#but i need them for the thing i want to study

[ttsukiimi]

˗ˏˋDOUBLE STUFFED ! ´ˎ˗

୨୧⋆ 𝐬𝐲𝐧𝐨𝐩𝐬𝐢𝐬 ⎯ Irritating neighbors are never a good thing. Then how come having both of them inside you feels so good?

୨୧⋆ 𝐭𝐚𝐠𝐬 ⎯ gojo x reader x geto, smut (mdni), 3some, unprotected sx, doggy, oral (male receiving), multiple 0rgasms, slight dumbification, slight f!ngering, slight slapping, slight mean!satoru, both at once, fac!al, overstim, reader referred to as (princess, baby)

୨୧ ⋆ 𝐚/𝐧 ⎯  the pain I went thru to post this…

As a tired college student, a fair number of things annoyed you. Loud children and their negligent parents, unpleasant people, your English professor who seemed to give out a ton of homework each day. But nothing compared to how irritated you were by your neighbors.

Satoru and Suguru.

While most girls would kill to be within ten feet of their presence, let alone live by them, what they didn't know were how loud and uncaring they could be. And that included the way they brought a different girl to their apartment each day dressed in skimpy shorts and a tight crop top—they seemed to have a type.

Though, the real anger within you only began to boil as they went on with their daily cycle. You always found yourself wondering if it was really that good to have them screaming and moaning in such a way that you could hear them clearly from your room.

Not that you ever wanted to find out, of course.

And today was no different. You could hear the banging of the headboard, her moans and cries of please, the lewd smack of their bodies—how thin were these walls?

You sighed, closing your textbook shut, concluding your 'studying' for the day even though you hadn't really even done anything. You had promised to finally complain to them today about all the noise, and you were sure you were doing the whole complex a favor.

By the time the sounds ceased, your statement was complete. Sure, the two males may be obnoxious, but they were damn attractive. You made sure to rehearse your sentence several times before you stood at their door.

Knock, knock.

Suguru's head swiveled to the source of the tapping, thinking to himself if their fling had forgotten something. He looked at Satoru and the male only shrugged, mouthing an "I don't know" quietly to him.

Upon opening the door, his eyebrow quirked upwards in confusion. You were a pleasant surprise to him.

Yours sprang up in embarrassment as you weren't expecting him to be shirtless. You fiddled with your hands, gaze darting anywhere but the man in front of you.

Tilting his head, Suguru leaned against the doorway, and smiled in amusement. Everything about him was so compelling—his long, luscious black hair, how he towered over you, his built physique—you didn't realize you were gawking.

"Well?"

"T-The noise," you started, clearing your throat. "Could you keep it down?"

Satoru, stuffing his face with post-nut sweets, snickered in the background, and they both feigned ignorance. The man in front of you hummed and scratched his head playfully.

"I don't recall there being any noise,"

And, while you would have found this entertaining if you were one of their little toys, you weren't. Your arms crossed over your chest, inadvertently pushing your breasts up, and his eyes shamelessly drunk in the sight.

Suguru had always found you desirable, finding himself thinking about the girl next door, even while he was balls deep in some random. But he made sure to hide that, even from Satoru, his bestest friend.

“Look,” you sighed, rubbing your temple. “I need to study and your ‘activities’ keep distracting me. Just, please—“

“Study?” Suguru questioned, his gaze searing as he looked down at you. “Princess, from what I heard yesterday, you were doing more than studying.”

And that’s when it clicked. Your cheeks flushed with heat.

It’s true. Yesterday, you’d abandoned your studying for something more…rewarding. Your fingers were stuffed deep inside your cunt, pumping in and out, while you moaned at the sweet pleasure. Thinking now, maybe you were too loud.

Satoru suddenly appeared behind Suguru and pushed him aside. He was aiming to grab your arm to pull you in but his friend nudged him in the rib.

“You’ll scare her off, move.”

Suguru then looked at you, smiling a little. “How about a bet?”

You quipped at the idea.

“We have a little fun with you, and in return we promise to be quiet.”

How could you say no to such a promising deal?

But it was all we, we, we. There was no way you could take both of them at once.

However, as you found yourself under both men, their eyes filled with lust and desire, perhaps you could.

"Satoru," you whimpered, watching the white-haired man take his painfully hard cock out of his sweats and pump it.

He grinned at you, sliding the tip over your lips, smearing his pre all over your mouth. "Think you'd look better with cum all over that pretty face."

They had you on your knees, each taking either the front or back. Suguru teasingly glided his tip up and down your pussy while Satoru held you up by your hair, both men pushing themselves into you in tandem.

Behind you, Suguru sucked in a breath—one thrust into you had his mind fuzzy and had him yearning for more. You were even more addicting than he thought you would be.

Quickly, he found a pace, drilling his impressively sized cock in and out of your warmth. "Fuck," Satoru huffed, feeling how your throat constricted around him and you gagged, looking up at him with teary, pleading eyes.

He scoffed, cocky grin widening. "No breaks, princess."

It was like you could feel every vein lining him once he started to move, your jaw locking in order to accommodate the sheer girth and largeness, more tears pouring down your cheeks.

"Don't break her," Suguru chuckled, large hand taking hold of your hips to steady his, the impact of his thrusts multiplying tenfold. Each drive had you shrieking out in a delirious mix of pain and pleasure, not to mention the fact that both men were set on making you feel good.

"Can't promise that; her mouth's so fucking warm," Satoru murmured back, using his thumb to wipe away a blend of saliva and pre-cum from the corner of your lips. "Keep sucking like that 'n I might just have to keep you."

With each ram into you Suguru's balls smacked against your clit pleasurably, stimulating the nub of nerves in a way that made your vision blurry with stars. You choked on your moans, the sounds vibrating onto the cock in your mouth and sparking the feeling of his climax.

Satoru groaned and pulled out, twitching as hot spurts of his seed dripped onto your face, down your lips and onto your lolled tongue.

"Told you I could last longer."

"Oh, shut up. She hasn't even came yet Mr. 'I'll have her orgasm 5 times.'"

Guaranteed, Suguru could be a little absurd when making bets like this, but that was a promise he could keep.

Over the course of the next hours and so, the two men had you in multiple positions, ones you didn't even know exist nor could be executed. Your mind was blurry by then, fogged by the multiple highs they forced out of you and your poor cunt, though even then they made sure this position stuck in your mind.

This time, you'd be having both of them. Both at once—not one in one hole and one in the other—both.

Satoru kneeled by your left and Suguru by you right, both males with their cocks in hand. You lie there, hopeless, your breathing steady yet uneven at the same time.

Slowly, one entered, now doing so easily with how much they had stretched you out. Then, as slow as the first one, slid in the other. The feeling was so much—too much for such a fucked-out mind.

You couldn't even process who was doing what, just noticed a big hand around your neck, squeezing lightly. "Eyes open, baby." Suguru's soft voice sounded, a low hum that made your body shudder.

It was thrust after thrust, drive after drive of two huge cocks, now both at once. "Hng—can't! N-no more!" you mewled, gripping at the sheets, anything that would keep your sweat-sheened body from rising off the bed. Satoru grasped your hips in a bruising grip, one that would surely leave red blemished for days to come, and snarled, white hair sticking to his forehead.

"You'll take all of it. Only fucking done when we say so." Then came a hot slap to the side of your ass, the sound rippling throughout their apartment.

They stretched you to the hilt, a point where you never thought you'd reached. Your stomach churned in pleasure, body feeling weightless, and there it was—your fifth orgasm of the day.

With the green light of your own, the two men gritted their teeth as they were swept up in pleasure. So swept up that, they didn't even notice how their seed was pumping into your already battered cunny.

Though, once they came to, both men couldn’t care less, too indulged in the double stuffed sight in front of them.

#ꔫ : ˚ ͙۪۪̥◌⎯ 𝐒𝐔𝐊𝐈’𝐒 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐓𝐈𝐎𝐍 #jjk fic #jjk smut #gojo smut #jjk x reader #jjk fanfic #jjk headcanons #jujutsu kaisen #jujutsu kaisen smut #jjk x you #gojo x you #jujutsu gojo #gojo x reader #satoru gojo #jjk gojo #gojou satoru x reader #gojo satoru #gojo satoru x reader #gojo satoru x you #gojo satoru x y/n #getou suguru x you #suguru geto smut #geto suguru smut #geto smut #jujutsu geto #geto x you #getou suguru x reader #geto x reader #gojo satoru smut #geto suguru

[f0point5]

i NEED jealous Max. Please 🥺🥺🥺 I love jealous/possessive guys haha the feminism just leaves my body

Me too! GOD. Me, too.

It took me ages to decide how to go about this because I had soooo many ideas but I hope you like it!

✨set during the Miami GP weekend 2022✨

Everybody wants you, but I don’t like a gold rush

Max glances down at his watch. 17 minutes. 17 minutes you’ve been standing in the gallery area of the garage, fanning yourself with a magazine - with Max’s face on the front of it, no less - in the Miami heat, talking to some freakishly tall guy in a Louis Vuitton denim jacket and aviator sunglasses. He’s so painfully American that Max wonders what you even have to talk about for…eighteen minutes.

You tighten your high ponytail while Paul Bunyon talks, his mouth wide with every word. Max studies your face for any sign that you’re bored. He’s bored of watching this, but he knows from experience that not looking isn’t a real option. You haven’t looked over at him once in those eighteen minutes, in fact you haven’t even been distracted by the mechanics moving around or the noise of drilling and clattering tools.

This guy must be really fucking interesting.

You smile at something Captain America says and Max feels his jaw clenched so hard he thinks a tooth is going to crack.

It’s like he’s thirteen again, watching you stand in the middle of the makeshift paddock at the karting track, swarmed by every one of his competitors, their parents packing up their stuff as they vie for your attention. He was the only one who stayed away, following his dad’s instructions on how to properly dismantle and store things while sneaking glimpses at the show you were running. He would win every race and still go home feeling like a loser.

It’s different now, of course. He doesn’t take your gregarious nature so personally now, and he can admit he understands what men see in you now, even if he doesn’t feel it. But he’d be lying if he said it doesn’t trigger something in him to see the way men react to you. It might irritate him less if you enjoyed it, but you’ve long since grown out of that. Now, you expect it so much that you ignore it, and Max has no choice to but to notice it, the same way you’d notice a rusty knife embedded in your side.

“You’re not listening to me, are you?” GP says, which snaps Max out of his calculations.

“I’m listening,” Max says, fiddling with the brim of his cap. “Drive fast, win race, I got it,”

GP frowns at his dismissive tone, and Max makes a point of looking at his water bottle, lest GP realise what actually had his attention. “Max, you need to focus. What are you even-“ It’s the sound of your laugh - high pitched over the deep bass of the music - that makes GP look across the garage. His features twist in disapproval as he turns back to Max. “You’ve got to be kidding me,”

Max looks down at his shoes, moving his foot as he inspects them. “What?”

Above him, GP groans. “I’m not going to say anything about the situation as a whole, because it’s waste of my time. But specifically now, she’s right there, she’s not going anywhere. Can we please just go through this once and then you can carry on staring?”

Max rolls his eyes, steeling his face as a cameraman enters the garage. He’s wearing a Red Bull shirt so Max doesn’t mind too much, but he can’t be captured looking as morose as he feels. The cameraman pans past him and onto you and the guest. Max watches you cringe as the guy throws up some hand sign to the camera, clearly at home with the media attention.

“Who even is that?” Max asks, unable to hide his rancour. He’s probably going to be forced to take a picture with Popeye later.

“I don’t know, some American football player?” GP says with a shrug, giving Max a helpless look. GP couldn’t give less of a shit about the celebrity guests touted around the gargae, and normally Max is his ally. “Are we done?”

Max nods, but not even a second later he’s looking again. It gets worse the more you talk, he can see this guy becoming more enchanted by the second. He wonders what kind of steroids they take in American sports leagues because the meathead is acting like a dog in heat. He leans towards you at an angle that is wholly unnecessary, his eyes fixated on your mouth, nodding too emphatically at everything you say.

“My God, why doesn’t he just lick her face,” Max says incredulously, more to himself than anything.

“Max,” GP sighs.

“Come on,” Max implores with a scoff, stopping himself from outright gesturing in your direction. “Look at him. That’s embarrassing,”

GP fixes Max with a deadpan expression. “Right, but you being sulky and jealous is the height of cool?”

“I’m not jealous.”

And he isn’t. Because Joe DiMaggio over there doesn’t have anything he wants. He’s not going to waste time being jealous of a guy getting half an hour with you when he has cats, and a home, and a life with you.

Finally, you look in his direction, but only because GP calls your name. “Can you come here?”

You give GP a thumbs up and excuse yourself, trotting over to Max without a second thought. Wannabe Tom Brady brazenly enjoys the view, and Max swears he hasn’t been that close to punching someone since Monza last year.

“What’s up?” You ask, slotting yourself between the two men as you lean back against the shelf.

GP hands you his phone. “Beat this Candy Crush level for me, would you? Been stuck for days,”

You look at him skeptically, but years of being filmed up close by cameras on the pit wall have given GP a hell of a poker face; he just stares back at you, and you give up with a huff.

“Men are hopeless,” you say with a roll of your eyes.

“Couldn’t agree more,” GP says, his eyes pointedly on Max, who can’t even defend himself.

Desperate to avoid GP’s scrutiny, he glances over at the gallery, only to find the Yank looking at him. Well, not him, you. He’s got that curious expression as he assesses you fiddling with GP’s phone, one that says he’s trying to understand if he has something to be worried about. He doesn’t. You’re not his to worry about.

“Here,” Max says, pulling off his cap. You barely look up at him before he puts his cap firmly on your head, holding it steady with one hand while pulling your ponytail through the hole at the back with the other.

The brim of the hat obscures half your face, and Max turns so that half your body is shielded by his, which he tells himself is in case a camera comes by.

“It’s sunny,” Max shrugs in his own defence, when he notices you looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

You adjust the cap on your head but don’t take it off. “Why don’t you just give me your letterman jacket?”

“My what?”

“Never mind,” you chuckle, shaking your head at him as you pat his chest with an indulgent smile.

He takes the opportunity at the sound of a large wheel gun to glance over at the gallery, only to meet the eyes of the guy you were talking to. Now that you’re no longer next to him, Max does sort of recognise him. He plays for some team named after an animal. Max just looks at him - he’ll do this all day if he has to - until the guy shoves his hands in his pockets and pulls out his phone, starting to tap away. Yeah, go back to Raya.

Good riddance, Max thinks to himself as he turns back to you, only to find that you already looking at him. He wonders for how long.

He can tell by your smirk that he’s been caught. If he’s honest with himself you caught him five years ago, this was just one of the few moments he let you know it. And you know it. How could you not know?

He thinks for a second that you’re going to tease him, but you don’t. You shift on your feet so that some of your weight rests against his arm, and go back to playing on GP’s phone.

“Go on, GP,” he says, fighting a smile at the large number 1 on the brim of what is now your hat.

He knows from the way GP is looking at him that he’ll get an earful about this later, but right now, he just clears his throat.

“Right, so,”

#max verstappen x reader #max verstappen imagine

[nathaslosthershit]

Long Distance (LN4)

Summary: Long distance relationships are hard, especially when they both have very time consuming careers

Warnings; Angst (a whole lot), no happy ending in this part (will happen in pt 2)

Request: hi!! requesting a lando norris x female uni!reader if possible reader being a medical student or a one of the engineers on the paddock 🧍🏻‍♀️

Lando wasn’t known for being the smartest on the grid. He, like many other drivers, had only a few years of school to his name. But that still hadn’t stopped him from being able to somehow ‘woo’ a woman quite the opposite. 

His girlfriend was currently in her last year of medical school. While he was unbelievably proud of how far she had come, the difficulties of long distance have gotten to both of them, and there wasn’t much hope once she graduated and was off to a medical training program. With her studying for finals and Lando being off to a new country every two weeks for Grand Prixs, their relationship has been rocky to say the least.

Constant lack of communication and missing each other's calls had led them to have tons of unspoken dialogue. Each unanswered call created the smallest bit of resentment that just continued to grow and grow. 

No more sweet ‘goodmorning’ or ‘goodnight’ texts, no more wishing her well before a big test, no more sending ‘good luck baby!’ before qualifying. Just a few ‘how are you doing?’ and other bland messages you’d send to a coworker, not your significant other. 

After weeks of little communication, they had finally scheduled a ‘zoom date’. Not particularly the most romantic date they had been on, but it's the best they could do with their schedules. Lando called in late at night for him while his girlfriend had a lunch break in between labs. Time zones be damned.

Lando was 25 minutes late leaving only 35 minutes to actually talk to one another.

Her wifi was spotty so it kept freezing.

Finally, with only 5 minutes left, Lando decided to make a joke that there is no reason for her to continue going to labs, as he would be happy to be her ‘sugar daddy’. This was not very well received by his girlfriend, who responded with a quick “fuck you” and hung up early.

Lando was joking, a bit. He loved his girlfriend and saw a future with her, he just couldn’t stand long distance and any job in the medical field was bound to take up most of your time. He wanted her, but he also wanted someone who could be by his side on race day. That just wasn’t something that was possibly currently. 

He supported her. He loved to brag about how smart she was and how she was so dedicated to helping people. But that came with setbacks.

After a quick message from Lando (‘I was kidding darling. You know how proud I am of you. Lighten up a little, yeah?’), which she ignored, she was off to her labs in a worse mood than before. Things couldn’t go on like this. 

He hadn’t heard from her in three days. His “how are you, love?” and “Miss you lots. Hope your class is going better than my neck training :(“ went unanswered. She knew she was being petty, but maybe a relationship was just too hard for her life currently. 

After three long and stressful days of silence, she called him. With no message asking what she needed to speak about, Lando feared he already knew.

“We can’t keep doing this” She said after they quickly exchanged a ‘hi, how are you?’ ‘I'm good, how are you?’. 

“Baby, I told you it was just a-”

“I know that Lando! It's just that this isn’t the first time you have mentioned me quitting my career to be your housewife or whatever unrealistic idea you have stuck in your head.”

“I don’t need you to be a housewife! I don’t want that for you. I just try to let you know that you don’t need to worry about your future as much because I will always be there to help you.”

“But I want a career! I want to work hard so I can have a good future. You need to get it into your head that your career isn’t the only important one.”

“I don’t think that! Me wanting to let you know that I support you no matter what isn't diminishing your career plans! It would be nice if you started to show a little more support. I am so sick and tired of all our conversations revolving around you and how your day was. If classes are rough, or you are stressed, you don’t respond to me. I never know where I land with you. But god forbid I try to mention how hard my day was. I am just as sick of it.”

She didn’t know how to respond. It seems that all the times she has been more focused on how she was feeling she completely forgot to check on how he was doing. Before she can even muster out an apology, Lando jumps back in.

“Maybe you are right. I don’t think I can do this either. Not anymore.” He feels his stomach dropping as he says the words, not fully meaning them.

There is a long silence, moments where she wants to apologize, to try and reconcile. In that moment all of the good memories of their relationship come flashing back to her, as if her mind is begging her to do something. But she doesn’t. 

“Then I guess this is it.” She finally says. 

“I guess so.”

#formula 1 x reader #formula 1 imagine #lando norris x reader #lando norris imagine #lando x reader

[wlntrsldler]

THE PROPHECY | LUKE CASTELLAN

synopsis: series of events between zeus!reader and luke that started the prophecy. not canon-compliant; inspired by the prophecy by taylor swift.

series masterlist | previous | next

Hand on the throttle, thought I caught lightning in a bottle, but it's gone again.

"Do you think Thalia knew I loved her?"

There was a bite in the air, as there always was when the summer began to fade and fall began to creep up at Camp Half-Blood. It happened every year, at least for the past three years you've called Camp Half-Blood your home.

Luke sat beside you on the hard, dirt floor, looking up at the green of Thalia's pine tree. The summer campers knew of her legend, but it was the year-rounders like you and Luke who understood her sacrifice best. There was a feeling of guilt and gratitude that engulfed all of you, like the protection Thalia blanketed over the campgrounds. You were thankful that demigods had a place to feel safe, but it came at the cost of a life. Thalia should be here.

"Of course she knew," Luke replied, unconsciously yanking out the blades of grass that flourished between the cracks in the floor. "She's your sister."

"Yeah, but do you think she knew I chose to love her?" You clarified, turning your head to face him. You did this every year, you and Luke at the foot of Thalia's tree once the summer campers all left for the year. “I mean yeah, I had to love her because she’s my sister, but do you think she knows that I would’ve chosen to love her even if she wasn’t? I feel like I never told her that. We always fought.” 

Each year you studied Luke and noted the things that were different. He's older now. His arms were more defined, muscles beginning to form on his otherwise lanky frame. He'd grown taller in the last few months and his body was adjusting to his new height. The pants he wore all of last summer were discarded a few months ago. They stopped short on his ankles and Luke decided that it was time to let them go. 

Another bead was added to his necklace, three wooden beads clanking against each other, just like yours, when he moved his body too quickly. A new bracelet adorned his wrist given to him by a young girl in the Hermes cabin before she left to go back to Virginia for the year. Luke had a collection of bracelets stashed in his bedside drawer. It was a reminder of all the demigods he wanted to protect. Some became painful reminders of the ones he couldn't.

Luke pursed his lips, "Sisters fight. I don't think she took it personally."

Each year you studied Luke and treasured the things that stayed the same. He still had the same smile as he always did, bringing you back to when you and Thalia first met him all those years ago– just three kids fighting for your lives all on your own. You and Luke were the same age, him only your senior by a few weeks, but he took the protector role seriously. Luke was your safe place before Camp Half-Blood. 

His curls were the same, especially in the mornings when he first gets out of bed; all wild and unruly, just like how he is when he wasn't carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Some people say it's because he's the son of Hermes so mischief ran through his veins, but there was nothing about Luke that mirrored his father. He was too good to be like the gods.

"I just wish my last words to her weren't that," You uttered, a bitter taste in your mouth as you replayed your last conversation with Thalia. In the final stretch of your journey to Camp Half-Blood, you and Thalia got into an argument. In hindsight, it was petty, a disagreement that any older and younger sister would have, but it felt big at the moment. You didn't speak to her for two days. And then, in the blink of an eye, there was a blinding light, and suddenly, your little sister vanished.

You don't even remember what the fight was about anymore.

"You need to forgive yourself," He said, flicking away the blades of grass he had in between his fingertips, "This wasn’t on you."

He said this every year, yet it never felt rehearsed. It always felt genuine when Luke said it. You wondered if he got annoyed at how you brought this up each year, this never-ending feeling of guilt that you didn't turn around to see if Thalia was behind you, that you couldn't protect your little sister, but Luke was patient with you. If it bothered him that you thought about it often, he didn't show it.

"Sometimes it feels like it is," You whispered, watching a singular pine fall from a branch. You like to think that Thalia did these things to let you know that she's listening. "Our dad hasn't talked to me since."

Luke clenched his jaw, wiping his hand on the fabric of his cargo pants. His warm palm took your hand, giving it a soft squeeze, "You're better off."

"Maybe."

"You are," He said, clearing his throat. His chest felt heavy as he spoke. "I have to tell you something."

You turned your hand over, lacing your fingers together. Holding Luke's hand always felt right, even when you were fourteen and he had to drag you away to safety from the monsters who were out to get you; even when you were fifteen being woken up by the nightmares caused by the empty Zeus cabin, a chilling reminder that your sister was supposed to be there; even when you were sixteen and began to take on more responsibilities at camp despite your protests. "What is it, Luke?"

"I have a quest," He admitted. He'd been keeping this from you for days. He was meant to embark on this journey today, but he pleaded with his father to give him until tomorrow to begin. He knew the day the summer campers left was hard on you. 

Your stomach dropped. Luke had been waiting for a quest from his father for years. You watched him fall into a pit of despair every time a camper who'd been at camp for a shorter period of time got a quest and returned with the glory of the strongest and bravest champions. You knew Luke wanted the opportunity to prove himself to his father. This quest was it, but it didn't mean that you were enthusiastic about the idea. "When do you leave?"

"In a few hours."

"Oh."

"Are you upset?"

"No," You said, then paused. You thought about it. Luke let you think in silence, rubbing his thumb along your skin. "Yes, but I can't do anything about it. I can't stop it."

"Say the word and I will, you know that," Luke rebutted, staring at you now. "I won't go if you don't want me to."

"Luke," You sighed, "You can't deny the gods."

"For you, I'd try to." Sometimes Luke said things that worried you. You'd always been told that your allegiance should be to the gods, your parents. Sometimes you felt differently, but you never said it out loud, but Luke had no problem doing it. He made it clear that his allegiance was to the people he loved, to you. 

"You should go," You said, ignoring the shake in your voice. It was tempting to tell him to stay; Tell him to be content to live a quiet life in the safety of these grounds, to be content with the glory he received from being the head counselor of the Hermes cabin, as the best swordsman at camp. But Luke craved more to life than this, you knew that. He needed more than another notch on his belt from Capture the Flag. He deserved more. He deserved a father who cared about him. Maybe this quest is the key to giving him exactly what he needed. You couldn’t in good conscience keep him from that.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes." The lie burned your tongue. While some demigods returned victorious, some never returned at all. The thought of it made a chill run down your spine. It made Luke flinch.

He wrapped his arms around you. The position was awkward, but neither of you cared. When you were younger, his curls tickled the side of your cheek when you hugged him. You used to be able to look him in the eye back when you were the same height. You used to be able to memorize the features on his face; the crinkles by the side of his eyes that would appear when he'd smile, eyelashes brushing against the stray hairs of his eyebrows; full cheeks dusted with the faintest shade of pink from the beating sun or the wind chills; a crease under his lips that cast a shadow on his chin.

Now that you're older, his curls fell against your temple when he held you like this. His face was thinner, jaw more defined and cheeks hollow, like his youth was being drained from him each year. But his heart remained the same. A steady thump against your own, a beat that became synonymous with home. 

“I feel like this is a test,” He murmured, shaking as he spoke. He’ll blame it on the wind if you asked, but he knows that his words would fall flat. You always did know when things felt wrong with him. Sometimes he thought that you knew him better than he knew himself. Luke licked his lips, “Like he’s expecting me to fail and prove what he’s known all along.” 

“You always tell me that I’m more than what the gods think of me,” You said, looking up at him. Luke was staring at the sky, jaw rigid as he fought back the tears. There were only a handful of things that made Luke emotional– talking about his father was one of them. He used to cry when he talked about May, too, but now when someone asks about his mother, his tone turns robotic. He recited her fate like a broken record, waiting for the inevitable looks of pity from the onlookers. You brushed your thumb along his jaw, “Luke?” 

“Hm?” His eyes darted to yours, a ghost of a smile appearing on his lips as he studied your features. Luke always knew you were beautiful, but sometimes when he was this close to you, it knocked the breath out of his lungs for a moment, like he couldn’t believe you were real. 

“You always tell me that I’m more than what they make me out to be,” You repeated, holding his face in the palm of your hand, “And yet you never believe it for yourself.” 

He couldn’t help but chuckle. You’d called him out on his hypocrisy more times than he could count. You were right, though. He did always tell you that the opinions of the gods didn’t matter, not when they didn’t know you like he knew you, not when they were too preoccupied in their own world to realize that you were the greatest thing they created. 

“You are more than what your father thinks.” 

He wanted to believe you, he really did, but all his life he’d been told that he was destined for something great. And yet the things he’d been able to accomplish so far seem so miniscule, irrelevant, in the context of the gods. He craved more. 

When Luke was a child, May Castellan used to mumble the same phrase over and over again. He didn’t think much of it then, nothing that his mother said usually made any sense to his nine-year-old self anyway, but the more time he spent at Camp Half-Blood, the clearer her words became. Luke was destined for something, it’s in the cards, it’s in the hands of fate. This quest might be it, the first step to reaching eternal glory. 

There are times though, during moments like this, with you beside him, when he thinks that he’ll be fine not reaching eternal glory. He can live out his life happily with just this; you and him at the foot of Thalia’s tree, with you telling him he’s more than what the gods want him to be. After all, he’d give up eternal glory if it meant being with you. 

“You’re gonna be okay without me around?” He teased. For years, it had always been you and Luke. It was a type of co-dependence that made Chiron and Mr. D's eyebrows raise. They found it dangerous. You overheard them talking in the Big House about it once, how unnatural it was for two demigods to choose each other despite the dangers of it. You joked that it was a trauma bond of sorts, but you and Luke both knew that it was more than that. Neither of you said it out loud, though, both too scared to ruin whatever this was.

“No, probably not,” You confessed. Your words took him by surprise. He was expecting you to join his teasing, but he found no trace of banter in your tone. You bit your bottom lip, “But you’re gonna come back, so I’ll be okay. I need to be okay with you being gone. I can’t expect things to always stay the same.” 

Luke couldn’t help but frown at your words. He knew you were right like you always were, but he didn’t like the idea of things changing. So much in his life moved with the tides, and up until he met you, he was fine with it. But the idea of the two of you changing, the idea of one day not having this, not having you, well, Luke didn’t think he could stomach the idea. His lips hovered over the crown of your head, almost touching you but not quite, “Not us, though. It will always be us.” 

Luke didn’t know what he was destined to do, what prophecy the gods and the Fates had in store for him, but the only thing he was sure of was you. And that was never going to change if he could help it.

#frances writes #luke castellan #luke castellan x reader #luke castellan imagine #luke castellan pjo #luke fic #luke castellan fanfic #luke castellan x you #luke castellan x yn #luke castellan x y/n #luke castellan series #percy jackson fanfic #luke pjo #pjo series #pjo fanfic

[admirxation]

Actress / Leon Kennedy oneshot

boyfriends dad!Leon Kennedy x afab!reader

summary: your boyfriend has brought you home to meet his father, but it turns to a non conventional meeting when your boyfriend goes to sleep.

cw: this fic contains cheating, I do not condone everything I write; this is just fiction where real people cannot get hurt, please read the warnings and continue at your own discretion // 18+ heavy smut (mdni), cheating, kissing, touching, tit grabbing, grinding, fingering (f receiving), finger sucking, degrading, unprotected sex (p in v), and creampie.

word count: 2.8k

thank you @valslullaby for this idea, my fellow older man lover, please check their fics as well they’re so good

When you told people you were going to college, the description and the idea of college tended to be romanticised, further enticing you to the whole ‘college experience.’ These conversations usually involved older people looking back on those former years through rose-tinted glasses and appreciating the simpler times, wanting to regress to that time when troubles weren’t as hard, where your biggest stress was getting an assignment in last minute compared to getting the rent due and food on the table for you and the whole family. The conversation tended to have them blissfully remembering how much they could drink and how they could handle the hangovers back then, remembering how easy it was to make friends in the same class as you and all they could do now was focus on a good credit score and getting on the property ladder.

But the conversation of college didn’t just come with remembering the good times; it came with some advice, some embarrassing advice you didn’t want to hear about—the sex talk. When you accepted your dream college's offer, the “be safe” talk was constantly repeated; you remembered how you wanted time to quicken and have the conversation end every time it started. You understood that they just wanted to keep you safe; after all, you would rather them tell you what to avoid than just outright forbid and have you get into some serious trouble—but who in their right mind wants to want to discuss their sex life with their parents?

The conversation consisted of the basics you already knew: you can say no anytime (obviously), make sure he uses a condom, watch how much you drink and who you’re going home with, the usual safety many people knew and practised. However, while you remembered it all in exact order to recite, you never thought you needed to use it when you entered the dorms since you didn’t have much luck when it came to your love life. That was until you met him—your current boyfriend.

You two were in the same class, him sitting next to you; it started with him acting stupid and you sharing your notes, compliments on how smart you are, later going to the same afterschool study sessions, then getting closer with every day that went past. At first, you didn’t think too much of it, thinking this would be a casual relationship that would end in the first semester, but then you started seeing each other more frequently; he was even buying you countless gifts that made you wonder what in the hell he was doing to afford it all. Then it turned to him meeting your parents; you tried not to admit it to yourself, but you wished that they wouldn’t like him, hoping to use it as an excuse to end things, but alas, they loved and approved of him, commending you for your “great taste” in picking a partner. You just smiled and hugged him that night as he gushed about his excitement about what they thought, but all you could think when nestled on his chest was: I’m forever stuck.

He was lovely and a nice enough guy, but something about him was off, maybe a touch of immaturity, not having much in common or just an outright lack of interest. Continuing your cowardly streak, you agreed to meet his father, wishing things would pick up after his first meeting.

The days rushed by when it came to driving back to his place, and you received constant text messages from your parents reminding you to be polite and make a good impression. A part of you was thinking about pretending to be rude and unlikeable, but you couldn’t bear someone thinking of you like this, especially an adult, after being raised to respect your elders, like most people.

You were quiet for the whole car ride, not sharing a single word, hoping he would perhaps disapprove of you—a girl could wish to get the easy way out.

As you two approached the front door, you heard heavy footsteps come closer and the clicking sound of a door unlocking. Later, you were in Mr. Kennedy’s gaze. You gave him a warm smile, watching his eyes widen as he quickly looked you up and down.

“Ah, it’s lovely to finally meet the mystery girl my son can’t shut up about,” he said, seeing your boyfriend roll his eyes in embarrassment as he entered his house. “Come in, come in.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kennedy,” you showed him respect.

“Oh, no need for formalities, just call me Leon… Mr. Kennedy makes me sound so old; I don’t need the reminder of how the years have slipped by,” you couldn’t help but let out a small giggle at his words; you never imagined his father to be like this, the way he described him didn’t fit the current person you were greeted with. Your boyfriend described how much he looked up to him, how he was his whole world and that he would trust his instincts; if he disliked something, he would dislike it; if he loved something, he would try his best to find a love for it. At first, you found it ridiculous how much he needed Daddy’s approval; you even told him he ought to just make his own thoughts. But standing there in his presence, you could understand; he had a gentle and subtle touch of influence in his stance, but also an overwhelming quality about him that made you want to follow his will.

Another thing you couldn’t deny was how attractive Leon was. You expected some normal military dad who was such a bore, but you couldn’t help but steal a few glances at the attractive older man.

For the whole night, Leon made you feel welcome, helping you with your bags and asking you for any refreshments you would like; your boyfriend mentioned how he hadn’t seen him so happy and eager for years; it must have been the presence of a lady, you thought. You forgot about the desire to have him dislike you; you even thought of continuing to ignore those feelings as nervousness in the relationship, but at the moment, you were so invested in everything Leon was doing and saying to you—you couldn’t describe the feeling he had over you.

As the night wore on, you saw your boyfriend’s eyes get heavier, but you were still wide awake as your conversations with Leon continued at the same pace as in the early afternoon, all the way to the late evening.

“I think I’m going to bed now; I’ll see you tomorrow,” your boyfriend gently kissed your cheek, automatically reciprocating it as he trudged upstairs back into his room, hearing the heavy door click into place.

Your heartbeat picked up when you noticed it was just you and Leon in the same room. You thought about all those thoughts you had when you first saw him, how you analysed his stature, how you looked at how his biceps filled the sleeves of his shirt, trailing down to his hands and how he used them in his manner of speech.

Whatever junk was playing on the television went on for a few minutes after your boyfriend had gone to sleep, and you noticed how Leon leaned back in his chair and listened carefully toward the bottom of the stairs, trying to hear if your boyfriend had gone to sleep already.

“He’s a fast sleeper,” you tried to break the silence. “I’m quite jealous of people who can hit the pillow and sleep -” You weren’t expecting to be cut off.

“Hmm,” a smirk played at the corner of his lips, making your curiosity peak. “You know, you’re a very good actress.”

“E-excuse me?”

“I know you don’t love him, gods, that kiss was pathetic… I know you don’t want to kiss in front of his old man, but that kiss was… plain… Does he really eat this shit up?” You were shocked how he saw through your facade; no one, not even your friends, who thought they knew you better than anyone, could see your true feelings. You felt anxious, like a cold spike that hung around your heart, that sensation in your chest; you were nervous about how he looked through, but in a way, relieved? Relieved that someone could finally see how you were walking on eggshells in your so-called ‘serious relationship.’

You sighed: “I’m sorry… Sir… I didn’t —”

“…Just because I’ve seen through your little act doesn’t mean I think of you differently.”

“Why? I’m kind of wasting your son's time,” you paused for a moment, “I didn’t mean for it to go as far; I just wanted something casual, and I—”

“Whatever you need to tell yourself to sleep at night, sweetheart, I don’t need to hear the excuse… I always knew… He showed me pictures of you… I was shocked he wasn’t making it up; in all honesty. A very pretty girl I thought, and I’m glad my theory was right.”

“You’re going to tell him when he wakes up?” you wanted to be prepared for when he would take the news, trying to talk to yourself and make sure you came clean until you heard Leon’s next words that curated a shake into your core.

“No, I think he can find out when he uses his brain… But I will say, this information does make me happy.” Your eyebrow peaked in interest, and you wondered what he meant. “It makes me feel less guilty.”

“For what?”

“Don’t play coy… I’ve seen how you’ve been looking at me,” you blushed as you swished your head to avoid eye contact, your heart thumping like an animal in a cage the moment you heard and felt him get closer, sneaking into the cushioned seat right next to you, placing his fingers on your chin and turning you to face him, “Don’t be shy now. I have to say I was excited to see that beautiful girl in the pictures; I’m quite glad she’s right in front of me now.”

“I, I, don’t think we-”

“Oh, now you’re a good person?” he teased with a taunting tone in his voice, slowly leaning back, “If you want me to stop, I will… just say the word, dear,” he tilted his head to the side, showing you he was hearing out for a ‘no’.

You couldn’t deny how much you were curious about what he was thinking. You were ashamed but also wanted to indulge in how Leon thought about you. You bit the bottom of your lip softly, slightly licking your lips as you briefly thought about what you were doing. You thought about the implications of cheating on your partner, for a little bit of fun, especially with his father, but that part of you couldn’t care about the right thing as you had Leon staring at you.

“Fine, I’ll —”

“No, wait… I don’t want you to stop,” you say in one breathless sentence.

“Hm,” he leaned in closer, placing his hand on your cheek as he brought you to his lips, “Just tell me when you wanna stop, darling,” he said as he pressed his lips onto yours for a moment, “and don’t worry… I’ll keep your little secret. For now.”

Your heartbeat continued to beat quickly, and you felt your blood rush through your body as you closed your eyes and got lost in his kiss; your lips brushed and glided against one another, and his tongue slid slightly in your mouth and smoothed over and around your tongue. You softly moaned into the kiss as your began to lose yourself even more, your fingers trickling through his blonde hair, feeling yourself drift into the experience as he pulled you closer as he placed his hand on your lower back and collided his body against yours, your arms wrapped around him as he slithered up to your chest.

His hand rose to breast, squeezing the mound that drew soft and whispered moans, continuing to meld into your soft plush as he continued to kiss you through your tender sighs; you instinctively moved your leg around his, making invitation for Leon for push you further into the sofa, not breaking from the countless interlocks and sensual touching. You felt him grind along your clothed pussy, feeling his growing bulge along your cores heat, pushing and rubbing against you as he continued to sway his hips forward and grind into your pussy that was already getting wetter the more the kiss and touches deepened.

He moved from your breast, grinding his index finger on your already hardened nipple, smirking at you not wearing a bra: “hm, you come prepared,” he said as you left a final strong squeeze and continued to graze down your torso, slithering to your core and lifting your dress up, placing a collective of his fingers along the wet patch of your underwear.

“You’re already soaked, you dirty girl,” he whispered in you ear, before leaving a subtle nibble on your earlobe that drew a deeper breath from your lips, arching your back into him as he continued to rub along your covered clit, squirming as his fingers went in perfect circular motions.

“Mm, fuck,” you moaned in a whispered hush, biting your lip as Leon stared at your core, no longer being able to wait as he wrapped his fingers underneath the waistband and travelled the material down your hips, staring at your glistening wet cunt as he discarded the cloth onto the floor, lost in thought as he proceeded to touch your heat, feeling how wet you were the more he circled along the bundle of nerves, your puffy clit stimulated more and leaving you to try your best to keep hushed tones.

“You’re such a beautiful girl,” he whispered to you, then proceeding to place his hand over your mouth, “now try to be quiet darling… we have a secret to maintain.”

He pushed his index and middle finger inside your wet hole, creating a catalyst for your widened eyes and drawing in air for a deep gasp as you felt his long fingers penetrate inside of your walls, feeling him pump in and out, using his thumb to press along your needy clit; your eyes rolled to the back of your head, exposing the whites and seeing a blurred vision as your walls tightened around his fingers, making his cock grow harder against his pants.

“Fuck, you’re so wet,” he expressed as he continued to pump his fingers, licking his lips as he felt and heard how wet you were, “and all because of me… easy to please a slut.”

Your breathing hitched into a tremble as he poked the right spots, a tingling sensation within you as you closed your eyes and got lost in his expertise before he slowly took away your excitement, feeling your hole flutter from neglect as you stared at him licking his fingers: “you’re a sweet treat,” he complimented as he wrapped his fingers around his trousers and glided them off, seeing his large member and feeling it slap against your pussy.

“Do you want this?” he asked as he positioned himself to your entrance.At first you nodded to which he replied: “be a good girl and use your words, or I’ll leave you squirming.”

“Yes… I w-want you, p-please L-“

“You can call me sir now.”

“P-please Sir. I need you.”

“Good girl.”

He slotted his length to slide into your aching hole, pressing the head of his cock against your walls before hitting the cervix with his tip; “god, you’re so fucking tight,” he groaned as he swayed his hips as he continued to fuck you.

Saliva collected at the corners of your lips, as your body swayed up and down as Leon pressed his hands into gripping your waist, pounding his length inside you and you trying your best not to scream out; oxygen felt scarce the more you gasped in need for him.

“Shh, shh, shh, try to keep that pretty mouth quiet darling,” he cooed as he continued to rock forcefully inside you, feeling a wave inside you about to erupt in motions.

Your eyelids fluttered as your walls spasmed around Leon’s large cock, feeling his balls slap against your ass, him lifting your legs around his neck to get deeper and bruising your delicate cervix even more.

Your blood rushed through your veins all at once, as you released a muffled and large orgasm trapped by his hand over your mouth, feeling your stomach coil up into a knot as you released and made a mess all over Leon; but he didn’t care, as he continued to push further and deeper as he watched your tits bounce to the rhythmic thrusts he gave to you.

Before you could recover from your orgasm, feeling your cunt continue to pulsate, you felt Leon’s movement quicken into rougher grinds; as your moans got more laboured and strenuous you felt him drape your walls with his hot cum, swimming out and covering your walls and pooling out, making such a mess.

In a moment of recovery, Leon stopped to catch his breath, keeping himself inside of you and watching you gasp for air, before dictating you: “Go clean yourself up, no one likes a messy slut.”

a/n: the partners dad leon fics are literally my favourite to write atm, and i’m glad to see so many people going feral over them hehe. just wanted to note that i am working on father in law leon kennedy series, and im thinking of not continuing the las plagas series as i don’t find myself or others liking it. thanks for anyone that reads and I appreciate and am grateful for all the engagement.

#leon kennedy #leon kennedy x reader #leon kennedy smut #smut #boyfriends dad!leon kennedy #leon kennedy x reader smut #cheating leon kennedy #resident evil #leon s kennedy #leon kennedy x you #fanfiction #leon s kennedy x reader #cw cheating #boyfriends dad #leon kennedy imagine #imagine #leon kennedy imagine smut #death island leon kennedy #death island #leon death island

[dotieeee]

The Gamemaker's Apprentice

Level 16

Pairing: Dark!Young!Coriolanus Snow x You, named!Reader

Overall Warnings:

NON-CON, DUB-CON, Dark!Young!Coriolanus Snow, Snow himself should be a warning, lots of blackmailing, gaslighting, manipulation, obsession, possesiveness, eventual forced marriage, eventual loss of virginity, breeding kink, canon-compliant major character death, reader is named but has no physical descriptions in the fic so one might also consider her an OC but in 2nd POV, will have canon inconsistencies, drugging, somnophilia, and other stuff that may be added

Masterlist

Level 16 Warnings:

Non-consensual dom-sub dynamic (belt-flogging), alcoholic consumption, bullying

Replay Level 15

Ready? Level 16 Start:

You didn’t really want to be here. Not at all, no sir.

You were a big fan of routine. Every day from Monday to Friday, Ms Rosenthal would come by at your home to supervise your studies. You’ve heard her compliment you many times to Uncle Cas about how you’re quite a few levels too advanced for children your age; you’ve been getting perfect scores in all your arithmetic tests; your reading and writing skills are superb.

Two months ago, however, Uncle had decided to take a pause on the routine and mentioned it was perhaps time to try something new: going to school for a day to see how you’d like it. This, you didn't understand. You’ve been doing exceptionally well with your studies, kept your nose clean and everything – so how come Uncle had to disrupt the way things were just because your psychologist told him to?

“Nellie is just eight and she needs to spend time with people her age, Mr Innis. She may be intellectually gifted, but besides her tutoring sessions, you may want to see her enrolled in any of our elementary schools and be around with other kids to prevent emotionally stunted growth.”

According to your research, the psychologist just called you aloof and immature.

But Uncle Cas pleaded that you give this day a chance. Just this first day of school, and he said if you didn’t like it, he wouldn’t pressure you to stay.

So far, except for odd stares from the other kids on the playground, you’d been left alone on a stone bench reading a book you had brought for comfort.

Algebra I For Beginners.

You wanted to be like your uncle working with computers one day, and he said if you wanted a leg-up, Algebra was the way to start. You took out a notebook and a pencil, intending to begin with an equation on page thirty-one, when you spotted several kids convening around the base of one of the slides, whispering among themselves. One of them, the blonde girl with pigtails in the middle, pointed to someone on the swing – a boy with thick brown curls and downcast brown eyes – followed by everyone else’s laughter. Anyone from a distance like yours could easily see that they were making fun of him for whatever reason – all of them except the tall boy with blond wavy locks and bright blue eyes, who ignored both the laughter and the boy on the swing, merely hanging back to observe. There was something a tad snobbish in his facial expression, but you couldn’t really tell. Maybe that’s just how he usually looked. You’d later discover how correct your initial assumption would be.

One of the kids, you didn’t see who, pelted the boy with brown curls with a pebble, but it hit the sand near him, loud enough to attract his attention.

From across the short distance you heard one of them say, “Hey, is it true they eat babies in the districts?”

Everyone, save the blond boy, burst into raucous laughter and went on to call him names you’ve only heard on television before, which made you frown a bit.

The boy was clearly minding his own business. Why would they bother him at all by calling him needlessly cruel names?

You abandoned your book and your bag and approached them.

“Excuse me,” you politely interjected. “What did he do?”

The girl with pigtails in the middle said, “Who are you?”

“That doesn’t matter,” you said.

They whispered among themselves, which you only caught glimpses of.

“You think she’s District too?”

“She doesn’t sound like it…”

“I haven’t seen her before…”

One of them quipped, “He’s District. Are you?”

“That shouldn’t matter, either. Everyone should be treated fairly.”

“You know what my father calls your type? A rebel s-sin..synthesiser,” a brown-haired girl said with contempt.

“I think the correct word would be ‘sympathiser,’” you replied with a tilt of your head, which earned an eye roll from the girl.

“Whatever, freak,” she said snootily. “Ugh, I’m leaving, this isn’t fun anymore.”

Everyone in the group groaned but they dispersed. The blond boy, however, stared at you with mild interest, which he tried to hide using a blank expression. You ignored him in favour of talking to the brown-haired boy – he could’ve stopped his ‘friends’ from calling him terrible names, but instead, he just stood back and did nothing.

“Don’t mind them,” you gave him what you thought was a friendly smile. “They’re all just huge shitbags.”

Both the boys seemed taken aback by your language. Your uncle always had to tell you not to say things like that, but you hear him use that kind of language all the time, especially in the kitchen. “My name is Prunella Innis. You can call me Nellie.”

You held out your hand to the brown-eyed boy, which he shook tentatively.

The blond boy confidently strode over to you and took out his palm. “Coriolanus. Coriolanus Snow.”

“Hi,” you flashed him the same smile and shook his hand lightly. You then turned to the other boy, who got out of his perch on the swing and introduced himself, sniffling.

“My name’s Sejanus Plinth.”

“I know,” Coriolanus said matter-of-factly. “I heard your family just moved to the Capitol.”

The boy named Sejanus nodded, but there was something sad behind his eyes. To try and make him feel better, you said, “Sejanus, huh? Mine did about two years ago.”

Both the boys gave you surprised looks; you shrugged it off and said, “So what? It certainly didn’t do my parents any favours.”

Sejanus actually cracked a smile, but Coriolanus’s real expression remained masked behind what you could tell was a fake smile.

A word you recently learned, ‘elitist,’ crossed your mind. You’d discover much later that assumption too, would be correct.

“You’ve been here since the middle of the war? I haven’t seen you in school before,” the curious blond asked.

“I’m homeschooled.” And if you had anything to say about it, you liked it better that way.

Sejanus bashfully showed a tiny brown bag. You peered inside and saw gumdrops. Your uncle didn’t hoard gumdrops as much as he did with chocolates, so you suspected that he didn’t like them very much. You took one, saying ‘thank you’, and Coriolanus took some after you.

“Am I going to see you around?” Sejanus asked you, looking somewhat hopeful.

Your smile faltered a little. “Probably not.”

Sejanus’s brows drew together. “Why not?”

“My uncle says I don’t have to stay if I don’t like it. And I’ve decided that I don’t.”

“So you’re going to keep studying…at home?” Coriolanus wondered with a tone that sounded like it was a foreign concept to him.

“Yes.”

You smiled at them both and went back to your bench to pick up where you left off in the book. Your uncle emerged not much later from the building with an expectant look on his face. That look immediately morphed into exasperation once he saw you begin packing your bag.

“Let me guess: the place didn’t even stand a chance.”

Nodding, you added, “The kids here are hostile; therefore I think the environment may be cutthroat.”

Your Uncle Cas sighed to himself and commented under his breath, “You know, sometimes I think your vocabulary is a punishment for my past actions…”

Ignoring this, you glanced up at your uncle with an innocent grin and asked, “So, do we get ice cream after?”

“A big, whopping ‘no.’ Not a damn chance.”

Uncle Cas only laughed at the pout on your face, but you glanced back at the boys named Sejanus and Coriolanus, nodding farewell to them both. The corner of Coriolanus’s mouth twitched upwards and Sejanus gave you a small wave. Your gaze lingered just a little on Sejanus’s warm brown eyes.

You would see both of them again in a few years’ time, but that little girl walking away from the schoolyard didn’t yet know that the boys would remain a permanent fixture in her life: one of them, taking her heart with him to his grave, and the other, forcibly twining with and shaping her entire future for the worse.

Nine fifty-eight on a Friday night is quite a busy time for Club She Said. The girls-only membership club is already packed with well-dressed rich Capitol women with pretty drinks in their hands, chattering about and giggling among themselves. The company whom you invited seems to have arrived surprisingly earlier than you have and is sitting at the bar seemingly engaged in a lively conversation with the lady bartender.

“You’re early,” you comment as you take the seat beside her.

“It’s called ‘growth. You should try it sometime, it wouldn’t hurt,” Livia Cardew jabs at you as she sips her drink.

Your maid of honour, casually dissing you. You roll your eyes in mild amusement as she orders a drink called The Dark Lady on your behalf – a blackberry-lemon smash – and say, “This is a nice place. It feels cosy and...safe.”

Your eyes dart around the club, spotting nothing but female staff – waitresses, DJs, bouncers – plus the numerous cliques who seem to be having a blast catching up with their girlfriends over drinks without the presence of their male partners. You’re thankful Livia chose this place on your behalf – even with your fiancé’s money and influence, this is a place he’ll never be allowed to enter.

Livia grinned smugly at your compliment. “Well, with your ridiculous time limit, I figured we both deserve to spend it wisely and without your boyfriend breathing down your neck.” She gives you a dead-eyed look and adds, “Honestly, he’s the only man I know who gives his girl just a measly one hour and thirty minutes to be out and about on a Friday night. So, unless he’s horny and he wants to fuck all the time, he’s just being an ass.”

This, you can’t agree more.

The lady bartender arrives with your drink, elegantly presented in a tall, slender glass, garnished with fresh blackberries and a lemon wedge. You thank her and turn to Livia to reply, “What can I say, I hit the jackpot. Oh my, this is amazing.” You had just taken a sip of the drink, which is by far the best you’ve ever had, to which the bartender beams in thanks.

Livia lets out screech of excitement. “Wait till you try Better Than Sex...”

She then proceeds to explain the drink’s etymology in great detail – a drink made of coffee liqueur, chocolate liqueur, full-cream milk and cherry grenadine, garnished with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. She goes on from She Said’s cocktails to showing you photos of bridesmaids’ gowns which she fishes out of her purse.

“I think this one fits your theme best,” she says as she points to a photo. “Besides, I look fucking fabulous in that colour and cut.”

Then she starts pointing out to you who’s sleeping with whom in the club, right before she jumps into the topic of arranging your bachelorette party.

“What? Absolutely not,” you say. Images of you passed out, drunk, and being hauled home by a displeased Coriolanus cross your mind. You shiver inwardly in horror at the idea.

“And why not?” she retorts, clearly outraged. “How could you fucking pass on your own hen party? That’s like, the hen’s only chance to have a bit of fun before the cock locks her in a cage and throws away the key. Pun totally intended.”

She takes a long swig of her drink and holds out a pointer finger for emphasis. “Read: by ‘fun,’ I meant strippers.”

With your eyebrows raised, you shake your head and respond, “Try mentioning that when he’s around and see if you get more than the icy stare.”

“Oh, boo-hoo. He used to hire escorts all the time. Honestly, he’s such a hypocrite.”

It takes you quite a bit of convincing for her to finally drop it and relent.

“Ugh, fine. Forgive me for trying to take my role seriously,” she sighs as she rolls her eyes dramatically and curls her lips in mock disapproval. “Don’t blame me down the line if you start feeling unfulfilled for not trying out other dicks for size.”

The lady bartender brings another round of cocktails for two, and you both clink your glasses together before sipping. This is the most alcohol you’ve consumed not just in one night, but also your entire life. You haven’t even gone through your second glass halfway and you’re already feeling the proverbial buzz.

“Okay, Innis. Spill. I know you didn’t invite me out for drinks just to shut down my hen party-hosting skills. Plus, we’ll get to meet at that cake-tasting thing tomorrow anyway. What is this about, for real?” Livia, ever the sharp one, rests her chin on the back of her hand and stares at you inquisitively.

You meet her gaze nonchalantly and reply, “Nothing. I was just bored. Can’t wait to try the cakes out.”

There is truth to that, somehow, because aside from the wedding preparations, college classes, and Coriolanus dragging you along to these events he’s always invited to, he still hasn’t allowed you to freely roam the city, perhaps fearing you’d attempt to contact your uncle and make a run for it again.

Livia squints her eyes at you while inching closer and not breaking eye contact. “You’re a good liar,” she concludes, leaning back into her seat and nodding in approval. “I like it.”

She gestures to the bartender for another round of drinks – your eyes widen when you realise she just ordered shots – and says with a mischievous grin as they arrive, “Luckily for me, I have methods of extracting valuable information – methods, mind you, that have, so far, yielded me with satisfactory results.”

You shake your head in mirth, accepting the drink from her. She raises her glass as if taking you on a challenge.

“Mark my word: you are going to fold, Innis.”

“Bite me, Cardew.”

Both of you burst into fits of laughter and throw your heads back in unison as you empty the shot glass. Two more of those and eventually you tap out of the drinking spree, earning the scathing comment ‘lightweight’ from your drinking buddy, who isn’t too far from your level of tipsiness despite what she brags about. You decide to order a basket of bacon-jalapeño poppers to nibble on, and you manage to get through half the basket before Livia takes it away and places it behind her, well beyond your reach.

“Easy on the grease, will you please?”

You pout. “Hey, I wasn’t done with that.”

She just replies with a frown, “Watch your figure. Tigris won’t like it if she makes adjustments to your dress at the last minute.”

You finish off the piece you’re holding with a single bite and lean on the bar with a slumped posture.

“Or not. You know, maybe if you let yourself go, your boyfriend might just – ”

“It’s Sejanus’s second death anniversary tomorrow.”

A pause passes between you two, with Livia staring at you as if she doesn’t know how to react or what to say to what you just blurted without warning.

“‘District boy?’” When you shoot her a half-hearted glare, she corrects herself, her tone a little more mellow, “Sorry, force of habit. And not to be a bitch, but why do you care?”

Why, indeed? The first year, you had no trouble going through, but the second somehow seems like another empty hole in your heart, slowly growing and gnawing away at the rest of it. Like all the aches you experienced just a few months after his death has come back in full force.

“Shit.”

Livia’s curse is followed by a slump in her posture as she leans on the bar and processes the information. “So, you really love him.”

“I do. Or did. I don’t know anymore.”

She motions for two glasses of water which arrives instantly. You’re only too happy for something without any trace of booze in it and drink the entire glass in one go.

“So, you called me here,” your drinking buddy says carefully, “Because you don’t know what to do and you can’t really talk to your boyfriend about it because he’d get jealous.”

Once again, she’s spot-on. Except she missed the part where you suspect that your boyfriend might’ve also killed him. You give her just a single look and she instantly confirms her hypothesis.

“He won’t get jealous; he’ll just shut me down.”

“That’s the same thing.” She sighs audibly and stares at you sombrely.

“You’re a sucker for self-punishment, you know that?”

You merely shrug in response.

“I’m not invalidating your feelings and shit, but this isn’t helping you at all in this Snow-situation.” Livia empties the last remaining shot glass. “I know you miss him, okay? It’s pretty clear. But that’s not going to bring him back. Just because your first love is gone and you’re stuck with your sociopathic fiancé doesn’t mean you have to be miserable.”

Livia gives you a look that can only mean ‘get your shit together’ and orders one more set of cocktails. When they arrive, she takes one for herself and hands you the other.

“But that also doesn’t mean we can’t toast to his memory.”

You take the glass and raise it. “To Sejanus Plinth.”

She copies your movement, muttering, “To your District Lover Boy, Sejanus Plinth.”

You both empty your glasses at the same time and you almost slam the glass back on the table. Never in a lifetime did you ever think toasting to your dead friend over a fruity-boozy drink could feel so cathartic, but here you are.

“There. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way, get your shit together, Innis. You’re smarter than that.”

Despite her harsh reprimand, you find yourself chuckling, to which she just rolls her eyes, smirking exasperatedly.

“You know, he gives me so much grief for asking you to be my maid of honour.”

Livia lets out a shriek of glee. “I’d pay a fortune to have seen his reaction when you told him.”

“Oh, he was beyond m-miffed.” Your words are beginning to slur, indicating you probably had way too much of your capacity. “I was jus’ wondering why you accepted. Curious, ‘is’all.”

“If you’re asking if I’m over’im – ” her own garbled words are interrupted by her loud burp, which startles the waitress passing by – “Yes, I am. I’m over him, swear. But if I can get laid while I’m at it, why the fuck not, right?”

Guffawing, she adds, “Jus’ wanna see him suffer. ‘Magine the guy losing you? He’d spiral the fuck down. Honessly, I tried, m’kay? All this wedding prep – I already bumped into him sooo many times, made a loooot of passes, but no-ooo, he only has eyes for you.”

Side-eying you in jest, she adds, “No accounting for taste.”

You giggle. You actually giggle along with her as she shoves your arm playfully. Then, both of you share a look and dart like lightning to the washroom, throwing up in separate cubicles in unison. Having let some of that out, you begin feeling just a tad better even if the buzz still lingers.

You’re on the sink washing your hands when you notice the time on your watch.

Shit.

Shit. Shit. Shit.

“I have to go.” According to the time, you’ve gone thirty minutes over your fiancé’s time limit.

Livia lets out a groan as she emerges from her stall. “Yeah, me too. I’m so hammered. I already paid, you get the next one. And you better not pull a District and go cheap on me, Innis.”

“Trust me, Cardew. When I pay, you can go drown in it for all I care.”

She snorts in laughter on the way outside the She Said Club, where she says her driver is waiting in the parking lot.

“Look sharp, Innis. Your executioner has arrived,” she mutters so only you can hear.

True enough, you look into the icy blue glare of Coriolanus Snow, leaning against the service car door, the stone-cold smile on his face concealing his ire.

“Did you have fun, sugarplum?” he says as he approaches.

From behind you, Livia fakes a retching noise.

You, however, are rooted to your spot as you try your best to appear sober.

“Livia, pardon me, but I have to take my fiancée home.” Coriolanus’s falsely cheery tone is disarming, as usual.

“You heard him. To the gallows, you go.” Livia pats you on the back and mumbles a ‘good luck’ under her breath before addressing the male. “See you both tomorrow. Try not to tire her out too much tonight, will you, Coriolanus? She can’t miss this; you know how she lo-oooves cakes. Loves them.”

Inwardly, you groan the way she just tries to rile him up, but he seems to keep a level head as always. In fact, he goes on to give her a wider grin.

“You shouldn’t concern yourself too much with what my fiancée and I do behind closed doors, Livia, and I am well aware how important this is for her.”

Livia just blows a loud raspberry in his direction before getting inside her car and driving off. A firm, large hand immediately grips your arm and the now stern voice of your fiancé chills your blood.

“Come, Nellie. We will talk when we get home.”

And you all but get shoved into the car before it drives you both home, where you suspect he might just pop off.

To the gallows, you go, alright.

Coriolanus Snow had never thought he’d see you again, but here you were, in the same year as him and in his class, sitting just a few seats before him to his right, listening aptly to Professor Cecil drone on about a linear equation on the board that he was well aware you’d be able to solve blindfolded and with hands tied behind your back.

You had left an impression on him when he met you in that playground all those years ago. Even if he remembered you using such colourful language unbecoming of a girl, there had already been something behind your eyes and in the way you spoke that he couldn’t pinpoint then.

He'd later discover the correct adjective: erudite.

Everything about you perplexed him to no end: your perfectly natural Capitol accent, your exemplary manners, your sharp wit, your gifted mind…

Your District origins.

Coriolanus had never thought someone of your calibre could emerge from such a place, yet here you were: an enigma he didn’t know what to feel about.

Festus elbowed him discreetly, distracting him from his thoughts and passing a crudely written note.

u crushing on district-homeschool freak?

Festus sniggered behind a closed fist to avoid drawing attention to himself. Coriolanus grinned imperceptibly and wrote down below the scribble a tasteful reply before handing it back to him:

Fuck off, kindly

The note comes back with more of Festus Creed’s infamous chicken-scratch handwriting:

really pretty though. too bad she’s district.

Coriolanus crumpled the note and tossed it in his bag and went back to staring at the back of your head.

Now, Festus’s former observation he could firmly attest to. You were undeniably easy on the eyes and considered one of the prettiest in his class. Over the next few weeks, he would find out that even the boys in the upper class agreed, with the way they would throw stares at you when you walk by them in the hallways. Unfortunately, he can’t confirm the part about you being District; you weren’t really forthcoming about your personal life to anyone yet. He’s heard of rumours circulating about you being born to a former Capitol actress, though, so the thought that maybe you’re not even District. Maybe someone else spread the idea of your District roots out of jealousy, and maybe you hinting at them when he first met you was just a way to make the real District rat feel good about himself.

Because if you were indeed not of Capitol origins, then that meant the Districts had the capacity to produce more children like you, which they could one day weaponise to try and overthrow the government once more. An army of district kids like you, putting the ones like Arachne, for instance, from the Capitol to shame…

Coriolanus shuddered at the thought.

He’d later discover another aspect of you: that underneath your well-mannered demeanour, you hid what he can only describe as intellectual savagery.

It was lunch break sometime in the first semester. You were alone at a table as usual, declining the nicer girls’ offer of sitting with them at their table.

Coriolanus sat with Festus Creed, Sejanus Plinth, and some of his other male classmates were sitting just a few tables away when Arachne Crane, for whatever reason, had just decided to cause a scene in her usual fashion, backed up by Juno and her other lackeys. The group seemed to have come from the Talent Show rehearsal and approached your table looking just about as menacing as a pack of squirrels ganging up on a rattlesnake.

“Hey, district-homeschool freak,” he heard Arachne call out, as she leaned on your table.

Coriolanus saw a hint of danger flash in your eyes before you stood with grace and an uncannily calm air.

“Oh, so she thinks she’s so tough, huh?” one of the girls quipped behind their leader, but he didn’t see who it was.

“Not at all. I’m just supposed to stand when somebody’s addressing me,” even your tone came off as non-confrontational. “It’s called courtesy, you might’ve heard of it.”

Arachne sneered. “Is that what they teach you at home? What else did they teach you, how to fold your laundry? How to be more submissive to your future husband?” The group laughed with her in a jeering manner.

Plastering a cold smile, you responded, “On the contrary, Arachne, they teach me Algebra II. We’re currently on the radian measure which you wouldn’t know because you’re not on that level yet. I could ask you what they teach you here, but judging by the way you talk, I’d say not that much. In fact, I fear for the state of the Capitol Academe.”

Arachne’s eyes narrowed at the insult. “Just because you have money for tutors doesn’t mean you’re smart.”

“True,” you said. “Money can’t buy intellect.”

“Well, it can’t buy class, either,” Arachne countered a little more loudly.

“I know. I can tell,” you said, clearly unfazed by her increasingly hostile behaviour. “Because you clearly have neither of the two. Are we finished?” You took a quiet, demure sip from your juice pack, before continuing, “Because this is boring me. That’s great Talent Show material, by the way: boring people to death.”

Arachne hid her hurt by scoffing, muttering, “Come on, this is pathetic.”

As they left you alone, you sat back down with the grace of a princess and continued your lunch like nothing happened. Festus kicked him under the table, grinning obnoxiously, and said, “What’s the matter, Snow? Scared that she’ll bite?”

Coriolanus curled his lips in a challenge and kicked him back, while the rest of the table chuckled, still in disbelief at what they just witnessed. He could’ve sworn it was this very moment that made you earn his classmates’ respect, even if you eventually revealed your underlying intolerance for blood and gore during a Hunger Games rerun in History class.

With his eyes glued on you across the mess hall, he couldn’t deny that the way you maintained your cool while hurling witty insults was a form of art you seemed to have mastered.

Later on, he would have his first proper conversation with you in an empty classroom when he arrived earlier than he had planned for a math period. You had been there earlier than he was, your razor-sharp focus on a fourth-year pre-calculus problem written on the board, your arms crossed in full-concentration mode. He watched you take a piece of chalk and attempt to correct what seemed like a solution written by a student.

It took him ten seconds. Ten seconds before he could stop himself and break the silence.

“What made you change your mind about attending school?” Coriolanus asked.

“Hello to you, too,” you turned to face him with a smile momentarily before shifting back your attention to the problem on the board. “Psychologist’s orders. She said I needed to spend time with people my age.”

As if he wasn’t already curious about you – or at least, matters concerning you – you had to add this to the mix.

“Why are you in freshman year?”

“As opposed to what, being locked up in an insane asylum? They have pretty rigorous qualifications that I haven’t met yet.”

It was this moment that he decided he liked your humour immensely. Coriolanus let out a genuine laugh, and you turned to grin at him before you writing a few more lines and returned the piece of chalk to the side of the board.

“No, I meant, why aren’t you in a higher year?” He clarified. “That’s clearly senior-level material.”

“It’s just math,” you shrugged. “Outside that, I’m just like everyone else.”

“I highly doubt that,” a voice said.

You both turned to the voice at the same time to find Sejanus Plinth standing at the classroom doorway.

Ah yes. The District rat.

Now, Coriolanus could confirm that he was, beyond a reasonable doubt, full-blooded, cloddish-accented, one hundred-percent District. The blond quickly masked the sneer of disdain forming on his face with his usual grin as a greeting. He spared you a glance and you both catch each other’s eye. He had thought for a moment that he’d seen a flash of recognition behind them – had you caught that scornful look he had for the District rat? But before he could even confirm, you were already smiling warmly at the other boy – that other boy who was leagues below who you deserved (even if you were part District). That boy with a bag of gumdrops you both briefly interacted with about six years ago who needed you to come to rescue him from almost being ganged up by a bunch of other children.

Sejanus Plinth, who would later grow closer to you and thus would divulge to his best friend the tragic events that would explain your need for a psychologist. Sejanus, who’d later reveal to him that he’s developed a crush on you. Private Plinth, who’d be too chickenshit to tell you until before he left for District 12 and ultimately stayed there.

The teenage Coriolanus might not have been aware then, but the two would have profound, lasting influences in his life: the girl, he’d fall madly in love with and force into marriage, and the boy, very much dead yet he’d still be competing with for her love.

Behind you, you hear the apartment door slamming close and you almost jump at the noise.

You sit on the loveseat in the living room, where Oscar the cat greets you with a head bump on your leg. Before you can pet him, however, Coriolanus picks him up gently and exits, presumably to put him back inside his playroom. He soon returns, pausing on the other side of the coffee table and staring down at you with an utmost displeased expression. Nowhere near comparable as when he found you crouching inside a wooden crate in the middle of a botched escape attempt, but it’s still significant.

“Explain why you went over thirty minutes beyond what you were allowed to spend outside.”

With his hands inside his pockets, he draws to his full height and glares at you icily while he waits for you to speak up and defend yourself. You rub your face with your palms to appear more sober than you really are, but so far, the buzz is still there like an annoying fly you can’t swat off.

“How much did she make you drink?” He asks, crossing his arms in his growing impatience.

“Wha-no, she din’ make me do anything.”

Great. Because slurring your words when you’re being interrogated by a former peacekeeper leads to excellent results. Still, you can’t help but frown at the way he makes it sound like Livia forced you into it.

“Fine. How much did you drink?”

“Much.” Dammit. “I mean, plenty.”

Coriolanus pinches his nose bridge and exhales audibly. “You know you’re not a heavy drinker. You shouldn’t have allowed her to goad you into this. How could you be so irresponsible?”

“Stop talking to me like ’mma child,” you bite back and cross your arms. Inebriated or not, you will not be reduced to an invalid without an agency of your own. “I can think for myself.”

Letting out an aggravated sigh, he gives you a condescending glower. “This is exactly why I told you not to pick her. She is not a good influence on you, Nellie.”

You blink once or twice to process what he just said. You get to your feet, finally realising why he’s so upset with such a simple thing as you drinking out like a normal young adult on a Friday night.

“No, you don’t like her because I’m actually having fun with her. There’s a difference,” you conclude softly. The idea is so absurd, it sobers you up a little. “Remember when you said, I needed to reconnect with old friends or some shit? This is me doing that.”

“This is not about you making friends,” he admonishes in the same patronizing manner. “This is about who you chose as your maid of honour.”

You choose to stand your ground and glare at him. “I made it clear I’m not changing.”

“And I made it clear that I do not approve of your choice,” he says roughly. “Get her off the list and call Clemmie or Lys.”

“Or just call off this fucking wedding, how about that?”

As you harden your expression, he, in turn, gives you a look that you are aware does not bode well for you.

“I don’t like your language, Nellie.”

At this moment, you find yourself agreeing with Livia.

Who cares what he thinks?

“It’s my wedding too, okay?” you snap. You exit the living room quickly, intending to just get the argument over with and lock yourself in your room where he can leave you alone. Unfortunately, he follows you at once. “I can choose whoever I want in my own damn entourage. It’s the only thing in this...this charade that I get choice in and you’re not going to take that from me.”

Coriolanus catches up on you and grabs your arm, which you yank back without much force. “Do not talk to me that way – ”

“She’s the first real friend I’ve ever made since Seja – ”

But there’s something within you that catches you mid-speech. the temperature in the living room seems to drop several degrees, which matches the tone he uses.

“Carefully choose what you say next.”

So, you’re really not even allowed to talk about him as a friend, now. It almost physically pains you that even the man he once considered to be his best friend now refuses to even speak of him.

“Coryo, it’s his second death an – ”

“I know what fucking day it is,” he draws close and hisses in your face. “And you don’t get to use that tone on me. You don’t get to endanger yourself this way and step out of line.”

After his menacing tirade, Coriolanus pulls away. In a second, his fury instantly dissipates, replaced by a blank, even serene expression.

The calm before the storm.

“I can’t have my future wife misbehaving like this,” he says with a tone enough to chill your blood. He then closes the space between you two in a calculated manner, stopping merely inches away from you to stare down at you. “I should be nipping this in the bud.”

Your vision spins next, and you wonder for a second if the alcohol you consumed finally has gotten the better of you – until you notice an almost painful grip around your thighs: your fiancé had just hauled you off the floor and placed you over his shoulders. Before you can protest, you’re dumped unceremoniously into a soft surface. Disoriented, you make a feeble attempt to get off the surface, but you’re harshly flipped over on your stomach, unable to lift yourself off owing to being pinned down by something you can’t shake off.

You’re filled with dread the instant your mind processes what just happened: Coriolanus had just carried you to his room and is keeping you in place on his bed with his entire body draped on your back.

It's the alcohol you’d have to thank for your delayed response time.

Desperately, you claw at the pillow, as if it’ll help you out from underneath him, but you freeze when you feel his breath fan your ear with a whisper that sends shivers down your spine:

“I want you to count to from ten when I say so, sugarplum.”

You feel him pull back, the bed shifting slightly. It takes the rustling of a belt behind you to send you into hysterics; the feel of the cold, night air on your ass as your dress is lifted, revealing you in just your underwear, is enough to make you beg.

“Coryo, please, no – ”

Your words die in your throat as a sharp, white-hot pain lands on the swell of your ass, almost at the same time you hear a loud crack.

He's just hit your almost bare backside with the softer side of his leather belt, and it fucking burns to high hell.

You’re still reeling at the shock of it, but your hair is bunched and pulled, not enough to hurt but to gain your attention.

“Start counting,” he commands from behind you.

Ten. That means ten lashes of his belt. Nine more of this and you can barely handle one.

You sob out of fear, but you don’t know if it’s out of fear of pain or of him.

“Please, I won’t do it again – ”

A pained yelp escapes you the moment the belt lands on your ass again. Another hair pull, followed by his stern voice from behind you.

“Nellie, you’re prolonging this by not counting as I said. Now, I will not ask again: count to ten.”

Go to hell.

You don’t know what compels you to – perhaps it’s the thought of you being unable to sit for the next few days on any surface without wincing in pain – you inhale sharply, swallowing back the insult you’re planning to hurl, and whisper:

“Ten.”

Another cracking of the belt, followed by your cry as it hits you, followed by you shakily whispering a number. He repeats this without mercy and without reprieve – just pure malice and the intent of inflicting pain.

Sniffling, you manage to stammer “f-five,” bracing yourself for another, but it doesn’t come.

You lay flat on your stomach as you weep audibly in your helplessness and shame, belatedly realising he’s removed himself from you and has gone off fuck-knows-where. Just as you’re about to try and get up, he makes a re-entrance, having come from the bathroom. He’s completely shirtless now, eyes locked in and heading straight towards you.

You begin sobbing anew and try to crawl off the bed, but he’s instantly on you, pinning you down as he straddles your thighs with his own, taking your wrists and pinning them above you with a single hand.

“No, please…”

Directly over your ear, he whispers gently, “Sshh, shh, it’s over, sugarplum, I’m here to take care of you now.”

Despite your rather pathetic sobs, he continues cooing over your ear, while you feel something wet and cold being rubbed gently on your ass where the belt had hit you multiple times.

“It’s just a salve, my little sugarplum,” he explains. “It’ll help heal the skin faster and reduce bruising.”

The salve helps like he says, thank goodness, because after he’s massaged the area, it had numbed almost entirely – too bad it does absolutely nothing with the trembling on your hands. For the next few minutes, your fiancé strokes your hair, kisses your crown, and whispers what he thinks are comforting words, all of them a blur to you as you continue lying down on your stomach, unmoving and still trying to wrap your head around what just happened.

“You made me do that, my sugarplum,” he says, and you’re almost tempted to believe how contrite his voice is. “I will never hurt the love of my life – as long as you give me no reason to.”

You’re barely paying attention when he starts peeling off your dress entirely, even when he jerks himself off above you and spills himself on your bare back, even when he cleans you up and wraps you almost lovingly in his blanket and pulls you close to him in a cuddle you’re all-too-familiar with.

What you listen to aptly, however, is what he tells you quietly as he runs his fingers through your hair in this sick form of forced intimacy.

“I will move the wedding to a month and a half from now. Mid-October. In return, you get to keep your maid of honour, and I will lift your uncle’s exile the day before the wedding. That way, he can walk you to the aisle and hand you over to me, just like he should’ve done from the start.”

Just before you let yourself succumb to sleep in his arms, you make a mental note to ask Livia for a crucial favour as this last-ditch attempt to throw a wrench at your fiancé’s plans for the future.

Sejanus Plinth felt a little guilty as he sat beside you on his bedroom couch. You were hunched over the coffee table poring over three open books at the same time, scribbling madly on a nearly full page of your notebook, essentially doing your part and more in this supposedly partnered effort of writing a ten-page analysis of some pre-Panem fantasy trilogy. It was obvious you had been spending the recent nights getting some work done on the paper based on the way you rubbed your eyes constantly and yawned into your palms. He was supposed to have written about three pages now, but he had barely scraped one and a half, and the open notebook he had on his lap was devoid of handwriting.

Yet he still couldn’t quite believe his luck that he had you in his bedroom, the first friend he had ever made since his family’s official move to the Capitol. His friend, the smart, quiet, sassy, pretty girl who had once defended him from one of the many bouts of name-calling by his own classmates and then vanished from his life. He had little hope he’d see you again, but here you both were in your second year, your friendship stronger than ever.

“You know, experts say that staring into paper has been scientifically proven to yield a ten-page book review.”

Your cheeky little comment did not go unnoticed, but Sejanus just flashed you an innocent smile he knew you couldn’t resist. You rolled your eyes at him and proceeded to sigh, before setting your pen down and heavily leaning back on the couch.

“I guess we could take a break,” you admitted as you rubbed your eyes, and grabbed a throw pillow, hugging it to yourself.

“Speak for yourself, I can go all day,” Sejanus joked. “I’ll go get us some food.”

He stood from his couch, but before he exited the door, he looked back at you and grinned, “Nellie, try not to fall asleep before I can come back, yeah? Ma worked hard on those strudels.”

You gave him a sweet, exhausted smile, and said, “Please thank her for me. Not that I won’t be thanking her later before I get home, but still.”

“I’m sure she’d like that,” Sejanus nodded when he finally closed the door behind him.

He released a breath he didn’t know he was holding and straightened the collar of his shirt. As if having you alone in his room – albeit for completing the essay together – had him feeling nervous enough before you even arrived, his Ma just had to gush over you just as soon as you crossed the threshold.

Of course, he’d revealed to them how he met you all those years ago, carefully omitting a few details, but when he told her last week he’d have you over to visit, she had wildly assumed you to be his girlfriend, which you weren’t. Something he had always been so adamant with her about. Besides, he knew he had zero chances on you, as gifted and as talented and as attractive as you are.

Sometimes, he’d find himself wishing that weren’t the case.

It wasn’t your looks or your brains that had him developing some sort of…feelings for you. You were a breath of fresh air in the Capitol for him, starkly different from the other girls in the school who were either vapid, vain, or arrogant, or all those three at once.

“So? How is it with you and your…friend so far?”

He hadn’t even crossed the doorway to the kitchen and his Ma was already on his case. He loved her with all his heart, and he was extremely grateful for her hard work, but she could scare you away even before he had made a move.

He met his mother’s expectant smile with a tired grin and replied, “It’s going great, Ma.”

His mother beamed at him – he didn’t have the heart to take this little joy away from her when she was so excited – and told him a maid would carry the tray of food upstairs for him instead and shooed him away from her kitchen.

“She’s really pretty, by the way,” she added just as he was leaving to go back to his room.

Sejanus found you resting your head on the couch’s armrest, hugging the throw pillow to yourself and in blissful slumber.

He didn’t have the heart to take this little bit of rest away from you, either.

Sighing to himself, he grabbed a fresh velvet blanket and tucked you in it before sitting beside you and observing you. He brushed a stray lock of hair away from your face and let his fingers linger on your cheek.

You didn’t wake up until about two hours later, and by then, Sejanus had made good progress on the essay since you weren’t distracting him too much. He then spent the rest of the day doing more staring than actual schoolwork, trying to commit this day to his memory, no matter how inconsequential.

Aside from the kiss he would eventually share with you, Sejanus would constantly remember in his last days just how soft your cheek was and just how he could’ve snuck in a quick kiss on them that day if he hadn’t been so faint-hearted.

Enter Level 17 - soon

Next on Level 17 - Wedding bells toll, Snows going honeymooning on the beach, just filthy filthy smut (fucking finally lmaooo)

Author notes:

Please reblog and comment, it's always appreciated! Sorry for the delay as well, the next update will likely take about 2 weeks from now duw to work still being crazyyy. Thank you for your patience!!!

#dark!coriolanus snow #dark!coriolanus snow x reader #Young!coriolanus snow #young!coriolanus snow x reader #named!reader #or #x OC2ndPOV #18+ only #dark!coriolanus snow fic #dark!coriolanus #dark!coriolanus fic #dark!fic

[muniimyg]

prologue // series m.list

note: no concussion will stop me … hi jus making sure u all still love me </3

🏷️ permanent taglist: @joonsjuice @pamzn @defzcl @maryy1300 @whoa-jo @taetaecatboy @jksusawife @un06 @firesighgirl @rrosiitas @butterymin @parkinglot-nights @musicjournalsjdb @kissyfacekoo @jkslvsnella @vampcharxter @bloopkook @kekerrreke @somehowukook @bbystarcandykoo

//

Jungkook hates studying. 

Although his grades prove to differ, a part of him has always thought it was simply good luck. For the most part, he’s an A student… Truth be told, he’s more of a cram-it-all-at-2AM kind of guy. On the odd days that Jungkook felt like he needed to prepare more, he liked studying in the University’s nest. There’s a good coffee cart there and it’s definitely much more social than the hideous library. 

Yet, the nest and his bedroom ceased to exist when he met you.

When he met you, Jungkook stepped into the library for the first time in nearly three years.

It was so odd.

He felt like a new student. It was a whole different world in that stuffy library of yours... He wanted to understand it so bad. Maybe that's why he kept coming back. Sooner than later, he realized that it wasn't the library he was trying to understand; it was you.

And it felt weird right off the bat. He felt so... Confused? Alone? It occurred to him just then that no one really talks about what happens when you develop feelings for someone... How you begin to alter your routine just so it can match theirs and how every little thing that you see becomes an excuse for you to use to see or talk to them about.

Since when did he care about who was in your Instagram story?

Since when did he care about which parties you were attending?

Since when did he give a shit about sitting next to you?

Oh, and not to mention the sudden change in preference... But let's fucking talk about the preference change.

He used to really like going down 3RD Ave to go home from the library, but you said it was too busy of a path. Going down 5TH Ave takes 5 minutes longer, but it's okay. The scenery is prettier. The walk is calmer. It's also conveniently closer to your place.

He used to not give a shit about oat or soy milk. Regular milk is fine. He's not even lactose. But since you prefer oat milk; so does he. You're right. It does make drinks taste better.

He used to only get haircuts once every 2-3 months... But you said he looked handsome when he cut his hair shorter than usual. Now, his barber asks him, "Seriously, bro, what's her name?" once a month.

It's mindblowing.

There are so many things he's changed about himself before he even realized he liked you. There are so many things that changed in his life just for the mere chance of you liking it or noticing it.

Like, fuck.

He's such a fucking loser.

Jungkook doesn’t know why he feels this way... He just does. It swirls in his stomach and presses on his chest. Simply, he’s confused about whether he can control it or not.

This feeling.

This change.

Truly, all he knows is that if you like something, he likes it too.

If you hate something, he hates it too. 

If you do something, he will do it too. 

A part of himself can’t even be upset at this change. At the end of the day, he was studying better. He was seating himself in a less overstimulating environment and above all; he was always with you. 

How could he be upset at that?

His thoughts pause as he feels you squeeze his arm for his attention. Gladly, he gives it to you.

"Hmm?"

"I think I'm all done for tonight—oh gosh—" Your words are cut off as you turn your face and meet his. He's so close! It caught you so off guard that your phone slipped from your hands.

"S-sorry," you apologize, pushing your chair back, bending down, and getting on the floor to find your phone. Jungkook quickly follows you, getting off his seat and meeting you under the table. "I didn't realize you were so close—"

"I was?" he asks, voice a little shakey. From the corner of his eye, he sees your phone and reaches for it. Just as he's about to give it to you, you laugh in response.

"I guess that's how close you usually sit to me. I was so focused on my work and when I finally turn away it was like boom! Jungkook!"

His facial expression remains blank as you ramble. You look at him softly, feeling a little confused. "Did you get another haircut, by the way? It looks good!"

He blushes.

You smile at him warmly, inching backward to get up from under the table.

"This? It was whatever—"

Jungkook's words cut off as a muted thud interrupts. He saw it happen. It happened so fast. Your forehead collides with the table's edge, eliciting a sharp gasp of pain.

He reaches for you, placing his hand over your forehead and hissing. "Shit, ___! Are you okay?"

Blinking away tears of discomfort, you wince as Jungkook presses his hand to your throbbing temple. "I'm okay," you murmur, trying to downplay the pain, though your voice trembles slightly.

It's in this moment that you take in how Jungkook looks at you. His eyes soften with concern as he studies your flushed cheeks and furrowed brow. Leaning in closer, he brushes a strand of your hair away from your face. His touch is so gentle and reassuring at the same time. It must be the bump because for some reason... You're dizzy.

You meet his gaze. Jungkook offers you a small smile and you melt. Despite the throbbing ache in your head, a warmth spread throughout your body at the sight of his fucking smile.

It's not even his best one.

His best smile happens when you say something under your breath and he catches it. Teasing you relentlessly, you've grown to accept his behaviour in exchange of seeing that damn smile of his.

It was worth it.

"Here," Jungkook takes your hand, “let’s get you an ice pack—owh, fuck."

Unsure if it's because he was nervous and distracted by the fact he was holding your hand, Jungkook clearly got ahead of himself. He doesn't time this right. His body jerked up too early, swiftly attempting to escape. Instead, a similar muted thud noise causes a muffled curse to escape his lips. The pain radiates through his skull and you look at him, knowing the feeling all too well.

Jungkook is stunned.

Jungkook is stupid.

What kind of genius hits his head trying to get out from under the table too?

As your eyes widen, your hands fly to the back of his head. You rub his head and lean in closer. Jungkook places his hand on your wrist, biting the inside of his cheeks.

He didn't know what emotion he felt more of... Was he embarrassed or was he was just super pissed at this fucking table right now?

Or was he kind of loving this?

You're so close to him that he can take your scent in. You smell so good... And you're so pretty up close. He pouts, and utters; "fuck, that really hurt."

You throw your head back and laugh. "I think we're idiots," you tell him. “Seriously, are you okay?”

“Yeah..” He snickers. "Wanna keep this a secret? Let’s never tell anyone about this... Ever."

He offers you his pinky. With your free hand, you intertwine them and make your promise.

At that moment, as you two locked eyes, everything began to fade away. Jungkook wasn't pissed anymore.

Why should he be?

There was solace in your gaze. It was a good reminder that you care for him... And wow, did that make him feel good.

His heart beats faster and faster.

Then, it skips a beat.

As Jungkook feared, you had truly done it now.

With the slightest touch, the softest smile, and kindest eyes... You mesmerize him and he finds it difficult—impossible—to get himself out of this.

“Is this even helping—“

Jungkook catches your hands, keeping them on him. You tilt your head but smile shyly. He clears his throat.

“Y-yeah,” he lies. “I think I hit my head harder than you. Can you just.. Yeah?”

You nod, moving in closer. At this point, there’s no space between you two. You continue to rub his head and he does everything he can to memorize this.

Every detail on your face.

How your touch feels.

How you touch his heart.

The way he feels right now… Oh, god. It’s too much. It’s a kind of high he has never felt before.

For a moment you two sit there and it’s like there is no world aside from the one you two found in each others presence. Under the table, laughing and comforting each other—oh, it felt golden. Jungkook couldn't believe it... He couldn't believe how this fleeting moment changed everything he ever felt about you. There was no going back. There was no way out either... There was just... This.

Here.

Now.

What bliss? How slowly, then all at once, you bloomed for his gaze.

#bts fic #jungkook scenario #jk uni au #jk x yn

[volivolition]

suggestion do you have... any wants? like obviously you do but like? suggestion my guy my ourple boy. both the easiest and hardest to write. you need a skill to say something to move conversation along but it doesn't fit any skill in particular? about 80% of the time you can have suggestion say it and it will make sense. but like actually characterizing him... how do i define you dude... what makes your character tick... urgh. i dont get you yet. im trying to understand but you are difficult.

#chemi chats #there are some skills that i just dont understand yet and that just means i have to work on their character study chapter #im reading his bio and i think suggestion is a good manipulator and it's instinctive and he tries not to feel bad about it? #he's clever!! charming!! friends with savvy and drama. planting seeds in the mind and coaxing them to grow towards him like he's the sun. #a crude oil reservoir lying beneath a carefully laid flower bed. taps into the roots. the plants don't know any better than to drink. #he's great at sensing what makes people tick and uses that to his advantage. he needs goals to look forward to so he knows how to best #pull the strings to get them there. otherwise he's a bit aimless. he likes being useful. and since influencing others is helpful #he just keeps doing it? because it's what he's good at. and he tries to convince himself its fun and cool and just cuz hes charming and #it's his role as a skill and manipulation isnt thaaaat bad because it's helpful to them after all... but he does feel bad sometimes. #oh im listening to his voice lines and i just got to ''brother you should have put me in front of a firing squad'' and im sad about him now #but what do you want for short term little guy?? probably for people to like him. he likes chatting with people. i bet he'd like genuine #conversations with no strings attached but there's always some part of him filing information and tidbits away that he can't turn off #subconsciously figuring out things he can hold over them or how he can nudge them into thinking someth-/wait.../ no. no he's just talking. #he's /supposed/ to just be talking stop analyzing them stop falling back into that just have a normal conversation!! but he can't help it.. #hm. this is all really helpful for his chapter. he and empathy are very alike but also different. very interesting... #task: swept up #okay good talk everyone i think i understand him a little better now lmao?? still gotta figure him out some more hes not fully there but ye #also i think he goes by whatever pronoun you think he'd use. just ''oh what do /you/ think i am hm?? what /would/ i use; do you think?? :)' #funny fella. i love you.

[frogserotonin]

overthinker- lars pinfield x reader

a/n: short one bc im still in a slump rn many sorries. also sorry lawl this fic is so disconjointed and i’m really unhappy with it but whatever 😭 warnings: nothin proper i don’t think, most ooc lars to ever ooc, unedited; tell me if i've spelt smth wrong 😁

“Would you want to go out to get some lunch together on our break?” Your fingertips bounce off of the sides of your legs as you try to remain composed. You're so high-strung right now, you almost expect him to laugh in your face. Nerves and the effects of having slept a fitful two hours last night override your usually rational brain and you feel the need to just run away without receiving an answer bloom in your chest.

“I thought you usually brought lunch? If you forgot to bring some you can have some of mine, if you want.” Lars doesn’t even look up from what he’s working on, just adjusts his glasses and uses a vague jut of his elbow to point to his locker, where you know his bag is. Your heart simultaneously drops and stutters. 

“Oh, it’s okay, I just felt like going out to eat, thank you though.” You try to make your words seem more upbeat than you feel, unsure of whether or not to take his words as a rejection.

“Oh. Okay then.” It must be your imagination, but his words hold a hint of disappointment. You open your mouth again, then close it, and silence re-envelopes the room. Turning, you make your way to your desk and begin to work away, dejection slumping your shoulders forward and making time drag on. When eventually the lunch break arrives, you grab your bag and rush your way out of the lab.

A squeak of shoes on the concrete floor behind you almost has you looking back, but your brain is so addled you almost believe you’ve made it up.

Like a fool, you don't talk to him when you come back, or when you leave, the time you spend alone and in silence building up an anxiety in the back of your mind. The idea that he's all too aware of your feelings, and is made uncomfortable by them and your advances overtakes you completely. That night, you stay awake, tossing and turning, over analysing every interaction you've ever had with him, trying to make sure you've not overstepped and made a complete and utter fool of yourself.

In the morning, you consider it a miracle you leave the house at all, with how tired you are. The thought of calling in sick crosses your mind, but by the time you get up your body automatically locks itself into its usual routine, and you mindlessly get dressed and make your way to the Ghostbusters facilities. Through your drowsiness, the realisation that you’re at your desk and doing absolutely nothing sets in and you jolt. 

“Good morning.” If he didn’t sound so concerned, Lars would sound thoroughly amused. “You alright? Look a bit…off.” Your face flares, and you go to stand up, only to stumble and almost fall on your face. Hands out, you stabilise yourself, and then face him.

“Yeah. Morning.” You can only hope that he backs off, because his concern seems too genuine for your feelings to not expand exponentially the more he stands before you looking like he cares. “M’feeling just peachy, you?.” Belatedly, you realise your words are clearly not convincing because he doesn’t move an inch, simply studying you. He then sighs and shakes his head, chuckling a little bit, just softly under his breath, taking a couple steps closer to you. 

“When’s the last time you slept?” His voice is too gentle, too un-Lars-like, that you’re almost convinced you actually did fall asleep last night, and now you’re dreaming. You open your mouth to respond, but find yourself nodding off as you do so, the last thing you process before fully passing out is the feeling of arms around your chest and shoulders. 

When you come to, you sit up quickly, and slowly become aware of what had happened. Muttering cursing to yourself under your breath, you take in your surroundings, finding yourself slung over the small couch situated in the room reserved for taking time off from work briefly. Hurriedly, you rush out of the room towards where you assume Lars is working, apology already on the tip of your tongue. You approach him quickly and loudly, a fact that can be gathered from his head immediately snapping up when you enter the room. He starts to speak, no doubt to rattle off reasons why you were irresponsible and stupid for coming to work while being aware you weren’t at your fullest capacity, but you cut him off.

“God, I’m so sorry. That was humiliating, and I’m so, so sorry that it happened, it won’t happen again.” You bow your head, refusing to look him in the eye, but quickly look up again when you hear him laugh. 

“It’s fine, really, you just scared me a little bit.” His smile is small, but sincere and you remember fully the reason you were in the predicament in the first place. “Are you feeling better now?” 

You probably look a bit crazy with how vigorously you nod, but you barely care anymore. 

“Yes, thank you so much, really, I’m sorry that it happened.” He laughs again, and it sounds like heaven.

“You don’t need to thank me or apologise,” Lars’ eyes sparkle a bit behind his glasses when he properly smiles, and you can feel warmth rush to your face. He hesitates, like he’s calculating his words, then gently says “I-uh. I care for you a lot, it really meant nothing for me to make sure you were okay.”

#lars pinfield #lars pinfield x reader #ghostbusters frozen empire

[dazednmatthews]

hey hot stuff i’m feeling the need to be self indulgent (feel free to ignore me LOL) but a matt headcanon with his gf in the middle of exams? late night study sesh and such🥹 i love you

- mads 🪽(@hollandsangel)

bf!matt x stressed college gf headcanons

sorry this took so long!! i had a… hectic day to say the least. i hope this does ur request justice 🫶🏾 i love u bad

-matt is the type of bf to never ever want to see you stressed

-he’s gonna do whatever he possibly can to take the pressure off your shoulders

-so when exam season comes up and you start to get kind of distant because you’re so stressed, this mf is the most attentive, doting man ever

-“i’m just so stressed. my bio exam is in three days and my english lit exam is in 5 and i have to do so many chores and pick up this stupid cake for my mom—”

-“go to the library and study. give me the time and place to pick up the cake and i’ll use my key to get into your apartment. don’t worry about a thing, sweetheart.”

-he would respect your space when you needed it and when you wanted to study alone

-“i wanna see you matt but i really need to memorize this chapter tonight. i can’t, i’m sorry.”

-“it’s okay, baby. i understand, school comes first right now.”

-you love him so much for that cause he never makes you or lets you feel guilty for the lack of time together

-he definitely brings you your favorite snacks, water, and meals to the library when you stay late

-“i’m not staying, i know you need to focus. but i also know you haven’t eaten today and i can’t have that.”

-when you do want company, he is hands down the best study partner

-he will deadass read the chapters you have memorize just to make sure he can quiz you

-helps you make color coded flash cards

-“it means… fuck i can never fucking remember this one.” you’re chewing on your pen cap racking your brain for the definition of a chapter concept you know you know. you can feel the slight hysteria building as matt sits patiently, gentle eyes pleading with you to go easy on yourself. “i’m never gonna fucking pass.”

-matt puts down the flash cards, careful not to mess up the order. he comes around to the side of his bed that you’re on, squatting down between your open legs. he’s rubbing his thumb in circles on your thighs with one hand as he removes your head from your hands with his other. “you are the smartest and most capable person i know. you have been working your ass off for this. you need to give yourself some more credit, sweetheart. cause i have no doubt you can do it.” he swipes at the frustrated tears pooling in your eyes and gives you the most honey sweet smile you’ve ever seen.

-you tend to overwork yourself a lot so he insists on breaks every couple hours

-you almost always protest in favor of getting as much work done as possible but he always wins the argument

-“baby, i can’t take another break. i’m so behind. i haven’t even done half of what i wanted to!”

-“last break we took was four hours ago y/n. you’re going to drive yourself crazy if you don’t give yourself some time to relax.”

-he takes you to get food or even just a short drive listening to the playlist you guys made together, talking and laughing about anything other than school

-sometimes you sit in the living room w all the triplets and watch them argue about something hilarious

-he’s always right and it always works

-when you finally finish reviewing all the material you needed to, you flop down on his bed with a heavy sigh

-“i’m so fucking happy i finished on time.”

-“i knew you would. you’re gonna fucking ace it tomorrow.”

-“yeah i hope. i had the best study partner in the world.”

-you spend the night before your exams in his extremely soft bed and his extremely serene arms, him kissing away the nerves that threaten to choke you. every so often he’ll whisper sweet nothings of how good you’re gonna do, how proud of you he is and how smart you are, making your heart swell.

-the day of your exams you wake up to the sweetest note with a smoothie made (he didn’t go to bed until like 7am that morning anyway)

-“you’ve got this, baby! you’re gonna fucking kill it. take your time and trust yourself. i love you -m”

-you feel on top of the world knowing the most amazing man you’ve ever met believes in you so much

-after your exams are done, you wait until you’re back at his house to view your scores online

-“you ready?” matt says, looking at you with nothing but love and light.

-“no, but fuck it. lets get this over with.”

-you of course get the best scores imaginable

-you celebrate like you won the fucking lottery, jumping in his arms and shrieking in hysterical delight

-he is just as, maybe even more excited

-“that’s my fucking girl! i knew you could do it.”

-and he spends the entire night showing you just how proud of you he really is

#matt sturniolo #sturniolo triplets #christopher sturniolo #nicolas sturniolo #nick sturniolo #sturniolo edit #chris sturniolo #sturniolo fanfic #sturniolo imagine #matthew sturniolo #matt stuniolo fanfic #matt sturniolo headcanon #matt sturniolo x reader #chris sturniolo fanfic

[blackbirdi]

One-Sided pt. II

If you haven't read the first part already, the link to part 1 is here

I'm so sorry this took so long, guys, I was struggling with ideas. Anyways, enjoy :)

Brief Description: Sirius begins to notice how suddenly you're around him a lot less than usual. What could he have done to make you want to avoid him at all costs? And why does your avoidance hurt him this much?

Point of View: 3rd Person

Word Count: 2181

Character: Sirius Black x Reader

House: Gryffindor

Year: Sixth Year

Two weeks. It had been two weeks since Sirius has talked to Y/n last, and it's driving him up the wall. The only other time where he doesn't talk to her for that long is during the summer, but at least they owl back and forth non-stop, and now suddenly he hasn't heard her sweet voice in two damn weeks.

And it's not as though he hasn't tried to talk to her. Hell, he's been going out of his way to run into her just to ask what was up with her, but every time she sees him, she runs away. And now she's changed the time of her daily activities (going to the library to read/study, walk in the courtyard, visit Hagrid, etc.) – not that he knew the times she was going by heart before she changed them – so now he can't even run into her then.

Two weeks. Two damn weeks. And he's not going any longer without her.

It was Saturday and the Marauders were all hanging out in their dormitory, and Sirius was itching to find Y/n and beg ask her to forgive him for whatever he must have done to have her ignore him like this.

"Remus," Sirius calls, breaking the silence.

"Hm?" Remus hums, not even bothering to look up from the book he was reading, which only caused Sirius to grow more frustrated.

He closes his eyes before he snaps at Remus, taking a deep breath to calm himself. The only thing that does is cause his eyes to well up with tears. 

Godric, what was up with him? Was Y/n really causing him to get this upset?

When he speaks next, his voice breaks, which causes all the other Marauders to lift their heads and look at Sirius with concern.

"Why won't Y/n talk to me?"

The other three Marauders share a few glances at one another before looking back at Sirius. The pity in their eyes as they look at him causes Sirius to grow frustrated once again.

His eyes, which were previously filled with tears, harden as he wipes them away. His lips pull back into a thin line as he glares down at his own hands.

"She keeps avoiding me! I haven't said anything to her in weeks!" he cries angrily. "And even when I do say something to her, she just ignores me and runs off! Did I do something to make her mad at me?"

"I'm sure you didn't do anything, Padfoot," James tries to comfort him. "Maybe Y/n just needs space for a while."

"Space from what?" Sirius snaps. "What did I do that would've wanted her to space herself from me? And only me! I haven't seen her ignoring you three, or anyone else for that matter! What did I do!?"

“Pads –” Remus starts, but is quickly interrupted.

“Why do you care so much anyway?” James asks. “It’s just Y/n.”

Sirius, Remus, and Peter all shoot James a glare, all three of them knowing that was not the right thing to ask.

“Yeah, Y/n, my friend,” Sirius sneers. “I care because Y/n is one of my closest friends and now suddenly she’s ignoring me! Do you have any idea how much that hurts? Because it does, a lot.”

“We know, Padfoot,” Peter replies, trying to make his voice sound comforting, although to Sirius it sounded more like pity. “I think James was trying to ask why you’re so … no quiet over dramatic about it … but more upset than you normally would be about something like this.”

“Yeah,” James agrees. “That’s exactly what I was trying to ask, thank you, Pete.”

Sirius glares at the both of them, his teeth gritting together as he tries to hold back from snapping at the two of them.

Why was he upset? Really? One of his best friends just straight up ditched him! Of course he was fucking upset!

“How do you twats not understand that I am upset my friend has fucking abandoned me!” Sirius snarls, his voice wavering as he tries to control his anger.

The others share another, worried glance, which drives Sirius even more insane.

Of course, Remus, James, and Peter quickly caught on that Y/n was avoiding Sirius, and were even quicker to catch on why. It wasn’t that hard to see that Y/n had finally had enough of her silly little crush on Sirius and was trying to stomp it out by avoiding him. And of course, Moony, Prongs, and Wormtail knew that avoiding Sirius at all costs wasn’t going to get rid of Y/n’s feelings for Sirius. And of course, Lupin, Potter, and Pettigrew knew that Sirius’s own feelings towards Y/n were developing beyond friendship.

“I can talk to her if you want me to,” Remus offers.

The usual stormy grey of Sirius’s eyes had darkened considerably in anger, his eyes narrowing at Remus in a glare.

“You’ve done quite a lot of talking to her,” he hisses. “A lot more than I have in Merlin knows how long. Do you know how frustrating that is, Remus? To see that Y/n, who suddenly hates me, is still all buddy-buddy with the three of you? Do you know how shitty it makes me feel when I see her talking to you and then she immediately runs away whenever she sees me? Do you?”

“No,” Remus replies, his voice squeaky at the anger in Sirius’s tone.

"That's what I thought," Sirius snarls, standing up from his bed abruptly.

With quick strides Sirius finds himself at the dormitory door, the door opened an inch before Peter asks curiously, "Where are you going?"

"To fucking find her!" Sirius snaps, turning around and facing his friends. "I can't keep going like this, without her. I - I need her, okay? I need her because ... because I love her. I love her. Holy shit, I love Y/n. I'll be back guys, but I need to find Y/n, even if that means searching every nook and cranny of this godforsaken castle."

He's out the door in another split second, the door slamming closed behind him.

Silence settles over the other three as they share glances, confused evident on each of their faces.

"Well," Remus finally mutters, breaking the silence. "He handled that a lot better than Y/n did when she realized she was in love with Sirius."

–––––––––––

To Sirius's surprise it didn't take him that long to find her. She was sitting in the courtyard, leaning against the truck of a tree with a book on her lap.

Sirius was careful to approach her quietly, not wanting her to spot him and jump up and run away (like she had been doing for two weeks straight).

When Y/n finally looked up from her book, the first thing she saw was Sirius looming in front of her. Her eyes widened as they made eye contact, scrambling to pick up her book and getting to her feet.

"Y/n, wait," Sirius snaps, grabbing onto her wrist with a vice-like grip before she could run away. "Please, don't run again, please."

Y/n sighs, trying to tug her wrist out of Sirius’s grip before she turns and faces him for the first time since the Quidditch game. Her struggling ceases as she sees the pain behind Sirius’s eyes, the pain that she would’ve caused every single time she ignored him or ran away.

“Please, Y/n/n,” he begs in a whisper, pulling her closer to him. “Please, don’t leave me again. I miss you so much. And I am so, so sorry if I did something to hurt you, or did something that made you want to avoid me. I never meant to, I don’t think I have done anything, but if I did just say the word and I will hold myself responsible for it and I will do anything I can to get back in your good graces because I miss you. So, so much. I hate that I haven’t seen you in two weeks, I hate that I haven’t talked to you in two weeks, I hate that I haven’t heard your voice in two weeks, and I hate that you’ve been avoiding me. I’m not blaming you because obviously it must have been something I did, but please Y/n, please, please, please stop avoiding me. I miss you.”

A wave of guilt washes over Y/n as she listens to Sirius, watching tears well in his eyes as it gets increasingly harder for him to talk without choking on his words. However, she can't help the little flutter her heart gives at his words.

Sirius takes a breath, trying to collect himself as he finally says everything he was feeling.

"And-and I hate how much it hurts that you've been doing this. I shouldn't care, I really shouldn't, but I do. I care so goddamn much, Y/n. It's been two weeks, two fucking weeks! I shouldn't be this effected, but I am. I've missed you more in two weeks more than I've missed anything else in my life, more than I miss the Marauders during the holidays, more than I miss Hogwarts during the summer, more than I miss the heat of the summer during the winter, more than I miss the sun in a rainstorm. I missed you, Y/n, and it's only been two weeks. So please, please, please, please, tell me what I did wrong so I can right it and we can go back to how we were before whatever I did."

A pause, a heartbeat before Sirius adds in a trembling voice, "Please."

Y/n takes a shaky breath, trying to stop the heat from rising in her cheeks and giving her away.

"Sirius," she says slowly.

"Please," he interrupts her, his voice breaking. "Please, Y/n. I don't know what I did, but whatever it must have been, I am so sorry. Please, please, please forgive me."

"Sirius," Y/n repeats, "you didn't do anything. I just... I realized something and I shut myself away from you. If anything, I should be saying sorry to you. I never meant to hurt you like this."

Sirius stares at her, confusion bubbling up within him as he listens to her explain.

"I-I don't understand," he admits in a quiet voice. Her stares up at her helplessly. "Why would you avoid me like you have if I didn't do anything? You haven't avoided the others, just me."

Y/n sighs, her heart thudding in her chest as she looks away from Sirius and finally admits in a small voice, "I'm in love with you."

The world stops, for the both of them.

Y/n can't breathe, why would she admit that!? Everything, everything, has been ruined. She ruined their friendship! Why would she do that!?

Sirius can't breathe, did she mean it!? Everything, everything, is going to change, for the better. She felt the same! But why did she avoid him if she loved him?

After what felt like hours of silence, Sirius responds, "I love you, too."

Sirius's heart pounds against his ribcage. Even though she said it first, it's still so hard to admit it.

Y/n's heart pounds against her ribcage. There is no way in hell that he actually feels the same.

"I – w-what?” she stutters, mouth dry.

“I love you too,” Sirius repeats, dropping her wrist. His hands come up to cup her jaw, holding her face in his hands as he smiles down at her. “I-I was thinking about how much I missed you, everything about you – not just your presence – and I guess that led me to realize that I would never feel this way about someone I thought of as my friend. Y/n/n, I realized that I’m in love with you.”

Y/n mirrors Sirius’s smile, relief flooding through her body as her cheeks flush with pink.

“I-I’m glad,” she whispers. “I was scared that you didn’t feel the same; that’s why I started avoiding you. I thought that if I was around you less my feelings would go away, which obviously didn’t work. But I was scared to say something in case I made things awkward between us.”

Sirius chuckles, pressing his forehead against hers, asking in a soft voice, “How could I not be in love with you? You, Y/n L/n, are the most kind, thoughtful, caring, smart, funny, beautiful woman in the whole world; I don’t know how I didn’t realize my feelings for you sooner. I love you.”

“I love you too, Sirius,” Y/n murmurs back. She closes her eyes, relishing in the feeling of Sirius being this close to her.

A comfortable silence fell over the two as they soak in each other’s presence, two hearts beating as one.

Two minutes. It has been two minutes since Sirius has admitted his feelings for Y/n, and it’s making him feel like he’s on top of the world.

Taglist: @littleshadow17 (who asked for a part 2 a month ago. I hope it was up to your standards lol). And @rosieandthethorns (who didn't asked to be tagged but I figured I should let you know so you can stop foaming at the mouth and writhing on the floor lmao)

#i'm sorry i took so long in getting this out guys #my writing brain wasn't writing #sirius black #sirius black x reader #sirius black x y/n #sirius black x you #sirius black fanfiction #sirius black imagine #marauders era #padfoot #requited love

[strawburry01]

Enjoy the Silence

Summary: (college) Aaron and Y/N at a halloween party where someone gets a little drunk. Still a little conflicted angsty. Don't need to have read the other stuff leading up to this but it helps!

Word Count: 3k

AN: Guys, why do things keep happening to me? I sprained my ankle so bad running after this exchange student I met like, two nights ago, and he just laughed! SMH. Forgive me for how terribly this may read near the end- I'm just trying to get something out. I'll edit it later (maybe) (probably not) (oopsies!)

It had been about half a year of you and Aaron studying tirelessly in the library, but it wasn’t for nothing. Both of you were getting the highest scores on the exams in class and had, by the grace of god, made it onto the Dean’s list last year. It left both of you more determined than ever, but also more inseparable than ever. At this point you were both either at the library, class, or at each other’s place, much to the dismay of your roommates who would like some peace and quiet some nights. Luckily for them, this was one of the nights you were both out of the house, as it was Halloween. Well, the Friday before Halloween. Nobody really wanted to party on a Monday night.

Aaron and you had fought about matching costumes for a while because you refused to dress as Sandra from Grease because you thought she was such a pushover and gave up all her morals for Danny, even thought it would’ve made for a really good costume. He eventually gave up and just admitted he wanted to wear his leather jacket and didn’t care what you dressed as.

Well that is until you met him at his house in a matching leather jacket. He shut the door on your face before you could open your mouth.

“We are NOT showing up to a costume party MATCHING,” he shouted from the other side of the door.

“Aaron you said you wanted to match though!” you shouted back, trying to hide back your laughs.

“You know what I meant Y/N and it wasn’t this!”. 

“Oh come on you kill joy everyone is going to be so jealous of how cute we look!” you laughed as you shoved your fists in your pockets, thinking you looked damn good. You heard him shuffle around on the other side of the door before finally opening it with a dramatic sigh and eye roll.

“You kill me,” he sighed as he started down the porch, letting you catch up to him. You smiled as you stepped into pace besides him. You were heading to one of his friend’s party’s for the night. Aaron insisted it would be fun, but he’d brought it up enough you were getting a little suspicious. Aaron started talking about his roommates' failed cooking attempts as you lit a cigarette between your lips. 

“You’re smoking?” he asked, stopping his story and turning to you as you puffed out a cloud of smoke. You turned away trying to hide it from him.

“So what? You worried about me?” you hummed, trying to diffuse his anger as you ashed the cigarette end. He rolled his eyes and focused back onto the sidewalk.

“That’s bad for you y’know?” he stated matter-of-factly.

“I do know Aaron,” you responded in the same tone as you tapped his shoulder with your free hand. He always hated when you started smoking. It was a cycle you’d gotten yourself into at the beginning of this year starting every few weeks and then quitting whenever Aaron would start stealing and hiding your packs. You smushed your cigarette into the ground once you were finished right outside the house. Aaron had put on some sunglasses to add to his costume which you giggled at. 

“Stop it, you know I look good,” he said as he threw his arm around your shoulders lazily leaning onto you as you both stood in front of the door. You laughed more and patted his chest as you snaked an arm behind his waist to steady him. His friend whips open the door and the noise of the party booms onto the porch. 

“Aaron! Y/N!” he shouted, the scent of alcohol already emanating off of him, “you made it!”. Aaron hugged his friend and started talking as you nodded your hello and slipped into the thumping house, letting the two catch up. It was already packed somehow even though it had just begun, that’s what they’d get for inviting a bunch of nerds. There were several black cats of varying authenticity, a few Gene Simmon’s look-alikes, a smattering of half-assed Jedi, and a fair amount of suspect Spidermen and other superheros. You smiled peacefully to yourself, despite the chaos around you, taking in the moment and what all led to you even getting invited to such an event. You slipped a hand into the cooler to grab a beer and cracked it open to start sipping on it as you watched the crowd. You’d always been a bit of a wallflower, while Aaron was the chatty one. Sure enough, he was still chatting with his friend, just as energetic as he was before. Your old lab partner Jen spotted you at the party and danced her way through the crowed until she was by you.

“Ohmygod Y/N, so great to see you!” she shouted over the speaker. You stifle a smile seeing how out of it she was.

“Jen, how are you?” you asked, trying to be sincere, swishing your drink. She nodded enthusiastically.

“I’m so great Y/N. Who do you know here?!” she said back. 

“Uhm, I’m here with Aaron,” you admitted bashfully. Sure enough Jen responded with raised eyebrows and a shoulder nudge.

“You guys are still talking? That’s going gooood?” she said, leaning closer and waggling her eyebrows. You playfully scoffed and pushed her away.

“You know it’s not like that Jen, we’re just…friends,” you said, glancing behind  her at Aaron still gesticulating a story to his friend. She moved her head to block your view.

“Sure and is that why you guys are wearing matching costumes?” she accused. You rolled your eyes and sipped the beer.

“It wasn’t on purpose,” you said under your breath. 

“You’re blushing!” Jen giggled obnoxiously as she shook you by the shoulders, to which you swatted her away and tried to shush her even though he was across the room. She aww-ed at your shyness and eventually calmed down. “Okay okay, but still-” she said, “you two are cute together,”.

“Thanks,” you mutter under your breath, looking around the room for Aaron again only to see he had finally moved away from his friend. Where did he go? 

“Hello Jen,” he suddenly chirped, appearing besides you, double fisting two red Solo cups. “Ah cheers,” he said quickly clinking his cups to your beer. 

“Hello Aaron!” she smiles back with a toothy grin, “Ugh you two look so good,” she said looking at both of you. Aaron smiled and looked down at his own outfit before looking at you and nodding, confirming her compliment.

“Thank you Jen, you look good too,” he said back, eyes glancing over her and her fairy costume. 

“You’re too sweet Aaron,” she said, “Okay okay okay I’ll leave you two alone, say bye before you leave!!!” she said in an airy tone grabbing both of your forearms before wandering back into the crowd. Aaron silently took a sip of one of his drinks and smacked his lips before looking back down at you.

“She’s- something!” he remarked. You nodded and matched him with your own sip. 

“She’s nice, just a bit of a party animal,” you agreed, “like someone else I know” you chuckled, elbowing Aaron.

“Pfft as if, I just like talking to people. Unlike soooome,” he retorted, elbowing you back.

“Let me catch up to you then I’ll get social” you jokingly grumbled, taking another sip. He snorted.

The party continued and Aaron and you split again. Sure enough, you do warm up to chat with your classmates and friends as you keep another beer in hand. You feel a buzz starting as you laugh loudly at someone’s joke as you attempt to land a ping pong ball into a solo cup across the table. You miss and loudly shout ‘SHIT!’, only to quickly feel a body pressed against your back, a hand holding onto your hip.

“Let me try for a redemption shot,” Aaron laughed, reverberating in your ear as someone hands him a ping pong ball. He completely misses and you both burst out laughing, and you take the opportunity to lean back on his chest, only to have his grip tighten on your hip. “I didn’t say I was going to be good,” he defended himself as you watched the opposing team try to make their shots. You reach behind yourself and pat his cheek.

“Sure you are,” you tease back, feeling his warm cheek under your hand before you go to grab another fumbled ball. It’s crazy how bad hand eye coordination gets when you’re drunk. You weren’t complaining though. Having Aaron this close was…nice, but you would never really admit it. The game continues and you two end up losing, but just barely. Aaron happily finishes the drinks as you insist you can’t handle any more, mostly because you’ve seen how long it’d been sitting out. Aaron’s fraternity brother tendencies came out whenever he was trying to impress people with these games. 

You expect him to step away once the game is done, but instead he stays right where he is, moving his arms up they’re wrapped around your shoulders, keeping you close. He sets his head on your shoulder blade and sighs.

“You alright?” you ask, tilting your head to look at him. You felt him nod onto your shoulder.

“I’m doing just swell Y/N,” he says, knowing he doesn’t need to shout, which makes a chill run up your spine. He tightens his grip for a second before changing his mind, “can we go to the couch actually,” he mumbles to you. You obliged and started to weave your way through the partygoers back to the living room where you know there’s a few couches. Aaron doesn’t let go, despite stumbling a few times into your back. You throw some coats left on a couch onto the arms of it and sit down, Aaron finally releasing his hold. He flops down, laying his head on your lap, leaving his legs dangling off the end of the couch. He grumbles and groans as he throws his sunglasses off into the void of people dancing. “Y/N…I’m getting the spins,” he groans as he rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. Oh shit, Aaron’s actually drunk.

You can’t help but gently place a hand on his hair and run your fingers through it.

“Poor Aaron drank too much?” you asked in a sing songy voice.

“Don’t baby talk me,” he whined as he lowered his hands and kept his eyes firmly shut, “can’t you just make me feel better,”.

“What would make you feel better?” you ask, raising your eyebrows to yourself. His eyes flashed open and he opened his mouth to say something, but instead of words he shoots up and promptly throws up over the side of the couch onto the ground. Yeah, good thing you didn’t drink that shit. 

You make him lay down on the couch as you tie up your hair and start trying to clean up the mess. Aaron’s friend finds you trying and grabs your attention.

“Y/N, yeah? Don’t worry about it-” he said, not seeming stressed, “I got this if you just uh, promise to get him home,” he said, tilting his chin in the direction of the still groaning Aaron. You nodded dutifully, you would much rather take this deal. After a few minutes of convincing you’re able to coax Aaron to his feet, leading him out before he can throw up on the floor again.

He does throw up again in the lawn and you try to pat his back to make him feel better, although you’ve never really seen him get sick from drinking so you’re not sure if you’re helping or harming. The two of you are able to make it back to his house, in only twice the normal time due to his drunken ramblings requiring perfect stillness in the middle of the street. 

“Y/N, you know I love you right?” he says bluntly the moment you pull the key to his house out of his jacket pocket. You froze. You know he doesn’t mean it like that, unless he does. You can’t really trust him with how half-shut his eyes are right now.

“I uh, love you too Aaron,” you say, forcing a bit of a smile into the corner of your mouth as you open the door to the dark house. Dammit, he’s not shuffling back into his room without a tumble or waking up the whole house. “We’re getting you to bed okay?” you say to him, as you hold an arm around his waist to steady him.

“Can you spend the night? I love you,” he said through his mumbles as the two of you stepped into the house. He leans his head down so he’s just speaking into your hair. 

“Aaron I don’t know I-” you try to interject.

“But I love youuuu and you never spend the night,” he whines like a teenager as you kicked open the bottom of his door to try and avoid a clatter. You sigh as you navigate him to his bed and let him fall onto it.

“Take off your shoes ya drunk,” you say as you cross your arms and flick on the lights. He hisses at the bright lights, but does kick off his boots before trying to get under the blankets. He eventually opens his eyes again and looks at you.

“Please spend the night Y/N,” he says softly, opening the blankets, “I just want you here,”. You’d spent the night before with him, but usually just on the couch after falling asleep on his shoulder during a movie. Did he actually mean this? Or was he just that drunk? “Please?”.

You can’t say no to this guy’s face. You sighed  and kicked off your own shoes and hit the lights before crawling into the area under the blanket. You can hear Aaron trying to form a sentence but he just mumbles words as he pulls you closer by the small of your back. You give in and rest your head on his chest, hearing just how fast his heart is beating, glad it isn’t just your own. 

“Y/N?” he finally gets out, breaking the silence of just the two of your breaths. 

“Yes Aaron?”

“Don’t leave me,”.

“I won’t,”.

You feel him slowly rubbing your back before eventually falling into a loud snore. He’s lucky he was handsome, otherwise you’d be smothering him with a pillow. Eventually you’re able to fall asleep into the darkness, trying to not overthink things.

You wake up to sunlight hitting you directly in the eyes through the window across the room. You groaned and turned to try and hide your face, remembering at the same time you were in a bed that was not your own. You groaned as you realize Aaron isn’t in bed anymore with you. Shit. You sit up in the bed, rubbing your head groggily. As if on command, Aaron swings the door open with two cups of coffee. His face brightens as he sees you’re awake.

“Good morning Y/N,” he says, his morning voice making your stomach do a flip. Well, either that or the residual alcohol. 

“How are you feeling?” you ask him, as you gratefully take the cup. 

“Not the best, I can’t lie,” he admits as he sits at the foot of the bed. You wished he’d just come back under the covers though, “I don’t really remember coming back home,” he says as he takes a sip of the coffee.

“Do you remember any of last night?” you asked. He shrugs, still facing the door.

“I remember doing really bad at beer pong with you,” he offered, rubbing the back of his head, “was I embarrassing? Oh Christ what did I say-”.

“Nothing! You just threw up on the floor, and then I uh- took you home,” you nodded, agreeing to yourself on this story.

“Mmm,” he hummed, before silence took over the room again. He didn’t ask what you were doing in his bed. He didn’t admit that he did remember some of the drunken haze. It wasn’t lying that he didn’t remember the walk home- he really didn’t- but he did remember you unlocking the door. And he vaguely remembered admitting he loved you.

For now though, the silence was welcome. The two of you sipped your coffee. 

“We didn’t fuck right?” he asked, only to be met with a pillow to the cheek.

#aaron hotch fanfiction #aaron hotch hotchner #aaron hotchner #hotch x reader #aaron hotchner x reader #aaron hotch x reader #college au #Halloween Hotch #hotch #thomas gibson

[communistkenobi]

Hi, genuine good faith question if you'd like! How is TOS racist? It was my understanding that the OG Series was like, huge for equality in media?

I’m speaking primarily about the content of TOS itself, not its historical impact - I understand it had various historic firsts in terms of having characters of colour in respectable roles, which I’m not dismissing. My experience with the discourse on here surrounding the show is that people front-load these character representations as emblematic of the show’s progressive politics. Which, if we want to go that route, TOS was contemporary to the US civil rights movement, which provides us with a handy measuring stick to see how TOS actually grapples with race, not just the presence of characters of colour themselves. I'm going to be kind of defensive in this explanation, not towards you specifically, but because I have had this conversation with people online many, many, many times, and so any defensiveness on my part is in anticipation of arguments I know will come up as a result of making the basic claim that a show made in America in the 1960s is racist. I'm also going to be copy + pasting from an older post I've made on the subject since it's been a while now since I've watched TOS so some of the details are fuzzy.

Like okay, the premise of TOS is that the Enterprise, as an ambassador of Starfleet/the Federation, is seeking out new alien life to study. The Prime Directive prohibits the Enterprise crew from interfering with the development of any alien culture or people while they do this, so the research they collect needs to be done in an unobtrusive way. I think this is the first point at which people balk at the argument that TOS is racist or has a colonial conception of the world - the Enterprise’s mission is premised on non-interference, and I think when people hear ‘colonial’ as a descriptor they (understandably, obviously) assume it is describing active conquest, genocide, and dispossession. Even setting aside all the times where Kirk does directly interfere with the “development” of a people or culture (usually because they’ve “stagnated” culturally, because a culture "without conflict" cannot evolve or “develop” beyond its current presumed capacity - he is pretty explicitly imposing his own values onto another culture in order to force them to change in a particular way), or the times when the Enterprise is actually looking to extract resources from a given planet or people, I’m not exactly making this claim, or rather, that’s not the only thing I’m describing when calling TOS racist/colonial.

The show's presentation of scientific discovery and inquiry is anthropological - the “object” of analysis is alien/foreign culture, meaning that when the Enterprise crew comes into contact with a new being or person, this person is always read first and foremost through the level of (the Enterprise’s understanding of) culture. Their behaviour, beliefs, dress, way of speaking, appearance, and so on are always reflective of their culture as a whole, and more importantly, that their racial or phenotypic characteristics define the boundaries of their culture. Put another way, culture is interpreted, navigated, and bound racially - the show presents aliens as a Species, but these species are racially homogeneous, flattening race to a natural, biological difference that is always physically apparent and presented through the lens of scientific objectivity, as "species" is a unit of biological taxonomy. Basically species is a shorthand for race. This is the standard of most sci-fi/fantasy genre work, so this is not a sin unique to Star Trek.

Because of this however, Kirk and Co are never really interacting with individuals, they are interacting with components of a (foreign, exotic, fundamentally different) culture, the same way we understand that a biologist can generalize about a species using the example of an individual 'specimen'. And when the Enterprise interacts with these cultures, they very frequently measure them using a universalized scale of development - they have a teleological (which is to say, evolutionary) view of culture, ie, that all cultures go from savage to rational, primitive to advanced, economically simple to economically complex (ie, to capitalist modes of production). And the metrics they are judging these cultures by are fundamentally Western ones, always emphasising to the audience that the final destination of all cultures (that are worthy of advancing beyond their current limited/“primitive” stages) is a culture identical to the Federation, a culture that can itself engage in this anthropological mission to catalogue all life as fitting within a universal set of practices and racial similarities they call “culture.”

This is a western, colonial understanding of culture - racially and spatially homogeneous people comprise the organs of a social totality, ie, a society, which can then be analysed as an “object,” as a “phenomenon,” by the scientists in order to extract information from them to produce and advance state (ie Federation) knowledge. The Enterprise crew are allowed to be individuals, are allowed to be subjects with a capacity for reason, contradiction, emotion, compassion, and even moments of savagery or violence, without those things being assigned to their “race” or “culture” as a whole, but the people they interact with are only components of a whole which are “discovered” by the Enterprise as opportunities to expand and refine the Federation’s body of knowledge.

Spock is actually a good example of what I'm talking about, because he is an exception to this rule - unlike the others in the crew, his behaviour is always read as a symptom of his innate Vulcan-ness, where his human and Vulcan halves war for dominance in his mind and character. Bones (the doctor, one of the main cast) constantly comments on Spock's inability to feel things, that he is callous and unsympathetic, ruled by Vulcan logic to such an extreme that his rationality is a form of irrationality, as his Vulcan blood prohibits him from tempering logic with human emotion and intuition. Now you can argue that Bones is a stand-in for the racists of the world, that Spock proves Bones wrong in that he is able to feel but merely keeps it under wraps, that Vulcans are not biologically incapable of emotion but merely live in a socially repressive culture, but this still engages in the racial logic of the show - Vulcans are a racially-bound species with a single monolithic culture, and Spock's ability to express and feel 'human emotions' is the metric by which he is granted human subjectivity and sympathy.

And on the flip side you have the Klingons - a “race” that is uniformly savage, backward, violent, and dangerous. In the episode Day of the Dove, where Klingons board the Enterprise along with an alien cloud that makes everyone suddenly aggressive and racist (this show is insane lol), the Enterprise crew begins acting violent and racist, but the Klingons don’t change. They aren’t more violent than before (because they already were fundamentally violent and racist), and they don’t become less violent when the cloud eventually leaves (because they are never able to emerge from their violence and savagery as a social condition or external imposition - they simply are that way). Klingons are racially, behaviourally, psychologically, and culturally homogeneous, universally violent and immune to reason, and their racial characteristics are both physical manifestations of this universal violence as well as the origin of it. The writers and creators of TOS are explicitly invoking the orientalist idea of the “Mongolian horde,” representing both the American fear of Soviet global takeover as well as blatantly racist fears about “Asiatics” (a word used in the show, particularly in The Omega Glory where a fear of racialised communist takeover is made explicit) dominating the world.

This is colonial thinking! Like, fundamentally, at its core, this is colonial white supremacist thinking. Now this is not because TOS invents these tropes or is the origin of them, it is not individually responsible for these racial and colonial logics - these conceptions are endemic to Western thought, and I am not expecting a television show to navigate its way outside of this current colonial paradigm of scientific knowledge. I’m also not expecting an average person watching this to pick out all the intricacies of this and link it to the colonial history of Europe or the colonial history of western philosophy/thought. But this base premise of Star Trek is why the show is fundamentally colonial - even if it was the case that the crew never intervened in any alien conflict, never extracted any material resources from other people, this would still be colonial logic and colonial thinking. The show has a fundamentally colonial imagination when it comes to exploration, discovery, and culture.

I think a good place to end is the opening sequence. The show's first line is always "Space! The final frontier." I do not think the word frontier is meant metaphorically or poetically - I think the show is being honest about its conception of space as an infinitely vast, infinitely exotic frontier from which a globally Western civilisation (which the Enterprise is an emblem of) can extract resources, be they material or epistemic

#tos.txt #< have more posts in there also

[five-rivers]

timer

@echoghost1 @everfascinated

.

It hovered over the surface of the portal, clearly separate from it.  A large, flat, disk shape, with a pale, luminous face.  More vivid numbers circled the edge, painted neatly.  A single, delicate, metal hand pointed towards the number seven, on the left side of the clock.  It had been pointing there for the past hour or so, ever since it had been noticed.  

Maddie drummed her fingers on the workbench she stood next to.  The timer - because what else could it be? - was, thus far, a mystery to her.  Usually, Maddie liked mysteries.  Exploring the mysteries of the Ghost Zone had been the reason they had built the portal in the first place.  This mystery was fascinating, and Maddie was excited about it, but it was also incredibly troubling.  

Obviously, the timer - hovering, green, immovable - was ghostly in origin.  What else could it be?  But how did a ghost place get in here to place it?  For what purpose?  How much time was left?  What was it counting down to?  It couldn’t be anything good.  Ghosts had no love for her family or their works.  

As soon as she’d noticed it, she and Jack had started taking readings, but nothing they did gave them anything conclusive, or any way to get rid of the thing.  

It was frustrating and troubling.  Frustrating and troubling.  

“Uh, Mom?  Dad?  It’s six and we were wondering if you wanted us to order dinner or anything…”

Maddie looked up to see Danny coming down the stairs.  

“Oh, sure!” said Jack.  “Pizza sounds great, son!”

“Yeah.  What are you even– What’s that?”  

Danny stared wide-eyed at the timer for a long moment, and Maddie moved to reassure him.  Danny was always so timid around ghosts, so afraid.  This timer was doubtlessly malevolent, but she and Jack wouldn’t let it do anything to Danny.  

Briefly, Danny’s eyes gleamed green.  Then, slowly, but inevitably, he collapsed.

Maddie leaped forward, keeping Danny from hitting his head on the bottom step by the narrowest of margins.  “Jack!”  

“What happened?” he asked, hurrying over.  “Danny?  Danny?  Talk to me, son!  Can you hear me?”

Danny’s eyes fluttered open briefly, overly reflective, then shut again.

“I’m setting up the quarantine booth,” said Maddie.  “Will you carry him?”

Jack nodded, grimly.  

They’d gotten the quarantine booth set up after Vlad’s unfortunate recurrence of ecto-acne and the revelation that ecto-acne could be contagious under certain circumstances.  It was sealed, filtered, protected, shielded.  Every precaution they could think of had gone into it. 

… and, yes, they should use those precautions more often, but Maddie and Jack loved getting up close and personal with the subjects of study.  

“We need to get that thing shielded,” said Jack as he set Danny on the bed.  He rushed out towards the timer and started setting up shield projectors around the portal.  

Maddie, meanwhile, pulled the medical scanner free from the ceiling.  Well, ‘medical scanner’ was a very sci-fi way of putting it, when really it was quite prosaic, if you knew how it worked.

She positioned it over Danny’s body and set it to taking data. 

Temperature, low, heart rate, low, bones, intact, nervous system… that part of the scanner didn’t work all that well, ignore that reading…  

Ectoplasm levels were off the charts.  

Maddie inhaled deeply.  Stay calm, stay calm.  They would fix this.  They’d cured Vlad and Danny’s friends, they could cure this, whatever it was.  They would get rid of that timer and they’d save Danny.  

“Mom?” said Danny, weakly.  

“Hey, sweetie,” said Maddie.  “How are you feeling?”  

“Bad,” said Danny.  He tried to sit up, but Maddie pushed him back down.  “What’s happening?”

“You collapsed suddenly,” said Maddie.  “We’re trying to figure out why.”

Danny raised one hand to his face.  Green light reflected off his hand.  Understanding flicked over his features.  

“Okay, but I think I’m feeling better, now,” he said.  He tried to sit up again.  

“We need to figure out what happened before you go running around,” said Maddie, pushing him down again.  She looked over at Jack, through the thick, transparent sides of the quarantine booth.  Jack was now trying to throw a towel over the timer and–

Wait a moment.  

“Stay down,” she told Danny.  “Let the scanner do its job.”  She walked out of the quarantine booth.  “Wait, Jack, wait.”

“But we have to keep it from affecting Danny.  We don’t know if its effect is visual or what.”

“I know, I know,” said Maddie.  “But look at it.  Look at the hand.”

The hand, which had been pointing at the number seven, was now pointing at the number six.  

Jack scowled at the timer and tried to throw the towel over it again.  The towel passed through it.  “Are we sure this is a timer, Mads?  Maybe the numbers are counting down charges or something like that.”

“I don’t know, it still looks more like a timer to me.”

“But why did it affect Danny like that?” 

“I don’t know.  We need to start decontamination procedures right away, though.  His ectoplasm levels are off the charts.  The sudden spike is probably what made him collapse, but I don’t know how this could have increased his ectoplasm levels so much so quickly.”

I don’t know either,” said Jack.  He picked up the latest version of the Fenton Finder (which incidentally, still detected Danny more often than not) and shook it.  “None of the detectors we have pointed at it picked up anything.  Nothing going towards Danny, nothing ambient, nothing anywhere else.”

Maddie had hoped that their detectors had picked something up, but with the continued failures of the Fenton Finder, maybe she shouldn’t be so surprised.  

“We’ll keep looking,” said Maddie.  She was forgetting something.  What was she forgetting?  “Jazz.  We need to tell Jazz, so she doesn’t come down here.  What if it only affects minors?”

“Righto,” said Jack, shoving the Finder at Maddie.  “I’ll do that, you start the decontam procedures!”

Maddie nodded tightly and turned back to Danny.  She could see his eyes gleaming from here.But they could fix this. 

#danny phantom #phic phight #phic

[gallilovesf1]

P1 Into You: Goodnight

🏁 Character Introductory 🏁

MASTERLIST

Pairings (applied to the whole fic): Sergio Pérez x FemHorner!Reader, Toto Wolff x FemHorner!Reader, Lewis Hamilton x FemHorner!Reader

Warnings: Slow burn, mentions of sexual topic, Dom/Sun dynamic, Soft Dom! Sergio, Dom! Toto, angst, cheating, fluff, mentions of death

Author's Note: I haven't seen someone write for Sergio so I'll just do it myself, this will be a long fic so bare with me! Enjoy!🏁🏎️

══════☆════════════☆══════

You graduated as a mechanical engineer at Harvard University, honestly it's one of your greatest achievements in life. Before your mother passed you promised to her that you’ll be a mechanical engineer just like her and you did, years of studying hard, all those sleepless nights, it eventually pays off.

Of course as expected, your dad's not happy on what you've done, you did what he also wanted, worked as one of the engineers in Red bull, you expect him to compliment you for a little but he didn't, except he pressured you enough to cry every night, blaming yourself that why aren't you good enough for your dad to be proud at you, but the good thing is your brother, Jonathan. One of the drivers in red bull is supporting you, you and him always have the best bonds as siblings. He teaches you some stuff on formula one, telling you the basics, like the teams and its drivers, team principal. Besides that he also supports you as an artist, growing up you always love drawings, you always tell your parents how much you love doing tiny doodles and showing it to them, but as always the only person who cares about you is your mom and your brother.

“Y/N?” Your brother says as you snapped back into reality, “Earth to Y/N?” “What-?” “I said, Dad needs us in the paddock, are you coming?” “Yeah, give me a minute-” you said as you grabbed your phone as you and your brother went to the paddock.

You and your brother arrived in the paddock as your saw checo, your best friend and also one of the drivers of red bull alongside your brother.

You met checo at your brothers first win in sakhir grand prix 2020, Checo’s on podium 1 while your brother is in podium 3, you're so happy for your brother that day, checo and your brother celebrated their victory as a team, later that night the red bull team threw a party and you had a blast, you made some new friends, talk so some new faces, until checo approached you, “Y/n, Right?” He smiled shyly as he looked at you up and down, “Yes, that's right, You're Sergio, right? Congrats by the way, you did so well earlier!” You complimented him as he smiled at you, ‘god he's handsome’ you thought, “Ah- Thank you, that's- really thank you.” Checo's cheeks turned light pink, “Call me checo, everyone calls me that and I think you should too.” He smiled, “Checo” you said as you liked the way his name sounds, “Yeah-” he chuckled.

Since then you and checo got really close, he always treats you, going on a dinner date with him, watching a movie with him, having some fun time together, and lastly going in some art museums around the world whenever the team travels for the race.

He knows that you're a big fan of art, he knows that you always liked drawings as a kid up till now, he thinks that you deserve to be treated like what he's doing, making you feel worth it and not neglected.

“Y/N, Luz solar-” says checo as you heard his little nickname for you, “Checoooo!” You run towards him as you give him a tight hug as if you haven't seen each other in years, “How are you?” You said as you smiled up at him, “I'm doing good, Miel, how about you did you enjoy the city here in Mexico?” He smiled at you, “Yeah! I liked it here already, though I haven't explored the city yet since you know, dad always needed me here” you rolled your eyes as checo chuckled, “Luz solar, I'll tell you what, after the practice we can go and take a look at the city, we can eat and maybe find some museum to go in.” He smiled as I pats your shoulders, “Can I come?” Your brother says as he looks at checo then to you, “ye-” “No.” You said “¿Porque mi amor?” (Why, my love) Checo says as he looks at you confused, You chuckled, “Dummy of course you can go! You two are my supporters, I wouldn't be like this if you guys weren't here for me!” You smiled to both of them as checo and your brother chuckled, “Ah, sí, after the race ok? We'll talk about it later-" Checo winks at you as he leaves, leaving you and your brother.

“I swear he likes you-” your brother teased as he scoffed, “He's literally way much older than me, what do you mean?” You looked at him confused, “C’mon, you and checo have been friends for 4 years now and you think checo doesn't like you? He always treats you like you're his wife!” Your brother said as he chuckled, “He's always like that, I think he's just kind and sweet, he knows everything between me and dad, so maybe he's just making me feel appreciated in a way he can.” You said as you had flashbacks of your moments with checo.

It's true, Checo's been treating you as if you're his wife. Honestly, you find checo attractive and god he's so perfect, his eyes, his face, the way he looks at you whenever he talks and listens when you're talking. You liked him, but you just don't know how you will say it to him, you don't want your friendship with him to go to waste if your relationship with him didn't work out.

─ ⋆ ────── ⋆ ────── ⋆ ──

The Free practice was done and you cheered your brother and checo as they got the pole position 1 and 2, Checo is in P1 while your brother is in P2, his highest position so far in this season.

“You did great!” You said as you hugged your brother, “Thank you sis! I'm excited for tomorrow-” your brother replied as he pulls away from the hug, You saw checo walking towards you while smiling, “Checoooo- you did great P1 is your highest so far! I'm proud of you-” you cheered as you hugged checo, “Thank you, Mi amor, Are we still going out though?” “Hell yes!” You said as you looked checo in the eyes, admiring his brown eyes, “Way to go checo!” Your brother said as they hugged each other, “You did well too.” Checo smiled as they both pulled away from each other, “C’mon let's get out of here I'm excited to explore the city!” You said as the three of you went to change clothes.

─ ⋆ ────── ⋆ ────── ⋆ ──

The three of you arrived in a restaurant, not far away from the paddock, you entered first as you bumped into a tall man, you felt like you bumped into some hard wall, “I'm so-” you said as you looked up seeing The team principal of Mercedes, Toto Wolff.

“I'm sorry-” you said shyly as you looked up at him, ‘Fuck, he's tall.’ you thought, he leans down at you slightly, “It's ok, don't apologize.” He said, smirking down at you.

“Is that Toto?” Your brother says, asking Checo, “Yeah and that's Y/N talking to toto?” They both looked at each other confused. “Y/N-” checo called your name as you looked behind you seeing your brother and checo walking towards you, “I'm really sorry I didn't see you passing by-” you apologize again as you lowered your head in embarrassment, Toto said nothing as he looked down on you as he nodded and left.

“You ok?” Checo said as he looked at you slightly confused, “Yeah, I just didn't see him that's all-” you said smiling at him, “Toto? You didn't see him?” Your brother chuckled as he teased you, “I Don't know, I don't even know who he is, ok?” You said chuckling. “That's the team principal of Mercedes, one of our rival teams, dad hates that guy.” Your brother replied, “That's him?!” You said shocked, “Yeah, your father and Toto are not the best of friends.” Checo said as he looked at your brother and you, ‘Why would dad hate him, he looks kind though-’ you thought, “Hmm, I see, let's just forget it- we need to celebrate for what happened on the practice earlier!” You said as you smiled at Checo and your brother.

─ ⋆ ────── ⋆ ────── ⋆ ──

The three of you sat down as Checo asked the waiter for the menu, the three of you took a while from choosing what to eat, “Since it's your hometown, why don't you tell us what's the best food to order?” You said looking at Checo while smiling, “Yeah!” Your brother agreed as checo grins “Ok- how about we choose this?” He said pointing at ‘Torta’ in the menu, “Torta? What's that?” You asked, “Well it's like a sandwich filled with a lot of vegetables and meat-” he said looking at you then your brother, “Well that's sounds delicious to me-” your brother said smiling as checo looks at you, “What about you Y/N?” “Hmm I want to try it!” You said as Checo smiled at your words.

Few minutes later all of your orders have arrived, checo ordered a torta with a diet coke on the side, your brother ordered the same, while you ordered a torta and a sparkling water, the three of you ate and exchange conversation, you liked the food that Sergio suggest to eat, “So, why did you bumped into Toto earlier?” Your brother asked, making checo nod, “Yeah, it's impossible for you not to see him, that guy is tall!” You chuckled, “Well yeah I didn't kinda see him because I was admiring the outside view of the restaurant, plus I'm really excited so I didn't bother to look In Front of me, the next thing I realized is that I felt like I bumped into a wall-” The three of you chuckled, “That's a weird and funny interaction of you and toto- is that the first time you saw him in person?” Checo asked, “Well…Yeah- given that dad only describes him with words and I only saw him in interviews and pictures, so I wasn't expecting he'll be that intimidating…” ‘and damn hot…’ you thought.

The three of you exchanged conversation as you remember that there's a museum close by the restaurant, “Checo, can we go to the museum across the street, please?” You begged as you gave Checo an irresistible eye, checo chuckled, “I don't know should we go, Johnathan?” Checo asked your brother as they teased you, “Hmm let me think about it checo-” Your brother teases you too, you looked at them unimpressed, “alright, ok, jeez-” your brother says as checo chuckled, checo paid the bill as the three of you head out, checo and your brother searched the museum that you might like, “Y/n, what about this?” says checo showing you a picture of ‘Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico’, “Wow- that looks so beautiful…” you said as checo looks at you saying “Yeah, Beautiful…”

You, Checo, and your brother arrived in the museum, you proceeded inside as Checo and your brother bought some tickets. Inside you saw a lot of beautiful carved stones with a lot of symbols in it, you took a picture to post it later on your Instagram, “Enjoying already, Y/N?” Checo asked seeing you taking a picture, “Yeah- these are beautiful-” You chuckled, as you saw your brother having his alone time at the other part of the museum, you and checo strolled along the museum, checo took some pictures of you, “We should take a picture!” You smiled as Checo seemed to be surprised, “Yeah, ok” you took out your phone as you took a photo of you and Checo, Checo's arms are on your shoulders as he looks at you, while you're looking at the camera smiling. You smiled at Checo, “Should we post that? I mean ya know?” As a mechanic of redbull and Checo a red bull driver, you don't want controversy or issues in the paddock, so whenever you and checo are going out or taking pictures you always ask him permission or he will ask you permission to post the pictures, “Of course- it'll be good for your Instagram eh?” He chuckled, “ok ok- I'll just tag you and Jonathan-”

─ ⋆ ────── ⋆ ────── ⋆ ──

After thousands of pictures with Checo and your brother you decide to go home to get ready for qualifying tomorrow, “I'll see you guys tomorrow ok? And I know that both of you will do well tomorrow.” You hugged your brother and checo, “Thanks sis! Love ya!” Your brother said as he opened his hotel room door, waving to Checo and you.

Your brother lives in 4th floor of the hotel, while you and checo lives in 5th floor, he said he wanted to be close to you just Incase you need anything, you find it very thoughtful of him, I mean…he's always like that to you, sometimes you think why you and checo aren't together.

You and Checo entered the elevator, he pushed the number 5 button as you posted the pictures on your Instagram, tagging checo and your brother. Silence filled the elevator, Checo's the one who breaks the silence first, “So, how did it go? Did you enjoy it?” He looks at you with full admiration, your eyes lit up “Yes! I enjoyed it a lot- I wasn't expecting Mexico to be a beautiful place, so thank you Checo.” You smiled at Checo as the elevator door opened. You walks out first then checo, standing In Front of your door as checo took a picture of you, you chuckled, “What's that for?” “Nothing, you just look beautiful.” He smiled, “Hmm..” you opened your door as you turned to face checo, “Thank you for today checo, You're the best.” You said tip toeing and kissing checo on the cheeks, “Goodnight, I'll see you tomorrow.” You saw Checo's face turned red, you went inside your room quickly, closing the door behind you, ‘Fuck, why did I do that-’ you thought as you sat on the floor.

Checo's still standing outside your door, still shocked by what you just did, “Goodnight too…” he mumbled, smiling as he left going to the other door beside your room, opening it as he caressed his face where your lips once were.

══════☆════════════☆══════

Omg I hope you like it! This part of the fic is All about checo and Y/N, and of course the meet of Y/N and toto!!

Taglist: (Let me know if you want to be added to our taglist!🏁)

@cheyxfu

@simbelmyne20niniel

@barcelonaloverf1life

#toto wolff x reader #toto wolff #mercedes #red bull formula 1 #red bull racing #sergio perez #checo perez #sergio checo pérez #f1 fic #f1 x reader #f1 imagine #f1 #f1 fanfic #mercedes formula one #mercedes f1

[revengeghoulette]

Matcha Latte w/ Rose

Part 1: The Meet Cute, Barista Swiss x Professor Mountain

I’ve had this idea written down since February, because a friend made me a matcha latte with oat milk and a splash of rose and I was like yup this is definitely Them. I also definitely did not describe my dream of owning a book & coffee shop. 

No mentions of matcha this part, but definitely next part.

@divine-misfortune bc i really enjoyed your tags :) @obsidianghoul, @gottagho-st @foxybouquet @rainsbasspick @hypnoneghoul bc Swissalps

Slightly edited, might go back in and edit some more

Swiss works at a quiet little bookstore and coffee shop owned by an elderly couple. They’ve been training him to take over the business since they're too old to be doing this sort of thing, and want to leave it to a local who will take care of their business. He’s always wanted to be a businessman and run a little local shop. A safe space for all the so-called weirdos in the community, especially the college kids trying to figure out who they are. Fresh baked goodies round the clock, fresh coffee, a bookstore with an upstairs quiet area for studying with sleeping pods in case anyone needs a place for the night, or just needs a nap. 

Once he officially became the owner, he changed its name to Rosy Crown Bookshop and Cafe. He hired a few teens, a handful of part-time college kids, and his friends Mist and Sunny, who help run the bookshop side of things and do other management stuff. 

Swiss enjoys working as a barista and running the cafe. He enjoys seeing all the new faces at the start of the semester, but mostly, he enjoys the fact that his coffee shop is the go-to study place. He also hosts study sessions, trivia nights, and other little destressors for students. During midterms and finals, the cafe would be open 24/7 for those procrastinators and extreme studiers. Mist, Sunny and Swiss don’t mind staying open for them and working long hours. 

The start of a new semester was around the corner. New faces were slowly starting to roll in, exploring the bookshop, trying the seasonal drinks, and a few asking for employment. Many nervous freshmen calm down after chatting with Swiss, knowing they have a safe space to come to for studying.

Swiss was finishing opening the coffee shop when he walked in. He’s tall, slender, wears glasses, tousled reddish brown hair that matches the autumnal leaves outside. Swiss was taken aback by this beautiful man… wait no. Ghoul? There’s a certain scent to him. He was too distracted to notice that he was ringing the bell for assistance. Snapping out of it, Swiss walks behind the counter to take his order. 

“Hi, welco-” Swiss starts, but never finished.

The man looks up the menu, only to say “12 oz drip coffee.” 

Swiss is shocked at the man’s abruptness, “oh sure, name?” 

“Mmmm…ark. Mark,” the hottie answers with some hesitation. 

Swiss smiles because it reminds him of those customers that like to make up names for their orders like Obi Wan or Rapunzel, “Mark?”

“Yes, I’m sorry, ca-can we rush this? I’m late for my first day,” the ghoul man stammers out

“You got it!” 

Swiss turns around to fill a cup with drip coffee. Before handing the cup over, he scribbled out a little message on the sleeve, “Good luck” 

“Here you go, on the house,” Swiss slides the coffee across the counter. 

“No, I have to pay,” he insists, fishing for his wallet in his messenger bag. 

“Mark, I’m serious. It’s on the house. Now go before you're even more late,” Swiss shoos him away playfully. 

The day goes on smoothly, but Swiss couldn’t get Mark’s smile out of his mind. 

“Whatcha doin’ there Swissypoo,” Mist pokes Swiss while he’s staring off into the distance as she wraps her apron around her waist. 

“Huh? Oh, nothing,” Swiss tries to play it off. Mist chuckles because she doesn’t believe him, but won’t push it. 

The entrance bells ring announcing the arrival of a customer.  Swiss stands up a little taller, and dusts off his apron. Mist looks between the customer and Swiss. There’s something there, so she hangs back, refilling the caramel sauce squeeze bottle, watching them interact. 

“Hi, welcome back,” Swiss smiles at the man. 

The man in front of him looks almost embarrassed, apologetic, “Hi, I’m- uh, sorry about um earlier.”

“Don’t worry about it, I understand,” he brushes him off. 

“I’ve felt bad all day so I thought I’d come and buy a little celebratory pastry,” the stranger flashes him a smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling a little bit. 

“How did today go?”

“It was actually pretty good, thank you. Can I get a slice of the carrot cake please. Can you make it to go?” 

“Absolutely,” Swiss grabs the slice and places it on a box, scribbling ‘For surviving the day’ on the lid before handing to him, “Here you are.”

“Thank you! I’m Mark, by the way. I know I told you earlier, but I wanted to properly introduce myself.”

“Nice to meet you, Mark. My friends call me Swiss.” Swiss extends his hand for a hand shake and Mark meets his hand, static shocking both of them. 

Mist was right, there was something there. She was definitely going to question Swiss once this guy leaves. 

“What the fuck was that?” Mist pushes Swiss to the back of the house, slapping his arm. 

Laughing, Swiss pushes Mist away by pushing her forehead, “What do you mean?”

“Dude, sparks were literally flying. C’mon spill.” 

“Nope! My shift is over, BYE!”

With that, Swiss takes off his apron, and leaves the shop. Mist is flabbergasted by what just happened. 

Mark came in every morning that week to get coffee before jetting off to work. Everyday Swiss would write a little something on the sleeve of the coffee cup, or on the napkin with his pastry. Mark has never mentioned them, but Swiss is hopeful he saw them. 

It’s Saturday, and he’s not expecting to see Mark, but it’s a nice surprise to see him walk in and take a seat at one of the corner tables. After setting his bag down, he walks up to the counter. 

“Hi,” he whispers.

“Well, hello stranger. Can I get you your usual?” Swiss asks as he’s about to turn around. 

“No, actually. I was wondering if you could make me your favorite drink. I don't usually drink like those fancy coffee drinks, but my TA was giving me shit for always drinking the same thing, so I wanted to explore different caffeinated drinks, I guess, and I didn’t know where to go, so I figured since we kind of have a rapport I could ask you. Oh my goodness, I'm rambling, I'm sorry!” 

Swiss smiles kindly at him, chuckles a bit. “TA? Are you a teacher?” 

“I’m a professor at the local university,” Mark explains. 

“Emeritus Tech? I graduated from there! But yes, why don’t you go sit down, and I'll make you something” 

Mark takes a seat and pulls out his laptop and a book. Swiss returns with a latte. 

“This here is a vanilla latte. Everyone says ‘it's basic,’ but it’s a good beginner coffee drink if you’re just starting to explore the coffee world. You can change the flavoring and the type of milks used. It’s vanilla flavoring, a shot of espresso, and milk with some foam on top,” Mountain lifts an eyebrow at the design on top, “It’s a swan,” Swiss answers his unspoken question, flashing him a smile, “I used oat milk because I find that it gives it a creamier, slightly thicker consistency. Enjoy. I’ll make my rounds.” 

Swiss leaves Mark to his own devices, but he watches him from behind the bar. Mark takes a cautious sip from the mug, closing his eyes and savoring the taste. He didn’t know coffee could taste so good. He just stuck to drip, because he was too scared to order or make different drinks. 

As the afternoon crowd slowly started to leave, Swiss began cleaning around, organizing shelves and restocking books and coffee supplies. Mark’s eyes would often wander to Swiss. He’d catch him dancing, humming to himself, reading the summaries of books before shelving them. Mark was entranced by Swiss’ silly little shenanigans.  

Mark stayed late to finish his lesson plans. Swiss occasionally brings him water, or a sweet treat against Mark’s wishes, but he still eats them. Mark wraps up his plans, grabs his things and leaves, waving goodbye to Swiss. 

Swiss switches off the open sign after staying open an extra hour just for him. He grabs a rag and a bin to clean off the table Mark was sitting at when he finds something scribbled out on a napkin. 

“Thank you for all the notes on my coffee and pastries. Call me -M” with his number written below. 

A giant smile forms on his face, he looks at the note again because he doesn’t believe it real. He’s so happy and excited that his tail unglamours and wags with happiness. 

From across the street, Mark watches as Swiss’ tail wags, admiring the dimples on his face. He’s so beautiful, Mark thinks. 

Swiss finishes closing duties and gives Mark a call after locking the door, to keep him company while he walks home. 

“Hello?” a groggy voice answers 

“It’s Swiss, sorry is this too late? I can call at a different time.” Swiss starts to panic, scared he woke him up. 

“No, no. It’s okay. I was just dozing off on the couch. I- I, thanks for calling, I-” Mark breaks out into a quiet giggle, “Oh this is dumb, but I wanted to hear your voice,” Swiss blushes hearing Mark say that, “Oh, also, you have a cute tail.”

“Wait. You saw that?!” Swiss is shocked. He thought he was alone, or at least, didn't think anyone would be paying attention to him. 

“Sure did, and my name's Mountain, not Mark, and I also have a tail.”

Swiss is relieved by the confirmation that he’s also a ghoul. 

“Mountain… I like it. It suits you.”

They talk as Swiss makes his way home, and late into the night, way beyond their bedtimes, and fall asleep on the call. 

After that phone call, Mountain went to the coffee shop every day before and after work. He’d sit in his usual spot and do some grading, or read a book while waiting for Swiss to get off work. 

Mountain’s become a regular, and the employees start to recognize him and his order, as well as some of his students. The coffee shop has become a secondary office where students stop by just to ask him clarifying questions, or sometimes they’ll set up a meeting to discuss larger topics. 

He’s met Sunny and Mist during the shift overlap, and they sometimes sit with him to keep him company when work is slow. They all know they’re ghouls living amongst humans. 

Sunny loves to discuss books. Keeps him updated on the latest book releases and also customer drama. Mountain is a big time consumer of customer drama. In return, he gossips about his students.

They’ve also discussed hosting some sort of reading or book program in collaboration with the bookshop. Talks about hosting Q&A’s with a variety of subjects have come up. 

On a quiet Friday night, when Swiss’ shift ends, Mountain walks him to his apartment as per the routine now. Once at the entrance, Swiss turns to him and meets his eyes. 

“I want to ask you something,” Swiss starts. Mountain waits for him to continue

“Would you, maybe, want to go out with me?” 

Mount eagerly smiles and nods, “I’ve been waiting for you to ask, and if you didn’t do it this weekend, I was going to ask. Yes, Swiss, I’d love to go out with you.” 

“Would you wanna come in? Stay the night perhaps? We can watch a movie, and have some frozen pizza? Neither of us have work tomorrow, and we can sleep in?”

“I-” Mountain starts, but is met with Swiss’ puppy eyes, “I can stay, yes.”

Swiss sighs in relief, grabbing hold of Mountain's hand, guiding him inside the building while rambling on about tonight's plans. Mountain laughs, squeezing Swiss hand a little tighter, sending a little thank you to whatever god made this happen.

Part 2: The Date... coming soon.

#swissalps #swiss ghoul #mountain ghoul #coffee shop au #the band ghost #the band ghost fanfic #ghost band #nameless ghouls #mist ghoulette #sunshine ghoulette #revenge works