subvert the girl-on-girl implicit violence of a beauty pageant is for all the participants to stick together and ‘support’ each other.

No it isn’t. This is just reinforcing toxic femininity in the American style where women are never allowed to actually openly compete and show actual human feelings like aggression, power-hunger, the urge to dominate, disappointment or anger.

Toni of course is all about hypocrisy. Betty is shocked that Toni is going to participate because unlike me she believes Toni’s hype about herself. There is something VERY INSIDIOUS going on with Toni’s character hideousness this season. I hate it so much. I know that ‘playing the race card’ is a racist tool specifically designed to prevent racial minorities in the US from bringing up any topic which might lead to their being given fair compensation and recognition. The thing is, Riverdale the show keeps having Toni actually use ‘the race card’ over and over. Riverdale thinks playing the race card is a real thing for black women. The stupidly reductive thinking seems to be that if you’re a ‘real’ black woman who ‘really’ cares about racial injustice you should just disappear from white society like Tabitha Tate and deal with the problem of wrangling the ‘really bad’ white people who are elsewhere, not here. If you choose to continue your education and not place yourself in mortal danger all the time, then you forfeit your right to bring up racial prejudice unless you’re a ‘race card player’ like Toni. Toni just wants to do what she wants to do - indulge in her inner square that wants to wear ball gowns and have the other squares smile at her and call her pretty - but she will stick some racial element (“This is the first year this pageant is integrated” but see also, “I am the first black cheerleader”) as justification.

The only two with rights about this ar Cheryl and Midge. Cheryl says very simply that she has to compete because her family sponsors the pageant. Casually, she drops the fact that she wins every year. It made me wonder if this is why Betty is truly not interested - she’s not any more interested in playing a game she can’t win than Veronica, and she has insider information to know that it’s more likely to be Cheryl than anyone else. But see, at least Cheryl’s answer is honest, both to herself and to others. High marks.

Midge later tells a concerned Fangs that the reason SHE is participating is because she just wants to do something silly and lighthearted, where she gets to be a mainstream one-of-the-girls before her pregnancy is inevitably revealed.

Veronica comes to find Betty later in the locker room to finally come honest. She wants one of those prizes - for Veronica it’s a toss up between the car and the scholarship (I’m pretty sure she’s had her Hollywood screen test). That’s why she’s participating. She openly admits that she was bullshitting the other girls. She only tells Betty what her real intentions are. Then she asks Betty if she isn’t deeply tempted by the scholarship - the ability to pay for college.

Sidebar - a 4 year full expenses paid scholarship, which is what Veronica seems to think the prize is, is massively more powerful an incentive than the actual prize given to the Miss America winner in 2021. She would’ve gotten $100,00, which would cover literally 1 year and some change at Yale University which costs $88K a year minimum, all in.

Of course, Betty is extremely tempted. In the direct antithesis of a Cheryl slow-mo walk down the hall, which are usually to express Cheryl in a really great, world-conquering mood, Betty does a nervous, worried slow-mo walk full of hesitation towards the sign up sheet immediately after. She signs her name right under Veronica’s.

In the kitchen of the Cooper house, Alice needles Betty about having signed up after all. She interrogates Betty, wanting to know if Betty plans to win and then pull off some stunt (“pull down the temple”). When Betty says she genuinely wants the scholarship money for college, Alice scoffs at her, telling her that she could probably earn an academic scholarship. Alice wants Betty to not go to college, which makes this Alice consistent with the Alice of the OG timeline. And this is how you know Betty is not going to get the scholarship money - Alice is involved.

Alice reminds Betty that she won the pageant one year, calling it a major highlight of her life, before she reveals that she had a dream of a career as a stewardess, which she gave up as soon as she married her husband and had two kids in short order. Betty is so nice - she wishes that the dream could’ve come true for Alice. But of course, Alice always has to puncture any kind gesture by Betty by bringing on the bad news: The pageant is not a one-and-done event. It requires spending a huge amount of time with Alice as she makes the participants ‘rehearse’ for the pageant. Betty is deeply aggrieved by this news. Too bad there wasn’t any fine print on that poster Ethel drew up.

All the participants in the pageant are walking in a circle with a book on each of their heads to give them better posture. Apparently this is going to be a two hours-long ordeal - Alice orders “one more hour of posture work.” Alice sounds absolutely deranged as she lists out the femininity checklist for all the things the girls are supposed to aspire to be. Toni, even though she’s participating just as obediently as all the other sheep, pretends to be above it all and makes a little self satisfied joke about how she’s proud of her “shapely backside.” Evelyn calls her “Greaser Garbage” to which Toni shoots back “Preppy Troll.” I’m with Evelyn. Shut up, Toni.

In the corner is poor Ethel, who is so humiliated at being disregarded that she has a full on hallucination. She imagines herself as having won the pageant. And it turns out her parents are still alive! Ethel also wants her paintings - not comic book work - to be hanging in a gallery or a museum. And voila - her self portrait is at the Guggenheim!

(By the way, I’m reading The History of Art Without Men and this is history -accurate. Many of the earliest Renaissance women painters’ most famous works are their self portraits at first, because that was a permissibly feminine topic and you could just look at yourself in the mirror so it wasn’t a disadvantage you weren’t allowed to learn anatomy). The final thing that Ethel wants in this perfect night to start the rest of her perfect life fantasy is to have Jughead Jones be her boyfriend. (“Just the ginchiest” is what she says.) Alice thinks that this is a terrible choice, because Miss Riverdale Teen Queen as the pick of the litter and Jughead is substandard. (I mean. I love Jughead Jones but he kind of is - and especially in this universe. He was last seen flipping his shit about milk.) Jughead comes up to the stage in a suit with a bowtie, tells Ethel she’s always been his best gal, and gives her a little peck on the cheek.

I WAS ROBBED.

I suppose 1950s and on live tv and her lipstick can’t be messed with and all that but I AM ROBBED.

Ethel deserves to fuck Jughead Jones’ brains out just the one time to get this fixation out of her system. She’s so much cooler and more talented than he is.

I am very discomfited by the way that the way Ethel is being treated by Alice is both accurate to life (if you are a child that all the adults around know you have no other adult advocate, you tend to get fucked over) and yet extremely annoying because Ethel is and always has been so interesting and so shafted all the time and this is more of the same.

Alice treats this orphan exactly like a hired servant - “I hope you did the thing?” is such a nasty way of giving a work instruction, and she’s making Ethel do all this for FREE.

The appointment that Ethel was supposed to have made is at Mary Andrews’ dress shop, which is called Perky Peach. I mean it says “Perky IN Peach” but from afar it will look like PERKY PEACH. “Shop for Ladies and their Daughters.”

While the young girls are all standing silent like mannequins in a circle, Alice and Mary chitchat “back in the day” when they competed for Miss Teen Queen. They are both wearing flower patterns (Alice, tight-ass ones, Mary, blowsy ones) but the girls are all in single colors. Red for Cheryl, purple for Veronica, Toni in emerald, Evelyn in maroon, Betty in hot pink, Midge in blue.

Mary and Alice start out pretending they don’t hate each other. Alice tells Mary that she always “gave me a run for my money” to which Mary concedes that Alices always won. They sound like they’re joking but they’re not, and Betty is the only one who picks up on the fact that these are the first shot of a battle to come. Mary says she thought being Miss Teen Queen might have been “a stepping stone to doing something important with my life, like… being the First Lady.” As in - Alice may have won this crown every single year of high school, but she has *not* done anything at all important with her life. Alice picks up on it immediately, saying that there’s “nothing more important than being a wife and mother.” This is an aggressive thing to say to a woman whose husband is dead and so she can’t be a wife to him for one, and for another, Mary owns a business and Alice doesn’t. Alice also has more than one child too. Mary pivots to say that she thinks these girls of the new generation can do “anything that they want.” Which indicates that she didn’t actually WANT to be either a wife or a mother or perhaps even a dress-maker.

Veronica, who doesn’t really fight other women, seems not to understand that the old biddies are actually fighting, so she suddenly pipes up to ask the group if they think there will ever be a female president. (FYI, Hilary Clinton was born 1947, Geraldine Ferraro was born 1935, Sara Palin and Kamala Harris in 1964).

Evelyn is (of course) immediately repulsed by the idea but see, I like how she puts it. She just says it outright: “I wouldn’t vote for a woman.” I like this better than coming up with some stupid statement about why women can’t do the job or whatever. Just own your misogyny.

Toni, of course, doesn’t really care about women but she also can’t stand it when she isn’t the one who started a social issues conversation so she brings up an entirely different topic when she says, “Or a black president for that matter?” She does tack on man or woman but then it just makes things unclear what the hell they’re talking about thereafter -The Civil Rights Act was in 1964 and women in the US could not open bank accounts on their own until l1974.

Betty is the most optimistic of everyone and *almost* correct - she says (from the context) that she thinks there can be a black woman president within her lifetime. President Obama aside, since Betty was born in 1938, she would’ve been 83 when Kamala Harris became a female, black and asian Vice President in 2021. Cheryl clearly thinks that there would have to be seismic changes in society for either scenario - a black president, a woman president, a black woman president - to be possible.

Alice doesn’t like where this conversation is going because being political is not good for ratings on her beauty pageant, so she comes bearing down on Mary to say that it’s “important to manage expectations.” It’s just for a second, but Mary sneers directly at her even as she says “Of course,” to keep up a united front of adults against the girls.

This entire time however, Ethel has been kneeling at Betty’s feet pinning Betty’s dress.

Mary said at the start of the segment “Look at all these gorgeous girls,” but she didn’t mean Ethel. Ethel was left out of both gorgeous and girls and nobody noticed except Ethel. Because she was implicitly told off by Alice for not keeping the conversation on track, Mary takes it out on Ethel by suddenly remembering to issue an instruction to the charity case: “Can you make sure you pin Betty’s dress all the way around the hem?”

Alice is totally shit but so is Mary, no exception. Not even waiting for any sort of response from Ethel, Mary turns to one of the ‘gorgeous’ people who still counts as a girl - Midge - to ask how the fit is on her dress.

Ethel has a choice between a) homicide and b) tears, so she starts crying. I would d

too. What a horribly pitiful thing they’ve reduced by Ethel to, the one who can kill a man with her bare hands when she has to! Betty asks her if she’s crying, to which Ethel promises to “not get any tears on” her dress which just broke my heart. Betty though is a nice person in this universe, so she does care about Ethel, but she’s not very bright, which is why she asks Ethel WHAT THE MATTER IS. What the fuck do you THINK the matter is, Betty??

This is something Riverdale the show consistently does by the way. Betty has had immense difficulties in previous seasons - her mother was and is both insane and abusive - but she’s also privileged and very blinded by that privilege. As a consequence she has a sort of stupidity when it comes to even the most obvious kinds of empathy - like the situation that Ethel is in right now, forced to work as a slave seamstress for her classmates because she is living on charity in one of their homes. Her only other option is the insane asylum. I think this is why Betty stans are completely unable to cope with any criticism about Betty in any way whatsoever - not just because they’re stans, but because the show is very adamant that Betty for all her aspirations to goodness is actually very unkind and unjust in action because she is blinded by her privilege, and being able to stan Betty Cooper requires totally tuning out this very important point about her. Her privileged blindness is inexcusable and obnoxious, and so is yours.

Ethel like all disadvantaged people who are wronged knows exactly what is happening, including the fact that if she were to try to tell Betty the truth, Betty would take offense at being called privileged, at being called blinded by that privilege, which are all true, and so she just gives up. “Nothing” is wrong, Ethel weeps, “You’re just so beautiful, Betty.”

There’s a lot in there. Why is it the oppressed and wronged always feel so protective of other people? (Don’t answer that. I know the answer. Fuck me if this didn’t get me right in the feels.).

Betty really does not understand why she’s crying. She’s trying, but she just doesn’t get it, at all. Because blinding pretty woman privilege, blinding middle class privilege, etc etc.

There isn’t time to go through any of this though because Mary announces to everyone that she’s going to have let out Midge’s dress a bit. Somehow this is taken as a huge BANG sort of realization on Alice’s part. Evelyn is very smart. She says a sentence perfectly constructed to out Midge’s pregnancy to Alice: “You better start cutting back on those desserts, otherwise that cute Serpent boyfriend of yours might decide that you’re too much woman to handle.” Though she means well, Cheryl only makes things worse by overreacting, telling Evelyn to kill herself (“Take a long walk off a short pier.”) Midge is smarter than Cheryl. She’s smarter than Midge as well.

And can I also just put in a word for us ruler shaped girls who only gain weight fore and aft -directly in the belly? I’ve always had a fat tummy but I’ve never been pregnant. When I gain weight I gain it in the FUPA first and most.

Midge needed to have more of a plan and a lie ready - like “Oh yes I’ve been gaining weight in my middle giggle giggle”???

Alice approaches Midge like a shark to demand a conversation later.

Later that evening Betty is hanging out with Ethel. Since she’s essentially a kind person in S7, she is still worried about why Ethel burst into tears at the dress shop, but appears to also be no smarter or less blinded by her privileges than she was earlier in the day.

What ensues is an INFURIATING fumble of a conversation. Ethel says that she wishes she was competing with all of them. She wants to be considered a girl, in other words, in her cultural context. Betty says - and she both seems to mean it and it is true - that Ethel is beautiful, so she should be competing if she wants to. Ethel counters that Betty’s mom said Miss Teen Riverdale is supposed to be an embodiment of the ideals of the town, which Ethel has understood she can’t be because “I’m the girl whose parents were murdered, quiet, likes comic books, draws creepy pictures.”

What she doesn’t say is made deafening by the fact that she doesn’t say it. She’s fat. Ethel is beautiful and fat. But the show absolutely refuses to address the fact that all the actresses other than Ethel for that generation are extremely slender - even the ‘expanding with pregnancy’ Midge has stick thin arms and the whole of her clavicle bones show end to end through her skin.

Because the show can’t let Ethel say she’s fat, Ethel doesn’t say that it’s because she’s fat that she’s not being allowed to compete in the beauty contest, and Betty, because being cosseted lessens her intelligence, simply takes Ethel at her word. But Betty not knowing that the beauty standard of the 20th century leans towards extreme thinness for women is exactly like Toni having to ask Tabitha what it’s like to be black in the rest of America.

Betty says true things about Ethel - that she’s inspiring because she’s overcome so much adversity. That Ethel has as much right as anyone else to be competing for the prize and the title.

Because the show - and Ethel and Betty - won’t address the obvious visible physical difference between the two characters, Betty’s line about Ethel having “more pep in your little finger than the rest of us do in our whole bodies combined” comes out really really cringe.

Ethel can’t stand it anymore and takes off, saying she shouldn’t have said anything.

Betty means what she’s saying, but how seriously can Ethel be expected to take this sincerity? Not very, honestly.

Meanwhile, Midge is getting the third degree from Alice, who knows she’s pregnant. Teedum.

And now we are five (plus Ethel standing in the back). Alice announces to the group that Midge is “no longer with us” and is no longer a student at Riverdale High, because she’s been carted off to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Alice Cooper is so obsessed with depositing girls with the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, isn’t she? She’s the type of person who can’t stand the thought of having to suffer something alone - she has to inflict the same suffering on others.

She drops the hints as heavy as anvils: “When you see her in six or seven months, Midge will be right as rain.”

Veronica finally gets it. She seems to know the duration of human gestation anyway. She tries to ask if Midge is pregnant, but Alice, wearing pink gloves (she’s pink handed rather than red-handed, I guess?) makes ‘close your mouth’ motions with her hands so she can continue her lecture about how “we must treat our bodies as temples.” Alice does have a way with words. She wants the girls to “guard against defilement” and instead regroup that afternoon to have some “good clean fun” preparing for the pageant.

As she exits the room, we see that she was using Ethel as a literal clothes hanger tool to hold on to her purse.

Later, wearing what looks like a dinner napkin as a scarf, Betty, who is really very dumb this episode, just simply does not understand why Midge was sent away. I was a bit taken aback by this. Betty Cooper is supposedly a straight-A student but she just does not know at all how long pregnancy lasts (Uhhhh does Midge also not know??). Evelyn AGAIN SAYS EXACTLY WHAT I AM THINKING because she snaps, “I thought you were supposed to be smart” before explaining to Betty that “Midge has a bun in the oven.” She just keeps the truths coming! “She let a greaser paw at her like a dirty rag.” I meannn I hate Fangs so yeah, I’m even going to excuse her misogynistic language.

Why does this keep happening to me, the humble Riverdale episode recapper? In S4 I was BRET. I had to identify with BRET WESTON WALLIS and now in S7, I’m Evelyn. Thanks Show, for the realizations I did not want.

Evelyn is just laying all the truths out on the table - that Midge is pregnant, that Betty is not very smart, that everyone knows that Cheryl and Toni are a dyke pair, and that Fangs should never be allowed to breed and now he’s gonna have offspring.

She gets threatened by Toni with physical violence which is just comical. I’m a short girl myself, but dude, Toni should never threaten people with physical violence. You’re literally like 90 lbs, Toni, shut up.

Betty really is dumb.

Like, actively stupid.

Look at this face:

Betty finally FINALLY puts it together that Midge has fucked Fangs and that’s why she’s pregnant. When she seeks confirmation, Toni clearly thinks she’s stupid just as much as Evelyn does, so she’s short with Betty, “Yes, Betty.” Betty wants to know if it was once or multiple times. The femme superdykes give her identical, OMG faces because they are both the type of queer girl who didn’t realize for a long time that they were queer because they thought they were just smarter than the majority of other girls, who of course happened to be straight.

Veronica’s love for Betty is everlasting, plus she’s a virgin herself, so she is willing to meet Betty on the same grounds. “I’m guessing they were doing the deed on the reg,” she says, trying to elevate Betty’s grotesque stupidity to the level of something akin to banter.

Toni starts to try to explain the ‘situation’ to all of them like they’re all 4 years old. “Midge loves Fangs and Fangs loves Midge.” Evelyn comes in once again with the correct take: “Quite the cautionary tale if you ask me.” Cheryl is completely unable to come up with a good come back beyond a very paltry No One Asked You type of comment, because I think Cheryl also thinks fucking around with boys is stupid and for the weak and always is going to end up with a cautionary tale type situation. She dislikes Evelyn, in other words, but doesn’t disagree, and only wishes she wouldn't keep spouting truths.

Betty continues to be extremely idiotic - “I’m wondering how Midge could have ended up getting…” is what she says. Not even Veronica knows how to salvage this. Both dykes, Evelyn and even Ethel, who as I’ve said wants to preserve Betty in her innocent stupidity rather than have her face the hardness of the world, give her looks. I think Betty is lying when she says that she “of course” “understand[s] how it happened.” But she’s seen now that her ignorance has shaded fully over into just a lack of intelligence, so she makes something up about "wondering if they were using…” because she’s heard that a man and a woman need to ‘do’ something ‘at least once’ to have a baby but there are ways to maybe make that not happen. Betty Cooper simply does not understand the mechanics of sex.

Veronica continues to want to adore Betty, because she just does, so she supplies the word - protection! Using protection! - because she can’t in good faith adore someone who is irretrievably stupid, and she doesn’t want to admit that about Betty. I am rather surprised to hear from Cheryl that she asked about birth control to Midge, with enough specificity to receive an answer: “Midge said they were, but once it slipped.” And then even more squick- Toni asked Fangs about birth control too, and heard about his incompetence with a condom directly as well. Ew. Cheryl does make an annoyed, oh these damned hetero morons type of eyeroll face as she tells her tale, to her credit.

This makes Veronica burst out that this is why the birth control pill is necessary, that birth control needs to be in the hands of women (not on the dicks of men) because “we’re the ones who have to live with the consequences.” I wish Veronica could be more radical in her feminism -that there should BE NO consequences, but as she’s said at the start of this episode, she likes inhabiting a face and body that’s considered beautiful too much to want to topple the whole thing over.

It’s clear from Betty’s expressions that she still isn’t sure how exactly Midge got pregnant, she doesn’t at all understand what ‘protection’ means really or what ‘it’ is that could’ve have slipped nor what it slipped from, and isn’t following Veronica’s train of thought whatsoever. But the looks that even Evelyn and Ethel gave her has had a silencing effect.

It’s really kind of a violation of human rights, isn’t it, that Betty just does NOT KNOW simple basic facts.

Anyway, Veronica is going on about how boys who impregnate girls have proven their manhood but girls who get impregnated by that same boy are treated as ‘fallen’ to which Betty starts to voice a very conventional fact; "Midge’s life is just… [ruined]."

Cheryl is a leader.

Can I say that again?

CHERYL BLOSSOM IS A REAL LEADER.

She cuts Betty off at the pass: “Her life is not ruined,” she says, categorically. Cheryl Blossom is not going to LET “this”- i.e. Fangs’ incompetence with keeping a condom on his damn dick - hurt one of ‘her’ Vixens in some irretrievable way.

Toni only WISHES she could exhibit this sort of moral, almost compulsive, valor.

Anyway.

Evelyn is so very even keeled. I kind of love that about her. She hates everyone at a very chilled temperature. Even her bright red lipstick has a chilly blue undertone. Evelyn points out that Cheryl and Midge are neither of them Vixens.

Toni wonders if Fangs even knows what has happened to his baby mama, to which Evelyn again acts as oracle to say everyone will eventually know. Cheryl and Toni take off to try to find Fangs so he can learn the bad facts from sympathetic tellers.

Veronica is still worried that she’s very in love with a very dumb girl, so she checks in with Betty to ask what she’s thinking about. Betty says that she’s thinking about how one night can change everything for you. I mean. That isn’t true though, not when you’re Alice Cooper’s daughter. Ethel had two very big nights - one was when her parents were murdered, which is the same night she got sexually assaulted by Julian Blossom, and then the night she killed the Milkman, which made all the adults back off from hauling her directly to the Sisters of Quiet Mercy again. Betty by contrast got caught doing a long distance strip tease with Archie, and then flashed her panties on live television but she has had to deal with no consequences whatsoever, other than her mother continuing to be crazy. So no, it isn’t true that one night can change everything - it only is true if you don’t have the right combo pack of protections.

Betty follows up with Ethel. Ethel is thinking about Midge at the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. Betty basically Yes-ands her, by saying she cares a lot about Midge being sent to an insane asylum (she doesn’t) as lip service so she can get Ethel to agree to take Midge’s spot at the beauty pageant.

You know what? I think I understand now why Betty has nothing to say about Ethel being beautiful and fat and how her fatness might be a problem for a beauty pageant. She’s too stupid to know the facts of heterosexual reproductive intercourse - so by extension she’s too stupid to know that fat girls are given a much harder time in life, a harder time than girls with bad skin, girls with glasses, girls who are too skinny, girls with bad teeth. All she sees is that Ethel is beautiful (factual) and deserving (also true) and so in a true genuine way, thinks she should compete if she wants to. Rather than Ethel being judged ineligible by reason a biography marred by violence and her body type by her mother, Betty genuinely thought Ethel didn’t want to be in the beauty pageant (because she herself didn’t) and genuinely also thought Ethel didn’t mind playing scullery maid to Alice Cooper and her own classroom peers. There’s clueless and then there’s criminal levels of clueless. Betty is fast approaching the latter.

Ethel in any case does not need to be asked more than once. She is so very conscientious though. She is immediately worried that Alice will be left high and dry without an assistant. Betty says she has a plan for that.

Meanwhile, Fangs has been told. He is hollering about how he’s going to “go out there to that convent.” Toni stops him from developing this scheme any further. Cheryl also chimes in, saying two kidnappings does not a solution make. Both these girls are betting that Midge’s parents don’t know that Fangs is the father. Cheryl says something weird - “We need to keep it that way so that you’re not arrested.” Why would Fangs get arrested? Are there anti miscegenation laws in Riverdale? Will they accuse him of raping Midge? What?

I also wonder about Toni playing the Friar Lawrence role to this pair. Her advice has thus far been singularly bad, hasn’t it? She knows how to rig up a home pregnancy test using frogs but doesn’t know any abortionists or even advise Midge on trying to find one. She ASSUMES that Midge’s parents will simply not accept the whole truth, and so steers Fangs and Midge into trying to get their ‘romance’ accepted first before dropping the pregnancy bomb, but that just isn’t how conservative families work. If Fangs and Midge had gone to the parents to say, do you want Midge to have a bastard child or do you want the baby born in matrimony, Midge’s mother wouldv’e gotten her an abortion whether Midge wanted one or not OR allowed them to marry. Here again, if Fangs let’s say showed up in all his biker glory and just burst into the Sisters of Quiet Mercy, wouldn’t that have been materially better for them both? Toni has done no research about this. She hasn’t asked Ethel anything. Ethel got out - why not ask HOW she made that decision stick?

I think Toni has a lot of unexamined hidden motives here -she simply does not want Fangs to have a happy romance with Midge in any direction. She’s very pleased, actually that Midge has been sent away.

When Fangs wants to know what he should do, Toni smirks and giggles as she tells him to write a hit song that becomes a gold record so that he becomes “undeniable to Midge’s parents.”

Yeah so what conservative racist parents (as per Toni’s assumptions about them) would want their child impregnated out of wedlock by not just a guy who is of color but a rock’n’roller of color?

This is insidiously evil of Toni.

Cheryl, of course, never liked Midge being with Fangs to begin with. But she’s moved by his plight, so she actually comes up with useful solutions. She’ll arrange a phone call between Midge and Fangs, and she wants Fangs to remain calm.

Meanwhile, I assume Betty and Ethel have made good use of the insider information that Ethel has access to from her days of slave labor as Alice’s assistant and have gotten Ethel a really gorgeous pageant dress. Ethel really does have “perfect poise” as Betty says. She can do spins in a ball gown with a book balanced on her head. That’s a neat trick.

Alice is very startled to hear that Ethel will be replacing Midge but lies in a white way (“That’s WONDERFUL” she screams) before insisting that she must have an assistant.

Turns out Betty has roped Long Duk Dong - no sorry, Dilton Doiley, into the role of the assistant. I hope she gave his extra huge Asian cock a blowjob.

Sorry. Sorry. I hate S7 Dilton and I hate this actor and I hate what they’re making him do.

Alice asks to speak to Betty in the hallway. She is enraged. Alice yells at Betty about trying to undermine her. Betty says she doesn’t understand what the problem is. I think she genuinely is stupid enough this season for this to be actually true. Alice tries to explain: “Ethel does not represent the ideals of Miss Riverdale Teen Queen.” Betty snaps back, “Why? She’s not pregnant!”

Alice says that Ethel has “an unsavory history.” Betty is again struggling to catch up, asking if this is about Ethel’s parents being murdered or if there’s “something else.” It occurs to me that maybe only a handful of adults other than Jughead and his editor, that is, Sheriff Keller, the principal, his husband, the head nun at the Sisters, Alice and maybe also Mary know that Ethel managed to avenge her parents and kill a man in self defense.

Alice doesn’t actually say if it’s the parents being killed or something else, to which Betty comes to some sort of conclusion that makes her put on a a horrified face to say “Woah, you are awful.”

Uh. What is this, by the way? It’s entirely not clear. Does Alice in fact blame Ethel for her parents being killed? Like, are we doing an Oscar Wilde thing here? ( “To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness”??) I’m still inclined to think that this is about Ethel being fat, but Alice and Betty both think fatness is unspeakable on the level of leprosy so they can’t even say it to each other. I say this because Alice says, “I am not gonna let you turn this competition into one of your crusades!”

Crusades for what? Advocacy of murder attempt survivors? Surely not.

Alice is very clear about her priorities. She wants “to protect the office of Miss Riverdale Teen Queen” first and foremost, because it seems to have been the only competition and externally validating thing she ever went out for and won. Ethel’s well being is a secondary priority, and again the wording is so weird. She wants to protect Ethel from “the scrutiny that Miss Teen Queen demands.”

Scrutiny like somehow a tabloid somewhere is going to take an avid interest in a small town electing a teen beauty queen to say OMG TWO PEOPLE WERE MURDERED THIS ONE TIME IN THIS TOWN IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE? Or scrutiny like, if you include a fat girl in a beauty contest everyone will mock her and the contest because that’s how fatphobia works?

Betty, who has been steadfast in calling Ethel beautiful, makes me lose faith in her. She says it plainly to Alice. For Betty, participation in this entire competition is purely pecuniary. To her it’s quite simple - Ethel is an orphan and she needs the money. But this carries no weight to Alice, because she can’t stand the only competition she’s ever won to be reduced to a mere charity. Alice screams at her that she must be the one to get Ethel to withdraw from the pageant. Betty stamps her foot in frustration.

Then she goes exactly to the Dyke Triumvirate for advice, down in the Dark Room. Veronica, for whom this is really just a lark to assuage her everlasting boredom and loneliness in Riverdale, Alice’s decision to not allow Ethel into the competition doesn’t make sense.

Betty finally fully (well as much as Betty can be fully honest about anything which isn’t much) admits that she knows the issue is Ethel’s non-ideal body type (“Ethel doesn’t represent the ideal blah-blah-blah”). After saying a bunch of things she may or may not have meant about Ethel’s looks, Betty really doesn’t want to be the one to admit to (a) cooking up this whole plan to sabotage her mother (because it’s plain now that this was the intention) and (b) telling Ethel she can’t participate. She tries to get the other three on board by talking about Ethel as a charity case. - “Imagine what winning would do for her.” She’s saying this to one girl with hereditary wealth, a daughter of major Hollywood players who owns her own apartment and her own movie theater (somehow, without also having access to a bank account) and Toni, about whom nothing is known but who doesn’t at all seem lacking for resources.

I don’t know how Ethel would feel if she knew this conversation happened other than humiliated. These four skinny girls held a round table ABOUT her without her, silently agreed among themselves that she doesn’t represent the ideal, but decided that she deserved their charity and graceful self abnegation for the scholarship money (which assumes that she’d choose the competition money and not the Hollywood screen test or the car by the way, which nobody has asked Ethel about).

Cheryl because she has the most leadership chops comes up with the best solution - all the thin, telegenic participants will withdraw if Ethel doesn’t get to participate. Without competitors, there can be no competition. Furthermore, all four of them seem unduly certain that Ethel doesn’t actually represent any sort of threat to their own bid for the title.

When Betty says she will confront Alice about all this again, Veronica stops her. Veronica knows Betty is not just kind of dumb, and that Alice Cooper might not be. She assumes that Hal Cooper is just as stupid as Betty, for one, and for another, Veronica Lodge is an expert at patricide (actual and metaphorical across all universes). She suggests threatening Hal Cooper, and volunteers herself as “a more seasoned negotiator.”

Right away, the girls go to “bend” Hal’s ear. Veronica immediately says that Ethel must be allowed to participate in the pageant. Hal says he’s already been yelled at by Alice about the Ethel issue, so that’s all already decided. Veronica knows a lot about TV so she starts dropping references that make Hal Cooper very vulnerable - “ad spending” “money brought in by live television” “sold all your commercial spots” and “cash those checks.” Having softened him up, they threaten to have all the participants pull out. They also want the swimsuit promenade cut. Hal says, grossly, that the swimsuit segment is a judge favorite event. Veronica incongruously points out that it’s the swimsuit competition that is “Plainly sexist.” My dear pretty little hypocrite - THE ENTIRE THING is sexist. WHY even bring up sexism? Do any male competitions exists that look anything like this pretending to be scholarship competitions? NO THEY DON’T.

Veronica, I love you, but fucking stuff it. Don’t bring up critiques about sexism if you’re going to participate at all. You’re disqualified from feminist discourse.

Hal and Alice have a big blow out fight right before the competition about Ethel. Hal says that since the judges like thin girls (he doesn’t say this but this is what he means) there is no way that Ethel will win the contest (because she is fat) because all it comes down to in the end is does the girl conform to the conventional standards of beauty, which in living memory has NEVER been not skinny and Ethel is fat (he doesn’t say this either but this is what he means). Alice is simply freaking out.

They are screaming the name ETHEL but Ethel pretends not to hear, and asks Betty if they are fighting about her (because they are screaming ETHEL MUGGS at each other). Betty does what Betty does and lies.

With 13 minutes of this episode to go, we are finally at the Miss Riverdale Teen Queen Pageant. The audience that we see for this is 100% all the boys who have ever had a speaking part this season. Not a single girl who is not in the pageant is shown watching this. They just weren’t selected so they disappear from existence. This pageant is entirely for male eyes only. Any talk about these sort of events being anything other than pornographic entertainment for the era when actual pornography was not readily available for private viewing is completely disagreed with by Riverdale the show.

Julian says he is mad they cut the swimsuit bit. Jughead makes fun of him, asking why he wants to “see your sister prancing around like a bathing beauty.” Archie totally looks like he has taken something, he looks so manic, and when Jughead calls Julian pervy about the desire for the swimsuit competition, guffaws. Jughead also laughs a lot as his own joke. Julian is annoyed, telling Jughead to drop dead. Is this - is this the first time they’ve actually said anything to each other? I can’t recall.

The judges for this event are Cheryl’s father, the high school principal and the high school child psychologist. This is very gross. The thing is being emceed by Betty’s father. Kevin is singing in the most oleaginous way over the girls silently parading around modeling their gowns. Jughead whistles at Veronica’s turn on the catwalk. Fangs wants Toni to win (why?).

Alice is in some sort of culty fugue as this event goes on. There’s an in studio audience cheering.

Veronica’s trick was tightrope walking. WHAT? WHY COULDNT’ WE SEE THIS? Reggie thinks this was awesome (“Who knew she was an acrobat!”).

Ethel closes the evening with a big song. I found it immensely cheesy though wow, Ethel is graceful and can sing really well, who knew?

Oh and Betty delivered the Gettysburg Address, apparently, which Jughead found “stirring.” Uh OK. Now THAT is really pervy.

Julian wants it just to not be Cheryl (we aren’t told what her talent was) that wins

Clay says they should’ve made the musical about Ethel instead of Archie.

Then they announce the winner. I realized at this point that I misunderstood what the prize was - you get ALL of the above. A car AND a screentest AND a scholarship. It wasn’t Or. It’s AND. For all her money having ways, neither of Cheryl nor Veronica have a car of their own so I see now why they want to be in this competition still. Everything else I said still stands though!

There’s a drum roll. Julian is intensely begging it to not be Cheryl (Why doesn’t Julian want Cheryl to have a car? Selfish dipshit.). Fangs is not thinking about the locked up knocked up Midge at all, focusing all his nervous attention on Toni, just like she wanted. Clay, despite thinking Ethel should win, does not expect her to, so he braces for impact with a wince.

The Coopers open the envelope with the winner’s name in it. Alice takes it from Hal, who look happy, and announces that it’s Ethel Muggs. Hal looks unhappy. The judges glare at each other. The boys in the diner lose their shits, screaming and hollering. Ethel is overjoyed. Betty looks overjoyed. The only one with a very honest, human reaction is Evelyn Evernever once again - she is upset and finds this whole thing incomprehensible. She also refused to do that deeply insulting thing of making the girls who are standing in a row begging with their tits for scholarship money hold hands with each other as the one winner among them is announced. I stan Evelyn Evernever for this. When she competes against other women she competes wholesale. I find this much more honorable. Why the fuck do the girls have to hold hands?

The next morning, Fangs runs into the diner to get a call from Midge. These two not very bright people being guided by Toni Topaz with ulterior (possibly unexamined) motives are very miserable. Midge’s despair at the end of the call is entirely Toni’s fault. Because all she has is this one phone call, Midge has to pretend she’s fine. Fangs should’ve driven into the convent on his bike.

That same morning, Betty walks into her mother’s kitchen. They have the scariest conversation I’ve ever seen between mother and a daughter on television. I’m not sure that this moment of complicated terror borne out of two women who represent the absolute most insane sides of white culture (I’m not white by the way, just in case that wasn’t clear) is worth the cost of having to sit through this horrible episode (because it truly was horrible) but this is what happens.

Betty launches the first attack. Is Alice exhibiting ‘sour grapes’ because Betty lost and Ethel won? Alice counters by showing Betty that she was in fact the winner. Betty has a hard time (Because as I’ve said for the umpteenth time, she is really stupid for this episode) wrapping her mind around what she’s lost. Alice says that all the men were deeply unhappy but live television’s demand that they put on a ‘flawless’ show forbade any of them from contradicting her.

As I’ve said, winning this contest multiple times is the only accomplishment Alice Cooper has had in her life, and Betty, by pushing a fat orphan to compete in a beauty contest, tries to besmirch exactly the things Alice values about her winnings by turning into a charity. It stamped her as beautiful and rewarded her apparently painful conformity with standard hetero culture. So in turn, Alice took Betty’s win away from her and gave it to Ethel.

If the winner had been any of the other girls, it’s strongly implied, she wouldn’t have done it. She even says it herself - “Maybe I just didn’t want you to win.” Alice tries to have a total victory - for all of Betty’s “grandstanding, Ethel would still have lost,” and moreover, it’s Alice, not Betty, that changed Ethel’s life for the better. And she also got to take something away from Betty that Betty really wanted - a way to go to college, without having to ask Alice for permission. I cut your achilles tendon and popped all your balloons, basically.

Then Betty does the most white woman thing of all time and tells her mother that she will think well of her. She stabs her mother in the face with the words “I love you.” Instead of expressing a natural human feeling - I am angry with you - which white women are not allowed by their culture to feel, Betty says “I know you are a good person” but in the most stony-faced, glassy-eyed way possible.

I think the victory belongs with Betty though. Sure, Alice materially hurt her daughter, and did that thing of cursing her daughter to “live the life I lived." But in retaliation, her daughter announced that she thinks she’s a piece of shit and she hates her, using the Opposites Day language of white womanhood. Moreover, it was Alice’s dream to a) keep Miss Teen Queen a validation of womanly perfection and b) to have some sort of legacy in the world which for her boiled down to being a Miss Teen Queen who raised a second generation of Miss Teen Queen. By hurting Betty, Alice hurt herself, because Alice cares about this competition and Betty does not want to give her mother any sort of legacy.

White anglo culture takes insidious passive aggression to a HIGH ART level and these people scare the shit out of me.

Secure in her victory, Betty goes to write an answer to all her girls who wrote into her newsletter. “There is a hope for a better tomorrow. In fact, we girls are that hope.”

This is completely unearned. Betty just engaged in a final battle of mortal combat of the soul with her mother, and has come out with like severed limbs and severe blood loss, though she won because she took away the one happy achievement her mother ever had in her life. She made Alice kill her own one shining earned-it-myself achievement. This event that Alice told the world on national TV is something more special to her that Christmas itself has been permanently tarnished for her, because in a desperate bid to survive this hate-filled battle with her daughter, Alice stabbed herself in the heart. There is absolutely nothing hopeful here. Betty is lying as per usual.

#be forewarned: i say a lot of very broad out of pocket things in here because it's the only way i could get this written #i disliked this episode so much i almost gave up doing any more write ups #i procrastinated for three weeks and i am not a procrastinator #anti betty cooper #riverdale s7 #riverdale 7.15 #miss teen riverdale #riverdale opinion #riverdale recap

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[foldagerborg8]

Gucci Belt Evaluation + Comparability

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[munn62savage]

Prada Luggage On Sale

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[shepherdlacroix8]

Prada Baggage

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[dilfwaynes]

durante la notte

summary: natasha always deals the cards first, but always ends up being the first to fold them as well.

✎ word count ; 1.5k

⚢ pairings ; natasha romanoff x fem!reader

genre ; smut

✗ warnings ; mean power bottom!reader, undertones of elitism, strap on use, degradation, pwp.

a/n ; natasha x Italian!reader cos i was finishing italian hw while writing this and thinking in Italian LOL not edited !!

translation: fangool / go do it in an ass, / marone / damn it / il mio piccolo tesoro / my little treasure.

you lick your lips slowly, lifting the petite glass and bringing it to your lips, tasting the rich krug flat on your tongue. fingers wrapped around tightly as you watch natasha flaunt around the bar end of the restaurant, collude deep with a full view of her little display with your table only a few feet away. rolling your eyes you pick up the cigarette pack aside from you, fumbling down your drink and lighting it up, blowing out the thick french scent smoke.

“excuse me, could you please put out your cigarette,” your eyes flash towards the man some tables away, eyebrow cocked in annoyance and distrain. you stare blankly, tapping away the burnt ashes off the tip and turning your attention back to natasha.” ma’am.”

“marone! leave the fucking smoking section then!” you snap towards their direction, eyes harden and un amusement fading to anger fast, glaring. “proletariat, fangool!” shifting back to the russian, catching her eyes and bridging the intensity of her green, inhaling once more. sliding the champagne again to your lips, raising an eyebrow over the rim with jealousy burning in with the alcohol. are you finished with your game?

natasha smirked over her slightly hauled shoulder, your expression lamely and stoic but faded underneath is the whole reason she’s continuing on her show. still, she peers at you from the corner of her while fingers shims around the younger girl’s arm, your rings grasping tightly against the glass, the cartier sleek love band, and the golden diamond aside it as well a panthère slimed around your wrist. truthfully you looked good enough to eat with the white silk pressed on your tanned skin, giving you more of a glow with the golden  accessories.

brushing back the stray hair behind the girl’s ear she watched as your mien fallen and a rushed snap of your fingers has the waiter ushering you the bill, eyes set on natasha as you mindless throw money for the check and tip. 

“natasha,” waving a hand behind your back to beckon her to tail from a distance, and like always she obeyed. following you into the car, muttering something in Italian before the chauffeur starts the car. you turn your attention back on her calmly, nodding before reaching a hand and yanking her head to rear in your pleasing.” what a show you’ve put on tonight beloved, but i didn’t care much for your co-star.” you laugh softly, pulling her upper to meet her eyes. your nails running along the back of her neck with your lips attaching to the base of her throat.

“but i don’t think it’ll do well,” you sigh, the mock of sympathetic patent with a now pout in place. natasha’s lips quirk upwards, deciding to play along.” that’s mean to say baby.” her eyes trained on your lips, the red curling into a pleasing smile, the hold within her hair loosens, and a soothing hand pushing her streaks back.  

“don’t worry, you can be the main star of my show,” you say quietly, intertwining your hand with hers and bringing it down to your thigh under your dress, your gaze flickering back towards her.” and mine will be a lot better and successful.” your fist tightening withholding her hair once more and roughly pushing her towards you, slamming your lips against hers with a smothering kiss.

“but i don’t know if you quite deserve it, touching that filthy puttana,” you whisper nearing the shell of her ear, voice edged with a low seething.”i shouldn’t even let you touch me. i bet if i let you, you’ve spread that whore out and fucked her, hm? or would you have done that if i wasn’t there?” your words meant to come out as teasing but natasha heard the undertones, and she knew you knew, that she knew.

“no,” natasha lets out shakily, holding back a groan of the feeling of your teeth nipping at her exposed neck.”don’t want her, just you.” your head falls against her shoulder, smoothing a kiss on the blade.

“just me?” your relaxed features now sneering, your grip a little tighter at the movement of the car stopping. nodding,” just you.”

giving her another kiss before opening the door, an unspoken command for her to follow you into the penthouse. kicking off the satin heels, peering over to the entrance where natasha stands.”c’mere il mio piccolo tesoro,” you coo, tapping a spot for her to join, smiling to ace the act. natasha doesn’t need to see the calm before the storm to understand how this is gonna play out. draping your legs over her lap, catching her face between your fingers,”such a pretty girl,” you murmur, shaking your head.”too bad she’s such a little fucking slut.” you finish, though the tone still mockingly sweet, your smile replaced with a lazy grin now.

without any response from natasha you shift towards her lap, your legs between her waist and gripping her thighs with a bruising kiss, wrapping her legs further around her waist. alining your sex to brush right against her bare thigh, sighing out at the friction, the thin panties the only thing keeping your pussy from her warm skin.”stay put.” you hiss, sealing it with a pinch to her arm, laughing at her little groan of pain.  striding towards the chest tucked into the corner, picking up the silicone and a small bottle of lube. 

“make yourself useful for once and lube that bitch up,” you laugh at your own words and take no mind to natasha, she rolls her eyes stripping herself of her top, watching your little tease show of taking off the silk, and as expected a matching white set underneath. rolling her hips up through the harness, squeezing some of the lube into her palms and running it along the fake length. lifting her gaze and meeting your steps to her, your bra unclasped and somewhere thrown but your panties remain. she cocks her eyebrow downwards, silently asking why they’re still on. you don’t reply, simply pooling them down, and reaching for natasha’s face by her jaw and shoving the expensive lace into her mouth, very well enjoying her wide eyes of curiosity and then surprise.”don’t give me those eyes, i don’t wanna hear you after that shit you pulled with that puttana.”

slowly sinking yourself on the strap, slapping a looming hand of the red head underneath you, taking the cock with a burning stretch leaving you aching, moaning when you feel the tip hilts, natasha drooling at seeing the fake cock poke out some from your stomach. waiting a few moments before lightly grinding on the strap.”see, if you weren’t some stupid bitch i would’ve let you fucked me,” you tell her, grabbing her shoulders for support, rising your hips up and slamming them down again. natasha grits her teeth, itching to touch you, kiss you, feel you literally anything.”please.” she muffled out.

you chuckle at her barely audible beg, her eyes glossy and her voice so whiny, you loved her like this. you decide to throw her a bone and grab one of her hands to give some attention to your tits. speeding up your pace with the added pressure of natasha tugging your nipples between her fingers.”fuck, fuck, fuck play with my clit baby.” you gasp out, your eyelids fluttering with the coil in your stomach ready to snap. podding her thumb against your clit, watching your face falls into pleasure and soon you’re crying out and gushing all over her lap. alcohol always made you extra sensitive.

ripping the makeshift gag of your panties from her mouth, she stares at you for a few seconds.”i’m fucking you at least once tonight.”

“if you can even do that right beloved.”

your words get stuck in your throat as your back drops to the couch, natasha between your legs and pushing the tip inside, arousal pulling at the slick coating the strap. holding your hips still she snaps hers, filling you up. her mouth dry seeing tears peak the corner of your eyes, your legs shake around her already and she hasn’t even moved yet. supporting her body weight with her hand against the side of your head, grabbing the arm of the couch and thrusting up, her grunt going straight to your core. she smirks at the strings of high pitched moans she’s getting out of you, your nails dragging across her back and digging in, your legs beginning to shake uncontrollably with the sound of natasha fucking you, the couch dampening under the pressure of natasha’s hips against yours.”don’t stop, i’m gonna cum you better fucking make me cum.” leaning down and smashing her lips down to yours, reaching a hand to where you both connect and rubbing circles on your clit.

your eyes roll to the back of your head, your grip on natasha unbreakable and your body shaking under her from your second orgasm of the night. giving out a few more trusts to ride out your climbmax, kissing the side of your temple and staying inside you. panting slightly, burying her face inbetween your neck and the Italian leather.

“does this make me forgiven?”

“we’ll see.”

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[angelamajiki]

[ study date - part two ]

PARING: Bully! Yandere! Hawks x Reader x Bully! Yandere! Dabi

CW: quirkless college au, yandere, noncon/dubcon, mindbreak, dacryphilia, boot licking, boot humping, humiliation, degradation, cum eating, spanking, physical abuse, verbal abuse, scumbag dabihawks

AN: finally part two is here!! sorry about the long wait. mind the tags and enjoy!!

PART ONE

The situation was all too suspicious. You couldn't put your finger on it, but you knew the two of them had something to do with it. They always have something conniving up their sleeves, inventing new ways to torment you.

Not less than a day ago did you receive that dreaded phone call, and of course, the pair of them were there to witness your breakdown because of it. Because of your failing grade in chemistry, your scholarship was revoked which meant that you lost your housing privileges for the campus. And those two seemed all too happy to watch you crumble and sob in front of them like a child.

“Sounds like you're down on your luck, princess. What's a girl to do?”

Touya was all too pleased about the situation, the smug bastard. A warm hand made a place for itself on your lower back as it rubbed circles of faux sympathy. Sobs dribbled from your mouth as his hands moved lower to grip your hips from behind.

“Now, now, Touya. Don't tease her like that.” Keigo tutted, leaning against the wall next to the two of you. “Perhaps we coulda let our girlfriend come stay with us.” He sighed dramatically, quirking his brow at you before looking away.

So that was it. They wanted you to grovel at their feet and beg for mercy if you wanted their help, just like last time.

“Too bad we don't have one, doll. Ya made yourself pretty clear that you just aren't interested in us. Such a shame, we coulda been a real big help, ya know.”

Touya patted you on the back before walking off down the hall with Keigo, leaving your tear-stricken face all alone.

“W...Wait!” It came out more desperate than you could have hoped. The two of them stopped but refused to turn to look at you. The silence was deafening. “I’ll go out with the both of you. I'll be your girlfriend.”

Admission alone should have been good enough for them, but your constant denial had left them greedy for more.

“And just how do we know you're not looking to mooch off us, babe?”

Rats, they were right. You had no way to prove you wouldn't just use them, abuse them, and lose them.

“Touya, I thought I said to stop teasing princess.” Keigo chuckled, turning to look at you with narrowed eyes. “Of course, we’ll go out with you; nothing would make us happier to call you our girl.”

Taking your hand, he helped you up off the bench and swiped the tears from your eyes. Humiliation flushed your face as you struggled to look anywhere but his hawk-like eyes.

“C’mon, doll. Let’s go clean out your dorm and head back to our place.”

»»————-　　————-««

Back in your apartment, the boys made quick of boxing up your things and loading them into Keigo’s pick-up. The poor distraught thing you were, the bathroom is where you holed yourself up and cried your heart out. The fact that you had to stoop as low as to live with your bullies to survive? And you thought you couldn't be more humiliated than the last time they offered helo. It’ll be temporary; you tried to convince yourself. You'll stay with them a few weeks and be on your merry way, finding someone else to stay with. Hell, you’ll couch surf if you have to. Anything was better than staying with those demons.

“Hey, doll!” Touya rapped his fingers on the door thrice before opening up to your crying form. “Hey, hey, hey. No need for tears. Your boyfriends are here to help.” His wolfish grin said otherwise.

“Bird brain and I finished packing your shit. Let's hit the road.”

A rough hand yanked you up from the floor, tugging you along. A yelp flew from your mouth before you could stop it as you pushed up against the sink, pinned in by Touya’s hips on yours.

“On second thought, I can't let my pretty girl feel so down, now can I? Let me give you something that’ll cheer ya up.”

A hard tent nestled its way up your skirt as he ground his hips against you.

“Let your man take care of you, huh? I’ll give you something good to cry about.”

Keigo was content to watch from the doorway as his partner continued to make you squirm under him.

“Besides, we haven't discussed payment. Rent ain’t free, princess.”

God, were these men cruel to you. You can't really expect any less from the men who were content to bully you in the first place.

“All my money was from the scholarship; I don’t-”

A hearty laugh came from the blonde, eyes narrowing in on your pinned form.

“Who said anything about money?” He quipped, sauntering over to you and took your chin in his hand. “You can pay us back with your obedience. We want a well-behaved slut that we can come home to, not some brat we have to take kicking and screaming.”

What choice did you have? They had you pinned in a corner, like a mouse caught by two feral cats who were just a bit too hungry to have any kind of patience to play games.

“I-I understand.” You swallowed, nodding in Keigo’s palm.

“Really now.” Touya drawled out, taking Keigo’s spot in the doorway. It was apparent they didn't want you to bolt on them. “I’m not convinced. You gotta prove yourself to us first, little girl.”

The bare mattress creaked under his weight as he took a seat in your room, legs spread as he motioned you towards him with his finger. Keigo, although reluctantly, let go of your face and locked both doors as he took a seat in the corner, seemingly content to watch the display.

A throaty chuckle left the man as you stood in front of him.

“Strip.”

The command left you shivering under his predatory gaze, a low whistle coming from his mouth as he fucked you with his eyes.

“Kei, put on some music.”

“Yes, sir.” He purred, using his phone for tunes and snatching yours from your purse before pocketing it in his jacket. Girls, Girls, Girls by Mötley Crüe filled the walls of your dorm, both men gratified by watching your little dance for them.

First went your shirt, tossed off onto the floor as your face flushed with shame. Tears welled in your eyes before you screwed them shut while swaying to the music.

“Hey! Eyes open and on me, little girl.” Touya snapped, spanking the side of your ass as punishment. You hiccuped, sucking in a breath to hold back the tears. The stress of the situation weighed you down, bursting you at the seams as you openly sobbed while removing your bra. Music blaring and laughs all around from Touya; you looked to Keigo for help; he always seemed to be on your side. Head thrown back against the wall, he jerked himself to the sound of your cries, winking and whistling as you looked back at him.

“Hurry it up; you're not very good at dancing, doll. You're stiff as a board.”

“She’s not the only one who's stiff.”

Cackles and guffaws filled the room, piercing your ears to the point where you thought you would go deaf at the next sound of their voices. Mindlessly, your clothes were haphazardly thrown off before you crumpled into a ball on the floor, shaking and sobbing.

“Aww, is baby having a bad day? Come to daddy.”

Touya helped you up off the floor before placing your bare cunt atop his left boot. “Why don't you relieve some stress, huh?”

The boot jerked under you, pressing up against your clit as you yelped. Getting the memo, you started to grind your hips down against his boot. Your cries quelled as you rocked your hips into a steady rhythm, biting your lip when you felt pleasure began to pool in your gut. How depraved were you? Getting off on your bully's boot while the other one got off to watching you. It was enough to make you sick, forcing you to cling to Touya’s thigh and rest your forehead there. A collection of moans and classic rock music blared in your room, bouncing off the walls so loudly that it made you even hazier.

As much as you wanted to deny it, the man had a point. You might as well submit and let yourself feel good; there's no getting out of it. Gasps and moans left your drooling mouth as you ground your hips on the tip of his boot with enthusiasm, letting yourself get lost in the pleasure slowly crescendoing in your core.

“Atta, girl.” Touya growled, gripping your hair from the scalp as he made eye contact with you. “Look at when you cum.”

Incoherent responses left your lips as you began to cry again, only that it was from pleasure this time. He continued to sustain eye contact as he fisted his cock, letting go of your hair in lieu of sticking his fingers in your mouth and choking you with them. Warbled cries fell onto his fingers as your hips increased in speed, thighs sputtering and shaking as you came close to creaming yourself on his boot.

“Cum on my boot, slut.”

His cock was aimed at your open mouth as you grunted and moaned, eyes cloudy as they rolled back into your bed. You came with a cry, squirting all over his patent-leather boot as your body shook with the sheer force of your orgasm.

Touya was not too far behind you, moaning your name as he shot his seed into your waiting mouth, covering your nose after finishing.

Like the obedient whore they needed you to be, you swallowed. His foot kicked up into you, knocking you off his leg.

“Disgusting. Clean up your mess, bitch.”

Nodding, a small whimper left your mouth as you began to lick your juices off his boot. Kitten licks and long strokes alike made their way around the leather, whining when he would shove his foot roughly in your face at times.

“Y’know, I’m still not convinced, sweetheart,” Keigo called out from behind you, taking a fist full of hair in his clutch as he pulled you up from the floor. “Beg for my forgiveness, and I’ll know you’re not trying to run a game on us.”

With a still tight reign on your hair, he threw you to the bed face down, ass up while discarding his own clothes. A harsh spank thwacked on your ass as he gripped the reddening flesh right after.

“Damn this ass is gonna be the death of me. Ain't that right, Touya?”

“Sure is; it's all she's good for.”

Neither of them really meant those nasty things they spewed at you, but it just felt too good at the moment to pass up seeing you cry. The sooner you learn that submission is the way to their hearts, the easier you'll have it. Sure, you were a whore, but you were their whore.

“Hope this pussy’s ready for a pounding cause Daddy is coming in.” He chuckled, groaning as he sank his length into your tight, unprepared vice. Whimpering and squirming beneath him, you attempted to grip the bare mattress for purchase as you felt the sting and stretch of his cock thrusting inside you. The pain wasn't terrible, but it was still there. You wiggled your hips, hoping to get some friction before another spank was administered.

“I haven't heard any begging yet.”

“P-Please fuck me, Keigo.”

“That’s not what I’m looking for, sweetheart.”

Oh? Oh.

“Please let me be your girlfriend! Please, I need to be yours; I need you!”

A slew of curses flew out of him as he pinned your hips down, thrusting deep and slow inside you. The pace was agonizingly slow as you tried to move your hips.

“Please, please, please!” you babbled. “Keigo, Touya. Let me be your girlfriend; let me be your obedient whore. I need to be yours!”

Humiliation hardly fazed you anymore as you let yourself, babbling and crying out begs and pleas for your two bullies.

Keigo happily increased his thrusts, pounding into you as a man possessed. Growls and snarls spat from his mouth as he savored the way your tight pussy fluttered around his painfully hard cock.

“Such a good girl for us, good girl.” The blonde moaned, pressing a sloppy kiss to the back of your neck. He lapped at the sweat there, leaving bite marks and blood for you to find later.

Your moans and cries were music to their ears, the most hypnotic melody they had ever heard. Touya stroked himself off in the corner, pleased with your earlier performance and giving his partner space to hit the nail into the coffin.

You, on the other hand, were being fucked out of your mind as Keigo dicked you down good. Good enough to make you forget your worries, your troubles, your life ripping apart at the seams for even just a moment. The sound of skin slapping against skin filled your senses as you felt the pleasure come at you full speed.

“T-Tell me you love me, that you love us.”

“Oh, someone’s feeling bold, birdie.”

Strings of “I love you”s flowed freely from your mouth as you chased your high, wanting to feel pure and utter relief, albeit it is just for a moment.

You came with a cry, spasming on his cock as he came deep inside you. A bright, white sensation filled your senses as you grasped onto your clarity for as long as you, not wanting to come down from your high.

Toned arms rested on either side of you before enveloping you in a warm hug.

“Good job, princess.”

A sweet whisper filled your ears before a kiss was placed on your cheek. Silence fell over the room, save for all of your panting and breathing. In your post-orgasm clarity, you couldn't help but realize something.

Wasn't Touya’s father dean of the school?

#yandere hawks #yandere hawks x reader #hawks #hawks x reader #yandere dabi #yandere dabi x reader #dabi #dabi x reader #yandere dabihawks #yandere dabihawks x reader #dabihawks #dabihawks x reader #yandere my hero academia #my hero academia #yandere boku no hero academia #boku no hero academia #yandere mha #yandere bnha #mha #bnha #yandere x reader #yandere

[worryinglyinnocent]

Fic: Practical Alchemy (1/11)

Summary: "Everyone knows that the Hawkeye name is cursed. There are always two girls to a generation and they have to keep the family name in order to inherit. They'll fall in love with alchemists, and those alchemists are doomed to die. We thought Aunt Trisha had broken the curse - she changed her name, and she had boys not girls - but it just rebounded on her. That's why I dread falling in love."

Riza Hawkeye lives a quiet life - running her late aunt's herbal dispensary and helping her Uncle Hoho bring up her young cousins, having vowed never to fall in love herself. A call from her estranged sister Rebecca turns her life upside down - especially when a certain State Alchemist named Roy Mustang enters the scene on the sisters' tail.

A Practical Magic AU.

Rated: T

[AO3]

==

Content warning for chapter one: Mentions of domestic abuse and suicide.

==

One

“Those poor girls. Can you imagine going through what they’ve been through at their age?”

“I suppose we should be grateful that they didn’t find the bodies. That would have been awful.”

Riza looked down at her shoes. They were her ‘best’ shoes, as Mom had always called them. Black patent leather Mary-Janes so shiny she could see her face in them. They were still shiny now, even after walking around the graveyard all morning. They were uncomfortable, probably because they were for ‘best’ and so she never wore them except for special occasions. Like weddings. Or the Christmas party that Mom always used to give every year to try and give the impression to the neighbours that everything was perfectly fine and the Hawkeye home was a nice, normal, very happy one.

Or funerals.

She didn’t really think that it made any difference that she and Rebecca hadn’t found their parents’ bodies. It still didn’t change the fact that their parents were dead and they were alone in the world, and she was trying to stay brave for Rebecca even though she was scared stiff about what was going to happen next. She’d read enough books about terrible orphanages that she knew she didn’t want to stay here in the children’s home for any longer than she had to. If the social workers said that they were going to have to stay here forever, then she was grabbing Rebecca and escaping as soon as possible. She was ten, after all. She could take care of herself and her little sister.

“What’s going to happen to them now? Is there any other family that can take them in or will they stay here?”

“Their mother had a sister, much younger, but they hadn’t spoken for years. Some kind of family feud, she ran away when she was a teenager. We’re trying to contact her now, but she changed her name so she’s proving hard to track down.”

“Yes, well, I can see why she’d do that. The Hawkeye name doesn’t exactly have the best connotations.”

Riza wondered if the adults in the office knew that she could hear every word that they were saying, and she continued to stare at her shoes. Rebecca was doing the same, swinging her feet where they didn’t quite touch the ground. She was only two years younger than Riza, but she was so small she always seemed younger, and after everything that had happened over the last week, Riza felt like acting like a little kid herself. 

She didn’t know how long they had been sitting outside the office, waiting to hear what would happen next. It felt like forever.

“I still don’t understand what happened. The police said it was a murder-suicide… what would drive a woman to do something like that?”

“Oh, everyone knew Berthold Hawkeye was a bad lot. From what I can see, Martha couldn’t take it anymore, but she couldn’t risk him turning on the girls if she removed herself from the picture, and she wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt and the law on her back if she removed him. They both had to go, to make sure the girls would be safe. It’s a tragic logic, really.”

Mom had always tried so hard to pretend that nothing was wrong, but Riza had seen the burns and the bruises, and no matter how hard she had pressed her hands over her ears when she had been hiding under the bedcovers in the dark, she had always been able to hear the raging arguments.

She looked up from her shoes as she heard footsteps come down the corridor towards them, and then stop abruptly. 

It was Marcie and Elizabeth, talking in hurried, whispered tones behind their hands, their eyes never leaving Riza and Rebecca. Riza didn’t need to hear what they were saying, she knew it all already. They’d heard the same mantra several times a day ever since they had arrived at the home a week ago. 

The Hawkeye girls are under a curse, you know. Don’t get too close or it might rub off on you.

If they had to stay in the home, Riza was definitely running away and going to a place where no one knew the Hawkeye name and no one would judge them or treat them like monsters because of it. 

Even their own father had thought that they were monsters because of it. 

“You girls are Hawkeyes,” she remembered him saying. “And that means you are destined to be miserable for your entire lives. Just look at your mother, she’s never been more miserable. It’s best for you to know this now so that you don’t get your hopes up for a happy life. Remember, when they talk about living happily ever after in all the story books, that doesn’t apply to the Hawkeye girls. You’re cursed, the lot of you. Cursed to live in misery.”

Well, whatever doubts about the infamous Hawkeye curse that Riza might have had before had definitely been put to rest this week. She didn’t know who had put it on them in the first place, or how to break it. Because all curses had to be able to be broken, right?

She remembered asking her mother about the curse once.

“You are Hawkeye girls, just like me, just like my mother and aunt before me. We will always be Hawkeyes. Even when we marry, we never take our husbands’ names. We are always Hawkeyes, and we are always girls. Always two sisters, one fair, one dark. We will fall in love with alchemists, and those alchemists will always die before their time. That is the Hawkeye curse.”

“Riza?”

Rebecca’s voice sounded very small beside her, and her eyes were frightened. 

“Yes, Becca?”

“I don’t want to go and live with Aunt Trisha.”

Truth be told, Riza had some misgivings about going to live with the aunt that she’d never met and their mother had never had a kind word about, but she had to be the strong one for Rebecca now, and that meant putting a brave face on it. 

“I’m sure that it’ll be better than staying here. Maybe she’s nice.”

Rebecca looked rather dubious at the prospect.

“Mommy never said she was nice. Mommy hated Aunt Trisha. She said she was a traitor to the family. Traitors are bad, aren’t they?”

“Well… I think Mommy didn’t like Aunt Trisha because Aunt Trisha didn’t believe in the curse and ran away from home and didn’t write or call or anything.”

Rebecca considered this for a while, going back to staring at her shoes again. 

“What if she’s mean?”

“Then we’ll run away too.” Riza was certain that whatever the situation they found themselves in, running away was a surefire way to get out of it. “Whatever happens, we’ll always have each other, I promise. We can look after each other if no one else looks after us.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

“Riza? Rebecca?”

Miss Elms, the social worker, was leaning out of the office. “Come on in, girls.”

Riza felt a bit like she’d been caught with her hand in the cookie jar and she was about to receive punishment, even though she knew she hadn’t done anything wrong. Well, apart from being born, but she couldn’t really help that. 

The seats in the office were much more comfortable than the seats outside, and Miss Elms gave them juice and the little sandwich cookies with jam and buttercream inside that were Riza’s favourites, but her stomach was churning with dreadful anticipation too much for her to be able to eat anything. Rebecca took a cookie, but she seemed to be making more crumbs than actually eating it. 

“We’ve been able to get in touch with your Aunt Trisha,” Miss Elms began. “She and her husband would be very happy to take care of you. They just need a few days to get a room ready for you, and then we’ll take you over there on Friday. Does that sound good?”

Riza nodded slowly. They didn’t really have a lot of choice in the matter, especially when the only other choice would be to stay here with all the other girls whispering behind their backs and refusing their tentative overtures of friendship.

“Is Aunt Trisha nice?” Rebecca asked. “We’ve never met her.”

“She sounded nice on the phone,” Miss Elms said. “I’m sure she’s nice in person as well.”

Considering that their father had his special telephone voice that made him sound like the sweetest and mildest person possible, Riza was not entirely convinced by this, but she didn’t say anything to Miss Elms. From what she’d overheard, it seemed to have been a bit of a task trying to find Aunt Trisha in the first place. She wondered if Aunt Trisha would be mad that the family she’d run away from all those years ago had caught up with her again. She wondered what her husband was like, and whether he was an alchemist just like the curse had said. 

She was still wondering hours later, when she was curled up in her bed with her arms wrapped around her knees, thinking that if she made herself as small as possible then she’d disappear altogether and she wouldn’t have to worry about potentially mean aunts and uncles, and family curses, and anything like that.

“Riza?”

“Yes, Becca?”

Becca’s head swung down from the top bunk, her dark hair falling over her face.

“We’ll be all right, won’t we?”

“Of course we’ll be all right. As long as we have each other, we’ll be fine. We’ll survive whatever Miss Elms and Aunt Trisha and Uncle… What did she say his name was?”

“It was something really long beginning with H.”

“Well, him. Whatever they throw at us, we’ll survive it. Together.”

Rebecca smiled - at least, Riza thought she smiled through the darkness and the curtain of hair. “Thank you, Riza.”

X

In Riza’s opinion, Friday ended up coming around far too soon. The journey to the little village of Resembool, where Aunt Trisha lived, seemed to take forever in Miss Elms’ old, spluttering car, and it was a squash with all their worldly goods packed in the back around them. No one really spoke for the most part, everyone just lost in their own thoughts, be they good or bad. The car smelled of pear drops and birdseed, and it was making Riza ever so slightly nauseous as they bumped along the country lanes towards Resembool. They had to stop for directions to the Elric house twice before they actually found it, a small, cosy-looking white cottage on the top of a hill.

“Wow!” Rebecca suddenly sat up from the melancholy half-doze that she’d been in throughout the entire journey, and she batted Riza’s arm. “Riza, look at the greenhouse!”

As they turned the corner up the hill, Riza could see the huge greenhouse attached to the back of the cottage, almost as big again as the house itself. 

“I wonder what they grow in there,” Rebecca mused. “Do you think palm trees would fit?”

Riza didn’t reply. She wasn’t really concerned about the plants in the greenhouse. More the people in the actual house. 

The car stopped in the driveway, and the front door had opened before Riza and Rebecca had undone their seatbelts and got out of the back. 

“Trisha Elric? I’m Sandra Elms, we spoke on the phone. It’s very nice to meet you.”

“Lovely to meet you too. Thank you for bringing the girls; we would have come and got them ourselves but as you can see, straying too far from home is tempting fate these days.”

Riza got out of the car and took her first proper look at her somewhat infamous Aunt Trisha. 

She was young, a lot younger than Mom had been, and of course she had brown hair because Mom had been blonde, and there was always one fair and one dark sister. She was quite small, just like Rebecca was so much smaller than Riza. 

Apart from her belly, which was hugely pregnant, and Riza could understand why she hadn’t made the four hour journey to the children’s home to come and get them. Her husband was at the door too - tall, with golden-blond hair in a ponytail and glasses. 

At first glance, they both looked harmless, and when Aunt Trisha looked across at them, standing in the path with their suitcases, Rebecca squeezing Riza’s hand so tightly it hurt, she had the most beautiful smile. 

“Hello Riza, Rebecca. Welcome to Resembool. I know it’ll take a while to get used to, but I really hope you’ll be happy here with us.”

Her face was open and genuine, and her smile was not the strange fake smile that Riza had seen so often on her mother’s face before, when she was saying that everything was all right even though Riza knew that it wasn’t. So far, she was getting a good feeling about this, and she didn’t trust it, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“You’re going to have a baby?” Rebecca asked. 

“Yes. He’s due in about six weeks, so you’ll have plenty of time to settle in before he gets here and shakes things up a bit, but he’s quite big already, as you can see.” She patted her belly. “You can feel if you want. His foot’s poking out here.”

Curiosity winning out over everything else, Rebecca let go of Riza’s hand and went over to Aunt Trisha, placing her hand over where the foot was being indicated. Their uncle was helping Miss Elms unload their boxes and suitcases from the car and bring them into the house, and she followed them inside the cool building, tiptoeing down the hallway towards the large open space at the back of the cottage that was the greenhouse. 

“Make yourself at home,” her uncle said. “Nowhere’s off limits, and Trisha’s put netting around the plants you shouldn’t touch.”

Riza nodded her understanding and went into the greenhouse, looking around at all of the plants in pots sitting here, there and everywhere. Everything was labelled up with little hand-written cards, often with silly little illustrations, and despite the huge feeling of trepidation that still hadn’t gone away, Riza found herself smiling for the first time in what felt like forever. She didn’t know what it was that drew her to the greenhouse, but she felt a calm peacefulness in there that she hadn’t felt anywhere else. 

“Do you like it? This is where I make all my lotions and potions.”

Riza turned to see that Aunt Trisha had come into the greenhouse behind her. 

“Lotions and potions?”

“I make herbal remedies and cosmetics from the plants,” she explained. “Like this one, for example. This is witch hazel. Good for putting on bruises to soothe them. And chamomile, that calms your nerves and helps you sleep. Peppermint is good for digestion. Oh, I could go on forever. Come on, I’ll show you and Rebecca your new room. I’m sorry if it still smells of paint a bit, we wanted to make sure that it was perfect before you arrived.”

Riza followed her back into the main house, finding Rebecca in the hallway looking cautiously excited. Miss Elms said her goodbyes and left them to it, and Riza watched her car bumping down the hill again as they made their way up the stairs towards the attic room that she and Rebecca would be sharing. It felt very final, watching her go, and Riza still felt a little bit like she was being lulled into a false sense of security with how nice her aunt and uncle were being. She was half-expecting them to turn into monsters as soon as Miss Elms’ car was out of sight, because that was what had always happened with her father whenever they’d had guests. Everything was perfect for those few hours, but as soon as they were gone, everything went back to the way it was before, and Riza and Rebecca had always instinctively known to make themselves scarce as soon as any company left. They’d tried to get Mom to hide with them, but she never did.

The attic room was decorated in peach and coral pink colours, warm and bright, and Riza was happy to see that a lot of the furniture from their old room back home had been brought in - their little white beds and closet, and their patchwork blankets that Mom had made when they were babies. 

“Do you like it?” Aunt Trisha asked. Riza nodded, and Rebecca was already unpacking teddies out of her box and lining them up along the bottom of her bed. 

“Perfect. Let’s get you unpacked and settled in then, and we’ll see what Uncle Van’s made for dinner. He’s not the best cook, but I was too excited about meeting you to do any cooking today.” For a moment her smile faded and her face was sad. “I’m so sorry that I never got to meet you before, and it’s taken something so tragic for our paths to cross. I hope that you two never have a big fight like Martha and I did.”

“We won’t.” Riza had promised Rebecca that they would always be there for each other, and no matter what happened, she was going to stick to that promise. 

X

After six months in Resembool, Riza could finally say that she had settled in properly, and she was no longer waiting for everything to go wrong. There was still a small part of her that was afraid that everything would go wrong at some point in the future, but it was no longer the biggest fear in her mind, and she was no longer actively expecting things to go wrong. Their aunt and uncle had continued to be very nice people long after Miss Elms had left them alone, and now that little Edward had arrived, life was as hectic and busy as ever. School was no longer as much of a worry as it could have been, as no one in Resembool knew about the Hawkeye curse. Hawkeye was just another name to them, and there were no sly whispers and taunting looks in the playground. Riza wasn’t one to make friends easily at the best of times, but Rebecca had fallen into her element, more confident and happy and outgoing than Riza had ever seen her. Still, even as she found more friends and met more people, Rebecca would always reaffirm, every night as they were lying in bed in their cosy little attic room, that Riza would always be her very best friend. They were sisters after all, and sisters were supposed to stick together. 

Riza had noticed that there was a sadness in Aunt Trisha’s face every time Rebecca proclaimed that she and Riza would be together forever, and although Riza hadn’t asked exactly what the big fight that Aunt Trisha and Mom had had, she had tucked the question away to ask at a later time, when it was less likely that she’d receive an answer of ‘I’ll tell you when you’re older’. 

Riza stared up at the ceiling, her mind coming full circle back to the Hawkeye curse. All curses could be broken, right? And maybe Aunt Trisha had broken it for them. Uncle Hoho was an alchemist, sure, but he was still alive and kicking for now. (They’d started out calling him Uncle Van, but after Rebecca had mispronounced his surname for the umpteenth time, the name Uncle Hoho had stuck.) And obviously, Edward was a boy, not a Hawkeye girl. 

But then again, Edward was an Elric boy. Aunt Trisha had changed her name; she wasn’t really a Hawkeye girl anymore. 

Riza gave an emphatic snort and rolled over in bed. If changing her name was all it took to break the curse then she would do it as soon as she was old enough. Riza Elric sounded good enough, and she was pretty sure that Aunt Trisha would let her share her new name. It would make her part of the family. Not that she wasn’t part of the family already, but it would be nice to forget about the Hawkeye curse once and for all. 

“Riza?”

She looked over at Rebecca’s bed. “Yes, Becca?”

“Do you think that we’re going to fall in love with alchemists?”

“Maybe, I guess. Why are you thinking about that?”

“Well, I mean, Aunt Trisha fell in love with an alchemist even after she changed her name and decided to stop believing in the curse. I think that shows that there’s still some truth in it, even if she doesn’t want to believe it.” There was a long sigh from the other bed. “Do you think that we’ll ever be able to get rid of the curse? I mean, some of the story books say that true love breaks a curse, but if falling in love is part of the curse in the first place, then that wouldn’t work.”

“Please don’t talk about the curse.” Riza didn’t want to be reminded of it and reminded of the foreboding fact that if the curse hadn’t been broken, then Uncle Hoho’s days were probably numbered. 

“Ok.” There was silence for a while. “I wonder what kind of alchemist I’ll fall in love with. Someone very clever, I hope. Maybe someone who can create fireworks.”

“That sounds kind of dangerous.”

“I think it would be exciting.”

“Go to sleep, Rebecca. You’re too young to fall in love anyway.”

“I’m nine!”

“Go to sleep, Rebecca.”

The conversation was closed, and when Riza next looked across at Rebecca’s bed in the dark, it looked like she had gone to sleep. Riza wished she could sleep too, but there was too much on her mind; too much worrying about the curse and everything that went with it. She really didn’t want to fall in love. It seemed bad to doom someone to die just because she was a Hawkeye and therefore destined to be miserable. All she could do was hope that she never fell in love. Well, there weren’t very many handsome princes waiting to sweep her off her feet. The boys at school didn’t really fit the profile. Maybe she could just stay here for her whole life and help Aunt Trisha in the greenhouse, and with running her shop in the village. Then she wouldn’t need to worry about falling in love, or anything like that. Maybe the curse wasn’t broken, but maybe Riza could hide away from it as much as she could.

X

Riza had learned a lot about plants over the time she had lived with Aunt Trisha and Uncle Hoho. Aunt Trisha was delighted that she’d found such an enthusiastic botanical student and would happily teach her as much as she wanted to know, eager to share her skills and her passion. For her part, Riza found the greenhouse to be an escape from the world, somewhere calm where she could forget all her troubles, including the pesky little curse. Even after Al had been born and Aunt Trisha was juggling a newborn and an inquisitive toddler, she still always had time for Riza and the greenhouse, and she was letting Riza do more and more things in there unsupervised (although the dangerous plants were still in netting and had been moved to the highest shelf on the back wall, far away from Ed’s little questing fingers). 

Which was why Riza didn’t feel too much like she was doing something she shouldn’t be when she crept downstairs and into the greenhouse to try and find all the ingredients she might need. She didn’t exactly have a recipe, but she knew what all the plants did, so she should be able to mix the right ones together to have the desired effect.

Riza was twelve years old, and Matthew James at school had told her that he liked her and wanted her to be his girlfriend. 

Riza had said no and moved to the opposite corner of the classroom, her heart beating painfully in her mouth at the prospect. She was not allowed to fall in love, or have anyone fall in love with her. She couldn’t be anyone’s girlfriend, not ever, but she couldn’t really tell Matthew that she had a terrible curse on her. They had managed to live in Resembool all this time without the stigma of the curse attaching to them and she really didn’t want it to come back.

There had to be something she could do to stop it. She knew that Aunt Trisha wasn’t a witch and that the things she made were just remedies and treatments rather than magic potions, but surely there was something in here that could work as an anti-love potion, if she mixed the right things together. Garlic was good for the blood, and that was sort of related to the heart, so maybe if she started with that…

“Riza? It’s four o’clock in the morning, love, what are you doing up?”

Aunt Trisha was sitting in the old wicker chair at her work table in the greenhouse, Al on her breast.

“I… Nothing.”

Aunt Trisha raised an eyebrow. “Really?” 

“I…”

“It’s ok, love, you can tell me. I won’t be mad, I promise. I’m just surprised that you’re awake and down here, that’s all.”

Riza sighed. Surely of all the people who could understand her plight, Aunt Trisha would.

“Matthew James asked me to be his girlfriend today.”

“Oh, really? What did you say?”

“I said no.” 

“I’ll admit I’m glad about that. You’re still a bit young for having boyfriends, I think. Leave it another couple of years.”

“It’s not that. Well, it’s not entirely that. Also you might want to tell Rebecca she’s too young; she can’t wait to have a boyfriend.”

Aunt Trisha sighed and rolled her eyes. “I’ll have to have a word with her. But go on. Matthew James asked you to be his girlfriend and you said no, and…”

“I wanted to make a potion. Like the opposite of a love potion. Something to make sure that no one ever falls in love with me and I never fall in love with anyone else, either.”

“Well, if you eat enough garlic then no one will want to come near you,” Aunt Trisha observed. “But you know that the plants don’t work like that, Riza. It’s not magic, it’s just biology.” She patted the squashy cushion on the arm of the chair as she transferred Al over to her other breast, and Riza took the offered perch. “Why don’t you ever want to fall in love with anyone?”

“The curse. All the Hawkeye girls fall in love with alchemists who are doomed to die. I don’t want anyone to die. I don’t want to fall in love.”

“Oh, Riza.” Aunt Trisha put her free arm around her, pulling her in close. The angle was rather awkward considering Riza was on the arm of the chair and Aunt Trisha was in the chair and neither of them wanted to squash little Al, but Riza was grateful for the comforting touch nonetheless. “The curse only has power over you if you believe it does. There’s no such thing as the Hawkeye curse, I promise you. That was what I fell out with your mother about. She was determined that there was a curse, and she thought that her life was pre-destined for her. I wanted to make my own destiny, forge my own path in life. I want you and Rebecca to be able to do that too, without all this talk of a silly curse hanging over you, dictating your actions. I want Ed and Al to grow up to be their own people too, but they’re still a bit too little for me to be worrying about that just yet. What can I say to put your mind at rest?”

Riza shook her head, thinking about what had just been said. Eventually, she spoke.

“If you don’t believe in the Hawkeye curse, why did you change your name?”

“If the Hawkeye curse was real, don’t you think changing our name would be the easiest way to break it?” Trisha laughed. “There’s a long story behind the curse and behind why so many Hawkeyes have chosen to believe in it and keep the name rather than take their chances like I did. For me, even though I never believed that the name was cursed, I still knew that there was a stigma attached to it, and there was a lot of gossip associated with the family that I wanted to distance myself from. You’ve felt that too, at your old school and at the children’s home. You said that people used to tease you and Rebecca about the curse all the time. It was just the same for me and your mom. I wanted to get away from that, to have a normal life with a normal name. I wanted to get away from the curse, yes, but not because I believed in the curse and believed that changing my name would break it. I wanted to get away from all of the mythology that’s built up around the Hawkeye name and the Hawkeye curse over the years.”

Riza nodded. “I suppose I can understand that.”

“That’s also why I didn’t change my name again after I married Van. I had already established myself with my new name. The Elric Herbal Dispensary had a good reputation, and I wanted to keep that. Van respected that too. It’s not really anything to do with trying to break the curse.”

“So how come there’s a curse in the first place?” Riza asked. “And what about the alchemy thing? Even though you don’t believe in the curse you still married an alchemist.”

“I think that was coincidence, Riza. There are a lot of alchemists in the world, it’s not a niche profession. There’s an entire government department of them, the State Alchemists. Anyway, the curse goes back a very long way, back to the middle ages. There was an alchemist named Hawkeye, the last of the male Hawkeyes if history is to be believed, but I’d always take that with a pinch of salt. Hawkeye was a rogue and a cad and an all round villain, and he seduced a young lady named Gwyneth, who was very skilled with witchcraft, again, if history is to be believed. 

“Being a rogue and a cad and an all round villain, Hawkeye left Gwyneth at the altar on the day that they were supposed to marry, because it turned out that he already had a wife and two daughters in a different part of the country. Naturally, Gwyneth was rather put out at this, and she supposedly put a curse on Hawkeye’s daughters. They would fall in love with alchemists, and those alchemists would die horrible deaths. They would suffer the loss of their alchemists just as Gwyneth had suffered, although why she took it out on the daughters and didn’t curse the man who had wronged her himself remains a mystery.

“Hawkeye himself had been a Royal Alchemist and he had amassed a pretty hefty fortune for his skills, a fortune that would pass to his daughters, but in his will he added the condition that his family could only inherit his wealth if they kept up the Hawkeye name - his daughters wouldn’t take their husbands’ names when they married if they wanted a share of their father’s fortune. Naturally, these were sensible young women to whom a fortune with which to provide for their families meant more than a name, and so the inheritance survived and the Hawkeye name continued down the line until it reached you and Rebecca. You are the only bearers of the Hawkeye name left, so whatever is left of the fortune will come to you when you’re old enough. In the eyes of the law I am no longer a Hawkeye, so I get no share in it. Honestly though, I doubt there’s much left by now, and I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I’m financially independent and I don’t need that windfall.”

Riza thought about what she had been told for a long time, watching as the sun began to rise over the greenhouse. Al was asleep again, giving snuffly snores in Aunt Trisha’s arms.

 “It’s lasted a long time, this curse,” she said eventually. “If it goes all the way back to the middle ages.”

“It might not go back that far. That was just the tale that my grandmother always told me whenever I asked her about the curse. I think that a lot of it has been lost to history, and I think that we should let the rest of it go to history as well. There’s no such thing as magic and curses, Riza, and I promise that you aren’t going to fall victim to any of it unless you try and make it into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more you read into it, the more you’ll start to think that everything is connected and pre-ordained. That’s why your mother and I fought so hard and so bitterly. She was determined that the curse was real and there was nothing to be done about it. Don’t fall into the same trap. Your life is your own, Riza. No one can control it for you.” She cuddled Al close, kissing his forehead. “I think we should all get back to bed now.”

Riza accepted with good grace, slipping off the arm of the chair and following Aunt Trisha up the stairs. She wasn’t sure that she entirely agreed with Aunt Trisha’s way of thinking just yet, not when her own parents had always instilled the fear of the family curse into her. It was a hard mindset to break, even though she knew, deep down, that she would be happier without it. After all, she had known her parents a lot longer than she had known her aunt, even if the two years she’d spent in Resembool had been the happiest that she could ever remember. It was like living in a dream after the nightmare that her home life had been, and she was determined that nothing would come to break that dream apart. For now, if that meant swearing off romance for life, then that was what she would do. She didn’t need to get married and have a family of her own, not when she was surrounded by the family she already had. 

She slipped back into bed, staring at the ceiling and waiting for sleep to come. It was interesting to think about the curse’s origins, so far back in the annals of time, and in her mind, that was another point in the curse’s favour. If there hadn’t been anything in it, then surely the legend wouldn’t have been able to stick around for so long. Something must have kept happening in order to keep the belief in the curse going for hundreds of years.

Still, she wouldn’t mention it to Aunt Trisha anymore. Aunt Trisha didn’t believe in the curse, and that was that. It wasn’t hurting anyone, and neither was Riza’s own belief. They could all just go about their lives as normal. 

#FMA:Brotherhood #FMA fanfiction #Riza Hawkeye #Rebecca Catalina #Trisha Elric #eventual Royai #background Trishenheim #Fic: Practical Alchemy

[perfeggso]

every fortress falls (AKIRA x NCT)

Please enjoy this anime-kpop crossover for the Lights, Camera, Fanfiction event hosted by @supermwritersnet​! I chose to write for Shotaro and one of my favorite fictional universes ever, Akira’s Neo-Tokyo. If you know Akira, my story will run parallel to the canon plot. If not, I hope you give this a try and enjoy anyway and I highly recommend the source material! <3

If you’re interested, here is my AKIRA playlist. 

Setting of Akira: It has been thirty years since the end of WWIII, begun due to the detonation of an unidentified superweapon known only as “Akira” over Tokyo. The incident and subsequent war decimated the city which was rebuilt into Neo-Tokyo, a corrupt and crime-ridden megalopolis centered on an artificial island in Tokyo Bay.

Characters: Shotaro, Sungchan, Yuta, Akira main characters, other NCT members upcoming. 

Genres: cyberpunk, sci-fi, action/adventure 

Warnings: drug use/abuse, gangs, some swearing, eventual graphic violence

Rating: mature but not explicit 

Chapter length: 1.3k

Chapter 1:

The capsule cradled in Shotaro’s palm is red and white and shiny, like the earrings that Noriko would wear and which, when Shotaro asked, he found out were supposed to look like “blood and come,” respectively. The drone of Tanaka-Sensei’s voice from the front of the classroom barely penetrates the cloak of sullen disruption shielding Shotaro’s wooden amphitheater seat in classroom 12 of the Eighth District Vocational Training School. Even though realistically no one is paying attention, Shotaro tries to hold the pill so that his hand is obscured by his row’s shared desk. He doesn’t know why he’s so nervous; Tanaka-Sensei is barely commanding control of the room as he attempts to explain how a carburetor works, the closest kid to Shotaro is reading a girly magazine, and everyone at the school is well aware that you can buy as many of these pills as any broke student could afford from the nurse’s office.

It’s just, Shotaro reasons as the patent-leather-like curves of the capsule glint in the jaundiced combination of natural and fluorescent light, he’s always been a good kid. He doesn’t do things like this – at least that’s what Yuta constantly tells him. He doesn’t buy drugs – no matter how cheap they are – from Kaneda’s girlfriend of all people, and he certainly doesn’t take them. Kaneda, Shotaro has always felt, is inextricably linked to him. For one, Shotaro Kaneda’s family name is the same as Shotaro’s given name (though they use slightly different kanji if anyone ever cared to notice). For another thing, the two boys have known of each other since early childhood, having come up in the same orphanage and school system for boys deemed by the state to be “lacking in future prospects.” (Shotaro doesn’t think this label really applies to him; it’s not his fault he doesn’t really like academics and the one activity he really enjoys – dancing – is far too expensive for him to pursue). For a final, crucial thing, Kaneda is the leader of the Capsules, the rival gang to Yuta’s Clowns. The fact that Kaneda could very literally kill Shotaro’s adoptive brother of sorts any day now understandably precludes him from feeling much of an affinity towards his classmate.

Shotaro has been taunted more times than he can remember for being the “boring” Shotaro. But if skating by under the radar to receive his vocational high school diploma, getting out, and not being sent to Jaws for discipline twice a week is boring to his classmates, Shotaro doesn’t really care.

Well, he didn’t care, until he had gotten to thinking one day last week. It started when he’d found Yuta’s stash of drugs. Yuta tries very hard to keep any evidence of his dependency from his little brother, but he’s not always great at it. Over the years, Shotaro couldn’t help but notice the blissful calm which comes over Yuta when Shotaro has caught him thinking he was taking the stuff in private. Nor could Shotaro help but register the ensuing boost in energy and motivation. It had always made him wonder even if Yuta categorically forbid it and he was good at smothering his curiosity. When Shotaro came to school the next day and mentioned finding Yuta’s pills offhand to Sungchan, the younger boy proved less adept at quashing his hunger for new experiences, and Shotaro had begun to truly let his imagination get the best of him.

“Hey!” The harsh whisper startles Shotaro out of his preoccupation with the look and feel of his capsule, to the extent that he almost blunders and drops it down the five graduated rows of seats below him. But fortunately, or maybe unfortunately, he holds on.

The voice is as familiar as the backseat of Yuta’s motorcycle and coming from the level of seats behind Shotaro, so he turns around. Class has devolved to the point that having a full conversation stage-whisper style is about the least disruptive thing occurring.

Sungchan’s oversized frame and comforting smile loom over Shotaro from above, like a benevolent version of the mechanical surveillance vultures Sungchan had once gushed in horror that the American government was trying to build.

“Did I scare you?” Sungchan asks.

Shotaro fakes a glare at his best friend, but only ends up chuckling.

“How could I be scared by a 185cm walking teddy-bear?”

Sungchan tries to look hurt but giggles right back.

“Did you get the stuff?”

Shotaro nods, angling his hand so Sungchan can see the pill.

“Why were you so late to class?” Shotaro asks, feeling irrational panic nipping at the edges of his mind for the first time all day to suggest that maybe Sungchan was held up because someone caught him with drugs. Shotaro wonders why this thought hadn’t occurred to him earlier, hoping that’s an indication of its ridiculousness.

“I got caught up talking to Sawako in the nurse’s office,” Sungchan explains, and Shotaro relaxes a little. “She was very chatty for some reason and I felt bad. I think she’s lonely. Did you know Kaneda got her pregnant?”

“No, what?” Shotaro makes a face as disapproving as he feels. “That asshole. Of course he wouldn’t use protection. Ugh, anyway. Did you get what you wanted? Everything go smoothly?”

Sungchan pulls a button-size plastic bag from his pocket and displays, not quite covertly enough for Shotaro’s liking but he’ll live, the identical red and white capsule within.

“Perfect.”

“I was thinking,” Sungchan continues, “Sawako said she thinks there’ll be a battle between the Capsules and the Clowns tonight. Should we try to catch some of it?”

Shotaro leans his elbows onto the desk in front of his friend and smiles, indulgent.

“While we’re high for the first time? Sounds like a shitty idea.” Sungchan pouts like Shotaro knew he would, so he adds a “we can feel it out in the moment, though,” because he is a weak man when it comes to Sungchan’s wants and needs. They are both that way towards each other, even when it gets them into trouble. But as Yuta always says, “memorable trouble is worth it”; i.e., if it makes a good story in the future, might as well go for it.

“Yuta would kill me if he found out though,” Shotaro wagers, “and I mean that literally.”

The last class of the day ends as he’s speaking and he and Sungchan make plans for meeting in the evening as they filter out of the musty, chipping paint, brutalist structure which is supposed to pass for a place of learning.

Shotaro finds Yuta where he always does after school: unsheathing his motorcycle in the back parking lot.

Yuta’s bike is a souped-up Honda painted to look like a 1940s bomber. Yuta wears a black leather biking suit he probably slipped on in the men’s room before heading out and pulls a helmet decorated with clown makeup over his black mullet as he greets his little brother, following the exchange by offering a similar helmet to Shotaro.

They hop on and head out onto the streets of Neo-Tokyo. Skyscrapers tower grey in the daytime light what feels like miles above the litter-strewn street and block out the sun. They’re so massive they could probably each hold an entire city’s worth of people, Shotaro reckons, and they move sluggishly in opposition to the trajectory of the bike, like cargo ships trudging against water.

“Good day?” Yuta asks when they stop at an intersection next to Flower Alley Mall.

“Yeah,” Shotaro assures. “Sungchan heard something about a battle tonight? What’s up with that?”

“I don’t want to get into it, but he’s right,” Yuta admits. “But don’t try to tag along or I’ll murder you.”

With that, the light turns and Shotaro grabs hold of Yuta, mumbling “I know” fondly into his shoulder. They zip away like that the rest of the way to their apartment, the capsule burning nuclear in Shotaro’s pocket as he’s left to ponder his next move.

#supermaction #supermwritersnet #nct #shotaro #osaki shotaro #shotaro fanfic #osaki shotaro fanfic #nct fanfiction #nakamoto yuta fanfiction #nct nakamoto yuta #yuta nct #shotaro nct #yuta #nakamoto yuta #crossover fanfiction #kpop fanfic #akira 1988 #akira fanfic #akira 1988 fanfic #sungchan #jung sungchan #sungchan nct #sungchan fanfic #jung sungchan fanfic #shotaro kaneda #neothestars #nctnetwrite #cyberpunk #anime fanfic

[waywardimpalawriter]

Man out of time (Marcus Moreno x Female Reader)

Man out of time

Pairing:  Marcus Moreno x Female Reader

Characters: Marcus Moreno, Missy Moreno, Anita Moreno, mentions of Miracle Guy,  

Setting: few months after the end of We can be heroes 

Rating: PG-13 for now

Warnings: few curse words, angst mostly,

 Word count: 1,610

Summary: Simple, two syllable word Dictionary.com say’s it means easy to understand, deal with, use, etc. Marcus Moreno curses its existence, wishing his katana’s could cut through with a neat slice and bring back what he’s lost.   

Notes: Written for Writer Wednesday held by the marvelous @autumnleaves1991-blog​. I’ll admit I battled with this one for a good while and with the help of @icanbeyourjedi​ decided this would be my first Marcus Moreno fic. I do hope you all enjoy and as always much love to all my doves. 

“You promised remember?” Stubborn set to her small statue, arms across with a deep glare in those normally sweet brown eyes. “What happened to that promise dad?”

Looking to his mom for help but coming up empty as she just lifts her hands and shrugs with a small roll of her eyes before turning away to head back towards the kitchen. “Thanks mom,” slight sarcastic twist to the tone. Hand resting on popped out hip studying his daughter while searching for the right words to explain. “True it’s no emergency like two months ago Missy but the mission is simple enough I’ll be back home before the weekend.”

“Take me with you then,” brow lifting in challenge remind Marcus so much of her mother the memory picking his heart.

Pushing those thoughts aside, “I can’t you have school and training,” seeing her fixing to protest he holds up a hand to stall the flow of words. “Besides it’s too dangerous, this isn’t a typical mission the Heroics would go on.”

“So they push it on you, why?” Voice rising slightly with worry and a dash of fear for her father’s safety.

Running a hand through his hair tugging the dark strands lightly in frustration. “Things are…” always searching for the right words to explain, without giving too much away and keeping Missy in the dark to protect her. “Complicated Missy I have to lead by example you know that sweetheart. Please trust me when I say this isn’t something I want to do.”

“Then why…”

Sighing Marcus steps towards his daughter crouching down so their eye level, “Because I’m the only one qualified to take the mission.” Resting a fingerless gloved hand on her slim shoulder, “Simple in and out, take out the bad guy done,” offering her, his patented half smile. “Besides you’ve got your friends now and training you’ll never notice I’m gone.”

Expressive chocolate eyes roll but the smirk is all Moreno when they lock back with her father’s. Flinging herself into his arms, wrapping her own around his neck and hugging the life’s breath from his lungs. “You’re wrong dad I’ll miss you,” trying to keep the trembling from her voice. Tears pricking the back of her eyes, nose rubbing along the leather jacket he’s wearing. “Four day’s right? No longer?”

“No longer just four days sweetheart,” pulling back to smile at his daughter catching the fear in her glassy eyes. “I promise to be safe.”

“And come home right?” She adds still clinging to her father’s shoulders. Memories of watching the alien’s wrap their mechanical arms around and pull him into the ship still very fresh in her mind. Never wanting a repeat performance of those horrible three hours.

Nodding, “Yes ma’am and I expect you to mind your abuela, do your homework and train.” Ticking off each one while giving her a smile.

“Always dad,” eyes rolling again as she lets him go, standing to his full height now. “When do you leave?”

Smiling slipping to a frown, “Once I’m packed. Intel came in this afternoon and I’ve been briefed.”

“Ah so that’s why your wear this ridiculous get up and rode in on that obnoxious two wheeled death machine,” putting her own words into the conversation, Anita Moreno rejoined her son and granddaughter leaning heavily on her cain. “Don’t you dare roll your eyes at me Marcus Moreno you aren’t too old for me to whip,” banishing her walking stick towards him affectionately.

“Mom,” wanting too but doesn’t roll his eyes at her words, heart warmed by the undercurrent of worry he picks up despite her admonishment. Knowing much like Missy, she worried about his well being and the dangers lurking around each corner for the leader of the Heroics. “Neither of you need to worry, it’s a simple mission nothing I haven’t faced before.”

Boy had he been wrong about those last few words, cursing that two syllable word with every fiber in his being while trying to adjust to these strange surroundings. Floating car honking, racing pass Marcus standing stock still in the middles of what didn’t appear be to a street.

“Hey asshole move before you get flown over,” half hanging out the window with a middle finger salute aimed his way.

Itching to use his powers on the punk Marcus shakes his head stepping back and almost tripping over the cement curb.  Mesmerized by the sheer sights surrounding him. Blinking several times thinking he’s seeing things or at the very least Miracle Guy is playing some seriously messed up trick on him.

“Lost?” Soft feminine voice questions from behind him.

Turning slowly, weary of who’s standing at his back, “You could say that.”

“Marcus Moreno?” Gasp issues from her parted lips eyes shocked wide almost like seeing a ghost. “But… but your…”

Frowning unsure of this woman with how she’s acting at seeing him. “I’m what?”

“Dead…” her words echo around him like a thick fog.

Head shaking, reaching into his jeans pocket to pull the cell phone out cursing upon finding it’s out of juice. “The rumors of my demise are greatly exaggerated.” Trying to make light even as a stone starts to sink in his stomach. “Miracle Guy put you up to this? Has to be some kind of simulation testing me right?”

“No… no it’s,” bitting her lip, she takes a step forward pulling a thin clear plastic looking object from her pocket. “What year is it?”

“Why?” Looking between her face and the light up piece of tech in her hand, Marcus takes a step back. Only to be honked at by another flying car. “Tech guys stepped up their game this time around.”

“Because,” swallowing harshly, “your not in Kansas anymore Toto.” Trying and failing to give a half smile. Only to have it fall with he scowl Marcus sends her. “Answer the question first then I’ll explain.”

Sighing, running a shaky hand through his hair, dread filling his veins, “2021, March if I remember.”

“I”m sorry Dorothy but you’re wrong,” glancing down eyes focused on the thin piece of plastic in her grasp. Pulling up the calendar to show him the date. “It’s March 14, 2041 and you good sir have come back from the dead.”

Gapping like a fish out of water, Marcus can’t seem to string two words together till a bubble of laughter leaves his chest. Morphing into chuckles and finally a great big belly laugh which has him doubling over holding his stomach and slapping his knee. “It’s a joke right? Miracle Guy, Tech-No he’d be able to pull something like this off.”

Glancing up at her, seeing the weariness even a touch of fear painted in those deep eyes. Turning her phone back around to pull up the news report. Male voice echoing around the two of them only slightly drowned out by the busy city still churning.

“The search has been called off for Heroic’s leader Marcus Moreno as it entered the third week with no sign. Our hearts go out to the Moreno family hit by this tragedy. Leaving so many to wonder what exactly happened and how did his last mission go so wrong.”

Shaking his head, eyes blinking several times to clear the imagines of Missy and Anita crying in each others arms. Surrounded by the children of the Heroics and the hero’s themselves, each taking the news differently. Vision filled with Missy’s red rimmed, tear streaked face breaking his heart, legs giving out from under him and crumbing to his knees.

“I don’t… I just left… it’s been two hours,” words stuttering from his mouth trying to grasp exactly what happened.

Debating with herself whether to step forward for comfort or turn to leave. The former winning as she drops beside him, returning the phone to its pocket and carefully gathering this broken semi stranger into her arms. “I’m sorry, this wasn’t the intension we had. There’s,” swallowing hard when she feels him stiffen beside her. “A plan, we had a plan but it’s changed and now you’re stuck.”

Wide with anger and shock, Marcus’s deep chocolate eyes raise to look at her. “You did this?”

Gulping for air and words, “Not me solely no, I apologize truly this wasn’t… I mean,” fidgeting under the intense stare, bottom lip caught by her tongue and drug between pearly whites. “I’m sorry Marcus so sorry,” short sob leaving a dry throat.

“Sorry for what? For taking me away from my life, from my time period or from the little girl who needs her father? Because as I see it right now this is all manner of fucked up and your gonna do something about it. Fix this shit so I can get back to my daughter.” Seething with rage Marcus stands to his full impressive height. Reaching behind to pull both katana’s from there sheathes.

Staying on her knees head bowed, “I can’t that’s the trouble Marcus.” Looking up into his pain streaked furious chocolate eyes, flinching at the sneer that contorts his beloved features. “I’m mysorry darling truly,” words whispered and barely meeting his ears as she vanishes into the thin air.

Speechless, arms hanging at his sides, stuck by the realization of her words, the video, combine with the knowledge he’s lost twenty some years with Missy watching her grow-up. Emotions swirl like a thick fog in his mind consuming thoughts and making reactions none existence to the world around him. A world that’s left him behind, while he’s stuck in the past and facing an uncertain future as a man out of time.

#Writer Wednesday #Marcus Moreno x Female Reader #Marcus Moreno x F!Reader #Marcus Moreno x Fem!Reader #We can be heroes fic

[2018shawn]

prosecco courage

warnings: unprotected sex bc they’ve had the discussion in my head prior to this night so if you haven’t wrap before you tap folks. smut obvs, swearing, light choking and a boy giving into a girls persistent ways

a/n: asbfjasds I feel like I'm so bad at smut I'm so sorry but nevertheless, here is 5k of it bc the live tonight finally got me to finish it. @shawnsmoose​ sent me an smol request about 20 years ago, so here it is n I'm sorry I don’t feel like I captured the choking very well sooooo big laughs 🥵👀 we’re here for a good time not a long time peace out x

Tom looked at the picture on his phone for probably the 176th time since you’d sent him it earlier this evening. Your phone was held in one of your hands, pointing towards the mirror to take the picture, a glass of prosecco in the other. Your body was covered in nothing but a matching, red lace underwear set, clinging to and showing off each asset of yours. He’d seen you in it once before and lost his shit back then and as it turns out – nothing has changed. Groaning and throwing his head back against his headboard, he tossed his phone aside, trying to get back to concentrating on writing the script in front of him. Deadlines were a bitch.

You, on the other hand, were in the corner of a club downtown, the red lace underwear covered by your sexiest black dress and topped off with patent, nude heels and matching bag. It was fun; the amount of alcohol you’d consumed soaking into your veins made it more fun that what you’d anticipated. You wanted nothing more than to go about your usual Saturday routine – face mask, bubble bath and your comfiest pyjamas. Or you most recent routine – face mask, bubble bath, your sexiest pyjamas and fucking the living daylights out of Tom.

The music was booming, the group of your girlfriends enjoying their time as they huddled around their booth, topping up their drinks from the ice-cold bucket in the middle of the table. You pulled your phone out your bag, feeling more annoyed as you clicked on your conversation with Tom seeing he hadn't sent anymore messages. After you’d sent the picture, he’d simply replied, be careful, let me know if you need picking up 💙

What a way to make you feel stupid, for not replying to the picture you’d sent to him. It had taken you almost half a bottle of prosecco before you’d even headed out the door to pluck up the courage to press send. It only spurred you on to drink more, to forget about embarrassing yourself to someone who wasn’t even your boyfriend yet. The more you drank, the more you thought he probably had girls throwing themselves at him; as much as he says he’s only seeing you, who’s to say he’s not the same as every other man you’ve dated?

It was getting to almost 1 o’clock, which you were proud of as a very rare clubber, but your drinking was slowing down, your stomach feeling full of fizz. Normally, you’d be straight on the phone to Tom, asking him to come get you but what was the point if he didn’t even want to see a picture of you. You gulped the rest of your drink in one go, picking up your bag and leather jacket – because London was cold in the winter – giving the girls the heads up you were leaving.

Several pleads to stay and hugs from your closest friends later, you were heading out of the packed club, heading to the taxi rank just metres away from the club entrance. Tom picked his phone up after another thirty minutes of working some more, his brain coming to a halt with words, only being able to think of you and that damn picture. He knew if he replied and gave you the response you wanted, you’d cancel your night out and turn up at his place, which he didn’t want you to do. He wanted you to go and have a good time, you needed it after how much you’d been working and grafting, so he’d finally persuaded you to go with them, telling you he’d be here plenty of other nights for you casual date night. He told himself he awake this late on a Saturday night, working, because he wanted to get the script finished. The reality was, he was awake this late on a Saturday because you still hadn’t replied and he needed to know you were okay. 

The taxi driver smiled at you as you sunk into the back seat of the black cab, “where to, miss?”-

A loud knock on Tom’s door at just gone 1:30am was the happy interruption he wanted for him to be able to close his finally close his laptop. He trudged to the door, wiping his eyes in an attempt to wipe away the heavy, sleepy feeling. He pulled off the chain, twisting the lock before tugging the door open, only hoping it was you the other side. And there you stood, your arms wrapped around your body to protect yourself from the cold and tom could understand why, the cold air hitting his bare top half, making him tense up. “Y/N?” He asked, blinking his eyes as if he was imagining.

“You’re an arse,” you spat, storming past him into the familiar warmth of his home. Despite your clear annoyance, he smiled at your presence, closing the door swiftly behind you to stop anymore heat from escaping.

“Excuse me?” He watched as you headed straight for the staircase, you high heels clicking over the hardwood floor before you kicked them off, tossing them to the side. Your hips swayed a little more than normal as you started your journey up his stairs, not caring that your dress rode up a little more than it had all evening. “And where are you going?”

“I need to pee,” you simply shouted, not bothering the turn around and look at him before disappearing out of his view.

He supposed he was meant to follow you, not very often dealing with the stubborn side of you thus far into your (not official) relationship. So he did just that. Locking up downstairs and switching all the lights off because he assumed you’d soon be crashed out on his bed, if the smell of alcohol as you drifted past him was anything to go by. The sound of the toilet flushing filled the empty silence before you reappeared, head leaning around his bedroom door to see where he was. On the bed, tom let his legs dangle of the foot of the bed, laying backwards with his arms flung across his face. You cleared you throat, and he removed his arms from over his eyes, sitting up and leaning on his forearms. The sweatpants that hung low on his hips, displaying the band of his boxers, were a total distraction from you being mad at him and he knew it.

“I’m an arse?” He asked, repeating your previous phrase with a hint of confusion in his tone.

You leaned against the door frame, still yet to enter his room as your arms crossed in front of you, body language telling him that you meant what you said, “Yeah.”

“And why is that?” He questioned, raising an eyebrow as you put all your body weight onto one side, your other leg bending at the knee. His eyes couldn’t help but wander over your body and admire the way the dress clung to your frame so perfectly and normally, he’d be ripping it off you, but he wasn’t sure you wanted that from him right now.

“You ignored my picture.” Oh so this is what it’s about he thought to himself, a smirk subconsciously appearing on his lips. He got up from where he was sprawled on the bed and walked over to you, his hand snaking around your waist, all the time keeping the cocky smile on his lips. “Don’t smile, you jerk. I felt stupid! I felt… like you didn’t want the picture. Like I was just some other stupid girl that had fallen head over heels for you and was trying to woo you. It was humiliating…” you hiccupped, your hand coming up to cover your mouth, “… and now I’m really drunk because some guy bought everyone at the table drinks and I wasn’t gonna but I though hey, if Tom doesn’t want the attention then someone else sure as hell…” His lips crashed on to yours, stopping you before you let anything else leave you mouth. He hated to hear that he made you feel stupid. He hated even more that you felt like you needed to get the attention from another guy, but he couldn’t say too much because, technically, you weren’t officially his.

He pulled his lips away, licking off the taste of jägerbombs and vodka, letting his forehead rest against yours. “You know, I had to stop myself from looking at that picture and being a horny teenager all night. If I replied what I really want to reply, you wouldn’t have gone out and had a good time.”

“I need to sit down.” You demanded, and you didn’t know if it was the alcohol that was making you dizzy or if it was just the way he just won you over every single time. He laughed softly, pulling your arm and sitting you on the bed.

“I’ll be right back,” he told you before disappearing out of the room, returning minutes later with two bottles of water and some medicine in his hand, “take these.” He handed you two small pills, opening the bottle for you as you popped them into your mouth. He helped you in drinking some water, his spare hand resting under your chin and tilting it back as you let the ice-cold liquid wash down the medication.

For the first time of the evening, your lips curled up into a smile as a way of saying thank you as he put the bottles of water on the bedside table, your stubborn personality restricting you from saying it out loud. “He asked for my number...” you don’t know why you were saying it, because at the time you turned your back to the creepy stranger and pulled a sicky face, and you most definitely were not interested. The only thing you was interested in was getting some form of reaction from Tom. But it was as if you’d forgotten the words he’d spoken to you before you felt like you was about to throw up everywhere.

“Pardon?” You words stopped him dead in his tracks as he was about to walk past you, stopping striaght in front of you instead. He didn’t say it aggressively, he didn’t say it like he was annoyed, but you knew he was saying it just to make you repeat yourself for the sake of it.

“He... I’m...” suddenly you felt nervous and gulped as Tom hovered over you, looking down as you sat on the bed, staring into his torso because you were too scared to make eye contact. His body was insane, even more so when he’s stood directly in front of you and your eyes can’t even manage to look away. Each pair of abdominal muscles felt warm against your cold finger tips, the feeling of him tense underneath you sending a flush of heat to your core. His hand wrapped around your wrist, putting a pause on any gentle touches you were giving him. Your eyes finally pulled away from his chiseled feautures, slowly drifting up until they connected with his. “He asked for my number.”

“And what did you say, darling?” His voice was soft, again, not like he was annoyed. You kind of wanted him to be annoyed though, you wanted him to want you as much as you wanted him.

“I… I said I was seeing somebody else.” You couldn’t help but rebel against his grasp, wriggling your hand out of his firm grip and returning it to his lower stomach. Fingers traced the waistband of his sweats, and you thought the outline of his dick was more prominent that is was before. You wanted to show him that you wanted to be his because rejecting one other guy was just not enough.

“Love…” he started, grabbing your wrist again, “not whilst you’re this drunk.” You rolled your eyes and threw yourself back to the bed, landing with a thud against the feathery duvet. “I’m gonna get you some clothes.”

In all honesty, he couldn’t look at you for a minute longer because he wanted to rip the stupid, perfect dress off and have you underneath – or on top, whatever, he wasn’t fussy – him all night long. He knew he was bad with words; he knew he never let on his true feelings and that’s probably why he’s had so many failed attempts in the past. But you were different, he was closer to telling you how he felt more than he ever had been with anyone else. His shadow disappeared from over you, and you sat back up, watching the way his back tensed as he walked over to his wardrobe. Sifting through several drawers, he picked up a couple of options, assessing a few items to see if they were too big for you. He’d liked the fact you told the other guy you were seeing somebody. In fact, he loved it.

You sighed, wishing he’d put on a stupid top if he didn’t want you to pounce on him anytime soon. The black dress that covered your body, was being tugged over your head messily by your arms, almost getting yourself stuck in the mesh material. He still had his back to you as you threw it to the floor, smoothing your fingers over your body whilst assessing the presentation of that red lace underwear.

“You know, I really did have to stop myself, with that picture. You looked fucking incredible, Y/N.” He said the words whilst he had the courage to say them, usually defeated by his inside voice when it came to discussing how he felt. “I think I picked my phone up about…” He turned around, sweats and a t-shirt in his hands and his jaw clenched. His eyes widened at the sight before him; you lay on his bed, on your stomach, with your legs crossed in the air and head resting in the palm of your hands. You can imagine cringing at yourself in the morning, because being sexy didn’t come naturally to you.

“Babe, please don’t make this harder than it already is” he laughed, placing the comfy outfit on the corner of the bed.

“Make what harder?” You looked up innocently, through your fluttery lashes, putting on the most delicate voice you could muster. He admired your body, tanned and smooth. The freckles on your back he’d once spent all afternoon counting – around 57, if you’re wondering – were only partially covered by the strap of your bra, which stood out immensely against your skin. The matching bright red panties adorned your hips perfectly, sculpting around your curvy hips and peachy derriere.

“Come here, let’s get you dressed,” he held out his hand, which although you didn’t want to, you took, shuffling yourself up to sit on your knees at the end of the bed.

“But I don’t wannaaaaaaa” you whined, quivering your lower lip.

“But you gottaaaaaa” he mimicked you, sticking his tongue out. That damn tongue. Could be put to better use somewhere else, you thought, giggling to yourself like a little lovestruck teenager as he just shot you a look at you amusing yourself.

If god was real, he was stood in front of you, attempting to get you to bed.

When you reached over to the short pile of clothes he’d placed on the end of the bed for you and pushed them off the edge, so they landed in a pile on the floor, he rolled his eyes. “Oops.” You shrugged. Your fingers found the waistband of his sweats again and he was getting tired of fighting you off. It not that he didn’t want you, because he’d be crazy not to, but he just didn’t want to take advantage of your current tipsy state, he’d been brought up better than that. You pulled at his joggers, making him tumble forwards towards you, already cringing at your desperate and needy voice. “Why don’t you want me… Tommy?”

The nickname was all it took to leap on top of you, pinning you down. His hand held around your neck, holding your head still as you flopped back against the bed sheets yet again. If you’d have known, you’d have said it sooner. You couldn’t help but smirk, your constant nagging finally getting you somewhere. His other hand kept him from crushing your body, holding up his weight above you. His eyes were lustful, like he’d switched personalities in a matter of seconds.

“You don’t think I want you?” He asked, voice quiet but rough. His breath felt hot against your skin, and you wriggled underneath him for a brief moment, until he moved his hand from your neck and snaked it down your body, making sure to take his time until he got to your wetting centre. He cupped whatever of you he could, his warm hands meeting your warm core creating the most uncontrollable heat between you.

“No. I don’t.” you spoke, with a hint of bratiness portraying in your words even though you felt like melted butter beneath him. A quiet tut left his mouth and you think it was followed by a dark chuckle, but you couldn’t be sure because you’d zoned into a world of desperation. Your hips bucked up against his hand, only briefly getting more pressure from him.

“Fuck this,” he spat, crashing down onto your lips, his thumb tracing the outline of your swollen folds through the material of your damp panties. He didn’t want to give in, he thought he could be better than that, but you made it too damn impossible for him to going about a normal nightly routine without being so irresistible.

A whimper fell from your plump lips as he pulled away, instantly attaching to the skin on your neck where a faint red mark had formed from where he had grabbed you. He soothed the area with his lips, tongue lapping across the sensitive area. The strain against his sweatpants was getting intense, digging into the inner of your thighs the further down your body his lips travelled. You muttered a string of words, squirming beneath him.

His hand came from your aching middle, fiercely reaching up and cupping your breast like he was holding onto it for dear life. Beneath the lace covering, your nipple hardened as he caressed you through the fabric, teasing it in between his nimble fingers. He got off on seeing you pleased, he knew that, you knew that, hell, even Sandra next door fucking knew that. So when his lips didn’t stop at your stomach and continued further south, you knew you could count your blessings and say goodbye to your bratty attitude. With one hand, he tugged your underwear to the side, tracing your damp folds with his fingers. “Tom…” You breathed, desperate for his touch. He smirked, not that you could see, as his head bowed further into the valley of your legs.

Replacing where his fingers had been, his tongue followed suit of his digits, tracing your dripping folds and circling your throbbing clit. That was the first squeal of pleasure you let out, mouth dropping wide and hands coming up to his freshly shaved hair. You were annoyed he had to shave it off, wanting nothing more to run your fingers through his floppy brown hair and tug away at it. Grabbing the next best thing, your fingers bunched up as much of the duvet as they could grab as he continued to tease your entrance, the roughness of his buzzcut brushing against your inner thighs. Reapplying pressure from his fingers caused your second squeal, your chest showing your heavy breathing and back arching into him. He squeezed your breast intensely in an attempt to communicate with you whilst his mouth was busy elsewhere. If this is where being drunk got you, you thought you’d start drinking every day, because never before has he loved and performed with such hungry passion like this.

The sound of his lips working against your cunt was the only thing filling the room, other than the sounds of your whimpers and whines. The vibrations shuddered through your body as he hummed into you, his hand trying to reach further up and find a place back on your neck. He noted your heavier breathing and the way your legs wrapped around his shoulders, getting tighter by the second. He knew you well enough to know that he could make you cum, just from using his mouth, but he didn’t want that. He wanted to push you, like you had pushed him.

When he was unsuccessful in reaching to your collar, he pulled away from your ridiculously wet core, sucking on your clit and pulling away with a pop, regaining his breath and wiping his mouth on the sheets beneath him. “You really do want me, huh?” He smirked, crawling up until he was face to face with you, admiring your flushed and rosy cheeks. Your teeth captured your bottom lip, nodding silently to his question, feeling unsatisfied with the lack of touch. He sat up on his knees, in between your legs, and tugged at the waistband of his sweats and boxers, pulling them down his legs, for what felt like the longest time, until his member popped free and you’re suddenly aware of how wet you are for him, feeling your panties stick to you.

“P-please, Tom” you breathe, hands releasing the ball of material in your hands and reaching up for him. He snaps your hands away, still annoyed by your persistent plan to get him to this point and he pushes them above your head, your arms stretched out as much as can be.

“Get up.” He demanded, moving back away from you to give you enough room to slide out. You remained stuck to the bed, however, confused by his sudden instructions. Was he kicking you out? Had you literally been that desperate he didn’t wanna do it?

“Huh?” You questioned as he shuffled back on his knees until his legs could slide off the foot of the bed, landing on the floor with his sweat’s puddled around his ankles.

“Get up.” He repeated, same tone but slightly higher volume. You sat up, wiggling your bum until your legs also fell over the edge of the bed. Your legs were wide, his body inbetween them as he traced his hand up your skin, starting at the valley of your breasts and finishing at your neck. His large hand cupped your jaw, and it the most delicately forceful way possible, he put pressure onto you, forcing your body to stand upright as you followed the direction of his touch. As soon as you were stood, legs threatening to buckle beneath you any minute, he once again soothed over the red mark around your jaw, relaxing his tongue against your skin.

Your arms bent around to your back, fingers clasping at the buckle of your bra, until he he caught you, pulling his head sharply away from your neck and capturing your wrists in his hands. “No,” he said, voice gentle this time, as if you were about to walk out the door and never come back.

“No?” You asked, relaxing your shoulder and letting your arms drop to your side.

“No.” He repeated, more definite with his tone of voice this time. “You wanted me to see this little ensemble...” His hands pointed over your body before they found your hips, twisting your body round 180° so you were facing the bed, your back facing his front. You got his gist, mentally cursing yourself as you was reminded of the picture. You were thankful for the alcohol, though. You wern’t sure you’d be so confident in it without the help of your little friend, prosecco.

You bent forewords, walking your hands across the bed until you were happy you were bent over far enough, your ass higher in the air than the rest of your body. Blonde curls slinked over your shoulder as you turned your head, and what you saw was nothing but a beautiful sight. 

Toms arm tensed as his hand wrapped around his hardened length, a groan of pleasure leaving his lips from the anticipated touch. He pumped himself a few times as he admired the way the lace decorated the curves of your ass; the Brazilian fitting showed off the creases of your hips and the soft natural stretch marks which he could spend hours kissing. His bottom lip was sucked in by his teeth and you reciprocated the action, staring up lustfully at him.

You wanted to beg. You wanted to push your ass back so you could feel his cock against you. But before you had time to decide if that was a wise idea, he took two small steps foreword, lining himself up with the centre of your body. You sucked in air, stomach knotting with butterflies as you waited for him where you most needed him. At tap from his hand on your ass jolted your body forwards, falling onto your forearms and chest flush against the bed.

You didn’t dare look back, not knowing how much more of him you could look at before you jumped ship and ended up getting yourself off. The feel of him pushing your pants to the side made you jump, a gasp escaping you as he ran his index finger up your folds, making sure you were wet enough. Satisfied with how he’d made you dripping with juices, he nudged the tip of his cock against you. Simultaneously, you both let out a moan, both needing it as much as each other. When he pushed into you, at the slowest pace possible to let you adjust around him, he gripped his right hand around your hip to hold you in place.

He began slow, grunting behind you each time you pushed back onto him. A string of unforgivable words left your mouth as you kept a straight posture, noting how the headboard smashed against the back wall as his thrusts grew deeper, the sound synchronised with the sound of his hips smashing against your ass. He released your hip, reaching forward and grabbing a fistful of your bouncy hair. Tugging your hair towards his body, you squealed as your head followed, back arching in the most flexible manner. Whilst keeping hold of your hair, he reached further round, grabbing the front of your neck to keep you from falling foreward to the bed.

The feeling of him clutching onto your neck sent your mind into overdrive although you struggled to spit out an approving moan, your throat being restricted by the pressure of his hand. Your legs began to quiver, bucking beneath you. Tom flipped you over in one swift movement, hand remaining on your neck the entire time as he thrusted back into you, hating the feeling of being out of you; even 2 seconds was too long. He held you there, by your throat, reminding himself that you were here, with him, and not that stupid guy at the club. He wanted you to know he was holding onto you because he never wanted you think about another guy again. He wanted you to know that he felt utterly awful for not making you feel as good as you should about that picture. He wanted you to know, that he wanted you. 

He felt himself getting close, more so now he was face to face with you, adoring how your mouth fell open, lustful eyes meeting his. When you bit your lip and giggled, he couldn’t understand how he was on top of, choking you and fucking you until you forgot about the sleazy guy at the bar, yet you could be the cutest human on the planet. He relaxed his hand, swiping his thumb over your lip in what you found to be more of a delicate moment compared to the ones he’d been showing you all night. His head bobbed down, lips hovering over yours as he spoke quietly. “I want you.” He breathed, tensing and twitching as you wrapped your legs around him, “so fucking much.”

His words were genuine, but you couldn’t understand. He had you. Underneath him. In his bedroom. At 2am on a Sunday morning. “You’ve got me.” You breathed, fingers playing with the hair -or lack of - at the nape of his neck as he rested his forehead on yours. He felt sticky, but you were sure that you did too. 

“All the time?” He asked with a quiver in his voice, but you put it down the the fact you were both on the edge of a climax. You just nodded, biting your lip to stifle a squeal at both your orgasm and excitement of his words. His hips didn’t stop or slow down like you expected them and you knew you were on the brink of finishing, fingers clutching and digging into his back at an attempt to hold on longer. 

“Tom... I- I’m-” You struggled to talk, cutting your sentence short and interrupting yourself with a scream, your eyes rolling back and squeezing shut. He breathed into the crook of your neck, a small mmhmm humming through hip lips in agreement. When his rhythm slowed as hips jolted fewer times, but with more deep and powerful thrusts, he nudged your spot, leaving you crumbling beneath him whilst a string of ohmygod’s and fuck-tom’s left you, your voice shaking in tune with your legs. 

Your hips jolted upwards as your came around from your climax, pushing into him as he experienced his own. His arm snaked round your back, pulling you into him as if you lifting up to meet his thrusts wasn’t enough, before he was moaning in your ear, sending shivers through your body like nothing you’ve ever known.

Neither of you knew how long you’d been there; him on top and still inside you and you catching your breath beneath him. But you both did know, is that you wanted to be there for forever more. It was maybe minutes until he rolled out of you, flopping back onto the bed with a satisfied groan. He still had an arm underneath you, and he tugged it, rolling you onto your side and further into his body. You aching centre felt sore, but very well loved and you couldn’t help but smile. “So... about that guy at the bar?”

“What about him?” Your eyebrows furrowed, not expecting that to be the first thing to come up after having mind blowing sex. 

“I’m gonna fuck him up for speaking to my girl.”

------

taglist: @imaginashawnns​ @fallinallincurls​

#tom holland #tom holland smut #tom holland blurb #tom holland one shot #tom holland fanfic #tom holland x reader

[chibimyumi]

Dear Chibimyumi, I’ve had a few debates with friends on the fashion of the series in regards to the Circus Arc. We’re at a bit of a standstill in regards to it—some of us think it’s inappropriate at best and ahistorical at worst, while others of us think that’s the point; a circus needed to draw attention and be somewhat scandalous to be successful in the era. From your redesigns we can tell you know more on the topic than any of us, so do you have any thoughts on the matter?

Dear Anon,

First of all, thank you for your high regard! That makes me very happy. Well then, without further ado, let’s dive into 1880s circus historical accuracy.

The short answer to your question is that both you and your friends are correct in your assessments for different reasons. In order to understand why, we must first look into how circuses entertained their spectators in the 19th century.

Background history - Ethics and Sensation

In the 1880s people had some “different opinions” on ethics than we do now. At the time it was entirely normal to display people as commodities in the same way they displayed animals and objects. In a time before television and wide-spread literacy, the growing lower-middle class sought their entertainment from spectacles. Circuses were relatively affordable (as opposed to theatre and opera), and yet came with quite some spectacular displays of talent. 

There was quite some supply of shows, so a circus had to make sure they’d make a lasting impression. The obvious way was to have very, very memorable and gaudy costumes, just like you said. Another way to make a lasting impression was to appeal to gut emotions: disgust and sensation. “What your brain might forget, your guts won’t”. ‘Freak shows’ for example, were a good way to invite disgust and sensation. The “different” ethics at the time allowed circuses to have freak shows as a standard without them ever getting into legal or moral trouble. I will not post any images of such people here, but just to give you an idea: “The Elephant Man”.

Snake

In this light, Snake is entirely befitting of that time period as he used to function as a ‘freak show star’. Even after joining Noah’s Ark he was still a bit of a ‘freak show star’. His clothes draw attention to the scaly skin, and his appeal is made to centre around his inborn snake quality. The main difference from a standard freak show is that his peers did actually treat him with love.

So here’s the answer about Snake: yes, Snake’s design is ‘inappropriate’ but also accurate of that time.

Doll and Wendy

When people talk about the ‘inappropriateness’ of the circus members’ clothings there is fair chance they are mostly talking about the girls.

The “different” ethics also meant that humans could also be displayed in a “sensational” or “disgusting” way. For much of history, performers were considered a very low caste of people, and therefore not considered actual members of society. If they were not ‘actual members of society’ anyway, then there is also no need to hold them to ‘social standards’.

In the case of women that was exposed leeeeegs. A practical bonus was of course that exposed legs makes performing (or actually moving) easier. You can’t do acrobatics or stunts with what was deemed proper for women to wear. People did know at the time of course, but the restricting skirts were a way to ‘control proper women’. Hence exposed legs were pretty much tolerable for this low class of women.

Many spectators probably also enjoyed this ‘scandalous sight’ because it was sexy. Humanity just loves taboo. “Proper (straight) men” (and anyone else who liked women) could enjoy the exposed legs while hiding behind: “Me, a perv???? No! I’m here for the performance! The artistry!”

In these pictures I found from late 19th century circuses we can see how their attires resemble Doll and Wendy’s quite much. In addition I also found a 1885 painting of a tightrope walker by Jean Louis Forain. In this painting the tightrope walker also dressed a bit like a ballerina, like Doll is.

In conclusion, we can conclude that Doll and Wendy are fairly period accurate and also ‘inappropriate’ for the time.

Beast

Beast’s level of exposure wouldn’t be too ridiculous for a circus, so the level of ‘appropriateness’ is historically accurate. What is not too accurate however is the type of bodice she wears. Many of her shiny black bodices appear to be patent leather, but at the time patent leather could not really be made flexible enough to be worn on the torso. Patent leather was almost exclusively reserved for shoes and accessories. Beast’s design is a very modern take on dominatrices, and would therefore probably not have evoked the opinion of ‘sexy’ among her contemporaries. Her contemporaries would probably have looked at her and have seen what we now see on the picture on the right. “W-what... is going on? Too much????”

Jumbo

As discussed above, ‘performing men’ too were not really considered actual members of proper society; hence some ‘inappropriate’ display of such men was nothing out of the ordinary either.

Jumbo is probably the most period accurate member of the circus in how there’s basically nothing about him that was not already standard for circuses. In this old photo from the late 1880s we see a body builder from a circus, dressed in a very similar fashion as Jumbo’s.

Joker,  Dagger and Peter

These three are not really that inappropriate for the time. Peter was an adult man, but had the appearance of a young child. As explained in this post, short trousers were a visual indicator of a boy’s youth, and therefore Peter’s exposed legs were nothing out of the ordinary to begin with. His visual designs were gaudy, but a very impressive and gaudy appearance was the aim of spectacle selling circuses.

Below we can see a few clowns and performers from Noah’s Ark’s Circus’ time. As you can see, these designs were incredibly gaudy too. I don’t think putting Joker and Dagger among them would have invited any raised eyebrows in 1889.

In short, the attires of the men in Noah’s Ark Circus were also historically accurate.

Conclusion:

The point of circuses was indeed to make a lasting impression, and the best way to do so was to invoke sensation and disgust. As performers were hardly considered ‘proper members of society’, they did not need to be held to standard social norms.

The Noah’s Ark Circus members dressed inappropriately for their time, but the inappropriateness was entirely historically accurate. All members of the circus would score a passing grade if you were to ask me, except for Beast for technical and conceptual reasons.

I hope this helps~!(*´▽｀*)ノ🎪

Related posts:

Redesign: Ciel’s notorious Robin Dress™

Redesign: O!Ciel and Sebastian in different eras

O!Ciel’s fashion translated to 2020 standard

Redesign: Ranmao Historically Accurate

Redesign of Yunbastian’s Demon Form

Redesign of (more accurate) Sebastian Michaelis

O!Ciel’s ceremonial clothes

#Historic fashion accuracy #Fashion history #historic accuracy #Circus arc #Noah's Ark Circus

[dragonrajafanfiction]

Genji Heavy Industries (Part 5) Hell

In this part of the plot of the game and Novel several things are happening at once. The scene I felt was most relevant to our MC is the scene I picked. 

This scene is not in the game. Please enjoy.

Chu Zihang coughed low in his throat next to Caesar and that man’s killer’s aura subsided. You could finally breathe again. You weren’t upset with Chisei Gen and you had nothing against him. You barely knew him at all. Caesar Gattuso just had a bad habit of getting emotionally invested in every single person he came across and that’s why you were here, disguised as Hydra Executive Bureau members, helping Hydra move -- while at the same time, being surrounded by armed guards who would shoot you full of holes and ask questions of your corpse.

Chisei Gen was here with Masamune Tachibana and were talking in Japanese while observing the moving process. You keep your eyes low, maintaining that careful methodical pace that would make sure that you all got on the elevator with the fiftieth box so you could leave to escort that shipment and escape.. 

Caesar successfully got on the elevator and the operator yelled “HAI”. As the elevator descended, you caught the sharp flash of Caesar’s blue eyes, as though, with that look, he could slash the man’s throat.

Next was Chu Zihang. It would take ten more minutes of work for him to get on the elevator and Mingfei was getting a bit distracted. He was interested in what Chisei and Tachibana were talking about, being the only one who spoke Japanese. While reconnaissance could be handy, the survival of the team was more important. If you survived, you could come back. So you approach him where he is dawdling and lightly nudge him with your elbow..

Chu Zihang successfully boards the elevator. He gives you a two fingered salute as he descends down the shaft and disappears.

You’re next.

Working steadily, you pass by Lu Mingfei. “I want to say I’m sorry.” You murmur in a low voice. “I shouldn’t have yelled at you… and tried to hit you. That was wrong.”

Mingfei looks at you with a confused expression. “No… I messed up. I almost ruined everything.”

“I’ll explain later…”

“HEY YOU!”

 Both of your heads look in the direction of the voice. A man in a dark windbreaker was gazing directly at you! Your heart stills. He’s saying something in Japanese but you can’t understand.

“He’s telling you to put the box down and follow him. He has another assignment for you.” Mingfei is looking at you with a face full of tragedy. “Little Sister…” He whispers. “Please don’t die.”

You smile at him and take his hand and give it a squeeze. “It’s okay.”  You whisper and turn away to follow the man in the black windbreaker. You give a sharp bow in front of him. He presses a button on the elevator that you came in on, and it opens. He hands you a small brown paper bag and gestures that you should get in the elevator alone.

Your mind is racing. Caesar and Zihang were already gone and there was no way to get in touch with them. They would just wait for you expecting you to come down the elevator. Lu Mingfei would have to tell them what happened. Knowing Caesar, he wouldn’t leave the place without you and would probably search the building and continue to risk his life and everyone else’s lives! You had to find another way to get to them.

You turn around to face out of the elevator and don’t let your emotions show. Lu Mingfei is trying to work, but he’s pale, terrified and alone. You smile calmly at him as the door of the elevator closes.

From the moment the elevator door closed, the screen showing the floor you were on suddenly went out. The lights and the music in the elevator shut off. All the floor buttons were disabled, and the word "HELL" lit up in red above the door. 

Your heart rate jumps and you try to press the door open button but it’s too late! You’re already descending, and fast!

You try every button but nothing works! Finally, you look up through the ceiling. Just as you’re thinking about escaping through the top, the elevator slows, and the lights come back on.

The lights reflect off the bronze doors like a mirror. Behind your reflection is the fuzzy reflection of a human shaped shadow. You reach for your pistol extremely fast, but a strong grip takes hold of both your wrists.

With a mighty twist, the person in the reflection turns you around, shoves you against the elevator doors and presses his lips to yours in a passionate kiss!

Your muscles jump and you try to escape, but his scent fills your nose. You recognize his hair. You go from resisting him, to embracing him and pulling him closer.

Z. 

How did he get here? Where did he come from? You want to ask, but he doesn’t allow you to speak. He kisses you as your knees buckle and your back slides down to the elevator floor. When he finally lets you go, he smiles, watching you tremble filled with a strange tingling you don't understand. There is a satisfied glint in his golden eyes. “Good. I wanted to make sure I got to you before those other idiots did.”

You catch your breath for a moment. He was dressed smartly in a suit and patent leather shoes over his bare feet. A black serrated army knife was on his belt. He rested one hand over his bent knee, crouching in front of you. As always, that clever smile that hid an inside joke was on his delicate features. He really did look quite a bit like Lu Mingfei. But you decide Z is much more handsome. But you were alone when you got into the elevator. How did he get here?

“How do I know you're really here and this isn't a dream?” You ask.

His eyebrows raise. “Is this the type of dream you would have of me? You’ve grown up…”

You huff with amusement. “I’m serious. Lu Mingfei has proof of his guardian angel. I want one, too.”

His eyes travel the length of you and his smile fades. “I’m no guardian angel. But if it's proof you want...” He leans forward on his hands and nuzzles your neck tenderly. But then at that moment he bites down hard and you cry out in pain.

 When you touch where he bit you, your hands come back with a small streak of blood on them. Z licks his lips slightly. Your heart beats faster and you feel a bit dizzy. You’re drawn to him far more than any of the ‘idiots’ on your dating game show. “Z… I think I love you…”

He wrinkles his nose. “That’s because you don’t know any better. I’m always curious. How does a human know what exactly ‘love’ is? You could throw yourself body and soul at them and they reject you. Or you can bite them and they call it love. It’s silly.”

The elevator continues to descend and you don’t know how to answer him. “I just want to be with you.”

“Then just say that.”

“Where are we going?”

He smiles again, showing his teeth. “Hell.”

You roll your eyes. “I know, stupid. I mean in this elevator.”

He chuckles, a little birdlike.”Ke-ke-ke…” and again you delight in making him laugh. He sighs and settles next to you. You’d dropped your brown paper bag and he handed it to you again. “Here. It’s food. Eat it. You’re going to need it.”

Inside, is an apple and a small sandwich labeled “egg sando”. It was good and suddenly you feel your hunger roaring like a beast. As you devour the food, he reaches up and gently runs his fingers over your hair, much like you did to the little black kitten in Chizuru.

At the bottom of Genji Heavy Industries, deeper than the Iron Dome Shrine, in absolute darkness, a deep red "ならく" is lit up, which is an elevator light. 

The word "ならく" is an exotic word derived from the Buddhist scriptures. Naraka is the deepest part of hell, the infinite fall of the void. The evil spirits in Naraka can never return to the human world, but experience an eternal fall into a bottomless pit.

The elevator door opened. You and Z, two black shadows, walked into the darkness where no one could see. Except for the faint sound of the ventilation fan turning, there is only dead silence here. 

The wall ahead suddenly lit up. The giant wall seven or eight meters high emitted an eerie blue light. A closer look will reveal that it is actually a huge water storage tank. The wall is a glass made of hundreds of pieces of glass of about one square meter, between the glass is a narrow metal frame. Above the water storage tank, a several meters in diameter turbine and filter is installed. The volume of this storage tank is comparable to the giant fish tank in an oceanarium built to house manta rays and whale sharks. The general water supply pipeline simply can not provide enough water, so it takes water from the sewer. Sewage filtered into this storage tank, and then pumped away with the turbine when the water was changed, re-entering the Iron Dome Temple system. 

The two of you lie on the ground under the glass wall, the blue light illuminating your faces. Z’s posture is reclining upright on his elbow, like those Greek boys carved in alabaster in the Parthenon, from a certain side he looks rather feminine, but from your angle he looks handsome like a young god. You’re lying on your back, looking up at him, staring into those golden eyes.

“Someone once said that the aquarium is one of the top places to go on a date.” He said, stroking your hair.

“Is that what this is? Odd timing…” You murmur.

“Well, you are a very busy woman and many men are looking at you now. Caesar Gattuso jumped in the rain from the top floor of the dorm into a moving convertible to stake his claim. Am I supposed to wait until the mission is over for me to make my move?” 

He was right. For as much as the Takamagahara Star-Heart contest glorified looks, money, and pure carnal instincts, what pulled you to Z was the sense that he would stand over you and snarl like a lion. Once he had you, no one would be able to take you away.

“It’s just a show, Z. Are you being jealous?”

“I’m communicating… that’s what this is.” He pressed one finger to your forehead in an odd gesture. “Anyway, the date's over, we have work to do.”

You sit up. 

“Use your Soul Skills. We are at the deepest roots of the Heavy Industry Building down here. I need you to cause an earthquake for me. Go for Magnitude 7 or 8.’

You’re silent for a moment. LIke any high level skill, it required considerable amount of practice and skill to wield without causing enormous amounts of unnecessary damage and death. Chu Zihang’s Royal Flame could be wielded like him, in various ways, like pottery in his hands, but he could only control it so much. Without injuring himself and others.

S-Level Skills like yours not only could cause excessive levels of death and destruction, but also came with sequelae, side-effects to the user. In order to create a Magnitude 7 or 8 you would not escape these side effects. But you would do your best to minimize them.

You place your hands on the ground and focus, slowly working your spiritual energe through the floor, through the meter thick slab and down into the bedrock formed by millions of years of heat and pressure. As it goes, so does your mind. The ground becomes like a skin, and you can feel the rubble of the subway, and the rush of the fierce waters in the Iron Dome in a steady vibration. A golden color lights up your dark eyes like a the headlight of a motorcycle in a tunnel that eventually fills the space until its entirely glowing yellow. 

Z  peeled off a piece of gum and stuffed it into his mouth, facing this empty water storage bin. He was not anxious at all. The sound of rushing water came from the depths of the water storage bin. Some kind of large aquatic animal swam at high speed, leaving a series of swirls with its long tail. The boy fished out a laser pointer from his sleeve, and after opening it, a red laser dot appeared on the glass wall, which cat owners often use to amuse kittens. The boy slowly moved the laser pointer. The light drifted, and gradually attracted the attention of the aquatic animal. It swam closer and closer. There was not one, but a group of large fish. The big fish put their heads against the glass wall, staring at the red dot. 

Their faces were so pale, they looked like floating corpses that had been floating in the sea for dozens of days. 

The group of fish with human faces peered through the glass at the human world, some expressionless, others with mouths turned upward, seemingly smiling. 

They are not all the same. Most have long tails and scaly armor, some look like sphinxes with animal paws or have uncanny organs attached to them. Some have huge sharp claws and knife-like bony fins, and, when they breathe, the cracks at the base of their necks open up to reveal deep red, gill-like structures. 

The boy turned his wrist slightly. The sphinxes twisted their bodies delicately, chasing the dots of light and swimming fast, like a group of obedient pets. The entire tank stirred and a dark golden skeleton came up from the bottom of the tank. The shape of the skeleton was between human, fish and flying birds. It was obviously the same kind of sphinxes. It seemed that these sphinxes do not mind eating their own kind when they are very hungry, and the dark golden skeleton is covered with teeth marks, as if cut out with a logging axe. 

Z turned off the laser pointer and approached the glass wall. The sphinxes that had lost their chase scattered. 

The size of the tank is almost equivalent to a small underground lake in the rock formation. The filtered groundwater is still clear, but once the sphinx swims far away, it is no longer visible. Only a smaller one was left, swimming in the waters near the glass wall, still seemingly trying to find the mysterious spot of light. The boy pressed his palm against the glass wall, which was half a meter thick from the reflection of the glass, and was made of huge glass tiles. 

Your Soul Skill has reached depth. Earthquakes were typically created when two broken slabs of continental plates floated on currents of magma, collided, and pressed together until the pressure was too great and then they slipped. There were many such faults in Japan. The skill was to find the one that would create the right amount of slip in the right location, and at the right depth.

Forcing an earthquake was like forcing open a stuck door. You leaned into it, gradually increasing the pressure against it to force it to move. If the door was inclined to move anyway, it wouldn’t take much force and the slip wouldn’t be too great and the earthquake would be small. But to create a great earthquake was to reach the limits of your control. Only a well stuck plate could create something like that. You had to force great pressures on the plate and, when it finally moved, it was like a door swinging open uncontrollably. It would be easy to turn a 7.0 earthquake into an 8.5 earthquake by accident.

You could jostle Genji Heavy Industries… or you could destroy all of Tokyo, depending on results you could not predict. In order to best guess how to apply pressure you had to increase the spiritual roots in the ground to make sure you had maximum sensitivity. And therein lie the danger to you. It was like burying your mind into the ground, your brain. If you poured enough of your thoughts into the earth, then you couldn’t be aware of your surroundings. You might lose track of how much brainpower you have dedicated to the task and little by little, the ground would suck your mind dry of thoughts and Caesar would find you in the depths of Genji Heavy Industries, completely braindead.

The sphinx pressed its face against the glass wall to observe the boy's palm, and then its appearance became clearer and clearer. It is actually a female with long dark hair, a deathly pale but beautiful face, with faint traces of minimally invasive plastic surgery between the eyes and eyebrows. 

"You were beautiful," Z said softly, "when you were still alive." 

Pretty only in that face, the sphinx was deformed from the neck down, the lower half of its body fused into a python-like tail, the remnants of its feet vaguely visible. 

In the mythology of the world, this image of the sphinx repeatedly appears, from the ancestor of mankind, Fuxi Nuwa, to the Three Emperors, and  Five emperors of the Taihao. Emperor, "Zhuangzi" was seen by the Duke of Qi Huan in purple clothes wearing a vermilion crown shaped like a half man and half snake. In the "Shanhaijing" there are multiple mentions of a  "human face with a snake body and red, straight eyes.” The god of Zhong Shan, ZhiYin, the so-called "Naga" in Sanskrit, the so-called "Medusa" in Greek mythology, and even the group of snakes whose names have been lost in the Mayan pantheon ...... 

They are between gods and demons, symbolizing seduction and ultimate mystery. Mythologists still find it difficult to explain why such monsters appear so consistently in various myths. If they could take a look at this "beautiful" monster, they would understand that their ancestors had indeed witnessed similar things crawling, swimming or lunging in front of them. They were so hideous that they could never be a species that God would make, but only a joke played by the Devil on man. This impression was like a lightning bolt that exploded in the minds of the first people, and they passed it on from generation to generation as a myth. 

Z lit up the laser pointer, the point of light appeared in the heart of the forehead of the sphinx, like a bright vermilion mole. The sphinx's ghastly white face was suddenly lit up. If you didn't look at the ghastly lower half of the body, it could be described as charming. It stretched out its deformed claws to grab the red light in the glass wall, although its claws are hard, but only in the super-hard glass scratching out a toothsome sound. However, it couldn’t grasp the red dot! Suddenly, became furious, and issued an inaudible roar at the young man. Its huge mouth opened to reveal sharp teeth as dense as thorns. This is when you can clearly see it's horrible mouth structure. On each side of its delicate cherry lips is a barely discernible slit extending to the ear. When it opened its mouth as if the entire cranium opened! 

"You're getting ugly like this." Z said.

The sphinx's hiss lasted only a few seconds. The giant claws coming from behind dragged it back to the middle of the tank. 

Z extinguished his laser pointer and watched the killing in silence as a dozen sphinxes surrounded and killed the smaller of their kind. They bite down on their prey’s body parts, swinging their long tails wildly, using tremendous twisting force to tear the prey apart. The prey and predator together formed a strange fleshy flower, a demon flower with snake-like petals, each one twisting and swaying as red blood smoke rose to the water's surface. 

"How ugly, this world." Z said faintly, his face devoid of sorrow or joy. 

You finally make your choice and your eyes glow in the dark. You open your mouth and let out a loud moan, as though you were giving birth and push! You push harder and harder and your cries grow louder and louder!

A soft popping sound ran through the entire glass wall from top to bottom, the metal frame supporting them twisting and distorting rapidly. The feeding sphinxes also noticed the change in the glass wall and swam over, leaving their bloody food behind, as if the prisoners had heard the iron prison door slam and would have looked in the direction of the door in unison. Glass wall is shaking. First, a huge glass tile fell where water pressure topped out against the metal frame, then more glass tiles fell off. Each is a square meter square and half a meter thick. Pushed by the force of several tons of pressure,  water sprayed out through the gaps more than ten meters away.

Z produced a white silk handkerchief from his coat pocket and dabbed the sweat forming on your forehead with gentle touches, like a husband comforting his birthing wife. “You should protect yourself.” He says softly.

You grit your teeth and nod. A thick wave of soil and rock smashes through the meter thick slab and rolls over you both to form a barrier.

 A few seconds later this transparent wall completely collapsed and tens of thousands of tons of water broke through the dam, carrying an unknown number of sphinxes with it.

#Dragon Raja

[oh-for-fic-sake]

Because Its The Truth

Its the day of the party and Clark makes himself clear.

Masterlist

Warnings: mild/implied Smut, Swearing ,Bit of Angst

A/n:so this is the next part of my Clark kent X reader series the next one is going to be smutty but until then here you go guys I hope you all enjoy xx

Taglist: @two-unbeatable-beaters​

Because Its The Truth

You whined sprawled out across the sofa below Clark, his hips snug against your own as he wriggled his way between your thighs, a spot that he had become accustom to the past week slipping himself here when ever he got the chance, he tugged your thighs high on his hips rocking lightly making sure your core was pressed down firmly on the under side of his cock pinning it back to his pelvis then he pivoted his hips rubbing back and forth as he leaned forward dotting kisses on the dark marks he had left across your neck you counted as he did. Five. Five fucking love bites all in various shades of blue and violet you sighed already knowing he was reiterating his claim giving small nips and sucks on the ones he deemed to subtle you pouted at him slapping his back tilting and wriggling trying to get away you stopped moving grunting a Little as his thick throbbing cock pressed tight against your quivering hole, he pressed harder grinding moaning feeling the heat warm the underneath of him you felt like you were melting onto him. He smiled leaning forward again to bite at you lightly, you laughed still batting him away.

"Nooo Clark don't I've got to cover them soon!" He laughed pinning your hands down the gave one final deep suck making you hiss at the slight pain.

"Cover them? Why maybe I wanted people to see." You glared at him

"No not this many I'm gonna look like a slag" he tilted his head blinking he didn't understand you sighed bloody American

"A whore Clark an easy lay" he gave a little ah then shook his head"They wont think that, they will think your loved, irresistible" he growled diving in again you giggled squealing

"No nono! Clark you big lump stop!" He stopped pulling away smirking as you shook your head at him he moved in fast capturing your lips releasing your hands as you tilted your had back as he kissed you deep and slow still rocking against you making you clench and shiver you pulled back moaning for him trying to grind faster on him.

"Fuck Cl-Clark! Please don't stop! Ah!" He chuckled

"Besides how can you be an easy lay if I haven't fucked you yet?" You groaned as he slowed his hips pressing hard letting you feel how hard he was, moving his hands to your waist pulling up the t shirt you wore tugging it over your head as you undid the buttons on his shirt dragging it across his shoulders you bit your lip as he leaned back letting you have your fill of him, you trembled eyes wandering across him, his pale skin stretched across bulging muscles you couldn't believe the first time you laid eyes on him, it was absolute perfection a Greek god come to life, you swallowed as he pulled himself back on top of you letting his weight hold you down as he wound a hand behind you unhooking your bra then slid it off quickly, you flushed covering yourself only earning you a soft look as he moved forward kissing you again lightly then he ran his hands under your bust warming your ribs with his palms then delicately cupped the underside of your boobs smoothing the pads of his fingers across them lightly, you could feel your nipples harden beneath your on palms gently he coaxed them away groaning as he finally thumbed the hard peaks, you panted squirming as he moved on to pinching them, then pressed your hands away fully moving down to kiss them lapping at them suckling, you arched into his mouth as one hand trailed down slipping below the waist band of your leggings smoothing his hand flat cupping your mound rubbing back and forth digging one finger just past your lips wetting your panties making it seep threw the material you moaned feeling him press harder and harder to you unable to stop your walls clenching. he pulled away licking his finger clean moaning loud.

"Fuck you taste amazing, ugh god I was going to wait until after tonight but I don't think I can" with that being said he scooped you up making you giggle as he carried you to the bedroom dropping you on the bed.

"Clark! We don't have time! I have an hour and that's not enough time for anyone" he stood hands already tugging his pants down kicking them off behind him leaving him just in his boxers before e leaned over you hooking his fingers in the hips of your leggings slipping them off quickly.

"Clark! OH MY GOD-AH!" you laughed loud rolling on your side avoiding him as he tried to trap you below him, you scrabbled on your front trying to crawl up the bed away from him laughing all the time he followed laying across you sliding you down the bed below him lining them up with his caging you below him kissing your shoulder blade, you twisted your head back leaning up kissing under his jaw, then licking below his ear nipped him sucking a little, he grunted thrusting forward anchoring your hips to his with an arm below your waist. you smiled against his neck moving low leaning your weight on your shoulders the side of your head on the bed looking up at him biting your lip and rubbed your ass against his erection, he jerked forward into your ass slamming his hand down by your shoulder tucking his chin to his chest grunting his cock was twitching and throbbing hard and sore wanting nothing more then to impale you, and fuck you thoroughly.

"Fuuuck! Oh-OH god shit babe THa-AH" he panted in your ear as you whined below him grinding on him trying to chase your own orgasm. You growled it wasn't enough.

"Claaaarrk please, please I want- I cant!" he smiled knowing what you meant.

"I know Honey, but you did say we don't have time, maybe your right" you whined you and your big mouth he pulled back placing one last kiss on your nipple sucking harshly then blew cool air onto it, you squirmed

"Clark stoooop teasing me!" He laughed leaning back hands up in the air

"Alright alright love I'm sorry....Come on we should start getting ready, not time to lay about y/n your going to make us late-ow!" you scowled at him as he sent you a cheeky grin rubbing the spot you just smacked, he smirked and helped you up. You pondered on this past week as he took a shower ,the last week has been a dream your relationship with Clark had blossomed it was amazing a new date every night each as good as the first if not better and each one came with another steamy make out session that seemed to get hotter every time you came together a clash of teeth and tongue always ending with you both panting and blushing ,tho you hadn't had sex yet both of you knew it was coming, you were just waiting for the other to make the final move,you'd had had a little strop about him littering you with love bites lets just say they didn't stop on your neck... you sighed looking over to your bag you were a little sad to be returning home tomorrow night, but before that was the party tonight he finally came out of the bathroom you up you made your way to the door passing him he looked, trying to peek at your dress but you twisted tucking your dress over your arm hands clutching your hair and make up bags.

"Ah ah Mr Kent this is a surprise, its the first time your seeing me all dolled up and I want it to blow you away" he scoffed waving his hand over his crotch with a smirk

"Blow away babe" you slapped out at him playfully grunting when he dodged laughing you smiled shaking your head closing the door behind him, contrary to what you'd thought when you met he was a little shit deep down, kind caring and lovable but a cheeky little shit none the less. You sighed hopping into the shower keeping your hair out of the spray  needing it to be a little dirty for your planned style once clean you decided to get started hair and make up first. It wasn't long before you had created a vintage up do a poodle style high in the back and one large defined roll in the front with a black chiffon scarf covering below the curls at the back tied in a large mini mouse style bow just behind the roll of center, your make up was simple having freckles meant you couldn't really go all out with foundation and stuff so settled for a deep red matte lipstick and dramatic cat eye liner then touched up your brows you had found a nail bar in town when shopping with Clark a few days ago had dragged him in, him getting him his first ever manicure it was funny watching him flinch at some of the tools they had let him stay next to you as you had yours done he seemed fascinated watching as you got a set of claws done just for tonight....well not claws but they were red almond shaped false nails, which he was against at first saying you didn't need them but had changed his mind when you'd gave him back scratches that night which had become a nightly ritual him laying across your lap watching tv as you traced random patterns across his mouth watering back, how you haven't drooled over him you'll never know but it was his new favorite pass time and he had fallen asleep a few times. Finally it was time for your dress. It was a bright red pencil dress with tiny white polka dots, ruffled bardot shoulder sleeves that swooped into a flattering sweet heart neckline that showed off your generous bust there was a thick matching belt at your waist showing off your natural hourglass figure. The dress was appropriately named Rhonda's revenge and you adored it, quickly you added your string of pearls and matching earrings then slid on your patent red leather kitten heel sling backs. With one last look you grunted seeing the dark marks he had left you sighed using your yellow color corrector and foundation leaving two on the left side of your neck, one was just below your ear the other where your neck and shoulder met there was one last one just peeking over the bust of the dress, you clicked you tongue and slammed open the door.

"Kent you little shit!!" He jumped spinning around then gulped...Holy fuck you looked hot, his cock immediately stood to attention straining against the tight pants he'd wore with the sole intention of enticing you .

"I-I wha- yes? Wow you look mmm" he growled walking around the bed closing the distance in three strides. You stopped his approach with one pointed nail poised at his chest he stopped gulping still wide eyed .

"Look at this!" he smirked

"I am and I must say its stunning and I cant wait to have a piece" you flushed a little but composed yourself quickly

"No I mean this you tit!" You pointed to the love bite peaking over the  top of your dress. He smiled at you grasping your finger placing a tiny peck on the end of it

"And if you would direct your eyes here you will see your not the only one" as he said that he moved your finger to point at the light love bite just below his right ear. You gasped moving closer clasping his chin tilting his head to get a better look feeling him smirk and try to suck one of your splayed fingers into his mouth.

"What? When did I do that?" He laughed twisting his head out of your hands capturing your palm placing a kiss on it then wound his arms around your waist puling you flush against him leaning in resting his head on yours.

"Well I'm not sure but at least it matches my shirt don't you think?" You blushed at him slowly running your nails up his chest to his neck then looked down only just taking in how incredible he looked, a dark blue pair of dress pants the without even looking you knew was cupping his peach of an ass like a second skin and a deep burgundy almost purple that did in fact reflect the color of the mark you'd left on him. You smiled undoing his top two buttons letting a tiny amount of hair peek through. He sighed looking down at you as you avoided his gaze as you toyed with the small patch of revealed chest before leaving it with one chaste kiss.

"Ready to leave?" he sighed releasing you grabbing his suit jacket walking out to the living room you followed grabbing your patent leather bag that matched your shoes giggling as he struggled you put his phone keys and wallet in his pockets.

"Here you can keep them in here" you said offering your open bag he thanked you placing them inside as you grabbed a black wrap to go across your shoulders before following him out of the apartment he double checked the door then walked down the stairs arm in arm guiding you out side holding your hand as he did

"You look beautiful tonight" you flushed looking down you'd never been  good at taking compliments you shook your head

"Th-thank you I wanted to look good for you tonight... hair went a bit messy.. hence the scarf and my eyeliner-" he stopped you with a finger to your lips

"Your perfect, you look stunning and I'm going to have to beat them off of you" you blushed again leaning into his arm as he hailed down a cab to take you to the party.

Wow that was all you could say this party....it was fancy hosted in the grand room of a five star hotel there was a huge buffet table with champagne pyramid it was glitz and glam with a live jazz band what ever award they won it must have been a big one. Upon entering Clark slid off your wrap holding it himself refusing to let you take it ,you didn't get far into the hall before you were both stopped by normally a stern looking man with uncharacteristic smile you could tell by the look on Clark’s  face.

Kent! good to see you! ah- wheres Lois? I thought she said you were bringing her?" Clark cleared his throat

"Ah yes that... No we haven't been together in just over a month but she was trying to force me to go with her..... This beautiful woman tho is my beautiful girlfriend Y/n, love this is my boss Perry editor and chief of the daily planet" you nodded shaking his hand

"So this is Perry its nice to finally have a name to the face" he got over his shock then shook your hand

"Its nice to meet you to and if I do say I think Kent here is punching above his weight" he laughed as Clark sighed closing his eyes at the comment.

"I think you will find its the other way around... this is a fancy party tho very nice." he thanked you then turned to Clark who had tugged you to his side after noticeable the looks his male coworkers were giving you, hungry eyes scanning his woman didn't sit well with him.

"So your from the uk?" you smiled nodding

"Yeah decided a change so up sticks and moved here-well smallville and met Clark" Perry nodded calling over a server Clark took a glass each for the both of you handing you yours

"Well that's one hell of a move where are you from in England"

"Kent funnily enough, in the south east" he nodded to you pointing in realization.

"The garden of England?" you scoffed at him sipping your drink.

"Yes something like that, I lived in a large city but just outside it is tiny villages and hundreds of orchards and manor houses, its picturesque I suppose" he smiled then looked to Clark

"So its over for good this time?- sorry for you don't mind?" you shook your head at Perry

"Honestly its fine I know she isn't....moving on" you looked to Clark there was stern look on his face you bit back the doubt choosing to quietly sip your drink, a slither of fear that he would choose this woman over you an your not sure you could handle it your sure you'd already fallen to hard for this amazing man.

"You know as well as I do Perry she wont listen... but this time I meant it and now I have this lovely lady right here...I hope she realizes now" Perry smiled as he watched you and Clark you blushed tucking your self into him, he knew that Lois had taken her toll on Clark but here in front of him he saw a happy man and could only hope it would last.

"Well I've got to do the rounds enjoy the party" you giggled thanking him wrapping a hand around Clark’s waist trying to push away the taunting fears that seemed to lurk just below the surface, he squeezed you a little reassuringly placing a small kiss on your head as he walked you over to a table of his co workers introducing you to them an hour later you had seemed to go through the same conservation the same answers yes you were together, no he wasn't bringing Lois, no he wasn't with Lois any more and yes you were from England and your accent wasn't fake...it was exhausting but finally Clark had stole you away onto the dance floor sharing a few slow dances stealing kisses you chuckled"Your lucky this is matte" he smiled kissing you again"I wouldn't care if it wasn't" you rolled your eyes shaking your head the leaned it against him listening to his heart beat it was a wonderful night... Then you felt it a piercing gaze into your back you knew, you closed your eyes all night you had been dreading this you knew it was silly but deep down you was scared he would run back to her, they had so much history together your heart ached he must of realized where your thoughts were going and placed his hands on your face making you look at him, fear and doubt clouded your eyes he smiled at you.

"Hey look at me- that's it, I'm here with you no one else" you blinked up at him and his heart all but stopped he moved down kissing you deeply you gasped tilting your head to the side he followed opening his mouth exploring your mouth then slowly pulled back

"I-I've fallen in love with you" you gasped at him heart skipping a beat

"What how- Clark isn't it to soon-" he smiled wrapping you up in his arms again gazing into your eyes shaking his head

"No Ma always said when you know you'll know...I never knew what she meant before.... she said it was like the world stops, no worry or fear just calm and quiet knowing everything will be fine in the end as long as you have each other and I'm telling you now I-I love you, I've never felt like this before its incredible and light, there's no strings o-or catches...I know it might seem weird and you might not feel the same-"

"Don't be stupid of course I feel the same, its- I was scared of telling you in case you thought I was moving to fast. I love you Clark Kent." his face lit up those words just hearing you say you love him. Not Kal. Not Superman. Him. Clark Kent. his grin lit up his face then he pulled you to his chest keeping you tight against him once the song was finished you shared a final kiss which he deepened quickly teasing your mouth open he plundered your mouth with ease he tasted of the wine he had been drinking a sweet strong flavor that he made sure to fill your mouth with as his tongue moved back and forth moving with your tongue fighting and playing, he grunted and tugged to towards him holding your ass squeezing it you bit at his lip pulling back giggling as he laughed a little. Then someone cleared their throat you tensed turning seeing a beautiful woman auburn hair and light blue eyes she wore a short silver dress hair hanging down in soft waves the sides pinned up behind her head with silver clips.

"Clark can I have this dance?" he went to refuse but you put your hand on his chest nodding.

"I will get us some drinks okay? see you in a minute" he was torn looking at you gulping

"But what about you?" moving to cup your cheek you tilted pressing a kiss to his open palm closing your eyes then took a deep look into his before nodding

"Its okay love, its just one dance you both need to talk" he went to speak but was interrupted

"Yes we do" you turned to walk past her closing your eyes at her voice, she wasn't happy with you, you held back a shuddering breath, this was it even tho you'd both just announced your feelings this woman was beautiful and she wouldn't give up Clark, you couldn't blame her if you were in her place you wouldn't give him up either you knew others were looking before you could take a step Clark grasped your wrist making you look at him.

"I meant what I said" you smiled and nodded placing a hand on his.

"I know that I did to" you pulled away leaving him with the other woman you stood by the table where his co workers were watching your bag you moved to sit next to a Asian woman you'd been getting along with. Bethany she moved over placing a hand on your arm.

"Are you okay?" you smiled fighting back your unshed tears

"Yes I'm fine... he has to make up his mind...I love him I trust him" she sighed shaking her head watching as he slipped his arm around the woman's waist rigidly moving across the floor.

"Its not him I'm worried about, I don't know what it is but there is something going on, he seems to feel obligated to indulge her... here you look like you need one" she said passing you a drink you thanked he

r"She tries anything I'll drop her like a fucking rock" she laughed at that you cleared your throat still feeling eyes on you looking over you saw Perry pointing to the dance pair questioningly you shrugged he glared and made his way across to you pushing threw everyone who seemed oblivious to the drama unfolding in the room.

"What the hell are you doing sitting here?" you smiled at him sadly watching as Clark and Lois made a swooping circle across the floor.

"He needs to talk to her... and this way no drama they can share a dance and say what needs to be said then he can come back to me...I hope" Perry snorted

"He damn well better do! and fuck not causing drama" you smiled at him watching with baited breath

"She tries anything you'll get drama alright trust me Perry" he would be lying if he didn't want to see that, as much as he liked Lois she had been odd with Clark in the past year he had seemed tense, a shell and everyone could see that he wasn't happy. Clark sighed as you walked away he frowned as Lois took your place quickly hand on his shoulder and waist as he took position stepping back as far as he could before dancing.

"You look very handsome tonight Kal" he flinched clenching his jaw as she spun out then back in to him.

"Lois... not here" she laughed a little as they continued to move.

"So who is she? someone to make me jealous? if you wanted my attention you should have asked." he bit his lip growling a little.

"No Lois she's not to make you jealous and it wasn't to get your attention she's my date" she faltered hissing at him

"No that doesn't make sense tho we were supposed to be coming here together? I waited you know." he spun making another round of the floor catching you sitting by Bethany, Perry standing by your side arms folded watching things play out, you looked distraught his heart clenched any lingering feelings he had for the woman in his arms died he turned to the red head.

"Well I told I wasn't coming with you and me coming with Y/n makes perfect sense considering she is my girlfriend" she glared

"Cheating? I never thought you'd be one for that Kal" he growled fighting to hold back his strength

"I've told you to stop calling me that! and we would have to be together for me to be cheating and we haven't been a couple in over a month." she smiled then laughed off his stern look.

"You cant be serious that little spat? Kal love I know I gave you space but really we aren't over... we always get back together after our spats....You didn't mean it, you couldn't" the last sentence was quiet, frightened and uncertain more a question than a statement. he sighed nodding.

"Lois I did mean it, we aren't together and we aren't getting back together,I'm with y/n now and I'm happier then I've ever been" she shook her head at him

"No do-don't say that you love me, why would you say something like that?" he shook his head at her grasping her wrists pulling them off him as she tried grasping him tighter afraid of the reality that she had lost him this time.

"Because its the truth, I'm head over heels in love with her and she loves me, not Kal El not Superman me Lois. Clark Kent is enough for her and that's all I've wanted for someone to love me, the Kansas farm boy... You couldn't" she gasped moving closer but he stopped her.

"N-no you don't know what your saying, you love me I know you still love me...y-you've been drinking or something-" he placed his hands on her shoulders pressing her back.

"Lois I told you...I don't love you anymore there was a time I thought I did but you never changed...I changed for you but you never did for me and I cant wait anymore and live like that, in a one sided relationship... I'm sorry but I meant what I said enough is enough I've moved on and you should to"

"I can change I can please just give me another chance...Kal-Clark" he sighed shaking his head

"That’s just it you cant even call me by my human name anymore, please I want to be friends but I'm not your happy ending and your not mine." he finished looking over to where you sat looking down into your glass.

"And she is?"

"Yes, She's my soul mate" Lois swallowed closing her eyes letting a few tears fall as it sunk in she had lost the most incredible man she had ever known and it was her own fault,the way he said it the conviction ,the certainty there was no hesitation. He loved her she knew, the woman in red wasn't some fling or passing fancy she was his world now with out a shred of doubt Lois knew that the woman sitting across the room was the woman he'd marry, the mother to his children and the one he would grow old with. It was a bitter pill to swallow she had always dreamt it would be her and suddenly it wasn't.

"It will take time... to be friends but I would like that in the end" she whispered the words releasing him, he pat her arms giving one last look before he jogged across the dance floor away from her to the love of his life. You'd been looking down you couldn't stand watching him with her for all your big talk you were devastated it was the longest dance you'd ever known you were torn you trusted him but.... she had known him for a long time they had a history had planned a life together who were you really? just the woman who knows his mother, who agreed to pose as his girlfriend? you sighed spinning the champagne flute in your hand you downed the rest of it standing placing the empty glass on the table only to gasp as you were suddenly grabbed around the waist tugged into a hard chest you looked up.

"C-Clark?" he smiled pulling you closer to him kissing your cheek

"Weren't leaving without me love were you? everything's sorted, Lois and I are...going to keep our distance for a while...then hopefully we can be friends but for now we are going to steer clear of one another....why did you look so surprised I came back?" you looked down a little tearful shaking your head resting against him listening to his heart, he sighed you had been worried about loosing him. He leaned down pointing at you bag motioning for Beth to pass it to him, once she did he unfolded your wrap placing it across your shoulders you blinked at him pulling back.

"Clark? what are you doing?" he smiled cheekily winking at you

"Well love it appears I've got to prove to a certain lady the she is the one for me..." he leaned forward nibbling your neck you giggled at him.

"And there is one way I can think of doing that but I'm going to need a bed" you giggled slapping at his chest moving in for a kiss letting him dominate your mouth slowly as he gripped your ass pulling you to your tip toes making you squirm before pulling away.

"Lead the way" he laughed quickly ushering you out of the party heading home.

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