Tumgik
#i think I’ve got the gist but still
assim-eu-sou · 2 years
Text
me writing a multi-chapter fic about a show that I have not even finished halfway is something that can be so unhinged actually
2 notes · View notes
hella1975 · 1 year
Note
has that other anon ever met an upper class brit because i guarantee they wouldn't feel the same after encountering All That
literally 😭 like comparing classism is so dumb when it’s very much a subjective, varied conversation WITHIN a country let alone amongst different countries but that sentiment can and should coexist with the acknowledgement that british classism Does Not Fuck About
#like u cant lob both country's classim under an umbrella term when comparing them#bc our culture and history with it is so wildly different#like american classism IS there and IS a serious problem the irony here is that literally at no point did anyone say otherwise#so idk why anon got so up in arms lol#but the thing about british classism and the reason it gets talked about so much is because it is such a huge part of our lives#and americans never seem to really get that like even americans that acknowledge it i feel still struggle to grasp the severity of it#I’ve seen a lot of much smarter well-researched people say that class and race in the uk and usa are flipped#so while it’s important to note that BOTH countries have serious issues in both departments the way they manifest is different#so the way race is treated with such severity/extremity in america and racism so normalised and systemic#is exactly how class is here#and the way classism is typically more indirect and underlying in america#is how racism is here#does that make sense? there’s a lot of articles online that explain it better#like im explaining it v briefly and it's obviously not that black and white but that's the general gist of it#and if ur american thinking ‘classism doesn’t FEEL indirect for me so you're WRONG’#then consider im not wrong. that's just how severe it is here for me to be saying it#like idk I can’t stand this narrative anyway of taking away from the original problem to instead have a pissing contest about it#so this will probs be the last I speak about it#but it’s super interesting and it can’t hurt to know more about especially with the prevalence of americacentrism#which is why I responded so harshly to anon to begin with bc like really?#you saw ONE POST that wasn’t about america or american problems and got upset. be serious rn#ask
14 notes · View notes
prehistorictriforce · 2 years
Text
sometimes i’m like “yeah i’m super chill around celebrities, i don’t really clam up or anything, i’m super normal” and then i remember when i “met” frank iero and im like hmmmm maybe i’m wrong.
#it was a few years ago but like. a friend and i got to a venue i think… like a little over 12 hours early for the show???#so we were obviously there before the band. but when frank got there it was still only like. my friend and a couple other ppl#(we became good friends w the group we waited with btw!!! we all have a gc on insta and stuff they’re rad!!!!)#(we’re trying to get together to see mcr together!!)#but frank like. comes by and starts asking us how we’re doing and is like hey do y’all need anything and whatever#we said we were fine bc evan had gotten us water n shit#and i was standing next to frank and we were all talking and he was like idk we were looking for food where should we go#and we’re in a totally different state from where i’m from so i’m like??? i don’t fuckin know????#but this was frank fucking iero i wasn’t gonna admit i didn’t know smthn so i’m like I THINK THERES A GELATO PLACE AROUND HERE#so i just sit there like a god damn buffoon nodding and going yeah yeah yeah absolutely sure yeah!!! to every suggestion#and he kinda looks at me as if i’m gonna say smthn and i just smile all ridiculous and shrug and go ‘sounds good to me’#there was much more to the conversation but the general gist was everyone else being normal and me being doe eyed dumbass#he was very nice abt it all bless him he was super busy but he came out to check on us a couple more times before it got busy#he was always smiley and happy and giggly abt it and i miss him 💔💔 frank i’m so sorry i was useless i swear i can be better#at least i went HARD during the show. we were all right in front since we were literally first in line lol#anyways. still absolutely one of if not my ultimate fave concert i’ve ever been to#these tags have been long as fuck but this memory plagues me at night
4 notes · View notes
buhok-ng-bruha · 2 years
Text
Uh oh! A Jehovah’s Witness is at my door!
A guide on what the fuck is happening and what to do about it as a never JW, from an exJW.
JW congregations have just been told to start doing door-to-door preaching (aka ‘service’/‘service work’/‘witnessing’) again this September. They stopped for the past few years due to…well. The whole state of things. But it’s starting again! Fuck!
So, to get you folks in on the Secret Inner-workings of a Cult:
JWs do service work mostly on Saturdays and Sundays, but any day of the week is fair game, just less of them will be out on other days. Generally it’ll be in the mornings (anywhere between 9AM to 1PM being common, my family did 10AM to noon Saturdays), but any time of day is also fair game. Evening witnessing is encouraged, to catch parts of the service area who didn’t answer during morning service, like people who were at work or asleep.
JWs are given ‘territories’: entire neighborhoods if they’re a majority language and can generally bet on most of the people in a given area speaking that language; SPECIFIC ADDRESSES if they belong to a smaller language demographic. These are on ‘territory cards’, which include areas to fill out once they’ve called on houses. They often pull addresses from the phone book or other such directory, pulling based on name, or get referred new addresses from neighborhood sweeps in other congregations and were told x language was being spoken, so if you get called on by someone speaking your language and wonder how they got your address, it’s because they’ve collected data already! On You!
On that note: JWs collect data on you! A lot of it!! Those territory cards they fill out? They can include any information they gleaned from conversation (age? gender? personal details like if you’re married, if you live with your parents, etc? what religion do you belong to? any problems in your life they can ‘help’ with? any ‘problematic’ details, like if you’re queer? all of it.); if someone was home or not (yes we can see you peeking out from behind your curtains! we looked in windows!); if the person answering the door was uninterested; if they were aggressive; if they have dogs; if we were able to leave any publications with them; the details of any conversations we had, like which topics we discussed and which seemed to interest you the most; when to call on you again. The areas to fill this in on these cards are rather small so they usually only write down the most important information, but it is the most important information for trying to indoctrinate you into a cult. DO NOT give them any personal information. It will be used against you.
So that’s the gist of it. Now, you don’t want them at your door, probably.
Please do not harass them.
I know they’re annoying. We always knew we were being annoying. They do it anyways because they think they’re helping you. They often have children with them - not only because it’s often families going preaching together, but also because it’s a well known tactic to get a softer response from people they call on, to have a child with you. Even if there are no children, please do not harass JWs - they are cult victims, and doing so will only enforce their ‘us vs them’ mentality, and discourages members from leaving. The outside world hates you so much, so how can you leave?
“But what if—“ Nope! Beyond the whole ‘don’t be fucking cruel to abuse victims’ thing, it doesn’t even work! I’ve been threatened with dogs; my mother has been threatened with machetes; others have been flashed, or physically assaulted - we still went back eventually. Usually someone else would get the assignment, and usually we’d wait a bit, but we still went back.
“Okay, but what the fuck do I do, then?”
You open the door (yes, open the door; if you ignore them they’ll return again, assuming they just missed you or you were busy), let them tell you what they’re there for, and before the conversation goes further, you simply say:
“I’m not interested. Please put me on your do not call list.”
And then you tell them goodbye. Nothing more. Don’t say you have your own religion. Don’t say you’re queer. Don’t try to use the ‘magic word’ apostate - actual former members can get harassed.
Unfortunately, despite this being the most successful and least harmful strategy, it isn’t 100% foolproof. They’re supposed to write ‘do not call’ on the territory card next to your address, but they’re human and forget sometimes (or might not mark it intentionally, though I haven’t seen that personally); the next person who gets that card might not see the mark, as well. On top of everything else, even if not forgotten, they will eventually come back. It’s policy to come by after some time to check on you, ‘just in case’: just in case you changed your mind, just in case you moved and there’s someone else there now, just in case, oh, you recently had a loved one pass away and suddenly find yourself in an emotionally vulnerable position in need of support and sympathy.
If you have the knowledge and mental/emotional energy and stability to, you can go about trying to debate them, maybe help some of them doubt, but it is no easy task and there is no guarantee of any success. It takes a lot of patience. They are undergoing some extreme brainwashing and ‘waking up’ is incredibly traumatizing, and you will face a lot of resistance in trying to deconvert any of them. Again, only attempt this if you have the energy, stability, and knowledge required - the delicacy required, too. Otherwise, remember, it’s
“I’m not interested. Please put me on your do not call list.”
Nothing more.
21K notes · View notes
loveinhawkins · 1 year
Text
There’s a table in the school library that’s nestled in the corner, right by a radiator; Steve has claimed it ever since his double block of ‘private study periods’ began.
Not that he’s planning on doing any studying: it’s the last day of school before the winter break, and while his face has healed up from the whole Billy Hargrove Incident, he still finds himself feeling wiped at random—like his body’s having a delayed adrenaline crash ever since he pulled Dustin out of that freaky vine-infested tunnel.
So really, this spot should be ideal for a couple hours of not having to think.
And it would be perfect, if his eyes weren’t instinctively drawn to movement at the front desk.
Because for the past god-knows-how-long, Eddie Munson has been in a back-and-forth with the librarian.
It had started when he ambled up to the desk with a healthy pile of books in his hands, placed them down neatly, all ready to be stamped. Flashed a charming smile.
Steve was too far away to hear the words, but he got the gist that whatever the librarian had said amounted to no, absolutely not, because Eddie scooped the books back up, dumped them on a table a little distance away from Steve’s, then hemmed and hawed before returning to the desk with a more modest pile than before.
He was sent away again with presumably the same refusal, and so the pattern repeated until this very minute: he’s returning with just one book in his hands, his smile less charming now, more desperate.
But… no luck.
Eddie slouches back to the table in defeat. Just stands there, staring down at the books.
And goddamn it, Steve thinks, now he’s invested.
“Hey. Munson,” he says in an undertone. “What’s up?”
He doesn’t miss the weird kind of double take Eddie gives him, but at least Steve knows it’s not because of his face being a mess this time—seriously, drawing looks from students when all he wanted was to get in line for crappy cafeteria pizza had not been fun.
“Nothing,” Eddie says with a shrug, and he flashes another wide smile that makes Steve think bullshit. “Apparently I racked up a mountain of late fees. Who knew?” He sighs, glancing at his wristwatch. “Guess I’ve got enough time to just read the—oh. Um. Hey?”
“These books?” Steve confirms, having already stood up to look at them.
Eddie blinks a few times. “Yeah, these—uh, Harrington, what the fuck do you think you’re—?”
Steve heads over to the front desk with the books. It’s not all that difficult of a decision to make; he remembers Tommy H had his own library late fees in freshman year, but got nothing more than a simpering, “Just make sure it doesn’t happen again, sweetie,” just because his mom knew someone on the school board.
“For checking out, please,” Steve says, not bothering with a smile as he hands over his library card.
The only resistance he gets is a raised eyebrow from the librarian before all the books are stamped.
“What the fuck,” Eddie says, voice flat; he doesn’t take the books when Steve tries to give them to him, so Steve just shrugs and goes back to his seat, sets the books pointedly on the edge of the table.
“Look, man, it’s up to you, but I’m not gonna take them. They’ll just be sitting here.”
Eddie huffs. He goes over to the books, his hand twitching towards them before drawing back, like he’s at war with himself.
“You—you didn’t have to do that,” he gets out as if it physically pains him to do so.
Prickly, Steve thinks.
“It’s no big deal,” he says. “My account’s gathering dust, so someone might as well get the good of it.”
At hearing that, Eddie looks a little less defensive. He chews on his lips for a few seconds, then says, his tone serious, “Harrington, I’ll—I’ll forget. Like, with the holidays… like, I guarantee you, even if I write a million fucking reminders, I’m gonna take these books and forget to bring ‘em back for months.”
“Oh, no,” Steve says dryly, “lemme go alert the press, I just heard a blatant confession to a crime. Dude, just take them, what do I care if your homework takes you months to—”
“It’s not even for school,” Eddie interrupts through gritted teeth, “it’s dumb, it’s just—”
“Jesus Christ. Lemme call the press again, sounds like you’re reading a book for fun.”
Eddie stares at him. Steve raises an eyebrow in challenge—he could do this all day; just the other week, he’d beaten Mike in a brutal staring contest that felt like it went on for hours.
Eddie breaks first. “Fine,” he says with another huff, but he’s less agitated when handling the books—lingers thoughtfully on their titles, puts a couple in his backpack. The rest he opens at seemingly random parts, but it looks like he knows what he’s searching for.
And then it seems as if he’s just going to pick up the remaining books and walk away—Steve expects him to, honestly—but he ends up staying where he is, gives Steve a look of consideration, almost like he’s a book worth reading, too.
“You stole my table, you know?” Eddie says.
“Uh, no,” Steve says automatically, then adds with more confidence, “I was definitely here first.”
Eddie snorts. “Nope. My senior year, uh,” he shrugs self-deprecatingly, “the first time around. That was my spot. Was pretty possessive over it too, think I signed the table, like, underneath.”
Steve’s eyebrows rise in interest; he runs a finger along the underside of the table and soon feels it: an E.M scratched into the wood.
“Huh,” he says. “Guess you’re right.”
A pause.
And then Steve surprises himself.
“There’s, um, room here, if you want? I’m not gonna use the whole table.”
Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up. There’s a long enough silence in which Steve considers just telling him to forget about it, but then—
Eddie sits down opposite him.
It’s not as awkward as Steve was expecting: Eddie seems focused enough on his books, on bringing out a battered looking journal with sheets of paper that look like they’re hanging on by a thread. He roots around his backpack some more, retrieves a ballpoint pen with a quiet, triumphant, “Aha!”
He either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care that Steve isn’t even making an attempt to look busy; his own side of the table is bare.
“Didn’t know you were left-handed,” Steve says after a moment.
Eddie looks up from his note-taking. He smirks, waggles his eyebrows briefly. “Fitting, huh? Spooky.”
“Oh, I’m terrified.”
And Eddie actually laughs—hushed, but it still counts as one.
He soon returns to being absorbed in whatever it is he’s writing, which means Steve has less of a distraction when the familiar wave of tiredness washes over him.
He tries to sit up as well as he can, conscious of the fact that he’s not alone, but the radiator is the perfect temperature, and the steady scratch of Eddie’s pen has a soporific effect. He’s distantly aware of the fact that his head is nodding down with dwindling energy to try and stop it—hears Eddie’s voice, as if from very far away, rising in question.
Steve sniffs sharply, jerks his head back up and blinks hard. “What?”
“Oh, sorry,” Eddie says quickly, and he sounds genuine. “Didn’t know you were sleeping.”
“I wasn’t,” Steve says.
“Uh, okay,” Eddie says. His lips twitch. “That was an awfully long blink then, Harrington.”
“Shut up,” Steve retorts mildly. He stretches slightly, hides a yawn behind his hand. “Did you actually want something or—”
“Nah, wasn’t important.”
Steve frowns, unconvinced. The side of Eddie’s left hand is covered in ink, and Steve can see where his pen has started to die on him as his writing gets more faded across the page.
Steve puts a hand in his pocket, brings out another ballpoint and throws it at Eddie.
The pen bounces along the table, and Eddie manages to catch it one-handed.
“Good catch,” Steve says.
“Thanks,” Eddie says. He sounds almost uncertain.
Silence falls. It only takes another minute or two of hearing Eddie writing away for Steve’s determination to stay awake to waver again. He slumps forward with a mumbled, “M’just gonna…” and lays his head down.
Eddie stops writing.
“Hey, man, are you… okay? Like, if you feel… if you wanna go home I could take you to the nurse? Or—”
“I’m fine,” Steve says into his folded arms. “S’just… the aftermath of… stuff. No big deal.”
“Oh?” Eddie says tentatively.
Steve lifts his head up a bit, squints dubiously. “C’mon, Munson. You must’ve heard the rumour mill.”
Billy Hargrove had spread it all over the school, how he had ‘taught King Steve a lesson.’ In all honesty, Steve hadn’t cared all that much about how he himself came across in whatever story Billy created, was just relieved that at least Max and Lucas’s names had been kept out of it.
“I don’t put much stock in rumours,” Eddie says carefully. “Folks can say… all kindsa things.”
Steve nods faintly. Fair point.
“Okay, but you can take a little bit of stock in this one. Like, a smidge.”
Steve demonstrates with his thumb and forefinger.
It’s only when Eddie doesn’t smile in response that Steve realises he’d been hoping to make him laugh again. Maybe.
“Huh. Well. For what it’s worth… I’m sorry.”
“What for?” Steve says tiredly.
“Harrington. I’m not stupid, y’know? That was more than a… a stupid fight after school or something. Like, I can remember what your face looked like.”
“Gee, thanks.” Steve sets his head back down, closing his eyes.
“I didn’t—I just meant whatever it was, it… it went too far. Way too fucking far.”
Steve yawns again, doesn’t bother hiding it. “Yeah. Something like that.”
He’s resigning himself to the thought of waking up with a stiff neck before Eddie sighs and says, “If you’re gonna sleep, Harrington, don’t be an amateur about it.”
Steve looks up in time to see Eddie reaching underneath the table with one leg, hooking his ankle round the empty chair next to Steve and shoving it closer to him.
“Three or four’s probably the best amount for stretching out on,” Eddie says. “Uh, speaking from experience.”
Steve smiles. “Noted.”
He manoeuvres himself until he’s lying much more comfortably across the seats, using his backpack and coat as a pillow.
Frustratingly but predictably, despite his fatigue, sleep doesn’t come easily, so Steve looks underneath the table and asks, “What’re you writing about, Munson?”
He can see Eddie’s boots, how one foot is tapping away, as if in time to a song no-one else can hear.
“Um, I was just… getting inspiration for… it’s kinda like. Like a story, but—”
“Don’t hurt yourself, dude,” Steve says, “I know what a campaign is.”
The foot tapping stops.
“Aren’t you just full of surprises?” Eddie says.
He sounds a bit far away again, though Steve knows that’s just in his head; he can feel his eyelids drooping.
“You’ve got…” He sighs, voice trailing off as he finishes, “No idea…”
Eddie launches into a speech; Steve can follow it well enough for a little while, Eddie rambling about the kind of decisions he thinks his players will make in the game, but eventually the words become a blur, and he drifts off just like that, into an unexpectedly peaceful sleep.
He wakes with the lightest of touches to his shoulder, a soft, “Steve?” that nevertheless makes him jolt to full alertness in a blink, reaching for a bat he doesn’t currently have.
“Jesus Christ!” Eddie yelps, almost falling back against the table. “What the hell kinda military training d’you have, Harrington?”
“Just have good reflexes,” Steve says, hopes it sounds casual enough as he breathes through his suddenly racing heart.
“Yeah, that’s one way to fucking put it. Anyway, uh. Sorry, didn’t mean to, like, startle you, but you slept right through the bell, man.”
Steve sits up; the library is empty apart from them, the librarian shooting them a not so subtle glare. And he realises that while everyone else was rushing out of school, eager for the holidays to start, Eddie must’ve stayed. Waited for him.
Steve runs a hand through his hair, quickly puts on his coat.
“God, sorry, you didn’t have to—if I’ve made you late, I’m—”
“Nah, don’t sweat it.” Eddie puts his backpack strap across one shoulder. “I wasn’t in a hurry. Um, are you… like, good to drive? I can give you a ride, if—”
“I’m okay,” Steve says, struck by the consideration behind the offer. He means what he says though; he feels pleasantly refreshed. He smiles self-effacingly. “Think I need one class where I can just sleep, and then I’ll get through the day.”
Eddie gives a playful scoff. “That’s already a thing, Harrington, it’s called first period.”
They walk out of the library together, and Steve finds that it’s kind of… nice, honestly. He keeps waiting for some awkwardness to creep in again, but it never does.
“Big holiday plans?” Eddie asks, smalltalk that should be stilted, but it just sounds like he’s sincerely interested in the answer.
Steve shrugs. “Not really. Oh, I’ve got—you know the Snow Ball thing tomorrow, at the middle school? There’s this kid I know, I’m gonna give him a ride there, but—”
Steve breaks off with a fond shake of the head, knowing that there’s this kid I know doesn’t really give it justice, doesn’t say the full truth: that Dustin Henderson has somehow wormed his way into Steve’s goddamn heart forever.
“His mom’s invited me over for dinner tonight,” he continues. “Think he wants, like, a dress-rehearsal of his outfit or something, which is probably the closest he’ll ever come to admitting he’s nervous. I kinda feel for him, honestly. God, do you remember being thirteen? Everything seemed to matter so much, and most of it was just… stupid shit.”
They’ve reached the parking lot, and Eddie gives Steve a sideways look with a bemused smile.
“Woah, Harrington, we’re still in school, remember? Don’t think we’re meant to sound so world-weary yet.”
Steve chuckles. “Yeah.” He gestures at Eddie’s get-up. “Bet you’ve never once cared about the stupid shit, though.”
What people think.
Eddie’s smile turns more knowing. “Shockingly, Harrington,” he says, “I didn’t come out the womb like this.”
They both hesitate; they’re at Steve’s car now, Eddie’s van parked in a space that’s further away. There’s no reason, really, for the conversation to continue any longer.
But Eddie still lingers.
“Uh, enjoy your dinner, I guess. If the… dress-rehearsal goes shit, just tell the kid it’s good luck for the real night.”
Steve laughs. “He’s in the Drama Club, so that might work, actually. Thanks, Munson.” He opens the car door as Eddie nods, starts to head off to his van. Seized by a sudden impulse, Steve calls, “Happy holidays!”
“Yeah, you too.” Eddie turns, tapping at his temple exaggeratedly. “Won’t forget about the books, I promise.”
Steve rolls his eyes. “You better not,” he says, tongue-in-cheek.
He starts the car and heads for Dustin’s house, honks the horn when he drives past Eddie’s van, catches Eddie waving.
Steve thinks he quite likes the idea (regardless of whether it’ll put his library account in jeopardy), of the books finding a permanent home at Eddie’s place. Briefly imagines Eddie writing with an ink-stained hand, curled up safely in a world of his own—where the only monsters are the ones that live in between the pages.
6K notes · View notes
thyme-in-a-bubble · 7 months
Text
ring ring
kinktober, day nineteen
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
a/n: this idea wasn’t originally for these two, but damn if it doesn’t fit super well 
summary: “you know, Sam is gonna notice if I’m gone for too long…”
warnings: bf!dean winchester x reader x sam winchester, smut, dubcon, established relationship, love triangle, phone sex, mutual masturbation, toys, dirty talk, having a huge crush on your boyfriend's brother, cheating, kissing, pussyjob, allusion to sex, slight orgasm denial, slight edging
word count: 2483
∼ gentle reminder that feedback, but especially reblogs are the way you support writers on here ∽
masterlist | join my taglist | kinktober 2023
Tumblr media
“Dean,” you raised your phone up to your ear and peeled your eyes away from the heavy tome cracked open on the table before you, “hi!”
“Hey beautiful,” his deep timbre rumbled warmly, “how’s it going over there?”
“Oh, you know,” you peeked over at Sam who glanced from his similarly hefty book, “slow,” you watched his eyes flicker back down to the page as he got the gist of the casual call, “it’s a lot of research to get through…” shooting your chair back, you stood up, absentmindedly pushing it back into place as you asked, “how about you? Are you still on the road?”
“Nope, I just got here a few hours ago,” your vision lingered on Sam’s long fingers as they ghosted their way down the page he was reading, “I was just about to go over and check the place out,” your teeth tensely seized your bottom lip as you slowly whirled around and took a few paces away. Picking up on your silence, Dean gently poked, “what?”
Hand apprehensively tapping against your thigh, you lowered your voice to admit, “I just don’t like the idea of you being all the way up there on your own…”
“I’m barely a day’s drive away,” you heard him let out a soft sigh. 
“But what if something happens?” your feet carried you out into the hallway, the younger Winchester still visible to your wandering eye.  
“Babe, I can take care of myself,” he pointed out with a small chuckle. 
“I know that…”
“I’ve checked out hundreds of things by myself, this time is no different, it’s just a little ghost, I’ll be fine,” he reassured you. Spine melting against one of the cool walls, you watched as Sam’s hazel glare locked on you as it so often did, effectively causing goosebumps to erupt, ones that didn’t fade in the slightest as Dean then cheekily enquired, “is it because I can’t take care of you from all the way up here?”
Breathy chuckle rolling off your lips, you averted your gaze and humoured him, “well you said it, not me.”
“Who says that I can’t?” you could practically hear the smug smirk through the phone. 
“Dean,” your head shook lightly from side to side.
Letting out a groan that made your cunt clench, “love it when you say my name…”
“I am supposed to be doing research,” a laugh bubbled out through your groan. 
“So, take a break.”
Casting one last glance back at the tall man sitting at the long table, you couldn’t help but give in with a playful, “I hate you.”
“Sure, you do,” he chuckled sarcastically as you scurried into your room just on the right, “was that the sound of a door closing?”
“It was,” you then purposefully flopped down on the mattress loud enough for the frame to creak, “and that was the sound of me laying down on my bed.”
“Atta girl,” he practically purred, “what are you wearing?”
“You are so cliché,” you giggled, staring up at the ceiling. 
“Oh, come on, you love it.”
Exhaling slowly, you counted, “t-shirt and a pair of jeans.”
Humming contently, you then heard him suggest, “why don’t you take those pants off for me?”
“You know, Sam is gonna notice if I’m gone for too long…”
“So? He doesn’t need you to babysit him. Just stop thinking about the research for a bit, just be here with me, relax, you clearly need it.” 
Exhaling slowly, you unbuttoned your trousers and wiggled them down your legs, “alright,” you kicked them to the floor at the foot of the bed, “they’re off.” 
“Are you touching yourself?” his deep voice tickled your ear and shot straight down to your core. 
“Not yet,” your thighs instinctively squeezed together, hips rolling gently as your free hand began to drift south. 
“Good, don’t. Not until I tell you to, okay?” 
Halting your hand in its tracks, it clenched into a fist as you chuckled, “you’re such an ass.” 
“I know, but I’m an ass who can make you cum straight into next week,” he bragged as you reached up to readjust the pillows, mushing them perfectly under your head, “Y/n, relax, shut that beautiful brain of yours off a second and just do as I say, promise it’ll be worth it,” 
“Fine, I promise I won’t,” you exhaled with a light eye-roll, “are you touching yourself?” 
“Do you know how hard it is not to when listening to your voice?” you suddenly noticed how ragged his tone was, “I just have to think about you and I’m fucking throbbing, baby,” you heard him spit in his free palm before sloppy strokes began to echo through the receiver, a melody alone that made you note just how torturously the ache between your thighs was, “shit,” he groaned shamelessly, “I wish it was you touching me… you fucking playing with me, teasing the shit out of me like you do when you’re sitting on my face… leaking down on my tongue… creaming from just a little kiss…” 
Bottom lip trapped between your teeth, you breathed, “Dean…”
“You know what I was thinking about just before I called you?”
“What?” your airy answer rushed out quicker than you’d like. He certainly had you hooked now… 
“That time in the car…”
“Which one?” you let out a light laugh. 
“That first time in the car. You remember how impatient you were? Couldn’t even wait till we got back to the motel.”
“I wasn’t impatient,” you defended, “you were just a tease.” 
“I was a tease? You were the one who climbed into my seat.” 
“Well, you were the one who invited me into your seat.” 
“Yeah, I was,” you didn’t have to see his face to know the huge smirk that had bloomed, “but it worked, didn’t it? Your legs didn’t stop shaking till the next day…”
Eyes lightly rolling in your skull, you tried not to give him the satisfaction of knowing the immense power he had over you, “you will never let me down for that, will you?” 
“I still remember what it was like hearing you moan for the first time… shit,” he brazenly let you hear every last lavish jerk he let himself relish in, “it was so hard not to burst right then and there… I had never heard anything as hot as that before…”
“Dean…” you whined, hips gently rolling though not giving any relief whatsoever, “can I-… can I please touch myself?”
“Why?” he teased, not slowing his own pleasure down one bit, “is this turning you on? Are you getting wet for me?”
“Dean,” you sounded downright pathetic at this point. Yet another thing for the memory banks that he could mock you endlessly about. 
“You didn’t answer my question, sweetheart,” he croaked, “reach down and feel for me, but don’t play with yourself, just feel…”
“You are so mean…” you grumbled light-heartedly as you finally slipped your free fingers below the waist of your panties. 
“Is that a yes?” he challenged. 
“Yes, yes, I’m really fucking wet,” you admitted begrudgingly, nearly whimpering as you retracted your hand, a sinful sheen now glazing the skin. 
“Good,” he crooned conceitedly, “now lift up your shirt and play with those tits,” though it wasn’t the place you longed to caress, you still rushed to fulfil his request, “what I wouldn’t give to touch them right now…” your breathing grew more ragged as your hand switched from one to the other in a lewd little massage, “they’re so fucking perfect… so soft, so pretty,” you gave the pebbly nipple right above your heart a harsh pinch, just like how Dean’s greedy fingers liked to do it, “and when you’re lying on your back and I thrust up into you just right, the way that makes them jiggle?” your cunt clenched at the image, “fuck… hypnotize me, why don’t you? Call me your slave because I’ll follow you anywhere…” dizzying breathes flowing from your lips, your boyfriend was only silent a second, enjoying what little you gave him before he finally said, “hey, baby?” a fuzzy hum immediately rushing out of you, “be a good girl and play with that pretty little pussy for me, yeah? Make it feel real good…”
You might as well have been set aflame with turned on you were. It almost felt like you electrocuted yourself when you finally rubbed your aching clit. 
“Fuck, Dean!” your form thrashed atop the bed. 
“Lower the phone, sweetheart. Let me hear how wet that pussy is,” to which you briefly brought it down to catch more of the lewd soppy sounds echoing throughout the room with every needy caress, “christ, I wish I was there with you…”
Yanking your panties off completely, kicking them to the floor, you swiftly slid two fingers into your quivering hole, “I wish you were here too,” but the petiteness of your fingers caused you to let out a desperate whine, “fuck, Dean, I-…”
“What?” by the sound of his condescending tone it was obvious that he already knew the problem, “what’s wrong, baby?” 
“I feel so empty…” you nearly cried as your fingers pumped and pumped but just couldn’t get deep enough to scratch that itch. 
“Oh, are your pretty fingers not long enough? Not big enough to stretch that pussy out the way that she deserves, huh?”
“N-no.” 
Completely entranced by the melody his own efforts emitted, he promptly muttered, “do something for me then, yeah?”
“Huh?”
“Stop touching yourself.”
“What?” your movements slowed, but didn’t halt completely, “no, no!”
“Stop touching yourself and go get the toy in the bedside table,” painstakingly snatching your glistening digits back, you scurried over the mattress to the table on the right side. Ripping the drawer open, you couldn’t get your hands on the realistic-looking silicone fast enough, “you got it?”
“Yeah,” you crawled back to your previous spot and laid back down. 
“Good. Now give it a little kiss before letting your cunt feel it,” you brought the tip of the dildo up to your lips, giving it a gentle little lick before filling up your mouth more, “be nice, treat it like you’d treat me.” 
After releasing it from your peck with a pop, slobber clung to it as you lowered it down between your trembling thighs, “oh my god,” your eyes fluttered as you slid it inside, “Dean!” 
“That what you needed, babe?” you heard him chuckle. 
“Yes, fuck, it feels so good!” squeezing your eyes shut, you pumped it lavishly, “I don’t know how much longer I’m gonna last with this.”
“Hold on, just a little bit longer, can you do that for me?” 
“Dean,” your plea came out as a moan. 
“Fuck, you sound so hot,” he panted, “don’t cum yet, baby, not yet,” obviously being painfully close himself, “shit, I wish I could see you right now, laying there, in your bed, fucking yourself for me, dripping all over those sheets,” your nails dug into the flared base of the toy, “I can’t wait to get home, baby. Feel that pussy clench around my cock again, maybe even keep that dildo close by to plug up your other holes… fucking hell, you wanna cum with me?”
“Yes!” you cried out. 
“Then go ahead, be a good girl and cum all over that toy,” removing your grip on the silicone, you briefly drifted your fingers up to give your clit the attention it was screaming for. 
But just before you were about to dance your digits back down to give the toy one last pump, it began to move on its own. Snapping your eyes open, you saw none other than Sam, grip firm on the base as he ploughed the dildo in and out of you, giving you exactly what you needed, “oh my god,” your eyes grew wide as they locked with his, though your fingers couldn’t seem to quit their needy circles over your puffy pearl, “oh my god,” holding his piercing gaze, you tumbled over the edge, “fuck!” 
Hearing your boyfriend swiftly follow suit, you just kept blinking back at his brother as he slowly pulled the toy out of your clenching cunt, “fuck, that was so good, baby, shit, I came so much over here.”
“Mhm…” you distantly hummed, chest heaving as you watched Sam swipe a finger over the toy, collecting some of your juices before swiftly letting his tongue have a taste.
“Fuck, I can’t wait to get back home to you.”
“Y-yeah,” Sam’s eyes stayed locked with yours as he popped his finger back out, “me neither…”
“Just a day or so more and I’m all yours,” your hazy gaze fluttered down to spot Sam’s girth, freed and throbbing. 
“See you then,” you distantly spoke before hanging up and letting your phone drop to the mattress. 
Like a crack of thunder, before you even had time to register what it was that you were doing, the two of you clawed the other closer and locked your lips in a fevered kiss. Nails nearly digging through his clothes, it didn’t take long before your fingers enveloped Sam’s cock, the weight making your knees wobbly. 
 But just as quickly as you had collided like magnets, that’s how fast you pulled back again, “Sam-, shit…” palms planted on his chest, you shook your head in an effort to clear it, “this is bad, we can’t do this…”
“Don’t say that,” he plucked up your chin, “don’t fucking deny what’s going on between us, what’s been there since the very beginning.”
“But, what about-”
“I don’t give a shit about that,” both his hands came up to cup your face, “do you want me? Do you want me as much as I want you?” 
Blinking back at him, all you could do was wistfully tilt your head instead of uttering the truth, “Sam…”
“Because if you don’t, if you really don’t, then tell me to walk away and I will,” he slowly inched closer, a hand drifting down to grasp his cock to tease you with the tip that was already so desperately nudging against your core and getting soaked in your want, “tell me that you don’t want this, that you don’t want me…” he parted your petals with his dick, “tell me and I’ll go away…”
Breathlessly, blinking back into his dark gaze, instead of finding the words, you simply pulled him back in and gave him a kiss as confirmation.
A string of saliva still connecting your lips, his nose ghosted against yours as his teasing grew more confident, “you want it, huh? Tell me that you want me.”
“I want you,” you finally uttered after ages of suppressing the fevered desire. 
“Tell me again,” he nearly growled, catching your weeping hole at every electric flick through your folds. 
“I want you, please fuck me.”
Tumblr media
© 2023 thyme-in-a-bubble 
1K notes · View notes
peachesofteal · 4 months
Text
Leave
Part two the Sassy Series but can be read as a standalone.
Tumblr media
Simon Riley/female reader 3.5k words - AO3 Warnings-tags: 18+ Angst, PTSD, canon typical violence, bombs, blood and injury. Smut, oral sex - fem receiving, praise kink, creampie. Unplanned pregnancy. Everyone is bad at feelings. He's like a bomb. Note: This was never posted to Tumblr, so in honor of the series and to complete the masterlist I decided to clean it up a bit and bring it over here.
The truck is a silent tomb.
Rigid, hard lines of muscle hold themselves still without quiver, eyes darting from the road to the floor, hands to feet. No one speaks. Soap’s fingers tap restlessly on his leg, and occasionally, he peeks around before refocusing his vision on something in the distance, something you’re not even sure exists.
The only one really looking at anyone, is Ghost. He’s staring daggers at you in the rearview mirror, fire blazing in his irises, heat so intense it forces your head down towards your knees. Even Gaz looks away from you now, occasionally nudging his thigh against your own, but keeping his gaze fixed out the window.
You’re fucked.
Simon explodes as soon as you’re all unloaded inside the gates. He detonates like a bomb, raw fury rippling through the air, impact radius large enough that it sends nearly everyone else scurrying. “Sass.” Your call sign is rough on his lips. He motions for you to step away, forcing you out from where you’re lurking close to Soap, rage, and something else, something secret, simmering beneath the surface, something you barely glean a glimpse of when he towers over you.
“Ghost. Listen-“ you hiss, fingers flying to push his hulking body away, anger boiling in your blood. He scoffs, like you’re so easily dismissed. Like you’re a child.
“You’re losin’ it Sass. I don’t know, and I don’t care how you used to operate, but we don’t pull shit like that in the 141.”
“Fuck you, Sim-“
“Don’t use my name right now.” The paint around his eyes is cracked, revealing small swaths of skin, the crinkle of crow’s feet. “You had no idea what you were doing out there!” He yells, and you snap backwards instinctively. “You were operating blind, like a fuckin’ idiot. Cap, and everyone else, seems to think you’re a world class operator but today all I saw was stupidity. Are you stupid, Sass?” His raised voice has captured Soap’s attention, who drifts closer and closer to where the two of stand. “I asked you a question.” Ghost snaps, and you want to melt into the ground.
“No.” you whisper. It’s too much. This is too much. 
“Then why would you do something like that?” He snarls, and you shy away. You’ve never seen him like this. You’ve seen him ruthless, cold blooded, laser focused on target. You’ve watched him shove a pistol in another man’s eye socket and pull the trigger, torture someone, and in the same breath, turn around and save a child from a burning building.
But you’ve never seen this. Gunpowder and rage. Metal and carnage.
You’re about to ask him what the hell his problem is when Soap steps between you both, hand out towards Ghost like he’s trying to gentle a scared animal.
“Take it easy, LT.” You use the distraction to make your escape before he can see the tears that are trying slip down your face.
Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry. 
“D’ye wan’ talk about it?” Soap sits with a thud next you, soft blue eyes shining in the setting sun.
“I think you got the gist.”
“LT can be kind of intense, but don’t take it personally.”
Don’t take it personally. 
Don’t take it personally that last week he was shoving his cock down your throat, telling you how good you were. 
Don’t take it personally that last week, when you woke up sweating and shaking, he pressed his face to yours with a whisper. “Just a nightmare Sass, I’ve got you.”
Don’t take it personally, that five, six months ago in Belize, he was screaming in a field medic’s face, promising to hurt them if you died. 
Don’t take it personally. 
“I don’t want to talk about it.” He shrugs, slapping you on the back playfully.
“Get some sleep, lass.” Across the gap between two tents, Price and Ghost stand with their arms crossed, murmured words drifting on the wind.
Price glances at you. His mouth moves. Ghost nods, and then leaves.
Great. 
A day passes, then another.
Then a week, then two.
Ghost- Simon, vanishes from your life. Evacuates whenever he sees you coming. At first, you tried to run him down, tried to corner him, get him to talk to you, but he’s too smart, applying his tactical prowess to his new mission: avoiding you at all costs.
One day, you catch sight of his retreating back around a corner and sprint after him, calling his name, not his call sign.
He ignores you.
He’s not Simon anymore, at least not to you. He’s Ghost.
You give up. You have enough sense to know when you’re not wanted.
“Sassafrass!” Johnny gleefully calls out as you duck into the ten for the briefing. Ghost tenses like he’s just stepped on a landmine, but you roll your eyes. Dickhead. You position yourself as far away from him as possible, just to the right of Soap, out of view.
He doesn’t even look at you anymore, anyway. Not like it matters. 
“It’s an easy extraction, get in, grab the target, get out. Don’t over complicate it.” You nod your understanding, and Price gives you a smile. “Sassy, you and Soap will tackle the southeast side of the building from the back door. Gaz and Ghost will come through north. We’ll meet in the middle.” Again, you nod, and Soap grins at you like a goofy faced teenager. “Alright. Let’s load up.” You shimmy your backpack high above your hips and roll your shoulders, partially listening to your partner’s excited, halfcocked thesis on entry tactics.
It's the behavior that catches your attention. The guy looks nervous, skin gleaming with the sickly sheen of anxious sweat, tense and poised, like he’s waiting for something.
You’ve seen it before. Too many times.
“Soap.” You whisper. Your tone is dead serious, and he turns with a question in his eye.
“What’s got ye spooked?” Your gaze flicks over to the guy you’ve flagged. You shake your head, just as your target is swinging his backpack around and unzipping the top pouch.
You try to warn Soap.
You press your comm and try to tell the 141.
You manage to do neither before the world explodes.
Your eyes open to pandemonium. People are screaming. Kids are crying. You can hardly see, debris and smoke from the explosion making your eyes water and practically blotting out the sun.
There’s blood on your face.
Everyone is scattered. The screaming echoes around you, mirroring the screaming in your mind.
Where are you? 
Your comm’s been knocked loose. Your gun is gone.
Your body is not your own. It’s acting on instinct. Fight. Flight. Push. Pull.
It shoves everything down. Everything your brain can’t compartmentalize right now gets locked away in a dark place. You can feel it all, later.
Right now, you have to survive.
“What the bloody hell was that?” Soap yells over the noise, snapping you out of autopilot. He’s somewhere behind you, sense of relief making you dizzy when you turn and see him crouched next to a large chunk of concrete. Thank fuck.
“Johnny? Shit.”
“Yeah. Shite. What was that?”
“A bomb.” You say, dryly. He gives you a dirt look.
“We’ve gotta split, lass.” The ground has a unique dirt pattern to it. The grains are all a different size, different shades of reds, greys, brown. Where are you? They work together, forming a chaotic design, one blanket of earth, dust and dirt swirling together and- where are you, where are you, where- “Sassy!” Soap’s face careens into your point of view. It looks distorted. You jerk backwards, the quick movement making your head spin. “You okay?”
“Where are we?” The words stick to the roof of your mouth. He gives you an odd look.
“Hey, Sassy. You alright?”
“I’m good. Yeah. All good.” A pause. A deep breath. A denial. “You got comms?”
“Negative.”
“Great.”
Johnny is bleeding. You didn’t notice right away, but the crimson stain spreads under his shirt near his hip, and your panic returns, ice slowly spreading through your veins, threatening to freeze you where you stand.
“You’re hurt.” You pat his shoulder, and he nods.
“We’ve got to find the others. Or the truck.”
You can’t find the god damn truck. You have no comms. No guns, only your combat knife and two grenades between the two of you, and Soap is actively bleeding.
It looks bad.
It feels even worse.
“Maybe we should just sit tight.” He grunts, and you startle.
“Yeah. Yeah, Johnny. Let’s just sit here, in the middle of active territory, with no comms, no guns, in the middle of the street. When you’re fucking bleeding out from your gut.” You snap. Confusion flickers across his face. You never snap at him. Gaz? Maybe. Ghost, yeah. Even Price sometimes. But never Johnny. “Sorry. Sorry, Soap. My head is still spinning from the blast.”
“It’s alright, lass.” His voice is calm, smooth. You can feel him watching you from the corner of your eye before he straightens, head turning the other direction. “There’s a hostel, a few clicks down the road. Want to give it a go? They probably have a phone.” You look at him, and then down the length of your own body, tallying and subtracting, plus or minus the odds.
Fuck it. 
It’s not very far, but it feels like a full days’ walk. Your head is still buzzing, proximity to the blast too close, too much, too familiar. It’s scrambled your brain, and you find yourself trying to focus on the back of Soap’s head, breathing through your nose. One foot in front of the other.
Somewhere, a block or two away, a car backfires.
Your muscles flex, and you flatten against the side of the building. Soap is talking to you, but you’re immobile, and you can’t hear him. Breathe in. Breathe out.
Something kickstarts in the back of your brain and your feet move. You give him a nod.
The woman behind the desk is terrified of you. Her eyes go round when you approach, gesturing to the phone, and she hands it over immediately, nervously looking between you and Soap, who’s slumped over in a plastic chair, bleeding.
You dial the number you know by heart without pause.
Soap is leaning against you when the truck roars around the corner, dust fogging the air beneath its wheels. He’s doing alright, your rudimentary medical skills coming in clutch when you decided to pack his wound as you waited, and the woman at the desk kindly gave you some towels for pressure. You flag them down, Price white knuckled behind the wheel, familiar skull mask in the seat next to him.
Your heart sinks.
He’s going to kill you.
When he jumps from the passenger seat, he looks anything but angry. His eyes are frantic behind the mask, wide and darting from you to Soap, pulling him from your side into his as you get closer.
“Johnny.” He says gruffly, and Soap cracks a smile.
“S’all good, Sassafrass patched me up.” He groans, and Ghost loads him into the backseat, sliding in beside him as you take the spot up front.
You’re numb. Price is asking you questions, and you’re answering as best you can, surprised when he seems satisfied after the play the play. He even says you’ve done well, the praise from your captain warming a little spot in your cold body. You nod robotically, shallow smile on your face, and check on Soap in the rear-view mirror, relieved that he’s got good color in his cheeks, still breathing.
You catch Ghost’s eyes in the reflection. They burn into you from behind the mask, pulling you apart to see inside. He doesn’t blink, and you turn away, uneasy.
You stumble away from everyone after you give Johnny a pat on the head. He’s still smiling, and squeezes your hand affectionately, medical team carting him away to receive actual care.
He’s fine. We got here in time. 
You’re staring at the blood in the sink when someone tries the door handle. After it doesn’t budge, a heavy fist thumps against the thin plywood.
“Someone’s in here.” You croak. The fist bangs again, and you sigh, swinging it open to tell whoever it is to go away.
Except, it’s Ghost standing on the other side.
“Fuck off.” The bewildered words come easily, and his eyes narrow. He shoulders through the door, slamming it shut, large hands gripping onto your shoulders and then tugging you into chest, heavy arms pressing you so tight into him that you’re having trouble breathing.
Your heart flips over.
He holds you, in silence, for a moment that feels like a decade. The balaclava scuffs along the top of your head, and he steps back, still clutching you by the arms, looking you up and down.
“Where are you hurt?” He shifts, thumb stroking a tender spot above your temple where you have a scratch, pulling the wet cloth in your grip free and dabbing it to the side of your head gently. 
“N-no. I’m not. Just Soap. I’m fine.”
“Good. That’s… that’s good.” You stare like he’s grown two heads.
“Ghost.” You’re cautious, unsure. Confused. You don’t know what’s happening, why he’s standing in the bathroom, caressing your face, helping you clean up. He holds the cloth under the tap, bringing it back up to your cheek. “Ghost.” You try again. Nothing. Finally, you try; “Simon.”
His hand stops moving. He’s as still as marble in the bathroom, lungs frozen in his chest.
He’s looking into your eyes with a long, dizzying gaze that has your own stunned wide, unable to blink, unable to look away.
Until he lunges for you.
He snatches you by the waist, dragging you out the bathroom and hoisting you over his shoulder. You yelp. “Simon, what the fu-“
“Hush.” He swats your ass like you’re a petulant child, beelining for your tent.
Sometime in the night, when the base is somewhat quiet and the lamp light has dimmed, he folds you in half on the threadbare mattress, pressing your legs back towards your ear, eyes trained on where your cunt flutters for him, clenching around nothing as you wriggle and try to press your thighs together for friction.
“None of that. Be good.” He admonishes.
“Simon. Please.” You’re not too proud to beg in this moment, that’s what nearly dying will do to you. You need him.
He sinks to his knees, still framed between your legs, and rolls the bottom of the balaclava to his nose.
It’s the first time you’ve ever really seen the skin on his face in such a large amount. No paint. No skull. No black cloth. Just his jaw, broad and sharp. His lips, full and wet, flash of tongue darting out from behind his teeth, mouth hot against your pussy, thumbs spreading you open to have his fill.
“There she is.” He murmurs, lips on your clit like a lover’s kiss. His tongue seeks your swollen nub under its hood, and it’s so much, warmth of your body, his face, all of it melting into your skin. Your heel pushes against the mattress as you rock your hips up into his mouth and he chuckles, a hand pressing down on your lower belly. “You taste good, Sass.” You clench, twitching, getting close, orgasm barreling through your nerves, body moving in tandem with each swipe of his tongue, muscles seizing-
He pulls away, hand wiping his face and rocking backwards on his knees.
“What the fuck?” You screech, propping yourself up on your elbows. He’s loosening his belt, and you can’t resist reaching, wrapping your fingers around the throbbing length of his cock. He snatches your hand away, holding you by your wrist and bending you back down, laying his weight on top of you and pushing inside your cunt with a single thrust. It’s been months, yet your body yields to him immediately, aching burn fizzling out as your walls flutter and you whine.
“My girl.” He moans, fucking into you like a man starved. “My good girl.” You stutter out a response, some jumbled nonsense that sounds like his name, sounds like Simon. “My sweet girl, takin’ my cock like you were made for it.” He rears back, pulling your leg to his shoulder, foot dangling next to his ear.
“Fuck, Simon. Don’t- don’t stop please-“ His thumb continues in a circle on your clit, pleasure shooting through your muscles.
“Are you going to come?” you nod furiously, eyes clenched shut. “Look at me.” He bears down on you, gripping your face, and you find his usual guarded gaze nowhere, nothing between the two of you, just two raw currents slamming against one another they’re sparking. You can’t look away.
He thumbs your clits hard, giving you more as he thrusts, rising crescendo forcing insane noises from your mouth, sounds you don’t even recognize, gasping as your orgasm rolls over you like you’ve been hit by a truck. You tighten around him like a vice, and he swears, burying himself deep, walls pulsing around him, pulling his orgasm into you with ease.
You both slips into uneasy sleep, his body wrapped around yours so tight it almost hurts. Your dreams are broken, shattered fragments of bombs from past and present; voices screaming, friends pleading. You scream, pain and fear scratching under your skull, an attack, and bombardment you didn’t see coming. He holds you, soothes you, kisses you, still tense, coiled, ready to spring if need be.
“I got you, Sass. I’m here.” His voice is soft in the dark, fingers smoothing the sweat dampened skin of your face. “I’ve got you.”
Two days later, he rips the rug right out from under your feet.
“What the FUCK is this?” you brandish the stack of papers in your hands at Simon, who sits calmly in the corner of the tent. He doesn’t look at you, doesn’t acknowledge your shrieking, your voice reaching frantic pitches of incredulity.
“Can’t have you here.” He says simply, like that’s all the explanation that’s needed. You’re vibrating, rattling with fury, with fear.
“You reported an intimate relationship with Price, to get rid of me?” His eyes narrow behind the mask, but he doesn’t deny you. “Oh my fucking god, Simon.” You laugh, and it’s sour, spoiled. Rotten, like the sickness that’s turning your stomach. This has to be a joke.
“I can’t have you here.” He repeats himself like a broken record, before he’s on his feet and heading for the exit.
“Simon!” You hiss at his retreat, but it’s far too late. It’s too late for all of this. He’s already gone.
He doesn’t come to say goodbye. Johnny shuffles out to the airfield to give you a hug, Gaz and Price with him. Betrayal burns the back of your eyelids as you shake hands with your captain, and he gives you a knowing look. A sad look.
When the helicopter banks over the tents, you see the black spot of someone standing outside, face turned up to the sky, and you stare at the white and black skull until it disappears from view completely.
You’re restless.
Your house is a skeleton, the walls of the rooms empty, silence so loud you swear you can feel it reverberating in the floors. You were technically on leave, but available for transfer, even though you hadn’t put in for anything, and hadn’t put any feelers out for private sector either. There was something glitching in your brain. Something serious after that last explosion. The whispers of self-doubt echo in your mind. You were off after that bomb, there’s no denying it.
You’ve tried to cleanse yourself of it. Of him. Of everything. You stand under the spray of the shower and scrub your skin until it hurts, letting the bathroom become so thick with steam it’s hard to see. It’s the only thing that relaxes you. It’s the only place that feels quiet.
It’s three weeks later when you start to get sick. At first, you think it’s a bug and expect it to pass. You have a hard time keeping anything down, your stomach sending food and water right back up your throat, forcing you to sip electrolytes throughout the day to keep from crashing.
When four days of the same turn into five, and then six, and then a week, you start to get nervous. You start to do the math.
That’s how you end up in the drugstore, staring at the selection of pregnancy tests. Just to rule it out. You tell yourself. There is no way you’re pregnant. You were good with your pills. You rarely ever missed one. Better safe than sorry.
The test glares at you, fully aware of much an affront it is.
“This can’t be happening.” You whisper to yourself in the mirror. “This isn’t right.” Fear ricochets up your spine.
Fuck. Simon. 
478 notes · View notes
lakesbian · 4 months
Text
Grue approached me, “I ran out.  Got extras?” I handed him a fistful of the wrist ties.
Grue wrestled with a gang member with an injured leg, twisting the guy’s arms behind his back and then punching him in the kidney when his struggling made it too difficult to get the plastic handcuffs on.  The guy gave up the fight. “You got any plans for tomorrow?” I turned my attention away from the unconscious girl I was cuffing and looked at Grue. “Well?” he asked. “I’m planless.  No plan,” I fumbled my words.
“Want to come over to my place?  I’m supposed to have a group meeting to discuss progress and whatever for this online class I’m taking, but I’ve also got my sister’s caseworker stopping by to check out my apartment in the afternoon.  I was hoping to buy some furniture and get it put together by then, but I’m tight on time and it’ll be a hell of a lot easier with two people,” he told me, “…and that was a rambling explanation.” “I got the gist.  Yeah, I could do that.” I had seen him smile that boyish grin of his often enough that I could picture it behind his mask. “I’ll text you with the time and address?” “Alright.” He gave me a very ‘guy’ clap on the shoulder, then headed over to catch up to a guy that was trying to crawl away, a little ways down the street.
>lie about running out of wrist ties for detaining people during the gang war the team of teenagers is participating in as an excuse to come talk to taylor >ask taylor on implicit date while punching someone in the kidneys >get nervous and start rambling while trying to justify the invitation >his date idea is taylor helping him put together furniture for his IKEA showroom ass apartment so he can convince his younger sister's caseworker that he is a very normal 40yo 17yo adult man and should be given custody of her immediately >literally just punched someone in the kidneys during a gang war >she says yes >freak out from the successful invitation, respond by awkwardly clapping her on the shoulder like she's a male friend and then hustling off to detain a crawling escapee from the gang war >all of the gang war detainees had to sit there and listen to that >he still genuinely has no idea that he's romantically attracted to her and is going to friendzone her on the date by going "uh, you could be like a sister to me, i think"
brian laborn, everyone. youve gotta love him
315 notes · View notes
sluttywonwoo · 1 year
Note
Skz thot incoming bc I saw u asked oops - seven minutes in heaven with Han who’s secret bf so it goes from kissing to him fingering you with a hand over your mouth in like thirty seconds flat
Tumblr media
“thank god the bottle landed on me or i would’ve killed myself.”
you roll your eyes and shove your boyfriend, sending him tumbling into the hamper behind him. he’d been on his knees, unsteady already, but you didn’t mean to push him that hard.
“oi, what was that for?” he grumbles, righting the hamper and himself.
“for being so dramatic.”
“i’m not being dramatic! the bottle was this close to landing on minho and then you’d be in this closet with him for seven minutes.”
“yeah, but we wouldn’t be doing anything, ji. the ‘heaven’ part of seven minutes in heaven isn’t guaranteed.”
“yeah but he’d definitely try something,” jisung mutters.
“oh my god.”
“knowing him! c’mon you know i’m right. have you seen yourself?”
you purse your lips. “do you really want to spend all seven minutes arguing over this or do you want to actually put them to good use?”
jisung sighs and pulls you onto his lap.
“for the record, if everyone knew we were dating, i wouldn’t have to worry so much about one of the other boys trying to get in your pants.”
“first of all, weird way to put it. second of all, you know why they can’t know. and third of all, i thought we agreed not to talk about this anymore.”
“i know, i know. i just-”
“so kiss me.”
he does, cradling the back of your head with his hand. he slips his tongue into your mouth the moment you part your lips in a moan. you want to grind down onto him but it’s hard to through the tight pants you’re both wearing.
jisung had chosen leather out of all things.
sensing your frustration, he snakes his free hand down between your bodies to unbutton your pants. it’s still difficult for him to get his hand down them, considering how big it is, but he manages to wiggle it in so that he’s cupping you over your underwear.
“fuck, you’re wet. what’s all this for?”
“you, duh.”
“well i’d hope so,” he scoffs, “but why?”
“you know i get horny when i drink,” you whine. “and this hair color looks so good on you, and your pants are tight in all the right places-”
“shit, you just got even wetter, i can feel it running down my fingers.”
“touch me, ji,” you plead, trying to grind into his hand.
“i got you, baby. let’s just get these pants down a little… there we go.”
your body slumps against his when he slides two of his fingers inside of you. you feel him chuckle and kiss the top of your head before repositioning you so that your back is against his chest.
“i’m surprised you haven’t already jumped me tonight,” jisung admits. “just knowing how turned on you are right now.”
“i have self-control,” you mumble.
“what’s that supposed to mean?”
“nothing, but if you think it means something then what does that say about your restraint?” the end of your sentence gets cut off because jisung started to move his fingers to shut you up but you know he gets the gist.
“what was that?” he asks.
“fuck you.”
“you already are.”
“i wish i wasn’t.”
“you know that’s not true. just feel how wet you are for me, baby.”
your head lolls back against his shoulder. “fuck, go faster please.”
“that’s what i thought.”
he speeds up and adds a third finger, making you whimper involuntarily.
“shhh, gotta be quiet, baby,” he whispers. “can’t let them know what we’re really doing in here.”
“can’t help it…” you choke out.
jisung’s solution is to hold his other hand over your mouth to muffle the noises you’re making. it’s effective, but it only turns you on even more, and you know jisung can feel you tightening around his fingers.
“how many minutes do you think we have left?” he asks, “maybe three?” you nod against his hand. your guess is about the same. “i’ve made you cum in less time. this should be easy.”
849 notes · View notes
sixx-sixx-sixx · 1 month
Text
TEASER: Cooper “The Ghoul” Howard x female!OC - The Trader’s Daughter
Tumblr media
I just wanted to hop on here and share a little bit of what I’ve been working on to contribute to the Cooper Howard fangirls 😭😂 Please let me know your thoughts and feedback is always appreciated!!
Synopsis:
Daisy is the daughter of an ex-vault dweller/wasteland forager named Josiah, who escaped the vault when she was only a child. In his time exploring the wasteland for the benefit of the vault, Josiah meets Cooper “The Ghoul” Howard, who becomes a lifelong acquaintance after a few heated run-ins. Cooper pulls some strings and uses his connections to get Josiah a safe place for him and his daughter, where Josiah becomes a trader of chems and anything else you could want from a trading post.
The Ghoul goes out of his way to make sure Josiah and his flower are well taken care of, and Josiah makes sure that Cooper gets the chems he needs to ward off going feral. Throws in some extra when he sees that Coop’s making an effort to get his kid to gain basic survival skills. (There’s totally a “they were roommates” vibe between her dad and Cooper, but I’m not going too in depth on any of that) Daisy’s just thankful to have a fun time when her Coop comes to visit.
As the years go by, Cooper’s visits to the shop become less frequent, stopping completely when our protagonist is 14. Daisy never stops thinking about the man who her dad trusted more than anyone in the wasteland, the ghoul who frequently went out of his way to bring her small trinkets from his travels as a bounty hunter.
Cooper returns to the trading post after over a decade. Except now, the once welcoming community has become more barbaric, with less smiling faces and more fighting and outlaws. By all means, it was your average wasteland town. He’s surprised to walk into Josiah’s trading post and see a breathtaking young woman come out from the back room, the type of woman men would go to war over in ancient times.
Shocked to see her ghoul standing in front of her, seeing him for the first time as a grown woman, with a grown woman brain and a grown woman body. Daisy had spent many years thinking about him, developed a crush in her teenage years that had bloomed in her chest for a decade. She knew that there was nothing there, there couldn’t be, he was her father’s closest acquaintance for years. He’d watched her grow up, essentially. No way she had a chance, but still, it didn’t hurt to yearn for the irradiated cowboy.
- so yeah. That’s like, the gist of what’s going on so far, it’s definitely not fully fleshed out, but I wanted to post some kind of teaser/synopsis of what I’ve got written messily in my notes app 😅 I want this to be multi part, not sure how many parts yet, but I definitely have at least 4 sections of blurbs in my notes that are going to turn into 4 parts. It’ll be slow burn, definitely a little big of dad’s best friend cooper (I’m just a girl, I can’t help it), definitely some daddy issues at some point, and diverges from canon probably a LOT because I’ve got a general idea of the fallout universe but it’s by no means comprehensive. The first part/chapter is probably gonna be her background, why her dad escaped the vault/maybe how he got acquainted with cooper.
- I also haven’t written anything in years, so be gentle with me 😭
95 notes · View notes
mykoreanlove · 10 months
Text
sweet whispers
Tumblr media
It was a dark and stormy night. The vivid lightning of thunder illuminated the darkness outside. Raindrops pattered against the glass windows heavily, but you didn’t notice. You were laying in your boyfriend’s arms sleeping. The relationship between Chan and you was still fresh, yet somehow you felt the utmost peace when you were with him.
He was observing you cautiously. Even though he was exhausted from all the shows he had done in the last couple of weeks, he did not want to shut his eyes and sleep. Instead, he watched you toss and turn, murmur in your sleep. Watching you slumber filled his heart with love and his mind with peace. He adored your beautiful features, even more exquisite now that you were asleep. Chan noticed you babbling franticly, too quietly for him to hear so he pulled you closer into his strong arms.
“What is it, baby?” he murmured while listening closely to your rambling. You did not know you were talking in your sleep. Nobody had ever mentioned that before, but again only a few ever got the chance to see you so vulnerable at all. Chan’s whole demeanor changed as he understood what you were saying. It ached his heart to hear about your gruesome fears. You had not mentioned those to him while conscious, maybe you had not been ready, yet? Not wanting to push you he decided to reassure you in your slumber first. If you were ready to talk about it while awake, he’d gladly repeat himself.
Another loud thunder disturbed the peace of the night which made him chuckle. “Baby girl”, he whispered, “I kinda got the feeling that your inner world resembles the outer world pretty much.” Chan placed a soft kiss on your temple, careful not to wake you. He held you firmly in his arms as he began talking to you.
“Y/N, I don’t want you to be afraid. Why are you afraid?” Another low chuckle left his lips. “Oh right, you’re not going to answer me right now. That’s okay. Maybe it’s better if you hear it like this for the first time. Y/N, baby girl, I am in love with you. I’ve been head over heels in love with you from the second I saw you. I never believed in love at first sight but here we are. I think you are amazing. Beautiful, smart, kind, funny, insightful, sexy” – he paused, eyeing you once more to check if you were still asleep – “creative, inspiring, strong… I could list a couple more, but I think you get the gist.” His broad smile slowly faded into deep concern.
“I don’t understand why you would ever think that I was going to leave you. You are such a catch. Don’t you think I should be the one worrying?” Still deep in sleep you grabbed a fistful of Chan’s shirt which made him pause again and look at you compassionately.
„I know you are still asleep but that kind of felt like you confirming what I said. Wait, should I be worried?” Chan laughed out loud while grabbing his forehead.
“Oh gosh, look at me. I wanted to take away your fears and now I am feeding mine. But in all seriousness, Y/N, you don’t have to worry about anything. I want you in my life. I want you by my side. I want to be with you – all the time actually. I am the happiest when I am with you. I love being with you. I understand that past experiences have fucked with your head and made you close off your heart, I get that. And I guess you’ll need time to process that and open up again, that’s okay, too. I am here for you. I will be here every single day and reassure you of my love, baby girl.”
By now you stopped talking and tossing altogether, laying peacefully in his arms dreaming away. Chan noticed this too and put another sweet kiss on your head. “It’s like you understood every word I said. Maybe you did? Can you grab my shirt again or something?” He waited cautiously but nothing happened. A broad smile formed again on his lips.
“Y/N, you are worthy of love. You are worthy of my love. I don’t think you’re good enough. You are more than enough. You are everything. Perfect, just the way you are. You don’t have to change a single thing. In fact, I love everything about you. Can you believe that? Can you trust me? Can you trust in love? Relationships are actually kind of beautiful if you think about it. I will be your best friend and you will be mine. And we’ll go through life together handling the ups and downs - smiling, crying, evolving, fucking. I can’t wait for everything that we’ll experience in the future. Please don’t ever be afraid of me leaving you. I am here to stay – forever… if you let me.”
Chan whispered the last part into your ear hoping that it would get right through to you. He did not know if you could drop your fears of abandonment just like that, but he would never give up. On you. Or your relationship. Ever.
387 notes · View notes
runnning-outof-time · 7 months
Text
There’s Something About These Grounds… | Tommy Shelby x Mrs Shelby & Reader
Tumblr media
Request: no - written for @zablife ‘s 2k celebration and @little-diable ‘s 15k celebration
Pairing: Tommy Shelby x Mrs Shelby & Reader
Summary: Mrs Shelby takes a walk and stumbles upon a dark secret that is hidden on the grounds of Arrow House. She's given a warning about the future of her family, a warning that makes her new husband wonder if she should even leave the house at all.
Warnings: language, drinking, smoking, paranormal themes, implications of past and future miscarriages (nothing in detail), implications of suicide (nothing in detail)
Word Count: 3317
A/N: I…I’m not 100% sure what this is, but hey, I finished it - I think we’ll call it my best attempt at writing something that’s the complete opposite of fluff haha. I’ve given Mrs Shelby a name…she’s an OC but reader is also present here. Enjoy! :)
A/N 2: Lee and Chi - congratulations on your amazing milestones!! I’m so thankful that you’re both part of this amazing community…I can’t imagine it without you! Thanks also to Chi for allowing me to play around with the prompt - it’s bolded/italcized in the story…I hope I still got the gist of it!
I’D LOVE TO KNOW WHAT YOU THINK! - YOUR COMMENTS & REBLOGS HELP ME WRITE!
Comment/Message Me if you’d like to be tagged in future stories similar to this one!
Tumblr media
The landscape got darker and more overgrown with each step Mrs Shelby took. She wondered why she'd decided to take a walk away from the manor that she resided in. At one point, she even considered abandoning her original idea and turning back to the house. But then she reasoned that anything would be better than being cooped up inside those dark walls for yet another day.
Her marriage to the man who owned the very estate she was walking on, Thomas Shelby, can only be described as a whirlwind. No one in either of their families knew of it happening until after the license was signed and they had taken a trip to Paris. What had bright promises at first now felt like the beginning of a prison sentence for the young woman.
It was Tommy's family that insisted they have the party that was taking place today. The bride was weary about it - she was never one to jump into the spotlight during social events, but Tommy's methods of convincing made it hard to say 'no'. He assured her that she'd be in control; that when she'd say that she'd reached her limit, the party would be over. It eased her worries when she agreed to it, but now that the day of the party was here, she was feeling uneasy once again.
So, in hopes to quell her building nerves, Mrs Shelby decided that she would escape the house and take a walk on its expansive grounds.
The landscape seemed to turn a darker shade of green the further she walked away from the manor, but she reasoned that the worry of being amongst some overgrown trees was affecting her much less than the worry of what would be happening later this evening.
She continued walking until she came upon a pond. The small body of water was surrounded by trees and shrubbery, and the fog that hung low over it added an eerie vibe to the atmosphere. As Mrs Shelby got closer to the pond, she noticed a woman standing in the middle of it.
"Hello?!" she called out, confusing quickly filling her as she walked closer to the water’s edge with caution. "Excuse me," she spoke again when the woman didn't respond or even turn to face her.
From her short distance away, she could see that this lady looked almost white, as if she'd been submerged in the cold water for too long and had lost all color. Her hair was wet and flat on her head, sticking to the skin of her shoulders that could be seen above the water.
Mrs Shelby felt a chill run through her body as she stayed focused on the mysterious woman, who still hadn't moved despite the other making her presence very known. "This is private property, you know," Mrs Shelby tried another direction, hoping that her voice held the authority that was needed to finally make the lady face her. But her words did nothing.
Frustration seeped into her bones as she willed herself to move even closer to the pond's edge. Maybe she didn't hear me, she reasoned as she prepared to call out again. But just as she opened her mouth, the woman completely submerged herself under the water, leaving not a trace of her behind. This made Mrs Shelby frantic. She looked everywhere - even kneeling down on the muddy ground and straining her eyes to see if she could spot her underwater - wondering how the lady could disappear from sight just like that.
The sudden voice that came from behind her made her jump.
"These woods are no one's property, darling." It had to be the woman who was in the water. Mrs Shelby was hesitant to turn and face the person, but when she did, she found the woman, who had disappeared just moments ago, standing beside her. She noticed that she was no longer wet, and was wearing a worn, white slip, something that was too cold to be wearing on a dark, autumn day. "They belong to nature."
"My husband would say differently," Mrs Shelby tried to stay calm, standing up and jutting her chin upwards slightly in hopes it would add to her act of confidence. She didn't want this woman to know that she was actually shaking in her shoes.
"Your husband does not know what he stands for," the woman was quick to say.
"Who-who are you and why are you here?" Mrs Shelby decided to ask, her voice faltering only slightly.
"My name is (Y/N)," the woman responded, "this is my home."
The second part of her statement made Mrs Shelby scoff slightly. "Impossible. My husband and I own these grounds. They've been in his hands for four years now," she spoke in a refuting tone.
"Don't be silly, Eloise. These grounds have changed hands many times," the strange woman countered, uttering a laugh of her own at the face that Mrs Shelby pulled when her name was said.
"How do you know my name?"
"I know things," (Y/N) spoke frankly. "I know things about you, about your husband. I know why your marriage occurred in the manner it did...it's not for the reason you keep telling yourself."
"I don't know what you mean..." Mrs Shelby wasn't sure if she actually wanted clarification.
"Tommy was lonely. He couldn't cope with himself, with his business and its demands. The whores weren't doing it for him anymore, and even though I told him that he could keep coming to see me, it wasn't enough for him. He needed someone who would be by his side constantly. Someone who could appease him physically. It's unclear to me why he chose you...since it seems you'd rather be away from him then by his side." (Y/N) ended her explanation by looking the other woman over, an unimpressed look present on her face.
"He and I love each other," Mrs Shelby tried to be indignant, but she didn't quite believe the declaration herself.
"That's what you try so hard to believe," (Y/N) snorted at the thought.
Mrs Shelby felt slighted by these words. She hastily tried to muster up the ability to take back the conversation, since it was clearly falling into (Y/N)'s hands. "We do. We've spoken of starting a family, of completing our home...a little brother or sister for Charlie." (Y/N) only laughed at what was said. Mrs Shelby scoffed at her reaction. "How dare you react in that way! This is not a laughable matter," she insisted, glaring at the grinning woman.
"You are so naïve to believe that it'll be that simple; that your wishes will be granted," (Y/N) stated, shaking her head. Silly woman, she thought.
"I don't see why they wouldn't be," Mrs Shelby furrowed her eyebrows at the other woman's cryptic statement.
"You've not lived here long enough to know what'll happen...to know what fate befalls every woman that sets foot on this property."
"What are you saying?"
"It's the land, Eloise. It's cursed. It took my babies, and it'll take yours too," (Y/N) words had an ominous tone to them, making Mrs Shelby shiver as she heard them. Nothing could have prepared her for what would come out of the other woman's mouth next: "it kept me here to make sure of it."
A mortified look formed on Mrs Shelby's face while a smirk formed on (Y/N)'s. The former of the two stayed frozen in her spot as the latter slowly retreated back into the trees that surrounded the eerie pond.
Even if Mrs Shelby wanted to, she couldn't ask the strange woman what her ominous message meant because (Y/N) had slipped completely out of sight. She'd practically vanished into thin air.
The conversation left Mrs Shelby reeling; questioning if any of it was even real. She tried blinking her eyes several times, wondering if doing so would do the trick of waking her up. Yes...maybe this is all just a twisted dream. But it wasn't. She was still standing out in the middle of the forest, the fog-covered pond still in front of her; the bottom of her dress still covered in the mud of the bank she kneeled on. So many questions were swirling through her mind as she grappled with what was real and what could possibly be made up.
She knew two things for certain: one, she couldn't stay out here a second longer, and two: she needed to speak to Tommy about this immediately.
Tumblr media
Mrs Shelby was completely out of breath when she reached the doors to Arrow House. She rushed inside, squeezing herself through the people who were working hasilty to make sure finishing touches were in place before the party started. She gave them no thought as she frantically looked for her husband, moving so quickly through the crowd that she hadn't noticed he was in front of her until his hands were grabbing hold of her shoulders.
"Where're you running to, love?" Tommy asked, his brows furrowed as he took in the sight of his distraught wife. He watched closely as she took several breaths to calm herself down, and he placed pressure on her collarbones with his thumbs, hoping that it would aid the process.
"Tommy, I...I went out t-to walk and followed the, the path down to the trees, and then I walked further in and I just kept walking until I reached a p-pond, and I, I, I uh I didn't...I didn't..."
"Hey, slow down, Eloise," Tommy cut off his wife's frantic rambles with a steady voice, "catch your breath first before you talk again," he suggested, seeing her nod before he brought his hands from her shoulders up to her cheeks. He caressed them softly as he let his eyes drift over her body. "What's happened, eh? Why is your dress muddy?" he asked, his brows furrowing together again.
"I was telling you, I...I found a pond. And there was a woman in it."
"A woman?" Tommy was taken back by the information.
"Yes. She, she was in the water when I first saw her, but then she came to me and she, she...Tommy, we need to leave. We need to leave here, now," her voice might have been shaky, but she still said the final word with the dire emotion it needed.
"Why would we do that, darling?" he needed to ask, now full of confusion.
"We have to leave here if we want to have the family we talk about. We can't have a baby here, Tommy," the fear filling her body was present in her words.
"You're confusing me, Eloise," he bluntly said, hoping she'd get to the point of her worries and stop dancing around the problem.
"To keep them alive, Tommy," she spoke with a sense of urgency, "there's something in the woods...a woman...she said that she's going to take our babies."
Tommy took a few moments to let what was just said sink in. The cogs in his mind were now turning at the second mention of this woman. He knew now that it was no mistake made by his frantic wife. She must've encountered (Y/N). Just the thought of that happening made his blood run cold. He needed to think of a way to deflect this; to make her believe that this was nothing to be worried about. "I think you might have been outside for too long, love. Why don't you go upstairs and change for the party, eh?" he suggested, his eyebrows raised, showing that even though he'd asked a question, his suggestion wasn't actually up for debate.
"But I didn't...I know it wasn't..."
"Go on, love," he cut her off as she fumbled for the words, nodding his head towards the stairs. "Everyone's almost here."
Mrs Shelby bit on her lip as she fought to keep everything inside. It felt like she was on the brink of a breakdown, and Tommy surely had to see that. Why was he trying to diminish the situation? Didn't he care to know more of why she was reacting the way she was? Did he even want the family they had talked about? All of these questions were bouncing around Mrs Shelby's mind as her husband looked expectantly at her. There was no way that she could bring the conversation back now. It was over.
So she nodded her head ever-so slightly, silently agreeing with what he wanted her to do. That was all Tommy needed from her. He dropped his hold from her, leaning in to press a quick kiss to her lips before he mumbled 'good' and left her side. Mrs Shelby stood there for a moment, still overwhelmed from everything that had happened. But there was only one thing she could do now: get ready for the party and hope for the best.
Tumblr media
"Fuck," Tommy breathed as he paced the floor of his office. He brought the glass of whiskey up to his lips and drank the rest of it, setting the glass down just as the door to the room opened.
"Frances said you needed me," the voice of his sister called out before she walked in from behind the door.
"Yes, come in," Tommy answered, waving his hand to her even though she'd already entered the room, "shut the door," he said then, fishing the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket.
"What's going on?" Ada decided to get right to the point. She was never one for beating around the bush, especially when her brother was so clearly being affected by something.
"Eloise just returned from a walk. She managed to find the pond," Tommy started, running his hand along the back of his head as he looked to the ground with a huff. His statement may have been vague, but Ada knew exactly what he was getting at.
"Oh, Tommy," she sighed in dismay. She watched her brother then, now seeing the stress and worry that was so clearly etched into his features.
"She told me she met the woman and that she talked to her," he gave more detail, sitting down on the couch with a sigh. "I don't know what I'm going to do to cover this up," he added, bringing the cigarette to his lips to take a long drag.
Ada stood in her spot, her arms crossed as she observed her brother. It didn't take much to notice that he’d already given this problem all of his attention. He may have seemed composed on the outside, but she knew that his mind was working on overdrive. "Maybe it's time you forgot about her," she offered a suggestion a few moments later.
"Forgot about who?" Tommy asked, not even bothering to raise his head from the couch's back.
"(Y/N)," Ada didn't hesitate in saying the woman's name. Hearing it made Tommy's head snap up so that he could look at his sister. He almost looked surprised at the fact that she'd dare say that name. "You have Eloise now. There's no longer a need to visit her anymore."
"She knows too much," he countered.
"Who?" Ada asked for specifics.
"(Y/N). She knows too much. Of me, of this land, of fucking everything. I don't want Eloise speaking to her anymore."
"What're you going to do then, forbid Eloise from leaving the house?" Her question was meant to be a joke, but it was one that made the lightbulb above her brother's head go off. She noticed it in the way Tommy moved, standing from the couch and stalking out of the room, on a new mission. "Fuck," she breathed with a sigh, knowing that his mind that been set and there'd be no changing it.
Ada wondered why Tommy cared so much about this woman; this person who was no longer living and breathing, yet was still chained to this world. He had told her about (Y/N) in depth: about how she lived a very unhappy life, how she'd gotten to the point where she had nothing left, how she went to that very pond and walked into it knowing that she wouldn't be coming back out.
What Ada didn't realize was that Tommy felt like he was connected to (Y/N); like she was the only person who understood everything he'd been through. Tragedy understood tragedy, and both (Y/N) and Tommy's lives had been filled with it.
So would Tommy really insert more control over his loving wife’s life just because she’d stumbled upon a spirit lurking on the grounds of their estate? That question may not be so easily answered.
Tumblr media
Despite the events of the day, the party went smoothly. Tommy, while still having to play host alongside Eloise, managed to speak to his wife about the adventure she'd taken earlier. He convinced her that they wouldn't be moving, and even though she didn't quite understand his reasoning, she agreed to never again walk past the gates of Arrow House's garden; thereby relinquishing her ability to leave the immediate property.
Eloise was able to fall asleep the second her head hit the pillow, exhausted from everything that had happened. Tommy was still wide awake late into the evening. He had one more thing he needed to do.
It didn't take him long to find the pond on the property, and it was no surprise that (Y/N) was waiting for him when he reached the water's edge. She waded towards him, a smile gracing her lips as she stopped in front of him. "I knew you'd come back," she said, speaking in that sweet voice that he'd come to find comfort in. But he couldn't let it calm him this time.
"You shouldn't have spoken to her," his words were abrupt, hoping that she'd get the point and they'd move on.
"I just had to let her know," (Y/N) didn't let it go; instead she explained her side. Her smile dropped into a pout as she tipped her head slightly, feigning innocence.
Her look didn’t faze him. "You'll not speak to her again.”
"I'm not sure I'll be able to help it if the option presents itself," her smile returned, and any trace of innocence was gone.
"It won't...she won't be coming down here anymore," Tommy stayed assertive, still not letting her switch faze him.
"So it'll just be you then?" (Y/N)'s eyebrows raised.
"It'll just be me. Forget you ever saw her," he finished off with one more succinct statement before turning to leave her. Even if he wanted to, he knew he couldn't stay out here tonight.
"She knows what'll happen," (Y/N)'s voice stopped him before he could leave. "She knows about the curse. Knows what'll happen if you try..." she trailed off, not even finishing her sentence because he already knew what she meant.
Silence hung in the air as he stared her down, watching for any subtle movements she could make. "Make it so it doesn't,” he said after a few beats, not waiting to turn and walk away from the pond without allowing her to have a chance to respond.
"I'll see you soon, Tommy," she called after him, smiling as she watched him walk away.
He knew that there was no way she could make things change, even if she wanted to. There was something about these grounds...something that was darker than anything he'd ever known. But he'd be lying if he said he wanted to leave them.
Eloise may not like it, but at the end of the day, she didn't have a choice. She'd stay locked inside of Arrow House so that Tommy could ensure that his two worlds wouldn't collide again.
Tumblr media
Tagged: @mystcldydrms @the-anxious-youth @cloudofdisney @look-at-the-soul @elenavampire21 @mrsalwayswrite @julkaamazing @evita-shelby @lilyrachelcassidy @notyour-valentine @shelbydelrey @theshelbyslimited @peakyswritings @just-a-blackhole @watercolorskyy @strayrockette @peakyduchesss @alexxavicry @captivatedbycillianmurphy @yummycastiel @dark-academia-slut @tommystargirl @emotionalcadaver @stevie75 @lyarr24 @signorellisantichrist @zablife @anotherblinder @cillmequick @dandelionprints @letal-y-poetica @gypsy-girl-08 @insanitybyanothername @depxiety @raincoffeeandfandoms @dragons-are-my-favorite @dlmlufics @forgottenpeakywriter @cljordan-imperium @brummiereader @areyenotfondofmelobster @everythingelseisextra @little-diable @thomashelbyswife @shaddixlife
MASTERLIST
205 notes · View notes
soongtypehuman · 21 days
Text
Boo-hoo update
I’m sorry to say I have an update I was hoping to not ever have to make. Some of you already know that I have some serious health issues, but I've been pretty quiet about the extent of what I'm dealing with.
The gist of it is that I have a rare bone disease called fibrous dysplasia that turned certain bones in my skull into tumors and then those tumors grew inward and started crushing my brain, so I had a craniotomy last year to remove as much as was safe and got a cool new titanium implant in my head to replace the removed bone/tumor. The unfortunate result was encephalomalacia, which is the end stage of liquifying necrosis, and now part of my brain is liquid instead of solid (it’s dead, in a nutshell). Most people don’t survive encephalomalacia, much less remain able to function, and most who survive the initial stage don’t survive the three year mark. Even when you do survive it, it often continues spreading. The last MRI showed it had already taken over about 1/3 of my brain. But I’m a stubborn asshole and am still hanging on.
Unfortunately, things aren’t getting better.
I have to have constant MRIs, EEGs, physical and cognitive therapies, and have been on more meds than I’d like to be in order to control seizures and various cognitive issues. I didn’t mention this before, but I had to go through a series of speech therapies just to learn to talk properly again. And the most unfortunate part of this is that my ability to write has been affected. Since the surgery over a year ago, I’ve only made 10 new posts in the Positronic Rivalry series, totaling around 87k words. For reference, I posted over 200k words in 2022. I’ve posted even less this year, and it’s not improving.
With that said, I have to take a step back. I’m not quitting and I’m not walking away from the fandom. I’d like to think I’ll still be able to post here and there. I just don’t know when and under what circumstances that will happen. I most certainly can’t handle the longer multi-chapter fics I once could. Maybe one day, but not this day. Since I started posting on AO3 back at the end of 2021, I’ve posted every Sunday more often than not. I’m sorry to say I can’t make that happen right now, and can’t say when I’ll post again or what it will be. I won't be able to continue with season 4.
But I’m most definitely not leaving the fandom and the people and the characters I love so much. I’ll still be here interacting and posting when I’m able. This fandom and the people in it are incredible and mean a lot to me. Data and Lore and Star Trek in general are integral to my life and general enjoyment.
But!! I’ve nearly completed compiling seasons 1-3 of Positronic Rivalry as well as 2022/23 Kinktobers into files that will be ready to print in physical book format (completely free, obviously), which I’ll make available for everyone to download in various print sizes, complete with covers, which you can then have printed at various POD sites if you’re so inclined. Digital versions will also be available (you can already download various formats from AO3, but they’re not compiled into seasons, don’t have covers, etc.).
I’m also continuing with the Trek-themed crossword puzzles because those are fun and my therapist thinks making them is good for my cognitive rehab.
This update is a massive bummer for me, but I felt it was better to just admit my limitations instead of constantly trying to convince myself that I could continue the way I had been pre-surgery and beating myself up when I couldn’t.
Lastly, I’ve finally taken the suggestion I’ve gotten repeatedly and set up a KoFi. If you’d like to buy me a coffee or toss a coin to your android porn witcher, you can do so right here and I’d be giggling and kicking my feet in gratitude.
Anyhow, I want to thank all of you for being amazing and coming along on this ride with me for as long as you have, and for as long as it might continue in whatever form it takes.
74 notes · View notes
joezy27 · 11 months
Text
Tumblr media
"How To Write HAWKEYE" by Matt Fraction
My process for Hawkeye isn’t like anything else I’ve ever used for writing, and it’s sort of involved. For a lot of reasons—none of which have to do with the how of anything, let alone the how of writing comics—my approach with this book, I decided early on, would be completely different than anything I’d ever done before. I’ll get into some of the why and how here, but, from that decision, everything about writing Hawkeye kept getting weirder.
About a year before I started on Hawkeye, I started to experiment with writing in a method called Marvel Style or Plot Style. It’s called Marvel Style because Stan Lee came up with it when he was the only writer at Marvel and had to produce eight books a month. Stan started to write in a way that leaned very heavily on his artists rather than requiring him to produce the screenplaylike scripts most of us think of as full scripts or just, y’know, scripts.
Tumblr media
Art by David Aja
Here’s an example of a full script I gave to my dad:
PAGE ONE 1.1 A SWEATY GUY gets out of a car. GUY We’re here. 1.2 The guy walks to a house, nervous, peering over his shoulder as he goes. GUY Ha ha. 1.3 He walks up to the front porch almost on tiptoes. GUY ha. 1.4 CLOSE: Still nervous, still on edge, he adjusts his tie. Blood under his fingernails. Uh-oh. NO DIALOGUE 1.5 FROM BEHIND: As he pokes his finger into the doorbell, we see, with his other hand, he’s got a gun held behind his back. SFX Ding dong
Note: SFX means Sound Effects
And so on. Now that took me as long to type as it took you to read, but you get the gist: dramatic beats and certain visual moments are isolated and chosen because they transmit the narrative and dramatic story flow to an artist who chooses his shots (or might take my suggestions if there are any) accordingly and crafts a sequence of images, keeping in mind moment, frame, image, flow. Isolated dialogue runs below to allow the artist to understand how much space to allot for words, and that’s it. McCloud-101 stuff, right?
But Marvel Style for David [Aja, the artist on Hawkeye] looks something more like this:
PAGE ONE Okay, David, on this page, a little car pulls up to a little suburban house and NERVOUS MAN gets out half-laughing to himself. He skulks to the front door, maybe adjusts his tie. He’ll have, like, blood under his fingernails. He looks over his shoulder, knocks. Then the last image on the page needs to be: we see he’s got a GUN BEHIND HIS BACK. “We’re here,” he’ll say, at some point, to no one in particular. And maybe giggle on his way to the door. NERVOUS KILLER CREEP here to WREAK HAVOC, David. Okay.
And I’ll move on to page two. My scripts are super informal. Nobody, but your artist and letterer are gonna read it, so why not make it fun for them to read?
I chose to write Hawkeye for David like this for several reasons. First, my favorite pages from our time on Iron Fist, which was written Full Script-style, always came when he’d politely and respectfully diverge from what was scripted for him, make something magical, then find his way back to where he was expected to be. So I’d start writing more and more vaguely for him, to give him more and more freedom, and he always crushed it. By “crushed it,” I mean he made a great page that made me look smarter than I am. Second, and I mean no disrespect to any of David’s other collaborators, many of whom I’m a fan, but I never liked David’s work more than I did on Iron Fist. And they were all doing full script for him. So, y’know—maybe a lightbulb went off. Third, writing Marvel Style scares the living crap out of me. It is the antithesis of what we teach ourselves as writers. It requires trust and sharing and believing in your partner—and he’s a partner, not an artist here, just check the credits page—and trusting in the collaboration above all else. And it’s easy to see how slippery a slope Marvel Style can be to get to “PAGES SEVEN THROUGH NINE: They fight.”
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Art by David Aja
I started experimenting with Marvel Style because it scared me, and when I get scared, I get exhilarated. These things, this job, it’s the best, but it can grind you down. It crushes your wrists and warps your spine and dries your eyes and smooths down your teeth and grows your gut. Excitement and danger, though meager compared to what, say, a firefighter might encounter, is important in your work.
Also, I thought it could save me time. I thought I could do half my work on layaway, basically; that I could crank out a plot in three or four days and script a few weeks later, in one or two days. I mean, it worked for Stan, right? And he and his partners—partners—only created the dang Marvel Universe. Lastly, it’s [Marvel Comics’s former editor-in-chief and current chief creative officer] Joe Quesada’s fault.
Let me digress here for a second: Joe da Q is a great guy. Great artist, great boss, great dad, great guy. And I love talking to him about the art of the art, because he’s been around and has some stories and a head full of great thoughts about it all and … and you do it for about a minute and a half and you realize exactly how Joe earned everything he earned and you couldn’t be happier. Anyway, one night Joe is winding Mr. Brian Michael Bendis up at BarCon. BarCon is the “con” that happens in the bar of the guest hotel of whatever con you’re at, literally, every single night, of every single convention, ever. Anyway, so Joe is claiming much of Marvel’s now-decades-long dominance over comics came from the inescapable visual firepower of our founding fathers, that Marvel’s visual style is as much a key to its successes as the radioactive spider. And if you doubt it, just look at how the key moments in the company’s history were written: Marvel Style. Brian howled in outrage, “That’s not writing, that’s cheap, that’s lazy. When you cede control of choice of moment to someone else, you’re just mad-libbing …” It went on and on. Joe poking, Brian exploding, and Joe giggling with glee.
Joe Quesada loves his family, the Mets, the Beatles, Marvel, and winding Bendis up, in that order.
I realized though, as I listened to them play-fight, that it was making me nervous. Just to think about Marvel Style. Just to pretend I’d even try it, even on a short story made me, sweartagod, nervous. So many of my favorite comics were done by singular cartoonists—Eisner, Hernandez, Brown, Clowes, Chaykin. And the more I thought about it, how could I ever hope to write the thing those guys did for themselves? You can’t. A writer could never coax American Flagg! out of Chaykin—unless they gave him a Marvel Style script and treated him like a partner as invested in the storytelling as the writer.
So I knew I had to try it.
This comic has been written in a giant scramble. All out of order. Not by design but … but because Team Hawkeye does nothing the easy way.
I know a big part of Brian’s lessons here is that the only way you need to find is your way. That your way is the right way and anything else is an obstacle but … but please, god, don’t do it like this. This is how I know how to do Hawkeye.
My initial pitch for Hawkeye ended up being published as issues 4 and 5. It’s our first two-part storyline and is very different than the issues on either side; international travel, glamorous and exotic casinos, international cabals of evil. Clint-as-Bond, where he’s in a tux more than a supersuit. Marvel said okay—remember, we just needed like nine of these—but I pulled out because it wasn’t right. When I sat down to write it, it wasn’t right, and I had to leave. I had a story, not a book, and so I stopped.
Then one night I thought about Jim Rockford and The Avengers—the UK ones I mean—for whatever reason, and found my book.
So I had to repitch. I got it, luckily, but everyone thought I was nuts. Anyway.
I was going to write Marvel Style for David. It was going to be all done-in-one, or sometimes two, issue stories. It was going to be about what Hawkeye did when he wasn’t being an Avenger because, when I got the book, Clint Barton was everywhere and I didn’t want to step on toes. Give me him on his day off, I figured. It was going to be street-level, real-world kind of stories, in, of course, the Mighty Marvel Manner. I would try to counteract the banal everyday stuff with a complicated structure that would reward close-reads. So yeah, there might be an issue that’s about Clint trying to buy tape, but it’s going to start with a car chase, cut back two days, then cut forward again, and on and on. And he would have a kind of mentee/partner in a young girl named Kate. It’s a double act.
So then I wrote the first issue. And I sent it in, and my editor said what I felt and suspected: “This is a second issue.” And he was right. It was as much about Kate as Clint, and it’s Clint’s book, so back to the drawing board.
Then I wrote what became issue 1. So, psychically, the order of Hawkeye to me goes 4, 5, 2, 1. Physically, in terms of what was actually typed and invoiced, Hawkeye was 2, 1, then 4 and 5—because those were for a guest artist—then 3, then 6. It can wreck your head if you have more than just that to do, let me tell you.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Art by David Aja
HAWKEYE ISSUE 6
Issue 6 was a breakthrough for a lot of reasons. First off, though, at this point, there were five other issues and they were all written out of order and it was hard for me to keep track of what was happening when and where.
I knew 6 was our December issue, and I always wanted to write a story with Christmas as a backdrop, so I locked in to making it a holiday issue. And I wanted to do a story about Clint wanting to hook up his DVR, but things kept getting in his way. Somehow those two strands tied together in my head.
I wasn’t kidding earlier when I said this job kills your hands and your wrists. Add to that I’m an art school dropout who misses his sketchbooks and I’ve, from the start, always started my comics writing in cheap little notebooks. Partly to get away from typing, partly because I love the feeling of graphite dragging across the page, partly because I’ve thought out and problem-solved in sketchbooks my whole life.
I wish I knew how I made the following intuitive leap, but I think that’s just it—like so much about my writing, Hawkeye especially, is all intuitive. I took pieces of paper and folded them in half. Across the top, I wrote the issue number and title. Down the left, I numbered 1 through 20 to represent each of the twenty pages of the first five issues, and then I wrote in a short sentence or phrase about what happened on each of those pages. I needed to, at a glance, be able to see how I was pacing things. And if I want to check, oh, how many pages that fight scene was on page 3, I could just consult my mockups and move on. I could just carry them around in the back of the notebook, lay ’em all out in front of me, and see six months at once. Perfect.
For whatever reason, I have continued to write like this for Hawkeye. I’ll lay out the last few issues and the next few issues, even if all I have is the cover idea and title (if I’ve got the title I have a vague sense of what the story will be), and look at how they all flow in and out of one another. Here’s the mockup for issue 6.
I randomly gave myself six days to tell this story in. (There’s a DJ Shadow track called “Six Days” that director Wong Kar Wai shot a video for, and I like the song and the video and I like the sound of “six days” as an increment of time. It comes up in my work a lot I’ve noticed.) Now, at some point in the writing, I realized everybody in the real world has to endure the holidays together, so I thought, “Great, we’ll find out what day our book comes out and make that the day the book starts on, and then bip and bop around the real days of the month.” But at that point, it had started on a Thursday or whatever, so I had to rework it all, and I kept getting confused.
As I pecked through the list, things got complicated. Look in those margins and you can see me losing the real time aspect of it, the actual days and how they all fit. So I had to get linear for my own sanity, if nothing else.
Here’s me boiling down the six days just so I could keep track—but once you tie a comic down like that with a nonlinear chronology, suddenly this all gets important. Well, was the fight at night? Okay, so then the next morning he has to be here, and beat up. But if … well, wait, he needs to be there, too. So maybe the fight was really the night previous, like, at 12:01 a.m., and it’s really been closer to forty-eight hours since, and…
Anyway, it was weirdly algebraic. You’ll see, in the script, how I added time even to help David and Matt Hollingsworth, our genius colorist, in their staging.
With my little half-sheet done, it was time for me to write my take on Marvel Style for David.
My Marvel Style scripts are really, if I’m being honest, about 15 percent less full than a typical full script. There’s dialogue sometimes. And if there’s, say, six little paragraphs on a page, you can tell how many panels a page I’m thinking about. But it’s as Marvel Style as I get. It works for us, though. For example, using the page as a kind of Advent calendar—to use an Advent calendar as a design device, came entirely from David. As I said—I trust in him to be as invested in storytelling as I am, and he produces things I’d never think of, let alone know how to explain in a script for someone to draw.
Tumblr media
Notes for Haweye #6
ART PROCESS From my script, David produces thumbnails—and they are the most laborious thumbnails you can imagine. All of David’s heavy lifting is done here. These things are tiny little bursts of science. Not that his mark making isn’t important, but his thinking is paramount to all of it and you can see it all in the layouts. It’s his half-sheet, if you will. Hardest work goes there.
Tumblr media
Art by David Aja
So I take the layouts and do a dialogue pass the best I can. Scenes can grow or change or transmute from what I’d written, or I can give notes and add things or take away. It’s great—as long as I can tell what’s happening, I mean. Which isn’t always.
So then David enlarges the pages with his own dummy lettering pass. By “dummy lettering pass,” I mean he actually letters the book roughly, but completely, so I can see where things need trimming and he can see how the words work in the frame. He sends this back and I tighten up my script accordingly.
Once David’s art gets the editorial okay from editor Steve Wacker, it goes back to David and colorist Matt Hollingsworth who have been, in the background, talking about the color schema for the issue. In a book where time shifts so hard and weird, color is one of the primary keys to helping orient the reader. Our readers are smart; they always get it. A big part of the why is Matt, doing subtle, almost invisible little things to keep you going with us. I could talk about this more at length, but it’s not my place to; let me just say, there is tremendous storytelling happening with our book’s colors.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Art by David Aja
Then I adjust the lettering until poor Chris Eliopoulos (letterer on Hawkeye) wants to murder me and the book has to be sent to press. Wait two weeks and, voilà!
We must be doing something right.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Hawkeye script by Matt Fraction, art by David Aja
Tumblr media
Hawkeye script by Matt Fraction, art by David Aja
HAWKEYE - The Fraction & Aja Creative Process
Words for Pictures - The Art and Business of Writing Comics and Graphic Novels (2014)
321 notes · View notes
cecilysass · 1 month
Text
Shine On (16/16)
Read on AO3 | Tagging @today-in-fic
Tumblr media
Chapter 16: Crazy Diamond
Farrs Corner, Virginia February 25, 2015 Two hours later
It turns out that Bunny Man Bridge is just a bridge. And okay, it’s a little creepy-looking—a one lane road going into a yellowed concrete tunnel under a train overpass—but not very eventful on a sunny, late winter afternoon. There aren’t signs of apparitions, dead bodies, or even Satanic graffiti. Which Jackson finds kind of disappointing after all Mulder’s talk.
Mulder drones on about the telltale hallmarks of paranormal activity, but since most of them would have involved interviewing human witnesses, they don’t seem very promising to investigate. There’s no one around but Jackson, Mulder, and Scully. And interested squirrels.
Still, Jackson is enjoying the outing. He and Mulder scramble up to the top of the bridge and look around the railroad tracks for any clues. Scully watches from the road below, leaning against the car, smirking to herself. After a few minutes Mulder begins to call for the Bunny Man like a lost dog— “here, Mr. Bunny Man, come on, boy”—which makes Scully cover her mouth with her hand and laugh.
Mulder looks down from the bridge at her with this goofy little smile, a whole lot like he’s an eighth grader pleased with himself. Jackson tries hard not to shine the man’s mind, as he’s thinking a surprising quantity of inappropriate thoughts for an old guy.
He gets the basic gist, though—the important highlights. They’re back together.
Jackson can’t help but feel happy for them. Mulder’s hope is contagious. It’s everywhere in the man’s mind right now, even in the dirty parts. It’s inescapable, Mulder’s hope. Like an annoying mylar balloon that keeps floating into your face. Even shining him a little makes Jackson’s own emotions begin to feel lighter, too.
“Is the investigation over?” Scully calls up to them. “I’m hungry.” She cocks her head strategically. “We could go pick up fresh bagels.”
Jackson raises his eyebrows. “I could eat.”
“I think we’re just about wrapped up here,” Mulder calls back. “It’s going to be kind of a drive for bagels though. We’re in the country, Scully.”
She shrugs and smiles. From her pocket her phone starts to buzz, and she rushes to pull it out, sliding into the car to take the call. As Jackson understands it, she’s finishing up odds and ends of her hospital job before she goes back to the FBI.
Mulder regards Jackson seriously. “I’ve got to tell you, Jackson—I’m not noticing any classic signs,” he says, gesturing around them. “No change in temperature, no strange odor.” He points to the birds chirping in the trees around them. “I still hear local wildlife going strong.”
“Yeah,” Jackson says with a sigh. “Maybe the Bunny Man really does only show up on Halloween.”
Mulder’s eyes light up. “Well, possibly we could come back—” He stops himself, but it’s too late. Jackson knows exactly what he was going to say, and he knows exactly why he stopped.
They don’t know where Jackson will be at Halloween. That’s eight months away. He could very well be locked in a juvenile justice facility. That reality hasn’t gone away, however much Mulder and Jackson want to forget and play ghost hunter. Everyone keeps acting like Jackson is just going to stay here and play pretend son, but that’s just not the case.
Jackson has to turn away from Mulder now. Sometimes other people’s hope is painful.
They have to be careful on the way down; the embankment down the side of the bridge is steep. Jackson’s feet, skidding out of control, stumble the last few steps down, and Mulder grabs his arm to steady him.
“You okay there?”
“Yeah, thanks,” Jackson mumbles.
Mulder’s thoughts are a burgeoning swell of concern, and Jackson knows he’s probably been doing a little shining. “Listen, Jackson—”
“You’ve actually seen ghosts before, right?” Jackson interrupts. He looks around at the wooded area around the bridge, then back at Mulder. “Not just read about them?”
Mulder considers him a moment. “I have, yes.”
“Who were the ghosts?” Jackson asks.
“The ghosts themselves? You mean in life?”
“Yeah. Did you know them?”
Mulder thinks about his answer. “One time it was a couple,” he says. “A couple who died together on Christmas.”
Jackson thinks about that for a moment, a couple who died together and spent eternity together, too. It seems like that might be good. Not entirely unhappy. He gets little visual flashes from Mulder’s memories, but he pushes them out—he’d rather make up his own little story about these ghosts.
“You never met the ghost of anyone you knew when they were alive?” Jackson asks. He hesitates. “Like … your own parents, maybe?”
Mulder’s head turns sharply to him. His gray-green eyes are sorrowful, then shift infinitesimally into sympathy and pity.
“Jackson,” he says, his words subdued, “you won’t get your parents back by searching for ghosts.”
A bird trills nearby, and Jackson’s gaze follows the sound. “Yeah,” he says.
His eyes again fill with tears. This is one of those things he knows he should know better about. Something he can see is a delusion—an idea gullible kids hold on to— but he wants to believe anyway. He wants to think that one day he might see his mom and dad again. How stupid, to imagine friendly ghosts who might pat him reassuringly on the shoulder and tell him it’s okay.
They both stand facing the steep bank of trees, saying nothing.
A very clear sentence runs through Mulder’s mind. If he were staying with us, I would make sure he got a new therapist.
Jackson can’t help but smile, wiping his tears. “If I were staying with you, I’d probably really need one.”
“Yeah.” Mulder snorts a laugh. “You probably would.”
***
Back in the car, Scully is sitting in the driver’s seat, unmoving, waiting for them. The radio is on, turned down very low, a murmur of voices.
“No ghosts,” Jackson informs her as he slides in the back. “Mulder says we can try Gadsby Tavern in Alexandria next time.”
“You all done with your call?” Mulder asks her, giving her a curious look. “Was it the hospital?”
“It wasn’t.” Scully says in a strange voice. “It was Skinner. He had news.”
“Oh yeah? What kind of news?”
“There’s been new evidence in the Van De Kamps’ case. Apparently a … witness remembers seeing a man wanted in Colorado in the neighborhood that morning, leaving the scene.”
“What?” Jackson inhales.
“The charges against Jackson have been dropped. He’s considered a missing child now. The Rawlins police are having a press conference, so it will be hitting the media today at some point.”
“A witness emerges from nowhere?” Mulder asks.
“Yes,” Scully says, and Jackson watches her eyes latch on to his. “And Skinner says the name of this witness has been strangely hard to come by, even for the Bureau.”
“This is good news though,” Jackson insists. “Right? It means I’m free. It’s good.”
He looks from Scully to Mulder. They both turn to him in the backseat, their faces blooming in simultaneous smiles. They’re both holding something back, but they’re not insincere.
“It is, Jackson,” Scully agrees. “You’re right. It means you have a lot more options.” He senses her worry simmering underneath. Something wrong here. Another shoe about to drop.
“Maybe I can call people now,” Jackson says, his eyes darting hesitantly between them. “My friend Louis. Maybe my uncle Wyatt.”
“Probably very soon,” Mulder says, nodding. “I’d like to wait until we know … just a little more.”
“You’re both worried,” Jackson observes softly. “You think something is weird.”
There’s a silence in the car as Scully starts the engine.
“We’re cautious,” Mulder says. “Happy, but cautious.”
***
When they get home from their bagel pick up—and Mulder was right, it was kind of a drive to get to the place with good bagels—Jackson is washing his hands in the kitchen when he feels Rose’s tiny nudge into his mind.
Apparently she’s back at home now, wherever that is. She tells him to pass on some messages. He’s happy to hear from her. He badly wants to tell her his good news, but he thinks about what Mulder and Scully said, and he decides to wait a little.
Jackson can hear Mulder talking on the phone outside. Actually, he is apparently taking a break from talking to whoever is on the line to discuss something back and forth very animatedly with Scully. Neither one of them really holds back their opinion, he’s noticed.
He’s started to put together a few more pieces about them. For one, he’s been curious about how Mulder pays his bills. Jackson’s parents always were very careful about money—clipping coupons, thinking through monthly budgets—but Mulder thinks about money much less than most adults.
Jackson knows that Scully is a doctor, and Jackson understands that doctors make high salaries, which explains her nice car and nice clothes. But Mulder hasn’t seemed to have a regular job for years, and Jackson doesn’t think FBI agents make enough to retire decades early.
When they came home with their dozen bagels, Mulder and Scully went to call this lawyer right away, both of them very determined. From what Jackson can gather, it seems to be a lawyer associated with Mulder’s family. So, Jackson infers, Mulder comes from some kind of family money. He wonders why Mulder doesn’t use it to buy a fancier house or car.
As he selects another bagel, he wonders about Mulder’s family. Who were they? How did they get rich? He wonders about Scully’s family, too. What’s her mother like, the one who is still alive? He could probably ask them all of these questions now that he isn’t a wanted man. Maybe he could even meet the mysterious grandmother now.
Outside Mulder and Scully still seem deeply invested in talking to the lawyer, so Jackson plops down on the couch with his cinnamon raisin bagel.
Chewing silently, he remembers what Scully said about the media getting the story soon. He searches around for the remote and turns on Mulder’s TV, pressing buttons to find a news channel.
When he does, he can tell instantly: the story is public.
A blonde reporter clad in a bright blue coat stands on a snow-covered street in downtown Rawlins, with the words “New Development in Wyoming Murder Case: Police Apologize to Runaway Teen” sprawled underneath her. Jackson is so shocked to see the familiar storefronts of his hometown on the national news he can barely focus on the words.
“...police believe that the victims’ son fled out of fear, and they hope Jackson Van De Kamp will be found safely.”
One of the police officers who’d been at Jackson’s school that horrible day—Davis was his name, Jackson remembers—stands in front of a microphone, looking gray and stricken: “We admit when we make mistakes, and this was a mistake. Mr. Van De Kamp is innocent of all wrongdoing. In all likelihood, he’s a scared and grieving kid. If you can hear this, Jackson, buddy, we want you to come home.”
Jackson stares at the screen open-mouthed, clutching his half-eaten bagel tightly. The rest of the report seems to slide right past him.
“Was that it?” Scully says sharply from behind him. The news has moved on to something else. “Was that the story about you?”
“Yeah,” Jackson says, his voice sounding like a small boy’s.
Scully walks around and sits down next to him on the couch. She picks up the remote and switches the TV off.
She peers at his face. “Are you okay, Jackson?”
“I don’t know,” he says. “The police … uh, begged me … to come home. To Wyoming.”
Scully’s eyes are so wide, so icy blue—exactly like Rose’s. They run all over him, as if studiously taking in every detail.
“Do you want to go back?” she asks.
“I don’t know,” he repeats, blinking.
She picks up his plate off of the coffee table, offering it to him. He sets his bagel down on it dazedly. She replaces the plate on the table.
“You have some decisions to make, Jackson,” she says, her voice gentle. “Not all of them right away. But you do have some decisions to make.”
Mulder appears behind her, his hand reaching for her shoulder. He’s watching Jackson closely, too.
“We spoke to the lawyer about the … custody possibilities,” Scully says. Jackson recognizes suddenly that she’s very nervous. He can feel fear starting to roll off of her in steady waves. “It’s most likely a relative has official custody of you now. Probably your uncle Wyatt?”
Jackson nods slowly. He can’t think of who else would.
“We can talk to your uncle about other possibilities,” Scully says carefully. “Living with us. Short term … or longer term. There are a range of options in the kind of relationship you could have with us. You could just do visits. We could have some kind of shared custody. There’s, uh, more permanent arrangements. Like legal guardianship. Adoption.” She swallows. Her fear is pulsing around Jackson now like a heartbeat. “I don’t know how your uncle will feel about any of this, but we thought we’d check with you before pursuing anything else. We want you to be the one … in the driver’s seat.”
Jackson reaches out his hand to rest on her arm. He doesn’t want her to be so terrified. It’s stupid. Unnecessary. Of course he wants to live with them. She stills at his touch, her eyes widening.
“Yeah,” he says. “I want to see Uncle Wyatt—like, for visits. He’s family. But I’d like to stay here. If that’s possible, I mean.”
Scully seems unable to suppress her initial reaction: she bursts into a pink-cheeked smile; she exchanges a quick, amazed look with Mulder. Her hand covers Jackson’s, and he can feel her intentionally calming herself down. “We’re happy you feel like that, of course. But that was … a fast decision. Are you sure? You can think about it. All the time you need.”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure.” He tries to make his own tone sound casual, breezy. “Uncle Wyatt has too many dogs and goes to a crazy church,” he says with a shrug. “And I don’t think he’ll argue with you too much if you say you want me to live here. I broke his big screen TV once, and he thinks I’m annoying.”
Jackson doesn’t say everything he’s thinking. That he would actually really like to see what it would be like to be part of their family. That he’d like to know what love felt like, everyday, with them. That he thinks it would be easy, somehow—much easier than he might have expected. That he thinks he understands now that this new relationship with them has nothing to do with replacing his parents.
Mulder’s smile is so wide that Jackson suspects he eavesdropped. “We’d love to have you, Jackson,” he says.
“We’ll talk to your uncle,” adds Scully. “We can be more specific about your options after that.”
“Rose said she could teach you more about how to block me, you know,” Jackson tells them tactfully. “So you wouldn’t have to worry as much about… not having privacy. You know.”
Scully flushes, and Mulder hides a smile. “That might be nice,” Scully says.
“She also said there was a really good STEM high school in Alexandria,” Jackson suggests with more feigned disinterest.
“Rose is full of advice,” Mulder observes wryly.
“Yep,” Jackson agrees. “I got a message from her, by the way.” He eyes the bagel on his plate again. “When you all first went in to call the lawyer.”
“Really?” Mulder says. “A … psychic message?”
“That sounds kind of overdramatic,” Jackson says, rolling his eyes and picking his bagel back up. “But yeah. She said she was home.”
“Good,” Scully says. “That’s good.” She throws Mulder a glance.
“She also said to tell you something, Scully.”
“She … did?”
“She said to tell you that they listened to her.” He looks at Scully to see if that’s meaningful, but her face looks blank. “Rose said that … she told them what she wanted, and they listened.”
He shrugs, deciding it doesn’t matter that much, and he takes a big bite of the bagel. Scully has a point about getting them fresh, he decides. They taste so much better this way. You could only get bagels in a bag at the grocery store in Rawlins.
A plummeting feeling from the pit of Scully’s stomach makes him look up.
“What?” Mulder asks her. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
Scully’s face has lost color. “No. I just …”
“Who listened to her?” Mulder insists. “What does that message mean?”
“I asked her … if the Walled Garden leaders listened to her,” Scully says in a low voice. “If they respected her.”
Jackson swallows part of his bagel so he’s able to talk. Through a mouthful: “You think she asked the Walled Garden for something she wanted?”
Mulder stares at Jackson, and then turns back to Scully, his eyes widening. “You think she asked them for something she wanted,” he repeats in a low voice, realizing. “Oh wow.”
“This morning, she said she was going home to take care of something,” Scully whispers, her eyes on him.
Jackson swallows his last mouthful. “What?”
“So she goes home,” Mulder says in disbelief to Scully. “And within a few hours…”
“Is it possible, Mulder?”
Jackson finally gets it. “You think she asked the Walled Garden to make sure the charges were dropped against me. Don’t you?”
Scully and Mulder are still looking hard at one another. “It happened so fast,” Mulder says. “All in less than six hours. If it was really the machinations of the Walled Garden…”
“They have an alarming amount of power,” says Scully. “Over multiple entities of government. An amount of power comparable to…”
“The Syndicate.” Mulder sits next to them on the couch, puts his head in his hands. “Can this be true? I don’t know what to make of an organization like this. They’re not even… strictly human. But they may be involved in… it’s overwhelming.”
They don’t say anything for a moment, looking dazed. Jackson watches them both in profile, unsure what to say.
“What do we do, Scully?” Mulder says.
She looks away, towards the window. There are entire worlds—entire universes—in Scully’s eyes. Jackson feels weirdly like his shine is lost in something enormous.
“I guess it’s fortunate there’s an investigative unit of the FBI qualified to keep an eye on them,” Scully says slowly and resolutely at last.
She turns and picks up Mulder’s hand. He lifts his head out of his hands and meets her stare.
“And keep an eye on Rose, too?” Jackson says incredulously.
“Yeah,” agrees Mulder, a strange finality. “And keep an eye on Rose.”
A fierce undertow of worry from Scully. But is Rose on the right side? How could we convince her? What if Rose were involved with something fundamentally wrong? What about any other members of the Walled Garden Mulder might feel connected to?
They’re frighteningly powerful anxieties, and Jackson doesn’t even understand some of them. They’re shot through with the stinging, luminous heat of her love. But weirdly he doesn’t feel himself getting drawn into these anxieties right now, even though he’s prone to worrying himself.
It’s just the more overwhelming emotion coming at him right now is what’s coming from Mulder. This ridiculous hopefulness. Bigger and more buoyant than ever. It fills up, expands and crowds out all competing feelings.
Jackson isn’t sure if Mulder is essentially being like a gullible kid—if he wants to believe things that aren’t true just to comfort himself. If that’s true, he is much, much better at it than Jackson. Because every cell in his body seems to be singing the same song: somehow, this will be okay. Somehow, what's wrong is going to get better. Jackson decides Mulder feeling like this is a good thing, even if it's not an entirely logical or sane thing.
As Mulder draws Scully into his side, and suggests they watch his favorite movie—some old movie about space that Scully protests vehemently—Jackson notices the influence of Mulder’s hope beginning to work on her, too. She’s arguing back, but she’s starting to relax, too. She’s got this little smile on her lips. Her anxieties are receding, falling into the background.
Jackson pulls his knees up at his end of the couch and stops listening to their good-natured argument. He wonders how it would be received if he asked if his friend Louis could come visit some time. He has a brilliant idea about splashing red paint around the inside of the Bunny Man Bridge and freaking the shit out of Louis. It would be hilarious. Also, he’d just like to see Louis. He misses him.
Mulder and Scully want Jackson to be the tie-breaker in deciding the movie. They both look over and ask him, with curious faces, what he wants to watch.
He doesn’t hesitate. “Finding Nemo,” he suggests at once. “Or The Incredibles.”
“Aren’t those kid movies?” Mulder asks suspiciously.
“Not ... entirely,” Jackson says.
“What are they about, then?”
Jackson considers his answer a minute and lands upon the right words. “They’re about doing crazy shit for your family.”
He wins.
***
Y'all, thank you so much for reading. I’m truly grateful for all of your encouraging, supportive notes and tags. You have no idea what they mean.
54 notes · View notes
juuuulez · 9 months
Text
📰 | part one: capulet.
info: Carl Grimes x Saviour!Reader, female reader I’m so sorry!!!!, mostly scene setting..next chapter will get juicy.
summary: You meet Carl whilst the Satellite station is being raided, where they take you as prisoner.
previous | next
This is gonna be an ongoing fic!!! I’ve already got like,, 8 parts mapped out, but will likely add more stuff here and there. It also currently has no name……but I’ll think of something. It will follow canon loosely, mostly at the start, and then I’ll just diverge into whatever I want to write about LOL. Let me know what you think, if you like it, want more soon etc etc.
It’s Saviour!Reader, with very heavy father-figure Negan because I am sorry but I LOVE HIM! Slow burn, enemies to lovers with Carl, teenage squabbling, you get the gist.
I’m also open for requests!!
Tumblr media
It feels like you can’t breathe.
It’s dark, so dark. Almost pitch black, if not for the moonlight shining through the windows, spaced out near the rooftops to allow some visibility. You try to keep your footsteps light, one hand clutched around a metal baseball bat, the other feeling the wall to make sure you don’t trip. Everybody else is asleep.
Everybody else is dead.
You have no idea who’s done this. But it’s multiple people, from what you’ve gathered. A group uninvolved with the Saviours. Until now, you suppose.
It was no secret that your father was a tyrant, and had his fair share of enemies, but this? Talk about retaliation. If you’d been sleeping, too, you’d be dead. Maybe it was some sort of fate that you weren’t. Divine intervention. Whatever, it didn’t matter.
Then an alarm blares, disturbing the calculating silence, awakening anybody who remained unconscious. Panic spreads throughout the satellite station, followed by the relentless noise of machine guns. Your grip on the bat tightens as you sprint down the hallway, searching for salvage, somewhere to hide. They’d overpower you, no doubt. Though you were strong, a dedicated fighter, there was only so much a 17 year old girl could do. Facing them was too risky.
And to come home in a body bag? Not an option; Negan would kill every last person alive.
You round the corner, facing a door that you knew led to a supply room. The perfect hiding spot. So, you check your surroundings, weapon at the ready before entering the small space.
The door slams behind you.
“Hands up.”
You panic, momentarily, yet don’t obey. Spinning on your heels, you meet the source of this threat, a pistol pointed in your direction.
But behind it stands a boy, likely no older than yourself. Messy brown hair, stupid looking hat. Eyepatch. Definitely not a soldier.
He takes your silence as offence, “I said, hands up!” The boy barks at you, pulling back the safety with a distinct click.
It feels like there’s a lump in your throat, yet you speak anyway, arms still caged defensively at your sides. “You wanna kill me?”
The question clearly takes this boy off guard, judging by the way his jaw clenches, displeased by the ambiguous attitude you’re holding.
“Haven’t decided yet.” He answers, tone cold and steely.
But the gun isn’t pointed at your head. It’s a little to the right, just past your ear. If he shot it now, the bullet would hit the concrete wall. Lack of depth perception, you decide. One eye.
And so, you take that chance. With one motion, you’re swinging your bat towards him, using all the strength in your body. For some reason, he doesn’t shoot, but does duck down, the swift motion causing that stupid sheriff’s hat to fall to the ground.
The minuscule moment of shock, uncertainty, is your window of opportunity: it doesn’t take much to barrel towards him, your shoulders colliding with a thud as you disarm the boy, letting the pistol fall to the ground.
You don’t bother to pick it up, kicking the weapon away from the two of you, letting it skid across the concrete and hit the opposing wall. But in the time it takes him to retrieve the gun, you’re already out the door.
It doesn’t take long to navigate your way out of the station. Sprinting through hallways, narrowly avoiding tripping over limp bodies of people you once knew. Then the doors are right there, so close. You could even see cracks of sunrise seeping through the gaps.
Fresh air assaults your face, filling your parched lungs, and it takes everything in you not to fall to the ground in relief.
But it doesn’t matter.
There’s shouting, the figures of people coming into view. It floods your system with panic, suddenly alert at the newfound danger. Your sprinting comes to the stop, skidding on wet grass, blanketed with morning dew.
You fall flat on your ass.
The moment of clumsiness is all it takes for these people to approach you, shouting, demanding a name. A gun in your face. You grit your teeth, spotting the metal bat a few feet away, too far to reach.
And that boy, with the stupid hat. He picks it up. It makes you want to scream.
They demand you take them to Negan. To the next outpost. Locate their friends. There’s talking, bargaining on a radio. You stood in silence, childishly frustrated about being used like a pawn on a board. Exchange of you, for their two friends. That, or they’d kill you.
This immature silence lasts the whole trip.
The handcuffs around your wrists are irritating. There’s an itch on your cheek you can’t scratch. Your shoulders begin to hurt from being twisted into such a position.
But the worst of it? That boy, with his stupid hat, holding your baseball bat.
You swallow your anger.
You swallow your anger as they leave you in the RV to raid the Saviour outpost.
You swallow your anger when they come out with their two friends, but none of yours.
You swallow your anger when they tell you that Negan is dead, he’s been killed. That you’ll be put in a cell until they know what to do with you.
“Let me see the body.” You demand, brows furrowed, attempting to shield your inner confliction. Concern.
The man with the curly hair and beard answers, already distracted, moving onto the next task. Like the life of your father was meaningless. “Ain’t no time, we gotta move. Get back to Alexandria before nightfall.”
You swallow your anger.
Until you can’t anymore.
It hasn’t even been that long. The end to a long, gruelling day. At least, it appears to be, judging by the dimming light seeping through tiny windows. You’ve never been in a prison cell before. Though, granted, it was probably time you got some semblance of consequence for your morally-grey actions.
There’s footsteps. Once person approaching, then another walking away. Keeping guard on your cell, you presume. The same process had happened twice already.
Except this time, the footsteps continue a little further. The jingle of keys, a metal door creaking open.
Then he’s standing in front of you, on the other side of the bars. You want to burn that stupid hat.
“Your hat looks stupid.”
His face twists, brows furrowed, but otherwise ignores the harsh statement. The hat remains on his head.
“What’s your name?” He asks, standing a few meters away, warily. As if he’s afraid you’ll squirm through the bars and attack him. Maybe that’s a good thing.
You don’t answer.
But the boy continues talking anyway, “Mine’s Carl.”
It’s like an olive branch, a truce. An ounce of humility amongst this whole, terrible experience.
You roll your eyes, but tell him your name anyway. Carl seems to take this as permission to continue, as he now sits down on the cold concrete floor, though still maintains the distance between the two of you.
“Were your parents back there?” He asks you, though doesn’t sound particularly curious, nor judgemental. It’s that same, weird, stony tone. Like he only wants to know simply for the benefit of information.
So, you humour him.
With a shrug, you mumble, “No.”
“Is Negan your dad?” Carl asks almost immediately, already having a path of conversation in mind. This boy knows what he wants, and intends on figuring it out. That, or he’s just really blunt.
Once again, you shrug, giving a pointed look that conveys how you don’t intent to cooperate.
In response, Carl narrows his eyes, taking your lack of cooperation as hostility.
A few moments pass, and he’s getting up again, storming towards the door. The keys jingle. Metal creaks.
And he’s gone.
Another few days pass.
Nobody had interacted with you; it felt like you were going insane. Four walls and a dinky bed.
At least Carl tried to talk to you, nobody else seemed interested.
Until the curly-haired man is back, who you presume is named Rick, and is getting you out of the cell, once again adorning handcuffs.
“You’re going to Hilltop,” He tells you, snapping your wrists together once more, but this time offers the reprieve of cuffing your hands in front of you, “Somebody will watch you, give you a new home. You misbehave? It’s back in the cell.”
Though displeased, you have no choice but to follow. Suspicion stews in your gut, as these people appear to be in a rush, ever so slightly frantic. An energy in the air.
You remain impartial, annoyance radiating from your being as they drive, all these people packed into an RV. Everybody is having their seperate conversations, though you remain alone, handcuffed at the back of the vehicle.
A few hours in… and the road is blocked.
Blocked by people. A few cars parked nearby.
Disruption stirs in the RV, weapons suddenly gripped, prepared for a threat. Just before Rick can go to investigate: you hear it.
Whistling.
Your face must clearly light up, a hint of hope, and you’re rushing to stand. Though you can only make it two steps forward, deeper into the RV, when suddenly hands are gripping your shoulders, a firm hold keeping you in place.
Keeping you from escaping.
You twist and turn, aggressive curses leaving your mouth, but are unable to fully face your captor.
But from the corner of your eye, you see the rim of that that stupid, stupid hat.
314 notes · View notes