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#anyway this has been sitting in my brain for far too long
letsplaypixeldolls · 2 years
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The Goths, but the Addams Family influence is even more obvious.
Featuring: (Back) Bonehilda the maid, Mortimer Goth, Bella Goth, Great Aunt Crumplebottom (Front) Cassandra Goth, Uncle Bachelor, Alexander Goth, Felony the cat
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sanatomis · 2 months
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currently thinking about. . .
satoru falling asleep in your arms.
notes. sorry for being so inactive guys, uni is not being my friend rn. . .anyways, enjoy this little brain-rot ! <3
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It wasn’t a surprise to you when Satoru told you he has trouble sleeping. The confession came four months after your relationship became official—which finally happened after many, many years of dancing around one another. In those four months, despite being attached at the hip, you have never, ever seen him fall asleep before you. 
A small, secret part of you hoped for that to change; That your darling would find peace in your presence, and sleep without any sign of trouble. In an ideal world, his nights that were previously filled with insomnia would make way for loving cuddles and some very needed shut-eye. Though, that thought may have been the hopeless romantic in you. 
Of course, none of that actually happened. Satoru still runs on approximately four to five hours of sleep a day, and with the occupation he holds, you think that’s far too little. So, despite your fleeting wish, your relationship didn’t change that part of him—you didn’t change that part of him. Though, even if you’re unable to do much about his (concerning) lack of sleep, you make his waking moments much more bearable. 
His nights are still long, and the time that he sleeps is still short, except now—he enjoys the time that he spends awake. In the middle of the night, while the rest of Japan is asleep, Satoru is awake. Doing what, you wonder? Holding you. It’s all he does until his (still very human) body knocks him out and forces him to rest—he holds you. 
Every night is different, even if his routine is the same. Sometimes he’s seated against the headboard with you in-between his legs, your cute little face squished against him. Other times he’s spooning you from behind, and snuggling into the crook of your neck as he finds comfort in your scent. Though, he plays favourites, and enjoys it most when you’re cuddled into his chest—he gets to shield you from the world, and gets to keep you safely tucked away into his arms. 
Satoru often says he could spend hours simply sitting with you in his arms. You never quite understood why, however. Until now. 
You’re laying on the couch, and it’s not even remotely close to midnight, but your sweetheart is asleep. The faint noise of the TV hits your ears, but it quickly gets overshadowed by the small snores your boyfriend lets out. You quickly bite your bottom lip—cooing over him would surely wake him up. 
Of course, he does this. Of course, he snores. 
You smile at the thought, and shake your head knowingly. Satoru lays on his stomach, in-between your legs, and with his head on your chest. Both his arms are wrapped securely around you, and you fight another smile when he cuddles further into you. His hair tickles your chin when he does so, but you’d rather die than ever have him move away. He’s so ridiculously cute. With his mouth slightly parted, with low breaths steadily leaving his lips, and with all signs of stress faded from his pretty face. 
You bring a hand up towards him. It’s a careful movement, as you’re a little scared of waking him up and depriving yourself of such a sweet sight. Your fingers gently caress his face; from his jawline, to his cheekbone, to his nose. Subconsciously, a little smile appears on his lips, and you feel as if you’re the luckiest person alive for being allowed to witness it. 
Satoru moves shortly after. Not because he’s awake, but because he senses it when you move your hand away from him, and even while asleep—he chases after it. He leans into your touch, and lets out a soft, happy sigh when he does. It seems he found himself at peace once again. 
“So cute, mochi,” you sigh lovingly, and gently start carding your fingers through his hair. You bring your lips to the top of his head, and press a sweet, lingering kiss to it. “You’re so cute. I get it now.”
Satoru is asleep, finally. He’s resting, and at ease, and, well, a little bit loud still as the snores continue on—but he’s so very adorable. 
It makes the next three hours of sitting completely still all worth it. You didn’t need the feeling in your legs, anyway.
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© MADE BY SANATOMIS — please, refrain from stealing, copying, or reposting any of my works.
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diejager · 2 months
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Imagine that the hybrid 141 was getting a teammate and that teammate was a hybrid and Laswell wanted it to be a surprise for the team what they are as in hybrid was and soon as they get off the aircraft and onto the tarmac, the boys realize that they’re with another dragon hybrid and her “heat” would be soon upon her (dark blue in to black better for stealth or, whatever you prefer, she also has her wings) how would the boys handle that you can take the story anyway you want 
This… I might make it self-indulging because this idea has been clawing at the back of my mind for a long while. Cw: mating/heat cycle, fire/water magic, tell me if I missed any.
Laswell had Price wait for the surprise she had planned, the secret she kept from them when they received your file. It had all he asked for in attributes and skills, but all things personal that should have been on it were scratched out in black. He was told that it was a need to know basis, your name, age or species wouldn’t be divulged unless you told them yourself. He knew you from words from mouth to ear, ad read of your skill and efficiently but nothing he heard and found told him an ounce about you as a person. Your character was a mystery he died to know.
So when he got word from Laswell that your ETA was just over half an hour, he had the boys reconvene to the airstrip, watching the aircraft carrying you land not too far from them, the rotors slowing to a steady thrum. The anticipation that bubble din his chest made this moment crawl at a snail’s pace, the ramp lowering too slowly for his liking and the droning sound of the aircraft’s irking his ears. Then, seconds after the ramp fully dropped, he caught sight of blue horns, tines growing from a singular robust beam, segmented like those of a scale. Your head, covered by a custom made helmet to let your antlers peek out and sit comfortably on your head (at least you wore something, unlike his constant frustration with finding one that wouldn’t bother his horns), followed after you walked out, decked in your gear and a bag slung over your shoulders. 
You weren’t what he was expecting, not exactly. He read that you had a masterful experience in hydromancy, stealing water from the air and humidity and contorting it to cause havoc in the field and cutting through the enemy. He and the others shared their theories, one possibility made you into a water witch, a leviathan, or one of those creepy monsters from the deep sea. Not what… whatever you were. You had elk-like horns painted in the deepest blue he’d ever seen and a tail covered in scales of the same shade, glistening under the light like it was wet with tufts of hair - or was it fur? - crawling down the base of your fourth limb to create a silky and soft end with long, slowing locks. 
What were you? What was that smell? It got sweeter the closer you got, a softness that clung to his nose and made him salivate. He wondered how strong it must be for the Soap and König who’s noses were more enhanced and sensitive than any others, they’d probably sniff the source - you - out and answer his undying question.
“Captain Price,” you nodded your head, a small smile gracing your lips, your slitted eyes narrowed in greeting, “Hope I didn’t make you wait too long.”
That sweetness lingered around you and stuck to his hand when you shook hands, giving him a firm shake and stronger grip that he could admire for the strength you showed. Had you face been as bright as it was a few seconds before? Perhaps it was the musk that oozed off you, it was uneasily addicting and pleasing to his lizard brain, slowly moving the cogs of hos old machine. He watched you take a step back, making some distance between his Task Force and you, and his mind got clearer, nose less stuffy and cheeks wash away the slight flush. Then it hit him, the sweetness, the dazed perception of you and the growing need in his body, he was reacting to you. 
“Sorry, I was told I’d be off for the week once I landed,” you cocked your head, sharing an apologetic smile, “My cycle follows the Lunar year.”
Ah, everything made more sense now, the gracefulness of your beautiful tail, the glistening of your scales and the sharpness of your horns. He had agreed to welcome another dragon to his Task Force, he was fortunate that Asian dragons were calmer and benevolent than his European counterpart. 
Taglist: @craxy-person @crowbird @dead-cipher @iwannabealocalcryptid @iizx7y @mxtokko @capricorn-anon @perfectus-in-morte @sae1kie @yeoldedumbslut @bvxygriimes @distracteddragoness @konigsblog @angelcakes-22 @cassiecasluciluce @ramadiiiisme @ramblingsofachaoticthinker @im-making-an-effort @love-dove-noora @jinxxangel13 @daisychainsinknots @0alk0msan @mul-pi @danielle143 @beau-min @makayla-666 @urfavsunkissedleo @notspiders @brokenpieces-72 @luvecarson @petwifed @randominstake @heartelysia @jggykhug09090 @cassiecasluciluce @hayleybarnesx @shironasumi @sparky--bunny @bloobewy @call-me-nyxx @sans-chara @infpt-zylith @sweetnanah @aldis-nuts @thigh-o-saur @evolutionarry @kaoyamamegami
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doki-doki-imagines · 1 month
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wc: 10k (next time I write this much shoot me down from the start) author note: wrote this to celebrate one year since I have been writing for bllk! Since my first post was about Sae I thought to celebrate with a fic about him. If you know me a bit, you know Sae is far from being one of my faves so I feel like a clown writing this much for him sob.
tw: none. 10k words of fluff more or less.
If you like my writing consider supporting me on ko-fi!
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You are sitting on an iron bench, wet from head to toe, with no way to protect yourself from the incessant rain. Your makeup is ruined and tears can’t be discerned from the droplets of rain running down your face.
You look desperate and there is no need to look at your face to understand that, you supporting your head with your hands is enough, crouched on yourself, sighs sound dulled by the downpour.
“You look pathetic.”  It’s a familiar voice, one that makes your skin crawl and now increases your heartbeat to dangerous levels. You look up and you see him, in all his cold beauty. He is wearing a brown boiled wool coat, underneath a turtleneck black sweater peaking out. He is looking down at you, like a high-class rich when he sees a snotty kid, the grey umbrella covers a bit his face, but those ice irises pierce your figure anyway.
“Sae-“ You whisper out your voice full of disbelief and shame.
But how did you find yourself in such a miserable situation? We have to go back a bit.
One year ago
You have never been a fan of parties, they can be a good way to unplug your brain for a bit before going back to normal life. But after a while you need a break, the music and sweaty bodies overwhelm your senses. Your friend Elisa stays back, a guy caught her attention but she asks where you’ll go, in case she won’t see you for long.
You go outside, the cold breeze of winter hits your naked skin making you shiver, but at least you can now breathe. There is nobody else outside other than you and a red hair sitting on the small brick wall on the opposite side of the entrance. You decide to sit there too, at a safe distance not wanting to bother him but close enough to start a chat in case you stay there a little longer than needed.
You look around a bit, breathing in and out while you notice the leaves moving and bushes filled with trash. It’s not a great sight and for sure straining your sight for that doesn’t seem a good idea, so your eyes fall on the stranger sitting next to you. He is now checking his phone, red strands framing his face. You notice his long lashes, it’s always guys that have the crazy luck to have doe lashes, the lower ones touching the apple of his cheeks. He looks young, but he has a mature aura around him, an idea that comes from both his posture and his clothes. The sky-blue shirt he is wearing must be crazy expensive-
“Can you stop looking at me?” You widen your eyes, now comically big.
“You mean-“ You point a finger towards yourself, but you can’t finish the phrase that the guy snaps back.
“Yes, you. Stop looking at me.” He finally faces you, his teal eyes staring at you as you’d do with a cockroach; the same amount of disgust.
He stands up now in front of you “You must be the friend of my physiotherapist, right?”
You nod. After all, it is thanks to her if tonight you are here, at a party full of famous football players and hot beyond imagination models…you must stick out like a sore thumb.
“I guess you recognized who I am. Please, stop. I don’t want to know you, I don’t have time for a relationship.”
Your mouth is wide open.
“I don’t know who you are-“
“Yeah, sure. I have to go now. Don’t follow me.” He doesn’t even wave back, he just gives you his back and walks away.
You have never felt so angry in your life, and you had to deal with a lot of assholes to reach this point in your life.
You stomp inside, searching for Elisa to ask what the fuck is wrong with people and you find there, the guy from before still next to her but there are also other guys and girls and him. The first reaction is to walk away, possibly closing yourself inside the bathroom until they finished chatting or, at least, that guy walked away, but luck isn’t on your side your friend already waving at you signaling to go sit with her.
There is just your friend's body between you and that guy, but this time it’s your eyes that throw daggers at him every time he just even breathes your way; he doesn’t seem to care and it angers you even more.
“Oh let me present you to Sae! He is the football guy I work for!” She said looking at you with a smile that goes from one ear to the other, alcohol playing crazy tricks in her mind not to notice your cracked mood. You extend your hand, trying to be a decent person and you see him sighing. Why punching idiots is not acceptable in modern society? Maybe because you probably wouldn’t be able to stop, after hitting that ugly mug the first time.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you Sae.” Your smile is fake, but you think you do a good job of hiding your feelings. The handshake is short, but while you tighten the grip to show you aren’t a weakling, the red hair slips his hand away the second your palms touch.
“Call me Itoshi.”
“Mh? Is that your name?”
“No, it’s my surname. I don’t like strangers to call me by my name.” He replies, back now hitting the red sofa of the club, looking somewhere on the dancefloor, probably at the butt of some dancer.
You look straight into the eyes of your friend and something finally clicks in her mind because you see cold sweat forming on her forehead after the interaction you had with Sae. No, wait. Itoshi.
“Well, guys-“ She claps her hand “it’s time for us to go, thanks for having us.” She stands up and you follow while she finishes to say goodbye to her colleagues. “See you tomorrow, Sae. Don’t exaggerate with drinks!” It’s clearly a joke, her tongue pokes out and Sae smiles back at her.
He would be cute. If only he isn’t such a shit. Your heart almost jumped with joy when the corner of his lips turned upwards, but your brain, thankfully reminded your body how he treated you a few minutes ago.
The walk towards your friend’s car is silent, the people inside the club making enough noise. Your silence gets broken when you enter the vehicle, before your friend can turn the engine on she stares at you.
“I leave you alone a few minutes and you get in a catfight with my client, really?” There is no real anger in her voice, knowing her position isn’t in danger. So you explode at her, telling her chapter and verse of what happened between you two.
“Is he always such an asshole? I feel sorry for you, I hope he pays you enough.” Your friend’s head hits the headrest, and a loud bubbly laugh escapes her mouth.
“Is he worse? Fuck maybe you should change job-“
“No, no. It’s that I invited you tonight because I hoped you could get together in the future.” Her voice is often broken by laughter and finally, anger free, you remember that she probably has drunk too much.
“Let’s switch, you are drunk.”
“No, c’mon. Sae is usually nice! He is a bit cold, but I thought a partner, or just a friend-” and it’s not hard for you to imagine he has nobody to talk with, every time he opens his mouth it’s the same as having two fingers in your eyes “You are also single, so I thought it could work out!” She slaps your shoulder and keeps giggling and now you are sure that you need to be the one to drive you both home.
“Don’t ever leave your job, you suck at playing Cupid-“ You giggle too, finally switching places and driving you both home.
The drive is filled with useless chatter, your friend seemed really into that dude of before, Leonardo is his name? Tomorrow with a more lucid mind you’ll dig more into your friend's new crush.
And you hope you’ll soon forget about that asshole of teammate too.
8 months ago
 When you return home after an intense day of work, the bare minimum you request is complete relaxation. No parties, no worries, no discussions; it’s the perfect way to welcome the weekend.
What you don’t want is to get jumpscared before you can even step in, a certain teal-eyed dude the first thing your eyes see.
“Fuck!” You are tempted to close the door, maybe it’s all your imagination and when you reopen he, the Itoshi, won’t be there anymore. But you don’t live in a fantasy world, sadly, so you know you’ll have the accept your fate.
“What happened?” It’s your friend’s voice screaming from the kitchen.
“Nothing, I’ve just seen a cockroach.” You reply with a monotone voice, closing the door with your foot.
You look better at the intruder, sitting on your couch. One hand has the remote, zapping between the channels, the other lying on the top of the furniture, fist keeping up his head.
He turns to look at you “Did you see yourself in the mirror?” And the sudden urge to hit him with the house key pervades your body. You groan at his comment, but decide to drop the topic; you have no energy to get angry.
“Oh, sorry I didn’t tell you before but Sae is staying with us this week. His apartment is flooded and all his teammates couldn’t help him out.” She comes into the living room with a bowl of…freshly cut vegetables? You suppose it was your guest's request, as much as Elisa likes carrots there is no way this was a choice born from her brain.
Now you know why she didn’t tell you anything about it. You would have taken a hotel room and made Elisa pay for it if you knew what was going on. He, at least, thanks her and it surprises you because you thought he didn’t know what manner are. Or common courtesy.
“I’m going to change into something more comfortable.” You sigh, your mind already adjusted to the idea of having that dude in your house. ‘It won’t be forever. Calm down. Don’t shout, don’t get angry.’ You repeat to yourself while wearing the comfiest pj in your wardrobe; you need it.
When you go back into the living room the film was already chosen, but you don’t mind, so tired that you know you’ll fall asleep the moment your head hits the pillow. The chat gets louder and definitely pick your interest.
“We both go to medical field universities! I finished my studies at home and as you know I work here, but-“ Elisa points her index finger at your figure, a fluffy cover hiding your body all crouched up on a side of the couch not to touch, or just get near, the guest “She is still studying to become a doctor! She will stay here one year and then she will need to go back home to finish her studies, right?”  You nod at your friend's words, now looking at the film.
“The film isn’t bad.” You whisper, humming in agreement.
“It was my choice.” A deeper voice replies back, it’s Sae.
You look at him until you meet his teal eyes. You see an equal amount of tiredness in his eyes and you seem to silently agree not to sassy reply back.
You are able to look at the film without falling asleep, at times you can feel Elisa asking stuff to Sae but you are too distant to understand what they say.  There is a pang of jealousy that stabs your heart, usually, you chat with Elisa while watching films and you don’t like the idea of being substituted by him.
You try to brush away the feeling. Maybe she is the one who has a crush on him, and even if you think she has questionable taste you won’t put yourself against their love. You yawn the second the end credits start to roll. You decide to go to bed, since you have no strength to add yourself to their pillow-talk, in the shared room you have to Elisa.
“I’ll come soon too.” She whispers while you nod, walking away; probably she wants a moment with her crush. You don’t even hear her opening the door, your brain voyaging dreamland the second your head hit the pillow.
You are the first to wake up in the morning, you step toward the kitchen trying not to wake up your roommate, and start to prepare coffee for the both of you. You are so used to making it that it becomes an automatism. It’s when the moka is on the fire that you start to look around, noticing a package that definitely wasn’t yours or of Elisa.
“That’s mine.” You hear croaking behind you, the sound makes you jump on your place.
“Yeah, it seemed pretty obvious. What is it? Some kind of tea?”
“Yes, it is salted kombucha tea. Want to try it?”
You snort and Sae looks at you questioningly, probably thinking his pronunciation is wrong.
“I hate tea. I’m team coffee.” You say pointing with your thumb to the moka, now gurgling a sign that your coffee is ready. Sae looks at you with disgust, a face you know pretty well by now.
“We are really different.”
“I was thinking that too.” You say now giving him the back to take the cups on the high shelf, a spoonful of sugar in your cup, nothing in Elisa's one.
Meanwhile, he has moved, opening the window of your kitchen. Summer is starting but the weather is still acceptable, morning breeze is a nice way to freshen the house.
“You want to make your own tea or I can do it for you? Do you trust me?” You say smirking, already knowing the answer.”
“I prefer to make it myself.”
You nod, a Chesire smirk plastered on your face. You point out where he can find the kettle, now sitting on the table, right next to the window, your head supported by your right hand.
He soon sits in front of you with his cup of tea, he looks outside for a moment, giving you the possibility to admire his features again.
He has a nice jaw, his skin is pretty smooth, probably he doesn’t have much beard, his upper lip is arched perfectly, his lips plump but not too big or better, they suit his face. His nose is slightly pointed upwards-
“You like to stare.”
Your head slid comically; you got caught, again.
“It happens when I look at beautiful stuff.” Really, the comment slips from your mouth before you can bite your tongue. But you feel him choking on his tea and it soothes the pain.
“You are also bold.” He looks at you with furrowed eyebrows, with such hatred in his eyes you almost worry to have done something way worse than throwing a compliment in his way.
“I just like to joke around.” You smile in your cup, a smile that grows wider when his eyebrows comically drop.
You hear him clicking his tongue, but you don’t say anything more.
You both finish your beverages, but Elisa is still sound asleep.
“Shouldn’t you wake her up?”
“Today is her free day, let her relax a bit.” You reply, putting his cup into the dishwasher.
You see uneasiness in his eyes, there is something he needs to tell you, so you make the first move as a good host.
“Is there something you need?”
“Usually I do yoga and meditate. Can you go out.” He formulated it as a request, but it sounded like an order in your ears.
“Can’t you do it in the living room? Or your bedroom?” You propose.
“My bedroom is too small. There are no windows in the living room and I’d prefer to breathe fresh air.”  You nod, his reasoning makes sense and there isn’t else you need to do in the kitchen.
“Can you teach me?” You propose half to piss him off, half because you suffer from terrible neck pain and you know yoga could help you out.
You notice how bad he takes it and you bask in the sensation of being finally able to take a rise of him.
“Don’t you have to go to university? Or I don’t know, student stuff?” He says it fast and makes you chuckle.
“It’s too early! I have all the time of the world now.” You get near him, trying to muster up the nicest puppy eyes ever done “I swear I’ll be a good student and won’t joke around.”
“No.”  Your nice façade drop.
“You are a real pain.”
“Look at yourself before saying that.” He looks at you with the same eyes as your encounter. The best choice is to leave him alone, and you do, but not without grumbling.
When you enter your bedroom Elisa is wide awake, already dressed for the day reading a book, a fantasy you guess knowing her taste.
“Mh? Elisa why are you here? You didn’t want to have breakfast with Mr. Sourpuss?” She clearly didn’t notice you entering the bedroom. She closes the book and smiles at your comment.
“I didn’t want to bother your bonding time.” She sing-sangs, book placed on the night table.
“Is this a way to force me to like your new boyfriend?”  Your eyes pierce her figure, muscles tense, trying to grasp any twitch or wince on her face. But nothing comes, if anything she replies to you with a pure laugh, not a fake one.
“I don’t see Sae that way, you dunce-“ Elisa stands up, hands now on your shoulders shaking you “I really think you can get along, please give him a chance.” She says exasperated.
“Tell him that, he is always an ass with me, and please-“ You say removing her hands from your shoulders “Stop playing Cupid, it���s really not your job.” You go towards your wardrobe ready to change for the day while Elisa keeps whining but no words get registered in your brain.
You don’t see anybody for lunch, so you spend a quiet afternoon at home, reviewing your notes and refreshing the lesson of the previous day.
Elisa is the first to come home, there is still light outside thanks to the longer summer days and she helps you out cooking dinner.
“We have to cook something healthy, you know-“ She winks “For our guest.”
Damn, for a second you forgot about him. “Shouldn’t he cook? So we are sure to prepare the right stuff.”
“I don’t know how to.” You hear from the living room, it’s his voice. You walk to the living room and you see him, freshly showered you guess from the soft soap smell coming from him and with two bags containing what you guess is food.
“I asked my private chef to cook for all of us.” He says placing the bag on the coffee table in the living room.
“Thanks, Sae!” Elisa says “Let me take these to the kitchen, I’ll prepare the table.”
“Do you need help?” Elisa brushes off your question “I know how to put a tablecloth and cutlery.”
To you, it sounded like an excuse to make you stay alone with the redhair.
“Thanks, Itoshi.” You hate how his surname rolled on your tongue, but you had to accept it.
He nods, removing his jacket and hanging it on the coat rack. You don’t miss to notice how at home he already feels; for sure he has good adaptation skills.
“So, how was your day?” You try to small chat, to break the unbearable silence it was already forming.
“Like always.” His answer is curt, but you can’t understand if it is because he doesn’t want to talk or just because it is him.
“And yours?” This surprises you.
“It was a good day. I was able to take a lot of good notes and the lesson was interesting.”
He nods at your words “I suppose it is hard.”
“Yes, but it is also really rewarding. For example-“ You start to blabber, and you notice it but you can’t stop, excitement guiding you even if you know your interlocutor has little to no interest in what you are saying. Embarrassing.
“Hey! It’s ready.” It’s Elisa that save you, stopping your blabbering. “What were you talking about?” She asks, curiosity evident.
You’d like to reply but you are too astonished by the food in front of you. Everything looked mouth-watering, you didn’t even know food could get such vivid colors, not to talk about the smell-
“She was telling me about her cardiac surgery lessons.” Sae replies for you, thankfully your eyes are already comically wide thanks to the food in front of you so nobody notices your surprise at his words.
So he was listening?
“Oh! I’m happy you are finally knowing each other, but now let’s eat! We don’t want the food to get cold.” You both nod at Elisa words and damn the food was as beautiful as it was delicious. There is not much chat, enjoying the meal in silence, just the background sound of the television to keep you company.
“Hey, you should accompany Sae to the aquarium one of these days.” Elisa says with a voice full of cheer. It doesn’t take much for you to understand where she took that idea, the advertisement of the aquarium still going on television.
“Well, it all depends on Sae, he has really strict hours-“
“Let’s go tomorrow. I have no training to do.” He says, no real force behind his words like he is just accepting his fate.
You gasp a bit “Oh, okay then. Is it fine in the afternoon?”
He nods, slurping down some of his cold noodles, you can only wish your technique will ever be as good as his, not a single drop of oil staining his shirt or mouth.
The dinner ends quietly, you place the crockery in the dishwasher and go directly into your bedroom.
The morning comes awfully quick and you feel even more tired than when you went to sleep. You proceed with your morning routine, not Elisa nor Sae insight so you take it easy. After you prepare yourself you go back to your books, your attention often grasped by anything going on.
Your attention gets caught one more time by a notification on your phone; it’s Eliza.
“Got a cute lunch date with a cutie. Try not to kill Sae and have a nice date &lt;3” Ugh. She can be so pushy at times. You sigh and notice the hour, it’s time to eat.
When you enter the living room you notice Sae already made himself comfortable on the sofa.
“I didn’t hear you coming in.”
“I tried to be silent. I was doing yoga so I didn’t make much sound.” He replies, boredom dripping from his voice as usual. You nod “Are we blessed again by your chef's food today or I’m on my own?”
“The latter.”
“Oh! Can I make you piadina? It’s an easy dish to make.”
He turns around, teal eyes finally looking at you “What are the ingredients?”
“It’s easy! It’s more or less a circle of bread that gets folded this way and you can choose how to fill it.” You walk near him and show him the screen of your phone, the picture on it the perfect example of a perfect piadina.
“So…I can choose something different than fried potato, right?”
“Yes, you fill it with whatever you want. Simply sausage and fried potatoes with pepperoni is a classic match.” He looks at you with disgust, and at this point it makes you laugh.
“Not a fan? I swear the match is heavenly.”
“Aren’t you a doctor? You should know fried potatoes are toxic to the body.” This time you chuckle out loud.
“Fried potatoes are the last thing you should worry about between the ingredients I told you. And anyway-“ You sign to him to walk with you towards the kitchen “You won’t die eating it once in a while.”
“I don’t know anything about this stuff. I just go with what my manager and dietologist tell me.” He replies, pointing to the fridge with the ingredients he wants.
“No? For real?” You start to cook his one, the guest always comes first.
“Yeah, other than football I don’t know much else.” You notice a hint of sadness in his voice, irises darkening a bit and it tickles something in the back of your brain.
“Well, next time why don’t you help me cook? You may have a personal chef but it is nice to have different skills.”
He nods, he doesn’t burst with joy, but he seems serious. You give him his dish, arugula, and tomatoes. You do the same, half because you like the match and the other half because you don’t want to prepare other ingredients.
You eat in silence, something you already expected.
“Are you ready to go to the aquarium?” You ask, putting the dish in the dishwasher.
He nods giving you his one. Previously Sae asked you if you wanted to go by car “If you don’t trust me I can always call my driver” but you refused his offer, telling him that you’d bring him there gladly and with the perfect vehicle for such a sunny day.
“Good, get ready because my vehicle is amazing.” He bends his head a little, confused by your words, but doesn’t inquire more. He supposes it will be a surprise.
For sure it is a surprise, but not the good kind.
“It’s a bike.” His voice drips venom, but you brush it off.
“Not just a bike, it’s a graziella! Perfect to carry people on the back!” You say, slapping the bike rear-rack.
“It’s too low, it will be uncomfortable for my legs.” He retorts but you don’t desist, smiling back at him.
“In fact, you don’t have to sit, you have to stand up on it on completely trust my skills.” The face he makes is pure comedy, it’s a mixture of scared, anger and, as always, disgust. “C’mon mister Itoshi. I swear you can trust me, not even a bug will hit your precious legs, let alone the ground.” You hear him gulp and see the gears in his brain running, you wait a few seconds but the answer finally arrives.
“Okay, but if something happens to me you’ll pay with interest.” You nod and smile back sitting on the saddle. You soon feel the bike moving under you with the added weight. You start to pedal not wanting to lose balance and make you both fall on the ground and his hands immediately find support on your shoulder, gripping tight on them.
“Let’s go!” You shout, the bike is harder to manage but you push forward. The ride is silent, the summer breeze dancing around you two, only gasps can be heard from the guy standing on the back when you take a hole making both the bike and Sae jump. His hands aren’t as tight on you anymore, probably he is trying to trust you as best as he can, it’s pleasing to think he is starting to trust you, the feeling runs to your head becoming a pink fog that makes you feel dangerously well and uncaring. You are sure you would look like a postcard if someone took a photo right now, you feel so peaceful that it’s hard to imagine you look bad right now.
Dangerous because you almost don’t notice that you arrived at the aquarium, pulling harshly on the brakes almost making your guest jump off the bike if it wasn’t for his hands harpooning your shoulders.
“Sorry-“ You say in between your teeth, wincing at your mistake. You hear him scoff but he decides to not salt in the wound.
“Put the bike there, I’ll pay for the tickets.”
“Are you sure? I can pay for my own-“ He doesn’t even listen to you, walking to the ticket office without looking back at you once.
The visit was actually really fun, for you at least, Sae never expressed any kind of emotions, the corners of his lips a line that never twitched upwards or downwards. You see teals eyes looking around, but it seems nothing catches his attention. At least he stops when you ask, not a groan of disapproval, not a happy smile either.
“I like penguins.”  You say looking at the glass separating you from the cute bird wobbly on its feet. A gasp of surprise escapes your mouth when one of them dives into the salty water to stop exactly in front of you. You pull at the end of Sae’s shirt, the excitement going straight to your head, too busy being ‘a finger apart’ than ruining your guest's clothes. You shout in happiness but the sound is drowned by the squalls of kids around you.
“I can see.” Finally, a hint of a smile appears on his face, but you are now too busy looking back at the penguins to notice it. Meanwhile, Sae is too busy looking at the features of your face, looking for once at you, not looking down on you. The blue and soft lights of the aquarium make you look like a dream, the joy in your eyes matching your smile.
Something moves inside him, it’s pleasant but it fades in a snap of a finger when you face him again, prompting him to walk towards the next glass. You talk about colorful jellyfish or something like that. It’s not that he is interested in anything there. After all, he accepted Elisa’s offer not to sound too rude even for his standard. But he thinks, that moment of happiness on your face was in part worth the deal.
Not that you’ll notice head entirely elsewhere.
“It was nice. Thanks for paying.” You are now outside, bike on hand while you walk near the seashore. The wind is stronger there, and more than once you shrink in your place, while the guy next to you is perfect, as always. A porcelain doll crafted by the most expert hands ‘too bad they didn’t lose another minute to work on his personality, tho’ you think.
“No problem. Can we stay here a minute longer?” Sae asks, but he is already still, as always it was an order, not a question. You nod, the sun is setting, painting the sea warm colors, waves are big but reduced to nothing when they arrive so near your feet. You see him breathing in, eyes closing to enjoy the moment.
“Do you like the sea, Itoshi?”
“Yes. I used to always visit the beach with my brother.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you have a sibling! Is he hot?” You chuckle, blossoming in full laughter after he sides eye you, annoyance mixing with the green of his eyes.
“He isn’t your type.” He clicks his tongue “You like handsome guys and he is not.” His voice is flat, as usual.
“Handsome guys? Yeah, I like them, obviously but why do you have this idea of me?”
“Simple-“ a smile, a real one, grace his features “You like me.” You gasp at his world, pushing his shoulder, but his body barely move.
“Mister Itoshi, your ego is way too big!” You puff out your cheeks, but there is no real anger in your words.
“Sae.”
“Mh?” The silence lasts very little but it feels like an eternity.
“Call me Sae.” His teal eyes link with yours. His voice is low, serious and makes your knees wobble a little. He looks happy, the sun painting beautiful shades on his fair skin. It’s honestly a breathtaking sight.
“Okay, Sae. Your ego is still too big!” You break the tension, too heavy all of a sudden. Too intense for two strangers who couldn’t even suffer each other.
Just too much.
The spell is broken and you see him wince, ‘probably he didn’t want to sound so intense’ you think telling him to go back home. The ride is silent, when midway it’s Sae who decides to talk.
“Why are people looking at us weird?”
“Maybe because you are a football superstar?”
“No, the look when people recognize me is different.”  You hum, but you come up with another motivation quick.
“Maybe because you are the one being carried! Usually is the guy that carries around the woman.” You state, no malice in your words. He is silent for a few seconds.
“Let’s switch.”
“You don’t have to worry, I don’t care about this-“
“I said stop pedaling and switch places with me.”
“Stop ordering me around! Plus if you have never done that there is no way you can keep me-“
“If you don’t switch I’ll jump off the bike, I’ll hurt myself and do you remember what you promised me this afternoon?” You feel more of his weight on your shoulders like he wants to remind you of his upper position, just figurately now “I’ll make you you pay, remember?” It’s the same voice he used on you the first time you met and it made you reflexly pull the brakes, this time slower so he could jump off without any risk.
He sits on your place and clicks his head, as a sign for you to stand on the back.
“But if you hurt me? What do I gain?” Your voice is wobbly, not trusting him at all. Your hands grip tightly on his shoulders and you are sure there will be a red sign there tomorrow.
“I’ll kiss it better. Now shut up.” He starts pedaling, not checking you once. For sure you didn’t like his answer but jumping off now sounded like a good way to sprain your ankle.
“Do you know at least the road to go home!?” He takes a hole and makes you jump, you suppose it’s the karma for how you drove before
“…okay. Talk just to tell me where to go.”
You arrived home, safe and sound. You don’t kiss the ground just because you don’t want to act overdramatic, but feeling the ground under your feet with no wounds on your legs seems a real miracle. Elisa welcomes you both with a big smile, her eyes are tired but you notice a drop of happiness in her eyes so you do not worry. The week goes by naturally. You and Sae don’t banter as often, but calling what you have a friendship would be a stretch, Elisa still tries to push you into something more, but her attempts are failures, if not disasters most of the time. Thankfully Sae doesn’t dig further, not that he cares since he is so sure you have a mind-numbingly, heart-shattering crush on him anyway.
The real surprise comes when he goes back home, everyone is back to their normal life ‘till one day receives a message from an unknown number. It’s not a text, but a picture of you two, of when you were going to the aquarium since you were the one pedaling. There are ginormous texts on the sides probably it has been published by one of those gossip magazines you tend to avoid.
“Who are you?” You text back, and an answer will not be long in coming.
“Sae. Elisa gave me your number.”  You smile thinking how happy she probably was when Sae asked for it. She was probably giggling like a schoolgirl.
“Why did you contact me? It’s a problem if we were seen together?”
“No” A dry texter, exactly what you expected.
“Then let me say; we really looked beautiful.” You write it with a heart bursting in happiness. You both looked happy, your faces radiating joy. You may not be an earth-shattering beauty but nobody would have been able to sincerely say you looked bad.
“We did.”
You are happy to know he feels the same.
5 months ago
You are at a beach party. Honestly, you would rather be somewhere else but after closing yourself for two months at home to pass your exams you need a bit of fresh air. Summer is now leaving its place to autumn, the days are still long, but at least the temperature is acceptable. Stars are shining high in the sky and everyone seems to enjoy the party. You wear a cute dress, ‘the one for good occasions’ you repeat to yourself. It’s not tight, the skirt is large enough that you can easily move around, but it hugs your waist before getting larger again on the chest area-
“Hey-“ Elisa elbows you “Sae is sitting on the couch all alone, why don’t you keep him company.” She laughs but this time it isn’t for the alcohol; she is just dumber because she could get with her crush, Leonardo. Actually, he was the one to set the party all teammates and their partners invited. You actually came thanks to Elisa's invite, but you would be lying if you said that it didn’t matter seeing Sae.
Something more keen to a friendship developed between you two during these months, the messages you exchanged a clear sign. What surprised you the most was that he also was the one to start conversations, asking if you were fine, checking if everything was okay. You had no other occasion to meet in person, between matches and studies you both had your hands full, so you don’t mind actually catching up with him.
“Hey sourpuss, it has been a while!” You plop down on the couch next to him. He widens his eyes in surprise, looking like a scared kitten, before returning to the bored expression, not even greeting you.
“Not even a hello? Bad night for our Casanova?” You chuckle as he clicks his tongue knowing full well you are teasing him.
“You know I’m not interested in a romantic relationship.” He is bored out of his mind and you decide to tease him some more…maybe you drunk too much.
“Well, it seems to me you are liking that girl over there. Your eyes are glued to her-“ You can’t finish the phrase, his index finger pressing against your lips.
“I never thought you were one for physical contact.”
“Never know you liked to drink this much either.” He takes the drink from your hand and takes a sip from it. “It actually tastes good.”
“I know it, you big bully! I just wanted to cheer you up and I get treated this way.” You whine. The redhead looks at you for a minute too long, pondering what to do, when his hand decides to find the crown of your head, patting you.
“Shh baby, everything is fine.” It’s a smile full of mirth and it reminds you that he is really handsome, in case your memory fails you. You must look like a pathetic cat in front of him, all pouty and a bit stupid thanks to alcohol.
“I just wanted to spend some time with you.” You whisper out, but for sure he could hear it, getting closer to you. This time you don’t see any mirth in his eyes, back to his usual seriousness so you decide to be direct with your feelings. “I missed you. That week living together made me really change my opinion of you.” This time you don’t whisper and you see Sae getting taken back by your words, batting his long lashes at your words. You can’t hold his gaze so you fix yourself on the fire in front of you, made to perfectly set the beach party atmosphere.
“Then we should meet more often.” You look back at him, but this time it’s Sae looking elsewhere, not at a specific person on the dancefloor, simply looking in front of him. “Taken with moderation it’s nice talking with you.” It’s his usual sarcasm and you feel melting, like he just removed a heavy weight you didn’t even know to carry.
“Okay, let’s promise!” You hold your pinky out and it makes Sae raise his eyebrow.
“I appreciate you wanting to integrate my culture, but we stop doing that after elementary sch-“
“Shhh, don’t break the magic! Just do it!” He sighs before rolling his eyes but at the end, he gives up intertwining your pinkies together.
“From now on we promise to see each other more often, like good friends!” The words roll from your mouth carelessly, even if you are serious about it. You feel Sae tightening your grip on your pinkie at the ‘good friends’ part but you don’t give it much importance.
“Are you next week?”
“Yes, I am now that exams ended! Do you have something in mind?” You ask a bit too excited.
“My manager told me to participate in a cooking video or something along those lines. He said it would be good for my image and they pay a lot, but-“
“You hate not being prepared, right?” You interrupt “Don’t worry, I’ll teach you a mouth-watering recipe!” And you compliment yourself for being really smooth when your hand, linked to his just by your pinkie, perfectly slides to hold it, palm to palm but not bold enough to intertwine fingers. Sae doesn’t jerk away from your touch if anything holding your hand tighter before nodding at your words. He holds your gaze and just then you notice how close his face is to yours, how there is just a whiff separating your lips…
“It’s time for the toasts! Everyone come!!” The shout of one of Sae's teammates awakes you both from the moment separating you two as quickly as you got near to each other. You don’t talk much to each other the rest of the night and you decide not to overthink what just happened, you probably drank too much and he probably was too tired to tell you to step back. For sure beach liked to play tricks on you.
Obviously, not overthinking was easier said than done, even with a pounding headache your mind started to wander and it only got worse when Sae texted his free day, to which you replied with a thumbs up. You aren’t worried about the recipe to make him cook, you have done it countless times and your mother sent you the right ingredients not so long ago. You are worried because maybe you are harboring feelings for him and you’d hate to tell him he was right all along. You can already see his smile, going from one ear to the other; you can accept being rejected, but not being made fun of.
Thankfully Lady Luck is on your side the day you finally meet up, but in a wicked way, making the chain of your bike drop something you had never to deal with. So when you hear the bell ringing your mind goes in tilt not being able to choose if panicking for your bike or for the guy in front of your door.
“Hi Sae.” You whisper out, leaning on your door.
“You are dirty.”
“Is this some new kind of dirty talking-“ He pushes you to the side, entering the house.
“So what happened? You look like a flea that just swam in petroleum.” 
“You are always so delicate Sae.” You slump your shoulders before explaining what happened “I tried to watch a video to fix it myself but it was no use.”
“I can help, where is the bike?” You look up, hope shining in your eyes.
“Oh the garage is the first left door at the end of the corridor, but are you sure-“  Sae already walked away, the squeak of the garage door telling you he got the right door.
When you reach him he is already on his knees, fingers deftly working to put the greasy chain in its place.
 “Done.” He flips the bike as easily as you’d flip a pancake, not even a sneer of fatigue appears. “Anything else?” You are shocked by how fast he fixed it.
“Aren’t you the one that doesn’t know anything other than football?”
“Yeah, but I had a childhood too. My little brother always messed it up. Do you have anything to wash the grease off?” You nod wanting the clean yourself up too.
“Now that we are all cleaned up, let’s cook! Today I want to teach you how to make tortellini, a type of stuffed pasta, have you ever heard of it?” The red hair waves his head left and right, you see curiosity in his eyes and it makes something bubble in you. “I have already done the filling, it’s easy to make later I’ll tell you the ingredients, but now let’s focus on the dough. As you can see I did a little fountain with the flour and we will have to put the yolks and the eggs white inside, like this-“ You show it to him, his teal eyes still fixed on your movements “Now grab a fork and start to mix, not everything together, just a bit and then always more until you can start to knead with your hands.” This is the worst part, the dough is hard and you need a lot of strength to mix it to perfection. “Wanna give me a hand?” You gasp already tired. He nods, but you didn’t expect him to help in this way.
His right hand locks with yours, the other already at the bottom of the dough, and his chest is impossibly close to your back. You feel his chin on top of your shoulder, his breath hitting your neck.
It’s intimate, too intimate for your standards.
“H-Hey thanks but you don’t need to hug the chef to do it, you know?” You chuckle awkwardly, trying to move your head far from his, but his body caging you doesn’t let you move far.
“Mh? Sorry I thought it could work better. Feeling how your fingers work on the dough and everything.” It sounds like a poor excuse even for your ears, but you brush it off his arms not blocking you anymore; probably he just needed affection or something like that.
You move to the side, watching him knead, but your eyes soon travel up, to his face noticing a new detail…
“You have freckles?”
“I get them when I tan, I hate them.” The corner of his plush lips turn downwards, his hands working harsher on the dough.
“Why? They make you more human.”
“What are you saying? That I’m a cyborg?” He stops, green irises gazing straight into yours.
“I’m saying that looking ‘imperfect’ makes you more beautiful Sae.” You say it as a universal truth, your voice doesn’t waver, and your eyes don’t either. This time it’s he who has to break the eye contact, you see him biting his inner cheek.
“So now?” He points at the dough.
“Now we have to roll it out. We should use a rolling pin, but it is too much of a pain so we’ll use another device-”
“No, let me do the old way. I’m not a weakling like you.” His voice drips of malice and the urge to knock his head with the rolling pin is harder than ever.
“Okay then, use it. I’m curious to see how you’ll handle it.” Sae takes it from your hand and tries to use it. The shape wouldn’t even be bad if it wasn’t so poorly distributed, some places thin others awfully thick, plus you can see he isn’t using the right muscles, making him more sore than he should be.
“You are terrible, can’t you see it all has different thickness? Move let me show you how to do it.” You push him away, no real force In your movement but he moves away, giving you the rolling pin with a provocative demeanor. “We say you have to make love with the dough, use your hips like this and you won’t have to use all your arm strength. Now do it.” You give the utensil back, Sae nods eyes filled with concentration.
Too bad he keeps making the same mistake. You click your tongue “Sae, do I have to teach you how to make love?” You snicker when he sides-eye you.
“Okay  mister icicle, let me show you again how to do that.” Your hands lay on his hips but you look at his face to understand if you crossed any boundary, but he doesn’t say anything, to say the truth he doesn’t even look at you, so you take it as consent. “Instead of using just your arm strength, help yourself with a push of the hips like this-“ You move it synched with his hands twice, before letting go of the hold you have on him. “Yeah, that’s exactly how you should do it!” You notice Sae smiling, it lasts very little but it is there and you feel really proud of his work.
Then you teach him how much filling is needed inside and how to close them up.
“I can’t do it, my fingers are too chubby, see?” The half-made tortellino’s dough tears in his hands that are, in fact, a bit too chubby to deftly close it.
“Hey, don’t trash it away! You can’t fix it but you can always have…an early taste.” You reply, winking at him.
“But won’t it be dangerous? The filling is cooked, but the pasta-“
“I swear you won’t die superstar, I’ve done it countless times and I’m as healthy as you are.” You say smacking his shoulder, but by the look, the redhair isn’t fully convinced. “C’mon try it!” You spur him like a granny urging her nephew to eat her home-cooked meal.
The shine in Sae’s eyes after the bit of food hit his tastebuds is a telltale sign that you really nailed the recipe. Not that you had any doubt to start with.
 You finish closing them up and invite him for dinner telling him that Elisa is out so she won’t mind. Sae refuses your offer, his manager needs to see him so they’ll dine together.
“Well at least bring back home a bag of these!”
“Won’t you die of starvation?”
“Don’t act stupid, I won’t give you them all, I’m not that nice!” You prepare two servings “In case you want to share a meal with a special guest.” He replies with a huff, but you don’t care, knowing well how he can be.
“See you soon Sae.”
“If that raw pasta will kill me my lawyer will bang at your door.” He replies already out and walking towards the driver he called before.
“Don’t be overdramatic, it doesn’t suit you, ice man.” He smiles back at you behind the window of his car but you can’t see him since it is tinted.
From that day you don’t hear him until the famous cooking video he told you about appear on your screen. Obviously, they made him cook something way easier, too bad he had a blindfold on and his teammate had to tell him what to do.
“I hope your teamwork works better on the football field.” You text him, a winking emoji at the end.
His answer doesn’t long in coming “Worry more about your exams.” It hurts you more than being run over by a car.
3 months before
“Sae can you pick me up?”
“Did something happen?”
“Nothing that bad, but could you?”
“Send me your position, I’m coming.”
“Thanks” You sniff.
You are not used to crying, or better, you are not used anymore. Years of university thickened your skin enough to be able to deal with most wounds.
Most, not all.
You studied hard for this exam, it was one of the few ones you had to do to finally get your degree, one step closer to reaching your dream. But you failed it, and now you’ll have to wait months before being able to take it again. You didn’t meet with anybody, barely talked with Elisa, and you share a bedroom with her, skipped meals to be sure not to lose time, and repeated the paragraphs till your voice gave out.
All of this for a fist of nothing.
You cried and gasped the moment you were far enough from the classroom. Weakness isn’t accepted and pity is a sign you won’t survive long in this world; this is what you’ve been taught. You forgot how shit you could feel while crying, how lonely you are. You wanted to call your parents, they have always been good at reassuring you, but then Sae's name was the first contact to appear and you clicked without thinking twice.
Maybe harsh love is what you need.
You regret your choice the second you hear the first thrill. He must be training, maybe he is in the sweet company of someone, you can already hear his ice-cold voice snapping at you for bothering him. But you don’t have the time to close the call, Sae picked it up and was coming to help.
You recognize the car, it was the same one that picked him up when he went back home from his house, but this time he is the one driving.
“Come in.”
You sit on the soft leather. While you waited for him you tried to dry up your tears to improve your current condition, but to no avail; eyes still red and puffy and some tears still escaping.
“Are you bri-bringing me home?” You brokenly say between gasps.
“No. What happened?” Sae’s eyes stay fixed on the road, raindrops fall on the windshield, ironic how the weather matches your mood.
He snaps his fingers in front of you, bringing you back to earth so you start to tell him what happened.
“I know I must sound so-so dumb but-“ Gasps keep interrupting you “I feel like a failure. Maybe I am.” You look at him, your vision is foggy due to the new tears, but this time he looks back at you. You didn’t even notice he stopped the car, now off the road.
But what it comes to surprise you. No harsh words, no sarcasm.
Sae hugs you, hands patting your back.
“Everyone fails, even cyborg guys like me. Everything can be fixed and a little misstep on the road doesn’t define you as a person.” He pulls away, face relaxed, and goes back to driving.
“One hamburger and a chips portion.”
Were you parked in a fast-food lot? You were so out of your mind and outside is so dark that you didn’t notice. You have been silent, still recovering from the hug and those words that sounded so encouraging and not like Sae at all.
“Why the chips? You don’t like them.” It’s the first thing you are able to blabber, at least you didn’t stutter anymore.
“This isn’t for me. It’s for you.” The redhair says putting the paper bag on your legs “Junk food can be nice once in a while. And stop crying-“ the back of his curled index finger swipes away a lone tear running down your face “I hate looking at ugly stuff and tears reduce you to a really ugly mess.” 
Ah, the old Sae is back. You can finally recognize him, with all his rude comments. But something inside you blossoms while he drives you back home and you bite into your hamburger.
Does it mean he finds you beautiful every other time? You feel blood running to your face for a minute you hear a whistle in your ears, but you impose yourself not to bash your head around it. Now you have to find a nice way to explain the situation to Elisa without making her worried sick and hide who brang you home to avoid her dumb smile and endless teasing that would come your way. You look outside the car window, mind already wandering somewhere else.
In the end, Elisa discovered everything, for sure Sae insisting on bringing you inside crumbled to pieces your plan, and your mood was too devasted to be able to efficiently hide your feelings. At least your attention wasn’t on the football star anymore.
Your mind already planned to think about them for the next weeks anyway.
Today. Night
“I suppose the date didn’t go as planned.” Sae doesn’t move, no intention of shielding your body under the umbrella.
“No, but it was my fault.” ‘Because I’m in love with you’ you add in your brain. “You want to know what happened?”
“Not really.”
“Bad for you because I’ll tell you anyway.” You joke between gasps. Sae doesn’t move away but he keeps looking down on you. “He was so nice, he took me to the restaurant and even wanted to pay. The small talk was incredible and we have a lot in common-“ You look down, not able to keep his gaze “But my heart is for someone who considers me barely a friend-“ Your hands now cover your face “And then when I arrived here to cry in peace a couple walked in front of me being all cute and I crumbled.”
“It could have been us.”
“Umh?” You can finally gaze back into his eyes, liquid fury while looking down at you.
“Who is the guy you have a crush for? The loser-“
“It’s you. You are the loser.” Your brain still struggles to phantom what is happening. You were freezing cold a few minutes ago, you couldn’t feel the apex of your fingers, but now you don’t feel anything.
But something inside Sae’s mind clicked before yours, the umbrella waving left and right, the grip on it clearly loosened.
“You are an imbecile.” His words are sharp knives on your body, but you can’t grasp in pain because something is pressing on your lips.
Sae is kissing you, his cold hands gripping you by the collar of your dress to keep you close, raindrops fall down from his cheeks to yours, the umbrella is left abandoned in a bush, the wind tearing it apart.
“For how long?” He pulls you up from the bench, his right hand gripping yours while the left one is on your back.
“The exam fail.” You whisper almost in a trance “And you?”
“Let’s go home-“ He starts to run out from the park, calling for a cab to bring you both to, you suppose, your house. You notice him looking around, probably searching for a place to shield your bodies from the rain; not that you have much to protect anymore both wet from head to toe.
“It has been longer...Sae! That’s why you have always teased me.” You finally laugh shivers of cold and joy running down your back.  “Sae!” You shout stopping in your tracks. Sae turns back but doesn’t have time to snap at you, this time it’s you kissing him. Your hands go to caress his cheeks, one hand sliding a bit back to scratch the back of his neck. You probably nailed the right point, because you hear him moan into your mouth. His hands slide lower caressing your waist to your hips, but never brave enough to go to your backside.
Or better, when you feel him sliding closer…
“Mister Itoshi, come in the car!” his driver came to pick you up, using the horn two times to announce his presence.
Sae looks at him, gnashing his teeth before looking back at you, his expression getting softer again. “Let’s go” he kisses you in between your eyebrows before pulling you towards his car.
“Okay, but you’ll have to tell me when you fell in love with me.” You feel the hold on your hands tightening, no need to look at his face to understand what’s going on in his head.
Maybe he’ll kiss you dumb to make you forget about that. Maybe he’ll be brave enough to propose showering together…your mind starts to daydream, maybe he won’t have the courage and you’ll have to take the reins, but one thing is sure.
You’ll both be happy.
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amomentsescape · 3 months
Note
can I also request to yandere slashers and sinclair brothers with a pregnant reader that gets kidnapped if thats ok? Thank you hope im not requesting too much, no pressure to make it 😅
Yandere! Slashers with Pregnant Reader That Gets Kidnapped
Yandere! Slashers x Reader (Separate)
Includes: Freddy, Michael, Jason, Thomas, Bubba, Brahms, Norman, Billy, Stu, Vincent, Bo, & Lester
Warnings: Yandere behavior, mentions of pregnancy, typical Slasher behavior
A/N: No worries! Thank you for requesting :) I also apologize if my last couple of Slasher fics have been a bit short. I've been stuck in a brain fog this past week.
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Freddy Krueger
The moment Freddy sees you gone, he just laughs
You couldn't be that stupid to just leave, could you?
You can't escape him when he can show up at any point no matter where you are
However, him popping up and seeing you being held hostage by someone else...
Freddy's smile fades
Of course you wouldn't leave him
But who dares to have put you and his child at risk?
The moment he sees them, he doesn't even care
He immediately slashes their throat and picks you up, not wasting any time taking you back to where you belong
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Michael Myers
The kidnapper was careless
Don't they know that Michael would walk to the ends of the earth for you and his child?
His abilities know no bounds
He finds your location within a single night
All you can hear at first are screams and splatters, not sure what is going on outside your little room
But the moment you see Michael, you immediately relax
You weren't sure he would come for you
But here he was
And without a word, he has you lifted in his bloody arms as he walks you back home
Just know he won't be letting you out of his sight at all now
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Jason Voorhees
He can hear your screams echo throughout the woods
He knows this area like the back of his hand anyways, so it doesn't take long to locate you
The way you're holding onto your stomach, trying to protect the child from any harm, has Jason seeing nothing but red
He doesn't even want to fool around with the assailant
His machete is plunged into the top of their head before they can even let out a scream
His mood does a complete 180 when he looks back to you, gently taking you in his arms to make sure you weren't hurt
He just sits with you on the ground for a while, rocking you in his arms
He's attempting to comfort you, but there's a part of him that's also trying to comfort himself
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Thomas Hewitt
When he comes home to the door wide open, he immediately panics
You didn't leave him... did you?
He thought you were finally happy
Teary eyed and angered, Thomas storms out into the night to look for you
He had wandered pretty far into the area when he heard your screams
Some crazy family seemed to have taken you from your home
Your screams were immediately cut off by the sound of a chainsaw, cutting right into the door
Your kidnappers jumped up and attempted to flee, but Thomas was quick to catch up
You had your ears covered and your eyes tightly shut when he came back in
He gently pulled your hands down and lifted you up
He carried you home without any hesitation
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Bubba Sawyer
The screams of devastation he lets out can literally be heard from miles around
Doesn't even want to consider that you left him
You've been so good the last few months
There's no way you would have just left like this
After an hour of him frantically searching around the area, he can finally hear your voice
You were talking to the stranger, asking them to please let you go
The fact that they just kept ignoring you made Bubba even more angry
They only finally looked up when they heard the revving of his chainsaw
They didn't even have time to flee before they were cut in half
He runs over to you quickly, placing one hand on your stomach and the other on the side of your face
He was blubbering, promising you he'll do better next time
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Brahms Heelshire
Well this was an incredibly stupid decision on their part
Don't they know that Brahms doesn't ever leave the house?
And wherever you are, he will be too
The kidnapper doesn't even make it out the door with you
The moment Brahms hears your screams, it's over
He emerges from the wall and grabs the kidnapper
You watch as Brahms slams the person's head into the wall, over and over again until they're just a bloody pulp
He storms over to you and grabs you roughly, looking your body over to make sure you and the baby weren't hurt
He traps you in bed with him for the rest of the night
His arms act as a cage, not letting you up for anything
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Norman Bates
Everything is a bit of a blur
He comes home to the place ransacked, you nowhere in sight
You weren't reckless
He knows you wouldn't have done this
He turns to go search for you, and that's when things go black
He finally comes to with you crying in his arms on a dirty floor
An unrecognizable body lays beside him, blood pooling everywhere
But you and his child are safe
That's all that matters now
And he'll make sure nothing like this ever happens again
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Billy Loomis
Billy is immediately in a rage when he sees you're gone
There is no way you're going to leave him
Never
He'll break into every house in this town if he has to
And that's just what he does
It's only after the 7th house that he finds you tied up to a chair
Oh you poor thing
Of course you didn't leave him
The scene before you quickly becomes bloody
A few bodies lie splattered on the floor, Billy tending to the rope around you
He apologizes for letting this happen and kisses you deeply
It's only later that night you hear of 7 families that had been found slashed in their own homes
There really is no limit when it comes to Billy
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Stu Macher
He has a mental breakdown when he sees that you're gone
Goes into a fit of hysterical laughter as he reaches for his knife
He doesn't want to hurt you, but he will if he must
When he hears a scream echo not too far from where he was searching, he sprints to it
And when he sees you being held by some random person, Stu's crazed smile finally drops
He lunges, and things go out of control
Stu is left with a few cuts and bruises, but he doesn't care
He immediately looks you over and makes sure you're not hurt
When he's content, he takes you home and cuddles up with you on the couch, bloody clothes and all
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Vincent Sinclair
Vincent doesn't like to venture too far from home, but he'll do it for you
Seeing that you're gone makes him assume the worse
He marches outside the home, already searching every nook and cranny of this desolate place
And it works out in his favor once he sees you in an old building, knocked unconscious
He smashed his way through the window immediately
The attackers come running towards him, but he was quick to act
You awoke to a bloody mess beside you and a worried Vincent knelt in front of you
He rests his hands on your stomach and you nod, letting him know you and the baby are okay
He's content with this and wraps you in his arms to take you back home
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Bo Sinclair
If he can't have you, no one can
When he's sees you're gone, he assumes you left just like he knew you were going to try
He hunts you down immediately, ready to do what needed to be done, only to see you scared and tied up
Oh, now Bo can't help the growing smile on his face
You didn't want to leave him, and now he can have fun with whoever was stupid enough to do this
Will knock them unconscious and take you both home
He'll make their death a long and painful one
But it's another addition to the wax museum
One that he is most proud of
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Lester Sinclair
He instantly tears up at the idea that you left him
He almost doesn't even want to go after you, but you're also carrying his child
He can't just let you go that easily
He of course checks Ambrose first, and he considers himself lucky to have found you as soon as he did
But seeing you being held by some random person was not what he had planned
Lester's self pity quickly evolves to pure anger
He jumps in and immediately attacks, not even thinking of finding a weapon first
His adrenaline kicks in and it doesn't take long before he kills the kidnapper, suffocating them to death
He then wraps himself up with you, holding you close and apologizing over and over again
1K notes · View notes
kenmakodz · 2 months
Text
CANDID LOVE ˙✧˖📷
06. brain food ☆
writing in-between cuts!
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a quiet knock on the door catches your attention, which was previously focused on scrolling through random shows on Netflix. a weird feeling, you get. an emotion that seems to be the love-child of excitement and nervousness. there's no time to run away from these feelings, though, so you get up and open the door for the poor boy who's been hauling 3 bags of food.
"my god" he sighs, setting the bags down on the coffee table. "i think my stomach has eyes. there's no way we're finishing all this in one night." you laugh, noticing how he's holding his arm out of pain. "i've definitely done the same, more times than i'd like to admit-- here, sit down for a bit." gesturing to the couch, you sit down and pat a spot relatively close to you. he takes this offer with open arms, considering he'd walked pretty far. "sorry i took a while, hopefully i didn't keep you waiting too long?" his hands fidget together as he takes in your room. it's the size of a triple, but you have it to yourself. it's quite surprising how nice the school treats transfer students, considering how main students are usually shoved into a tiny room with 2-3 other people. you place your hand upon his; a ballsy move, but you know how it feels to be anxious about things. you don't want him to be anxious with you. "it's fine, really. i don't mind waiting for you." you smile, moving your hand back to it's previous position. embarrassment clearly runs through his body, but to you he just looked starstruck. after a moment of pushing these feelings back, he returns your smile. "i'm glad, then. um, can we eat? i fear my stomach is going to wrinkle up if we don't." "yes yuuta, we can eat."
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"okay, okay. this seems good for now, i think?" he sits back from the laptop you two have been sharing, taking a second to re-read the outline. your eyes scan the page as well; it's a very.. rough outline. you start laughing at the last few lines, where he'd begun to give up on being professional. after all, only you two will see this draft. "why are you laughing?" he pouts, thinking you're making fun of the ideas laid out. "oh relax," you lean back with him, realizing he's gotten much closer than before. "i can just tell that you were rushing writing the final scene." his head whips to you and a hand clutches his chest, feigning shock; a sarcastic gasp falls from his lips. "how could you! we worked very hard on this!" your hand pushes his away from his chest, the both of them landing on his lap. "oh, shut up. i'm just teasing." he huffs anyways, a facade you've become accustomed to. after all, one of your best friends is nobara kugisaki.
reaching to a stuffed dog to your side, you hand it to him. "here, will an emotional support dog help?" he sighs, wrapping it in his arms. "i suppose." laughing again, you sit up and grab the laptop once more. "you're so dumb." he grips the toy more, you don't realize it, but he likes the way it smells of lavender just like you do. "what are you doing now, don't you think its enough for tonight?" you stop to think, after sending the draft to your phone. "well, we'll need to send casting calls to the neighboring schools sometime soon.. but i guess we can be done for now." he closes the laptop for you and places it on the table once again, looking back. "good, we can do that another time-" his sentence is cut off due to his phone practically blowing up in the room over. "sorry," he starts, getting up and handing the stuffed dog back to you. "let me go check on that."
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"hey, sorry again. my friends were blowing up my phone for some reason." he comes back into the room where you two were sitting before, unsure if he should sit back down. he can't read your face, and you can't read his either, despite you both feeling the same way. "it's okay. you can sit back down if you want to stay a bit longer..?" you look down for a split second, anticipating the rejection he was about to give you. "i was looking for shows before you got here, but i couldn't find a good one." you try to convey what you say as a question, but it almost comes out as a plea. he doesn't say anything immediately, and you almost get upset? looking back up, you realize he's already getting ready to sit back down with you. "i'd love to stay. i also have an amazing suggestion for a show." your eyes light up, and it feels like the room filled with more air the way you both sighed with relief. "oh really?" you tease him, as he takes back the toy he'd left with you. "lay it on me then."
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fun facts -> TWO PEOPLE PINING FOR EACHOTHER BUT NEITHER KNOW IT!!!! a classic trope. chefs kiss. yuuta offered to go get snacks not only because he was starving, but he also needed time to calm himself down before going to y/n's dorm. he was scared. scared that he'd say something stupid, give her the ick, embarrass himself. you know, the works. once he got there though, it felt like he never wanted to go home again.
-> GOD I LOVE THEM SO MUCh. screams. kicking my feet like a little girl writing this chapter.
previous, masterlist, next [07. i hate men (except you two)]
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taglist is open! @just-a-girlblogger @moryymor @swissy23 @hvnyacoded @sereniteav @k4romis @jayathelostdragon  @h3rmess @olivandeee @lysaray @ari3000dontcare @raechu11 @marifujioka @nyxlai @sonicsolos @saltypuffin1040 @r0ckst4rjk @h8ani @lmaolmaolmao @maya-maya-56 @mittensdun @adrenova @pnkblueberry @morgyyyyyyy @chososwh0r3 @lunecqm @r4veeen @arivsx @levlucs-kiru @mellozhi
if you are in bold, i am unable to tag you :( and if i forgot to add you, PLEASE YELL AT ME
⤷ © kenmakodz
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deadsnothere · 8 months
Text
Gunslinger Girl!
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Synopsis - After getting a call from Garp, Alias made her way to the Baratie for a nice bite to eat and a long needed reunion.
Part 2
WARNINGS!! - READER HAS A NAME!!
Request - no, not taking them sorry.
Word count - 2.8k
Speak Ali! - Both parts together make 5,340 words, this Fic has literally taken up my brain.
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Monkey D. Luffy.
Garp was a cheeky bastard.
I, Alias Foreman, Swore to be on Monkey D. Luffy's pirate crew when we both turned sixteen and fled to the sea together. I had a dream of becoming one of the most versatile people known to man. I want to learn as much as I can, to cook, to clean, to navigate boats and ships, anything you can teach me I will try my hardest to understand and learn. Now I'm not saying that I want to be the best at everything, there will always be people better. But I want to at least understand the basics of as much as possible. But for all of my life I've been known as a Gunslinger.
I'm ‘The Cheshire Cat’. Cool name with a stupid job. I hate being a Warlord of the Sea, it's the stupidest job on this side of the east blue, and they wouldn't even give me a proper crew. Just a few bumbling idiots who don't know what being a pirate really means.
Luffy always understood what being a pirate meant. I remember watching Garp train him day in and day out. Parts of me understand why Garp was so hard on him, I mean people say he takes after Gold Roger. Imagine your grandson taking after someone you helped execute. I don't think I'd be fond of it either. I’ve never thought Garp nor Luffy were wrong for what they want but, I think one knows what he's doing and the other doesn't.
-
It's always quite bothersome when halfway through my delicious dinner, I get interrupted by a soggy mean fishman running in here and trying to take my table for dinner. If he had waited a few minutes I would've gladly given it up, I just wanted to finish my meal. But the inpatient idiot just had to have it now.
“I'm afraid there are no more tables.” Arlong and two of his crew members were walking down the stairs of the Baratie. They’re bodies are still wet and leaving water as they walk, which is just plain disrespectful. “I see a bunch of tables.” I couldn't help but roll my eyes, to think I would have a peaceful dinner, just hopeful dreaming. People started to whisper and get up from their tables but I stayed in my seat, intending to finish the nice meal served to me. Plus it's not as if they got far, Arlong was yelling at them as soon as he got to the middle of the staircase. “Sit down!” he yelled in his degrading, chalkboard scratching voice. I continued to cut my steak in pieces to eat, they over cooked it a bit but a fine job was done anyways. Seasoned almost perfectly. A little too much oregano, but I'm just too picky with my food. Arlong went around as if he owned the place. “No one leaves.”
He looked at me with malice in his smile. “Except you.” His webbed hand went to grab the collar of my shirt but I stopped it with my own, barely even looking back. “I only have a bite or two left, I'll give it up when I'm done.” I took another drink from my wine and let go of his hand, continuing on with my meal. I could tell it pissed him off from the way he growled close to my ear. A stupid amount of spit landing on my dinner plate and shoulder. I shivered in disgust and stood up from my table. “You know what- take it.” I grabbed my plate and wine and stood up, leaving the small round table for the fishmen to sit at. I felt bad not eating the steak so I got a to-go box from the reservations desk and put it in there to give to someone later. Deciding that maybe i'll get a nice drink from the bar instead.
I was a wine kind of gal so I got a nice glass of Merlot, it was tasty. Had lots of flavor, some of which I enjoyed and some I didn't. I was enjoying the peace. I always knew it wouldn't last long but god was i sad when it was over. “Which one of you is Arlong?” Oh shit. I knew his voice anywhere, the voice I was sent for by his grandfather, the voice of a new age. I got a refill on my wine, and bought the whole bottle while I was at it, due to the lingering feeling that this wasn't going to look pretty.
When I got back into the restaurant I decided to just rest a little under the staircase, hidden by the shadows hopefully. Seeing Luffy again made me nervous. Something about it..something about how he’d be even a little bit different. When I assessed the situation in front of me it confused me a bit. I could hear that Arlong was yelling from the bar but he's an idiot so I tuned it out and tried to enjoy the bit of ‘quiet’ I had. Arlong has an older gentleman by his shirt collar, while Luffy was halfway down the main staircase. He had two men behind him, one named Usopp the other Sanji. I heard about them both, one from a customer here and the other, from a bartender. “So this is the pirate I've heard so much about.” Arlong was starting to circle around some of the tables, pacing I guess. “You know, I was expecting someone… bigger.”
Sounds like my cue. I came out of the shady area setting the wine glass and bottle on the table and grabbing a pack of cigarettes and a lighter from a pocket in my shorts, picking the lucky one and placing it in my mouth delicately. “Tell me about it..I've had someone in my ear all day. ‘Find that dumbass.’ I have a headache at this point.” I laughed and leant on the chair. Luffy looks away from Arlong for a millisecond, to look at me but I don't think it registered in his brain. He couldn't have forgotten me. Luffy spoke, in his normal, nonchalant, Luffy way. “So was I.” I was puffing from my cigarette as I laughed. The snicker making smoke pour out of my nose. That got Luffy's attention. His head snapped to look at me, his eyes didn’t leave me, it looked like he was inspecting every part of my body. Probably looking for the one sign it was me. The small skull shaped scar just above my left knee. I wore shorts today just so he would see it.
His eyes were as wide as the plates they were using to serve that delicious soup I had for an appetizer. “ALIAS?!-” internally I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. Externally, all I could do was smile. Luffy had a bright smile on his cheeks and I couldn't help but smile back. It was a smile I yearned for, for so long. I knew with even a bit of it, I was going to be addicted again.
I could see how excited luffy was that I was here (which made me VERY happy), but Arlong being himself did not like that attention wasn't on him for those few seconds so he cleared his throat obnoxiously. “Do you know who I am, boy?” Luffy's attention went to him but came right back when I spoke up. “Arlong the Saw.” There was a moment of silence, I taped the ash away from my cigarette into an empty glass off the table of people in front of me, and took another drag from it. “And just who are you-” - “I’m The Cheshire Cat.” I undid two of the buttons on my button up shirt with one hand, letting my collar fall back to show off the cat like scratches that laid on my collar bone (If those cats were lions that scratched almost all the way down my torso and arm). I did a stupid little bow. A few people reacted but I enjoyed the way Luffy looked so wowed. Arlongs eyes widened but they just went right back to a dumb smug smile. “You, Arlong, go for 20 million berrys.” I took another drag, exhaling calmly. “Which is impressive for the east blue but..Not so much other places.” He laughed from his chest, his friends going along with it. “What does the sell out have to say about it?” I sighed softly.
A part of me wished I was a sell out, instead of a kidnapped child forced to do the government's dirty work. The other part knew I would never do that, knew I would never betray my own crew like that. “Oh nothing honestly, I don't care about you.” I looked over to Luffy who still had a smile on his face. When we made eye contact he started to beam. I've only visited him once since I became a warlord, it makes me happy to see him so full of joy just from a moment of eye contact with me. “I'm here for him.” Luffy's hands started to shake, it was something small he always did around me. Blurted it out one day, said when I was excited sometimes I gave him a look, a glint in my eye that made him so happy his entire body shook. It was the sweetest thing he’d ever said to me. Arlong growled once again, leaving spit in someone's food. Those poor people.
He was circling the tables to get to me, circling around me slowly as if I was fish bait he was waiting to snap on. “Well I was here first.” I thought about correcting him, telling him that I was in fact here first. But Luffy interrupted the thought anyway. “How’d you find me anyway?” Luffy sounded completely confident in himself, Arlong just let out another horrid chuckle and made his way back to where he originally stood. “Old friend helped me track you down.” At first Luffy looked over to me, but I was drinking a sip of wine, just listening to what was happening in front of me. Arlong clicked his tongue and one of the other fish men grabbed the clown pirate's head out of a bag. “Heya, Straw hat. Did you miss me?” Luffy looked extremely confused, Sanji looked exhausted and Usopp looked terrified. “Burpy?” The name he called him almost made me spit out my wine from laughter (Which made Luffy happy, I could tell because he glanced at me. Even just for a second.) “What are you doing here?”
The fact that there was only a clown head confused and disturbed me, but I looked past it. “Believe me, it wasn't my first choice either.” He looked a bit nervous as he spoke. “But these fine fishy folk persuaded me to point them in the right direction, which ain't easy when you don't have any hands!” The joke made me raise my eyebrows and laugh a bit, it was funny i'll give him that. But Luffy still looked confused. “How’d you even know where to find me?” Suddenly the clown had the most serious expression I've ever seen him in. “I told you, I've got eyes and ears everywhere.” I noticed an ear start to climb out of the red band of Luffys hat. It was quite strange. The ear went back to the clown and popped right back in place, laughing. Luffy took the hat off his head inspecting it, while the two men behind him shared a look. “Stereo!” Luffy looked shocked. “You were listening all along? You heard everything?” The clown was quite happy. “Everything! and that old quick. 'Cause you shi-diots have no idea what you're doing.” The mashup word made me giggle a bit, it sounded so stupid, but it was kinda funny. (But luffy frowned a bit when he saw I laughed so i stopped as quick as i started).
The clown's head jumped towards the fishman with the huge lips. “Hey lips? How about a scratch behind the old ear, huh?” That made me roll my eyes, he was stupid enough to ask his captors that? The fishmen put him back in the bag. Buggy complaining about how sandy and wet it was.
“Listen here. I want my map.” It was so stupid. Watching them fight over the map to the entrance to the grand line, I understand why Luffy wanted it, but Arlong has a giant crew of thieves who could easily take it from another marine base. “Along with half of whatever you plunder as tribute.” Tribute? for getting a map, does he want tribute for his own existence now? “And if you bow down to me, I might even let you serve in my kingdom.” Stupid men. All of them were the same. Well not all, but most were extremely similar. “I don't bow down to any man.” Luffy stood tall, his head held up high as usual. That's my boy. “I'm no man.” Luffy continued. “Or fish.” That made Arlong growl and made me laugh. “And you’re no king.” There was a certain feeling in the air, the aggression that at any moment, one or the other would attack. Everyone was on high alert, my wine made that hard. It was just so delicate. Hard to enjoy in this environment but perfect in others.
“I will be, when I get my grand line map.” Luffy just smiled, which was a little bit attractive. “Then” He placed his hat back on his head. “You’re gonna have to fight me for it.” I take the attractive comment back, he's stupid. “Then let the fighting begin.” A bullet bounced off the fishmans skin. My hands almost drew closer to my own guns but instead I decided to pour another glass of wine. The old man that cooked my food was standing with a gun in his hand, the trigger pulled in his fingers clutches.
The thing about fishmen (I had learned the hard way) is that regular bullets don't affect them. I have very special bullets, made from some weird unmeltable ice, something about them coming from a town inside the grand line called drum town, from the deepest parts of frozen lakes. They're so sharp they even pierce fishman skin but don't go as deep as I would like.
Arlong turned to the old man, one of his crew members kicking him away and down before punching him into a pillar. Sanji called out his name and ran over, jumping on the table and kicking the fishman in the face. Which just pissed him off more. He got a few good kicks to the face and arms, even the legs but Luffy distracted him. “Really good fighter.” By the time he went to do a quite nice spinning kick to the face again, he caught his foot in his arm. I reached for both guns in my holsters, Checking that they had the correct bullets and shot multiple rounds from Alice, all of them making a trail up his arm and letting Sanji get away. The fishman looked back at me, anger and confusion in his eyes. “These bullets are made of ice, so sharp they even pierce fishman skin. I got them specially made.” There was a delicate smile on my lips, blowing the smoke out of my mouth and away from my guns. Normally i wouldn't touch these but i had a feeling about bringing them today, i'm glad i did. they may be expensive but Luffy was worth it anyways.
Everything was happening so quickly, Luffy's gum gum pistol, Arlong grabbing and pulling him closer. “Uh-” I could tell there was panic in his voice, but I couldn't tell if helping would really be helping at all. He was thrown at a pillar, landing on the floor with a thud. “Get up!” Arlong yelled, if i was him i would've stayed on the floor in spite, but he got up regardless. He kept stretching his arms three punches, one to each shoulder and one to the face. “Not bad for a human.”
I lifted my pistol to shoot Arlong but luffy put his hand up, his middle and ring finger were intertwined and the other three fingers touched. That was our sign when we were kids to stay out of it. It was our secret signal, not even Ace or Sabo or Dadan knew what it meant. I lowered my pistol, spinning it and putting it back in its holster. I grabbed the wine bottle taking a nice big gulp. Glad i’d gotten the entire bottle because this in fact, was not going to be pretty.
Part 2!!
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lovebugism · 1 year
Note
the customer’s always right just gave me life, they're just so sweet AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
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THE CUSTOMER'S ALWAYS RIGHT | heart-shaped
summary: you think you might be falling in love with eddie. eddie thinks he might be falling for you. a series of stashed away insecurities threaten to get in the way. pairing: virgin!eddie munson / f!reader word count: 10k holy moly warnings: talks of drugs, shitty boyfriends, and being a whore <3 also reader gets fingered <3 a lil bit of angst, smut 18+ mdni a/n: ah shit here we go again!! thanks for waiting so patiently for me to get over my writer's block and finally post! reading all the feedback for this series has been so nice, all of you guys are so so sweet <333 anyway, pls enjoy this installment and if you don't.. maybe don't tell me :^) happy reading ily!
( PREVIOUSLY) | ( MASTERLIST ) | ( NEXT )
Truth be told, working the lunch rush at Enzo’s wasn’t the worst thing in the world.
It meant you got to miss out on serving all the wine snobs at dinner who send back devoured dishes like it’s their job — insistent on a refund because their food was “unsatisfactory” just to get twice the meal with half the tip.
The rich country club goers you waited on were far more docile in comparison. They arrive dressed in pastel-collared shirts and pretty athletic dresses after finishing up their tennis practices or games of golf.
They sit and talk for hours, dine on the most expensive shrimp and wine, just to leave a tip so ginormous that you have to thank them before they go. It’s a flaunt of wealth more than anything. It might’ve felt the least bit demeaning if it wasn’t going directly into your pockets.
And it would be way too lame of you to say that getting to see Eddie Munson after your shift was the only thing getting you through it at all. That sort of puppy love belonged to high schoolers who don't know any better, you know that… But screw it— knowing you were going to meet him after was the only thing getting you through this mind-numbing, foot-aching, brain-cell-losing, eight-hour shift.
The days, of which there had been four (but, then again, who’s counting?), had been excruciating without him.
You couldn’t even sleep the first night you left his trailer. You felt him everywhere — your mouth, your chest, and between your legs — still buzzing with his touch even halfway across Hawkins.
It had you swearing up and down that the Dungeon Master had some actual powers you didn’t know about. That he’d cast some sort of love spell on you after getting you to come on his thigh.
You quickly learned that Eddie Munson was the kind of boy that girls lose sleep over; the kind of boy that reduces you to your basic schoolgirl tendencies as you grin into your pillow and kick your feet in the air.
It was embarrassing, the effect he had on you.
And you so desperately wanted to blame it on whatever witchcraft the town thought the leader of Hellfire possessed. It was easier than facing the fact that you were head over heels for a stupid boy. 
You didn’t even have time to face it, really, because you were already too busy falling for him. He had you tripping all over yourself and face-planting into the petals of a thousand roses — it was pathetic.
You’d catch yourself smiling whenever you thought of him, grinning like an idiot while you rang up customers at the register — more ecstatic at the idea of Eddie than the hundred-dollar tip they’d left you. It made you giddy to think about seeing him again, enough that it distracted you from the fact that you hadn’t sat down since your shift started.
Eddie had you full of sunshine and rainbows and mirth, like something out of a damn GAP commercial. It was a particular sort of happiness you thought abandoned you a long, long time ago.
Apparently, you were wrong.
You think of Eddie, and a foreign feeling of anticipation swirls in the pit of your stomach. It almost makes you sick with childlike excitement. You didn’t know another person was capable of making someone this happy. It’s unfamiliar and daunting and euphoric and really fucking scary. 
It’s an otherworldly feeling that feels like it’s only happening to you. A secret you want to keep to yourself and shout from the rooftops at the same time. People bustle around you, keep on living their mundane lives, and spare not a glance to their lovesick waitress.
No one knows I’m falling in love right now, you find yourself thinking.
But that isn’t exactly true. Jim Hopper knows because that asshole knows everything, and notices almost immediately how strange you’re acting.
The chief of police was always a comforting sight amidst a sea of strangers, most of whom made more in a week than you could ever hope to make in a year. He's a breath of fresh air, as it were, which is strange considering the two of you spent the entirety of your high school career playing cat and mouse.
He’d catch you smoking, threaten to turn you in, and you’d beg him not to — pull out all the stops, the puppy dog eyes, the innocent schoolgirl charm, the whole damn nine to make him melt.
He’d take pity on you and let you off with a warning, as long as you promised never to do it again. And you’d lie to him, tell him it was a one-time thing, and he’d catch you a week or so later — getting high at the quarry or with your hand shoved down the pants of a man too old for you at Lover’s Lake.
And the cycle would keep on repeating for the next four agonizing years until you graduated.
Strangely, somewhere along the line, the two of you became pretty good friends.
Everyone once in a while, he’ll stop by Enzo’s during his breaks to keep you company. He never actually orders food, though, just binges on the endless free breadsticks until the buttons of his uniform threaten to pop. He'll bathe in yellow candlelight and chi-antee for an hour or more and then leave you a too big tip you always have to fight about when he goes.
Your pour the crimson colored wine he’d ordered into his rounded glass, flashing him the label before describing the vintage to him, per your boss’s demand. 
It feels foreign to be so formal in front of Hopper — because, after catching you with a mouthful of Tommy Hagan in a car back in '83, nothing makes either of you uncomfortable anymore. But sometimes it feels like your asshole manager is lurking over your shoulder every damn second of the day.
And having a job is more important than your pride, you figure.
“This is a medium-bodied, acidic tart, ruby red wine. The earthy aroma pairs nicely with the cherry and strawberry notes…” and blah, blah, blah. You’ve repeated the same couple of lines so often you’ve started to say them in your sleep.
“Well, shit, teacup. If you put that much effort into school, you coulda been valedictorian,” Jim quips with a signature dad smirk that’s half-hidden beneath his bushy mustache.
It’s not the first time he’s made that dumb joke, and it won’t be the last.
You roll your eyes more at the nickname than the backhanded compliment, because it isn’t your fault the sasquatch is six-foot-four.
“How much is this one gonna cost me?” he asks you and leans in his plush seat to reach for the wallet in his back pocket.
“Don’t worry about it, lurch. It’s on the house.”
A mischievous glint twinkles in Jim’s eye as he squints up at you. He tucks the leather back into his khakis. “Sure Enzo won’t mind?” he asks you because he hasn’t yet bothered to acknowledge that your boss wasn’t actually named Enzo. 
“Yeah, he’ll be pissed,” you confirm with a shrug. “I just don’t care.”
“Well, you’re in an unrealistically good mood after the lunch rush,” he sing-songs.
You don’t miss the suspicious lilt in his voice. Your smile is equally sarcastic and sickly sweet as you tell him: “It’s ‘cause my favorite customer is here—”
“Yeah, I don’t buy that,” he interjects with a curt shake of his head. He sits up straighter and leans his elbows on the white linen cloth of the table like he means business. “Who’s the boy?”
“What— I don’t— What are you— boy?” you sputter with a half-hearted laugh. Your stammering isn’t the least bit convincing.
“It’s a boy, right?” he monotones. “You only get all giddy and gross like this when there’s a boy.”
You hate that he knows you so well. It might’ve been sweet if it wasn’t totally infuriating.
To be fair, you did tend to wear your heart on your sleeve, even when you didn’t want to. When you were falling in love, it poured out of you like sunshine and blinded anyone who dared to look too closely.
Golden rays shoot from your fingertips, shine in the irises of your eyes, and flash from your smile — like the one tugging at the edges of your lips now.
It leaves no room to deny what he already knows: that you’re a stupid girl with a stupid crush on a stupid boy because she hasn’t learned from her stupid mistakes.
“Fine,” you concede with your sheepish gaze flitted to the ceiling. “It’s— It’s dumb. It’s a silly crush, it doesn’t mean anything.”
Hopper nods, like he’s giving you some kind of blessing. “Good for you. It’s about time you moved on from that asshole— what was his name again? Harrington?”
It makes you roll your eyes. You can’t tell if he’s actually confused or if he’s making fun of you. It would be all too like a middle-aged man to make a misogynistic joke about a girl who’s had more partners than years she’s been alive.
“Hargrove,” you correct in a monotone. Your tone is as bitter as thinking about him makes you feel.
“Him, too,” he quips.
There it is.
“It’s not even like that, okay? It’s not like anything,” you try and deflect like you aren’t beaming and trying horribly to hide it. “He… He probably doesn’t even like me like that.”
“Well, it’s about time you got over that boy, is all I’m saying. You deserve a good guy. A boy treats you right, who has actual aspirations in life, and keeps his nose clean—” he rambles as he brings the wine to his mouth to take a drink. He stops himself to ask: “What's his name again?”
You fidget ahead of him, shifting your weight on your feet awkwardly because good guy who stays out of trouble and has actual aspirations in life isn’t how most people would describe the Munson boy. Jim least of all.
He’s got a similar relationship with Eddie to the one he had with you, though there was little room for friendship between the two. It’s just an outlaw making a living on drugs and a chief trying to catch him dealing it.
“Eddie,” you answer and then clear your throat. “Uh, Eddie Munson…”
The life leaves Jim’s eyes.
There’s no amount of wine in Enzo’s cellar that could’ve prepared him for that — or you, for the twenty-minute lecture that followed.
“I have no words,” he’d scolded you like a disappointed parent but proceeded to rant for nearly half an hour after the fact, in true fatherly fashion.
Hopper knows when you’re falling in love. It’s all sunshine and rainbows and blue skies. It’s all so sweet he could gag. But there’s always another side of that coin — a dark, colder, meaner one. 
Because sometimes boys are cruel, sometimes you really are in over your head, and sometimes relationships don’t work out. And when things go bad, they go rotten, and he has to deal with the storm cloud you become after the fact.
Taking care of you becomes his part-time job, and his check-ins become endless as he makes sure you don’t fall back into your old ways — using and getting used.
And truth be told, you don’t have the best track record with men, and Hopper tries to tell you all this, but it doesn’t get through.
Because you have a good feeling about this. About Eddie.
Fuck all the rest.
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Today marks your thirteenth meeting with Eddie.
For such an unlucky number, it’s got you squirming from all the butterflies fluttering in your belly with an excitement more innocent than you’re used to. Like standing in the queue for a rollercoaster in a childlike mixture of apprehension and animation, somehow both frightened and enraptured for what’s to come.
And you’re absolutely bouncing with it. Smiling to yourself in the car with the radio turned all the way up and the windows all the way down, thrumming your fingers on the steering wheel as you belt the lyrics to “Super Trouper” with a beam that could make the sunshine cower. 
It’s all completely and utterly perfect until you become suddenly aware of how unearthly happy you are.
Then it hits you like a ton of bricks and you shrink into yourself because… maybe you shouldn’t feel this way. The last time you saw Eddie, he came in his jeans and you got off on his thigh — there was never any room for daydreaming and pining and puppy love-ing, not when you so quickly gave yourself away.
The thought of Eddie not nearly being as happy to see you is what hurts the most. How he had you once and now you’re back to just being the customer he sees once a week.
What if he doesn’t give you weed for free anymore? Fuck that — what if you’re not his favorite? 
And maybe it’s just you, maybe you’re the problem. Maybe you should be passed the point of giddy excitement, maybe it’s uncool, maybe you’re wearing your heart on your sleeve and it’s leaving the door open for too much hurt. Maybe Hopper was right.
But you’re happy, at least for right now, and you don’t get the chance to be too often.
Most days, you’re just an accessory — a pretty pebble someone finds on the ground and spends a couple of seconds ogling at before leaving and never thinking about again.
You deserve the chance to be held, don’t you? You should get to be praised and coddled and worshipped like the pretty girls do.
And Eddie makes you feel held. 
So you’ll stick around until he gets bored of you, until you stop being so fun for him. You’ll take the moments of happiness as they’re spoon-fed to you and taste them, really taste them, until you’re starving again. You’ll stay full of this pure puppy love you have for Eddie until it’s time for you to go. 
Because, for now, you’re happy. And isn’t that what matters most?
You don’t know it, but Eddie’s caught in a similar dilemma.
He waits for you at the bench you meet him at every week, like you’ve done for months now, but he’s filled with an unfamiliar gaiety as he anticipates your arrival.
He’s so goddamn excited to see you that he doesn’t know what to do with himself. It borders on a slight uneasiness that makes him sick to his stomach.
Eddie never gets nervous around customers. Not once, not ever.
He’s dealt to weirdos who live on the wrong side of the track, preppy douchebags that shove him into lockers at school, and pretty cheerleaders who pretend he doesn’t exist outside of dealing.
He’s seen it all, really. But you’re the one that’s got him bouncing his knee something fierce beneath the table and tapping his fingers against the rotted top of it while his heart races a million miles a minute.
He’s frightened of being too overeager. He’s scared that you’ll come here, all cool and collected about all of it, and he’ll be the freak show acting like a pretty girl’s never given him an ounce of attention before. They haven’t, but he’d rather not project that sort of disposition. Not to you, at least.
He guesses, more than anything, he’s just afraid of scaring you away.
So Eddie tries to keep the smile on his face hidden — not knowing that it’s your favorite part about him. He tries to be as stoic as possible. He wants to be this cool and mysterious and sexy guy he thinks you want, having no idea that you’d already fallen in love with him before he even realized he needed to be those things for you. 
He’s just about able to wash away his grin when he sees you emerge from the woods and into the small clearing where the lone picnic table lives. 
The pinky plaid skirt you wear rustles against your legs with the breeze, the pleated edges brushing against the skin of your thighs. You pair it with a white piece of Beatles merch that clings to your torso — and fuck he hates the Beatles, but you’re the prettiest thing his cynical eyes have ever seen.
He’s beaming at you before he even realizes it. And by the time he does, he doesn’t feel like the idiot he thought he would.
You’re both sporting matching grins, trying to hide them and failing miserably. His is pursed softly to the side and yours is pulled between your teeth.
You look like the rays of sunlight filtering through the trees, Eddie thinks to himself. 
His eyes must be the golden of them, you conclude.
When you settle on the bench in front of him, you tuck your skirt neatly beneath you and focus on smoothing out than fabric rather than meet the boy’s gaze. You sport a meek smile and a pair of fidgeting hands that ache to touch him.
“Hi,” you greet sheepishly.
He sees your face scrunch in embarrassment at how shy you sound, and the way you almost reach out for his hand but stop yourself just as quickly. He wishes you wouldn’t. He wishes you knew how perfect you were, even when you weren’t totally graceful.
“Hi,” he repeats with a mocking, but no less loving grin, tilting his head towards his shoulder. “How’s it going?”
“Oh, you know… overworked and underpaid,” you shrug. “Just the usual.”
You’re grateful for the small talk. It leaves little room for the awkwardness swimming in your belly. He doesn’t immediately mention what happened the last time you saw him, like people often do when they want to do it all over again. But he isn’t in a hurry to give you your weed so you’ll leave him alone either. That's what people usually do when they want nothing to do with you anymore.
It’s almost like it never happened. 
Or rather, like it did, and he isn’t treating it like a spectacle.
It’s refreshing.
“Boss giving you a hard time?”
“Oh, always. I’m pretty sure that’s what he gets paid to do, actually.”
“Right,” he breathes out a laugh.
Silence hangs in the air for a moment, just a blink of a second, but it’s noticeable. The sudden quiet floats on the cool breeze that ruffles Eddie’s wild hair and sends a shiver down your spine. 
In a split-second decision, you decide not to deprive yourself of the urge to touch him. Partly to distract from the stillness, but mostly because the ache had reached a fever pitch.
You’re so enthralled by his hands resting upon the old wood — the veins that decorate the back of them like the roots of a tree, the way his fingers thrum to a beat only he can hear, and the rings that wrap around them.
“Is this new?” you wonder aloud. You take his wrist in one hand and trace the glinting silver on his pointer finger with the other. It’s the bony fingers of a skeleton curved to form a heart. He’s taped the sides to make it fit better. It didn’t belong to him before now. 
Eddie watches, pleasantly surprised, as you dote on him. 
Your eyes glitter golden beneath an early setting sun. They dance with amusement as your fingertip traces his heart-shaped ring. He smiles to himself and wonders how often you’re looking at his hands to notice he’s got a new ring on.
“Oh, yeah,” he shrugs. He plays it cool, like his heart isn’t thrumming like a hummingbird in his chest at your touch. “Got it a couple days ago at the thrift store outside of town. It was a whole seventy-five cents.”
“I like it. It’s cute.”
“Cute?” he repeats with a scrunched nose and blushing face.
It makes you giggle. “Yeah. You can be cute and badass at the same time, you know?”
“I didn’t know those were mutually exclusive.”
“They weren’t. Not until you came into the world, Eddie Munson.”
He feels cold when you drag your hand away. The kind, almost teasing grin you flash his way warms him all over again. He’s still trying to get used to being so loved on.
You can see the way he gets lost in you for a moment. His cinnamon-tinted gaze, made golden in the sunlight, glazes over as his head gets stranded in the clouds.
The only reason you notice it is because it happens to you. Eddie makes it so terribly easy to float in the deep galaxy of his eyes. Your heart swells to know that it’s happening to him now. Happening to him because he’s looking at you.
You didn’t know you were the kind of girl people could get lost in.
Eddie clears his throat and shakes his head, mostly to himself, but enough to jostle the soft curls that frame his face and sit above his eyes.
“Well, I’m honored, sweetheart,” he grins his signature grin, the bright and cocky one, though he’s too shy to make it reach his eyes now. He busies himself and his restless fingers by rifling through the product sitting in the tin box at his side — baggies full of green nuggets and white powdery pills. 
“So, uh, what’s on the menu this week? The usual?”
“I’ve still got my stash from last week,” you confess. “Haven’t really had the time to smoke it yet.”
His eyes flit up to yours again. “…Yeah?” is all he can think to say to you because internally he’s buzzing — you didn’t even need weed, he thinks to himself, you just wanted to see him.
You only shrug. “I’ve just been, like, crazy busy this week.”
Eddie nods understandingly, but can’t help but to joke: “Is that why you haven’t called?”
Because, fuck, if the past couple of days without talking to you haven’t been complete and total agony. He knows it’s a little too brash and brave of him to wonder why you went AWOL when he hasn’t exactly made an effort to seek you out either. 
Not for lack of wanting to, though. He’d like to put that on record.
“Well, I didn’t call because I don’t have your number,” you retort with a smile that toes the line between cunning and timidity. “So, you can’t really blame me for that.”
He huffs dramatically. “Guess not.”
“It’s probably for the best. If I could call you, I’d never leave you alone.”
“Bold of you to assume I’d want you to,” he dismisses your negative talk with ease.
You warm with his words and duck your gaze on instinct. You keep your eyes on your hands while you fidget with your fingers, wishing that they were his instead. “Just don’t want to bother you or whatever, you know?”
“You could never bother me.”
“Promise?” you ask him. Your smile is playful, but your words are sincere.
Eddie’s is much of the same. “Cross my heart.”
“How about this — I give you my number and you just call whenever you’re free,” you offer, more confident at the boy’s admission and glowing with it. “‘Cause, you know, Wayne probably wouldn’t appreciate me clogging up the phone line very much.”
“He wouldn’t notice… Or care,” he tells you and pulls out an old pen from his tin box. His sparkling deep brown eyes stay locked on you as you rise from your side of the bench and round the table to sit next to him.
You’re obviously not as nervous as he’d been at the trailer all those nights ago, when he had to practically be beckoned over to realize you wanted him beside you.
You sit opposite him, with your knees pointed away from the bench. You get to be closer to him this way. Your thigh presses against his as you twist towards him, your chest mere inches from his arm, your mouth even closer.
You write a series of numbers on his forearm that Eddie can’t make out because he’s too busy looking at you. He admires the frown between your brows as you struggle to get the ink to write and the way your lips purse to the side in concentration.
“Wayne would actually be pretty stoked I was talking to a girl—” he jokes with a laugh though he’s quick to cut himself off like he’d said something he wasn’t supposed to.
His admission was supposed to be funny, something the rest of Hellfire would’ve laughed at because they know him. But you don’t, and he doesn’t really want you to. You’ve already got this idea of him in your head. He lives in agony that he won’t be able to live up to it.
He’ll just have to fake it, he concludes. Fake it until he doesn’t recognize himself anymore.
Fortunately enough for him, you don’t read into his words too much.
“He wants you to settle down, huh?” you joke back, half-distracted as you doodle a heart onto his skin.
“Wants me to move out, more like.”
“I’m sure he’d appreciate the bed.”
Eddie scoffs. “Yeah, right. That old geezer’s practically in love with his Laz-E-Boy.”
He watches with glimmering eyes as you laugh. Then he’s smiling because you’re smiling. He isn’t sure how else he’s supposed to look at you. How could anyone possibly look at you and not hold so much love in their eyes?
You haven’t yet let go of his arm, he notices, as you cradle his wrist in your grasp and swipe your thumb over the blotchy blue veins there. Your gaze is pointed down to where you hold him. There’s a distant grin on your face as you admire such a minute piece of him.
He wants so badly to kiss you.
He could. All he’d have to do, really, is move his head a couple inches and he’d brush the apple of your cheek. The skin would warm against his lips until he ducked down to kiss you for real. 
And he feels just bold enough to ask you, but not quite enough to say the words out loud. Instead, they sit impatiently on the edge of his tongue while he waits for the right moment to say them. The wind blows, and it passes.
“It wouldn’t be totally crazy if I kissed you right now, would it?” you ask him first, looking at him through your lashes like you’re scared he might reject you.
He glows pink, momentarily stunned that you beat him to the punch, then worried that you might’ve read his mind. He plays it cool with a shrug and a shake of his head. “No… Not unless it’s totally crazy how bad I want you to kiss me right now.”
You don’t waste any time. You gravitate towards him like you were made to do it and he meets you easily halfway.
When your lips lock, it feels like a routine. Kissing you is like a cup of coffee and the morning paper and a rocking chair on a front porch — something he could do forever and ever and not get bored of.
You kiss him so soft, more gentle than anyone’s ever been with him, but your tongue swipes into his open mouth, and it’s dirty. 
Eddie still isn’t sure how a person could touch him the way you do. You’re all sweet, like you’re frightened you might break him, but you aren’t scared to kiss him like he’s yours.
As good as it feels to have him against you this way, the position you’re in isn’t any less awkward. Your upper-half is still twisted to face him and he has to lean slightly over to touch you completely.
He explores the cavern of your mouth with a more confident tongue than you remember him having while ten ringed fingers press into your ribs. 
Eddie can feel your mouth contort in a smile. He thinks it’s because he’s tickling you, but you’re just in love and totally giddy with it.
The wooden edge of the bench digs into your spine. The ache distracts you from feeling him the way you want to — the way you need to — so you make a split-second decision to rise from your seat and rest your bottom on the table.
Your lips click wetly, almost out of protest, when they part.
You use the palms of your hands to lift you and prop your sneakers on the bench seat when you sit down again. You wait patiently for Eddie to accommodate you, to rise and keep kissing you the way he was just kissing you. 
He does. Eventually.
He just needed a few moments to gather himself when your new position flashes him the faintest glimpse of your panties — all black and dotted with little red hearts that have started to fade with time.
His eyes widen and he everts his gaze immediately. His cheeks and the tip of his nose go red, like he’d been caught looking at something he wasn’t supposed to be looking at. It’s sort of stupid. You were getting off on his thigh some days ago, and now you’re kissing him like you mean to swallow him whole, surely you wouldn’t mind him peeking.
If he were someone totally different, he might’ve spread your legs, dug his fingers into the fat of your thighs, and put his mouth on you like he wanted to do three nights ago — like he’s been wanting to do for ages.
But he doesn’t.
He just sits there, for what feels like forever, feeling like a total idiot.
But if you notice his hesitancy, you don’t show it. You just cup his warm cheeks in your hands and drag him up to you. Eddie isn’t enough of a dumbass to reject your affections.
He happily melts into your touch once more while the both of you maneuver like a bunch of lovesick teenagers around the bench — rather than just part momentarily to move more efficiently.
You round the table so you’re propped on the outside of it and Eddie’s no longer confined in the seat. If making out and multitasking was an olympic sport, you and Eddie would take the gold, no doubt.
It’s hopelessly high school, the way you make out like teenagers in some clearing, known only to Eddie’s most loyal customers and a golden orange sky. 
It feels rebellious and raunchy, like you’ve just snuck out of Mr. Kaminsky’s lecture on chemical bonds to fuck under the bleachers. You kiss each other and it feels like you’re doing something so much more than yourselves.
Eddie touches you and you feel like a kid again. Everything’s just new experiences and stomachs full of butterflies — heartache is virtually nonexistent. 
As far as you’re concerned, you’ve never been kissed before now. 
You had no idea someone could hold so much love in their mouth and then kiss you with it. You’re so used to tongue and teeth and spit, not these slow and sweet pecks that feel like white clouds and summer rain.
Every now and then, Eddie will slot his kiss-bitten bottom lip between the plush of your swollen mouth. And he’ll just stay there, for several long moments, just to feel you. His ringed fingers rise to cradle your jaw to keep you against him. His nose knocks against the bridge of yours and his heavy breaths fan against your cupid’s bow.
You’re not sure why he does this, why he chooses to be so soft with you when he knows he could have you however he wants. You’re a kitten purring against his chest now, all pliable and willing for him, but he just likes how still and soft you are like this.
You let him kiss you the way he likes. You notice he takes acute infatuation with your bottom lip, biting softly and pulling at the skin until it’s a plump pink thing for him to suck into his mouth.
Every swipe of his tongue against yours is experimental and methodical. He finds what makes you exhale the heaviest moans and keeps doing that until you’re a puddle of a woman in his hands.
Oh, god. His hands.
It’s almost unfair how kind they are. 
One keeps a steady, warm hold on your cheek. He can feel the way you start to soften as you lean more and more into his touch. The other has fallen to your thigh. His fingertips settle beneath the skirt you picked out specifically for him, but don’t move any further than that.
He just likes the feel of you, it seems, as he pets the softness of your skin. Occasionally, he’ll squeeze and marvel at the feeling of your thigh in his grasp and the way it makes you moan against him. The feeling of his silver rings against you makes chill bumps erupt on your skin.
You’re unsure if he knows the effect he has on you. Surely, he must, you figure — just days ago you were falling apart on his thigh and here you are now, willing to do it all over again. 
He touches you like he knows. Like he takes pleasure in teasing you until you’re all but begging for more. And you’re not the least bit ashamed to do it, either. His touch, his hand down your panties, it isn’t a want — it’s a need.
You take Eddie’s wrist in your impatient hand, moving his palm further and further beneath your skirt until it’s pressed against the dampening cotton of your underwear. “Touch me, Eds,” you plead against his mouth, already breathless.
The boy tenses.
It’s a dream come true in the most literal sense, to feel you like this. You cling to his consciousness wherever he goes. You’ve spent so many nights plaguing his dreams that they’ve started to feel like nightmares. He’d wake up in the middle of the night, achingly hard and shuddering with cold sweats at the mere thought that he’d never get to have you the way he always dreamt of having you. 
But it’s here now, lying beneath a heart-patterned cloth, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. 
He’s not scared of you exactly, just of everything else. 
His hand has never gotten anyone off but himself. He’s scared that he won’t make you feel good, or worse, that he’ll hurt you — he’s scared of himself. He’s terrified of losing you and you’re not even his. 
It’s everything else that frightens him, but not you. Not when you’ve got your legs spread out before him and begging him to touch you. Not when you act like you want to be his.
Rather than deprive himself of the dream of you, Eddie decides to hook his pointer finger around the hem of your panties and slide them to the side.
With your pussy concealed by the pleated skirt you wear, he’s forced to work blindly while he touches you. He doesn’t mind, though. He takes the opportunity to feel you as it’s presented to him on a silver platter — the softness of your lips, the trimmed mound of hair above them, the slick coating your warmed skin.
You feel like silk and velvet. A material that’s far too expensive to touch. It makes him feel like he’s ruining you in some way.
Eddie’s open-mouthed, heavy breaths fan against your lips, all nicotine and mint gum. Your eyes flutter shut at the feeling of him — billowing across your jaw, pressed between your thighs, fingers treating your pussy like it’s a piece of delicate art.
“More,” you beg in a dream-coated sigh and spread yourself further for him. You’ve got one hand twisted in his leather jacket and the other flipping up the skirt of your dress, putting yourself on display for him — a piece of delicate art indeed.
You’re laid out before him, all at once, bare and glistening with need. 
He’s seen plenty of vaginas in his time, usually photographed in a centerfold of a magazine or half-blurry through a botched VHS tape. But, for obvious reasons, you’re quite different. 
You’re beautiful. The kind of beauty that men would’ve fallen on their swords for a time ago, the kind you’re lucky to see in a lifetime. That’s a bit what it feels like to look at you. He looks at you, and he sees a cotton candy sunset over mountains that touch the clouds or clear blue waters that go on for infinity.
Even like this, with your pussy on display for him — in a moment that’s supposed to be dirty — it’s a serene sort of beautiful. You need to be hung up in a museum, Eddie thinks to himself, in the Louvre or some shit — because a freak show from the middle of nowhere shouldn’t get to just have you like this.
He slots his middle finger between your lips, for once not overthinking when the urge to feel you takes over. You soak his appendage with ease, the slick only adding to your softness. He dips down to the dimple of your opening and rises to the peak of your swelling clit. He notices how it makes you twitch against him. 
It feels like being you’re touched for the first time. Unfolded and cherished like some sort of expensive gift. You’re not used to this sort of tenderness. No one’s taken things this slow with you before. The way he’s making you feel good is for him just as much as it is for you. It’s unfamiliarly blissful to be handled with so much care.
Eddie watches with heavy and attentive eyes as your head tips back, like you’re starting to drown in your own pleasure and unbothered to keep yourself afloat. Your contented sighs and gentle tremors spur him forward. Those subtle praises almost equal the pleas that spill from your kissed mouth. 
It makes him stop worrying about how to do all this without being totally obvious that he’s never done any of it before.
Everything he knows, he’s gotten from poorly produced porn. He doesn’t want to treat you like that. Like you’re some toy or plaything or a game to be won. He wants to take things slow and treat you right because it’s becoming more and more obvious to him that no one’s ever done that for you.
He’ll be your first, if you’ll be his.
He finds himself grateful for how responsive you are. He doesn’t need to know everything there is to know about sex or ask you for direction like an idiot because your pussy tells him what to do. 
You tremble every time the pad of his finger swipes against your clit. He can feel you clench around nothing every time he dips towards your opening, as if in a silent plea. You tell him what you like without saying anything, but rather by drenching him in clear-coated honey.
His eyes have trouble flitting away from your pleasure-ridden face and down to where he coaxes you open. His finger glistens with your wetness. Beneath a setting sun, it looks like the sparkling rays over an ocean.
“Fuck,” he huffs, almost moaning. “You’re so fucking wet.”
“Sorry…” you mutter meekly.
“What?” Eddie finds himself laughing softly, brows furrowing in confusion at your sudden embarrassment. That’s not the response he was expecting. “Why are you apologizing?”
Your skin burns hot at his question — no longer warmed from pleasure, but out of pure self-consciousness. It’s a conversation you’re used to now, but it hasn’t gotten any easier. With his finger still caught in your drenched pussy, you find it suddenly hard to meet his gaze and instead peer at him through your lashes.
“I don’t know,” you murmur. “Some guys think it’s gross… And messy—”
“Screw ‘em,” he blurts. His brown eyes twinkle with a newfound confidence, not one of the unabashed metalhead drug dealer, but one of a boy whose head over heels for a girl who doesn’t know what it means to be truly cared for. “It’s sexy,” he assures you.
A shy smile hints at the corners of your lips, innocently comforted by the promise and pleased by the compliment. “Really?”
“I promise, sweetheart,” he tells you with a wholehearted nod. He means it more than anything he’s ever said. “Cross my goddamn heart.”
He leans in to press his lips against yours then, just because it feels right to, and you graciously accept his affection. 
Eddie’s kisses come in innocent, loving pecks that are far too sweet in comparison to the way he’s making you feel. His finger traces the slick gathering at your opening, not having to force his way in because your pussy is more than wanting.
Both of you let out low moans when he’s finally inside of you. He doesn’t stop until the silver of his ring is pressed into the outside of your pussy.
You’re wrapped around him like velvet, warm and tight velvet that won’t let him go. He works hard to find a steady rhythm that you like and watches your every reaction intently.
You’ve got your lip dragged between your teeth, biting so hard that the fragile skin has started to blanch. Your eyes have fluttered slowly shut with a frown forming between your brows in a vague concentration as you focus on your own pleasure.
You seem to like it most when he’s crooking his finger rather than thrusting them inside of you. At least, that’s what he assumes, as he reaches a much softer spot within you that makes you jolt against him.
Your hand darts to his wrist, not to tug him away or pull him any closer, just to tether yourself to him.
“Can you— fuck—” you sputter when the palm of his hand bumps against your clit. “Can you add another finger? Please?”
You’re all whiny and breathy like you’re begging him, like there’s any chance he might deny you. Eddie’s not exactly in the business of saying no to you. 
He slides his ring finger in with his middle. He marvels at how snugly they fit inside you and how the sticky nectar coats his skin. Your wetness has gathered around his silver rings, including the one with the skeleton hand you were complimenting earlier.
He doesn’t ever want to wash them again... Not that he ever did in the first place, but he makes a vow not to start now.
Eddie doesn’t know it, but this is the part where you usually get embarrassed. Sometimes you think you’re too sensitive, too responsive. You’ve found that there’s a threshold between being sexy and being needy that most guys tend to enjoy. But, for you, it's a finicky thing and you find yourself crossing it before you realize it.
You moan too loud, talk too much, whine too often. Nearly everyone you’ve ever been with has said so in some way or another — mostly in gentle approaches that are observations more than anything. But some boys aren’t so nice. They say that you get too turned on, the wetness coating your pussy is evidence of that, and they tell you that’s it’s gross.
But here, now, with Eddie, there’s little room for embarrassment.
He tells you that you’re pretty, swears up and down that the way your slick trickles down his fingers is sexy. And for the first time in your life, you find yourself actually believing someone who tells you that.
You let him pry you open with slow and meticulous touches. You can feel his bent fingers deep inside you, exploring the slick velvet of your walls, and rubbing at the spot that makes you keen. It’s got your back arching and thighs trembling by his waist, toes curling inside your sneakers while you keep a tight grip on his wrist.
“Rub my clit, Eds,” you plead breathlessly with your eyes shut tight. You’re about to come, you can feel the tightening coil in the pit of your belly, you just need a little bit more. “Please, Eddie— please, touch my clit—”
He’s hasty in his attempts to comply to your request. He barely lets the words leave your mouth before he presses the pad of his thumb just above the hood of your clit. And it doesn’t feel bad per se, it actually feels pretty damn good, it’s just not where you need him most.
It’s not the first time a guy’s had trouble finding your clit and you figure it won’t be the last, so you opt guide him with a helping hand. You maneuver his thumb until it’s pressed snuggly against your swollen button. 
Eddie watches attentively as it makes you whine. You arch your back, pressing yourself further against him, as a moan rises from the depths of your chest and spills out of your mouth. You pull him somehow closer by the lapel of his jacket. 
He takes every unspoken criticism to heart, along with every one of your wordless praises. His acute attention to what you like the most — how his thumb on your clit makes you clench around him, how you moan every time he rubs against that foreign spongy spot inside of you, and how he keeps on doing that because he can tell that you like it — sends you to an otherworldly place pleasure.
It’s different from guys that are just good from experience. Most do the same old shit that gets their girl off because they know they’ll get off in the end, too.
Eddie’s attentiveness is unfamiliar and spellbinding, all-consuming and unavoidable. A pleasure you’re both chasing and wanting to run away from out of fear it might be too much.
“Is this okay?” he whispers to you, breath fanning across your cheek.
You nod wordlessly in reply, with your lip caught between your teeth as you fight to bite back the cry building in your throat. It’s hard to when he’s so intently hitting every spot that makes you dizzy. The moan that inevitably spills from your mouth sounds wet, like you might really start to cry.
“Fuck,” you wail when your stomach tenses. His fingers, deep in the confines of your pussy and rubbing at your clit, are relentless. Pleasure’s biting at your ankles now and you have no way to stop it from swallowing you whole. “Feels so good, Eds—”
Your mouth hangs open as you drop your head down to watch him work you open.
His ringed fingers are coated with you, a sheen of honey that drips down his fingers and onto the silver wrapped around them. You’re hopelessly spread open for him, your pussy blooming like a flower at the promise of springtime for the boy, and then tightening around him to keep him trapped inside you.
It’s dirty, like a lewd piece of art that you can’t help but gawk out.
You fight to keep your heavy eyes open. You want to watch what he’s doing to you, but it’s a harder feat than you could’ve ever imagined. Pleasure rises so violently in you. You’re frightened you might burst entirely.
“I’m gonna come,” you whimper. It’s a warning to you but for him, it’s a promise. Your head tilts back again, face scrunched in a gentle sort of horror, like you’re scared at how good you feel. “Please don’t stop. Oh my god, Eds— Please don’t stop. Please, please, please—”
Eddie presses a gentle kiss to the buzzing skin of your cheek. He whispers his slurred promises there, too. “I’m not gonna stop, sweetheart. Not gonna stop until you want me to, ‘kay? Not until you’re pushing me away. Wanna make you come so many times you can’t take it—”
You clenched around him at his words. His fingers, trapped in your velvet, struggle to move within you as you tighten. The thumb on your clit works you through your orgasm.
Your mouth hangs open in a silent moan while your hand grips his wrist something fierce. Pleasure builds and builds and builds, striking you like lightning so suddenly, and reducing you to a shuddering mess on the picnic table in front of him.
“There you go,” Eddie whispers in your ear through his own trembling breaths. “Yeah, keep going for me— keep coming.”
You comply.
You don’t have much of a choice in the matter, anyway.
Your orgasm runs over you like a dozen fucking freight trains. You’re caught in your own riptide of pleasure, drowning in it with no way of getting out. With no choice but to endure it, you whine and writhe against him while his hand stays trapped between your trembling thighs. It forces you to feel all of it until you can’t take it anymore. Just like he promised.
The pleasure passes. The vice-like grip your pussy had on his fingers lessens. The high fades. But Eddie keeps going. You don’t feel much of it at first, still pleasantly numb and buzzing, then you realize how sensitive you are.
He crooks his fingers faster, rubbing against the swollen spot inside you, while the pad of his thumb presses steadily against your clit.
You’re sloppy and wet and still gushing from the fading orgasm. A second one wouldn’t be too hard to reach, not with Eddie touching you the way he is just now, but you’re scared that it might be too much.
The I can barely see, we need to lay down a towel, hold me while I float into subspace sort of too much.
“Mm-mm,” you hum softly in protest, twitching against him while you squeeze his wrist. You feel his fingers still within you.
A lazy smile plays on your lips as you tilt your face towards an orange sun, all fucked out and beautiful. Eddie could stare at you for ages and find something new to love.
“No more. I need… Need a break.”
You shudder when his fingers drag slowly out of you, trying hard not to jostle you too much. The pads of them have started to prune slightly. His ring and middle finger stick together with a mixture of your come, he separates them to watch your honey stretch and break apart. 
He doesn’t know what to do with them. If he should wipe them on his jeans, or if that would be too barbaric of him. If he should stick them in his mouth to finally get a taste of you, or if you might think that’s too much.
You beat him to the punch, just like you always do, as you grab him by the wrist and bring his fingers to your mouth. Your eyes are still half-closed as you run your tongue over his skin, sucking at them like they were his cock — god, he wishes it were his cock.
He watches you with his own heavy gaze and an agape plump pink mouth, stunned at how you could do something so sexy without thinking. He has no idea how you manage to find ways to become more beautiful just when he thinks you’ve run out.
When you pull off of him, you do it all slow, like you’re teasing him. A soft, wet pop sounds when your lips leave his fingers. You smile like a fucking minx at him when you do.
“Was that— Was that good for you?” Eddie asks you with a nervous, doe-eyed chocolate button gaze. You’re unsure how he could make you feel so good and then worry that it still wasn’t enough.
“It was perfect, Eds,” you promise, then joke: “If you don’t believe me… believe the wet spot you made me leave on this fucking table.”
It makes both of you laugh like a pair of lovesick idiots. 
Your hands rise to his jaws, fingers getting lost in his wild curls as you drag him to you again.
He keeps a pair of steady hands on your hips as you lick hungrily into his mouth, kissing him like you haven’t gotten tired of kissing him yet. And when you part, you leave one, two, three more pecks against his lips.
“So… This is what you came out here for, huh?” Eddie jokes with his signature stupid grin that you want to kiss all over again. “You didn’t even want the weed, you just wanted to use me. I’m wounded, sweetheart. Truly.”
“Mm-mm,” you shake your head with your bottom lip caught between your teeth. “Came out here to see you… This part was just a bonus.”
He happily accepts the kiss you give him, though he tenses against you when your hands travel from his jaw and to his chest, trickling down his torso like drops of rain until they rest on his belt. 
“Something tells me you don’t mind either way,” you murmur against him when your palm settles against his hard cock trapped in his tight jeans.
He can hardly hear you, though, too trapped in his own head. 
He can’t fuck you out here, not like this.
Maybe it’s too stereotypical for a virgin, but he wants his first time with you to be on a real bed and not some bench that threatens you with splinters. He wants to wine and dine you, and treat you right like he’s supposed to, not fuck you in the middle of nowhere like you’re a plaything he can do whatever he wants with.
But he doesn’t know how to tell you all this, so he parts from you with a wet click and shakes his head. “You don’t— You don’t have to—”
“I want to, Eds,” you assure him. “I promise.”
“I can’t… I mean, I guess, I’m not really…” he stammers out. He has no idea what to say to you, totally at a loss of how to turn you down. The way you clutch his covered dick, make his toes curl in his sneakers and his brain go all stupid, doesn’t exactly help either.
“What?” you tease with a light-hearted chuckle as you squeeze his rock-solid cock through the denim. “Not really hard?”
“No, it’s just…” he breathes out a laugh, or rather tries to.
He watches with wide and frightened eyes as you work at his belt buckle, struggling to unfasten it without his assistance. There’s a tug-of-war playing in his brain right now, because he wants you — he wants you so bad — but not like this.
Not when he hasn’t been completely honest with you.
It’s not fair to either of you. 
Least of all when he has to turn you away without explaining why.
“I don’t think we— we really shouldn’t,” he tries to let you down easy, but to you it just sounds like he’s being coy, playing with you so you’ll beg to suck his cock. And you keep on going because you’re not totally above that. “No, really. I can’t— seriously, stop. We need to stop.”
The sudden firmness in his voice makes you still. Eddie’s never talked to you like that before. The stern, foreign words he spits at you tells you that he’s serious.
You jerk away from him like he’s burned you.
Embarrassment sets fire to your face.
“Sorry. I just— I thought that— I just wanted to return the favor,” you stammer out in an apology, frightened you’ve crossed a line with him.
No one’s ever turned down a blowjob from you before. Most times, that’s all guys want.
“No, yeah, I know,” Eddie nods understandingly when he sees how you’ve started to shrink into yourself. He steps back from you and tucks his belt back through the loop of his jeans “I just… I— I have more customers coming… And everything, so…”
“Right.”
“Yeah. And I don’t really, you know— I don’t want them to see…” he trails off with a shrug because that’s easier than saying, I don’t want them to see you sucking my dick. No one deserves to see you like that. That’s for my eyes only.
It would’ve been something short of a compliment had he said it out loud. You would’ve blushed with a shy, cheeky smile — “For your eyes only, huh?” you would’ve teased like you weren’t enlightened by the prospect of belonging to him and him only.
But because he doesn’t say that, you take on a whole other meaning to his words. I don’t want them to see me with the town whore, you can imagine him thinking. I might be the freak, but being associated with the slut would be a whole new low. 
Maybe it’s irrational thinking, but it wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened to you. The fear has turned into a full-blown phobia.
You’ve made a boogeyman out of the clothes in your closet because you’re so frightened of him leaving you. And he doesn’t even fucking belong to you.
“Right,” you echo with a nod. “Okay.”
You find it suddenly hard to meet his gaze as you slip off the bench, sliding your panties back into place before pulling your skirt down again.
You’re so deep in your own head, wallowing in your woe, that when Eddie leans down to kiss you, you jerk away from on instinct. Like your body’s telling you not to play with fire, something that’s destined to burn you.
Because Eddie can’t ever belong to you. In some ways, you can’t really belong to him either, not when you’ve belonged to half of Hawkins.
But your wordless rejection sends a shock to his heart, a bolt of blue that pierces the beating organ. Your denial feels like heartbreak and you can see the anguish coat his features. He looks at you look a wounded puppy, glassy eyes going wide and thick brows frowning softly as he wonders what he did so wrong.
You kiss him anyway, if only to tell him that he didn’t do anything wrong — that it’s all you and your stupid brain that won’t let you enjoy a good thing while you’ve got it. It’s the briefest little peck, a brush of your lips against his, and it has his mouth tingling anyway.
“I’ll call you later?” he says to you, though it comes out as more of a question than he intended it to.
You shrug with pursed lips, then try your best to smile. “Whatever you want.”
Eddie watches you walk away and feels like an idiot to let you go. 
He can tell that he’s upset you. You’ve had too many shitty experiences with guys not to be weary of another, and he knows that.
But he also knows he’s a total fucking coward — he’s always ran away from things, never towards something. Because that shit? — That shit was fucking scary, even for a so-called devil-worshipping freak.
But he finds himself hurrying towards you anyway.
His raggedy sneakers practically float on air as something short of muscle memory carries him towards you before you can get too far away.
And when he reaches you, he takes you by the arm, spins you and pulls you towards him. You barely get the chance to blink before he presses his mouth against yours.
He cradles you by the neck, resting large palms on either side of it, as he slots his lips against yours. And he does that thing where he just rests his kiss there, just feels you. 
Eddie notices when you relax against him. You sigh against his cupid’s bow, your hands fall to his waist, and you melt totally into him. Your lips untangle slowly and tingle when he parts from you. You know you’ll be feeling him there all night… there and everywhere else.
“I’m gonna call you later,” he tells you, voice confident and unwavering.
He hopes you understand what he really means by them — whatever you want, you’d said when you saw how unsure he was. And now he’s telling you what he wants, not to make some stupid phone call, but that he wants you.
He can tell you get the hint when you smile at him. It looks like the pinky-orange sunset that bathes you in warm-colored hues. 
You nod. “I’ll be waiting.”
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have any more virgin!eddie thoughts? or just thoughts about my writing/requests in general? leave them here if you want! ꒰◍ᐡᐤᐡ◍꒱
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faith-forgxtten-land · 2 months
Note
If I may oh-so-humbly request smth else:
Bayverse Leo x back scratches/shoulder rubs
How would Fearless react to a partner that is always ready and willing to help him release the tensions that leading his brothers and being a vigilante cause? Maybe his reaction to the first time his gf comes up behind him when he's sitting on the couch, frustrated at something and starts to knead the tightness from his shoulders?
Thanks again💙
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Balm | Leonardo
i'm not kidding when i had a plan to write something along these lines yesterday morning and started writing ideas in my notes app... also, hello, leo's eyes in this gif????
okay this one kind of got away from me i won't lie. even i'm not sure how it ended up how it ended up. so, i'm adding in little headcanons at the start to make up for my detour because i did not expect to get angsty and introspective and barely include what you specifically asked for...
warnings: kind of longer than i thought, i fear it drags. angsty, sad leo, nothing really? fluffy ish too. bad writing that's not proofread. everyone is 18+!! bayverse
summary: leo is tense and brooding but your delicate touch and kind words are what he needs
word count: 1, 375 (incl. headcanons)
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
he's not really expecting it at all
gets extra tense the first time and worries a little that his skin is too rough and his muscles are too hard for your human hands
meditation is the be-and-end-all of "relaxation" for him (and he has a tendency to see it as training and a way of pushing himself even if he enjoys it and it's good for him)
so having someone take care of him in such a tender way without any motivation beyond comfort kind of breaks his brain
his shoulders and neck are wrecked
your hands are so tiny on his body that means you have to massage a lot to reach every spot, right? right? he is obsessed now
feels a bit hesitant to ask for a while at first, but you spoil him and he's easy to read
becomes a ritual for the both of you after he's been out on patrol
but you like doing it any time for comfort and intimacy
it's become habit for you to massage or brush your fingers against his shoulders whenever you pass him by
definitely brings you closer together
.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.
Leo couldn’t remember the last time he slept. His head was pounding, an unrelenting percussion beating across his temples, and he could feel a wave of nausea crashing against his chest, a tell-tale sign that he’d been pushing himself too far. It was a sign that he tended to ignore (foolishly so, a mini voice that sounded suspiciously like Splinter chided). His hands trembled imperceptibly, and he gripped his knees to avoid acknowledging it a little longer.
He must’ve been really out of it because he jumped when he felt a pair of warm hands settle upon his shoulders. A burning shame fanned smoke that clogged his throat, a humiliation stitched into his veins that your touch couldn’t cleanse. “Leo?”
He couldn’t reply, letting himself recline and press gently against your palms instead. “Leo,” you murmured again, and he glanced at you tiredly, normally bright blue eyes hollow with exhaustion. You looked pensive and worried, brows drawn and eyes soft, wearing an old shirt he never wore anyway, and he wanted nothing more than to sooth the anxious lines of your face with the fingers that still grasped his knees. A fresh wave of guilt clawed its way into his gut and nestled there. He was worrying you, he knew, and now you weren’t sleeping either. He had warned you before you’d gotten together of what things would be like. Maybe you didn’t believe him at the time, and he wondered if this was the moment you realised and walked out (or he drove you away).
You’d come into his life when things had been eerily calm, and he’d stupidly felt confident that he could juggle everything and still have you, still indulge in something he had refused to let himself consider a realistic possibility. He knew Raph longed for acceptance and comfort and love, and that, despite his insecurities and anger and hurt, he would never stop dreaming of it. Donnie would envisage it quietly, usually agreeing with Leo’s dismissal of acceptance but privately yearning for it more than he’d ever let his family know (but Leo knew). Mikey wanted it too and wasn’t shy about it; he was so happy and sociable and sunny that it made Leo nauseous to repeatedly shut down dreams of the life he deserved. The thing that made Leo truly sick, sick with the world and with himself, was that Mikey truly believed, even after all these years, that he’d succeed in attaining it.
Leo thought he’d succeeded, thought he’d managed to find the thing that tore his brothers up inside without even looking for it (and that only made him hate himself more, something he would never – could never – bring himself to admit to you). You had only been dating a month, but God, he thought he’d found everything he had always refused himself. Love and acceptance outside of his family weren’t things Leo allowed himself to consider before. As a teenager, he’d meditated over and over to clear those useless longings from his mind. Then you appeared in his life out of nowhere like an apparition, offering solace and tenderness, and he didn’t want to refuse himself those impossibilities anymore.
Perhaps he’d been too hasty, it wasn’t like him to throw caution to the wind, to dive in headfirst. He hadn’t considered the implications enough, had been foolish to think he could be a leader, a hero, a brother, and a lover to you, and now here he was trembling and feeling sorry for himself with your sad eyes watching him and cutting straight to his core.
“Mikey got hurt,” he rasped. He’d let Mikey get hurt, he added silently, and somehow you must’ve heard him.
“Mikey is fine, back in one piece thanks to you,” you shot him a half-smile that made his heart stutter even at a time like this. “He was practically bouncing off the walls when his stitches were finished.” 
Leo didn’t reply.
You placed your hand against his cheek, and he clenched his jaw to stop himself nuzzling into its softness. “It’s not your fault.”
“They’re my responsibility and I failed them,” he said simply. They’re my brothers and I didn’t protect them. “Things are getting worse with the Foot Clan and I–” I don’t know what to do.
Your sad eyes were somehow even sadder, and it made his own sting. He blinked quickly. “You’re not infallible and invincible, Blue; your brothers know that, your father knows that. You do your best.” What happened when his best wasn’t good enough? You clasped his jaw tighter, somehow reading his mind again. “You’re more than good enough, you can’t control everything, and you can’t keep carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
The terrapin let you remove his gear, the heavy straps that had been digging into the hardened skin of his shoulders. You pressed soft kisses into the scales, and he closed his eyes at the reverence in your delicate touches as your nails trailed along his shell. “Everything will be okay,” you whispered, the heat of your breath soothing his still-trembling hands and warming his soul. “Your brothers are safe,” another kiss as gentle as moonlight, “I’m safe,” one more to the junction between his shoulder and neck that made his eyelids flutter, “and you’re the most incredible man I’ve ever known.”
Leo hated the shakiness of his breathing, torn between the urge to tense further and wanting to melt into your touch, as your fingers kneaded the strain poisoning his muscles. You pretended not to notice, movements heartbreakingly tender. Had anyone ever been this gentle with him?
“You do more than anyone could ever ask you to. Well,” you amended softly, a hint of fond exasperation colouring your tone, “anyone but yourself.” Your hands continued to work in tandem with your words, one a balm to the aches of his body and the other a balm to the aches your hands couldn’t wash away. “You do so much for this city, for people who won’t ever know it.”
The churrs that rumbled his chest were deep and Leo couldn’t do anything to prevent the unwinding of his limbs and the slowing of his anxious thoughts under the comforting weight of your affection and acceptance. He brought his hand up to clasp one of your own. You were so small it made his heart clench with fear and desire, and for a moment he felt that familiar feeling of inadequacy at his own monstrosity before you chased it away with a loving kiss to each fingertip. He swallowed thickly as you managed to tangle your fingers with his, your hands slotting together with ease. You smiled at him and kissed the top of his head, squeezing his hand, and he pushed himself deeper into your embrace. Looking at your joined hands again, Leo pressed his lips reverently against each knuckle, feeling like if Icarus had somehow managed to cradle the sun. He repeated the kisses once, then twice. Thank you.
You smile wider and he lets you lead him to his bed and your accepting arms.
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xxresi-rotxx · 9 months
Text
Harsh Ending pt 3 (NSFW)
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Hot damn it's been too f*cking long! I just want to say if you're reading this, ily so much<3 I started this tumblr just to get out the brain rot in my head for this man, and I love having found so many ppl who feel the same<3 enjoy bb;)
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By the time Leon found you, he was fuming. How the fuck had you gotten this far away? From what he knew about this parasite it should have slowed you down if anything, not made you faster.
You were trying your absolute hardest to get your breathing under control. Your breath coming out in short, quick pants. The sound of your blood pumping only increasing in your ears as you kept hearing an unfamiliar voice speak to you. If you weren't so out of breath, you'd be pissed. You were slumped against the base of a tree, fighting to keep your eyes open as extreme exhaustion began to settle its way into your features. You hadn't even heard the agent sneak up on you.
"Y/n?" Leon asked, putting the back of his hand against your forehead, confirming what he already thought.
"Fuck you're burning up. Y/n?" He called your name again.
Leon? Was Leon speaking to you? His voice sounded so faint you weren't really sure.
"Goddammit," Leon muttered under his breath as he went to slide his arms under you, attempting to pick you up. His heart sank a little when you didn't fight him back. No comment, no movement, no resistance from you at all. The parasite was progressing faster than he hoped it would. He had to get you back to Luis and get that medicine in you.
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You woke up feeling groggy as hell and in a bed you didn't quite remember. It wasn't your bed, that was for sure. You didn't really feel as if you had slept either. Your exhaustion fading slightly as you moved to sit up. That's when it dawned on you.
Spain. Ashley. Las Plagas.
Panic immediately set in as you went to reach for your pistol, only to notice it wasn't there. Neither was your knife, or any of your tac gear for that matter.
"Feeling okay?"
Leon's voice startled and calmed you at the same time. He must have taken your tac gear.
"Yeah, just a little tired and," you trailed off, rubbing the back of your neck, feeling how stiff all of your muscles felt.
"Out of it?" He finished for you.
You nodded your head in agreement.
You half expected to see the black veins crawling their way up your arms, but you couldn't find any.
"Luis has medicine, it didn't get rid of the plaga but it should have slowed it down." Leon said, answering the question you were thinking but hadn't asked.
"Y/n," Leon spoke your name, causing you to turn your head and look at him, "you know Luis has a lab here that can remove the parasite."
He wasn't asking you, but you nodded your head anyway, you did know that.
"Why did you run?"
Run? When had you...?
Everything came crashing back to you in an instant. Making your head ache slightly.
You had run, fast too.
Leon already had his suspicions for why you ran but he needed to hear you say it. You were still trying to protect them. Couldn't you get it through your head that your life was just as important?
"Well?" Leon spoke again when you hadn't answered.
"You know why I ran Leon, are you really going to scold me again for looking out for yo-" you cut yourself off "for Ashley."
You knew there was no way he missed what you were about to say.
And he hadn't. But he didn't deserve to be protected, let alone by you. And especially not at the cost of your life.
"If my tactics bother you so much why go after me in this first place?"
This broke Leon right out of his thoughts.
What the fuck had you just said? He couldn't have heard you properly.
"I get you didn't want me on this mission but what I don-"
"No, I didn't want you on this mission."
Leon interrupted you.
"But you have no fucking clue why that is do you?"
Leon was walking towards you now, kneeling beside the bed you were resting on.
"Do you?" He asked again.
"I'm sure it has to do with my lack of protecting-"
"Yourself," again he cut you off, "your lack of protecting yourself. Do you have any idea how fucking nerve wracking it is to have to focus on Ashley when all I'm concerned about is you?"
You could tell Leon was clenching his fists based on how his arms were flexing. There's no way he was saying what you thought he was...was he?
You opened your mouth to respond but cut yourself off. What were you even supposed to say to that? Sorry? Explain please?
You locked eyes with Leon then, your breath hitching in your throat. God, why did he have to be so fucking beautiful? You took a moment to let your eyes wander down to his mouth, picking up on how hard he was breathing. When you trailed your eyes back to his, you could have sworn you saw his pupils get bigger.
"Say you'll stop me."
"What?" you responded, breaking out of your trance.
"Say you'll stop me if I'm wrong about this."
You could see Leon shifting his weight closer to you, getting up from where he was on the floor and moving to sit on the bed.
"I'm not so sure I could stop myself," he adds, "I'm going to need to hear you say it."
Everything finally clicked in your brain. Why he was so furious at you for protecting others over yourself, why he brought you back, why he was so pissed you were on this mission; what he was asking of you right now.
"I'll stop you." You responded in one quick breath, already anticipating what was to come.
"Thank fuck." Leon moved fast, pushing you against the headboard, resting his hands on either side caging you in. His mouth crashing on yours, a low moan emitting from him the second he felt your lips move against his.
The kiss was intense; messy and fast as his lips explored yours. As if he was pouring all of his frustration into this kiss and taking it all out on you.
When you let your tongue slide against his bottom lip you could feel him tense, his grip on the backboard of the bed growing tighter. His lips were so soft and plump, warm and inviting. You wanted to devour him, taste everything he had to offer.
Feeling your tongue Leon eagerly turned the kiss into more. Your tongues wrestling for dominance as you both drank each other in.
Feeling bolder, you placed your hands against Leon's chest, moving your hands up and down feeling all of the taut muscles underneath his shirt. You began moving your hands lower, letting Leon take control of the kiss while your hands were on a mission.
You could feel the sharp intake of breath Leon had, the gasp he emitted once your hands found what they were looking for.
He was so unbelievably hard for you. Painfully so you thought to yourself as you palmed him through his cargo pants.
Leon broke the kiss, letting his head fall to your shoulder as his breath came out in rough pants, his hands still leaning against the backboard.
"Fuck," he panted, voice coming out slightly higher in octave, "God, fuck please don't stop."
You were mesmerized watching how his body reacted to yours. The way his hips moved on their own, finding rhythm with your hand and grinding into you.
"Do you understand now why this mission has been utter torture for me?"
You let out a little giggle, not to mock Leon's torment, but more so because of the inner turmoil you'd been going through ever since your last conversation with the man. How all those feelings of hurt could have been avoided.
"You think that's funny?"
Leon had lifted his head now and was looking down at you, smirk plastered over his lips.
You had no time to respond before Leon trailed his hand down over your sex. The contact through the clothes making you shiver slightly.
You wanted him so fucking bad. You hadn't realized how empty you felt until his fingers started rubbing circles over you. Applying pressure where you needed it most.
"Fuck, Leon." You drawled out, your hips grinding against his hand, similar to how he had been grinding against yours.
He could just picture it. How insane you'd go from being teased and played with, how you would beg for release, all the cute noises that would come out of you; the way your body would react.
He wanted that, no he craved that, but he was losing his patience faster than he would have liked and his cock felt almost painful pressing against the rough material of his pants.
"Le-leon," you rasped, drawing the man out of his thoughts, "I love that you wanna take your time" oh how wrong you were "but if you don't fuck me soon, I think I might actually lose it."
Fuck, you were perfect.
Leon slipped his hands past the waistband of your panties, feeling the evidence of your arousal. You were more than ready.
Leon flipped you over to your stomach, the sudden change in position making you laugh.
"Grab the headboard for me." Leon instructed, his mouth so close to your ear you could almost feel his lips against you.
"Aren't you going to say please?" You teased him.
Leon chuckled, moving his mouth so that he could nibble on your ear, his hands gripping your waist.
"Please Y/n?" He moaned, doing his best to whimper the end of your name.
You grabbed the headboard instantly, your body immediately going flush hearing Leon moan for you. It sent heat straight to your core. You had never heard the man moan, whimper; hell make anything akin to the sound you just heard as he pleaded with you to do as you were told.
Leon had discarded your clothes and was in the process of discarding his own when he decided to slip a finger in, making sure you were fully prepared. The grip he had on his control now completely gone.
Fuuuuck you were tight. His cock already leaking just on how you felt clenching his finger.
Your back arched, your grip on the headboard tightening.
"Leon for fucks sake," you whined, "stop teasing me. I need this, I want this, pleaaase put it in me?" You tried your best to mimic the whiny plea he used earlier.
It worked. Leon slid himself in slowly, the weight of him resting against you, his grip on your waist tightening. Once he was fully in, he gave you a second, a brief one, to adjust.
"Promise me something" he spoke, keeping himself perfectly still.
"Is this really the best time?" you asked, your hips involuntarily twitching.
"Seeing as I think this is the only time you'll actually listen to me?"
You could almost feel the smirk you were sure was on his face, rolling your eyes you replied.
"Make it quick Kennedy."
"That you'll keep yourself safe, otherwise I might seriously fuck up this whole mission."
"I promise, but only if you'll buy me dinner when we get back."
The smirk on Leon's face grew wider, the fear that maybe your attraction to him being only physical slowly vanishing.
"Promise" he whispered against your back.
There was no warning after that. Leon was thrusting into you as if he was certain a lack of contact would kill him. His thrusts fast and deep, finding that spongey part inside of you and hitting it every time.
You could feel your legs start to give way, The messy pace his thrusts were setting, the rough grip he had on your waist, and the little grunts he'd make every time he pulled out just to plunge back in, had you seeing stars.
"Leon I'm cl-"
"Fuck, wait for me, fuck y/n"
You could feel the erratic way his thrusts become rougher, faster.
He was on the edge, and thankfully you were too.
His thumb found your clit, roughly pushing against it and rubbing it in fast circles.
"Come for me y/n"
Your body answering his command without hesitation. The orgasm rocking it's way through you, sending a shiver across your whole body, the sensitivity in your body heightened as Leon's thumb didn't stop.
Just when you thought you'd actually have to remove his hand, both his hands gripped yours against the headboard, holding you to it as he lost himself inside you, his body shivering just the same as yours had.
You let yourself slump against the bed, utterly spent and exhausted. Leon doing the same, his arm coming to rest across you.
You both laid there, listening to the rise & fall of each other's breaths, taking in the moment, knowing soon enough it would be back to the hell that was this mission.
"Hey y/n?" Leon spoke first.
"Hmm?" you responded, so close to falling asleep.
"When we get back, where should we get dinner?"
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I HOPE YOU ALL ENJOYED LOVELIESSSS! This took me like 2 days to fully finish & proofread lol, incase anyone was wondering lol 😘😘
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witchthewriter · 3 months
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𝐁𝐞𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧 𝐚 𝐩𝐨𝐥𝐲 𝐫𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐩 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐧 & 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧𝐧𝐲 𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐥𝐝 𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐥𝐮𝐝𝐞
⤷ female, ambiguous race, and any size reader. Requests are open, thank you for reading!  
Warnings: swearing, nsfw included (no one under 18 please).
a/n: ghoap is my favourite ship but I always want to be involved so this is fanservice and ... self insert. Anyway, enjoy!
ᴹᵃˢᵗᵉʳˡᶤˢᵗ | ᴹᵃˢᵗᵉʳˡᶤˢᵗ ᴵᴵ
God there is so much I want to say!!! I want to read more ghoap x reader. It's so funnnnn. Anyway, please enjoy - if you have any suggestions or prompts I would be more than happy to answer them &lt;3
𝑺𝑭𝑾🌿
・You were in a relationship with Johnny long before Simon entered the picture
・Johnny had made you absolutely swoon for months, but you were too hesitant to do anything about it. Your insecurities held you back.
・How could someone as gorgeous as this man, nay, god, even look your way.
・But he was looking your way, and crushing so bad that you were all he could think about.
・You found a lot of solace in each other, swapping phone numbers and texting constantly. Johnny's first message was: "heyy bonnie, how'd ye day go? ❤️"
・It took you nearly an hour to reply because all your brain could do was short circuit
・But over the years you became friends, then lovers, moving in together. All while he was still going on missions.
・He took you to meet his family after 3 months of proper dating, and he was so proud to show you off.
"Aye this is she!," he said (yelled) presenting you to his large family. (They didn't believe you existed).
・Your relationship with Johnny has always been based on honesty and humour. You know you can rely on him for anything, even if he can be a bit fookin' cheeky.
・Johnny had told you about his teammates (once he realised you were the person for him).
・And you quickly noticed the way he would speak different about his Lieutenant. Simon Riley.
・A crush...
・You had no issue with it. Crushes were normal, and you knew Johnny was faithful. You also knew Johnny was much to apprehensive to do anything with Simon.
・But one day, when you were picking Johnny up on the tarmac, after a grueling 3 months away. Simon watched as you ran into Johnny's arms. Kept watching as he spun you around, buring his face in your neck.
"Johnny..." you whimpered, pressing soft kisses all over his face.
"Aye, it's me bonnie. Couldn't get rid of me if you tried."
・Tears were in both of your eyes and Simon had to close his own. Swallowing a lump down his throat.
・After you and Johnny had left, Simon stayed in his car for upto 2 hours. Staring out the frontshield window. Confused as fuck.
・How could he fall in love with a person he'd never spoken to? In his deeper, most inner self, he knew he loved Johnny too.
・And when he arrived 'home,' he shucked off his clothes and stayed in the shower. Sitting, letting the water mix with his tears. He would give anything. Anything, to be with you both. But he knew that was ridiculous.
・Surprise. It wasn't ridiculous.
・When you got home, instantly you brought up Johnny's superior.
"Eh, wha' about him, bonnie?" Johnny asked suspiciously, opening the fridge door.
"He likes you."
All you got in response was an eye roll.
"Johnny," there was something in your voice which made him look at you.
"As a ... teammate. As a friend, aye. Yes. Not as anything more."
"I like him too," you cooed. Walking over to the blue-eyed Scotsman.
・He smirked, grabbed your waist and pulled you close, "don't go pryin'."
・You went prying.
・But didn't have to go too far, because Simon was never too far away.
・You bumped into him many times, both with and without Johnny.
・It all came to a head, when your car stopped working and you needed a ride home.
・Simon was more than happy to help.
・Johnny nearly fainted when he opened the door. His partner and his teammate stood in the doorway, a cheeky - almost sheepish smile on yours.
・No matter how hard Simon tried to leave, you made him stay ... and stay he did. You made his tea perfect on the first try.
・Always a dog pile when it's time to go to bed. Arms and legs are splayed over whoever. You might start in the middle but by the morning you're completely on top of Simon while Johnny uses your bum as a pillow
・It took 6 months for Simon to move in. And he brought Riley with him as well. Your cats weren't too happy about that ...
・It's a silent agreement that no one uses the boys' call signs. It's always their real names or pet names.
・Simon and Johnny like to keep their work away from their home life as much as possible.
・On deployment, Johnny and Simon have both agreed that home with you is their solace. You are their person.
・And speaking of being on the same task force; you made Johnny and Simon sit down (with their favourite beverages) to talk it out. Sometimes they wanted you there, other times you knew they needed to be alone.
・But encouraging communication made both men a lot less scared to express their feelings. Even if you could be quite ... aggressive.
"Look, Johnny...it's uh, hard to say... but-"
"No, no, I ken what ye mean-"
"Ah! Let him say it Johnny!" You yelled from another room.
Johnny sighed, blushed and sat straighter in his chair.
"Uh. Yeah well," Simon started to sweat. This was worse than an interrogation.
But before Simon could finish, Johnny just bellowed out in a very gruff Scottish accent, "I love ye Simon Riley!"
And Simon never thought he would feel as elated as he did in that moment.
Until you rounded the corner, sat on Johnny's lap and blushed. "We, love you Simon Riley."
・And you pushed a black box over to him.
𝑹𝒆𝒍𝒂𝒕𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒑 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆𝒔
Would Die For One Other
You (And Johnny) Fell First, But Simon Fell Harder
"Hey can I have a…" (You) x "Yes. Whatever it is. Yes." (Johnny)
"You wear the pants in this relationship" (You) x "oh I wish, I cannot control you at all" (Simon)
The Moon (Simon) and His Star (Johnny)
𝑹𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒄 𝑷𝒍𝒐𝒕 𝑻𝒓𝒐𝒑𝒆
Soulmates Sometimes Come In Threes
𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒎𝒆 𝑺𝒐𝒏𝒈
The Tour by James Newton Howard
Skyfall by the Midnite String Quartet
Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon
(yes there are multiple songs because this relationship deserves it)
𝑁𝑆𝐹𝑊 🔞 No one under the age of 18 past this point, makes me feel weird if you read it.
・Might be a bit of a shock, but Johnny loves to dominate Simon. Especially when they're deployed.
・You gave them the green light to be intimate whenever they wanted, especially when on deploment. But both Simon and Johnny agreed it wasn't the same without you. (Actually makes them feel sad and guilty.)
・Trying new things in the bedroom is something that you and Johnny really enjoy. Simon is more of a calmer, more sensual lover. He doesn't like anything too hardcore.
・He wants to make love, not fuck goddamit!
・You know how couples love going to the farmer's markets on the weekend? Yeah well you and Johnny love going to sex shops.
・Dildos, vibrators, strap ons, nipple clamps, different types of lube...
・Both Johnny and Simon like to be pegged.
・And Simon likes eating ass
・Simon isn't very comfortable with public sex, so you never push him to. But Johnny is all for it.
・You and Johnny love riling Simon up. His stoic demeanour almost triggers you two to make him blush.
・No one can remember how this started, but when both men are at home and it's night ... you start a stripping party. But whatever song it lands on; you HAVE to strip/dance/perform to it.
・It took a while for Simon to even participate, but once he saw how open Johnny and you were, he couldn't resist.
・The first time he joined, the song that he had to strip to was, "Say My Name" by Destiny's Child
・He wasn't so enthusiastic but with a bit of encouragement, he blew your minds'.
・Simon ended it by throwing Johnny and yourself over his shoulders and marching you up to the bedroom. Both you and Johnny laughing your assess off, and pinching Simon's backside.
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lovesickry · 7 months
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- let the light in.
┈⋆⭒ lando norris x rival femdriver!reader [1.8k] ┈⋆⭒ part 1 !
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⎯ find all parts here! ˗ˏˋ ´ˎ˗ .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⎯ contains: 18+, swearing .𖥔 ݁ ˖ ⎯ a/n: its kind of a filler.. ............. comment if you wanna be added to the tag list x
The shred of relief you felt after Miami was only due to the 2 week gap between races, time to focus more and time to maybe, slightly get on with things. Lando Norris had occupied your mind for far too long but no matter how many times you rerouted your thoughts, It wasn’t helping. You were still furious, you just couldn’t afford to be, it was interfering with everything you did now. An obsession, an annoying, tugging, nagging thing in the back of your brain. It wasn't supposed to be like this, you've been impeded before and gotten readily over it, why was time different. It had you hung on it and you hated it.
Since Miami there had been countless articles covering the crash and both you and Lando’s reaction to it. Most were fine, others were less so, but thanks to the work being done by your PR officer who told you exactly what to say when posed with any kind of question regarding the “incident” in Miami. Most unpleasant experiences were completely uninteresting and not warranting any article worthy statements. Proof of Mercedes PR managing skills as you watched Lewis laugh to himself when you spoke through gritted teeth how the crash wasn't “anyone's fault”.
Lewis was amazing, you couldn't have asked for a better teammate. Always calm, always kind and always supportive. He was the first to comfort you after Miami and the first to compliment your driving rather than your "composure". Sadly you couldn't spend every moment with Lewis and when he got some world champion privileges, like picking and choosing his media days, you did not. Which meant on Thursday when it was told to you who would be in press together you nearly had an aneurysm because it would just be you and the 2 McLaren members. Of course, of fucking course. Where was Lewis, anywhere but here. You wished you could’ve gone with him. Maybe when you have a few world championships under your belt Toto will let you skip out on media duties.
༊*·˚ SPANISH GRAND PRIX 2022
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Spain definitely wasn’t cold the first day you arrived on track, briefing with the engineers and teams before being escorted to press. You spoke with Daniel before going in, you know he has it hard with McLaren, they treat him like shit and it’s starting to show, you laughed a bit before you felt Danny go stiff and you knew who must’ve arrived.
“Hey mate” Lando pulls Danny in for a kind of high five, handshake thing. Weird.
You're still just standing there. 
“Oh hey Dylan, I didn’t know we were doing press together”
You smile weakly and nod, you know he's lying. Danny gives you a sympathetic look. 
“Sorry if they ask me a bunch of questions about my win, i know it might be a bit annoying for you” he was half joking, but it still made you fucking mad. 
He was so cocky you fucking hated it. 
“Don’t worry, I’m sure they’ll have lots to say, it is quite a momentous thing anyway, first win in formula one and it only took crashing into me."
He snorts at that and Danny gives you a knowing look.
Lando walks towards you some more and goes to open his mouth before Danny steps between you two. 
“Yeah alright, alright, lets just calm down okay”
Always the mediator. You were silently grateful as you were suddenly ushered into the press conference glaring at the back of Lando’s head and sitting down between the 2 drivers. You wished you were anyway but here as you looked out at the boppings heads of journalists and the prying eyes. 
“My question is for dylan”
Your head perked up, initially zoned out. You nod at the journalist for them to continue.
“How confident are you feeling about Spain after Miami?”
Good this was good, remaining fairly neutral. Thank you.
“Yeah, I mean, in Miami the car was insane, but I did find myself struggling just in regards to wear on the tires and grip with the street circuit a bit more, but the team is expecting great things from the car this weekend, so yeah. Fairly confident.” you nod and move the microphone away from your face to signal that you’d finished. 
The conversation flows on and you suddenly feel a hand on the back of your neck, quickly glancing next to you. You’re met with a smug Lando Norris who happens to have his arms spread out over the couch. You scoot slightly away from him and see the smirk that follows as you express your dis-comfort. You shoot him a look, which he responds to by moving closer to you and again touching the back of your neck. As his cold hands touch the skin at the back of your neck you subconsciously take a deep breath in. Was he this fucking stupid, what was the media gonna say about this shit. You couldn’t move away again it would seem unnatural, but the way his touch felt on you was wrong, you tried to not let it affect you. Not let him affect you, but it was, you try thinking about anything else, but all you can feel is his hands on your neck. He’s taunting you, playing you. His hand remains there until the end of the press conference to which you promptly flee from. So promptly in fact you have Danny chasing after you to check if you’re alright, you insist that you are and then pose the idea of dinner with him and Heidi soon, you guys hadn’t caught up in a while. He smiles at this and gives you a pat on the back before walking back to the McLaren garage as you walk to the Mercedes garage. 
On Friday There's a few team meetings before you get ready to hop into the car, the activity you had been anxiously anticipating since Miami. Hopping into the car going into practice 1 is reminiscent, it had only been two weeks but you’d missed it. Pulling out of the pit lane ready to hear the car once more. 
Practice 1 was less than satisfying, a meagre P8. However practice 2 was much more fun, as it always is, needing a little bit of warming up to things you clocked a P2. Getting out of the car for the day smiling was something that even your engineer was shocked about. Everyone had been shocked with your performance but you’d never been outwardly impressed with yourself. Maybe now it was just a reminder that the man who took your win was struggling significantly more with his McLaren than you were with your Mercedes. He got under your skin, now it was your turn to get under his.
Saturday rolled around and you had a pep in your step, you had a good feeling. The car felt great and you loved the track too. You hadn’t gone around spain too much but you’d reserved a few days to look around that weren't going for runs with your trainer. You said hi to Lewis in the morning as you sat down with the team, debriefing on yesterday’s results and car performance, Lewis had a small problem with his brakes yesterday that the mechanics said they had fixed, you raised the problem of a small oversteer but how it was not too much of an effect to your driving yesterday. You hopped into the car feeling settled and your engineer who you'd had a talk to before had advised you to “push even more”. So you did, you pushed the whole time and in doing so, pulled the car into P3, honourable but down a place since FP2. 
Sat in your drivers room, legs-crossed sitting, a ritual for qualifying, calm before the storm. You are interrupted with 2 short knocks, you thought it might be holly (your physio) so you get up and don't hesitate to open the door. You roll your eyes at the smirking fucking face you see, you close the door almost immediately to which he only opens it again. 
“Rude” he says. 
“Fuck off”
“Just wanted to wish you good luck” his voice is high and taunting.
You glare at him, you’d been doing better than him all season he’s the one who needs “good luck”.
“I should be saying that to you, considering your results in practice”
He throws his head back and laughs, acting as though you've wounded him.
you walk towards him, hoping that with the movement he’ll edge towards the exit, but he stays put, looking at you. 
You tense your jaw and walk past him, opening the door, gesturing for him to leave.
“Good luck”
He walks out with a grin on his face. What the fuck did he get from riling you up like this?
Holly, your physio finally arrives and you greet her with relief as you get prepped for qualifying. Holly was both friend and doctor as you knew her and she was always there to listen when you had drama to talk about, this specific one relating to a certain boy wearing orange who couldn’t seem to stop annoying you. She laughed at the gestures you made and stayed to talk as the PR officer came to talk to you about the Post-quali interviews and while you put on your fireproofs, telling you about her most recent life events. As you climbed into the car, still mouthing the words of the last song that played in your eyes, you wished you weren’t thinking of one thing: him. You begin your lap with a blank mind, pushing and pushing and pushing the car and the thoughts out of your mind of anything. Especially him. Its gruelling going into Q3 but you do it and your engineer is giving you points on where to push. 
“That's P4 Dylan” 
“Thank you” you say out of breath.
“Thank you”
“Great job”
You leave the track that night with a sense of satisfaction, not once thinking of him as you drive to your hotel. 
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tag list:
@eviethetheatrefreak, @fairiesdowntheroad, @landosgirlxoxo,@hiraethrhapsody, @hockeyboysarehot
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ghostaholics · 1 year
Text
ᴍɪsᴄᴏɴᴅᴜᴄᴛ
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SUMMARY: Ghost doesn't tolerate bad behavior. PAIRING: Simon ‘Ghost’ Riley x fem!Reader (drabble) WARNING(S): illicit relationship & power imbalance; dom/sub vibes (brattiness); this is not that fleshed out but I think their background is enemies-to-lovers; fingering; ruined orgasm, but he makes it all better, sorta; oral sex (receiving) A/N: this is OOC but I still wrote it anyway because my mind would just not shut the fuck up W/C: 2.1k
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HE HOLDS YOU THE SAME WAY HE HOLDS HIS GUN – with all the confidence that he can take you apart and put you back together again like it’s muscle memory.
It's not pride. It's just fact.
He wants to know the inner-workings of your brain. He wants to know what makes you tick. Hell, all he wants to know is what it's like to be inside of you.
He’s still wearing his clothes – jacket, trousers, and boots – everything down to the signature gloves and the fabric balaclava that masks his face.
You, in turn, have nothing. It’s a very unfair playing field – one that you hope to level soon. But Ghost has always been mountains above you even before the current circumstances; you've never turned down a challenge, though.
"Maybe..." he says, musingly as he stands at the foot of his bed, "I won't let you come."
It's a taunt, one that you happily indulge.
You wet your lips in anticipation. You're excited – hungry for it. Back and forth. Pressing his buttons, and in return, learning your place under his direction.  A provocation to take up with the same kind of resolve you'd had when the rules said that you couldn't do it because he's your superior, your Lieutenant – it swells inside you, profuse – fills you up to the brim.
(Illicit. A violation of boundaries. Conflict of interest.)
But look at where you are now. You’ve managed to fucking do it.
It's so overwhelming that you can't possibly stop the next words that you fire back, like loaded bullets, full metal jackets shooting off at the mouth: "Maybe you just can't make me."
Ghost seizes you by the throat – hand so big it engulfs your lower jaw too; sick with power, the thought infects him like an all-consuming disease: he could crush your windpipe if he wanted to. It’d be so easy. Apply pressure. But only enough to provoke a sharp intake of breath. (You can take it.) "God, the fuckin' mouth on you," he growls.
Your voice, breathless under the force of his hand and far too flirtatious for your own good: "I can show you what else it can do." A shameless smile stretches over your mouth as if he doesn't have a noose around your neck – a palm instead of rope but equally as unforgiving.
His eyes burn holes into you. They smolder. And his temper? He's fuming. Underneath the surface, but raging all the same, make no mistake. There are a lot of things he’d like to do to you that would wipe the grin clean off your face and scrub the insubordination from your brain. "Think I’d rather take an apology, first."
"Oh," you lament around a pout. "You'll be waiting a long time before you hear one out of me."
The answer is an act of arson; it reeks of gasoline. Octane. It’s a fuel that you douse onto ever-growing flames. Scorched earth policy, like you want to sit back and watch the world go up in smoke, embers and all.
"Trust me,” he says, shucking his gloves off –doesn't want to get them dirty with your recklessness. (At least he can wash this sin from his hands later.) “You’ll feel sorry by the time I’m through with you.”
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So how far can you push him? Turns out, a lot. More than you’d anticipated, actually, because earlier:
“Don’t test me.” “Why?” “You won’t want to find out.” “I think I do.”
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His fingers brutally stuff your cunt, and your walls eagerly accommodate the stretch around the width of him. An uninhibited moan wretches itself from your throat at the intrusion. You clamp onto his arm instinctively for purchase. He's got you filled to capacity.
"You're so tight," he murmurs, feeling around for a bit, searching for – there it is. He hits that little spongy spot inside, and he knows he's got you. His digits slide through your hot core in that come-hither motion, and he's enticed by the way your body convulses at his discovery. He's addicted to the sensation, already knows he'll never be able to find anything else that gives him a high as good as this – that he'll never be able to quit you. Perfect, so perfect. The craving is bad, like he's been stabbed full of needles and shot up with something that he knows will have him hooked forever.
You rut down, hips canting as you fuck yourself down on his fingers, meeting him thrust-for-thrust because you're just that needy for it.
He collects every moan like it’s payment, and after the defiance you've been throwing his way, it's the least that you owe him.
And—
He doesn't need to do it – you're already soaked. But he fucking spits on your pussy anyway. Yeah, that’s good. So bloody fucking good. He watches it mix with your arousal. Slickness, everywhere. It leaks out of your puffy folds, juices running down to the juncture of his wrist where his tattoos start – floods the gaps in between the ink of his sleeve. He's aching for more.
Filthy. Filthy. Filthy.
You prop yourself up on your elbows to watch the sight. It's lewd. You nearly collapse on the spot.
But still, you capture his wrist, nails sinking into his flesh as he continues to pump in and out of your sopping cunt. You’re so wet, it’s almost embarrassing. You don’t want him to stop. You have to keep him there forever. "I'm close," you croak out. "I'm—"
"Gonna come now?"
A familiar wave of heat starts to crest within you. "God, yes." It surges, rises hard and rises fast. The feeling is blinding.
"That's it," he says around a low rumble of approval. "Give it to me."
It's the final tipping point to send you over the edge – no return. Euphoria is within sights. You're flying to a climax and it's right there, so close you can almost touch it and—
He snatches his fingers away.
You come around nothing.
You're yanked back into a cold and disappointing reality. It's disorienting. The heat fizzles out so fast it’s like a bonfire during a downpour.
That ecstasy that had been building up passes through you like a phantom. It's just gone. Goddamn it.
"No, no, no! Fuck, Ghost! What the fuck?" 
You didn't finish. You didn't get to the end, because he took it from you and snuffed the life out of it with no remorse.
It's what he does best.
You're drowning in your own bitter rage, reeling between riptides of ire and violence. The feeling is highwater. You want to commit atrocities against this man.
He draws his fingers into his mouth, mask pulled up for a fraction before he sucks, eyes lazily flicking over to you – you’re the picture of red-hot anger and burning insolence. Deep satisfaction settles in his bones. He lowers the balaclava back to where it was. "You taste sweet," he comments, almost absentmindedly. "Shame the personality doesn't match."
You're seething, a temper bristling with unfathomable resentment. "You're so fucking mean."
"Hate me all you want, love. We both know whose cock you get wet for at the end of the day. You wouldn't be here otherwise."
He calls you the term of endearment as if he cares. You aren't stupid. That’s not what this is. His tone is laced with derision.
"Unbelievable," you mutter. "I'm gonna have you court-martialed for being such an asshole."
He chuckles darkly. "Let's try this again."
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The first day he met you: Your file, in big bold letters with an extensive skillset, and one section that stood out to him: INTERROGATION. Everything redacted. "How good are you?"– he'd asked. "That's classified, sir. But all you really need to be worried about is that I know how to make people talk." Smartass.
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"I wanna... oh, God. Let me come. I want it, need it," you moan. He's been continuing his onslaught for too long, and you can't handle it.
"Where'd all the attitude go, huh, love?"
The whimper is high in your throat. "Please."
"The begging's a nice touch. Unfortunately, it won't save you now. I’m already fresh out of fucks.”
“Simon—”
He wouldn’t call you a whore, but that’s exactly what you sound like.
Your composure snaps.
"I'm sorry," you gasp, wrecked.
Finally.
His voice is devastating – a sawtoothed-edge that threatens to tear you apart. "Done playing games?"
It sends cracks throughout your fortitude – fractures spidering along your backbone. It’s a thousand splintered fragments.
Something in you shatters. It feels a lot like your self-respect.
“Yes, sir.”
This is rock bottom, a callous reminder of where the two of you stand. You despise using his title now more than you do out on the field.
“Yeah,” he agrees, “thought so.”
He kneels in between your legs, has your thighs wrenched open between the sheer size of his bulky shoulders. Simon lifts the edge of his mask up to settle onto the bridge of his nose, just to expose the bottom half of his face – sharp contour, a determined set to his stubbled jaw. It’s not all of him, but it’s enough. Simon’s mouth is on you in no time flat. It's not something he'll admit, but he’s starving for this. Ravenous – a carnal appetite. He wants his fill. Lust gnaws at his gut; it bites away at his resolve.
"Tastes so good," he grunts, sending vibrations rocking through you. His tongue laves over your clit, your entrance, lapping it up, taking what he wants. "Anyone ever tell you how much of a brat you are?" he asks, voice like gravel.
"Christ, shut up," you mumble pathetically.
Simon sinks his teeth into the side of your thigh to show his displeasure before turning his attention back to the task at hand. He's amused at the way you curse at him for being a bastard. More passes at your clit that make you tremor under him – he could get drunk off of this. It sends a nice buzz to his head better than his favorite whiskey.
His tongue is wet and soft, dipping between your engorged folds and making the nastiest noises. He's licking his way into your cunt. "Fuck." Again and again, using his mouth to rip those pretty sounds from you – the moans and everything, he'll drink it all up.
He adds his fingers back to the foray, knuckle deep. A high-pitched whine leaves you, cresting into another low moan as you adjust around the familiar feeling of the heavy and thick drag of his fingers through you; it almost makes him come, untouched.
"Ah, Simon," you whimper.
He lifts his head, chin drenched. There's a glossy sheen to his lips. Thoroughly wet. So much. You can feel it pooling under your ass, too. The sheets are saturated. That's all you. "I'll let you come this time," he rasps, sounding just as bad as you.
And at that, you don't care. Nothing else matters anymore.
You chase the high, white-hot pleasure mounting to a fever pitch. It strikes somewhere deep inside you. Blinding ecstasy swallows you whole. It’s cataclysmic. Bliss surges through your veins. “Oh, fuck me,” you choke out, arching off the bed. Your body's wracked with spasms. It's the hardest you've ever come in your life, and you hate that he's the reason for it.
Beginning and end — everything in between, and all at once — he's there. Simon continues, even after you ride out the rest of the orgasm, working you through the entirety of it – a mercy that he grants you for your earlier penitence until you're spent and oversensitive. It's charity. He's just that generous.
"Fuckin'... just drippin' all over my fingers," he growls, "can't wait to see what kind of a mess you make on my cock. I'm gonna ruin you."
"Yeah?" you say, in between shuddering breaths.
"Mm."
You've gotten what you wanted from him already, so a vain attempt to save face: "Do your worst."
The switch is instant. His eyes flash to yours in warning. "How many times am I gonna have to prove you wrong today?"
That same smile again, the one that spells trouble –  it's what started this in the first place. “However long it takes until you make me cry, maybe.”
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ptn-imagines · 2 months
Note
hey hey, can i request zoya, deren and langley walking in on chief trying on their outfits :3
I usually try not to get too spicy unless it's explicitly requested, but Zoya's part of this definitely has some spice (though not explicit) so be warned of that!
Walking in on Chief trying on their outfit
Zoya
Chief Is In Trouble. In a hot way.
She doesn't knock before entering, swagger in her step as she strolls in like she owns the place. Seeing Chief wearing her clothes does stop her in place, but the look in her gaze is both playful and hungry, rather than surprised.
She spends a long moment taking in the sight before her, her clothes far too large on Chief's body. Still, she seems to like it, judging by the way she licks her lips.
She finally speaks, leaning against the doorframe as she does. “Like my clothes, do you, Chief?” she teases. “How about we get some in your size? You can hardly decide if you like it with it hanging on the floor like that.” She laughs at Chief's blushing face as they try to stammer out a reply.
It's hyperbole, of course, but it only takes a few days before she shows up with a copy of her outfit in Chief's size. She'll turn her back if Chief asks, but if given the chance, she is absolutely watching Chief put the clothes on.
Once Chief is dressed, Zoya's gaze quickly sharpens to that of a hungry predator, and her teeth suddenly seem like fangs as she grins, appraising like she's looking at her next meal.
“You look good, Chief. Big fan of how it shows off your body, even if you don't exactly have my build.”
It makes Chief blush, but it's true. Zoya does like it. Seeing Chief dressed in her clothes… It's certainly awakened the hunger inside the wolf.
Langley
Once again, Chief Is In Trouble. But it's in a different way this time.
As soon as Langley sees Chief putting on her clothes, a slow smirk spreads across her face. “Rookie, I don't recall giving you permission to touch my things… Let alone my clothes.”
Chief turns bright red, flailing for an explanation. Langley only watches, her smirk growing ever wider; she enjoys watching Chief squirm like this.
Once she's had her fill of Chief's torment, though, she gestures for them to be quiet, and they quickly silence themself. “I'm willing to forgive this transgression, rookie, if you do something for me.”
It's a trap, Chief is sure of it, but Langley's punishments are known for being brutal, so they don't want to risk the alternative. Still, they're surprised when Langley's request is to finish dressing up and sit down in their desk chair, doing their best impression of her. It doesn't make sense to them, but they comply anyway.
They realize the reason behind the strange request when Langley snaps a photo of them with her phone, and they flush red to their ears. The picture is set to Langley's background, and she teases them about how cute it would look framed on her desk – a subtle warning not to touch her things without permission again.
Deren
Deren definitely has the most lowkey reaction of the three. She stumbles across Chief looking for the very clothes they were trying on, funnily enough.
When she walks into the room, midway through a sentence, it takes her brain a couple of seconds to process what she's seeing. Once she does, though, confusion is her primary emotion rather than embarrassment. “Uh, Chief? Why are you wearing my clothes?”
She's surprised when Chief says they wanted to see how they looked in them. “Well, you'd look good in anything, but… Why my clothes? They're nothing special. I can get you a hundred different outfits that'd look better than my stuff.”
A very flustered Chief has to explain that their interest in the clothes is largely due to the fact that they are Deren's clothes. The director is taken aback at first, but then she laughs.
“Is that so? Well, sure, go ahead. I won't stop you, so long as I get a front row seat~”
Deren's gaze on the Chief is still flustering, but she's a lot less intense than the other two would have been. When Chief apologizes to her afterwards, she waves it off, saying Chief can wear her clothes anytime, she doesn't care. It's the truth, and of course, it doesn't hurt that Chief looks good in her clothes.
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burntheedges · 2 months
Note
Hi Kate!
I'm back with my Ask games again!
This time we have a spring based prompts theme. You get a spring prompt and a character and I'd like to know your head canon/immediate thoughts on the combination.
Character: Din Djarin
Prompt: lake
With love,
El
El! the way this immediately set my brain spinning!
anyway, here we go, I hope you enjoy this. I made myself laugh. lol
A day at the lake
Din Djarin x gn!reader | 1006 words | rating: gen | ao3 tags/warnings: make sure to do your research before going to strange planets, I guess, the Razor Crest is still with us, not betaed
or, Din tries (and fails) to relax on vacation
Din stepped out of the Razor Crest with his hands on his hips, sweeping his gaze over the view in front of him. He huffed a tiny disbelieving breath, too quiet to be picked up by his helmet’s modulator. He shifted his weight and shook his head.
It was, by any measure, idyllic. The sunlight reflected off the small ripples in the surface lake in dazzling patterns. A gentle breeze rustled the colorful flowers and grasses that lined the narrow shore, itself covered in pastel orange and pink pebbles. The mountains across the lake that formed this bowl-shaped valley had extremely picturesque snow glinting on their peaks. As he stood there, taking it all in, he heard the songs and trills of 4 different birds. A trio of small, colorful winged insects floated by the edge of the ramp of the ship, fluttering in the breeze. He watched a shiny fish jump out of the water and do a flip before smoothly slipping back into the lake.
He blinked.
When you’d said you wanted to take a vacation, just the three of you, he’d remembered hearing nice things about this planet. It had been nearby, barely a system over from their last destination. And it really had looked nice as he flew the Crest into land. But looking at it now, he realized it was too beautiful. Way too beautiful. 
He didn’t trust it.
Din thought back, trying to remember what he’d read about the fauna on this planet. Or maybe strange weather patterns? Was it extreme temperature fluctuations? Paradise couldn’t actually exist, not without people taking advantage of it. There had to be a catch.
He walked slowly down the ramp as he looked for a sign of you and his son. It didn’t take him long to spot you.
You were both sitting on the shore of the lake, about 35 meters to the right of the ship. Right as he turned towards you Grogu tossed a small pebble into the lake, and the sound it made when it hit the water – kerplunk – sent the child into a fit of giggles. Din watched as you joined him, letting his eyes trace the shape of your smile and the outline of your shoulders, relaxed and at ease. Hidden within the privacy of his helmet, he smiled.
He started to walk towards you, still carefully scanning your surroundings with every sensor and setting his helmet had to offer. 
Nothing.
Brow furrowed, he stepped onto the beach about 10 meters away from where you were sitting, and you and Grogu looked up and smiled at him. He smiled back in spite of his growing conviction that nowhere could be this perfect.
“Din!” You called out, grinning. “Look at this place!” 
I’ve been looking, he wanted to say, and I don’t trust it.
“Isn’t it almost too good to be true?” You continued, incredulous, as a frog-like amphibian hopped just out of Grogu’s reach into the lake and he squealed. 
Din nodded as he stepped up beside you. “There has to be something wrong with it.” He knew he sounded judgmental and wary, but he couldn’t help it.
You threw your head back and laughed. “I knew you’d say that.” You reached out to gently poke his leg. “Can’t just take the win, huh?”
He was certain you could tell he was smiling. He sank smoothly to sit next to you. “It’s too nice. Nothing is this nice, cyar’ika, not for free. Not without a catch.”
You shrugged. “Maybe it’s just too far out of the way of any of the main trade routes. Maybe there’s a season of ridiculous weather we’re lucky to be missing.”
Din tilted his head, amused, and reached out to tickle Grogu's side gently. “Maybe there are giant, man-eating frogs that are creeping up on us now, as we speak.” You laughed again at his words, letting your head fall onto his shoulder. Grogu made an offended noise and poked his father in the knee. 
“That’s right, Grogu, your father is being very silly right now.” 
Din huffed to hide a laugh but he knew you could feel it. “I set the ship to do a long-range scan. I’ll check it again before we decide whether to stay.”
You sighed but smiled up at him without removing your head from his shoulder. “I knew you would. But really, so far?” You lifted your right shoulder in a small, uneven shrug. “So good. No idea what kind of problem there could be.”
Din brought his right arm up and around your shoulders, tugging you in closer as Grogu climbed into his lap. He nodded, conceding. “We’ll see.”
Later, after a very pleasant afternoon by the lake, you could see how hard he was trying to hold in his “I told you so” as you jogged up the ship’s ramp to escape the huge, hissing, angry aquatic mammals that had emerged from the lake at sunset. Nocturnal, you'd guessed as you scrambled towards the ship. They had fangs.
On the bright side, they were pink, just like the many pebbles Grogu had stuffed in your pockets. And their legs were really short, so short they had no hope of catching you.
You looked at Din when the ramp closed, and his shoulders were shaking with his effort to hold in a laugh. You rolled your eyes. “Yeah, yeah. You still owe me a real vacation, you know.”
He laughed outright, and the sound of it through the modulator made you grin. “I’ll do more research next time.”
“You’d better!” You called after him as he moved towards the ladder. “No more angry pink animals with fangs, please.”
Grogu squealed and held up a pink rock for your inspection. “Yeah, buddy. Pink, like that.” He made an insistent noise and waved it at you again.
And that’s when you noticed that it had legs. That one, and the 35 other members of Grogu’s collection that started squirming in your pocket at exactly the same time.
“DIN!”
...
a/n: lol no, I don't know where this came from
tag list: @katareyoudrilling @jeewrites @djarins-cyare if you're on the tag list for Maintenance Request and you want to be on my tag list for any/all fic, just let me know!
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Text
First Blood
Summary: Danny should have expected that he wouldn't be able to do this ghost fighting thing by himself forever. Though admittedly, he didn't expect things to go quite like this.
Author's Note:
My brain: Hey you should write a Danny Phantom AU
Me: Wtf? Why?
My brain: I wanna
Me:
Anyway I do partly blame this fic on AO3 by artistfingers for giving me the inspiration.
He’d meant to tell them, was the thing.  It was entirely a coincidence that they weren’t there when it happened in the first place.
Sam had been the one to first have the idea of checking out the ghost zone, even if Danny had been desperately curious before that too.  But she’d been the one to convince him to try it, and he’d even gotten into the suit his parents had designated for this purpose (thankfully with a thought from Sam to pull his Dad’s face off his chest), but before he could actually go in the portal and turn it on, Sam’s parents showed up and dragged her and Tucker home.
They had never been the biggest fans of Danny or his parents, and weren’t super happy when they learned Sam was there.  Tucker had tried to protest against getting dragged along, but Sam’s parents kind of had a presence you couldn’t stand up to for very long, so they’d both left eventually.
But Danny was only more desperately curious after almost going in, and he couldn’t know when his parents would both be out like this again.  So, he’d gone back an hour later and turned the portal on.  And then…
Well.
Then he’d started trying to come up with a way to say “hey guys I’m sort of half ghost now” without sounding like a total lunatic.
And then the ghost fights had started, and Danny Phantom became well known before Danny Fenton could come up with a way to explain it to them.  And then he didn’t want them to get hurt.  The fights were hard enough on him, and he had superpowers.
He’s… definitely regretting that decision now.  He should have known eventually he’d come across something he couldn’t defeat on his own, for one reason or another.  But he’d always assumed if that came up it would be a ghost that was just too powerful, and he could ask someone for help.  Hard to do that when the problem is an evil but human ringmaster with a ghost-controlling crystal ball.  Admittedly, he hadn’t thought that far ahead.
He’s not quite sure what’s going on when he comes to, but the crystal ball is shattered in pieces at his feet and the other ghosts he’s become familiar with are blinking in the space across from him.  Freakshow himself is in between them all, staring at the crystal ball like he’s trying to process what’s happening.
Danny’s doing the same thing.  This isn’t Amity Park, that’s clear enough, but he doesn’t know where he is.  He doesn’t know what’s just happened, though he has a vague memory of an overwhelming sense of anger giving him enough force to throw the crystal ball to the ground.
“You know,” Freakshow says, looking up with a terrified grin.  “When I called you, uh, ‘minions,’ it was really a term of endearment, like, ‘Oh, I love my minions!’”
Danny scoffs, meets eyes with the other ghosts, and finds them in agreement.
They drag Freakshow to the haul he’s made them all put together, call the cops, and fly off into the night.
But while the three of them go who-knows-where, Danny changes forms and heads for a grocery store or a gas station, any place where he can find a newspaper and hopefully figure out the date or his location.  Preferably both.
…It’s been weeks.  It’s been weeks and he’s halfway across the country.
Danny sits on the ground outside of the gas station and drops his head in his hands.  The homework alone is going to be a nightmare.
His stomach growls.  He’s been in his ghost form for who knows how long, and it’s probably been just as long since he ate, but he doesn’t have any money on him.
So, in a move he’s not exactly proud of, he steals a couple apples and bags of chips from the gas station and practically inhales them.  He sits on a bench for another hour or so before he realizes he probably can’t put off the inevitable anymore.
He switches forms again and starts flying home.
He’s pretty fast at this point, so it takes him no more than a couple hours to get there, but he has no idea what he’ll find when he arrives.  The past couple weeks get blurrier the closer the time gets to the present, but he has the feeling he’s done some bad stuff.  He doesn’t know what his public image in Amity Park is anymore, but he has an inkling it’s not exactly great.
And that’s just the Phantom side of things.  He’s going to have to deal with the Fenton side first, and that almost sounds worse.
First, however, he’s exhausted, and still hungry, and he can’t deal with this tonight.  So he resigns himself to worrying everyone for one more night, grabs some stuff from the fridge, and flies silently up to his bedroom.  He eats handfuls of whatever food he grabbed with his back to the door, and then leans back against it and breathes, taking in the feeling of at least being home.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem he’s going to get even a night of reprieve, because the next second someone bangs on the door he’s leaning against, and he splays forward on the ground with a surprised yelp.
He turns to see Jazz forcing the door open.  She freezes when she sees Danny, and for a couple seconds, they stare at each other.
“Uh,” Danny says.  “Hi?”
Jazz blinks.  “Hi?”
Danny swallows.  “Yeah?”
Jazz balls her hands into fists and glares at him.  “Where have you been?”
“Um.”
Jazz buries her hands in her hair and pulls on it, giving a frustrated scream.  “Danny!  Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?”
“Sorry,” Danny mutters, not sure what else to say.  He still has no idea what’s happened the past few weeks.
Jazz runs her hands over her hair, smoothing it down, and takes a deep breath.  Then she kneels down and pulls Danny into a crushing hug.
“Why would you run away like that?” Jazz says, but there’s something else in her voice, like she’s trying to get at something.  “Are you okay?  Are you hurt?  Do you want to—” she pulls back, and looks Danny in the eyes with a very pointed expression.  “Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, her voice suddenly very soft and gentle.
Danny stares at her for a second, not sure where the sudden shifting emotions from her came from.  Either way, he shakes his head.  He doesn’t even know what he’d say.  He’s going to have to come up with some kind of story, but how is he supposed to do that without contradicting something he doesn’t remember happening?
“Are you sure?” Jazz says, still looking at him intentionally, and Danny does not understand what she’s trying to say.  He’ll blame the exhaustion and brain fog.
Jazz sighs, and pulls him back into a hug.  “Okay.  But you’re going to have to explain to Mom and Dad why you’ve been missing for weeks.  Uh… for exactly three weeks and four days, as we both know very well of course.  And you’ll also have to explain why no one knows anything at all about where you’ve been or what you’ve been doing— as far as I know that is.”
Danny pulls back and gives her a baffled look.  “Why are you talking like that?”
“Excuse me!  You’re the one who runs away for, just to reiterate, exactly three weeks and four days to an unknown location, and you’re asking me why I’m being weird?”
Danny stares at her.  “Uh, I mean I kind of am now?”
“I can’t believe you!” Jazz exclaims, waving her arms up without actually looking that exasperated.  Then she leans forward and wraps her arms around Danny again.
“I’m really glad you’re okay,” she whispers, with a suspicious sniff that Danny doesn’t acknowledge.  “Please don’t scare me like that again.”
Danny reaches up and wraps his arms weakly around her.  “I’m sorry,” he murmurs, which is all he can say, because he can’t exactly guarantee that nothing like this will happen again, can he?
For a minute, they both just sit there, and Danny tries to ignore how good it feels to be hugged by his sister, because that’s a totally lame realization to have, and he doesn’t need any more reasons for people to beat him up.
But then another familiar voice comes from behind them.
“Jazz?  What are you doing up—”
Danny jerks around and meets eyes with his mother, who stares wide-eyed back at him.
After a second, she turns and screams, “JACK!” then rushes forward and pulls Danny towards her.
“Are you okay?  Are you hurt?”  She takes his face in her hands, turning it back and forth.  “What were you thinking, you’re grounded for a month!  You look terrible, when did you eat last?  When did you shower?  Do you have any idea how worried sick we were?  I’m never letting you out of my sight again!  Was it ghosts?  What can you tell us about them?”
Danny laughs despite himself.  His mom is being so incredibly normal (well, normal by her standards) that it immediately brushes away quite a few of his worries.
Then he remembers what his best option for a cover story is, and his smile fades.  His dad shows up in the doorway a second later, looking half-asleep.
“It… it wasn’t ghosts, Mom,” he says, and at least that part is true, if misleading.  “I just… I’m sorry.”
His mom presses a hand to her forehead, looking like Danny’s taken about ten years off her life.  “You’re grounded for two months,” she amends.  “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t,” Danny says, which is also true, if… also misleading.
“You got that right,” his dad said, putting his hands on his hips in what looked like his best impression of a stern father.  “You’re grounded for three months, mister.”
“That’s just going to keep going up, isn’t it,” Danny says with a sigh.
Jazz reaches over and gives him a side hug and a sympathetic smile, and Danny really isn’t sure what’s going on with her right now.
But honestly, for the moment, he’s just glad to be home.
Danny still isn’t quite sure how he manages to get out of giving any details to the police, but he does it.  He’s given back to his parents to decide his punishment, meaning he’s confined to house arrest for the next five months (it did keep going up).  That’s going to make ghost hunting a little bit difficult, but he’ll burn that bridge when he gets to it.
The one exception to grounding, obviously, is school, which Danny is equal parts dreading and looking forward to.  It was a Saturday when he got back, and of course Sam and Tucker know he’s returned, but he hasn’t gotten to see either of them.  He doubts he’ll be able to see them much outside of school or the occasional study party.
Stupid Freakshow.  This is going to ruin his life until Christmas.
Either way, Monday comes.  And Danny walks into the school and over to his locker and tries to ignore everyone staring at him.
A loud bang at his left causes him to jump and turn to see Sam leaning against the lockers, looking none too pleased.
“So,” she says.  “Have you finally decided the rest of us are worthy of your presence again?”
“Come on, Sam,” Tucker says, walking up behind her.  “You said you weren’t gonna be like that.”
“Sorry, he just screws off to nowhere and you expect me to not be upset?” Sam asks with a glare at Tucker before turning back around.  “Honestly Danny, you know I’m all for escaping awful parents, but you didn’t even tell us where you were going!  We didn’t know if you were okay!”
“My parents aren’t awful,” Danny mutters as he looks down at his feet, all he can think to say.
“Then why did you leave?” Sam snaps, leaning into his face.
Danny winces, leaning back.  “Do we have to do this out here in the hallway?”
Sam huffs, standing up straight and glaring away.  “Fine.  Whatever.  I’m going to class.”  She stalks off without another word.
Danny sighs and turns to his locker so he can put the textbooks he needs into his backpack.  It’s not his fault, and he knows that, but he still feels like the worst person on the face of the planet for making them worry.
“So…” Tucker says slowly, leaning back against the locker much less angrily than Sam.  “Why did you leave?”
Danny closes his locker and swings his bag over his shoulder.  “Doesn’t matter.  I’m back, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, except it kind of does, though?  Dude, if you feel like leaving again, I want to help you.”
Danny turns to look at him and sees nothing but honest concern in Tucker’s eyes.
He wishes it was that easy.
“You can’t,” he says.
“Why not?”
“It’s not—” Danny sighs, looking around to make sure no one’s listening.
Everyone is listening.
“Not here,” he says, turning back to Tucker.  “And not now.”
Tucker looks at him for another second.  “Okay,” he says finally.  “But don’t think I’m letting up on this.”
Danny smiles just a little bit.  “I know you’re not,” he says.
The warning bell rings.
“I have to go,” Danny says.  “If I cut first period on my first day back after running away, I think my parents will actually kill me.”
Tucker smirks.  “Sounds like you brought that one on yourself, dude,” he says.  “But sure.  See ya at lunch.”
“See ya,” Danny says, and turns to walk the other way.
The day is about what he expects.  Mocking and socks in the stomach from Dash, dry remarks and glares along with piles of makeup work from teachers.  He’s exhausted, but he deals with all of it and prepares to work through it until things are at least marginally back to normal.
He can’t wait for Sam and Tucker to not be mad at him.  That would help a ton.
There doesn’t seem to be much of a chance of that when lunch arrives, however, because Sam starts glaring at him the second he sits down, and Tucker just gives him that same concerned look that Danny is pretty sure he can’t make go away without spilling his guts.
…Well, not that “hey Tucker I was actually being mind controlled by that ringmaster from Circus Gothica” would make him less concerned.  If he believed him in the first place, that is.
Danny doesn’t know what to say to break the awkward silence, but apparently Sam has that covered.
“So, Tucker,” she says, very loudly.  “Are we still on for Nasty Burger after school?”
Ouch.  Fair enough.
“Uh,” Tucker says, rubbing the back of his neck.  “Maybe that’s not such a great idea anymore?”
“Why?  Are we supposed to drop our plans the second Danny decides to stop being childish?”
“Okay,” Danny says, turning to face her.  He’s positive he doesn’t have the energy to deal with an angry Sam for the weeks it takes her to forgive him.  “What do you want me to say to you, Sam?”
Sam turns her glare on him.  “I want you to tell me why on earth you left with no notice of when you’d be back or whether or not you were okay or why you were leaving,” she snaps.  “Why the fuck would you do that to us?”
“I wasn’t trying to,” Danny says, looking down as guilt stabs him in the chest.  “I’m sorry.”
“What do you mean you weren’t trying to?  What were you trying to do?”
“I don’t know,” Danny says, because it’s true.  He doesn’t really remember the exact specifics of when and where and why he left Amity Park with Freakshow.  He is pretty sure he wasn’t around as Danny Fenton for at least a couple days before that, though, meaning Jazz’s random ‘three weeks and four days’ comment was probably more accurate than the one he’d worked out from the newspaper.
“I really don’t know what I was thinking,” he reiterates, forcing himself to turn and look at Sam.  “I don’t know what else to say.  I’m sorry.”
He watches anger and concern and something else war on Sam’s face for a second before she scoffs and glares away.  “You’re really not going to tell us what happened?” she asks.
“I… don’t know if you’d believe me,” Danny says quietly, looking down at his awful school lunch that is leagues better than the almost nothing he’s probably eaten the past couple weeks.
Sam gives a bitter laugh, shaking her head.  “Oh my god.”
“Sam,” Tucker says, narrowing his eyes at her.
“What?” Sam asks, turning her glare to him again.  “Are you trying to pretend you haven’t spent the last three weeks terrified out of your mind too?”
Danny fights to not hunch over on himself.
“I’m sorry,” he says instead, turning to look at Sam.  “I really am.  I didn’t want to scare you.  I’m sorry.”
Sam looks at him firmly for a long second, and she must see something in his face that makes her believe him, because she stabs at the limp broccoli on her tray without looking at it and says, “You gonna do it again?”
Danny shakes his head and prays to whatever’s out there listening that he’s not lying right now.  If Desiree was around, he might even make a wish on it.
Sam seems to accept that at least a little bit.  She turns and takes a bite of her vegetables.  “If you do I’ll murder you,” she says.
You’re a couple months late for that, Danny doesn’t say.  Instead he just nods.
“So,” Tucker says, drawing both of their attentions with a much more easygoing smile on his face.  “I imagine you’ve got a lot of homework to make up, Danny.  You want to move our hangouts to after school while you’re doing that at least?”
Danny smiles gratefully at him, and Sam sighs and mutters, “Yeah, sure, whatever.”
So that’s where they end up, and Danny immediately appreciates how almost-normal it feels.  One of the last clear memories he has before things start getting fuzzy is studying in the same library with Sam and Tucker, so in a way it feels like picking up where he left off— with some unwelcome tension added to the air.
Danny spends the first half hour or so doing homework while Tucker and Sam talk idly next to him about things they’ve done in the past three weeks that he’s apparently missed out on.  Unlike lunch, there’s no anger involved, just awkwardness and hesitation, which is… better, he supposes.
Finally after an hour, when he’s only finished a tiny bit of homework for one of his classes, he sits back in his chair and massages his temples.  “This is gonna take me a month.”
“Well, you did miss almost a month of work,” Sam says, with a not-very-sympathetic smile.  “You don’t really have anyone to blame but yourself.”
“I’m gonna get so tired of that sentiment,” Danny says, dropping his head into an open textbook.
“It’s true.”
“I know,” Danny mutters without lifting his head.
“Did you at least have fun while you were on your runaway vacation?” Tucker asks.
Danny pulls his head up and finds Tucker now leaning on the table in front of him.
“No,” he says, because he’s sick of lying.
Tucker winces.  “Ouch.”
Sam snorts.  “Serves you right.”
“Sam,” Tucker says, at the same time Danny waves her off with “I know, I know, I get it.”
Sam sighs, and pushes herself up on the table.  “Alright, look.  You should probably lie low for the first month or two.  But when your parents eventually stop watching you closer I can help you sneak out for a little fun from time to time.”
Danny gives her a grateful smile.  “Thanks, Sam.”
“Yeah, yeah.  You owe me one.”
“I already owe you one,” Danny says.
“You got that right,” Sam says, crossing her arms with a smirk.  She probably thinks he means her forgiving him so quickly.  He doesn’t.
They don’t stay much longer, because the hour after school in the library is the only time his parents gave him before he has to go home.
As soon as he gets a free moment, when his parents are busy making dinner, he sneaks downstairs and looks up Danny Phantom on the computer.
Just as he expected, it’s not great.  Most of the things it lists Phantom as doing are robberies and property damage, about what he expects.  But there’s also quite a few mentions of him being cruel to the other ghosts in Freakshow’s circus, and he… cannot figure out how he feels about that.
Fighting ghosts is nothing new, obviously.  But the ghosts in Freakshow’s circus didn’t choose to be there.  He didn’t choose to hurt them either, but he still feels kind of uncomfortable with it, with the idea that it happened and he doesn’t even remember it.
“Danny?”
Danny yelps and closes the window on the computer, spinning around to see Jazz standing there.
“Jazz,” he says weakly.  “I uh, I didn’t hear you come down here.”
“Dinner’s ready,” Jazz says, giving him a look he can’t read.
She looks at the computer, and it’s way too obvious she saw what he was looking at.
“You know,” she says, turning back to him.  “Unless you’re just catching up on the ghost fighting from the past couple weeks, I wouldn’t put too much thought into Phantom.”
Danny blinks.  “Uh, why?”
Jazz rolls her eyes.  “He was so obviously under the control of that Freakshow guy,” she says.  “Don’t you think?”
“What?” Danny stares at her.  “How would you know that?”
Jazz gives him a soft smile and leans forward to kiss the top of his head.  “Just a hunch I have,” she says.
“Gross, get off me,” Danny says, though he can’t put any real bite into it and he’s pretty sure Jazz can tell.
“I pay attention, you know,” Jazz says, stepping back.
Danny swallows.  “Yeah?  How much?”
“Enough to know that robbery and property damage isn’t Phantom’s MO,” Jazz says with a roll of her eyes.  “And that those reports aren’t gonna say anything about what he’s actually like.”  She pauses and looks at Danny for a minute, then clears her throat and looks away.  “You know, just in case you’re curious about that kind of thing.  You should find better sources.”
“And what are you, a journalist?” Danny asks.
“I’m just… concerned,” Jazz says hesitantly.  “I hope that… wherever Phantom is, he’s doing okay.  I hope he knows it’s not his fault.”
Danny doesn’t say anything, and he and Jazz stare at each other for a minute.
They’re interrupted by their mom calling from upstairs, “Kids, are you coming or not?”
“We’re coming Mom!” Jazz calls back.  She looks back at Danny and nods her head up the steps, and Danny shuts off the computer and follows her up.
He’s not that shocked when he gets nightmares about Freakshow, but it’s definitely inconvenient.  If he can think of one thing that won’t help with getting things back to normal, it’s being consistently sleep deprived.
The worst part is that he can’t really be sure which of the nightmares are his brain throwing his worries back in his face, and which parts are actually his brain putting together things that have happened that he can’t remember right.
Honestly, maybe it doesn’t matter that much.  Either way, he doesn’t get a full night of sleep once for the first week he’s back.  He can tell Jazz notices, though he’s pretty sure his parents aren’t picking up on anything, and none of them say anything.  He tries his hardest to pay attention at school, because he really can’t afford to fall behind due to falling asleep in class.
Unfortunately, between trying to act normal around his family and pay attention during school, that means he usually spends the first half hour with Sam and Tucker passed out asleep on top of his textbooks.
“Dude,” Tucker says, after the fifth school day in a row of waking him up so he can do at least some of the homework he’s missed.  “What time are you going to bed?”
“Yeah Danny, I never thought I’d be the one to say this, but maybe you need to go to sleep a little bit earlier,” Sam says, raising an eyebrow.
“You act like I’m not trying that,” Danny mutters, rubbing at his eyes.
“What’s stopping you?” Sam asks.
“Uh,” Danny says, not having thought that far ahead.
“Danny, seriously, on top of being the only time you can get your homework done, this is also the only time we get to hang out with you for a while,” Sam says.  “I’d appreciate it if you could stay awake for all of it.”
“I’m trying, honestly,” Danny says, leaning back in his chair.  “It’s not like I don’t care.  I do.”
“Then what’s going on, Danny?” Tucker asks.  “You know you can still talk to us, right?  You can always talk to us.”
Danny winces.
Well, maybe he can start small.
“I… I’ve had a couple nightmares,” he admits, running a hand through his hair as he sits up.  He pulls his homework closer so he doesn’t have to look either of them in the eyes.  “It’s not a big deal.”
“Nightmares about what?” Sam asks, giving him a look he can feel without looking back.  “Did something happen?”
“I really don’t want to talk about it,” Danny says.  “Can we just acknowledge it and move on?”
“Uh, no?” Sam says, reaching forward and pulling the homework away from him.
“Hey!” Danny says, turning to her.
“You can’t just say something like that and not expect followup questions,” Sam says, crossing her arms.  “Nightmares about what happened while you were gone?”
Danny sighs.  “Maybe.”
“What happened?” Tucker asks, obvious concern in his voice and on his face.
Danny looks up at him, not having a clue what to say.  Should he explain the one about blasting all of the other ghosts into the concrete hard enough to cause a dent, or the one about terrorizing a small child and her mother to get them away from the paintings they were trying to steal?
Neither of those sound like they’ll come without follow up questions.
Danny reaches over and pulls his homework back over in front of him.  “There just wasn’t a lot of food going around,” he says, settling on the one human experience he can reliably count on.
There’s a couple seconds of silence, and then Tucker gives a long sigh.  “Dude,” he says.  “Why did it take you so long to come back?”
“I need to get this science homework done,” Danny says in lieu of a reply.
Neither of them say anything back to him.
Strangely enough, the first one who comes up with something that’s actually helpful in regards to the nightmares is Jazz.  And she seems to do it unintentionally, like she’s been doing a lot lately.  She very casually at dinner one night brings up an article she’s read about how rewriting the endings of nightmares can sometimes be a good way for someone to calm down after having them, then starts discussing the science of dreams and sleep and how both of them are important and how to make sure both of them are going as smoothly as they can.
…Okay, maybe this time it’s a little more intentional than she wants to let on.
That doesn’t mean her ideas aren’t worth trying, though, so Danny gets a notebook to keep on the nightstand for alternate endings to write down.  (He’ll destroy the pages every morning for privacy purposes, but he draws the line at getting a night light.)
It ends up being helpful enough that he can at least fall back asleep, which is a big improvement, if the ideas he writes down seem a little unrealistic, with how hard it actually was to break out of Freakshow’s control.  Either way, he’s not so tired, and despite how loathe he is to admit it, he has Jazz to thank for that.
Not that he’ll ever tell her that, of course.
It’s a week and a half after he returns that things change in a meaningful way.  He hasn’t had any ghost fighting to do since getting back, but that changes during lunch on Monday.  Not anything he can’t handle, just a quick eye roll with the Box Ghost, but it apparently means something very different to the rest of Amity Park, and, more important to him personally, to Sam and Tucker.
“I mean honestly,” Sam is saying when Danny shows up at the library after school.  She’s pacing back and forth across the library, and though Tucker waves at him when he notices him, Sam continues marching angrily in front of the table.
“Who does he think he is, showing up like nothing’s different?  First of all, he ruined Circus Gothica, and then he just shows up expecting everyone to still see him as the hero?  That’s not how that works!”
“Hey Danny,” Tucker says as he approaches.  “Don’t mind Sam, she’s pissed off about the ghost fight today.”
“Why?” Danny asks, setting his bag down on the table.  “I didn’t think that was really your scene.”
“Not until that Invis-o-Bill idiot made it personal by messing with my circus,” Sam says, rolling her eyes with obvious anger.  “And then expects everything he’s done in the past couple weeks to just be brushed off.”
Danny sighs, reaching inside his backpack for his homework.  “Yeah, that figures.”
“What figures?” Tucker asks in confusion.
“Math figures,” Danny says, dropping his notebook on the table.  “Gonna try and knock out a lot of the math homework today.”
“Uh, fair enough?” Tucker says, still sounding confused.  “But honestly Sam, at least he seems to have gotten over whatever’s been going on and isn't actively being malicious anymore.”
“Great, so we’re supposed to reward him for the bare minimum?”
“Do we have to talk about this right now?” Danny asks, looking up with what he hopes comes off as annoyance.  “I get enough of ghosts from my parents, I was kind of appreciating you guys actually being a break from all of that.”
“Look, you don’t get it,” Sam says.  “I don’t imagine you’ve been following ghost news for the past couple weeks, but he’s—”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” Danny snaps, giving Sam as firm a glare as he dares to right now.
Sam raises her eyebrows.  “Excuse me?”
“Sam, honestly, I’ll let you be as mad at me as you need for as long as you want,” Danny says.  “But please, can you back off with the ghosts?  My parents already think I was kidnapped by them or something, I don’t want to talk about them during the only time of the day I can actually relax for a little bit.  Okay?”
Thankfully, Sam and Tucker both go quiet.  Now he’ll just have to hope that neither of them actually ask his parents about that excuse and realize he already told them that’s not what happened.
But apparently he’s misjudged their silence, because after a minute Tucker taps his textbook with a pencil, drawing his attention.
He looks up and finds Tucker and Sam both looking at him like they’re trying to come up with the right way to say something.
He blinks.  “What?”
“Danny,” Tucker says slowly.  “If I ask you something, can you promise not to freak out?”
“No,” Danny says honestly.
Tucker considers this for a second.  “Fair.  I’m gonna ask anyway.  Did you actually run away of your own free will?”
Danny goes stiller than, well, a dead person.  “What?”
“Did you actually run away?”
Danny looks back and forth between him, and then Sam, and then back.  “Why are you asking me that?”
“Dude,” Tucker says, leaning closer.  “You’re not acting like yourself.  Even ‘just made a huge mistake and now everyone’s mad at you’ yourself.  You’re having nightmares, and you don’t want to talk about what’s causing them.  Did you actually run away?”
Danny opens his mouth, shuts it, and looks down at his math textbook.
“…Danny,” Sam says, sounding baffled and angry but also more concerned than he’s heard from her since he got back.  “Why didn’t you say anything?”
“Because that’s something you just say in the middle of the hallway,” Danny snaps despite himself.
“Danny, come on,” Sam says.  “Why are you just letting everyone be mad at you then?  You need to tell someone—”
“No,” Danny says.
“What?  Dude,” Tucker says, leaning forward with obvious worry.  “They could go after someone else, or come after you again—”
“He won’t.”
“You can’t know that!”
“Yeah, well, I do,” Danny says, keeping his gaze very firmly on his math homework.  “And I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You know what?  Fine,” Sam snaps, pushing her chair back and grabbing her bag.  “Because you’re being ridiculous.”
With that, she turns and marches out of the library.
Danny doesn’t say anything in protest and starts working on the first math problem on the sheet.
“You know,” Tucker says quietly.  “She was really really scared when you weren’t here.”
Danny keeps writing.
“She was worried something was gonna happen to you and she’d never see you again,” Tucker continues.  “I…” there’s a pause, and then he sighs.
“I’m not gonna make you talk about anything you don’t want to, dude,” he says.  “Just… know that she’s not actually mad at you.  She’s just still scared.”
Danny sighs and puts his pencil down.  “Yeah,” he says.  “I know.”
Tucker reaches out and puts a hand on Danny’s shoulder, in a way that should feel really awkward but somehow doesn’t.  “You know you can tell me anything,” he says.  “Right?”
Danny looks away.
“Okay,” Tucker sighs.  “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He picks up his stuff and leaves.
Danny spends the night laying on his bed tossing a ball up in the air and trying to catch it.  He has to get up and chase it down more often than he’d like, he’s not exactly the most athletic person out there.
He ignores his growing stomach and skips dinner, telling his mom he’s not feeling well.  He can always go down and grab something after everyone else falls asleep.
After dinner, however, he hears a knock on his  door.
“What?”
“Can I come in?” Jazz asks.
Danny pauses in tossing the ball in the air and considers for a moment.  “Yeah.”
The door opens as Danny resumes tossing the ball.  Jazz walks in, then closes the door behind her and heads over towards the bed, already looking concerned. 
“Are you doing okay?” she asks.  “You were upset about something when I came to pick you up, and now you’ve been up here for hours.”
Danny manages to actually catch the ball and sits up, setting it down next to him.  “Okay, what is with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve been acting like, aggressively supportive since I got back,” Danny says.  “Sam is angrier at me than you.  Mom and Dad are angrier at me than you.”
“I’m your sister,” Jazz says.  “It’s not my job to get angry at you.  It’s my job to support you.”
“No, you’re my sister,” Danny says.  “It’s your job to tease me relentlessly and make my life way harder.”
Jazz gives him a look.  “You really don’t need that right now.”
“And why should you care?” Danny snaps.  “I brought this on myself, remember?”
Jazz doesn’t say anything.
“I just, I’m trying to understand what your deal is,” Danny says.  “Do you want something?  Are you trying to butter me up for some reason?  What are you getting out of this?”
Jazz gives him what almost seems like a sad look, then reaches forward and squeezes Danny’s hand.  “I’m worried about you,” she says quietly.
“Why?” Danny says, pulling his hand away.
Jazz sighs, looking down at the bed.  “Because we both know you didn’t run away, Danny.”
Danny throws his hands up.  “This again?  I’m fine.  No one died, no one hurt me, I didn’t have to hurt— people, so I’m fine!”
Jazz gives him a look.  “That is in no way how that works.”
Danny shakes his head, glaring down at the covers.
Jazz nudges him gently in the side.  “I’m not going to make you say something you’re not ready to,” she says.  “Just know that you can tell me anything, Danny.”
With that, she stands and starts to walk out, and Danny feels a weight press down on his chest, one he’s barely sure he can take anymore.
“Jazz, wait,” he says, reaching out and catching her arm.
Jazz pauses and turns back around.  “Yeah?”
“I—” Danny says, and stops.  Nerves start to crawl up his throat.  He half expects his ghost sense to go off, but it’s not that kind of anxiety.
He takes a deep breath.  “If I tell you something,” he says.  “Can you promise to let me explain everything before you make any kind of judgment?”
Jazz smiles at him.  “I promise,” she says with a nod.
Danny takes a shaky breath.  “I, um.”  He stops.
“Yeah?” Jazz probes gently.
“Sorry,” he mutters, looking down and clenching his hands around his blankets.  “I don’t think I’ve ever actually said it out loud before.”
Jazz reaches out and puts her hand over his.  “You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” she says.  “I… already know.”
Danny jerks his head up.  “What?”
By the look on her face, he can tell they both mean exactly the same thing.
“You…” Danny says weakly.  “How long?”
“Uh, since the Spectra thing,” Jazz says, rubbing the back of her neck with a sheepish smile.  “I wanted to give you a chance to tell me yourself.”
Danny gapes at her for a second, Jazz gives him a soft smile.
“And you…” he says finally.  “You don’t care?”
“Of course I care,” Jazz says, crossing her arms.  “I care that you’re safe.  I care that if you don’t want someone to know, they don’t find out.  I care that you’re my brother and you’ve been trying to do this all alone.  I care that some jerk ran off with you and has been forcing you to do things you clearly don’t want to do for the past month.”
Danny winces and looks down.
“Are you okay?” Jazz says, sitting down on the bed next to him.
“Not… really,” Danny says.
Jazz wraps her arms around him and pulls him over towards her, and this time he doesn’t pull away.
“I don’t like watching you do this all by yourself,” Jazz says.  “Can I help you?”
Now Danny does pull away, if just to stare at her in bafflement.  “You want to help?”
“Of course I want to help,” Jazz says, like that’s obvious.  “If anything, the past month is a clear sign that you shouldn’t be doing this by yourself.”
Well, he can’t exactly argue with her there.  Still…
“It’s dangerous, Jazz,” he says.
Jazz raises her eyebrows.  “All the more reason I don’t want you rushing into danger without backup.”
“I can handle it,” he says.  “That’s what the ghost powers are for.”
“Danny.”  Jazz leans forward, giving him a pointed look.  “I want to help you.  Okay?”
Danny looks at her for a minute.  He takes a breath.  “Okay.”
Jazz leans forward and pulls him into another hug, and for once, Danny can know she means it.  His brain can’t make any arguments about how she wouldn’t be doing this if she knew, because she does know.
And, well.
He could get used to that.
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