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#and the way they stirred with the spoon
maxsix · 6 months
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Taebin: Total Opposites
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thatcharmingjerk · 1 year
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Only reason I actually would love a hand gun is so I could fire it few times a month to keep our rent in check like its pretty high already and I'm very tired of that
But here to get a gun you either need proper criminal connections i guess or just psych evaluation and permits and if I somehow got the gun the police etc WOULD KNOW and then they'd just visit me and I'd had to be like me:*clearly gun shaped* pigs: did you do that thing again,
and yeaaaaaa..... issa hassle.
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spookyboywhump · 1 year
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They should invent kitchen utensils that do not hurt so much to hold
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weaselle · 2 months
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it was too much i had to make my own post
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line cook here. ACCURATE
if you don't get the hate, here's what you don't understand.
it takes up to 2 hours to close down the kitchen.
The last 60-90 minutes before closing time you do almost no cooking because the restaurant doesn't have many people in it and you've already cooked most of their diners.
So if someone walks in during, like, the last hour, the cook is in the middle of an industrial deep clean of the kitchen.
(these numbers can vary quite a bit from place to place but i have worked several restaurants with these actual times and the concept remains the same)
Say the place closes at 10. If you wait til the restaurant is already closed to start all your cleaning duties, you'll be there until at least midnight.
More than that your boss knows that on an average night you can start your clean up as soon as the last rush ends and get out of there around 10:45, even 10:15 on a slow night if you get lucky. That means there are plenty of restaurants where if you do take until midnight the manager is going to come up to you at some point that week and ask you what went wrong that night, and you'd better have an answer.
So this example restaurant closes at 10 pm. The dinner rush ends around 8:30, and shortly after that the cook is going to start getting every single dish possible over to the dishwasher because the dishwasher always gets hit hard and late, and the machine runs for 2 full minutes and only holds so many dishes, so the way that works out is if you wait an extra 30 minutes to give the dishwasher all your stuff it can mean adding like 60 minutes to the end of his shift. And you're gonna KEEP finding shit to send to the dishpit right up until you leave probably.
all these little square and rectangle containers in this cold table have to be pulled out and changed over into new containers, replaced by new full ones, or in some cases filled from larger containers in the back, which can result in even more empty containers to send to the dishwasher.
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while it's all pulled apart to do this, you have to clean up all the spilled food and sauce and juices and stuff from the joints and ledges and shelves and drip trays
Once you get your line changed over in this way, and fully stocked, anytime someone orders something that makes use of a bunch of that stuff, you have to restock and re-clean it some. It might already be covered in plastic. Some of it might already be stuck in the back to make room to take apart your cutting board counter to clean. To cook a dish isn't TOO much of a problem at this point, but you're really hoping for zero orders because you still have so much other cleaning to do.
Meanwhile the salad bar and appetizer section and server station and everybody are all doing the same thing. Even the bartenders are stocking olives and lemons and sending back whisks and stir spoons and shakers and empty 4quart storage containers that used to hold the back-up lemons and olives and things. Every section is dumping their must-be-cleaneds to the dishpit as fast as possible because early and fast is the only thing they can do to to help that dishpit not absolutely drown into overtime.
The poor dishwasher is always the last to clock out, soaking wet and exhausted.
Around this time you probably scrub the flat top, which has turned black from cooked on grease and is still about 500 degrees. Line cooks are divided in opinion on water-based or oil based cleaning methods for this, but they all involve scrubbing with (usually) a brick of pumice stone using every ounce of your strength while you try not to burn yourself
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you scrub it from fully blackened to gleaming silver and now if somebody orders something that needs the flat top to cook, you can either fuck up your cleaning job or fake it in a couple frying pans and pass that tiny fuck you down to your dishwasher (who usually understands, especially if you help them take the garbage out or clean your own floor drain later)
If there's deep fried stuff on the menu then the fryers have to be cleaned out, which includes straining the oil out into enormous and super-heavy pots full of oil so hot that if you spill on yourself then it's probably a hospital visit and if you slip and fall face first into it it'll be the last thing you ever do.
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Then you gotta scrub out the fryer. Like you gotta take the (hot) screen out and reach your arm down into the weird rounded pipes and curved areas (so hot, burn you if you brush against them hot) and scrub off whatever is down there
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Depending on your kitchen you might have to do up to four of these. Then you'll have to pour the (dangerously hot) oil back in
oh, and if you didn't dry the pipes and get ALL the water out of the trap and tank?
water reacts with hot oil in a sort of mentos and coke way that can send a tidal wave of oil past the open flame of the pilot light ...HUGE dangerous mess and/or burn down the kitchen if the oil lights up.
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Unless! If the oil has been used too hard and needs to be changed, it's time to carry those open topped super heavy pots full of will-kill-you-hot oil and dump them in the barrel outside by the dumpsters so you can put room temp fresh oil in the fryers. whew!
The clean up is not just some light wiping down that can be easily interrupted, is what i'm saying.
You might have to do some kind of walk-in duty (moving around 50lb cases of lettuce and 50lb bags of onions to get to the stacks of five gallon buckets full of salad dressings and sauces to move so you can reach the giant metal pots and bus tubs full of prep and get it all organized and make sure it's all labeled and i have to stop now i'm having flashbacks)
THE POINT IS
by 15 or however many minutes to close, the line cook is doing an intense deep clean and probably has the whole stove taken apart to detail.
For some industrial stoves this means lifting off large cast iron plates that weigh like 20 lbs each and are still quite hot. Whatever metal burners are on there, you gotta take off and clean, you can see here the lines that indicate the large thick cast iron rectangles that sit on top of the burners to allow heavy pots to rest on. Those five (each has one front burner hole and one back burner hole, see?) have to be lifted off and cleaned with soap and a wire brush usually, and then the underneath area also has to be cleaned because a lot of shit falls through the burner holes on a busy night.
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if you didn't do it when you did the flat top you have to do the grease trap (which can be like a full five minutes and is always disgusting).. You gotta clean out all the little gas jets in each burner with a wire or something so the burners all flame evenly, and sometimes you have to remove some of the natural gas piping that connects the burners to access where you have to clean.
you gotta clean out the bottom of the oven and the wire racks, and, oh gods, you gotta take down the filter vents from the hood fans above the stove.
See all the lined parts along the top of the wall?
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those are hood vents, and as they pull air up they also pull a lot of grease and they have to be taken down and cleaned, then you gotta climb up there and scrub where they go before you put them back...
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And then there's the mopping and floor drains and...
Anyway, that's what the line cook is doing when you walk in fifteen minutes before closing and order something that needs to be cooked on that stove. They are doing an entire industrial cleaning of a professional kitchen.
In some restaurants maybe one or two of these jobs will be every other night or even only twice a week, but in many, possibly most kitchens, ALL of these things happen EVERY night. You don't want to leave any food mess that might attract insects or rodents for one thing, so a really good kitchen is as close to brand new as you can get it every night.
IF YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO ORDER SOMETHING ANYWAY, HERE IS WHAT TO DO
open with an apology and ask the server to go ask what the cook would prefer you to order.
Any good server will already know what the cook is hoping for and what will make their line cook go into the walk in and scream. If it's significantly less than an hour to close and they say some variant of "oh anything is fine" they are either telling the lie their boss wants them to say, or they actually do not know what their line cook wants, and you can either use human connection and a conspiratorial just-between-us tone to get them to drop the customer-is-always-right act, or get them to actually go ask the cook.
It might be as specific as "the lasagna is easiest on the kitchen" or it might be a simple guideline like "nothing that requires the flat top" or "any of the sautés are easy" but a good line cook will probably have a system for if they have to make a couple of the most popular items after they start their close, so the answer is likely to include something most people like and you should be good to order that.
but for the love of all that's holy, please only do so at great need. Leave that last 30-60 minutes to the truly desperate and the crew's duties.
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theradicalscrivener · 4 months
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How tiny does Caleb want to get? Smaller than Trevor?
Nah. I don't think Caleb would want to get that small. I figured if he'd love to be action figure size which would put him at around 5-6 inches. Small enough to be hand held. Not too small to have any meaningful interaction with the world around him.
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faeriekit · 4 months
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#i'm very pro danny accidentally adopts a whole bunch of talons previous installments
*
The next day, the body was back.
The green was gone from its eyes, but the awareness wasn't; it spent about an hour watching people go around outside Danny's apartment, which was new behavior. None of the corpses that shadowed him had shown any interest in garden-variety humans before. Now it sat at the window and watched families come home from school or head to their afternoon shifts.
That went into Danny's notes.
After that hour, it taught itself to flush the toilet repeatedly, rearranged the contents of Danny's half-assed linen closet (again) and then stood hovering over the safe where Danny had stashed the ectoplasm.
"...Okay," said Danny.
The dead body croaked. It was a new sound, but there was no context for it. Danny just kind of...wrote it down and hoped for the best.
The day after, Danny woke up at a very reasonable ten forty eight in the morning to find stray corpses feeding each other spoonfuls of ectoplasm in the kitchen.
At that point he kind of had to throw out the notes on how much each one was dosed with, because what the fuck.
"Really?!" Danny shouted, spooking the bodies into fleeing behind chairs and doors and back into his closet again. The only one that didn't flee was Danny's ringmaster corpse of the hour, of course. "You really couldn't wait??"
It stuck out a withered black tongue out at the mortician, who was, really, the victim in all of this. A victim to his parents' whims and a victim to the dead people who followed him around all the time.
This was how Danny found out that, when it doubt, the corpses could just tear through solid steel if they were motivated enough. The finger-marks were so deep and so embedded that they actually looked more like rough claws in the metal.
Great.
Danny ordered a new locking cage for the fridge on Prime and darted off to work. One of his regulars was on the table, though, so Danny just ended up doing what he would have at home— sewing up a gash in its neck and reattaching dead fingers back onto dead stumps.
On the third day, in which four of Danny's frequent fliers had learned from the first how to flush the toilet (and therefore raise the water bill immensely) Danny got a ring from a dark voice he (almost) recognized.
"Is he here?"
Danny squinted, jerking the phone further under his ear as he whipped up some scrambled eggs. The dead girl leaning over his shoulder leaned a little closer to watch the egg froth up. "Is who here? Who is this?"
"This is Batman. Is— the body requisitioned from your facility currently at your place of residence?"
Danny fully let go of the whisk. It landed haphazardly in the glass bowl he'd been stirring in. "What on Earth is a Batman?" he asked, incredulous.
"I visited your workplace previously."
Oh! "Yeah, the cop's friend. I remember now." Danny pulled the whisk out of the liquid eggs and held it out to the body. The unusually animate cadaver mostly prodded the whisk wires and paid no attention to him. "No one's here but me, though. Not that it's your business...?"
"And there are no non-living bodies currently in your apartment?"
Danny ignored the flushing noise in the other room. "I don't know, dude. They practically live in the walls at this point. Don't come over unless you have a warrant."
The call ended with a click.
His omelette turned out amazing, by the way. In case you were wondering.
On the fourth day, the ectoplasm was gone, because the corpses had apparently all taught each other how to lockpick the container in the fridge.
"Okay, some of that was meant to be my dinner. No more lotion at the funeral home now, okay? Now you all can be ashy forever. I'm so serious," Danny complained to the only visible dead person in the room.
The dead person held up a cracked egg. It was probably a gesture of peace, but now there was egg on his vinyl flooring to deal with. And. It wasn't exactly all that comforting in the end.
On the fifth day, Danny awoke to the sensation of a hand jamming itself through his neck until it punched into the mattress beneath him.
Fuck.
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yandere-writer-momo · 5 months
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Yandere Head Canons:
My Purpose
Mad Scientist Husband x Reader x Yandere Clone
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Now your husband, Dorian Goodman, truly believed he was doing you a favor with his newest creation… or should he say creations? He felt like a horrible husband by being away from you for long hours but he was allergic to pet dandruff so that was out of the equation… so why not clean himself? That way you wouldn’t be lonely! He only had his genius to blame for the horror he inflicted on you from this…
So imagine waking up to see your husband laying beside you in the bed still? His arms felt colder than normal and he smelled like preservatives… something was off but you couldn’t put your finger on it… his black hair was still long and beautiful just like his dark lashes. But something in your gut told you this wasn’t him.
And that’s when the figure beside you wakes up and gives you a bright smile. “I’m Dee. I’m your husband’s clone to keep you company while he’s away.”
You never shot up from the bed so fast to call your husband. You were extremely upset with him for creating a replica of himself rather than spend time with you himself… the nerve!
But your husband reassured you it was fine. That Dee was essentially him in every single way and that Dee could be your companion. He brushed off your concerns on this being cheating since Dee was a complete biological copy of Dorian himself but Dee could be deactivated by Dorian’s voice… it frustrated you. Why couldn’t he just leave his silly inventions behind and just spend time with his own spouse once and awhile? You were so lonely in this mansion…
But you didn’t take your frustration out on Dee. The poor clone was as clueless as you but he insisted he was created to serve you. Dee’s purpose was to take care of your needs
Dee would clean around the house and do the yard work. He was the complete opposite of the stoic Dorian. He felt more like a real human being than your own husband… minus how abnormally cold he was. He didn’t talk much but he was there. You started to grow attached to him
You spent a lot of time with Dee. He’d cover you with a blanket if you sat in your reading nook to read, he’d brew you your favorite coffee/tea, and he’d rub your shoulders. You constantly had to tell Dee that it was okay. That he didn’t have to be at your every beck and call but he would always say, “you’re my purpose.”
And Dee took notice of your sexual frustration when he peaked in on you touching yourself in the privacy of the bathroom within the glass shower walls. Curiosity began to settle in him. The cute whimpers and cries from your lips stirred something within him and he pushed the door open
You nearly screamed when Dee entered the bathroom, the only place he wasn’t beside you. But what shocked you more was the large erection in his gray joggers. It seemed he was more human than you thought and you were aching for something inside of you…
You let Dee have his way with you. He truly was a copy of your husband from how much he stretched you. Dee felt so good. He was so big and he was so strong. And he oddly smelled like your husband now… like clean linen and citrus. It was comforting and sexy. It was like Dorian was with your right now. Like Dorian was inside of you.
And in your passion it spilled from your lips once your orgasm rocked through you. Three little words that changed Dee forever, “I love you.” Dee held you while he rode you through your orgasm until his finally came. His strong arms held you up and his cheeks were filled with color. You loved him. You loved him. Dee didn’t want to ever be deactivated. Des wanted to be with you.
Dee would big spoon you every night. His large body pressed as close to yours as physically possible. There was a change in him. He was starting to become warm. Warm like a furnace. It was strange…. Dee became more and more human as the days turned to months. Your texts to your real husband became less and less but he probably didn’t even notice since he was busy with his inventions.
Dee would make you breakfast every morning and have his face between your legs to please you while you ate. Breakfast and sex became the norm for you and him. It felt so wonderful to feel wanted again. And every time, Dee begged you to tell him how you loved him. He would do anything to you to hear those words. Anything.
A shame you started to neglect your real husband. Dorian was shocked to see you folded up in a pretzel in your bed while Dee slammed into you like a mad man. This wasn’t what the clone was built for. He wasn’t built to fuck you. What the hell?
And that’s when Dee gave him a smirk. It was like looking in a mirror except there was something terrifying behind those ice blue eyes. Something sinister and Dorian didn’t like it at all. Dorian needed to get rid of Dee quickly… Dorian gave Dee one last look before he walked out of the room before you noticed
Dee kissed your head as he tucked you in. “I’m going to go get some water, okay?”
Dorian waited in the kitchen for Dee to come to him and the clone did. Dorian and him stared at each other for a few minutes before Dorian sighed.
“Deactivate.” Dorian told Dee but the clone remained standing there menacingly rather than deactivating like he was supposed to. “I said deactivate-“
And that’s when Dee launched himself toward Dorian and began to strangle him. His ice blue eyes filled with glee as the color slowly drained from Dorian’s face. An evil smirk on his face.
“It’s my purpose to make (your name) happy and there not happy with you so you can’t deactivate me anymore.” Dee whispered in Dorian’s ear. “They don’t love you. They love me.”
Dee ended up burying Dorian in the backyard before you woke up. He didn’t want you to be sad about your old husband any longer….
Dee slipped the ring he took off Dorian’s finger onto his. The shiny gold band now proudly on display. A smile on his face. Your real husband was with you now and he’d make you happy.
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relto · 1 year
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ok i understand what everyones going on about now im love vash
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cherryredcheol · 15 days
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partner privilege
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tldr: just use face i.d.? tf? a/n: i am...delusional
“hyung?”
seungcheol didn’t look up, he typed in the password to his phone, immediately opening his messages to you, “yes, dino?”
when dino hesitated, seungcheol finally looked up. dino looked a little flustered and when seungcheol looked past his maknae’s shoulder, he saw jeonghan and joshua giggling on the other side of the practice room, trying (and failing) to be subtle about watching him and dino. 
immediately sensing he was being set up, he asked again, “yes, dino?” 
dino couldn’t even look seungcheol in the eye. instead he kept his eyes trained on the ground and asked, “why is it that you always type in the password on your phone? why not use face i.d.?” 
seungcheol’s face instantly warmed. his eyes cut across the room to jeonghan and joshua just in time to watch them fall into a puddle of laughter. ignoring dino, he called out to them, “you guys suck!” 
and with that seungcheol left. eager to see you now that practice had ended early. he was going to offer to give jeonghan a ride home on his way over to yours, but not after the shit he just pulled. 
“cheollie, would you please pass me your phone? i want to change the song.” 
seungcheol walked around to the other side of the kitchen island, handing it to you easily, “here, baby.” 
you grabbed the phone with your spare hand, the other still stirring your dinner on the stovetop. 
seungcheol bumped your hip ever so lightly, grabbing the spoon from your hand. “find the song, baby. i’ll stir.” 
you smiled at him, pressing a soft kiss to his cheek. you held the phone up to your face, pressing the lock button, illuminating the screen. the phone, sensing your face, immediately unlocked, no password required. 
after a few seconds of searching through his music app, you’d finally found the song that had been stuck in your head at work all day, the soft melody coming gently out of the speaker on your counter. 
you returned to the stove, peering into the pot. bringing a hand to rest on his back, you gently pushed him from the stove. “i’ll finish up here, cheollie. grab some bowls, will you? and if you want rice, put some instant in the microwave. i forgot to make any earlier.” 
he smiled, gummy and broad, relinquishing the spoon to your capable hands. “sure thing, baby. anything for you.”  
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sunsetsimon · 6 months
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sleep refused to find him easily that night. simon stares up at the ceiling, watching the ceiling fan spin quickly. he knows he’s home, the comfortable bed a clear reminder, yet his anxiety is high, like something’s wrong. he thinks back through the night, retracing his steps of making sure each door and window is locked. he knows his gun is next to him on the nightstand, and it’s completely silent throughout the apartment. nothing out of the ordinary, just unable to leave his survival mode.
the sheets rustle beside him as you turn to face him. your eyes are closed, breathing light and looking so calm. he loves the way your eyebrow twitches in your sleep, your nose scrunching from something in your dream land. he takes a deep breath, laying on his side to face you, deciding to watch you sleep.
he rubs his hand up and along your arm, cupping your cheek and softly caressing the skin. simon wishes he could sleep the way you do, occasionally waking up with an interesting dream to tell him about. he feels frustrated, exhausted and just wanting to recharge, but it’s so hard for him.
you stir awake suddenly, eyes refusing to fully open but able to tell he’s off. “you okay, si?” you sleepily whisper, reaching out for him so cutely. you’re so soft in this moment, he feels himself falling even deeper.
“m’okay love, just cant sleep.”
“lemme hold you,” you offer, scooting closer to the middle of the bed to prepare for a spooning position but he laughs at you. “hold me?”
grumbling, you push on his shoulder to signal for him to face the other way so you can come behind him. he obliges, facing away and lifting his head from the pillow so you can rest your arm under his neck. his body is huge, you’re barely able to spoon him but you scoot closer, pressing your chest against his back. you can feel his heart pounding, chest rising as he takes a deep breath to calm himself. this is so foreign to him, not used to such tender care.
it takes a little, but simon feels his eyes growing heavy, catching up to you who fell asleep near seconds after getting close. your tiny body against his back makes him feel surprisingly calm and safe. eventually his brain relents, allowing him to sleep for a few more hours until the sun starts to peek over the horizon.
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irndad · 26 days
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a/n: continuation to this, but you don't necessarily have to read it first! all you need to know is reader got shot protecting maeve, and both survived. spencer has been in love with her the entire time.
“Have you called Maeve?” 
She asks it on a beautiful, rainy day, about five weeks after the event in question. She’s a little too nonchalant about the whole thing, has been from the start- Spencer’s been correcting for that. He’s been treating her like something fragile, a beautiful glass figure that was almost shattered. This is something he knows irritates her, but how can he not?
He tries not to think of it, but the memory of her in a hospital bed, bandages over her abdomen, the wooziness of giving her blood. He can’t help his caution, now. People assume, quite often that Spencer was unaware of the fact he’s in love with his best friend. Like it was something he didn’t know, didn’t have to live with. 
Spencer can be oblivious about a lot of things, but being in love with the person he’s shared a desk with for 4 years is not among them. 
“No,” he replies, looking up at her as she sits down, handing him the cup of tea she made him. They’re at his apartment. She’s been cleared for desk work, but Spencer had been nervous about the whole thing. They’ve fallen into a rhythm of her going to his apartment after work, and for how determined he is to tell her how he feels, he’s not really able to pluck up the courage.
“Spence,” she sighs, “You have to call her.”
“I did! When it happened, I called her. We talked. We just don’t talk anymore.”
She furrows her brow in an adorable way, and Spencer’s heart threatens to fall out of his chest. He’s been playing a game of she loves me, she loves me not in his mind for the. Past few weeks. 
Took a bullet to see me happy. She loves me. 
She stirs her ceramic spoon, the clink of it against the mug fills the silence. She bites her lip, clearly disappointed with his response. 
Wants me to call my not but kind-of ex. She loves me not.
She’s wearing this blue floral dress, and he is trying not to stare at where the fabric has ridden up, kissing the skin above her knee. She’s got lipstick on, and he tries not to read into how she’s sitting so close to him. Except he is kind of reading into it. 
Before she got hurt, he had tried to shove this feeling down- tried to ignore the swoop of his stomach when she walked by, or when she gave him a compliment, or when she let him do a card trick for her. He tried to shove down how much he fucking hated it the one time she had a date pick her up at the office. 
She’s just easy to be in love with. She writes little smiley faces on post-it notes and leaves them on his desk, and when the whole Emily thing had gone down, she’d spent weeks taking care of him through her own grief. 
She’s sitting on his couch. Five weeks ago, she was half-dead in a hospital bed, and now she is on his couch, in a beautiful dress after returning from the job they both share. 
He does not want to call Maeve. 
The comfortable silence turns tense as the episode of Doctor Who plays in the background, and he’s still a little gunshy- she’s breathing, she’s okay. He feels creepy, but he lets his eyes close for a moment so he can hear the sound of her breath, to know it’s still there.
“Spencer,” she says, after she pauses the show, and he turns fully to face her, “I am okay.” She grabs his hand, and he takes a couple of seconds to process the touch as she places it over her own wrist. ‘I am fine. They fixed me up. You are allowed to stop worrying.”
Her tone is even, but intentional. She’s giving him permission, as if his presence is some guilt-driven notion that’s stopping him from getting what he really wants. It’s true, though, that he doesn’t always believe she’s okay. Notices how she’ll wince when she bends a certain way, and the scar by her eyebrow is healing well, but he still searches for it in her face.
He savors the feeling of the soft skin of her wrist under his touch, running his fingers over the junction of her hand and wrist with delicate affection. How she hasn’t figured out he’s in love with her is anyone’s guess. 
He wonders what it would feel like to kiss her there.
“I know I can call her,” he manages to say back, meeting her warm gaze in a maybe too honestly in love glance, “I’m where I want to be.”
“Before I got hurt, you picked out an outfit, you asked for advice on dating, Spencer. You did that. I just-“ she sighs, moving her hand from his grasp and pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration, “The piece of you that wanted that is obviously still there. You don’t have to spend a Friday night with me in your apartment because you feel guilty that I got shot.”
“You’re not here because I’m guilty-“
“Then why-“
“You’re in my apartment right now because I am in love with you, and if you’re out of my sight for more than twelve hours than it’s like I forget that you’re still alive. That you didn’t get yourself killed before I ever got the chance to actually tell you.”
He’s not yelling. Well, he’s kind of yelling. Talking loudly, anyway. Her eyes widened and he’s hyperaware of how close she already was, is. She smells like lilies and her, and it’s all so present. She could have died. She might have never heard it. 
She’s heard it now, he supposes. All the weeks of agonizing, notebooks he’s managed to fill in the last few weeks trying to figure out a way to say it to her that could charm her into loving him back- all gone. He’s told her, now. 
All the cards are in her hands.
Her doe eyes almost sparkle at him, her head tipped to the side in a fond, loving gesture, and he wants to kiss her, wants to feel her faded-lipstick pout against his mouth. He wants his I love you to turn into I can have this. 
“Spence,” her voice is a trembling, insecure thing. One half of his mind wants to rage at him- there’s no way she’s going to tell him she loves him back, that someone like her could ever want someone like him. But the other half, one that seems dangerously like hope- she took a bullet for him. She didn’t even think twice. “You’re in love with me?”
It’s like it’s not even him who replies. Some bitter thing takes over his voice and speaks for him. 
“How could I not be? It’s you.”
It’s then he notices, that oh, she’s tearing up. 
A beat passes, and Spencer sucks in a deep breath before rambling an absurd amount. 
“You don’t have to- We can still be friends, obviously, you know that. But we can, I just- I needed to tell you because when you were in that hospital bed and you’d never heard me say it, I just couldn’t live with you never knowing. But now you do, and you don’t feel the same, and that’s okay-“
He doesn’t get to keep talking, because she grabs him by the collar of his shirt and kisses him. She’s warm and beautiful and her hair brushes up against his cheek and there’s something in him that takes over when he moves to  cradle her head between his hands, both desperate to keep her in his grasp and savor the moments he gets to hold her. She tastes like cherry chapstick and something completely undefinable. 
When she pulls away after a moment that feels entirely too short, heavy lidded eyes meeting his in affection, and Spencer thinks he’d like to do that for the rest of his life. 
“I love you too,” she says back, and he commits it to memory, the sound of her so-sweet voice wrapping around the words he’s fantasized about hearing since the first time she smiled at his joke about philosophy. “I’ve loved you a really, really long time, Spence. I just thought I lost my chance, you know with- with everything. I never really thought I had one.”
He can’t even speak, really. He doesn’t think he can wrap his head around the fact that she felt like he wouldn’t like her back. 
It doesn’t feel like a concern, now, when he leans in to kiss her again. She smiles into him, and Spencer memorizes the feel of her waist encircled in his arms, when he realizes that this is the heart he is able to hold without limits. 
She loves me too, he thinks. She is safe, she is okay, and she loves me back. 
On the following Monday, when Morgan sees the two of them with linked hands before Hotch gets to the office, he doesn’t say anything. 
He does hand Emily 20 dollars, though. 
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i-am-hungry-24-7 · 2 months
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[Domestic life with retired husband!Simon]
Fixed some things so uploading again :D I love domestic fluff sorry and thank you :) word count: 372
He knows how to cook, and is quite talented at it, but he just tossed some food into his microwave or shoved a spoonful of canned beans in his mouth before started living with you. Now when you come back from work, what greets you is the appetizing smell of steaks and your husband wearing an ‘I’m a baby’ apron, telling you the meal will be ready by the time you finish showering.
When you reluctantly get yourself off the shared bed on weekdays, two plates of pancakes and tea are already placed on the dining table. Simon is just about to check if you oversleep again, so you bump into his chest when you open the door to the living room. He’s amused by your grumpy face, lips pouting at the annoyance of working, and you’re so adorable that he can’t help but wrap his arms around your waist and kiss you on those plump lips.
“Good mornin’, love.”
He always maintains touches during sleeping, whether it’s his hand slipping under your shirt and relishing your warmth, or his face buried in the crook of your neck, drowning himself in your soothing scent. He stirs and murmurs into your ears when you get up for the toilet.
“Don’t leave... so cold...” His voice is still hoarse from his slumber.
“Simon I really need to pee.”
This happens almost every night, and it always ends with him hugging you and you two walk like penguins on your way to the bathroom. Once you step out of the bathroom, his arms snake around you instantly, and penguin walk back to the bed again. He slumps down onto the bed, dragging you along with him, little giggles leave his mouth when you wriggle under his weight. Finally back to your regular position, a peck on your cheeks with sweet words is what he gifts you before he drifts into dreams once more.
“I love you, good night.”
and those dreams aren’t that bad anymore, because now, he has the love of his life sleeping safe and soundly in his bosom.
“I love you too, Simon.”
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Text
It's a Match! || poly!141 x Reader
[Chapter 25] || [Chapter Pre-27] || [Chapter 27]
Pairing: 141 x gn!Reader Words: 1.2k~ cw: smut, penetration, oral sex (m!receiving), gay sex (anal) Summary: While overcoming recent heartbreak, you decide to join Tinder in search of a rebound. Your friends advise to just Swipe Right indiscriminately... What happens when 4 soldiers from the same squad match with you? a/n: we're almost THERE
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Chapter 26: Smart mouth
If you thought last time you guys did this was too much, you weren’t ready for this afternoon.
Had you had all your braincells intact, you would’ve pondered HOW John would end up adding to this, if it was even possible to add an extra person…
But they weren’t intact. You were utterly fucked out, stars prickling at the corner of your eyes…
You were lying on your tummy, legs spread apart to either side of the bed, Kyle steadily snapping his hips against your ass, the sound of his cock plunging into you wet and slick echoing in the room, not even concealed by your muffled moans.
Your head was craned back, your neck straining a bit in that position to allow for Johnny’s cock to plunge deep into your mouth, muffling any of the cries of pleasuring coming from you.
It didn’t help that Johnny was not controlling himself, his cock hammering into your mouth with wild abandon.
But that must have had something to do with the fact Simon was fucking him from behind, a hand gripping Johnny around the hip, the other holding your hair to make sure he stayed buried in your mouth.
The corners of your mouth hurt, Johnny’s shaft so impossibly thick, just like the rest of him, that you couldn’t help but whine and whimper at the stretch it forced your mouth to perform.
And Kyle with his damn moans and sighs behind you, his lengthy cock plunging so deep inside you, his thighs nearly permanently glued to your ass more often than not.
“Tha’s it… Wanted to ‘ave a fucking smart mouth, did ya?” Simon taunts who you know is Johnny, but frankly he feels like he could be speaking to any of you really.
“I-I… I’m sorry L.T.!” Johnny whines, his eyes rolling back, his back pressed firmly against Simon’s chest, head lolling against the taller man’s shoulder.
“Don’t apologise to me. Apologise to the pretty thing that’s got you all the way down their throat.” Simon replies, his tone bossy and authoritative.
“I-I’m sorry, bonnie… A-Ah…” Johnny got interrupted halfway as Simon’s hand bobbed your head back and forth, causing some audible sounds of you choking.
“Fuck… Looks so good…” Kyle huffed behind you, bent halfway over your body, panting right against your shoulder blade.
All he could see from that angle was your nose burrowed to Johnny’s pelvis, Simon’s hand in your hair, tears in your eyes…
Simon’s hand left your hair for a moment, allowing you to swallow the build up of saliva in your mouth and to breathe better through your nose, instead caressing Kyle’s cheek, his thumb grazing his bottom lip.
“You’re all doin’ so good f’r me…” Simon tells you, Kyle’s eyes closing at the praise, his lips parting to suck Simon’s thumb. “Good…”
Your eyes watch the entire scene, or… they would, if you weren’t already 2 orgasms in, too fucked out to think of anything at all beyond the fact this all feels too good.
-
You find yourself stirring awake by a sudden lack of warmth and groggily look around to notice Kyle leaving the warm pile of bodies on your bed, revealing your back to the cold air of the bedroom.
Grunting softly, you're shushed by a kiss on the crown of your head and an arm wrapping around you tighter, rubbing your bare back.
You’re hugging onto Simon, who has an arm around you. Kyle had been behind you this whole time, spooning you, and Johnny had been behind him.
“He's going to let John in,” Simon tells you as he keeps rubbing your back, gentle kisses pressed to the top of your head.
Johnny is sleeping soundly, just like you had been, his breathing steady, not quite a snore, but loud enough.
“John?” You murmur, rubbing your eyes.
“Yeah, he texted me about an hour ago, asking if we wanted dinner.” Simon tells you.
“Dinner?” Johnny murmurs in a half-awake state.
“Bloody ‘ell, did’ya wake up at the mention of food?’ Simon quips with a soft rumble of a laugh against your ear. It sounds like he's purring…
Johnny scoots closer, taking up the space that Kyle had been in until now, his lips beginning to press kisses to your bare shoulder.
“I'm so sore…” You murmur, lamenting how sluggish you feel, not to mention your cotton mouth.
After your session, you had all taken turns showering and Simon had made sure to get you all to drink water, but that did little to help your sorry state.
“At least ye don't have a bum knee.” Johnny quips behind you.
“And don't pull a muscle while sitting down,” Simon remarks.
“Or fuck up your back while having a one night stand.” John announces when he shows up at the bedroom door, Kyle right behind him.
Besides Simon, John’s the only one that's dressed, a pair of dark blue jeans, a white undershirt and a brown sweater on top, his hair slightly disheveled from having taken off the beanie he usually wears as a civvy.
“Hi…!” You greet him lazily.
“Hi, darling.” John replies as he approaches the bed.
He drops a kiss to Simon’s head, a peck on the lips for you, and runs a hand over Johnny’s messy mohawk.
“I see you lot had some fun, hm?” John teases before crouching by the bedside.
“‘f course we did, sir.” Johnny jokes with what you know is a sly little smirk on his lips.
“How about you lot get dressed and get some food, hm?” He quipped and ran a hand through your hair as you remained warm sandwiched between Johnny and Simon. “I brought Indian.”
“Ooh, butter chicken?!” Johnny remarks and immediately bounces up, trampling over you and Simon to get off the bed, causing you both to groan.
“I just said I'm SORE!” You scold Johnny as he starts gathering his clothes, which Kyle is also doing for himself.
“Clearly not sore enough! Guess I didn't fuck yer throat hard enough if your mouth is still yapping.” Johnny retorts, causing you to gasp.
“Johnny-” Simon replies as he slowly shifts and stands up as if already threatening him with another fucking to get the attitude out of him again.
“Tough talk for someone that had a cock up the ass 3 hours ago.” Kyle quips from beside him.
“HAUD YER YEESHT! You’re just bitter Simon didn’t fuck ye!” Johnny retorts as he nudges Kyle, the two of them picking up on their usual bickering.
“I wouldn't count that as fucking, more like putting you in your place.” Simon replies swiftly, joining Kyle in tag teaming Johnny.
“My PLACE?!” Johnny gasps.
John takes a seat in the spot Simon had been occupying, letting you curl up to him instead as the lads descend into the madness that is their usual bickering.
John’s arms pull you up onto his lap, wrapping you in a warm hug, his chin resting on your shoulder as you both gaze at the loud men in your bedroom.
“I'm sorry you have to deal with them.” He tells you playfully.
“And I'm sorry that you've been dealing with them for so long.” You retort.
You both share a glance and a chuckle.
"You know if you ever want a break from them... I've got my own place..." John suggests with narrowed eyes and a smile, puffy cheeks lightly pink.
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velvetydream · 3 months
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꒰ :🥀 [ May I have this dance? ] ”♡ᵎ꒱ˀˀ ↷ ⋯
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Summary : It was a late stormy night at the hotel, you weren't able to sleep, but when you sneaked into the kitchen a certain red-haired demon was humming to a tune while cooking.
Pairing : Alastor x Reader
Word count : 1309 Words
Genre : Fluff
Warnings ➵ None
a/n : Dancing with Alastor? Sign me up (even tho I cannot dance and he would probably kill me for stepping on his feet..-)
Also I personally cannot dance, so I'm sorry if the description of the dancing seems a bit off!
┌───────────────────────── ·  ·  ·  · ♡
For once it was storming in hell, it was a very rare occasion, but once it did storm, it was crazy. The whole city had a blackout, VoxTech was probably going crazy right now. Meanwhile, the hotel was cozy, Alastor used his magic and brought out some candles, so the hotel was clad in nice candlelight now.
Yet here you were laying in your bed, not able to fall asleep. Outside your window the rain was slamming against it, lightning and thunder could be heard every few seconds. Sighing you swing your legs back out of your bed, it is no use, you won't be able to fall asleep like this. Feet hitting the cold floor, a shudder running over your body. Slipping on some socks and a jacket, you take the candle holder from your nightstand and light the candle up again, before you make your way out of the room.
Slowly and quietly you make your way downstairs to the foyer and then to the kitchen, everyone else was probably asleep right now, so that's why you were almost going on your toes. Arriving at the kitchen, the door closed, you noticed soft light shining underneath the door gap, wondering who was in the kitchen this late at night. Opening the door a bit to slip a glance inside, you see Alastor at the stove, candles were lit all around the kitchen, indulging it in soft light. The stove was going with fire, probably thanks to Alastor's magic. He was stirring something in the pot, you couldn't see what it was, but the smell it gave off was enticing.
"How long do you intend to stand there and gawk at me, darling? Come on inside!" Alastor did not turn around at all, making you wonder how you were noticed, unknown to you, his shadow was watching you the entire time since you began to sneak a peak inside. Entering the kitchen now, you close the door behind you softly, pulling your jacket closer around you. Your feet carry you over to Alastor, glancing into the pot. He was making some stew, you couldn't really tell what every ingredient was, but it smelled good. "Open up dear~" Holding the wooden spoon up, he let you have a taste and it was incredible, he had a hand for cooking. It was a slight bit spicy, but not too much. "It's very nice!" Nodding now, as you slowly start to get the things out you actually came for, a cup of tea.
"Oh dear, let me make this for you, do take a seat." Grabbing the cup from your hands, you look at him a bit flabbergasted, yet do as he said and sit down. "Why are you even awake this late? And cooking on top of that?" Watching him, just now you notice how he was still wearing his normal attire, he hadn't changed into sleepwear yet. The only thing he took off was his coat and bow, the first button of his shit open, yet he still looked proper as always. "Oh I just felt like cooking something up, couldn't really rest." Was his answer to your question, afterwards it got quiet again.
Just now you notice how some jazz was playing from his staff, Alastor was tapping his foot along to the rhythm. It was a nice change for once here in hell, simply enjoying some music and calmness. "Do tell me, darling, do you dance?" Looking over his shoulder with a mischievous smirk, smiling and smirks were normal for him, yet this one looked daring and playful. "I'm not really skilled at it if I'm honest, I prefer watching others." Alastor's eyebrow quirked up a bit, the lid of the pot was placed on it now, letting the stew simmer for now. Your tea was almost ready too, as he strode over to you. His hand was extended out to you now, his playful smile a tad bit bigger now. "I beg to differ, my dear, I think you may be a skilled dancer, with the right person to lead you, so.. may I have this dance?" The jazz music getting a tad bit louder now, as he awaits for you to place your hand in his. For a second you were unsure, yet placed your trust in him, in other occasions this may be a bad idea, but right now it's simply a dance.
With a quick pull, you were on your feet, as Alastor slowly started to lead you, the music slowed down a bit, while he took the lead to guide you, probably taking it slow at the start right now. The dance was a swing to the jazz music playing, the more he guided you and twirled you around, the more you got the hang of it. Letting Alastor and the music guide you, the next song was slowly picking up the pace, he was obviously enjoying this, having fun with twirling you around to his heart's content.
"You see my dear, you were only missing the correct partner to make you a darling little dancer~" His words made you blush a slight bit, it wasn't unusual for Alastor to talk to you or Charlie with pet names like dear or darling, but somehow his words now had a different tune to it, they were soft, like he meant what he said with his whole heart. "I guess you're right.." Agreeing with him, as he now noticed how you were slowly getting out of breath, the music slowing down to a waltz, as he pulled you in closer to his body now, his hand now placed on your waist, as his other one holds yours in a soft grip, as on instinct your hand finds its place on his shoulder.
This felt different than before.. more intimate than the fun swing before, his face wore a soft smile, as he looked down at yours, your eyes avoiding his a bit now, too shy to face him. A chuckle makes you raise your head again though, noticing how close he was to you now, mere centimeters between you two.
"So mon amour, how did you like this?" The music was still going and so was Alastor, softly guiding you to the music, but not as concentrated anymore as before. "You definitely are a great guide, it was fun, though I was a tad bit nervous I must admit." Chuckling at your response, he nods. "Don't worry your pretty little head, you were fabulous, like a little dove." Letting your hand go now, he comes to a stop, takes a step away from you and back to the stove. Your breath was still the slightest bit harder from the dancing, you were just happy you didn't end up stepping on his feet or anything.
"Your tea darling, head on out to your room and sleep soon, it's late, can't have you missing sleep now can we?" The cup was placed in your hand, as he guided you to the kitchen door with a hand on your lower back. "Thanks, sleep well too Al!" Giving him a soft smile, as you turn to go back to your room. "Let's repeat this another time darling." His words bring a slight red hue to your face again, as you nod in agreement, before making your way back to your room. Alastor closed the door with a content smile, he didn't get to dance often, and dancing with you, his little darling? An amazing turn of events.
The next day the power was back and the storm gone, the cup on your nightstand empty and after exhausting yourself with dancing, you slept like a kitten this night.
And let's just say, Alastor pulled you into a dance here or there more often now than you thought he would.
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astaroth1357 · 3 months
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Thinking about Culinary Wizard MC who basically the reverse of Solomon.
They emphatically do not know Devildom any cuisine in any way, but whenever they step into the kitchen they can throw whatever together and it all just works.
Levi says that they just cook on vibes alone. Half the time they don't even know what they're using. They'll sniff at things in the fridge, then pour a random sauce they find onto their dish that miraculously makes it delicious.
Any demon watching them would have a heart attack after seeing them pour what could be the Devildom equivalent of marshmallow fluff on a sirloin, but it somehow, it turns into a 5-star meal once they're done. It should never work as well as it does.
Solomon can even join them in the kitchen because their good cooking is so powerful it cancels out his bad cooking.
Barbatos wants to study them in a lab. He's brought them to the Castle numerous times and each ends in frustration...
~~~~~~~~~
MC: *stirring a pot on one of the several stove-tops in the Castle*
MC: Okay, Barbs. Hand me that purple thing!
Barbatos: *trying not to die inside as he has already watched them drop 3 random fruits and 12 roots into whatever concoction they have cooking up*
Barbatos: MC, are you sure this... dish would benefit from fresh midnightroot? It's so savory that it might-
MC: Barbs.
MC: What did I tell you? When I'm in the kitchen...
Barbatos: ... We must trust the process...
MC: Exactly. Now that purple thing, please.
*One increasingly concerning cooking demonstration later*
MC: *sniffs at the pot and nods approvingly before handing Barbatos a spoon to taste*
MC: Done!
Barbatos: *looks at the pot warily but dips the spoon into the, now purple, creation that has about the consistency of a pie filling*
Barbatos: *tastes the spoon*
Barbatos: ......
Barbatos: *holds his head in his hands, awash with frustration and defeat*
Barbatos: It's... delectable....
They cannot keep getting away with this...
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supercutszns · 3 months
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bitter to the taste; luke castellan
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series masterlist
wc + pairing: 5.5k, luke castellan x f!reader
synopsis: a sharp blade, a black eye, and (more than) two kisses.
warnings: this is even sluttier than the last one, language, sword fighting, sharp objects, blood/injuries, reader is still a horrible person and so is luke but he's also a loooser, making out, allusions/mentions of sex but no super explicit descriptions, kind of fluffy at the end
notes: i’m starting to hate this bc i think i’ve been staring at it too long sorry if this is not as good as pt.1 but i have plans for this series ok. also READER AND LUKE ARE NOT GOOD PEOPLE!!! THEIR RELATIONSHIP WILL NOT ALWAYS BE GOOD!!! THEY SUCK!! they are also not real but keep that in mind :) synopsis inspired by crush by ethel cain; designated song for this fic is unpunishable by ethel cain (i’ve got a whole chronological playlist for these freaks like it’s serious)
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You’ve always had a taste for violence. And an equally powerful penchant for sloth. 
You prefer to watch the carnage, not participate. It satisfies something inside you that you know, if it wasn’t for your laziness, could cause something irrevocable. Who the hell has time for that?. You’d rather lie back and watch instead.
This flaw of yours is the only reason you haven’t stirred more trouble, you think. It’s the reason you never attend camp games or sparring lessons. Sometimes, when you do, a dark muscle flexes inside your heart to curl out of its slumber, forming a hunger you don’t have otherwise. The second it starts to pry you have to rear yourself back and tuck the monster in. Banish the need for something more.
You don’t want to feed it. You don’t know what happens if you do. So you let other people do the feeding for you.
Luke cuts through two dummy heads in one swoop. It’s fucking gorgeous. The moon reflects off his sword, a silver sheen casting his face when he’s in the right spot. His brows are set, eyes so dark they blend with the night. Every motion is ruthless. Satisfying. 
You don’t know how many times you’ve watched him like this. He called you out for it last night, but you’re sure he doesn’t know the half of it. The shadows are a sacred cloak to you, and you wait inside them until you want your presence known. 
Meet me tomorrow. 
It runs through your head like a broken record. You can still feel his breath on your lips and your neck is still tender—had to wear a sweater in the blazing heat to hide the marks. Since you were created you’ve accepted a universal truth about yourself: you don’t harbour affection for anyone or anything. There’s not a single thing you’ve felt drawn to or protective over but yourself. It’s solitary, yes, and lonely, yes, but that’s the way you’re supposed to be. 
But you think about last night. You think about the moments between the kisses and the rush. When he teased you against your ear. When his hand brushed a certain spot on your back and something much lighter fluttered inside of you. When you crawled into sleep and thought about him, those were the moments that struck you the strangest. 
His gaze pans over the treeline every once in a while, the anger diluted. Then it comes back twice as hard as he shreds another dummy to pieces. 
He’s waiting for you. Oh, this is rich! A better person would probably turn around and go spoon their offerings into the bonfire the second they understand what they’re doing is incredibly destructive. But who are we kidding? You wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t. 
So you take a step forward, slip out of the comfort of the dark, and the next time he looks to the treeline he knows you’re there. He can’t see you, but he knows. 
You wait. His strikes are less tenuous, much smoother. It almost makes you laugh. Some fucking showman he is. 
Eventually, he buries his blade in the dirt and wipes his brow. “Are you gonna come talk to me or are you gonna stare at me all night like an owl?”
You relish in the feeling of shedding the darkness, coming into the light of the moon. “Hi,” you say flatly, but there’s a tiny smile on his face when he sees you that almost puts you off. 
“Hello, rotten.” He tries to lean on the hilt of his sword but it isn’t quite tall enough so he stumbles. It’s so pathetic it almost makes you laugh. 
“Don’t call me that,” you grimace.
“Okay, back to heathen?”
“Don’t call me that either.”
“Well, you don’t seem too happy when people call you by your name so pick your poison here.” 
You don’t say anything, your mouth set in a scowl. “All right, both it is,” Luke shrugs.
He’s different from last night. Less impatient. You hope it’s not because he thinks he has you now—he’s got another thing coming. “I almost thought you weren’t gonna come,” he says with a crooked grin, neither bashful nor ashamed. 
You’ve made your way closer to him, the soft grass turning to dusty earth. “Don’t know why I did,” you mutter crassly. 
Having abandoned his sword, Luke chuckles wryly. “Yes, you do.”
That bitterness he hides from everyone else pierces through. He tilts your face up like he did yesterday, the press of his fingers beneath your chin almost burning you. You know he’s peering at the marks on your neck. 
“If you made me come here just to hook up with me you’re delusional,” you glare. 
“What, like that’s not why you’re here?” He pushes your face up a little higher, grinning a little when you add resistance. “I’m a gentleman, you know. I can be patient.”
This guy is full of fucking shit.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” you snipe. The only point of contact you have is his hand on your chin, but you’re a hair’s breadth away from having everything else. The air drifting between you is almost palpable, shrinking smaller and smaller like it’s terrified of being trapped between you.
He keeps your face still. He’s studying you, and you’re suddenly curious about what he sees. You remember all those looks you’d share at the dinner tables that made this happen in the first place. What did he see then? 
“You wanna fight?”
It takes you a second to react. “What?”
“You want to fight. Pick up a sword, let’s go.” He smiles as he finally lets you go, waltzing away from you to unbury his sword from the dirt. His touch permeates through your skin and you hate it. 
“What the fuck are you talking about? I can’t fight.”
“Sure you can,” he replies, grabbing another sword from the training rack. “You need to burn off a little steam.”
You laugh sharply. “And you think me waving a sword around is gonna do that?”
“Uh, yeah,” he grins. “It’s the method that lets us keep the most clothes on.” 
You glare at him. His smirk is a mile wide. The way your stomach is simmering almost makes you sick; it’s like gorging yourself on candy except this time the candy has a sword and maybe wants to fuck you. 
You just watch as he hands you his sword, and the moonlight glinting off the metal has you believing it’s not the kind used for training. “I’ll use the dull one,” he assures. “C’mon, heathen. I know you’ve used a sword before, they force us to.”
“I usually skip those classes.”
He laughs. You can’t tell if it’s at you or with you. “Of course you do.”
You don’t like following orders, but oh, what the hell. Luke knows something about you, just like you know something about him. You’re only a little curious about it. 
“Straighten your back,” is the first thing he says once you’ve taken your stance across from him. The blunt of his sword reaches out to tap your hip. 
You begrudgingly do as you’re told. He watches you mirthfully, and the press of his sword against you starts to feel like a substitute for his hand. All the closeness you’re hungry for, dampened by cold steel. It still makes you buzz. 
He gives you the barebones—the right grip, how to maneuver, the proper balance. But long gone is his easy disposition. The motor inside him that powered all those dummy beheadings and disembowelments is running again, except this time it’s for you. He wants a fight. This is his battlefield. All right, you’ll bite.
You start to spar with the skill of an overgrown toddler. The sword feels like an unnatural ligament hanging off your body. Luke is precise, convicting, far more enthusiastic than you. “You can do better than that,” he prods after your swords clash lazily for the billionth time. “Stop going easy.”
“You’re going easy,” you shoot back. 
“Yeah, but I’d really rather not. Come on.” 
There’s a moment of hesitation. You think about that dark thing you keep harboured. A muscle aching to be used. 
“Come on,” he says again, and he almost sounds pissed. “All of a sudden you’re playing nice? What are you afraid of?”
Something flares inside you. “Nothing!”
“Then pick up the sword and fight me.”
You huff and roll your eyes, but your next swing is far more inspired. Luke blocks it easily, but you don’t care. “There we go,” he nods. “Again.”
This is more than you bargained for when you decided to come see him. All you want is to make out with this hot, awful person and have him tell you hot, awful things about yourself you probably already know. Why do you have to fight to get it? 
He keeps provoking you no matter how hard you try. Your temper picks up the more you swing, discordant clangs bruising the air, but it’s still not enough. Luke doesn’t let up. Of course the one time you try to be nice, you’re not allowed to. On second thought, why are you reigning yourself in for Luke? The only other person in camp with a real, consuming viciousness? If anything you should hit him twice as hard, since he’s so sure he can take it. 
“No wonder you’re so angry all the time,” Luke heaves out, and it gives you a swell of satisfaction. “You don’t have a proper outlet. Maybe you’d be nicer if you didn’t sit around and complain all day.”
“Shut up,” you gnash your teeth. 
“Just saying, maybe you should do something about it.”
You’re getting lost in the rhythm of the swords, the adrenaline, the sweat passing the scar on his cheek. Every swing you think less and less, and that dark muscle flexes more and more. It feels like home to you. Like a good meal. Your bones ache and the world has darkened, but that rotten pit inside you cracks open in full bloom. 
Luke keeps egging you on but you can’t hear him. Not like he still needs to. You think you’re smiling, or huffing furiously, or both. The sharpness of the sword intrigues you. A million terrible things reflect off its blade and you imagine them, all at once, until you are out of your body and the black hole inside you has properly wedged itself open. 
Luke jabs at you and you bring your sword down with a vengeance. But it’s a little too low. You only notice when he drops his weapon to the side and staggers back.
The fog of violence falters. It fades almost completely when he hisses long and hard, eyes screwed shut, and you see the tear in his shirt. In his skin. 
“Shit,” you say. “Fuck.”
You don’t sound sorry, you don’t think you are sorry, especially when he laughs. It’s a wheezy one through his teeth as you come up to him, but a laugh nonetheless. “Knew you were going easy,” he remarks through a wince. 
You ignore him, looking down at the injury. A  gash across his abdomen. It’s bleeding a little, but not enough for it to drip. You did that. Just looking at the blood, you feel the bitter taste of it in your mouth, the reward a temporary hunger for carnage brought you. This is why you don’t play camp games. 
“I’ve got thick skin. I’m fine,” Luke says casually. “I’ve got a medical kit under that tree over there in case I beat myself up too bad.” He’s no longer scrunched in pain, and you’ve got a feeling he’s telling the truth. So you go fetch the kit where he said it was. You need to wrap that slash. Not because you’re sorry for him, but because looking at it makes you angry. 
You kneel and pop the lid of the small tin kit, covered in dirt. It’s mostly gauze and bandages. Rubbing alcohol too. “Just give me the gauze, that’s all I need,” Luke gestures. 
“Shut the fuck up, I’m doing it myself.” You’ve already torn off some gauze, sitting all the way up on your knees. 
“Most people just say sorry.”
“You pushed me,” you spit back, surprisingly forceful. Luke’s smile drops. You take a deep breath, adjusting yourself to get eye level with the injury. “I told you I don’t fight.”
You’re not sure what makes Luke give in, but he doesn’t say a word as you lift the hem of his torn shirt and he holds it up. There’s no proud remark about your eyes lingering on his stomach, or the hesitation in your hands. You stare at the wound. It really is shallow. Your thumb presses at the skin around it and he winces. “My bad,” you mutter. 
As you sterilize the cut and wrap the gauze around his torso, you try not to let your fingertips cling to the warmth on his skin. You try not to notice the other scars littered there, most faded to the point they should be impossible to pick up even in the sun. It’s obvious he’s staring at you. Your neck is crawling with warmth. But you don’t engage, you just wrap the gauze a few times and do your best not to notice the rise and fall beneath his muscles as he breathes. Then you fasten things neatly and put everything away so you can get up. Any second. Come on. 
“Good?” You ask instead, exhaling. 
“Good,” he affirms. He slides a hand under your forearm and gets you up. It stays there once you’re standing. The night stills. 
“I’m guessing you’re adding ‘attempted killer’ to your list of horrible qualities,” you go on to break the silence.
He holds your gaze unyieldingly. “I’d consider that a pro, actually.” 
You are entirely fed up with this drawn out evening, but you can’t bring yourself to speed anything up any more than stepping closer so your chests brush. “I will give you one, though,” he continues, craning down to your ear. You smell his skin and it sends you back to the position you were in yesterday. 
He finally kisses your jaw, just once, then your neck. You shiver. “You’re too tense.” Another kiss behind your ear. It’s not enough. “Do you even know how to have fun?”
“I don’t want to have fun,” you reply bitterly. I just want to make out with you, asshat.
Luke’s breath frosts over your face when he chuckles, but before he can get any further away you catch his mouth with yours. Almost instinctively his arm winds around you to pull you in closer, your hand looping through his curls. It's a relief, knowing last night wasn't some freak accident. This does feel good, actually, and it can happen. Everything you felt yesterday is only more urgent now, hungrier, and you're pretty sure the way you kiss him gives that away.
He indulges you, squeezing the base of your hips as his other hand thumbs across the marks on your neck. This is so fucking embarassing—you think you whine when he bites down on your bottom lip. You’ve never needed something this bad, you’ve never needed anything. But you press yourself as close to him as you can manage and his hand runs lower, slips against your inner thighs, and it’s difficult to worry about anything else. 
Until he pulls away. Like a dick. 
He doesn’t go far, his forehead pressed to yours, but you feel like pulling out all his hair. It’s a muddling mix of frustration and longing you’re starting to associate with him. “Dude,” you groan, an inner coil only starting to unwind begrudgingly compressing. 
“Let’s go for a swim,” he says. The enthusiasm is almost alarming. Almost makes him look younger.
You’re homicidal. “Are you fucking serious?”
“Yes, heathen. Let’s go for a swim, come on.”
He’s rubbing circles on your thigh, which only makes you want to strangle him. “But I—I don’t have my bathing suit,” you string out. 
The smile gets more boyish. “Wow, whatever shall we do?”
It’s another challenge. Another dare. And he knows what you want, fucking jerk. You’re going to kill him. 
“Fine,” you grunt, and the second the words leave your lips you’re pulled to the lake. 
It’s a warm, sticky evening, only made worse with the sweat and the half-assed kissing, so the water doesn’t seem all that bad. Unfortunately, you don’t like giving into demands. So you stare ghoulishly at your fingernails as Luke tosses off his ripped shirt and his shorts so he can plunge into the lake. “Aren’t you going to at least come in?” He asks, but you don’t look at him. 
“I don’t like swimming,” you lie. 
“At least your feet. It’s nice, I swear!”
A splash, like smoke moving through wind chimes. You look up and Luke has completely submerged, popping his head up closer to the mouth of the dock. “Please,” he says with such conviction your resolve turns to butter. Gods, what is happening to you? You still need that lobotomy! 
You sigh, roll your eyes, turn your back to him. “Fuck this,” you mutter under your breath. You undress to your undergarments and you’re not sure if you want Luke to be watching or not. The moon touches your bare skin and a chill trickles through you. 
You take a seat at the edge of the dock, knees tucked to your chest. Luke swims over for you right away. His hair is dripping against his skin, and you hate how beautiful it looks. The waterline is high tonight, almost ridiculously so, so he props his elbows up on the dock with no problem. “Come in,” he urges. 
“No.”
“Just your legs?”
“No.”
“Gods, I’ll make it worth it, just throw your damn legs in!” 
Your eyebrows shoot up. His face is stubbornly pink. Oh, so now he wants something. You take your time uncurling yourself and Luke wades away from the dock so you can put your feet in. The water goes up to your calves, and you shiver. “So fucking difficult,” he mutters, and your pulse flickers. 
“Sorry, what was that?” You let yourself grin for the first time all night. 
“Nothing,” he hums. This time when he comes to the dock, he wraps his hands around your calves. You’re pretty sure he can stand here because he stops treading. The warmth of the water seems to spread further, long past the threshold of your knees. 
He rests his chin just above your knee, water pooling on your skin. “Stop dripping on me,” you complain. 
“Sorry.” He fake pouts when he kisses the damp spot. You see, ever so faintly, a diabolic shift in his expression. He nudges your leg with the point of his nose, then kisses it, then starts to move it aside. “Feel bad about teasing you all night,” he murmurs, still with an edge. He presses more kisses on your legs. “I really did want to see you.”
The irony that he’s still teasing is not lost on you. You’re not loving how desperately warm you’re starting to feel. “Why’s that?” You lean back on your palms. 
“You’re a very interesting person,” he quips innocently. His hands are cupping the backs of your calves. He’s pulled you a lot closer to the water, and somehow you’ve just noticed. Another blistering kiss on the inside of your thigh. 
“You’re fucking evil,” you scathe. 
He looks up at you from between your legs. “You have literally done nothing but berate and injure me this whole evening.”
“Yeah, and right after I patch you up you jump in the water for shits. You’re playing infection roulette, Castellan.”
“See? You’re so mean.” He sighs, and in a move that almost surprises you to death, he hoists both your legs over his shoulders and they dangle into the river behind him. “And here I am anyway, making it up to you.”
You are suddenly illuminated on the purpose of this situation. Why Luke is between your legs. Your heart jolts. “Luke, you can’t be serious.” 
“Mmhm.” He leans forward to kiss right under your navel. 
You hate how much you want him to do it again, how your body burns, but you avert your eyes. “Someone’s gonna—someone’s gonna hear us.”
He snorts, “No they won’t. Either this or you come in the water with me. Or both. We’ll see.”
A huge smile cracks across your face before you push it back down. You’re going to spend a lot of time coming back to this moment, this night, wondering why. “What is wrong with you.”
It comes out like a compliment when it leaves you. You want to vanish. Luke chuckles, and something foreign to the both of you buzzes through the air. 
“Are you going to be nice?” He asks against your skin. 
“Are you going to be quick?”
His mouth finds your hip bones and yeah, why the hell would you say no to this? He nods, “Swear.” 
That’s all you need. You let your eyes slide shut and your head tilts towards the sky. Luke takes your permission and runs with it, pries you open with his mouth until the stars soak through the black of your eyelids. 
You discover pretty quickly neither of you are good at keeping promises. 
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The next time you need Luke’s med kit, he’s already awake. 
It’s been happening more and more often. You lurking around camp past moonrise and finding Luke outside his cabin, going for a walk or a stretch or a … something with you. 
“Do you ever sleep?” You ask him sometimes between flurries of kisses with your back against a tree. 
“Could ask you the same thing, heathen,” he squeezes your hips and nips at your neck, but never answers the question. And neither do you, so you’re both okay with it. You’d hate to give up this feeling, but he doesn’t need to know that.
This is the first time in your punitive life you have felt alive. Like a person, with bones and flesh and soul, a real presence. Not a ghost of smoke and shadow. You are real. 
Fooling around makes you feel like an actual teenager. You’re young, you remember when Luke joins you in the dark. You’re having fun. His hands under your shirt and his mouth on your collarbone, the way he bites down and winces when you do something a little too well, when you string out his name and he rewards you for it. You’re both greedy, insatiable people, so there’s a push and pull only the two of you would ever be able to handle. And nobody has to know. Despite all the bruises, the sleepless nights, the swollen lips, all you and Luke share in the daylight are noxious looks, and that's only if he can find you. A perfect crime. Camp Half-Blood’s angel and the vice that lives in the shadows. But in the dark, it’s hard to tell which is which. 
“Luke,” you whisper. “Luke.”
“I’m up,” he grumbles, peering up at you. “You shouldn’t sneak into my cabin.” He was already sitting up in his bed when you slipped in, and he didn’t notice you were there till you were right in front of him.
“Worried someone will catch me? You should know better.” 
He follows you outside so you don’t wake the other campers. There’s a thrill knowing just one interaction between the two of you could ruin both your reputations forever. 
“What is it, heathen?” He asks as the door closes behind him. It’s so dark and your back is turned to him, but his voice is drenched in smugness. “You don’t usually want to put up with me more than once a night.”
“Don’t have a choice,” you mutter, staring out at the camp. You go to chew on your bottom lip, but you wince immediately. “Where’s your kit thingy? The one we used after I impaled you.” 
“You mean after you lightly grazed me?” 
“Just tell me where it is, Luke.”
Your sharpness could cut through any sleepy daze he possibly has. He’s silent behind you for a second. “Why?” He asks.
“Because I need it.”
His hand curls around your shoulder and before you can think to submerge yourself in darkness, he turns you around. When he sees you, his face breaks from something proud to something … you’re not sure you like. “Oh, heathen,” he murmurs. “What happened to you?”
You guess it’s a semi-appropriate reaction, although you expected at least a grimace. To put it lightly, your face looks gnarly as fuck. There’s a bruise on your cheekbone and your lip is split. But what really draws attention is the half-formed, garish black eye swelling up your right side. 
“Just the usual. Pissed someone off.” It hurts the skin on your lip that’s caked with blood. 
He rests his thumb on your unbruised cheek, but somehow it still stings. You know he can’t see much of you in the dark but he tries. The prolonged eye contact without the imminent promise of a kiss feels foreign. “You need to go to the Apollo cabin,” he concludes, brows pushed together. 
A laugh slips past your broken lips. “No fucking shot. They would not help me.”
“Why not?”
“Because one of their shit-eaters did this!”
The words take a moment to register. You see them filtering through Luke’s brain. He blinks absurdly. “An Apollo guy beat you up?”
“Not beat up. Just … tussled.”
“How much tussling earns you a black eye, exactly? From Apollo kids.”
“Gods, just tell me where your kit is so you can go back to fucking sleep.”
His fingertips inch around the back of your neck, thumb still against your face. “Already wasn’t sleeping. I might as well help you,” he shrugs. “I move the kit every once in a while so some other campers don’t ravage it.”
“I don’t need help.”
Luke opens his mouth, then sighs deeply. He takes a firm hold of your arm and starts to tug you along. “Hey, what—” you swat at his arm. 
“You’re ridiculous,” he huffs. “Come on.”
It’s strange. Luke’s never done you a favour before. At least not one like this. You’re disgruntled enough that you had to go ask him in the first place and now he’s dragging you around? “This isn’t such a big deal, Luke,” you badger. “I’m fine.”
“Sure, whatever. Wait right here.” He lets go of you and only then you realize you’re in front of the Apollo cabin. You grimace, and Luke must have noticed because he says, “Don’t worry, I’m just gonna go inside and grab some things. No one’s gonna jump you.”
You scowl at him, and he just laughs. A part of you hopes he hits his head on the way in. You hide anyway. 
It’s a few minutes of waiting in the oppressive summer heat, until Luke emerges from the cabin with his hands full. He looks around, hesitantly calling, “Heathen?” Then again. You move out of your hiding spot and he jogs over to greet you. 
“Nice haul,” you comment. There’s an ice pack, cotton pads, a few miscellaneous items. “How’d you get them?”
He smiles widely. “Everyone loves me, heathen. It’s not hard.”
“…So you stole them.”
“Yes, but only because I’m too tired to talk to people and I’m protesting for your sake,” he rattles off. “Now hold this ice pack before it gives me frostbite.”
The two of you make your way down to the docks again. It’s morphed into your usual meeting place, since the waves lapping at the shore mask when Luke gets a little too noisy just to piss you off. (At least that’s what he tells you.)
He’s stashed his little tin in a different tree this time. After he retrieves it he sets everything out like a chef preparing to make a meal out of gauze and rubbing alcohol. 
Your head has been throbbing for the past few hours. You’re not proud that you antagonized the wrong Apollo kid and got a shiner for it. You’re less proud that you came to Luke for help. Just like everyone else does.
“Come,” he gestures, tugging at the waistband of your pants. You scoot closer to him and swallow the weight of your pulse when he touches you. 
Luke slowly presses the ice pack to your black eye, letting you hold it. “What did you do to earn this, anyway?” He asks, head tilted to the side. 
You’re hissing because of the ice, half-consciously shifting into him. “The usual. Spat at him. Made fun of his daddy a little too much. Tripped him so he landed face-first in his offerings.”
“You did not,” Luke laments as he dots alcohol onto a cotton pad. 
“You’re allowed to say you’re proud of me, Saint Castellan. I won’t tell. You can be mean.” Your voice drips with irony, and you hope it bothers him. The flex in his jaw gives it away. 
“You’re always gonna be meaner,” is all he says back. “This is gonna hurt.”
It’s all the warning he gives before he presses the pad against your lip. The sting envelops you immediately, and your good eye squeezes shut. “Shit, ow!” 
“Stop moving your mouth.”
“Fuck,” you swear anyway. Your lip burns so hard you can feel it in your teeth. 
Luke holds your jaw with his other hand so you can’t shy away. “I’ll kiss it better,” he teases. “Almost done.”
You roll your eyes, but Luke takes the pad off a few moments later. “Serious question. How are you so awful to people all the time?”
A groan tears through your throat with such force your head tilts back. “Not you too! I don’t need a fucking reason, there is no reason. Why doesn’t anyone get that?” 
“I’m not asking why. I’m asking how.”
He’s oddly serious, the caress of his thumb on your cheek far slower. You hate it when people want a reason why you’re like this, just to help them sleep at night. But from the bags lining Luke’s eyes, sleep doesn’t seem to be on his radar. 
“I just don’t care,” you admit, shrugging. “I don’t care about any of them. I don’t care about what they can do to me. I don’t care about anything.”
“…What about the Gods?”
It makes you cock your head. “Huh?”
“You wouldn’t care about them, either?”
You think, but only about which words to use. “No,” you decide, “They don’t scare me. They’re nothing. What are they gonna do to me?”
Luke snorts, almost nervously. “Uh, punish you for saying that, for one.”
You turn back to him, ice pack leaving your eye as you gesture. “How? By killing me? Pecking out my eyeballs? Burning me alive? I’m telling you, I don’t care. I don’t care about anything. It’s all just nothing to me. I’m fucking unpunishable, I’d like to see them try.” 
Huffing, you look back up at the firmament of stars. Luke says nothing. 
The grass rustles as he shifts, and his mouth ghosts over the bruise on your eye. “Unpunishable,” he murmurs, like he’s testing it out. Then he places an uncharacteristically gentle kiss just beneath your eye. And another just above. “We’ll see about that.”
You get that feeling again, the unbearable lightness in a place it shouldn’t be. Mixed with the poison lodged in your heart. 
Luke kisses you, still so delicate that you wonder if he’s been body-snatched. If anything, your bleeding lip feels soothed against his. His hands cradle your face with no ferocity at all. It seems wrong. 
“How do you feel?” He asks after pulling away, dark eyes nebulous and wide. The night usually sharpens his features. Now, they’ve been hushed.
“Um, better,” you reply. 
He hums, laying a slow trail of kisses on your jaw. “Did you at least get the other guy?” He asks between kisses. “Like, did you hurt him?”
“Not really,” you divulge, wondering if you should feel shame. 
“Why?” He’s made his way to your neck now, nudging your jaw up so he can kiss behind your ear. 
“I’m not a fighter.” And, without warning, for a reason you will never, ever be able to explain, your tongue adds, “I’m a killer.”
Your own brows furrow. Luke pauses for a moment, but knocks his nose against your neck. “Guess one of us has to be.”
There’s no more fooling around. No snappy insults, no feverish kisses, no hunger to be satiated. Luke just checks you over a few more times, hides his med kit, and you both get up to sleep. But his hand wraps around your wrist, far less firm than when he dragged you here. “Stay in my bunk, heathen,” he offers. “Leave in the morning.”
You think you’re making a mistake when you agree, but it doesn’t feel like one. 
The next day, after you’ve left Luke’s bunk, rumours float around camp that Luke Castellan accidentally butted some Apollo kid in the face with his sword during training. Caused a bloody, broken nose. Luke was very sorry, apologized profusely. 
But you know, by the way he takes you behind the stables that night, that he didn’t mean a single damn word.
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