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#but i'm happy with everything i got to give the world
smoooothoperator · 2 days
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untouchable
epilogue: Happy Ever After
Lando Norris x OC (Violet Sinclair)
same group friend, unrequited love, acquittances to lovers, ski trip, love triangle, life as lovers
a/n: So this is officially the end! I wanted to make a different epilogue of what I used to make! In this epilogue you'll watch what Lando and Violet did for the next few years. And of course, I had to make little cameos of ACOTAR.
If someone wants to ask me to make an extra chapter abot their story, I'm very happy to make it!
Official Playlist
Masterlist
previous chapter
If you want to be tagged don't forget to message me!
Every way of feedback is very welcomed
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26 of December of 2024
violetsinclair
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liked by landonorris, maxfewtrell, carlossainz55 and 21.683 others
violetsinclair A whole year with this curly haired man. I love you Lan, love of my life🧡
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landonorris For more mornings next to you🧡
maxfewtrell You guys deserve everything good in this world, no one suffered as you two and none of you gave up
violetsinclair Maaaaaaxx🥹🥹😭😭
maxfewtrell You are not crying, right?
landonorris yes she is
carlossainz55 congratulations you guys❤️
violetsinclair Eh! No red hearts in my feed! Only orange!
landonorris I love you🥹🧡
landonorris
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liked by violetsinclair, carlossainz55, mclaren and 436.468 others
tagged: violentsinclair
landonorris Never give up our dreams, they always come true. I love you with my whole being 🧡
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violetsinclair Thank you for not giving up on me, never. You are everything I ever wanted and I'll never stop loving you 🧡
landonorris I love you so much😍
mclaren Our favorite pair of brits 🥹🧡
February of 2025
violetsinclair
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violetsinclair Story of the day I became a dog mom🐾🧡:
Today Lando came to pick me up from work with a suspicious grin of his face. He said something about going out for the day, to spend the afternoon somewhere away from the city. And of course I believed it! He sounded very convincing!
We had lunch on a very nice place next to a river, but I noticed him a little nervous while looking at his watch. We collected everything and went back to bed, thinking we were going back home.
Turns out he had other plans! We went to a land where the owner has a lot of puppies! And then I found this beautiful black little guy and I immediately fell in love with him. And of course, Lando had everything planned and already came with things for the puppy.
Everyone, meet Rhysand Norris (yeah, it's on purpose. And I wasn't the one that chose the name🤭)
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maxfewtrell I still can't believe you named my godson after a fictional character...
violetsinclair I beg you pardon? It was about time that I had a pet named after him
maxfewtrell what about the options I gave you?
landonorris Rhysand is Rhysand, no more discussion
maxfewtrell Rude. But I'll still name him Reese
violetsinclair Fair enough for me
sarahjmaas His name definitely fit him!
violetsinclair omg hi I love you. Now I can die in peace
landonorris Hi sarahjmaas you want to meet him? We're fans :)
sarahjmaas Sure!
landonorris added a story
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mclaren
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mclaren look who came! Rhys is in the paddock! The high lord is the the house!🤭👀🧡
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f1 It was nice having this little one around! He stole everyone's heart
roscoelovescoco It's always nice having a doggie friend around! 🐶🐶
violetsinclair Admin is now in love with Rhys🥰 I'm a proud mom
mclaren the high lord deserves every fan he has :)
landonorris
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liked by violetsinclair, maxfewtrell and 312.649 others
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landonorris Today the love of my life got her degree of History of Art! I can't be prouder of her 😍😍
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violetsinclair 🥹😚🥰
martingarrix photo creds mate...
landonorris I paid you dinner
martingarrix so?
violetsinclair Habemus pacem kids... but you made amazing pics! I love them🥰
martingarrix thanks Vi, at least you are more decent than him
violetsinclair Of course! Now I have a doctorate
landonorris stop bullying me
July of 2025
landonorris
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liked by violetsinclair, sarahjmaas, maxfewtrell and 721.649 others
landonorris And of course, Rhysand is no one without his mate. Welcome home, Feyre🧡
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sarahjmaas Omg I can't believe it! You really found Rhys a Feyre!🥹🥹
violetsinclair (I still can't believe I befriended you) Yeah! She's the cutest! You should come and meet her
sarahjmaas oh I'll definitely will
mclaren Still impressive how we have a crossover of ACOTAR and F1...
landonorris You're welcome 😉
December of 2025
violetsinclair
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liked by landonorris, maxvertappen1, f1 and 43.572 others
violetsinclair P3 in the Drivers Championship for my man! Couldn't be prouder of you🧡
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maxvertappen1 White looks good and you, huh? Right, Lando?👀
landonorris 🤔🤔🤔
landonorris Don't know what you are talking about
fia Where did you leave the high lord and lady? We wanted to see them
violetsinclair They stayed at home🥹 but next year they won't miss it
October of 2026
violetsinclair
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liked by landonorris, pietra.pilao and 43.726 others
tagged: landonorris, pietra.pilao
violetsinclair Life lately🐾🧡🎶🎨
pietra.pilao That was the best day of my life🥹
violentsinclair agree
landonorris agree
taylorswift agree
violetsinclair omfg hi 😭
December of 2026
landonorris, violentsinclair
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liked by maxfewtrell, mclaren, carlossainz55 and 926.168 others
landonorris Right where everything started, where I confessed you my feelings, where I had you in my arms for the first time and then where you said yes to a lifetime with me. I can't wait to continue this journey with you🧡
And thank you maxfewtrell and pietra.pilao for keeping the secret and not being suspicious, making sure I don't lose the ring after months of having it and for taking the pictures for us🧡
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mclaren I'm not crying🥹 congratulations!!!
carlossainz55 You are maturing, I can't be prouder of you. Congratulations to both of you, can't wait to see you and hug you!
maxfewtrell It was such a pleasure taking pet of am important moment of your life, as always, mate. And I won't stop saying it, you two deserve everything good
violetsinclair For how long did you know about this?
pietra.pilao You would get surprised...
March of 2027
violetsinclair
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liked by landonorris, maxfewtrell, f1 and 53.581 others
violetsinclair God news and bad news!
The good news: I'll be some months working here, in Egypt! I had the pleasure of receiving a call from the museum so I can experience how they work in the ruins and and translate some ancient papyrus.
The bad news: Lando and I will have to be some months apart and I can't attent to his races like I used to do. But this won't stop me for supporting him or loving him every day more.
This is just another chapter of our story, not the end.
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landonorris I can't be prouder of you, love. You always fight for your dreams and I'm so happy for you that you can finally achieve them. I can't wait to have you in my arm again. Rhys, Feyre and I love you so much.
violetsinclair I already miss you😭
maxfewtrell Super proud of you! Now I can say that my best friend works in Egypt and will appear in a documentary soon
violetsinclair You and Pi are welcomed in my house anytime you want to see some nice old people :)
mclaren Admin is going to miss you... But I'm proud of you!
violetsinclair Admiiiin🥹
April of 2027
landonorris added a new story
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maxfewtrell You couldn't be away for more months, can't you?
landonorris Stay away from Pi for some weeks and then answer me again
maxfewtrell God, are you moody?
landonorris I experienced the No Nut November in March. I don't recommend it at all
maxfewtrell I didn't need the details...
landonorris Sorry😩
violetsinclair
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liked by netflix, landonorris, pietra.pilao and 73.269 others
violetsinclair I'm super super super happy to announce that the "Cleopatra" series are finally out! Netflix and I worked alongside to make this amazing series about the absolute queen of Egypt. I hope everyone likes it!
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netflix We were so happy to have you on set and work with you!
landonorris Who else knows a couple that both of them worked with Netflix? I'm so proud of my girl!
August of 2027
landonorris, violetsinclair
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liked by maxfewtrell, carlossainz55, mclaren and 936.269 others
violetsinclair I can't believe that this is my last day as your girlfriend and tomorrow I'll be able to call you my husband for the rest of our lives.
And this morning I remembered my best friend Eloise while I was getting my things ready for the big day, crying a little and then smiling at her pictures. I miss you, Eli. I wish you could be with us, celebrating my wedding and standing next to me. I miss you, I never stop thinking about you.
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landonorris Eloise is watching us, babe. I'm sure she's proud of who you became
maxfewtrell She's proud for sure, we miss her
mclaren Can't wait to be there tomorrow, we are proud of you two
carlossainz55 The best pair I ever met, can't wait to watch you two linking your lives together
violetnorris, landonorris
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liked by mclaren, oscarpiastri, carlossainz55 and 967.471 others
landonorris We are still over the moon about yesterday. It was so beautiful watching everyone, sharing our most special day with all of you. I still can't believe this morning I woke up next to my wife.
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carlossainz55 You two made a beautiful wedding, I will never forget how you two looked at each other. Felicidades, cabrón
georgerussel63 Can't believe you are the same small boy that debuted on F1 next to me and Alex. Now look at you, mate.
oscarpiastri I still remember the day you introduced Violet to me. You told me that you were going to marry her one day
landonorris What's going on with you guys georgerussel63 and oscarpiastri? You want to make me cry or what? Yesterday wasn't enough?🥹
December of 2027
violetnorris
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liked by landonorris, carlossainz, pietra.pilao and 65.279 others
violetnorris Maldivas🥰🧡
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landonorris 😚
June of 2028
violetnorris
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violetnorris The last few months some of you were sending me Dm's and even asking Lando why I stopped going to the races, if I was sent to Egypt again for work. Well, I guess now our little secret is out! Baby Norris coming in October👶🏻🧡
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oscarpiastri Now it makes sense why I saw the other day Lando asking to the person in charge of the merch to give him an onesie of McLaren... Congrats you two!
landonorris I thought no one saw me🥹
oscarpiastri I guess you were wrong
quadrant Okay, baby collection in progress.....
carlossainz55 I know I'll be the favorite uncle
oscarpiastri Excuse me?
danielricciardo Excuse me??
alex_albon You're joking, right?
georgerussel63 I bed you pardon?
violetnorris Okay guys, no fighting...
October of 2028
landonorris
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liked by carlossainz55, mclaren, oscarpiastri and 927.917 others
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landonorris 17 of October of 2028. Baby Eloise Claire Norris decided to come some days earlier. Mommy and baby are okay🧡
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charles_leclerc 17 is always a good number❤️ Can't wait to meet her
carlossainz55 So happy for you, man. She looks like you
oscarpiastri On my way to meet her!
mclaren on our way* to meet her!
maxfewtrell My goddaughter is so beautiful 🥹😍
pietra.pilao Our* goddaughter 🥹😍
taglist
@elisysd @racinggirl @ninifee1802 @kakorrhaphiphobia @landoyesrizz @lorarri @bellwhysomean @leptitlu @aphroditeisamilf @brekkers-whore @copper-boom @sideboobrry11 @alltoomaples @f1madison @elijahslover @silkenthusiasts @chonkybonky @summerslike11 @randomgirlnumber-13 @is-just-a @whentheautumnleavesfall @malynn @mycenterfold @barackosteaa @izzy-marvel @ssprayberrythings @ophcelia @traveling-inspiration
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Could you do a Lance blurb in which Lance and the reader take the girls to race week where the grid and the rest of the Aston Martin team meet for the first time the newest member of the Stroll Family, as well as some drivers like Fernando and Ocon giving a gift to Genevieve at the to the point where the reader is gets very emotional to know that her youngest daughter has not been in the world for long and is very loved by everyone like Margot and Addalynn are.
Silverstone seemed to be a good race for Genevieve to make her first paddock appearance. It was close to home, so travelling wouldn't be an issue and it wouldn't mess up your routine, the whole family would be there and you felt at ease to do it.
As you stepped inside the hospitality, Fernando was the first person you encountered, his eyes lighting up when he saw you, "Y/N! I haven't seen you in so long", he said before he looked at the way your hands supported the bundled baby that was sleeping on your chest, "can I see her?", he mused.
"Yes, of course - little one, this is uncle Fernando", you cooed, lowering the fabric around her back so her face wasn't as nestled to you.
"Look at you, little princess, don't you have the cutest face, you're so beautiful - and I have a present for you, I've been saving it in my driver's room until you payed us a visit - one second", he excused himself.
Fernando came back with a small bag, "this is from me and Melissa - we found it in a shop over the winter break and we thought it would be perfect for this time of the year", he smiled as you took the piece of clothing out. It was a cute overall in a light mauve colour, "it's very soft and the lady in the shop handmakes them and babies really love them!", he offered.
"Thank you, Fernando, this is so nice", you said before hugging his side.
"I have to go to the meeting, but I'm very happy I was the first one to catch a glimpse of the littlest Stroll babygirl", he smiled.
News travelled fast as everyone seemed to come and say hello to you and the baby, always respectful and mindful of it all.
When Esteban spotted you, you, Lance and the girls were sitting in one of the tables outside, kissing Margot's and Addalynn's heads before he turned to you, "I left a little present inside - your mother took it with her", he spoke to Lance before he looked at the little girl sitting on your lap, "I caught you wide awake, didn't I? Hello, Viv, I'm Esteban and I'm very happy to meet you. How has your day been?", he asked.
"How has your day been? That's not a question you ask a baby, Esteban", you heard Mick say as he approached, "hey gorgeous girl", he waved as Genevieve let out an excited squeal as she stretched her hands to grab on his hair, "see? Barely a minute and I'm her favourite", he smirked before highfiving the older girls.
Back in the hotel room, the girls were already asleep so you could get ready for bed, getting distracted in brushing the tangles out of your hair until Lance called your name, "is everything alright, love?", he quesioned.
"I was just thinking about how loved the girls are, all three of them", you smiled as tears brimmed your eyes, "they're so lucky to have so many people who care about them, and I'm not talking about just gifts, everyone had a kind word to say and I think we have a year's worth of babysitting if just half of the offers I got were actually meaningful", you giggled.
"She is, all of the girls are", Lance agreed, kissing your temple, "although I must say, I'm not sure how much I'd trust a baby alone with Esteban", he joked.
(Thank you for sending this in ✨️)
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huihui29 · 2 days
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Declaración
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member — junhui x f reader
Genre — Fluff
synopsis: "I confess my feelings to my best friend without knowing that he also has feelings for me."
Warning: None
a/n: "This is my first time doing this, so I hope you enjoy it."
I had been planning this moment for a long time. It took me a lot of courage to do it, but it was time to let everything out that I had been storing inside. Junhui was sitting on the bed in front of me, waiting with an expectant smile.
"Hey, there's something I need to tell you from a long time ago…"
I blushed and tried to find the right words. My heart was pounding a thousand, and for a moment I thought I would have a heart attack. In the end, I took a deep breath and started to speak.
"I know this might be a difficult thing to hear, and it might not be something you want to hear, but I need to tell you: I have feelings for you."
Even though I knew that this was risking our friendship, I also knew that I couldn't keep hiding my feelings after so long. I needed him to know that I admired him more than he knew.
So I kept talking, hoping that my words would ease his doubts and fears.
"I know this might be an awkward moment for you, but I want you to know that my feelings are true and that I don't want to lose you from my life. I'm happy to have you as my best friend, but I also want you to know that I'm willing to put my whole heart and life into this, if you're willing to do the same with me.
Junhui was listening attentively, and although he was visibly moved, he didn't seem to be as uncomfortable as I thought he would be.
"Are you sure you don't want us to stay as friends?"
His question surprised me, but I answered without hesitation.
"Absolutely sure. My heart only wants to be with you, and if that means I'm happy, then I'm willing to take the risk. And if it doesn't work out, I'll be here for you as your best friend. But I believe we could be something more if we give ourselves the chance."
Junhui smiled softly, and I felt my heart beating with force.
"Then we can leave behind everything that's been holding us back, and give ourselves a chance," Junhui continued, with a big smile on his face.
I embraced him, unable to believe what was happening. After so long of hiding, we were finally together. And although I knew there was still much to learn and experience together, I also knew that we had a lot in common. We had our goals and aspirations, and we shared many of the same values and beliefs. We were both determined to work hard and make the most of every opportunity that came our way, and we were both committed to being there for each other through thick and thin.
As we lay in bed, holding each other tight, we started talking about our dreams and aspirations. We talked about our respective families and where we came from, and we discussed what we wanted to achieve in our professional and personal lives. We discovered that we both saw the world in a similar way, and that we shared many of the same ambitions.
As the conversation progressed, we found that we had a lot more in common than we initially thought. We both appreciated art and music, and we both loved to travel. We both enjoyed trying new things and exploring different cultures, and we both had a passion for learning and growth.
As we talked and grew closer, we started to understand each other on a deeper level. We knew that we could trust each other with our secrets and our fears, and we knew that we could lean on each other when times got tough. We were a team, and we were committed to always having each other's backs, no matter what.
As we laid there, listening to each other's breaths and feeling the warmth of our bodies pressed together, we both knew that this was only the beginning. We had a lifetime of adventures and experiences to look forward to, and we couldn't wait to embark on that journey together.
In that moment, we both understood that our love was stronger than any obstacle or challenge we might face. We knew that as long as we had each other, we could overcome anything that came our way. And we knew that as long as we continued to communicate, to respect each other, and to stay true to our values, we could build a life together that was full of love, happiness, and fulfillment.
In that moment, we could feel our hearts beating as one, and we knew that nothing could ever tear us apart.
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meownotgood · 5 months
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"aki who doesn't know how to dirty talk he just says Things" ooohh ur so right there would be absolutely no thought put onto it from his part he's just thinking out loud nd that's so endearing 😔
side note but i love the way u love aki, it feels so gentle, just what he deserves
aki's such a sweetheart, he only wants to be honest with you, wants to tell you exactly what you do to him and explain to you how you make him feel because you deserve to know, and because he truly loves to say it.
"you're so gorgeous when you're like this. so pretty when you're on top of me, I love it so much..."
"so warm, feels so amazing... I don't think... 'm gonna last very long-"
"I love you, I don't ever want to leave you. you're so sweet to me, you've always been, don't know if I deserve it- fuck- I really really love you."
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franeridan · 6 months
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doodling ace and suddenly having a lil mental breakdown over him, daily occurrences and all that
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Text
went to my first con in 4 years on Friday to meet Kaiji Tang and got a Dazai autograph + video recording of him reading to me. He was the sweetest person (as I knew he would be) and interacting with him was lovely, but also at the same time oh boy it sure was an extremely stressful, ugly wake-up call of what it feels like to live in a world now where everyone around you has blissfully moved on from covid and can enjoy things normally and happily, while you'll forever be trapped in a hellscape of perpetual fear 🫠🫠🫠
#like. to be clear this was the first time i've been literally anywhere but doctor's appointments in 4 years#not just because of the pandemic but because of mental and physical exhaustion#so it was a Big Mistake to go from 0 to 100 and not ease myself into it at all#but at the same time........ it was a fucking hellscape of people. i don't think any kind of buildup could have prepared me for it at all.#it was so much less crowded in 2020 (ironically the very last place i ever went; literally on the BRINK of covid)#and now idk what it's become. a monster con. it was unbelievable.#but i was only there for less than an hour but i was so so so terrified that i very nearly left before even seeing him#i couldn't even fully enjoy meeting him as kind as he was because i was so anxious and distracted#and when i got back to the car i just fucking cried.........#the last five days i've just been sitting in fear waiting to feel Any sort of symptoms#i wore two masks and again was barely there for long but Still#and everyone around me was so chill as if everything was normal and No One was wearing a mask :))))) it's not fucking fair man :)))))#insert the 'they don't know' meme; they don't know how much covid can destroy your body even if you get a 'mild' case#i would never want to be that ignorant even if i wasn't disabled and didn't have reason to worry (but everyone has reason to worry!!!)#but also. ignorance is bliss and it just really fucking sucks man.#it really fucking sucks. why do they get to be happy and enjoying life and not /me?/#why can't i do just ONE thing for myself without having it tainted by anxiety and fear that i'm going to die horribly???#while they get to do fucking EVERYTHING???#if they all just wore masks we could all enjoy ourselves much more comfortably than some of us are now#but no that's too much to ask from people 🙃🙃🙃#shit sucks man. the world sucks. something that should be a happy memory for me was simultaneously the most awful experience#and i don't know how to feel about it now that it's over#he knew that i was afraid and at the end he told me that he hoped to see me again at another event someday#and that made me cry because it felt like dazai telling me to live. and i want to. but i don't know how to when the world is like this now.#i desperately want to be able to see him again someday but right now after how terrifying that was i never want to go to a con ever again..#i wanted to ask him things about the manga and about dazai but i was being rushed and stressed so i couldn't ugh#(and doing that is hard enough anyway cause disability and i have to talk with my phone bahhhh)#at least i was able to give him my note *sigh*
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for the 'why wouldn't date them'
charles, hawkeye, trapper
and i think you might be into twin peaks? if so, dale cooper and donna hayward
whichever ones you want to do :)
Ahhhhhh omg thank you for all of these I want to do them ALL but let's go backwards.
Donna Hayward
Ok so the thing is I AM into Twin Peaks but it's been a while since I've seen it and I tried to watch The Return but I was too stupit to understand much less enjoy it :( sowwy. So I would be dating my own flawed incomplete interpretation of a person, really. Typical Twin Peaks. 
Anyways I love Donna! I think we have similar personalities and stuff. In all brutal honesty I think if I were in her situation with a friend like Laura I’d have done similar things. Also yeah maybe her actions did lead a man to suicide but that was NOT her fault. I think the only three things that would prevent an attempt at a relationship here are 
1) The obvious. Her taste in men = atrocious. In all the rest of these hypotheticals where the character is already canonically in a relationship or has feelings for another character I’m just like yeah the more the merrier but if Donna insists on inviting her insufferable ass boyfriend into the mix I could NOT fucking do it I’m sorry. 
2) This girl is not ready for a relationship yet after All That god damn. But then again neither am I so maybe that balances out. We would need to spend some time as support group buddies just hugging and crying a lot before even considering a date. 
3) It is unlikely we would ever interact as I am never setting foot in that town ever in my life are you kidding me. Donna is super pretty in both her incarnations but I’m sorry I don’t think any pussy pops severely enough for me to risk going to fucking doorknob hell or some shit.
Dale Cooper
Ignore everything I said in that last paragraph. I change my mind. I forgot my beautiful autism creature husband is here. I would risk it all for a date with Dale Cooper and so would all who know and perceive the truth. AND he’s got two hot girlfriends with him at least one of whom is ALSO an autism creature??? Sign me the FUCK up for this polycule IMMEDIATELY. “Oh but OP what about the horrors” I don’t even fucking care it’s fine. Dale can have little an evil doppelganger. As a treat.
Still there are some problems:
1) Dale is an FBI agent and Harry is a cop. Booooooo!!!! But maybe if Annie and Caroline and I unionize we can force them to quit their jobs. 
2) Unclear if I would be forced to join the Black Lodge Horror Vision Rotation along with Annie and Caroline. Boring and time consuming task and unlike Laura you don’t even get to do a Big Scream.
3) I personally actually don’t like pie or coffee at all :( I’m sorry babygirl I understand if this is a deal breaker. 
Trapper McIntyre 
You know that “golden retriever boyfriend” joke? Trapper is like THE golden retriever boyfriend to me. Which I mean as an absolute compliment! Golden retrievers are friendly, helpful, adorable, lovable dogs. I am always up to pet a golden retriever.
But the thing is, I would never get one myself. They’re just a bit too big, bit too much energy, bit too messy, and anyways I prefer cats. No hate, no judgment, just a series of tiny preferences. Not into jocks, not into casual no-strings-attached type relationships, not super into kids, you know how it is. Boring and petty answer but I just feel like this adorable happy-go-lucky goldie deserves the PERFECT forever home and obviously he’s one of the most popular of all the dogs at the Mashblr shelter so I know he’ll get adopted super fast. So I can turn my attention to the miserable ass overbred old cat in the corner <3
Hawkeye Pierce
Oh, Hawkeye. I just don’t think so. Idk what’s wrong with me but I have to work to see Hawkeye as like. A dateable entity in my mind. He’s our little scrunkly! It’d be weird to date a scrunkly. BUT maybe I’ve just been overexposed to him purely by dint of being in the fandom he’s the main character of, because objectively I DO find Mr. Alda’s portrayal of him in certain scenes to be Attractive (TM), and seeing clips of his charisma and charm and humor and all that good handsome stuff is literally what got me to check out the show in the first place! Man. What happened. Hmm. 
I think one issue is that scenes where he’s explicitly trying to be Romantic and/or Seductive have just never done it for me. Like comparing Hawkeye’s lovey scenes with Kyung Soon to Charles’ with Martine, there’s no contest in how they make me feel. To me, Hawkeye is honestly at his most appealing when he’s radiating Friend Energy, which is why his casual relationships actually work really well IMO; you feel like he’s truly a great pal to the nurses he hooks up with. This is also, I think, one of Piercintyre’s great strengths as a ship, because Hawkeye and Trapper both have amazing Friend Energy and then their natural compatibility makes that bleed seamlessly into sweet romantic vibes. And to be clear I would LOVE to be in a Friends To Lovers relationship too but unfortunately I am cringely obsessed with loveydovey romance in a way I’m not sure Hawkeye is even capable of. Plus there’s also just the fact that I’m a shy waiting til marriage person and I suck at banter and yeah it’s just not working. In conclusion neither Hawkeye nor Trapper should date me they should date each other!! But we knew that :P
THAT CUNT
There are 10000000 reasons not to date Charles. But I will be doing it anyways ^_^ Peace and love on planet earth <3
Anyways I’m not bringing up his Problematicness as a reason here because I didn’t bring it up for anyone else and nobody noticed, so why should it be any different with him. Like no obviously I would not date this dumbfuck racist but I also would not date a guy who thinks it’s a funny prank to make a woman think she’s being sexually assaulted. I also for that matter would not date a guy who works with the dumbfuck racist and is like aw, ya know what, he’s not that bad really :) the second they have a chance to have a bonding moment. I guess I have decided to be a buzzkill about that forever now btw sorry :( oh well 
But ok no real talk I would Not date Charles unless one very specific condition is met, which is that I have whatever magic stardust they sprinkled on his single-episode love interests before they put them in the story that made him be utterly besotted with them, because more than any other character on the show, it seems, the difference between Regular Charles and Charles In Love is so hysterically huge??? Like fuck. My dudes. We’ve done it. We found the one villain who actually does do a complete 180 and starts trying to act right as soon as a girl takes pity on him enough to look at him twice. (Disclaimer: I haven’t seen Ain’t Love Grand yet I’m sorryyyyyyyy) He’s so ~romantic~ and it’s like catnip to me unfortunately. :\ The total opposite of what I said about Hawkeye up there. Offers a girl his stupid little teacup and recites poetry at her. Unbelievable. Did anyone ever think about the fact that maybe I would like to be offered a teacup and recited poetry at. No. You all only think about yourselves.  
Like even though objectively the way he nukes his relationship with Martine was hurtful to both of them, he’s so Tender the whole time it’s insane. She turned him into her pauvre petit miaou miaou overnight. I want that power so fucking bad I NEED that power so fucking bad. Say it with me everyone. I Could Fix Him. (”But OP Martine and Donna DIDN’T fix him he still left them both and never mentioned them again?” Yes but don’t worry they were just loosening the lid on his jar a little bit. I’ll get him open you’ll see. He’s gonna be soooo well trained when I’m done I’ll make him apologize to Maxwell and everything. He won’t even need the shock collar after a few weeks.)
But yeah if I have to like, try to appeal to him on my own it’s not fucking happening. I have no desire to hear the equivalent of a DOS deepfake hologram that has become evil due to being trained on text scraped from youtube comments tell me I’m ugly and stupid, which is exactly what would happen. Up til now I’ve sidestepped the issue that I do not think any of these people would give me the time of day (except Maxwell who would take pity on me probably because he is sososo Good) but I cannot ignore how much Charles just would Not like me. I don’t know how the selfshipper community does it they’re braver than any fucking US marine over there fr. Charles would look at me like I was a gross little bug on the ground and I can’t escape it. Oh well. Who needs him. Where’s your sister you dipshit I’m about to GET IT
#THANK YOU for this kind ask beloved mutual!! Sorry it got long and weird it's been a rough week and I'm afraid that may have bled through#to all these answers which I'm so irritated at myself for but I can't fix it OTL#Starky loves answering questions#majorbaby#I LOVE when people notice what fandoms I'm in it makes me so happy thank youuuu#anyways DOS leading romantic hero of all time but nobody ever let him fucking BE one. humanity deserves to be driven to extinction for this#wtf is ''You give the longest compliments I've ever heard'' ''Then let me be more succinct [adorable kiss]'' BITCH I'M GOING TO KILL YOU#WHAT IF I WANTED A LITTLE KISS HMM!!!!!!! WHAT THEN!!!!!!!#Anyways I used to get so sad knowing my favorite characters wouldn't like me. Cried alone in my room over it as a kid.#Now it's just like whatever. Join the club.#Anyways I LOVE how DOS' insanely amazing ability to sell those one-episode romances better than any other main cast member#inadvertently makes Charles seem uniquely susceptible to falling in love at first sight and being an embarrassing little hopeless romantic#which is an absolutely hysterical trait to give your rude brooding misanthropic antagonist#''I hate everyone in the world and they are all beneath me#except for this random girl I met yesterday who is Everything to me I love her SO much <3<3<3''#SEE. LITERALLY A GUY FROM AN X READER ''I CAN FIX HIM'' FIC.#Actually in my experience most X Reader types are fairly uninterested in fixing the him in question despite all the bad press they get#like at most they only care that the Him is nice to THEM and sometimes not even that#like I'm sure this is a phenomenon IRL but it's really not there much in the kinds of fanfiction#that everyone blames for causing said IRL phenomenon#I know this because I AM an I Can Fix Him person! And I'd be the one to find Fixing Him content if it existed!#for me it's only fun if there's fixing involved tbh. I don't want a Mafia Boss Wattpad BF that's not fun.#that's literally just a guy being mean to you. do we not get enough of that IRL. I want a little project!!!#these tags are one giant red flag for me as a person but you should have known I was unsalvageable the second I begged off a date with Trap#NOT the behavior of a mentally well person#mash
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yandere-sins · 8 months
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Imagine getting isekai’ed into otome game as a background character, watching the main character going down routes as you live your peaceful, mundane life, but you’ve unknowingly been going down a route as well, a route for a hidden character that you didn’t discover during your time playing the game.
That character being the reason the game has a dark content warning.
Gosh anon, that idea is so good!!!! I didn't know it would tickle all the right places in my brain, but when I started I couldn't stop lol. Love it, thank you for sending it in ♥
If this had one of these super long titles that are tmi it would be:
I got Isekai'ed into an Otome Game as a Background Character and now I Have to Finish It with the Secret Yandere Love Interest!!
»»———————— ♡ ————————««     
A serene smile spread over your lips as you watched the two lovebirds in the corner of your coffee shop.
Swirling the milk into a cup, it created a little white heart surrounded by foamy coffee, its aroma drifting into your nose. Had someone told you that the little things like a cup of coffee made with love and care were enough to give you the peace of mind you always wanted in your previous life, you would have laughed at them. For you, it had always been the hustle, the making money, finding a partner, and creating a family. Make everyone proud while being successful, whether it costs you nights of sleep or days without proper meals. But looking at yourself now, it all seemed so far away now, and you let out a content sigh before setting down the cup in front of the customer at the bar. 
"You seem happy today," your regular at the counter noted, picking up the cup and taking a moment to appreciate the aroma just like you had. A smile sneaked onto their lips, too, after they took a sip, and you couldn't help but feel your heart swell with pride and happiness when they gave you a satisfied nod. 
"I am! I'm really getting accustomed to my new life here, it's... been a while since I've been so content."
The truth behind everything that happened to you was something you couldn't speak about lightly. Not when it turned the life you knew upside down, leaving you to start over completely. One day you were an employee of a well-known company, responsible for sales and reports and everything stressful. And the next, you were in your favorite, cozy video game, running the coffee shop the main character liked to visit with all the romance options in the game.
Isekai was the genre that came to mind when you thought about your situation. Luckily you were spared the memories of your death in the real world, the circumstances blurry as you barely remembered going home late from work, only to wake up in this very different universe. Perhaps you were just comatose, and this was a dream. Still, by now, you had managed to slip into your role as the barista of the small coffee shop, a barely mentioned background character, just fine.
Your eyes jumped back to the couple in the corner, giggling and teasing each other over a group project, and you felt an immense relief you weren't reincarnated as the main protagonist and had to go through the years of studying and trying to establish connections with the love interests again. You already did that in your old life, and it wasn't as romantic and fun as the game made it out to be. You only played it because it got your mind off things, the art was pretty, and it had the exact amount of cozy time management you needed to relax. But living as the main character in it? No, thank you!
"Jealous?" your regular teased, and you chuckled, shaking your head. They tapped their—now empty—cup, and you took it from them, replacing it with some water until you had the next cup of coffee ready for them.
"I just think it's cute. I never had someone so interested in me they'd take me out for coffee and share their cake with me when I was younger."
Your words tasted a little bitter on your tongue. Still, you genuinely couldn't wish for anything but the main character's happiness. It was just the feeling of being loved, desired, and wanted that you missed, even though your new life was more than satisfactory despite you feeling a little lonely sometimes.
"Well, it's never too late to start," they chuckled, taking up their fork and cutting off the tip of their strawberry shortcake, including the big chunk of strawberry on top, picking it up and holding it out towards you. 
"Oh, I wouldn't dare--"
"I insist! As thanks for the amazing coffee every time I come here."
Nudging your lips with their fork, you let out an awkward chuckle. It was okay, right? They wouldn't sue you for eating the cake they paid for, would they? This was just a silly little game. What could go wrong with you accepting their kindness?
Opening your lips, you let them feed you the cake, taking a moment to let the sweet and fruity notes mix with the fluffy whip cream before you were sent straight to heaven. Not to toot your own horn, but your baking skills had improved so much since you started working at the shop. Who knew you had that in you?
Occupied with the moment of bliss as you let the cake flavor mix in your mouth, you hummed happily before devoting yourself back to making the coffee with a smile on your face. Unaware of your regular fixating on the fork you had just eaten from, staring at it like it was some strange artifact. Your phone dinged softly in its drawer, and you checked it briefly to see the notification pinging up, saying, "Achievement unlocked: Cake-Master - Provide the most delicious cake to your customers."
"Excuse me!" the main character called out to you, stepping up to the counter, and you directed your attention to her, ignoring the little game notification you've been receiving since starting your new life here, the love interest not far away before the two began fighting over who was going to pay the bill this time lovingly. Of course, the love interest won, but you wouldn't have expected it any other way. Seeing the blush on the main character's face after her romance option told her he'd "always take care" of her made you grin like a little fan, and you cheered them on in your head. 
By the time you returned to your regular, their knuckles had gone white with how hard they were gripping the fork in their hand, their eyes following the couple who was about to leave. For a moment, it made you wonder if they had a crush on either of them, their sweet interaction surely uncomfortable if that was the case. But you didn't remember there being a jealousy scene in the game. You'd know, almost playing it 100% before your death. There apparently was a secret route you never got but were trying your hardest to achieve. Now you were left to wonder what it entailed.
But the second you returned, they looked up at you, expression softening and the tension disappearing, and you chalked it up to having witnessed a cringe moment that they had gotten so awkward. "Thank you for the cake, that was really nice of you! Do you want another fork?" you asked and were met with a headshake and a smile. 
They quickly began eating their cake and complimenting your baking skills, stroking your growing ego when they rubbed their belly. 
"I never had a cake that good!" they proclaimed, and you laughed out loud, overjoyed that you had made them so happy. 
"Say..." they suddenly spoke up again, leaning on the counter and watching you with gentle eyes. Your heart set out for a second, tension rising as you didn't know what they were going to ask. Ever since you opened the coffee shop, the main character, love interests, and this regular had come by constantly. If you were honest, you enjoyed their visits more and more. Their presence felt like it belonged here with you, and you were a part of something bigger after all, washing away the small, lonely part of you. 
And maybe... just maybe... this was how your happy end would play out.
"Are you this nice to every customer?"
Halting your movements, you set aside the brew head that you used on the espresso machine, despite having to clean it, thinking about your answer for a moment. It was a strange question to ask someone who worked in customer service. Still, you appreciated your regular, so you didn't want to give them a snarky answer.
"Uhm, well, I am just trying to make everyone feel welcome! But of course, it's a bit different with my regulars! After all, they come here often, like a second family. So I guess I'm a bit nicer because you really get to know and appreciate these people that stay to chat and tell stories."
"I see," they muttered. "Family, huh..."
After that, you suddenly were swamped with sudden orders, excusing yourself to fulfill them, chatting and laughing with even the people that were just passing by. Maybe you really were just nice? Perhaps this new environment had made you more relaxed and gentle than the harsh world you lived in, and it was showing? But their question was shoved into the back of your mind as you kept fulfilling orders and earning your keep.
Once the rush was over, you returned to your regular, only to find their seat empty. Strange, you thought. You could have sworn that you felt their eyes on you the whole time you were away, but luckily, they didn't walk out on their tab, leaving the money and a folded-up napkin beneath their empty cup for you to find. You quickly stored away the bills, trusting your regular with knowing what they had to pay after so many weeks of the same order.
You were about to throw away their napkin when you noticed some red marks on them, unwrapping the paper to find a note scribbled in what you had to assume was ink. 
"You're so beautiful when you laugh."
The surprise wore off quite fast, and you smiled, thinking nothing of it but that it was a nice compliment from your regular. Still, you ended up throwing the napkin away—not knowing if it was dirty, after all—taking the coffee cup and plate to the sink to clean them, overseeing the red tip on the fork that was too dark to be from the strawberry.
The rest of your day was uneventful, and by the time you were closing, you were tired and ready to tug in for the night, wrapping up your business at the shop quickly before walking home. You didn't have a chance to look at your phone since you glanced at the achievement notification, so you took it out, startled when you saw a dozen new messages. 
Achievement unlocked: Happy new life - Be content with your new life
Achievement unlocked: A fork for two! - Share a fork with someone special
Achievement unlocked: Jealousy - Make someone special jealous
Achievement unlocked: Soothing - Calm someone special down with your presence
Achievement unlocked: Family - Have someone be moved by your words
Achievement unlocked: The nicest person in town - Be beloved by all, but especially by someone special
Achievement unlocked: Blood in the cup - Have someone hurt themselves at your coffee shop
Achievement unlocked: Wonder-Barista - Complete twenty orders in less than thirty minutes
Achievement unlocked: Strange compliment - Receive a compliment through unusual means
Achievement unlocked: Blooming infatuation - Have someone special fall in love with you
Achievement unlocked: Shop-Pro! - Close the shop twenty times after making a profit from your work
Achievement unlocked: Tired - Hard workers deserve to relax
You blinked a few times, surprised by what you were reading and a little weirded out by some of these achievements. They gave you some extra coins in your shop till and reputation with the townspeople, so you usually didn't mind them. But to say some of their descriptions were weird was an understatement. You couldn't even remember someone getting hurt at your workplace that day.
By the time you reached your apartment, you decided to ignore the strange notifications and just let the day come to an end with a hot bath and your favorite show. But you were startled when your phone suddenly began ringing loudly, even though you had turned off the sound back at the coffee shop after the first notification. The first messages that appeared before you were more achievements, and you stopped turning the key in your door as you read them.
Achievement unlocked: Follower - Have someone special follow you home
Achievement unlocked: Welcome home! - Arrive at home, not alone
Achievement unlocked: Wherever you go, I'll be watching you - Ɨ ΔΜ ΔŁŴΔ¥Ş ŴΔŦĆĦƗŇǤ ¥ØỮ
Lifting your head, you looked around you, glancing over your shoulder and into the courtyard below. No one was out; everyone was at home eating dinner and occupied with their lives. Confused, you swiped all the notifications away before another pop-up appeared.
ALERT! You're about to enter X's route. Do you want to continue?
> Yes > No
Panicked at this point, you pressed "No," but nothing happened. You kept tapping it repeatedly, not understanding what was happening with your phone. But nothing changed, the notification staying in place. The sound of something breaking inside your apartment tore your focus away from your phone, startling you. 
You must have finally managed to close it, the pop-up disappearing just as you unlocked the door to your apartment, still having held on to the key when you were surprised by the sound. Darkness and silence greeted you from inside, everything seemingly normal.
Majorly confused, you shook your head, slowly entering the hallway leading inside. "Hello?" you called out, reaching for the light switch. The light flickered on, and... there was no one. Holding your breath, no sound reached your ears, and you groaned, realizing you got freaked out about... nothing. 
This wasn't some kind of horror game, and the story never had a murder-solving subplot. True, the ratings for it were kind of strange—it being rated as 18+ on the website—but seriously, what should happen in a cozy little city like the one the game played in? You didn't even think they had a police station here.
Pushing off your shoes as you shrugged off the weird feeling from before, you walked up the hallway to your living room, turning on the light before coming to an abrupt halt. There were broken pieces of glass underneath your living room window, but what really freaked you out came into view only when you lifted your head. You could look into the mirror of your cabinet door from your position, red marker dripping from it as if someone had hastily scribbled on it just seconds ago. You weren't sure it was a pen anymore, judging by its deep red color and the fluidity of it.
"𝘪 𝘸𝘪𝘴𝘩 𝘺𝘰𝘶'𝘥 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘭𝘢𝘶𝘨𝘩 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘮𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘴 𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘢𝘻𝘺"
Your phone pinged.
Achievement unlocked: 
On the Highway to Hell - Unlock the secret route
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Out of curiousity, do you think most national museums are participating in the same kind of thing that the British Museum is, i.e. holding onto items that they stole in conquest / archaeological items that other nations are requesting back?
I always wonder if we should be looking at the bigger picture rather than just this one spotlighted issue (not that the spotlight isn't important in raising the issue originally).
oh goodie we're digging up stuff I wrote from 2 years ago...yay
Okay, for starters, let's look at how you've phrased your question. Currently, the heavy implication is that this is all the BM is (i.e. it only holds colonial loot and contested items), which is false. Yes, it does hold colonial loot from the British Empire. No one is disputing that. It also holds contested items such as the Parthenon Marbles and the Rosetta Stone. What it also holds are many items taken from digs where the country in question permitted them taking them, and then also gifts and other such non colonial requisitions.
Mostly, I need to stress, because as someone who's adjacent to museums this drives me insane: Framing all museum collections as Bad and only containing Bad Items from Bad Deeds doesn't give you the full picture and if you don't have the full picture you can't really address the issue of repatriation properly. It's the classic 'All or Nothing' mentality and I'm begging people to seek nuance on complex topics such as this. Also governments suck and so hearing repeated 'well museums suck because XYZ' means they're more than happy to simply defund them, which they already are doing and that's not helping stuff like repatriation either.
In short, if you're asking does any other museum have a law like BM63 (I wrote 68 in the post because...I'm bad at numbers)? Not as far as I'm aware, no. The BM is unique in that instance where the government literally created a law to prevent it from divesting of its collection.
Do other national museums hold colonial looted artefacts and contested items? Yes. Lots of them. All over the world.
Germany's Neues Museum holds the bust of Nefertiti, which is contested.
The Louvre in Paris has multiple Italian artworks that were stolen in the 1790s that Italy wants back.
The Horses of St Mark's (in Venice) were stolen from Greece by Constantine in the 1200s. (Not really all that contested but they were definitely stolen).
Yale University holds numerous items from Machu Picchu. The 1911 dig had permission from the Peruvian Government, but the items were supposed to be returned. I believe (don't quote me) that less than half were originally. They have subsequently been returned, but this is not an uncommon story.
There's a bunch of Nazi looted artworks that are in museums that need to be returned to their rightful owners.
The MET museum in the US and everything it got from Douglas Latchford (this is ongoing, with some repatriations having already happened)
The National Museum of Australia also got caught out by that guy.
To be fair, the MET Museum has a problem with looted artefacts in general from the 70s onwards as they tried to compete with the European collections and thus ended up gaining a lot of 'not properly provenanced artefacts'. There was a gold sarcophagus they returned only recently that was looted from Egypt post-2011.
The Bible Museum in the US has...stuff it shouldn't (there's a lot and I'm not listing it).
*voice dripping with derision* Whatever the Hobby Lobby is up to
I could go on!
Focusing solely on the BM is a result of a US-Centric mindset, and a pervasive anglophone bias in things people will read. (Or in other words: It's fun to shit on the Brits and most of you only read English anyway.)
This has the unfortunate effect of making it seem like the BM is only museum in the world doing this, and they're not. Not in the slightest. Many museums, national or not, will have colonial looted items if that country has, at any time in the past, waged expansionist wars against other nations, no matter how brief. If your local museum has artefacts from Not Your Country there's a good chance they were looted! Again, I stress that many many artefacts that left places like Egypt were part of agreements with the Egyptian government (called partition agreements) whereby the Egyptian government took first pick of artefacts from a dig and then the dig organisers could take the rest. This hasn't happened since UNESCO World Heritage Convention 1975, which prohibits new artefacts from leaving countries which is also why I will bonk on the head with a cardboard tube anyone who says Archaeologists/Museums are still stealing things.
So yeah, if you're looking at repatriation, you'll be much better looking at the bigger picture and understanding how all this came to be in the first place than you'll ever be making memes about the BM stealing things on the internet.
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kichoukotori · 2 years
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Several years ago I briefly worked in the warehouse of a nondescript extremely large e-commerce company. I had no other options for employment but desperately needed money. Turnover was like 150%. I worked from something like 7pm to 5am, my commute was 50 minutes each way and before I got paid I didn't even have the cash for enough gas to get home one night and had to bum $10 off of my kid sibling (this is all to give you an idea of my abysmal mental state while employed here.) You're not allowed to do anything besides your job, no music or anything and they track your movement on cameras so you can't even take a breather. The job is real monotonous, you get sent boxes of items of random sizes and you have to put the items into shelves of varying sizes and the shelves come to you, you don't walk to them. Because the company tracks the rate at which you put items on these shelves, many small items are desirable because you can put a lot of them in quickly. Everything about the place seems almost designed intentionally to break you mentally and turn you into a robot. So I'm about 6 or 7 hours into my shift, feeling on the verge of a mental collapse, and up comes a container with a bunch of small white boxes, bout half the size of a deck of cards. No labels. Great, I'm already happy about whatever these things are. So I go to scan them in, and it gives you the name of the item and a little picture. Sasuke Penis Costume. What? Sasuke Penis Costume. A picture of that red cloud robe from Naruto and one of the headbands with the metal plate on it. I'm thinking, there's no way. What is a penis costume? Am I hallucinating this? And there's so many of them, literally about a hundred, and I know I'm going to be spending at least an hour with Sasuke Penis Costume, there's so many and they're so small, I'm already excited about the potential efficiency of these, and then I see it's Sasuke Penis Costume? So the entire shift I'm like, trying to not put these things away too quick, because honestly I'm starting to build a kind of kinship with them. This is quite literally the most exciting thing to happen to me during my whole 2 week employment at the warehouse. I started to see Sasuke Penis Costume as a friend, some reminder of the outside world, a reminder of the humanity I was becoming so unfamiliar with, a reminder the world contained comedy, art, anime, and penis. I really couldn't tell you if I ended up putting all of them away, the last thing I remember is my desperate need to look these items up when I got home. I needed a link to send to my friends for when I told them this riveting story. I learned that the costume is called the Akatsuki cloak in my fervent search for the item, and wouldn't you know it, absolutely zero trace of these things exists online. Not on the e-commerce website, not on any specialized penis-costume websites (whose existence I was not privvy to prior to this incident) and no third-party retailer has these. Not even Google images will show me the hypothetical existence of Sasuke Penis Costume. Every few months I look it up, trying to find evidence that it can be bought, that any of this was ever real. My bond, my friendship, and dare I say even love for Sasuke Penis Costume feels as tangible as the boxes they came in, and yet the universe will give me no closure of their fate. Less and less frequently I search for them, each time becoming more and more discouraged that I will ever find them, but unlike their substance on this earth, one thing is inarguably certain. Sasuke Penis Costume exists to me, and it will live on firmly and resolutely within my memory and within my heart.
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emberwhite · 2 months
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Do people judge a book by its cover? They absolutely do. They take one look at this, and they either often instantly hate it or love it.
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Talking about how things should be is just yelling into the void. There is just reality. And this is the reality of being a self-published indie author.
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People make complete conclusions based off of incomplete information. In this case, my book, there are no adults pressuring the boy into getting any surgery. There's no mention of surgery at all even. This person is thinking of a children's book written by a very popular political figure. Some people have had the courtesy to ask me if it's like that book. It's not at all. It's not even political. It's a story told from the perspective of a kid who grows up knowing they are very different and yet can tell no one about it. Even saying a word about it would bring all of his deepest and darkest fears into reality.
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The challenge was to make the story as dark and scary as I could without ever going too far for a children's book. There are already some scary children's books and movies out there that prove what's possible, and I worked with my illustrator, Marta, to push it as far as we could go. There's one page we had to re-do almost completely because even I said that's a bit much.
But I'm very happy with the final result because we also got to do so many fun and colorful pages like this.
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There will be plenty more drive-by reviews as the book continues to grow and grow. They take one look and see a soapbox to express all of their disappointments and frustrations in life.
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I think they might be scared of the book. The world they grew up in is slowly fading away day by day, and it's all they have come to know. They've been around for so long that everything has become a bore to them, and the only remaining pleasure is to escape into the past in order to better preserve it. I can oddly relate, actually.
So the book is on Amazon, and you can watch the whole thing for free on YouTube as well. If you get the chance, let me know what you think. Literally, watching it for free and then giving it a simple rating on Amazon is the best way to support the book. But I also love waking up to reviews like this every day.
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cagedchoices · 1 year
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tag drop, part I
GENERAL TAGS I'M AN UNDERACHIEVER — OUT. IT'S STILL ME — FACE. SO IT TELLS THEM WHO I AM — ABOUT. ROUGH EDGES ARE THE ONLY THING I'M HANGING ONTO — MUSINGS/AESTHETICS. AT LEAST YOU HAVE SOME INTERESTING COMPANY — PROMO. WHO DO YOU THINK I AM? — SELF PROMO. THEY BUILT THE WORLD TO BE A GAME — PROMPT. YOU KNOW THE DRILL — REPLY. YOU GOT MY MESSAGE? — ANSWERED.
CHARACTER TAGS (GENERAL) WHATEVER YOU'RE INTO MUST BE PRETTY BAD — DOLORES. YOU EVER THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? — MAEVE. I WON'T REST UNTIL EVERYTHING YOU BUILT IS DESTROYED — CHARLOTTE. YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF PERSON CAN'T BE BEAT? THE KIND THAT DOESN'T GIVE UP — FRANKIE.
DYNAMIC TAGS AM I THE BAD GUY? IS THAT WHY YOU PICKED ME? — DYN | DOLORES & CALEB. YOU'VE SAVED MY LIFE BEFORE...HAPPY TO RETURN THE FAVOR — MAEVE & CALEB. I HAVE SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T HAVE — DYN | CHARLOTTE & CALEB. I WILL COME BACK TO YOU...I PROMISE — UWADE & CALEB. YOU'RE MY WARRIOR...I LOVE YOU — FRANKIE & CALEB. WE HAD TO HAVE OUR OWN PLAN...STICK TOGETHER — FRANCIS & CALEB.
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cagedchoice · 1 year
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new year, new me, new tags part 1 \o/
GENERAL TAGS I'M AN UNDERACHIEVER — OUT. I AM ME…IT'S STILL ME — FACE. SO IT TELLS THEM WHO I AM — HEADCANON. ROUGH EDGES ARE THE ONLY THING I'M HANGING ONTO — MUSINGS/AESTHETICS. AT LEAST YOU HAVE SOME INTERESTING COMPANY — PROMO. WHO DO YOU THINK I AM? — SELF PROMO. THEY BUILT THE WORLD TO BE A GAME — MEME. YOU KNOW THE DRILL — REPLY. YOU GOT MY MESSAGE? — ANSWERED.
CHARACTER TAGS (GENERAL) WHATEVER YOU'RE INTO MUST BE PRETTY BAD — DOLORES. YOU EVER THINK ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT? — MAEVE. I WON'T REST UNTIL EVERYTHING YOU BUILT IS DESTROYED — CHARLOTTE. YOU KNOW WHAT KIND OF PERSON CAN'T BE BEAT? THE KIND THAT DOESN'T GIVE UP — FRANKIE.
DYNAMIC TAGS AM I THE BAD GUY? IS THAT WHY YOU PICKED ME? — DYN | DOLORES & CALEB. YOU'VE SAVED MY LIFE BEFORE…HAPPY TO RETURN THE FAVOR — DYN | MAEVE & CALEB. I HAVE SOMETHING THAT YOU DON'T HAVE — DYN | CHARLOTTE & CALEB. I WILL COME BACK TO YOU…I PROMISE — DYN | UWADE & CALEB. YOU'RE MY WARRIOR…I LOVE YOU — DYN | FRANKIE & CALEB. WE HAD TO HAVE OUR OWN PLAN…STICK TOGETHER — DYN | FRANCIS & CALEB.
CHARACTER TAGS (URL SPECIFIC) WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU DON'T COME BACK? — COPIESOFME (DOLORES.) WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE FOR US? — KILLJOYSANONYMOUS (MAEVE.) IF I STAY…WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO? — KILLJOYSANONYMOUS (DOLORES.)
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wonryllis · 3 months
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𝜗𝜚 'OH' I LOVE LOVE HER?
╰ 𝖺𝗅𝗍𝖾𝗋𝗇𝖺𝗍𝗂𝗏𝖾𝗅𝗒, 𝗐𝗁𝖾𝗋𝖾 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗒 𝗄𝗇𝗈𝗐 𝗍𝗁𝖾𝗒'𝗋𝖾 𝗂𝗇 𝗂𝗍 𝖿𝗈𝗋 𝗍𝗁𝖾 𝗅𝗈𝗇𝗀 𝗋𝗎𝗇.
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𝒏o𝓉ℯs. enhypen realizing it's you 𖥔 ݁ rom-fluff, kinda poetic? LIB? fem!reader requested word count ` 1945
꒰˵ˊᯅˋ˵꒱ love how this turned out!! <3. unedited!
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𝐋𝐄𝐄 𝐇𝐄𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐔𝐍𝐆 he doesn't know much about love, he's never really experienced it yet. he has fallen for conventional and unconventional things, things that compliment and things that complete, he's been through the good phases and stuck through bad ones, he held on to things he shouldn't and let go of things he should. there are a lot of lessons he has learned along every relationship he has been in the lines of yet lee heeseung doesn't believe he's ever been in love until he has been with you. it wasn't something he knew he felt, but it was surely something he realized in the spur of a moment, in a split second of epiphany. he knew what he felt for you was something deep when he realized that yes he wouldn't hesitate to die for you, but what he wants is to live for you. it's easy to be the first to go but to hold your strength through everything and survive for someone, that is definitely love is what heeseung believes.
"baby, baby calm down i'm okay," he reassures your crying and frantic figure as you scan his injuries, ones he got from trying to protect you from a fatal fall. perhaps it was the situation or perhaps it was realisation of it all. when he jumped to saved you all he could think about was he'd give his life if it meant you lived, but in this moment he cannot bear to see you so devastated, to think he could've left you like this? no, he's decided he is never going to do it until he can't help it and even then he'd fight to stay with his love.
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐉𝐎𝐍𝐆𝐒𝐄𝐎𝐍𝐆 he has lived his life prioritizing his family over everything else. to him nothing can go above and beyond familial love. he doesn't really believe he can love anyone anything like he loves his family and that is a statement of disappointed in itself. if there's anything he wants to give his best for it's people who have stuck with him since day one. bonds need to tested by time is the belief he holds dear until his world crashes into yours and time changes from something that defines to something that builds. his relationship with yours is not as long as people he's close to but however long you have spent together seems to strengthen and augment the bond. his love for you settles into an understanding of his when finds you running through days and nights in the hospital caring for his family after a big blow. a choice to choose, not an obligation to carry out. a crack in his notions you give him a new definition of love.
"y/n? baby come on go and freshen up, i'll watch over mom," his hand rests on your head, soft caresses to wake you up after the long night you spent sitting beside his mother while he ran around for paperwork. as you leave the room in a rush wanting to come back quickly and take his place so that he can get his rest, jay finds himself seeing you in a new light, telling his mother that he's found an angel. the angel she always told him about, the angel he loves.
𝐒𝐈𝐌 𝐉𝐀𝐄𝐘𝐔𝐍 he has spent years jumping from person to person, reveled and basked in moments of happiness and run away amidst the weights of problems. there is a price to pay for everything and love is no exception but he has yet to accept the fact of reality, the thorns that come along with the scent and beauty of roses. love gives and love takes, love heals and love hurts. it takes several trials and a meeting with you for jake to understand that. to him it is a conscious decision, a hard hit and an opening of eyes when he realizes you're the one for him. he has never made it work until you, coming to the conclusion in the middle of the worst argument that you're worth all the trouble. and if wants to have you by his side, he needs to fix this and he needs to cherish you. he can see himself with you for the rest of his life, one single person he is willing to fight for. for jake sim you are a sphere of acceptance, you redefine love and endurance for him.
"one day we're gonna have kids together and i want them to see that daddy really loves mommy, i'll change for the better i promise," jake's voice softens as he hits the big realization, getting down on his knees, tears falling free. your arms slip around him in a hug and jake swears he'll do all it takes to become the one for you, he'll do all it takes to make this worth it, he'll do all it takes to have you stay. because he's found the one he loves, the one he wants to be his best for.
𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐇𝐎𝐎𝐍 he has always felt a gaping hole in his chest, a feeling of homesickness even when he is home, a feeling of vanity even when he shines bright soaring through all the achievement of his dreams. to him there's something that's always missing. no he has never thought of love but he has never despised it either. he doesn't dwell on the possibilities of it but the absence and lack of them. until you enter his life completing him like a perfect piece of puzzle, a missing piece of him. he realizes his love for you in bits and moments of warmth, slowly step by step as you fill the void. from helping him through his hard times and cheering him on in his good ones, sunghoon finds his home in you, a walk so long but finally arriving at it's destiny, where it's always been meant to be. perhaps he's always longed for love and never understood it. nevertheless, park sunghoon finds it in his moments of mundanity with you. you teach him the power of the presence of love.
"my little charmie, loved your pretty banner," sunghoon leaves a wet kiss on your lips, arms going around your waist as he comes rushing to you a second after winning the championship, cameras all panned on the champion of the season but all he can see is you. you feel like a warm hug on a rainy day, a blanket of comfort near the fireplace. all the anxiety he ever felt, the pressure to be on the top, you took it all and turned it into something beautiful and enjoyable.
𝐊𝐈𝐌 𝐒𝐔𝐍𝐖𝐎𝐎 he has grown up surrounded and so bathed in love, he thinks he knows it all, he has seen it all. every version of love, and everything that exists in between. so confident he'd know it instantly, the one for him, the love of his life. but love takes time and love find it's loopholes. someone that evokes no romantic feelings could become everything in just a turn of events. kim sunoo never believed or cared to understand that until he felt that something for you. that little upturn of sparkles and butterflies, that intense emotion kindling in his heart when he sees you in a new ambience. a single moment of revelation when he's staring at you talk about things that you love, things that he doesn't like but suddenly he doesn't mind hearing about it. he knows he hasn't felt this way before for you, there's something different and that difference makes him rethink his entire relationship with you. you become so important to him in a split moment, love so familiar and calm yet unfamiliar and exciting.
"go on i'm listening," sunoo has his head on his hands, eyes shaped crescents, a gaze so loving anyone can see how he feels, so transparent. the tiny flowers behind you would look so pretty on you, no- you look so much prettier than the flowers, your voice is so pretty, the way your lips move, the way your eyes light up, has sunoo always loved hearing about legos? no. has he always loved listening to you? he doesn't know but he could hear you talk forever.
𝐘𝐀𝐍𝐆 𝐉𝐔𝐍𝐆𝐖𝐎𝐍 he is one who sees love in everything around. the little things and the big things. in the light and in the dark. in memories of the past and in possibilities of the future. there is not a specific instance where he realizes his feelings. to him you are the premonition of love. he knew it from the very moment he met you that you are the one he is going fall in love with. that inner instinct that instantly sparked up when you entered his life. every day and every second it grows, it piles up, it escalates. the weight of life and the wings of love you make everything easier. one who has always given meeting one who gives back to him. overwhelmed in an ocean of new eternal verities, a feeling so mad, blind and passionate he finds himself wanting to be bound to you by his every bone. if there's a forever then he wants to spend it with you taking walks by the river, watching the lantern festival with a smile on your faces, so sick in love it makes everyone else sick.
"i wish this wish comes true," jungwon whispers to himself as he watches you walk ahead of him, turning back time and again to tell him how far your lit lantern made with a pretty little smile on your face. he wants to see this everyday, every morning, every night till however long he can and if possible even in his afterlife and all the lives that come ahead. to be the one to be chosen by you because he for one will always choose you in all forms of reality and at every chance,"baby wait up for me, let's go together!" hand in hand all along.
𝐍𝐈𝐒𝐇𝐈𝐌𝐔𝐑𝐀 𝐑𝐈𝐊𝐈 he has always found himself struggling to express his emotions, words and actions alike. something so inherent in him, he can't seem to overcome it. the sheer desperation to get his feelings through to someone, he's never felt it. he hasn't ever felt the need to feel it. to connect so closely with another is not something he has ever been comfortable with or wanted to be comfortable with. until you happened and riki's world went through a turmoil of sentiments, wrecking him from inside so intensely he could never go back to before. love is something he has never experienced and something he could never fathom. it just never made sense to him, how one could feel so much solely for another. but in moments of his silence where you struggled to understand it all, he realized the importance, the willingness to learn to express his feelings. your tears and your smiles he wanted to be the one to comfort and the one you showed your happiness to. the one you love and the one he loves.
"i've never said this before but you are so special to me, what i feel for you is something i've never felt for anyone else and i don't wanna lose you by not letting you know that. i'm wanna learn to show you that again and again," riki smiles through his tears letting himself be vulnerable before you, as you hold the little handmade gift he got. your own tears threatening to fall while you nod vigorously reaching forward to let him know it'll all be okay.
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TAGLIST ( open. ) @kangseulgithegreat @s00buwu @luvyev @pockyyasii @nctislifue @ashtxrie @miniature-tragedy @jayujus @nanabbg @thoughtsmeander2tumblingblindly
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sinsofsummers · 10 months
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sensational; part ii
6.8k | joel miller x f!innocent!reader follow-up to sensational
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summary: you've tasked joel with teaching you about all of the things you missed. he's back for more...teaching moments. warnings: smut (duh), 18+, mdni. softdom!joel vibes in this one, joel gives reader an anatomy lesson, pet names (lots of dollface) fingering, praise kink to the gods, masturbation (f and brief m), reader gives joel a hand(y), grinding, bit of a corruption kink toward the end, jesus there might need to be a part 3 note: well. look at what you guys did. you went and loved on sensational so much and asked for a part 2 so often that i just had to grant your wishes. i hope you’re fckn happy✌🏼🥹 (this is all jokes i’m so excited to write more of this dynamic teehee)
You'd never counted yourself as a dreamer of any sort; when sleep clouded your brain at night, every thought faded along with it. Aside from the occasional nightmare, reminding you of your parents' absence, you hadn't had an actual dream since you were a kid.
Of course, that night in Joel's house had changed everything, in every possible way. In just an hour or so he had taken your world into his hands, shaped it, flipped it, and returned it to you, unrecognizable. His name was carved into everything you saw and touched, and this included your dreams.
He was everywhere in your head when you slept. So much so that you'd begun to forget which was reality and which was a figment of your imagination, which made your patrols with him all the more humiliating.
Your hands were cold. It was all you could focus on as you followed Joel along your normal patrol route. Just twelve hours had passed since that night in his house, when he'd touched you with rough hands and what taught you what it meant to feel desired. His words still rang clear in your head days later:
Trust me, doll. I've got so much more to teach you.
It sent your head reeling just to think about it now. The memory of his fingertips grazing the side of your face as he'd said it, those brown eyes sparkling with desire for you—a vision of contentment.
You had leaned into his touch subconsciously, reaching a hand up to trace the line of his wrist. His eyes had darted to where your fingers pressed to his skin, a soft grin replacing his satisfied smirk. "I'd better get you home, then," he'd whispered.
It had taken everything in you to ignore the small pang of disappointment that had bloomed in your gut, but it was an easier task when he'd dropped his lips to your forehead.
"No one'll miss me at home," you'd protested quietly, trying not to relish too much in the feeling of his beard scratching at the space between your eyebrows.
This sentiment was true. You still didn't know how things had worked out so well, but after arriving in Jackson, Tommy (the fact that it was Joel's younger brother made this seem all the less coincidental) and Maria had been more than accommodating. They'd offered you your own space, a house to yourself. Granted, it was much smaller than Joel's, but it was your own. It had become home in the four short years you'd lived in Jackson.
No one was waiting for you at home. It was a fact that used to make your throat close up, memories taunting you every moment they could. Now it was a welcomed thought, if it meant that you could remain in the heady presence of Joel Miller.
But he'd only shaken his head, his brown eyes flitting down to your lips before returning to your gaze. "I'm sure they'll notice when you don't come strolling out of your own place in the mornin'," he'd insisted gently. His thumb traced your bottom lip when your shoulders slumped. You hoped you didn't look as pitiful as you felt, your lip threatening to push outward in a pout.
"Might not be able to keep my hands to myself tonight if I let you stay," he'd breathed. You didn't care if he said it as an apology, or if it was actually true.
Because who were you to disagree with him? It was Joel.
So without more than a lingering hand on your wrist, he'd walked you to your door. When you'd teased him for such a chivalrous act, he'd cocked an eyebrow, glancing sideways at you. "Can't just let you walk home alone after that," he'd scoffed, his voice rough again in the outdoors. A few people were still milling about despite it being darker than pitch after nightfall. "M'not a complete scoundrel," he said with a wry grin.
Your front door always looked so inviting, a place for you to take a breath and relax after a long day. In that moment, it was taking everything in you to put one foot in front of the other and return to your own place.
"Scoundrel," you'd mused, hoping the amusement in your voice covered the way you leaned back with every step, as if you could claim one more touch of his body—arm, chest, shoulder—to send you to bed with nothing but him on your mind. "Kind of a big word, wouldn't you say?" you'd teased him, just as he'd done to you. "Sure you know what it means?"
The twitch of his jaw was enough of a reward for your attempt at humor, but your satisfied smirk had been wiped clean off your face when he'd darted a glance around before leaning in, hovering just centimeters from your face.
It occurred to you in that moment that you'd truly only kissed him once. A shame, a voice in your head sighed. His lips were devastatingly plump, even in the darkness.
Joel had stayed there, his eyes tearing down to your mouth before warning you in that deliciously low baritone, "I know what it is. Best get inside," his jaw twitched once more and you caught him clenching and unclenching his fists, "'fore I show you what it means to be a scoundrel."
You'd gone inside with a shaky breath and the return of that familiar pulse that, it seemed, only he knew how to ignite.
Joel chose not to look in the mirror when he'd gone home that night. He wasn't sure he'd be able to stand the way his hair was undoubtedly wild, his eyes hard with desire, and his hands still aching with the memory of her squirming body in his lap.
After four years of near silence, this girl had unraveled him. After all those days on patrol with her, nothing to do except look at her when she wouldn't notice, Joel Miller had been undone.
The next day, waking up early with the stiffness in his boxers begging to be dealt with, Joel spit on his palm and wrapped it around his cock, releasing a sigh. Fuck's sake, he thought with a groan. Can't hardly get a full night's sleep anymore.
It should have annoyed him; it was certainly an inconvenience. But if it meant that he'd get to spend more time thinking about her body and her lips and her eyes when she asked those incessant questions, then so be it. He'd never sleep another wink and be glad for it.
It didn't take long for his release to come, not when the memories of her whines were so fresh in his mind. To think that he'd had her on his lap, hips squirming in that way that only she knew...it was enough to make him—"A grown fuckin' man," he reminded himself—spill into his hands and draw ragged breaths into his lungs to recover.
With an arm thrown across his face, he latched onto the image of her in the heat of ecstasy, her eyelids fluttering shut and her lips wet from constantly biting them.
For a moment, he tried to rein himself in. Can't be doin' this, he'd thought while getting ready for patrol that morning. Don't wanna take advantage of her, or fuck her up cause of my inability to control my own desires.
In reality, he'd considered, did she really know what she was getting herself into? With little more knowledge than the mechanics of reproduction, it had been evident with the events of the previous night that she knew nothing of what pleasure could be. Did he really want to be responsible for her discovery of such things?
But when he went to the stables an hour later and saw her standing in the snow with an extra twinge in her grin and her eyes sparkling despite the echoes of fatigue in her irises, every doubt dissipated immediately. He pretended not to notice the way her eyes lingered on his back when they saddled up, heading out of Jackson for the day.
Joel Miller was never one to deny a woman in need. Why should he have stopped now?
"How'd you sleep?"
When you looked over at him, almost shocked that he'd broken the silence, your eyebrow quirked up. "Fine," you answered.
It wasn't that this patrol had been disappointing, it was just...ever since you'd left Jackson that morning, you'd been waiting for him to look at you like he had the night before, or to even acknowledge you in the way that you could still remember him doing.
Maybe it was because Tommy was nearby at the time, or maybe he'd changed his mind after all. Maybe you'd overstepped, asking a man so much older than you to teach you all of this. Maybe it hadn't happened at all—your dreams were rather convincing these days.
If it hadn't been for those girls, hell-bent on making you feel ostracized, perhaps you wouldn't have landed yourself in this position. You probably wouldn't have had any reason to be curious about what it all meant, and you could have gone on in comfortable silence with him on your patrols.
With a heavy mind, you blew out a breath. If it hadn't been for those girls, though—you never would have known the creases that sank into the corners of his eyes when he grinned at you.
Beside you, having held back to come up shoulder-to-shoulder, Joel huffed. "Bullshit, darlin'," he scoffed, casting a sideways glance in your direction.
You tightened your hands on the reins. "Excuse me?" you said sharply.
His chuckle was a soft rumble in his chest, and you ached to feel it against your back. "I saw those sleepy eyes at the stables," he crooned, the corners of his eyes crinkling just like you remembered. "Looks like someone didn't get a good night's sleep."
"Oh, and I'm just supposed to believe you slept like a damn baby, then?" You couldn't help the incredulity in your tone, but you blushed when you noticed him smirking, his lips twitching as he fought a smile away.
"'Course not," he shook his head almost dismissively. "Couldn't tell my brain to stop conjurin' pictures of you shakin' in my lap." He adjusted the way he was seated on his horse, and you couldn't help but wonder if he was getting hard at the reminder of the memory.
You, in a similar vein, were trying to ignore the unmistakable feel of heat puddling between your legs. Keeping your eyes forward, you asked, "Is that a good thing?"
Joel nodded. "A very good thing, dollface. You were so good for me last night."
Any air that had been in your lungs left in a rush, and you put a hand to your cheek, warm despite the winter's wind. You thought you heard yourself whine at the sound of the pet name.
Thankfully, he didn't say or do anything to show that he'd noticed. Instead, he tugged his horse to a stop. "Let's get down here," he said. "Walk and talk, yeah?"
The thought of walking beside him after all that had happened the night before was enough to make you freeze in your saddle, suddenly unsure of how to get down. "Yeah," you mumbled, if only to fill the silence.
You could hear the crunch of snow under his boots as he came up beside you, thick gloved hands reaching for your waist. "C'mon, darlin'," he'd insisted, "I won't bite."
There was a note of irony in his tone, and you let him pull you from your saddle, landing in the snow in front of him. Your jacket snagged against his, and you stood there for a moment, letting your frosty wisps of breath coil and furl with his. "What do you mean?" you asked, cursing your ever-present confidence when it came to asking him questions. It seemed that you'd never learn to hold your tongue.
"Hmm?" he hummed in response. "What's what mean?" He stepped away from you to grab the reins in his hand and began to walk forward in the snow.
You shook your head and pushed on, stumbling after him. When did the snow get so deep? "You sounded rather..." you trailed off, searching for the word.
"Oh, here it comes," he mused in that serious tone, hardly covering the teasing lilt that rang clear in his eyes. "Bet you're coming up with a big word right about now, huh?"
You couldn't help it when you rolled your eyes and swatted a hand at the back of his arm. "I was going to say you sounded smug," you finished. "About how you won't bite?"
There it was again. That look of slight surprise at your questions. You waited for a few moments, the two of you trudging along in the snow, before he answered quietly. "We're jumpin' ahead of ourselves, but I s'pose it won't hurt." He shrugged. "Some people like it. Biting."
You furrowed your eyebrows. "Like it?" You looked down at your hands, covered in thick gloves. "Doesn't it hurt?"
Joel smirked. "It can," he considered, "if the person gettin' bitten wants it like that." He brushed your arm with his. "But some people don't like it at all. Just depends."
You braved a look up at his face and swallowed roughly, feeling your core pulse at the sight of his rosy cheeks. "Does it have to hurt?" You didn't mean to sound so desperate; you were just curious. "I mean, is it like...like a real bite?"
It happened so quickly that you hardly had a moment to process. Joel stopped in his tracks, pulled you near, and dipped his head down to your ear. "Don't have to," he murmured, and you were just starting to quiver at the feel of his voice next to your ear when he was brushing your hair from your neck and grazing his teeth against your skin. "Can feel good, if the person doin' the biting knows how."
You couldn't help the hand that shot out to grab his arm, as if it were the only thing that might hold you up. "I'm assuming you know how," you said thickly, eyes wandering on his weathered face. Funny, you thought at the sight of his grin, he looks quite young like this.
Joel shifted his arm so he could squeeze your hand once with his before letting it go. "Don't boost my ego too high, sweetcheeks," he warned, but you could hear the humor in his voice. "Might never let go if you do."
You knew he was kidding, but the prospect that he was being serious made your stomach flutter and forced you to clench your thighs together, bringing the forefront of your attention back to the frustration that was pooling between your legs. "Joel," you muttered in a whine, not quite realizing you'd said it until he was looking at you with a twinge of concern.
"What's up, doll?" he asked, slowing to a stop. "Somethin' wrong?"
A curly tendril of his graying hair was blown into his face with the winter wind, and you wished you could brush it away with your fingers like he'd done just moments ago. "I..." you inhaled deeply, and shifted your weight. "I'm..."
It took him a moment to understand, and when he did, his eyes sparkled. "Oh, doll," he cooed, reaching forward to tug you closer to him. "Need something', huh?"
You leaned your head forward until your forehead rested against him, breathing in the scene of pine and old leather and that heady musk that was utterly Joel. Nodding into his strong chest, you brought your hand up to his wrist and tugged it down, down, down...there.
Joel's large hand cupped the mound between your legs and you swallowed harshly as it pulsed again, begging for the sweet release he'd given you the night before. "Fuck," he breathed, the vibrations of his voice rolling against your skin. "Shoulda told me you were this bothered, baby," he hummed.
You lifted your head. "I've been trying," you said in a pitiful whine, although this wasn't entirely true, and he knew it. "Why does it...why do I ache so bad?"
His smirk quivered, and his pupils were suddenly huge as he withdrew his hand from where it covered your heat, exposing it to the frigid winter air once more. "I think we've gone far enough, don't you?" he winked. "Think we may as well head back."
The implications of what would happen when you got back to Jackson made your head spin. Nodding feverishly, you let go of the twinge of embarrassment at your eagerness. "Yes, please," you hiccuped.
His tongue darted out to wet his bottom lip. "Good," he murmured.
This was the worst possible outcome.
Just when you'd worked up to exactly where you wanted to be with Joel, with his hands on you and his intentions leading you back to his house (and hopefully his couch), Tommy stopped you at the stables.
Well, not you. Not you at all, actually. He stalked up to his older brother and said, Meeting at my place, Joel."
He'd just gotten down from his saddle to help you do the same and was letting his hands linger on your waist when the interruption happened. With his hungry eyes locked on yours, he'd been leaning into your touch and hovering his hands just inches from your heat.
You could have sworn he jumped out of his skin at the sound of Tommy's voice; you just hoped it was because of his infamous hearing loss on his ride side and decidedly not because he'd been caught standing so close to you.
"We just had a meeting last week," he said gruffly, his eyes still searching yours. For what, you weren't sure—but you were quickly growing addicted to finding those rare flecks of gold buried in the espresso brown seas reflected back at you. His hands clenched involuntarily, and given the fact that they were resting around your hips, you got a delicious lick of pleasure that shot through your pelvis at the sensation.
Tommy didn't seem to be in the mood for dawdling. "And now we're having one this week," he insisted. "My place. Maria and the others are waiting."
You lifted your chin to see him close his eyes in annoyance. His mouth opened once; he closed it. When he opened it again, his eyes flashed along with the movement. "Alright, I'll be there in a minute," he said tersely, and you pretended not to notice the way his gloved thumb rubbed a slow circle on your hip. An apology, perhaps.
When he didn't move, you blushed with smug satisfaction. It had never been more clear that he didn't want to move.
"Joel, it's important." Usually, you'd never had an issue with Tommy. Now, of course, the sound of his voice clawed at your every hope for tonight.
With a soft look at your lips, Joel jerked his head to look at his brother. "I said give me a fuckin' minute," he said, his words clipped. "Fuck's sake," he muttered as he turned around. "Just answerin' a goddamn question," he finished, soft enough that you were sure his brother couldn't hear.
Tommy grumbled his fair share of disapproving words, but you couldn't help the grateful bubble that bloomed in your gut when you heard the shuffle of his boots as he left you alone in the stables with Joel.
He waited a moment or two before letting out a soft sigh. You couldn't have known how disappointed he was, but the way he lifted a hand to your cheek was clue enough. "New lesson, dollface," he said.
A pang of regret hit your stomach and you found yourself shaking your head. "Please?" you asked in a quiet voice. "I don't want a new lesson."
Joel grinned and sucked in a sharp breath. "I know, baby, I know." The familiar phrase threw you back to the night before, when he'd had his hands all over you, reassuring you with those exact words. But now, it wasn't a comfort. "But if I'm not around and you need to feel good..." His hand trailed down your cheek, brushed against your chest and returned to its previous spot between your legs. "I want you to practice touchin' yourself, yeah?"
His voice had become a near-painful whisper, just loud enough for you to feel rather than hear his words caress your skin. "This of me all you want, darlin'. God knows I'll be thinkin' of you at this damn...meeting," he practically spat the last word, but it didn't take away from the pressure that was building and causing you to blink rapidly. "Think about me," he repeated, "but I want you to explore this pretty body for me so you can tell me all about it when I get back."
The sound of his voice enveloped you, that heady sensation nearly making your knees give out. With a slow nod, you couldn't see yourself ever disobeying him. Not when he asked such sinful things of you.
"Okay," you whispered. "I'll try."
His mouth was in a hard line, his irritation at Tommy's interruption still prevalent. But it softened for a moment when he slid a gloved thumb over your bottom lip, letting it get pulled from its place before bouncing back. You darted your tongue out, wetting your lip in a desperate attempt to taste his leather on your skin; to taste him.
"Good," he said softly. Something new pulsed at the sound of his praise, but you fought it down. "I'll see you soon, doll."
Despite everything you tried when you got home—despite squeezing your eyes shut and picturing that dimple in Joel's cheek when he smirked, or the way his arms felt when wrapped around you—nothing helped. The pressure remained, the ache between your legs was ever-present, and yet...
You couldn't give yourself the release you craved. Not like Joel could.
There was no telling how long you tried, hand shoved down your pants in a sour attempt to replicate the feeling he'd given you. Your fingers were clumsy, untrained, and entirely new to the task, leaving you desperate and unsatisfied. A strangled whine left your throat when your mind flashed with the memory of his face near yours, his lips on your own, and his rough hands rubbing that small bud at your center. It was maddening.
He'd asked you to do this one thing, and you couldn't deliver. Of course, you'd never even realized this was a possibility; you'd only ever heard of men bringing themselves to the plummeting precipice of pleasure. You never considered that you could do the same.
But you didn't want to make yourself feel good. You wanted Joel to do it.
After what felt like hours, stuck in your house alone, Joel nowhere to be found, and with your hopes slipping into despair, you gave up. Your fingers would never be as rough or as thick as his. You didn't know how to explore your body when you couldn't tip yourself over the edge to ecstasy; it was impossible.
Weary and defeated, you went to bed with a groan. Joel still hadn't shown up. Either it was a long meeting, or...you didn't want to entertain the thought that he'd possibly forgotten about you. About your task to be completed.
You actually did drop off into a dreamless sleep, but when you woke to the sound of a knock at your door, you were almost positive the dreams had begun again. Swinging your legs out of bed, you trudged to the door with sleep oozing in every movement. The door opened with a click, and you blinked.
"Sorry I'm late, sweetcheeks," Joel breathed. A distant streetlamp, the only one in Jackson, was the sole source of light that illuminated the edges of his broad body on your porch. He looked near-angelic.
You didn't say anything for a moment, only crossed your arms to keep yourself warm in the face of the wintry outdoors. The relief and anticipation at seeing him here paired with the disappointment and fatigue that it had taken so long warred with each other, creating a dangerous mix as you managed to say, "Are you...hungry? Or something?"
He swallowed, and your head swam with the desire to lay your tongue flat on his neck where his Adam's apple bobbed. "Starving," he groaned, and in one step he was not only in your house but he was all over you, and you were wearing nothing but your thin pajamas.
He'd apparently already taken off his gloves, and when his hand came up to cup your cheek your body registered the chill of his fingers with a shock, despite leaning into his touch all the same. He took a moment to look at you before touching his forehead to yours, pressing his lips to yours gently. You could practically taste the restraint on his mouth, and you wanted nothing more than to beg him for everything.
Something about your face must have given it away when he pulled back because he tapped a finger against your cheek. "You look like you need somethin'." He darted a look down to your legs. "Did you do what I asked?"
You weren't sure what made you lie, but you nodded nonetheless. "Uh-huh."
Even in the dark, he was so close to you that you could see his eyebrow lift in question. You didn't know how he knew, but why wouldn't he? This was Joel. "You didn't come," he concluded, and you ducked your head. "Why not, dollface? I thought I told you to."
The implication that his request was, in fact, a command, didn't slip your mind. Your cheeks burned when you forced yourself to look at him. "I couldn't. I don't know how."
"Sure you do," he whispered. "You did real good last night for me, remember?" His lips ghosted your jaw.
You shook your head. "I don't know how. I've never...made myself come."
When Joel looked at you, you could have sworn his lips twitched, betraying the desire in his movements. "I'm sorry, babydoll," he cooed, bringing his other hand to your cheek. He slotted his lips over yours once more, and it was all you could do not to sink to the floor right there. "We'll have to fix that, won't we?"
You nodded. "Show me? Please?"
Without another word he bent to brush his lips across your hairline—you could have sworn you felt him inhale with his nose in your hair—and murmured, "In the morning, yeah?"
You pulled away to complain but he only gave you a soft smile. It was then that you could see the exhaustion in his face, eyes downturned despite those creases winking at you in the darkness. "But—"
"Told Tommy you need a day off," he clarified. "'Cause you're...sore..." he splayed his hand on your back and tugged you near, voice low. "Ya know, from all that horseback ridin'."
An anticipatory chuckle bubbled from your chest. "No way he bought that," you said breathlessly as he nipped your jawline with his teeth (you were almost sure it was supposed to be a kiss). "I've been patrolling on horseback for years."
Joel shrugged and looked down at you with a smirk. "Who knows? Maybe I should have told him you were waiting for me to come home and make you fall apart on my fingers," he said dismissively, but his tone did nothing to stop your stomach from flipping.
"Oh," you said dumbly, cursing yourself inwardly for how easily you were rendered speechless in his presence. "He'll...he'll really let us take the day off?" Your mind swam with the possibilities of what you could do with an entire day.
He shook his head. "Not us, darlin'. Just you." Tracing the line of your jaw, his lips twisted into a dry smirk. "I'll have to go tomorrow. But," he whispered, squeezing a hand on your hip and cocking an eyebrow at the way your legs wobbled," I'd gladly go every morning all by myself if it meant you were in your bed all day, daydreamin' about me."
It was a heavier confession that you'd expected out of him, and you let out a breathy sigh. "In the morning then," you asked. You swallowed roughly in an attempt to push down the lump of pure need that had risen in your chest, but to no avail.
Joel nodded firmly. "Trust me," he hummed, "in the morning."
So you'd led him to your bed with no more discussion. It hadn't occurred to you that he might not stay the night; he'd come to your place after the meeting like he'd said, and it was the middle of the night. Why wouldn't he have stayed the night?
Despite everything in you fighting to stay awake, the second you returned to your mattress and pulled the covers up, your eyelids drooped. Joel stood at the end of the bed and shed his jacket slowly. "Sleep, doll," he said, his voice echoing in the otherwise silent room as he bent to kick off his boots. "I'll be here when you wake up."
Was he getting too close? Was he pushing the boundaries too far, too soon? Probably.
Selfishly, Joel didn't much care.
Sure enough—when morning came, when the dull winter sunlight crept into your house and draped the floor in soft yellow, you felt the dip of your mattress beside you and betrayed Joel's presence. He'd stayed. Like he said.
Quite the dedicated teacher, you thought to yourself with a satisfied warmth. You'd felt him climb into bed last night, but despite your every wish for him to press himself to your back and hold you tightly the whole night, he'd kept at least a foot of space between your bodies. Always close enough to touch, but never giving in.
You rolled over and swiped a hand over your face, a few stray strands falling into your eyes. The breath left your chest when you saw him there, eyes open and waiting for you. "Hi," you said, your voice rough with sleep. Again with the monosyllabic responses, you scolded yourself.
Joel hummed, the deep rumble of his voice reverberating through the mattress and into your body. "Looked so sweet like that, darlin'," he mused, his rough hands tucked under his head. He reached one of them toward you and tapped your bottom lip, plump with sheep, with two of his fingertips. "Didn't wanna wake you up."
"You didn't." You weren't sure what made you do it, but you moved closer, shifting your entire body until your nose almost brushed his. Your eyes flitted up to look at the way his graying hair laid messily around the crown of his head, haircuts neglected for who knew how long. "Can we...I want to start now," you mumbled.
His jaw ticked, and he looked like he was swallowing down a grin. "Look at you," he cooed, "so eager. Aren't you hungry, doll?"
You bit your lip and you could have sworn you saw his eyes widen. "Starving," you fumbled over the word, imitating his response to you the night before on your porch.
Joel let go of a chuckle and his eyes danced with mirth. "Always turnin' my words back on me, aren't ya?" When you nodded sheepishly, he slid his hand around to cup the back of your head and he pulled you in, connecting his lips with yours. "Okay, pretty girl," he said. "We'll start. Since you asked so nicely."
His lips were chapped from the cold weather but they were still soft as he pressed them to yours, moving lazily as the two of you blinked away the last clutches of sleep. "Always so soft, these lips," he murmured, and then his hand was moving from your neck to your chest. "Everyone's different, yeah? There's these spots on everyone's body," he said, absentmindedly drawing swirls along the expanse of your chest, making you shiver. "Let's call them...pleasure points."
"Pleasure points," you repeated breathlessly, your stomach fluttering as he rolled a nipple between his thumb and forefinger. "Is that—"
He grinned with a nod. "Think I just found one of 'em, doll." He rolled you onto your back and bent his head down, his breath fanning over your chest and warming you through your thin pajama shirt. "This is how we get you all ready for me, when the time comes."
You nodded quietly and let out a shaky sigh as his hands wandered. He pressed a kiss to your forehead and you practically preened at the feeling of his lips against your skin while his hands squeezed and caressed your breasts, moving over your stomach. "Joel—"
He paused, hand hovering over the hem of your shirt. "What, babygirl?"
You couldn't help the whine that fought its way out of your throat. "Please," you whimpered, squeezing your eyes shut at the pressure that writhed in your core.
Joel's fingers lifted the hem of your shirt, his mouth widening in a grin at the way that your stomach rose and fell in spattered pants. "Come on, darlin'," he crooned, "open those pretty eyes for me. Gotta see you, doll."
It was all you could do not to take his hand in your own and shove it to your core where you needed him desperately, but you did as he asked.
"That's it, baby," he breathed, good girl."
You'd become familiar with the way your stomach clenched at his use of pet names, but this was new. You had done well for him. You wanted to stay that way. "Will you touch me please? I need—"
"So eager," he murmured, leaning in with his lips to your earlobe. "Lemme take my time with you, dollface." And then his lips were wrapping to the soft part of your ear, his teeth grazing at your skin. Paired with this sensation and the heady feeling of his hand on your waistband, fumbling to push his hand beneath it, you arched your back and released a series of high-pitched whines.
"JoelJoelJoelpleasepleaseplease," you were overcome with the pure, unbridled need that was speeding through your body like a tidal wave on a summer day.
"Alright, darlin', alright," he acquiesced, pushing his hand into your waistband and pulling it down over your hips. You didn't even have the mind to be shy about being laid bare to him this way; you just needed him to touch you.
Before you could beg him again, he had his fingertip on your core, sliding it gently through your slick heat. "Oh, baby," he groaned, rutting his hips against your side. His bulge pressed into your hip and you flexed your fingers to reach for it. "M'never gettin' used to how wet you are for me," his voice shook.
One finger became two, and then his fingertips were rubbing sweet circles to your sensitive bud, drawing near pornographic moans to tumble past your lips. "Can I touch you, please?" you begged, your hand fisting your bedsheets. "Wanna touch you, Joel, please."
He hummed against your ear as he swiped another finger against your bud and lifted your hand to his lips. "Sure thing, doll," he said, and placed it in his hair. Your fingers instinctually carded through the coarse strands, and you blushed when his eyes fluttered closed. "Hold on tight if you need to, pretty girl," he grinned, and lemme know if it's too much."
You were going to ask if what was too much, but then he dipped his finger further down your core, notching it at the small opening. You hadn't even thought this far ahead, that things would eventually lead here. Something pulsed and you whined, tugging his hair in your hand.
"Look at you, so ready for me," he murmured against your neck. His tongue swept out to lick a small stripe along the sensitive skin there and when you let out a stuttering breath he chuckled. "You are ready for me, aren't ya, pretty girl?"
You couldn't nod fast enough. "Please," you choked out, and then he was pressing his finger inside you.
It was a small intrusion, but overwhelming all the same. In all your years, you'd never had the thought that it could feel this good to have him close to you like this. He was only as far as the first knuckle, but with the way that his bulge was nudging your hips, he wanted much more. "Good girl," he breathed, "such a good girl, openin' your legs like this."
"Wanna touch you," you whimpered again, vision blurring with the desperation that coursed through your veins. "Please, Joel, let me touch you."
He kissed you, but you could hardly focus enough to move your lips against his. "Already touchin' me," he said. "You want more?"
"Yes," you nodded feverishly, releasing your hand from his hair. "I wanna..." you looked down at his bulge and licked your lips.
Joel's eyes were wide as he whispered, "For fuck's sake, darlin', when you're cryin' about it..." he swiped a thumb across your cheeks, collecting a teardrop you hadn't even known was there. "How could I say no?"
Thankyouthankyouthankyou were the only words in your mind, a jumbled mess as you reached for him. Your finger traced his length and before you knew it, you were reaching inside his boxers to release it from its constraints. "Holy fuck," you whined, bucking your hips into his hand as you saw just how big he was, long and thick and heavy in your hand. "Need it," you found yourself whispering. "Need you."
It was all you could do before he pushed his finger further, then out, and then in, just enough to throw you closer to that addicting edge of ecstasy. Once again, you found yourself enveloped in the thick pressure of pure desire in his arms.
He pressed the pad of his thumb to your bud and swirled circles in your heat, his lips connecting to your ear once more. "Alright, baby. Alright, baby," he practically chanted in a low tone, nibbling on your lobe just hard enough to pinch the skin. "C'mon now, squeeze my finger like that, that's it," he groaned, drawing out the final two syllables, "good girl."
With his hand in the crux of your legs and his mouth connected to your ear, whispering the filthiest things you'd ever heard in your sheltered life, you threw your head back into the pillow and curled your legs toward him, your hand squeezing his cock tightly as you continued your strokes.
The sounds that erupted from your throat as you burst in a state of pure pleasure were the most pitiful (and yet electrifying) noises you'd ever heard yourself make, and you couldn't help but continue rolling your hips into his hands, chasing the feeling until it became more intense and your legs began to twitch again. "Joel," you mewled, voice breaking, "I need you."
A teasing chuckle sounded, and your cheeks warmed as he removed his hand from your slick. "So much you don't know, dollface," he crooned, tracing his index down the line of your nose. He pushed another, shining with your release, into your mouth. The sweetness nearly made you fall apart again. "Don't know if you're ready for that."
Your body was on fire, nearly throbbing with the insatiable need to be wrapped in his arms, with his hands everywhere, his lips anywhere. Your hand had been moving on his shaft, but his hips stuttered with your next words. "I am," you insisted, "I need you, please. I wanna feel you everywhere."
Joel's pupils went wide and he shuddered out a breath, mumbling a string of curses with his eyes shut. He thrusted his hips into your hand and then your skin was sticky and warm with his own release, some of it landing on your stomach where you lay beside him.
"Shit," he groaned with a rueful smirk. "Maybe I'm not ready for that yet." His breath fanned deliciously over your skin as he continued. "Can't hardly last long enough with the thought of stretching you out like that, baby."
You grinned, and you didn't mind the fact that he could definitely see the flush in your cheeks. "No?"
He shook his head. "Fuck no. I don't wanna think about how quickly I'll come if I were to be inside that pretty pussy yet," he said with a short and gentle tap to your mound. When your hips arched off the mattress and you whined at the sensitivity, he cooed apologetically.
"Isn't that a good thing?" you frowned slightly. "I thought I was making you feel good."
"Makin' me feel too good," he mused, bringing his hand up to hold your face toward him once more. He winked. "Can't have me comin' before you do, sweet girl. Not very gentlemanly of me."
You couldn't help the pang of doubt that clouded your face, and it must have been obvious, because then he was cupping the back of your head and pulling you to his chest. Humming into your neck, he smirked. "Besides, I want to be able to take my sweet time with you. To see you squirmin' beneath me like you do, baby? S'enough to make the pope leave the goddamn church."
tysm for reading, i can't believe you guys convinced me to write MORE filth for these two. u made it to the end, lemme know what you thought!
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velvetures · 9 months
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A/N: Yeah... I don't know about this. I'll probably take it down since I'm unsure if it's got enough of a consistent vibe. Let me know if it's actually something you enjoy since I don't write angst or hurt/comfort often. I ALWAYS WRITE HAPPY ENDINGS THO. That's a damn promise. Summary: You've given Ghost a title he hates, and takes it out on you. The situation goes too far, and you're both left trying to figure it out. Reader is nicknamed "Brass" since she's a long-distance shooter/sniper. T/W: angst, cursing, Ghost being an emotionally unstable human, yelling, the reader having a breakdown, smidge of not eating, smidge of not drinking anything, comfort, feelings, female reader, not proofread.
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When you joined the task force, things didn’t exactly go as smoothly as you had hoped it would. Training sessions usually ended up with you either getting your ass beat or nearly surviving a full-on embarrassment by the skin of your teeth just to be told that you still weren’t in good enough shape to keep up with them in the field. Surely being a woman didn’t excuse you from being in shape for the kind of work Laswell and Price had brought you in for, but damn if it wasn’t difficult to try and have a one-on-one fight with someone like Soap or Ghost without the benefit you would typically have in a real-world battle situation. The reality that all of the men in the squad were literally the best of the best aside, there could be just barely enough room for you to compete on the same level when it came to sheer physical strength. While that wasn’t your specialty anyway, the Captain made it clear you needed to prove you could handle your own against serious physical fights without assistance. After nearly five weeks of having one of your squad mates slam you on your ass one too many times in the training hall, you finally were able to prove to Price that you could go out in the field and he didn’t have to extend any extra worries for your ability to survive.
Logistically as a sniper, it meant you frequently held a much more distant role in missions. By watching from a scope you could ensure that infiltrations, covert ops, and other hush-hush kinds of operations that typically the 141 wouldn’t have the luxury of. Being the skilled marksman you were, it made sense to take advantage of your talents and also extend you a job that progressed past what you’d experienced in your “standard” military career and multiple tours overseas. However, that meant communications were essentially the backbone of your usefulness aside from your rifle. Next to nothing else, your daily and mission-based work almost exclusively went through Lieutenant Ghost. Which… often proved to be the largest obstacle that you faced aside from making sure that your scope didn’t get bumped off sight the -often- rough flights and drives to insertion points.
The Lieutenant was particularly mean… he certainly didn’t give a single thought to if anyone thought that he was a little too harsh of a personality to swallow. That went for everything you came to learn about Ghost. From his lack of willingness to speak unless required of him, to his unique ability of appearing and disappearing from anywhere without the slightest sound or hint of where he’d come from or gone to. Trained as a distance marksman, even you were impressed that such a massive man could move around like smoke on water. That and his physical appearance; good god above. Surely a man like Ghost had never graced the face of the Earth before, else he’d have been just as mythical in his legendary life and would’ve been known by thousands of people. He stood towering over just about everyone, in whatever room he was in, and compared to your own height it was downright laughable the difference between the two of you as operators.
The one thing that made the biggest impression on you after meeting the Lieutenant was his voice and how he spoke. That thick accent always sounded rough and a little gritty. His deep timbre gave such a commanding authority that if given the choice between getting yelled at by Captain Price or Ghost… there was no choice you’d sit for hours listening to Price threaten you over Ghost. He just sounded so scary and attractive all at the same time. Unsurprisingly, it developed into a subconscious dynamic where you saw Ghost as such a superior officer -and human- that no matter how much you liked to daydream about Ghost in less-than-professional situations… You gave him the utmost respect at all times. Easiest of all to recognize was that from day one, you had never addressed Ghost to his face as anything other than ‘sir’. Not even his rank gave enough nuance to his character and presence, so for you, Ghost was inextricably attached to the name.
Ghost however… didn’t like it.
Such a simple address actually made Ghost grit his teeth beneath the shield of his mask. When he heard you call him that, he automatically related it to how he had called General Shepherd ‘sir’ as a subtle sign of mockery and defiance. Thinking about that made him more than necessarily angry and confused, but he couldn’t really accuse you of having ever been given much of a reason to detest him. Therefore, he had to come to the conclusion that you were doing it out of some kind of respect that a drill sergeant or boot camp instructor had bashed into your brain so hard that it stuck permanently. Not surprising since you were much different from the rest of the task force. Yet he had to revise that after the first six months of you being with them permanently. You had gotten settled in. Enough so that you called the Captain, ‘Cap’… Soap, ‘Johnny’… and Garrick, ‘Gaz’ like everyone else did. Exceptionalities only appeared when it came time for you to be around him or have any sort of interaction that wasn’t the occasional silent nod of acknowledgment when walking past each other in the hallways.
He honestly tried to ignore it and you altogether for that matter in an attempt to keep his bitter anger at a minimum. Seeing such a small and fucking happy woman always lingering around somewhere in the corners of his sight couldn’t be anything but a distraction waiting to happen. A bad habit that he didn’t have the mental capacity or emotional willingness to take on. Fuck… he already had to worry about the 141 as a whole, to begin with. Now you on top of that? It was more responsibility than he’d signed up for initially. Hearing you call him ‘sir’ day in and day out began to take its toll on his self-control. Ghost needed to either find out why you were hellbent on calling him that, or at least be enough of a bastard to you to be reassured that you did it because you wanted a polite way to tell him to shove it up his ass sideways.
The Lieutenant had been being nothing short of a prick in the last few months.
He was making paperwork back at HQ a nightmare that couldn’t be solved alternatively through someone like Gaz or Soap who often didn’t mind playing the part of the unbiased third party. Refusing to sign things when you stopped by his office, outright ignoring your necessary questions, and stonewalling you at every single stop along the way just to yield at the last moment and do everything you’d been asking for so the both of you wouldn’t face heat from any higher-ups. That alone was enough for you to consider talking to Soap privately since he knew Ghost the best… but you’d kept putting it off hoping that it was just a passing phase of shitty attitude.
Your patience and emotional strength fell through the floor after attempting for the third time in a week after something so fucking simple as trying to get his approval and official signature on a post-mission report Price had delegated to you after being called to Washington D.C. for a meeting. It wasn’t a major task, but knowing that the Captain had given you the responsibility first over anyone else made you want to impress him and take care of business without incident. God forbid you do something as simple as ask Ghost to pick up a pen and scribble his name at the bottom of a page so that you could send it on through the higher-up channels. It resulted in the Lieutenant straight-up yelling at you in the middle of the hallway outside his office when he’d found you standing there patiently waiting for him to show up. He wasn’t threatening physically, but it cut much deeper into your pride and feelings than it should have.
With every word that dripped venomously out of his masked mouth, you lost a little extra peace of mind on having such an untouchable and unshakably good opinion of Ghost for so long. This moment of undeserved verbal punishment was enough to make the corners of your eyes burn with inner disgrace, self-doubt, and plain old sadness which motivated you to get the hell out of there before the Lieutenant saw you cry. When you turned your back and walked away right in the middle of his berating for you being “too fucking annoying to tolerate”, your only destination was your personal quarters on the other end of the building where a lock on the door could shut out the entire base for as long as you saw fit. Upon the first estimation, it would be after Captain Price returned so that you could have at least one single chance at not getting a second punishment or dismissal from the squad. The sound of your door slamming shut and your back sliding down against it on your way down to the floor silenced the entire room around you, leaving just enough room for the papers clenched to your chest to flutter onto the ground and your weak cries to sounds amplified.
It was hours before you could drag yourself off the floor and into bed, too tired and wanting to fall back on the trained and instinctual desire to hide away somewhere isolated and not move for hours on end. Being a long-distance marksman gave you the talent of patience insurmountable to the average person, allowing days to pass by without you needing to do more than go to the bathroom before coming right back to a motionless position. That’s what you wanted tonight. You needed to focus all of your energy into your brain alone and use it to sort through the hurt burning through your eyes and throat, and the questioning that gave such a sickening feeling a chance root in your stomach. Questions of if it had been foolish to trust Ghost as much as you did the others, knowing how you’d been warned that he would be difficult to work with. Hoping you hadn’t been truly so ignorant of judging behavior to think that the Lieutenant was something much greater than his behavior had been not only today but for the past months.
The next two days were spent laying near motionless… not hungry or thirsty.
Just thinking, sleeping, and staring at the wall across from your bed.
A solid knock on your door was the first human sound that hadn’t been made by you in over forty-eight hours. You’d not looked at your phone or any communications since locking yourself inside, and there was a good chance someone from the squad had come searching for you after such a long period without seeing or hearing from you. When you refused to answer right away, another harder knock banged on the door twice and rattled the steel in its doorframe. Impatient. Testy. Quite familiar with everything you’ve been through lately. Recognizing the Lieutenant was the one outside made your gut churn all over again. Questioning whether to get up or not wasn’t hard. Laying perfectly still in bed, you waited. If you were being honest though, it’d been a long time since you’d spent so long restricting yourself from basic needs for the purpose of acting like a living phantom. Close to three years since any sniper position had left you utterly abandoned without resources. Only this time it was self-induced and nothing short of a trauma response you wanted to hide away from. Truthfully you couldn’t tell if walking to the door was an easy feat or not. After not drinking anything, using the bathroom wasn’t necessary and the last time you’d stood up didn’t cross your memory clearly.
Ghost slammed his fist against the door again one last time. But he didn’t wait long enough for you to answer before rattling the handle to the door with a heavy sigh that was audible through the cracks separating you. Metal on metal gritted softly and moved the door handle a bit further. Recognizing that as nothing short of Ghost picking the lock to your quarters without the slightest care of how he’d be breaking multiple stipulations laid out for them living in HQ. Either your physical or mental state kept you from giving a damn when the handle gave way fully, leaving a bright fluorescence light flooding in from the hallway into your pitch-black room. It made your eyes water and the urge to turn your head away was strong enough to budge your head into the blankets and pillow surrounding. Heavy boots made the paperwork scattered on the floor crunch softly and the sound of his deep breaths gave away his current state of frustration. Clearly not appreciating being locked out of a room that he had no fucking business being in. A long pause led to shuffling around, and the sound of your desk chair creaking under his weight.
“Gonna say somethin’?” He sounded no less irritated than the last time you’d spoken.
It made your throat burn to even think you’d allowed his to get in your head so deeply just to utterly rip every last bit of security and respect away from you for no damn reason. Your silence made quite the statement, even if the actual task of speaking hadn’t been a totally voluntary one. You’d not moved your jaw in days at this point.
“You’ve missed five drill sessions, two mandatory meetings, and one phone from General Shepherd.”
Listing off your offenses hardly bothered you. The consequences of this had been fully accepted days ago, and Ghost would have to do a lot more to get you up from this bed. You’d trained for hell, and no matter how badly Ghost had ruined your almost loving and patient view of him there weren’t enough men on the planet to make you get up voluntarily. Drastic… yes. Satisfying to your own pride… undoubtedly. When you didn’t even let out a single breath loud enough for Ghost to hear instead of that instant apology or willingness to appease him… please him even, with that little quip of ‘sir’ ready on your tongue, the Lieutenant was up out of that chair so quickly you heard it roll into the wall behind him hard enough to thud against the drywall.
“Goddamn it Brass, I demand a fuckin’ answer!” His loud bark caught your attention, but the feeling of your blankets being ripped off your body was a far more startling sensation.
Baring you to the cold air of the room, all your body managed was to raise chills on your skin in a feeble attempt to keep you warm or alert you to seek out that heat again. Tension exploded into shocked silence when Ghost didn’t utter more than a sharp inhale after getting one, shadowed glimpse of your body totally frozen on your stomach. You knew it couldn’t look great. Snipers could come back looking like skeletons sometimes after a long mission if they were given the orders to stay put. You’d not been laying nearly long enough for that to be the case, but dehydration was certainly a symptom you were ignoring quite easily, as well as the possibility of some minor pressure ulcers that would linger for a few weeks if you didn’t move soon. Ghost wasn’t as familiar with the sight of how you felt internally. Snipers weren’t commonly used or in collaboration with Task Force 141. You’d been their first real look at how the inner workings moved or didn’t, and much of your personal way of doing things had dispelled or blown away any misguided assumptions they’d made about your skills early on. Viewing a sniper after days of doing literally nothing, of her own free will…? That wasn’t healthy or accepted in general military companies. Lucky Ghost got the front-row seat though.
When you heard his movement next to you, weight pressed down the mattress at your side in the shape of his hands, and a low sigh registered.
“Brass…” Failing to even say something, you wondered if your own assessment of yourself wasn’t accurate. “It’s been five days.” His faltered tone was truthful, and it destroyed your semblance of time that had been misled by the absence of sunlight coming in through your room.
You thought about trying to say something, resolve falling flat when swallowing felt difficult. A gloved hand rested against your thigh and Ghost almost growled again, sounding a lot more like he was resisting the urge to squeeze you hard. Only his fingers traced along your hip and over the curve in your waist with a tense and heavy swallow. He was being gentle beyond your concept of his depth of emotion and understanding. Nearly loving as he paused over your ribcage with another pinched sort of sound. Staying like that for what felt like hours, you struggled to keep yourself awake. It had been a struggle to move your tongue in your mouth, testing what mobility you’d lost in the short term. Only Ghost wasn’t leaving like you expected, and suddenly his voice returned it its normal stature.
“This’s Ghost. Get a bay ready now, I’m bringin’ someone in.” The reverb of his voice crackled in a radio you knew hooked to his vest. A backup short-range alternative in the case that SAT couldn’t be established or wasn’t clear enough to rely on in the field. Apparently, he used it to keep in contact with someone on base. Or multiple people for all you knew.
“Copy Ghost.” A static voice could be heard and quickly the room was pitched back into a silence you wanted to remain in, but Ghost was adamant to keep infracting alone with a whole list of other rules that, for whatever reason, just didn’t fucking matter or apply to him.
His other hand searched around the dark until he found your face resting amongst the fabric of your bed, curling his hand around your head and meticulously lifting you so very slowly away from the bed with his other arm steadying your legs that had also been taken up off the mattress. You’d never touched Ghost once in all the time you’d known him. Understanding that with his sour attitude, there couldn’t be a single chance in Hell that touching him was an acceptable action. Whereas with Soap, Gaz, and even on occasion Price: hugs, handshakes, shoves, and other physical touches were common, Ghost totally ignored all human contact. Maybe Hell had frozen over outside of your quarters for your weak and still motionless body to be lifted up against the Lieutenant’s chest and carried preciously outside of your room into the burning light of HQ. His chest heaved deep and quickly against you. Both hands curled around you and flexed tighter each time you were able to hear another set of shoes approaching closer to you. Possessive like a soldier. Silent like a Ghost. Determined.
He takes you straight to the medical hall where three nurses and two of the on-shift doctors are fast to respond to your condition. Only Ghost refuses to let them take you away from him for any reason. Stoically stonewalling them just like he habitually did to you as they begged him to lay you down on a transport bed so they could take you back to a room for assessment. The Lieutenant took you there himself, with the group of nurses and doctors hot on his heels and surrounding your bed once Ghost had you settled down inside a private room.
The whole place smells sterile and like alcohol. It’s not the first time you’ve been here, but these are far different circumstances. You’re still too sensitive to open your eyes, but hands are all over your body, gloves fingers touching around the sore places on weight-bearing points on your body, pricks in your fingertips, and a needle poke to the back of your hand. It’s overstimulating, to say the least, and you’re worried they’re going to think you’ve tried to starve yourself to death or decided that living altogether wasn’t worth it and simply wasting away into your bed was the solution. Right away, one of the voices of the medical professionals breaks that worry in your mind by calling for some of the tests to be staggered, needing time between them for nothing other than your own benefit.
“Treat this no differently than prolonged active reconnaissance,” The female voice states softly. “Being on-the-gun for this long is detrimental to all senses, and she’s going to need a while to wake up in a meaningful way.” She added, voice coming clearer the closer she got to your head.
“You’ve been working very hard, I suspect. Maybe not in the field… but you’re one tough lady.” She commented to you quite personally, her hand falling to your shoulders. “We’re going to get you plenty of fluids and start you on a vitamin drip to get everything running as it should again. You’ve also got some slight bedsores, but as long as we take care of them now, you’ll be right as rain soon, sniper.”
Tests were run, treatments began, and nurse after nurse was brought in with both doctors running rotations in and out of your room for the rest of the night. All of them were under the hard watch of Ghost who’d not moved from his position sitting in the corner of your room where he could see not only you but anyone approaching the door. He’d been very quiet throughout the process, watching and waiting for someone to give him some news about your condition with actual certainty. Stewing over the guilt he felt knowing damn well he was the reason you’d shut down so far and were still unable -or unwilling- to come out of it yet. You’d been nothing but the perfect little woman, doing her job with skill and grace, making everyone around you happier just with one glance in your direction. But fuck, he couldn’t stand seeing someone do the callous profession of killing people with one single squeeze of her finger and still have so much innocent and emotional humanity inside such a small body. Ghost couldn’t wrap his mind around it. So instead of trying to do the right thing and figure it out, he did what a man so out of touch with empathy did: Try to snuff it out.
You threatened him whether you or he realized it in the beginning.
But now he could see it with that crystal fucking clear hindsight. How monstrous he was for punishing you with no foundation other than his own selfish fear of seeing a dynamic he didn’t know was possibly wrapped up inside of you. Sweet and little you, never saying anything to him other than a ‘yes sir’ or ‘no sir’. Goddamnit Ghost knew he’d nearly killed you in a way. Seeing days of neglect in your sallow expression, darkened under eyes, and weakened body was more than even his cold heart could take all at one time. Wasting away for someone as useless as himself, all because he’d never given you enough credit for finding something worth liking in him where no one else had. Screaming at you. Cursing your existence. Right in your face, while he’d been too big of a pussy to even take off his own mask he hid behind every day as he utterly destroyed your meaningful position and life working alongside of his and his squad. Owing you his life wouldn’t nearly cover his offenses. Laughably, Ghost admitted his own life or death couldn’t measure up to yours. So instead of saying any kind of bullshit apology, he sat in the corner of your room and denied himself sleep, food, and water because there wasn’t anything else he could do until you’d been considered healthy and strong again.
Almost one week to the day you had been signed off for return to duty with zero restrictions. Your physical and mental evaluations came back clean, and with both Price and Ghost signing off on the doctor’s orders, you returned to your quarters where you expected to see your room exactly as you’d left it before Ghost brought you into the medical wing. Only nothing was as you’d left it. All the paperwork left on the floor was gone, as well as the other documents that had been left on your desk that still needed finishing. All of it was gone. Your bed and all of the bedclothes you’d been taken from were also missing. Replaced with totally brand new bedding in dark hues of dark green and navy blue with a decidedly feminine pattern on the quilt. Items you didn’t own. Or have any idea where they came from. Even the smell of stale air was traded for a woody, and familiar smell that wasn’t of a candle, or room spray; It was from a person. The person who sat in the corner of your room in your desk chair with his massive arms crossed over his chest and dark eyes staring at you through the painted visage of a skull gracing a black compression mask.
“Sir,” You greet hoarsely, still working through some of the non-significant parts of your recovery that lingered. Ghost stood from his seat and met you halfway across your room with a silent nod, his hand reaching out and motioning for you to step closer to him. Warily but complicit, you make the few steps forward and watch his hand turn to slide against your jaw and stay there firmly. “I expected you to be at drill.” You say with a tinge of surprise at the touch of his bare hand resting against your cheek.
“Should be,” He replied flatly. “But I’m not.” You nod a little, biting your tongue when his fingertip rubs over the curve of your ear. His eyes were soft and his unarmored physique was highlighted by the shadows made by the lamp on your side table. He’s inspecting you, you know as much. Clear by his thumb pressing over your pulse point and the minute exactly that he waits before speaking again.
“Do you like the color green?” His question knocks you off guard and his eyes slide over the quilt laying neatly over your bed. You were quick to answer honestly out of mere habit.
“Yes, sir.”
His hand stiffens against your cheek, and Ghost takes another step closer. His boots graze the tips of yours and his chin is nearly tucked against his chest to look down at you properly. You’re breathing a little harder, anticipating another break of his patience and an onslaught of screaming all directed at your apparent mistakes made right in front of his face. Judgments you’d still be unable to solve no matter how much you thought about it or what you did to try and find a solution of healthy -or not- motives. Ghost doesn’t yell though. He actually lowers his face down to yours, eyes locked right on you and an intensity burning there.
“Why do you call me that?” His low growl made you shiver, especially when his hand dropped lower to your throat. Now squeezing, but holding your gaze steady on him, reminding you of his strength. The power over you he’d always held, and given you the instant to call him ‘sir’ in the first place. Everything about Ghost was overwhelming, and you’d always been one wave away from drowning under him.
“You deserve the honor…” You answer, certain. Even if he’d broken your spirit and came back in the aftermath with questions you still believed to be much too complex for a single-sentence answer. Hopefully, he understood a little bit better but the way you leaned against his hand, letting him actually feel the pressure of your throat pressing into his palm. Literally offering your trust in him over again, testing the Lieutenant and watching as his eyes widened. His other hand came up to your face, counteracting the pressure you’d applied to keep your breath and blood flow uninterrupted. His face is still only inches away from yours but unflinching at the close contact.
“Brass,” He murmured, masked face teasing closer with his own lack of control. “I’m not what you think I am.” Your chest tightens with his words, soaked in desperation that heats your lips and cheeks.
“What’s that, sir?” You question, earning another flinch of his fingers against your skin.
“Safe… Trustworthy… Honorable.” He replies, getting even closer. The smooth material ghosted over your lips, and his breathing fanning over you wetly through the damp material. You sigh, feeling lightheaded. Weak in his hands, confused yet happy to have your life held in the palms of his hands. Confused about where his mistrust comes from, but gaining perspective every time he flinches when you address him in the way you always believed he’d feel the most revered and… loved.
“You’re wrong,” You challenge, hands moving from your sides to run up the thin shirt covering his chest. “You’re a man of fear. One that death shakes at the mention of. Even looking at you through my scope a mile away is enough to remind me you’re capable of inhuman things…” Your voice lowers, hearing thoughts straight from your soul escaping without filter from your brain. “Yet you’re human. So much more than anyone sees. Because it’s not evil that keeps you going. It’s the fear and hatred of losing anything that means something to you.” Your hand rests over his chest, hearing his heart thundering against his ribs.
“You’re not a monster, you are terrified of losing everything. That is why I call you ‘sir’, is because you’re a man unlike any other, Ghost.”
Hearing your own voice say his name like that feels so foreign. Coming off your tongue with the letters not fitting together in a way that you’d experienced. But Ghost… he reacts differently. His hands tightened around you and he hugged you against his chest tightly. His chest heaves up and down and the thunder of his heartbeat impossibly quickens until your left ear can’t hear anything but the repetitive thrum of blood coursing through his body. Heavy arms snake around you, one around your head to secure it to him and the other clinging to your waist with his hand fisting into your shirt until it’s skin-tight on your stomach. The Lieutenant practically shakes against you, using your much smaller frame to steady himself.
Yet he’s dropping to one knee on the ground, bringing you down with him until he’s nearly cradling you and softly rocking your weight back and forth. Soothing himself in much the same way a child would after scraping their knee on the sidewalk and the tears have begun to dry up. God, it made the massive man feel so weak; much like you did after he’d yelled at you a week ago. Both of you kneeled on the floor now with all of your wounds opened up to each other and had silently found a calm within the eye of a destructive storm that had been raging against the pair of you while everyone on the outside had been simply looking on with bated breath to see how the ending would play out.
“Brass - I…” Ghost’s voice choked up again, his arms tightening around you. “God, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t ignore you anymore… I’m losing my mind.”
You lean into his chest harder, arms struggling to reach all the way around his wide back in an attempt to support him a little bit. You understood through the way he was grabbing at anything on you he could desperately. So you did all you could and rubbed your hand up and down his back quietly allowing him the time to work through his thoughts. Both of you had been hurt by this, and while the Lieutenant’s form of apology came in the way he’d ushered you for help when you needed it most and unquestionably been the reason behind the way your quarters looked. Now it was you, cradling a man who’d never shown a single crack in his armor, feeling the weight of so many emotional wounds that he was practically bleeding out with pain and palpable regret.
“You don’t have to…” You whisper, resting your forehead against his.
Ghost just nods his head, panting heavily and giving a low sort of whine. “I’m so sorry…”
You smile sadly. “I’m sorry too.”
His eyes soften more, blinking away at wetness brimming at his waterline. “Say it again… please. I need to hear it. God, please.”
“It’s okay…” Your hands cradle his cheeks, feeling the sharp lines and hard muscles. “I’m right here, Ghost. We’re going to do this over again… Together, Ghost.”
Nodding weakly, he meets your gaze as you say his name again. Reveling in it. “Together… together, with you.”
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