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princessbiteme0o0 · 2 days

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Jealousy~ (JSchitlin x Reader)

The current request I’m working on is kinda dark and I need a break from it for a moment so enjoy this smut with almost no plot.

Also, a side note- whether or not Schlatt is in a relationship is none of our business. If he is then I’m inexplicably happy for him, if not, then that’s (probably) his choice. As fans, I feel like we should just be happy for him, rather than push him towards something he doesn’t want or try to pressure him for information that doesn’t belong to us. ALSO, this isn’t meant to offend anyone, but Schlatt deserves all the privacy he wants. Don’t forget that creators are people too :)

Love you guys 🩵🩵

WARNINGS: Jealousy (obviously), mostly smut, porn with very little plot, fingering, ownership kink, let me know if I need to add more :)

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She hated parties; hated them.

He knew this and he was well aware of why. With her history, it’s understandable why she hated being surrounded by drunk men. He knew she was beautiful and he knew that she had to deal with men (and women) flirting with her all of the time. He also knows that he has no right to be jealous, but currently that didn’t matter to him. His eyes were locked on Ted, who despite him only being six or seven inches taller than her, seemed to tower over her.

She awkwardly smiled when Ted leaned against the wall in front of her, grinning like a Cheshire Cat as he stared down at her. She was internally questioning why she agreed to come; she should’ve known that if her and Schlatt got separated that she’d have men approaching her. Her mind is drawn from her thoughts and frustrations at her best friend as Ted speaks.

“Hi there, Honey.” He hums, low voice melting the tension between them. It was her turn to speak and she struggled to decide whether to flirt back or not.

“Hi, Ted.” She whispers softly, a warm blush spreading across her cheeks. As Schlatt stood back and watched this interaction, he felt a jealous rage swelling in his chest. Before he knew what he was doing, his feet directed him in their direction.

“You look absolutely adorable in that pretty little skirt.” He drunkenly slurred and she could smell the alcohol rolling off of him. A warm blush warmed her cheeks, making Ted chuckle softly.

“Thanks…” She trailed off, a nervous insecurity swelling her chest. Ted moved just the slightest bit closer and she could feel the warmth rolling off of his body.

“Why so shy, (Y/N)?” His voice is low and gravelly as he speaks and she furrows her brows when she looks up at him.

“You know I’m not a big talker, Ted.” She mumbles softly, bowing her head slightly. His fingers snaked their way under her chin and tilted her head up to make her look at him.

“I bet I could make you one-“ His words are cut off when Schlatt clears his throat beside them and slips an arm around her waist, pulling her away from Ted. Ted opens his mouth to say something, but shuts it as soon as he sees the glint in Schlatt’s eyes. Grumbling under his breath, Ted rolled his eyes and glared at Schlatt.

“Why don’t you go get a drink, Toots? I need to talk to Teddy Boy.” He smiled down at her and as a soft blush spread across her cheeks. Nodding quickly, Schlatt grinned as he watched her scurry off towards the kitchen. Turning back to face Ted, he raises a brow. Ted stares right back at him, glare boring into him. “What in the hell is wrong with you, Ted?”

“What?” Ted snapped in return, shifting on his feet as he moved to rest his back fully against the wall.

“You know how I feel about her.”

“Well you better tell her. If you don’t take her, I will.” Ted grumbled drunkenly, pushing off of the wall. Schlatt had to fight every urge to launch himself at Ted, instead he focused his attention on her. His eyes found her cute little figure, head down and cheeks pink as she grabbed a beer for him through the crowd of people. Before he could even think about it, his feet were guiding him towards her. Snaking his right arm around her, she tensed for a moment.

“Easy there, Pumpkin, it’s just me.” He whispered to her and she audibly breathed out a warm sigh, looking up at him and smiling softly. His eyes ran over her face for a moment before he spoke again. “Can I talk to you upstairs?”

“Sure.” She hums, eyes soft and sweet; that was one of his favorite things about her- if he stared into her eyes, he could see into her soul. Her kindness and subtle purity making a warmth flood his gut every time he looked at her. He gently takes his hand in hers and guides her through the crowd and up the stairs. Once the two of them made it upstairs, he leads her into a room and leans his back against the door after he shuts it.

“Jay…?” She whispered and the way her voice sounded nearly made him snap right then and there, biting back a growl. He slowly took steps towards her, fully expecting her to walk backwards as she does with everyone else, but she just stood there and watched him. He only stopped when he could feel the warmth of her body radiating through the tiny gap between them. Lifting his hand, he slowly and gently ran his fingers over her collarbone.

“So fucking sweet, like candy…” He mumbled as his fingertips still carefully explored her skin, ghosting up the side of her neck. “So pure, like a pretty little angel…”

“Jay, I-“ She whispers out, but the words die on her tongue as his thumb runs across her lower lip.

“Open.” He stated simply, watching her mouth as her lips part and he slips his thumb into her mouth, watching the way her pretty eyes widen in surprise.

“Suck.” And she instantly did as he said, pulling a growl from deep within his chest.

“And oh God, you’re so damn obedient.” She stared up at him, shuffling in place to press her thighs together in hopes of relieving the ache that was spreading through her abdomen and leaking between her legs. Pulling his thumb from her mouth, he’s surprised to hear her whine softly. “Shh, shh.” He gently shushes her while his hand moved to the back of her scalp, tangling his hand in her hair.

“Please, Jay… Please.” She chokes out, their faces a few millimeters apart. Leaning forward, he brushed his lips against hers as he whispers.

“My sweet, little, forbidden apple.” He hummed out, pressing a small kiss to the corner of her lips.

“So tempting in everything you do…” He mumbles, free hand traveling down her side to her hip. “From the way you move, to the way you speak… All the way to when you look at me. Mmm, the way you look up at me so innocently- makes it so hard not to grab your face and kiss you right there.”

He chuckled momentarily when he saw the subbed out expression gracing her face. Her hazy eyes, pupils blown wide, stared up at him with so much softness, swirling with passion and making him take in a sharp breath. Nudging his nose against her cheek, he whispered again, “All mine.”

“Jay…” She whined softly, pulling away to look up at him. Her pretty blue eyes flip between each of his eyes and her lips part to speak, “Why don’t you kiss me then?”

“Because if I kiss you…” He pauses a moment to try and gather his thoughts- the way she’s looking at him makes his brain turn to mush. “If I kiss you, I don’t know if I can stop.”

“Oh yeah?” She hums softly, still staring up at him with wide eyes. When he gives a small nod, she continues, “Who says I would want you to stop?”

Her words made a soft growl leave his lips and the two practically pounced at each other, their lips colliding, much like waves crashing upon shore in the middle of a violent storm. She laced her fingers into his hair and he wrapped his arms around her waist. Before the two even realized they were moving, her back was slammed against the wall, him holding a hand behind her head to carefully press her further against it for support. His tongue clashed with hers, setting a bright, vibrant fire in her chest. While their tongues mingled together, his left hand slid down her side and gripped her thigh, lifting it to rest on his hip.

“Tell me you want it, (Y/N). Tell me who you want.” His voice comes out in a shaky growl against her lips, words barely audible over the heavy thumping of her heart in her chest. Upon a lack of reply, he pulls away just enough to look into her pretty, bright eyes and a soft whine leaves her at the lack of touch. Her lips tried to chase his, but he moved the hand behind her head to carefully wrap around her neck. “Tell me.”

“You, Jay. Please, need you. Please.” Her voice cracks and her chest heaves as she struggles against his hold, desperate for any touch from him. A smirk crosses his lips as he leans down and kisses the side of her head.

“Good job, baby. I’m so proud of you.” His praise pulled the most lewd mewl from her lips and she struggled in his hold once more, hips incidentally grinding against his. “So impatient.” His words are teasing… mocking… But she doesn’t mind- in fact, the way she was nearly dripping down her thighs at his tone made her oh so aware of what he does to her. His lips ghost down the side of her neck and he gives a playful nip to her collarbone, pulling the prettiest little whimper from the back of her throat.

“Please, please, please…” She begs and pulls away just enough to see his eyes- heavy with love and deep with affection.

“Anything for you.” He whispers in return, fingertips sliding carefully up the thigh over his hip. Slipping under her skirt, he slowly worked the pad of his thumb in circles around her clit making her head fall forwards against his chest. “Does that feel good, honey?”

“So- so good.” She whimpered softly, her body quivering with each slow, deliberate stroke of his fingers. Gently he pushed aside her panties and sank just his middle finger into her, making her gasp and grip onto the sleeves of his shirt for dear life. He torturously worked his finger back and forth before adding another. The lewd mewl that left her lips made him grunt out a soft reply as he felt his cock twitch in his pants.

“It’s too much, Jay!” She squeaks out softly as she clenched around his fingers. Her body trembled in his arms as she quickly approached her orgasm.

“Yes you can, Angel. You’re gonna take it and I’m gonna be here to catch you when you fall apart.” He whispered softly in her ear, kissing her temple. Schlatt held her there against the wall, wrapping his free arm around her body and carefully holding her up and against him. His warmth made her feel safe, like a giant blanket protecting her from everything- he helped her just to… Feel.

“I- I’m gonna- I can’t- please don’t st-stop.” She choked out on a sob met somewhere in her voice with a moan.

“That’s it, baby. Let it all out. I know you’ve been neglected, my love. I’m here now. I’ve got you.” He praised her softly as her body twitched and her eyes closed tightly, basking in not just the glow of her orgasm, but the light of his love.

-A/N:- Pt. 2? I know it was a cheesy ending but the romantic in me couldn’t help it 😭

#jschlatt x reader #schlatt x reader #schlatt fluff #jschlatt fluff #jschlatt smut #schlatt smut

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leavesfallensparse · 3 days

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Cigarettes & Wine | M. Healy | 2

'I think I'll put you in another song, a little glimpse of you before you're gone.'

In which Sadie and Matty can't seem to get along at all. They refuse to see eye-to-eye, but Sadie is starting to find Matty's annoyed face a bit too hot. When faced with conversations about feelings, Sadie can't help but want to run away from it all.

warnings: implied alcoholism, implied panic attack (not in a written scene), smut (unprotected sex, oral (f receiving), fingering), lots of arguing, they both just spew shite at each other <3.

word count: 6.7k

authors note: lalalalala sadie matty smut lalalalala. so what it's angry (lowkey heartbreaking) smut, its still smut. i rlly had fun writing this and i am sorry for the angst <3 (not rlly x)

Sadie doesn’t think she’s ever felt anger like she’s feeling right now. The band had just gotten back to their flat after one of their more hectic shows, and George had obviously had the smart idea to go out after said show. Sadie missed out on this night out, feeling like her body was about to collapse inwards, but when the band returned home, loudly, she woke up and immediately seethed. Her anger worsened when she fully woke, she knew what was going on in Matty’s room due to them sharing a wall. Cheap flat means paper thin walls. As each day passes the urge to ask George to switch rooms with her grows.

The pornographic moans and groans paired with the bedframe that is just about banging her bedroom wall down is enough to make Sadie roll out of bed and leave her room with a huff. She almost regrets it when she sees Ross and George basically rolling on the kitchen floor trying to put a frozen pizza in the oven, Adam was standing over the pair just laughing at them. Sadie smirks but then when she hears another bang of Matty’s bedframe come from behind her she mutters a string of angry swear words under her breath. “What does she look like this time?” Is the sentence Sadie uses to make her presence known to the three drunk men in the kitchen.

The boys all look up at her with grimaces on their faces which makes Sadie run a hand down her own, she knows they all want to say “You.” Which makes her reconsider her entire career. She is subjecting herself to something comparable to torture day in, day out. Ever since Sadie had started point blank refusing him sex he was acting crazy, actively seeking out girls who have something in common with her looks wise. She had only started closing herself off because the band was starting to gain traction and she didn’t want anything to end in a messy enough manner for them both to risk their careers. It seemed like a lost cause with the way they were both acting though.

“It’s okay though, we’re having a pizza party.” Ross had somehow manoeuvred from the floor to Sadie’s side, leaning his entire body weight on her. She grunted and moved so the pair of them were leaning on the counter, she looked in his eyes at his extremely slurred words and wondered how he could be this drunk after only being out for two and a half hours. She shook her head with a smirk and snatched the pizza from George, forgetting how much of his weight that Ross was putting on her until he keeled over onto the floor with a giggle.

“Oh my god, Ross.” George pretty much collapses on top of Ross in a fit of drunken giggles and Sadie busies herself with setting the timer on the oven. When she turns around, Adam is stood with his arms open, and she smiles up at him and accepts his invitation for a cuddle. He starts swaying the pair and she can’t help but breathe out a laugh at the song he’s attempting to sing, Sadie has no idea what song he’s actually trying to sing. She tries to pull away when he starts swaying a bit too hard but before she knows it the four of them are on the floor struggling to breathe through their laughs.

When they all sit down on the couch to indulge in their pizza, Sadie hears a door open and close from the hallway. She can’t help the way her eyes roll into her skull, and she suddenly doesn’t want to finish her plate. The way he gets a glass of water, silently, pisses her off beyond belief. He grabs a slice of their pizza and heads back to his room with the water, he notices the silence when he walks in, but he chooses to not make a petty comment. When his bedroom door practically slams shut, Sadie lets out a breath she didn’t know she was even holding in. “George, can I sleep in your room?” He nods with a mouthful of pizza and Sadie heads to her room to grab her water bottle.

Sadie can’t sleep for George’s excessive snoring, he always fucking snores when he’s drunk. She gets up to fill her already empty water bottle with a sigh, a chill comes over her body when she opens the bedroom door, she immediately connects the dots when she sees Matty hanging out the living room window, cig in hand. She sighs and turns her back on him, flipping the tap to cold and turning it on, she hears him clearing his throat behind her and has to stifle the groan trying to escape her lips. “Bored of your girlfriend in there?”

Matty’s chuckle tastes bitter on his tongue, he despises her immaturity sometimes. When he doesn’t reply, she turns to him and when he gestures her over with his head she sighs, she can’t say no to him, and she loathes it. Sitting down next to him she takes his offer of a cigarette, he also forces the glass of wine he’s cradling into her hand, which she happily downs. He looks at her, she looks out the window. “Can’t sleep?”

“George won’t stop fucking snoring.” Matty smiles at that and hands her his lighter. She hands it back and inhales deeply when her cigarette is lit. The silence between them is the calmest silence they’ve sat in for at least three months, anytime the two have been forced in a room alone the tension has been so palpable you could cut it with a knife. Probably due to the fact they’ve not had sex in three months either. She can’t help but study his face, she hasn’t properly taken him in for a while, she tends to avoid him whenever they aren’t shouting at each other’s faces. He looks exhausted, the way his eyes are heavy set into his face and his mouth is nearly permanently in a frown are the telltale signs, this makes her frown. She leans onto his shoulder and lowers her voice to a whisper, “I’m sorry.”

“What? What for?” She shrugs and he wraps an arm around her shoulders, an attempt to protect her from the cold breeze wafting in through the open window. Hesitating slightly, he leans his head against hers, his lips meeting her messy hair before he does so. She sighs and shuffles a bit closer, having sat at a decent distance from him originally. “Nothing to be sorry for, Sades. I’m sorry.”

“Well, what are you sorry for?”

“I’m not sure either.” At his lack of attempt to actually apologise, she hums, nothing has changed. This conversation isn’t progress.

“I should go back to bed.” Sadie feels Matty’s head shake on top of hers and she snickers slightly, raising her head to face him. Their faces are much closer than they were before which makes Sadie’s heart pick up in pace ever so slightly. She pretends that it doesn’t though. He tries to sneak a glance down at her slightly dry lips, but her eager eyes notice, and she instinctively leans in, she swears she does it without realising. Before she knows it his lips are on hers and every argument they’ve had recently has flown out of her head, replaced by the way his hand feels when it falls to her bare thigh, practically coaxing the goosebumps out of her. Matty pulls away first and Sadie shakes her head. “We can’t. Shouldn’t.”

Silencing her with another kiss, a squeeze on her thigh, and his tongue against her lips, Matty groans into her mouth, begging to be let in. She denies him entrance until his other hand tugs lightly at her hair, drawing involuntary moans from her mouth, gaining him entrance. Readjusting so he’s no longer sitting cross legged on the windowsill Matty drags Sadie by the hips on to his lap. She feels so dirty, Matty had gone from being inside the girl in his bedroom two hours ago to making out with Sadie in the living room, but a sick part of her likes knowing that he’ll always come back to her. The same sick part of her grinds down into Matty’s growing erection, revelling in the way his head thumps against the window behind him. “Fuck, Sades.”

“Did that girl not do it for you? She might look like me, but I bet she doesn’t fuck like me, hmm?” Her hands find the seam of her pyjama top, but she quickly feels him swatting her hands away, wanting to take her top off himself. Doing so with fervour, his lips ghosting her nipples, blowing hot air over them and giving her reaction a sick smile. When his mouth closes around her nipple, a low groan ripples through her throat, she feels the need to get his clothes off of him as soon as possible. “Matty, please.”

“You’re filth. Desperate to fuck me when I’ve got a girl waiting for me.” Matty’s words hit Sadie right in her core, writhing on his lap, desperate for friction. The thin material of Matty’s boxers paired with the lacey material of Sadie’s panties was sending her wild, the feeling against her heat is delicious but she’s growing bored of it. He lifts his hips in a frenzy to rid himself of one of two clothing items keeping them apart, at the rapid friction Sadie moans loudly and squeezes her eyes closed. Letting out a dry laugh, Matty shifts her on his lap, her eyes cast down to his length and her hand automatically wrapped around it, like it was muscle memory. “No, need to be inside you. Won’t last long.”

Sadie feels like her lungs are being squeezed with how breathless she is, frantically shuffling her panties down her legs. Takes himself in one hand, Matty lines himself up and grabs one of Sadie’s hands with the other, she squeezes it as he pushes into her, a whine scraping the inside of her throat before tearing out of her mouth. Matty lets go of her hand and sticks two of his fingers into her open mouth, hissing at her, “You’ve got to be quiet, Sades.”

Whining around his fingers, Sadie bucks her hips into his harshly, Matty lets out a sound akin to a growl. She stops and raises an eyebrow at him, brutally shoving two fingers in his mouth. Feeling his mouth forming into a smirk around her fingers at her smug face, he starts fucking up into her to break her mean demeanour. The way her eyes roll into her head spurs him on, his pace relentless, his tongue licking up and down her fingers to match the pace of his savage thrusts. An urge to hear the noises that Matty clearly wants to make takes over Sadie’s brain, so she rips her fingers out of his mouth and sticks it on his knee behind her, leaning back in his lap to feel him hit her deeper inside. “Can fucking feel you squeezing me, so tight, missed this.”

The fake pout takes over her face without her permission, “Really meant it when you said you wouldn’t last long. Pathetic, I’m not even close.” She’s playing it up and he knows it from the way she tenses her thighs and squeezes his knee until her knuckles turn white. But Matty takes her words as the truth, holding himself off from finishing inside her, picking her up and throwing her onto the couch. Moaning at the way he man-handled her, Sadie can feel the loss of him inside her like he’d just ripped her arm from her torso, her blissed out face was quickly replaced by a glare at the two fingers re-entering her mouth, scowling as his hips snapped back into hers. When he leans down to give her neck an open-mouthed kiss, she snaps around his fingers, into his ear. “Fuck you.”

“I am.” The words uttered into her pliable skin make her arch her back into him. She hates the way he knows her body like he worships upon it everyday on the hour, almost as though he had studied her every atom under a microscope in a lab. Lifting one of her legs over his shoulder, she whimpers at the deeper angle, her walls flutter around him and she can feel the stutter of his hips. “Your filthy cunt is fucking sucking me in. You’re like some kind of witch. Come on, give it to me, Sades, fucking hell.” Staring down at the way a string of saliva connects her mouth to his fingers when he pulls them out at a tantalisingly slow pace gives him an idea. “Open your mouth.”

The compliant side of her does so immediately, moaning at the way his spit crawls down her tongue, he nods, she swallows. The wetness of his fingers immediately reaches between her folds and finds her clit, matching the pace of his persistent thrusts. Her left hand scrapes his spine and her right hand rips at his hair. She loathes the way his hands make her fold, feeling her climax take over her entire soul, her eyes squeezing shut at the feeling. “I fucking hate you so much.”

The tone in which she utters this word has him spilling inside her with a pained groan. The pair hold each other tightly as they both hit their peak, Sadie comes down almost immediately from the way Matty rides out his high inside her, she hisses from the overstimulation. “Fucking hell.” His body collapses on top of hers and she whines at the scraping feeling she feels inside. “Pull out, please.” A muttering of a few more swear words from her mouth pulls him from the cloud he’s found himself on, ripping himself from her. The boy inside of him peers down at the sight of his release spilling from her, she groans and steadies herself at the thought of standing up and cleaning herself up.

“Stay here. I’ll be right back.” Her eyes fixate on the torn up skin of his back as he pulls his boxers back on and sneaks into the bathroom. When he emerges, he smirks at Sadie’s sleeping figure on the couch, her deep-set eyes gently fluttering as she gives in, her dark eyelashes resting upon the cheeks. The one word ringing in his mind, beautiful, is giving him a headache. He rubs at her bare thigh in a soft attempt to wake her up, between whispers of different variants of her name. “Just cleaning you up, darling.” She gently whines and rolls over.

“Why are you asleep on the couch?” George is hanging over her like a bad smell, looking down at her with a raised eyebrow, she groans and pushes his face away with a stretch. The sudden memories of the previous night climb into her brain and start to take over, sneaking a glance down, she smirks at the sight of the cushions propped up gently and her clothes on her body. The slight bliss that was beginning to take over her being is interrupted by an unrecognisable, shrill laugh at the kitchen island. George silently communicates at her to keep her mouth shut.

“Morning, Sades! Bacon roll?” At Matty’s chipper tone, George knows all he needs to know, cradling his forehead in his hand. She snorts and sits up, finally getting a look at the girl who was clearly not good enough for Matty. Sadie would describe the girl as ‘nice’, nothing more and nothing less. She looks nice. Matty doesn’t like nice. The other two boys are sat at the kitchen island too, stuffing bacon in their mouths like it’s going to make their hangovers magically disappear. Sadie circles round the couch to stand behind Ross, giving Matty a curt nod before sitting on the last spare seat, right next to this unknown girl.

“I’m Sadie. Who are you?” Adam covers his laugh with a cough, George groans into his hand, Ross is blissfully unaware, and Matty has to stop himself from whipping around to shout at the girl. The poor, innocent girl looks round at Sadie like she’d just shot her dog. A shit eating grin overtakes her mouth, smiling up at Matty as he places a bacon roll in front of her. “Thank you very much! Smells so good!” The tone of her voice makes Adam’s laugh finally escape his mouth, when Miss Unknown turns to him, brows furrowed, he panics.

“Oh, we have fun here.” Sadie opts for taking a bite so none of her laughter sneaks out. What a shit excuse, Adam.

“I’m Daisy, it’s, erm, nice to meet you?” No words. Sadie has no words. Daisy is basically Sadie rearranged. She politely nods at Daisy and turns to face forward in her seat, no longer wanting to interact with anyone. She feels a dull ache in her chest as she watches the way Matty talks to Daisy, a miniscule part of her brain is begging him to look at her. He doesn’t, instead turning back to the pan and humming a merry tune. Sadie is practically snarling at his back, knowing that her very nails have left marks on the hidden skin. That’s all it is. Hidden. Matty clearly has a sudden thought with the way his movements stop.

“Want any sauce, darling?” Sadie doesn’t know what happened, she’ll claim to have blacked out.

“No thanks, Matty.” Her eyes widen. Daisy nearly chokes on her breakfast, poor girl. As if on auto-pilot, Sadie’s feet drag her to her bedroom, completely abandoning her breakfast. She’s sure they all heard the scream she forced into her pillow.

The moon is the only thing lighting up Sadie’s room, the hopeful gleam staring right in her window. The Smashing Pumpkins ‘Oceania’ is humming into her ears as she edits a few photos from the night before, specifically avoiding the ones of Matty. A gentle knock on her door rips her from her daydream, pulling her eyes from the moon she murmurs a “Come in.”, shutting her laptop and turning round in her chair. But the sight of the man she’s avoiding draws a silent groan from her throat, she turns away.

“Hi. Can we talk?” He’s grovelling and she doesn’t know why. When met with silence he keeps talking. “We can’t keep dancing around this, it’s starting to hurt me. I can’t fucking look at you without wanting something from you, anything. I just want a sign of life, Sades.” She stares back out the window, wishing she lived in a house alone on the moon. But no, she’s here, face to face with everything wrong with her. All she knows how to do is shake her head.

“I don’t know what you want from me. I don’t have anything to say to you.” The way he takes a deep breath as he sits down on her bed makes her panic a bit, she knows that he’s about to hurt her feelings. It was just the honest truth, she didn’t have anything to say to him, what words could possibly come out of her mouth that he’d want to hear. Not a single thought in her head is something that should be said out loud to him.

“No, Sadie. What do you want from me? I am fucking sick of you, the sight of you, the way you’ll speak to the boys with no fucking malice in your tone, what did I do to you? And, what? Every two months you want me to fuck you and have it not mean anything? I can’t stand to be in your fucking presence everyday anymore, it’s draining me.” She zones out slightly, trying to will the lump in her throat to go away. Nothing that he had said warrants tears because he is also telling the honest truth.

“We’ve ruined it. Been friends eight years and fucking ruined it.” Shaking her head with a wet laugh she lets it fall to rest on her knee, a single tear slipping out. “Can’t believe there was a time we got on. Now you’re just horrible to me.” Bitter laughter takes over her ears and another tear falls. And another. Lifting her head she writes down the words, ‘wishing you could forget the present you’re living in’, in the notebook on her desk. The notebook is just full of shit, mostly angry shit, recently.

“You’re the horrible one. One day someone snapped their fingers and you turned on me. I can’t fuck around with you anymore, you’ve changed, and it makes me sick. To my stomach. And calling me horrible? Whatever.”

“You’re still talking if you weren’t aware.”

“Yes I was. Wasn’t done either.” Standing up and gesturing wildly, his bitter tongue still talks. She’s reduced to a pile of sobs on her desk chair, just watching, unable to make it stop. “I also find it quite frankly hilarious that you’re the first one to tell people that I’m the ‘worst person you’ve ever met’, it wasn’t that when we were shagging everyday four years ago.” Sadie sniffs a laugh at this, he’s contradicting himself by saying ‘she’s changed’ one second, then referencing a time Sadie actually liked him. “Oh! Another thing, telling George that I’m the only one you don’t say ‘I love you’ to is so strange. I’d like an explanation.” Walking over to her until he’s hanging over her, she has to look up and face his snarl. “Why? Why don’t you love me. I think you do and you’re just fucking scared of me, pathetic, by the way. I think you realised years-”

She interrupts him, unable to control the angry scream ripping from the depths of her lungs. “Stop! Just fucking stop! Get the fuck away from me.” He stills and cocks an eyebrow. “GO.”

A slam of a door and tears coming out in screams is all that’s heard through the flat.

The next time Matty’s on stage doing what he loves, he isn’t sure he actually loves it anymore. He’s considering hiring a new photographer. Sadie’s been dancing round his feet all night, apparently unable to take a single photo of Matty, she’s taken more photos of Adam tonight than she probably ever has. The way in which he is performing is growing slightly more aggressive, standing on the stage, seething, unable to do anything about it. Could you imagine what the crowd would think if he started shouting at his photographer mid-show?

She smirks as she comes round the back to take a couple photos of George, he shakes his head at her, and she lets out a laugh. Shrugging her shoulders as if she’s done nothing wrong, she quickly realises that coming onto the stage to take photos was a mistake, Matty turns his back on the crowd briefly and whispers in her ear, “What the fuck are you doing?”

“What? Nothing? My job.” Turning back to the crowd with a scoff he keeps singing, Sadie takes a couple photos of the view from the back of the stage, looking out into the mass of people, she smiles at her camera knowing it’ll be a good shot. Exiting the stage from the left hand side she takes a minute to look through a couple of the photos she’s taken as she sips from her water bottle. The events manager approaches her and smiles.

“Why aren’t you taking as many photos of Matty?” The way her sickly sweet voice punctures Sadie’s ears makes her cringe a little bit. But she hides it with a returned smile in her direction and turns her body slightly towards her. Taking in her professional outfit she hides a laugh, how she’s not sweating is one of the wonders of the world. The way she was very clearly flirting with Matty before the show had pissed her off and Sadie knew she was only asking because she wanted to see photos of Matty.

“Don’t worry about it.” Walking all the way to the back of the hall with no more words said, Sadie scoffs when she’s no longer in hearing distance. Shaking her head she snaps a few more pictures before heading back to the dressing rooms, hearing the band finish the show she busies herself with looking through photos. She likes to pretend she doesn’t exist after the boys finish a show, they also like to pretend she doesn’t exist, mostly high on adrenaline. Since people had started taking the band more seriously, the energy at their shows has increased tenfold. So has their egos but Sadie never makes comment on it. Hearing the stomps of Matty down the halls has her realising that pretending she doesn’t exist isn’t an option today.

“What the fuck was that? You’re embarrassing yourself.” Slamming the door behind him, leaving just the two of them in the dressing room, Sadie rolls her eyes. She watches on as he grabs a wine glass and pours from the bottle, he takes a sip and groans, shaking his head. When their eyes meet, Sadie curls into herself a bit, intimidated. “Just utterly pathetic.”

“What’s pathetic? Me not wanting to see your face? Did you forget the things you said to me? Or are you going to blame that as a ‘heat of the moment’ thing like you always do?” The slam of his glass on the table makes her jump and he turns to her with nothing but malice in his eyes.

“No, you should be able to hold a level of professionalism that allows you to do your job no matter how you actually feel, Sadie. You’ve always managed to photograph me even if I have been in the wrong, but not today. I’m calling you pathetic because I thought you were more mature than you actually are. Turns out I was fucking wrong, hmm?” Matty is leaning over her, pointing a finger down at her. She stands up to defend herself.

“Actually, I think that you speak to me like I’m a piece of shit on the bottom of your shoe and then expect me to carry myself professionally when in reality just the sight of your face makes me want to punch it. And oh, I’ll just carry on taking my silly little pictures and pretend you don’t come off that stage and hurt my feelings. Every. Single. Day.”

“Oh, I hurt your feelings? Fuck off, Sadie.” With this he leaves the dressing room and slams the door behind him so hard that Sadie sees the mirror on the wall shake a bit. She has to hold her laugh in when he comes back in for the bottle of wine. She really struggles to hold it back when George comes in and gives her a look like she’s dumb.

“What?” When George just laughs at her she laughs too. She grabs the second bottle of wine from the table and takes pleasure in drinking straight from it. “Genuinely what was I supposed to do? Let him keep treating me like this?” George leans onto her shoulder when he sits down, his voice is sympathetic, and Sadie is having none of it.

“You could’ve gone about it a bit nicer.”

“Why would I be ‘a bit nicer’ after all he’s done to me?”

“Yeah, you’re right, fuck him.” With that George takes the bottle and starts drinking from it too.

They’ve somehow ended up in a sleazy bar in Soho, they’d played just round the corner at some hall Sadie can’t remember to name. Matty’s still pissed, Sadie is very drunk, some would call this a recipe for disaster, George would call this a recipe for entertainment. Sadie has linked eyes with a notably cute guy a couple of times this evening, but she’s waiting for him to be the gentleman and make the first move to speak. As Adam stands up to get the next round she hears laughter from behind her and sees Matty flirting with some girl. She turns to Adam, “Get me a vodka shot, too.”

Adam really shouldn’t be encouraging her to drink anything that strong, but after clocking on to what Matty was doing he immediately adds it to the list of drinks he’s ordering. When it slides in front of her it’s down her throat practically before it’s even stopped sliding her direction. Ross grips her arm and laughs but she pays no mind to him, distracted by the bitter taste in her mouth, she’d be convinced the bitter taste wasn’t coming from the liquor. Eyeing the way Matty’s arm slings around the girl and his shoulders look slightly less tense she turns to search the crowd of people, looking for the guy who was eye-fucking her earlier. She leaps out the barstool when she sees him, throwing everything about wishing he was gentlemanly out the window. “Hi, I’m Sadie.”

“Theo, nice to meet you. I was gonna come over in a bit but here you are, like a dream in front of me.” Sadie laughs probably louder than she should’ve at this, hand coming down on his arm. At this Theo notices the lack of drink in her hand and rests a hand on her lower back, “Shall we go get you something to drink? On me, of course.” She lets him lead her back to all her friends, narrowly avoiding them as he leans over the bar to order her an espresso martini. She does not like espresso martinis.

“Thank you. I noticed your accent, Australian, right? What are you doing in England?” The small talk flows quite freely between the two as they exchange careers and anecdotes, Sadie finds it easy to talk to him. Not as easy as any of her actual friends but it’s good enough. She has to hold her breath anytime she takes a drink but they’re free, so she isn’t saying anything. Matty catches her eye for the first time since being distracted by the girl on his lap, when he catches a glimpse of the blonde boy standing next to her he shakes his head. She scowls at him and turns back to the boy, a bit closer than she was before.

“Do you wanna get out of here? Maybe back to my hotel?” Sadie doesn’t really hear him, she sees Matty shaking her head at something the girl is saying and when she starts shouting at him Sadie knows he’d just been asked the same question she has. Matty makes fleeting eye contact with her, making a look that reads ‘I dare you’. Turning back to Theo she nods her head, smiling up at the smug look on his face, shoving his arm slightly. She finishes her drink with a slight gag and grips onto his arm as he leads her out the front.

“How far is your hotel?” She’d love to know why she feels guilty.

Sadie’s sitting on the doorstep to their flat building with mascara staining her cheeks. When she’d gotten back to Theo’s hotel she experienced something akin to a panic attack and basically ran out of there, he’d chased her just to make sure she was okay and when all she said was, “It isn’t your fault,” he knew that it was the other guy from the bar holding her back, the one from her friend group, “I just have to get back to my flat.”

Feeling nothing less than mortified, she couldn’t bring herself to go in, so she was sitting smoking on the doorstep with the entire evening playing on a loop in her head. Dropping her head to her knees with a sigh she let one more tear fall before putting out her cig with her shoe and opening the door behind her. When she opens the door to the flat she’s met with silence, unsure if anyone’s home until she hears George snoring and a strum of a guitar in the room next to hers. Upon realising he’s the only other person awake she admits defeat and heads to her own room.

After brushing her teeth in the bathroom and grabbing water and some painkillers from the kitchen, she opens her bedroom door to Matty standing, staring down at her. Shutting the door behind her she looks up at him with a fixed glare, silently wishing he’d brush past her and shut the door so she could sleep. But no, as she shuts the door behind her she finds herself slammed against it. “You’re so fucking pathetic, Sades.” It might be the slight buzz she still feels in her head, but his words paired with his hands on her hips hit her right in her core, feeling like her head is about to float right off her shoulders.

“Matty, you’re just here to fuck with my head.” She really tried to make her words believable but the way she trails off into a whine makes it seem quite the opposite. The way in which her body always reacts to him the way he wants will forever make her angry, staring up at him trying to keep her glare steady on her face. It proves hard when Matty’s face moves down to her neck, attacking it with his lips, practically taunting her by the way he leans back up to swallow the moan that leaves her mouth.

She fights her body, trying her hardest to not kiss him back, but the way his tongue is licking into her mouth makes her desperate for anything he’ll give her. “Think you can just go fuck anyone, hmm? You’re wrong, angel. Belong to me, don’t you?” The scowl that takes over her features makes him smirk down at her. “Pretty when you’re angry. Gonna let me show you who you belong to?” She doesn’t want to nod but of course her body is doing things without her brains consent. To be fair said brain is actively turning to mush and melting out of her ears.

“Matty, please. Hurting my head.” After a quick glance up from her neck, he realises she doesn’t mean that literally, but instead she means that his actions are confusing her. He’s too in the moment to care, dragging her to the bed to put her out of her misery. The feeling of the mattress on her back makes her sigh in pleasure, he smirks down at her, working his hands under her, way too big, jumper as he hovers over her, moving down at a teasingly slow pace. She writhes on the bed until his hands take a strong grip of her hips, dragging them to the bottom of the bed before holding her in place as he kisses from her knee to her thigh. “Fuck, why do you always come crawling back to me? Just told me you can’t fuck me anymore.”

“I can’t get enough.” Letting go of her hips to move her panties down her thighs, her hands whip to his hair as she feels a puff of cold air blown onto her clit, her heart stopping in her chest at the feeling. He growls into her dripping cunt, licking a stripe up it before feeling her thighs squeeze his face, moving his hands round them to keep them apart. “Be good. Keep quiet. Maybe I’ll let you cum.” The whine that leaves her mouth is involuntarily and goes against what he’d just said, she knows she’s fucking in for it now.

Lowering her voice to a whisper she leans up onto her elbows, “Matty, do something.” Brown eyes looking into her blue ones with a teasing glint he gives her another kitten lick and her elbows give out on her, back arching from the mattress. The teasing pace of his tongue is making the whole ‘keep quiet’ thing impossible for Sadie, her entire fist is in her mouth at this point and her brain is wondering where on earth he learned how to do this. Sure, he’s eaten her out many times before, but this is her first time realising how good at it he’d gotten. “Please, stop teasing.”

Humming into her wetness, he ponders on whether he should give her more or not. Does she deserve it? “Me stop teasing you? Oh, angel. Take your own advice.” Something about the way she whimpers spurs him on to, in fact, stop teasing. Giving in to her immediately, his tongue finds her clit and picks up the pace by the most miniscule amount. Unwrapping one of his hands from her thigh, his fingers find her entrance, ever teasing, but finding their way in after she hisses down at him to stop.

When he parts for a breather Sadie can see her slick on his chin and the sight brings out something carnal in her. She grabs his chin and pulls him up to her level, smashing their lips together as if they’re running out of time. Pulling away from her, Matty looks down at her, jaw slightly slack. “Like tasting yourself? What do you want, angel? Speak to me.” His digits still slipping deeper into her makes it incredibly difficult for her to formulate words, after whining at him and being met with a cocked eyebrow, she manages.

“Want you.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just fuck me, Matty.” He doesn’t relent. Hands speeding up, kisses draped across her neck, his other hand finding it’s way up her jumper, squeezing her tits. Determined to pull at least one orgasm from her before giving in to what she wants. He groans into her neck when he feels how tight she’s squeezing his two fingers. “I’m gonna cum.”

“Let go then, angel. Give it to me, all over my fingers, gonna make a mess?” Frantically nodding, she feels her brain fading away into nothingness before his lips wrap around hers. Laying still, not kissing back, her orgasm takes over her being, Matty practically chews her moans with his teeth as if they were tangible. With a whine she rips his hand from between her thighs and finally gives in to the feeling of his lips on hers, kissing back with fervour. He pulls away to glance at his fingers, smothered in her arousal, the sight alone would’ve made him hard if he wasn’t already. Opening her mouth without having to be told to, she takes his two fingers into her mouth, sucking tiredly at them. “You tired?” Taking his hand out of her mouth to hear her reply, he smiles down at her blown out pupils.

“Fuck me, please.” Sometimes she can’t help but make the same mistakes.

Sadie had woken up hours ago. Some sick part of her is forcing her to stay in bed, under his arms, in his t-shirt. There’s an air of domesticity surrounding the pair, the way his dark eyelashes flutter slightly in his sleep has Sadie enamoured. Silently wishing things could be easier, with a sigh. Her brain starts to ponder on where things went wrong, and who might’ve been at fault, when she didn’t like the conclusion she came to she shut her eyes. Matty must’ve felt the way her body shook slightly, waking up slowly with a long stretch. “What you crying for?”

“I don’t know.” He squeezes his arms slightly tighter around her and wipes a tear from her cheek, unable to stop the concerned expression from taking over his features. Rubbing a soothing hand down her back, he shushes her until she’s calm, looking down at her slightly with an encouraging glint in his eye. “I just feel shit about the point we’ve gotten to. Wish we were 16 again.”

“Angel, don’t feel shit. I’ve been a dick to you recently and I’m sorry, I just don’t know how to speak to you anymore.” Sadie nods against his arm at his words, the soft smile taking over his face makes her feel at home. He looks like he’s 18 again in the mornings. It makes Sadie feel a bit sick.

“I don’t know how to speak to you either. We’ve spent everyday together for as long as I can remember, but it’s like you changed without me realising.” Matty hanging off of every word she says enhances the sick feeling in her stomach and she looks away from him. Grabbing her water from the bedside table she cradles her headache with her other hand and hears Matty laughing at her from behind. Putting her water back down she hits his chest and stands up. “I can’t have this conversation with you. I think I need to fucking find my own place. Then Ross and Adam can actually have their own rooms instead of being forced to share. Think it would be best for everyone.” Being met with a head of curls frantically shaking, she sighs.

“You can’t.”

“I will. Watch me.”

#dont ask why it took me so long to write this #sadie can do no wrong btw #matty healy #matty healy fic #matty healy x reader #matty healy imagine #matty healy smut #cigs&wine #the 1975 #the 1975 fanfic #writing #george daniel #ross macdonald

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 2 days

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AITA for wanting to spend a night out with a guy?

I'm twenty, study in university and still live with my parents. I've been planning to move out since I was eighteen, but they told me to keep living at home and not get a job so I could focus on studying while they take care of me financially. This arrangement has worked mostly well in the past years save for a few small conflicts, but it's escalated in the past 3-4 months.

The issue is my time schedule. I have a very active social life, am active in the local art scene, do political work and a lot of extracurricular stuff for university (I'm a straight A student, I might add!). Because of this, and because I'm a natural night owl, I usually come home late several days a week (between 10pm and 2am) and stay out all day for most of the week. This means I can't do a lot of chores, and usually there's a lot of housework because my mum has a bit of a cleaning anxiety and wants to make sure everything is spotless 24/7.

Enter this guy, I'll call him Tim. I met him at a festival last summer and we became long distance friends. Tim has visited me for a day several times before, but this weekend he offered to come over for two days and we agreed to spend the night stargazing together without sleeping. I loved the idea and immediately said yes. It was gonna be just us, a couple energy drinks, and some bench in the city center, and I was really looking forward to it.

The thing is, my mum does not like Tim. Like, at all. She thinks he seems very sleazy and generally distrusts him because he feels "too nice" for her. Mind you, he's just a somewhat shady looking guy who is generally pretty anxious he might make a bad impression, so he overperforms the whole "respectable member of society" act a bit around new people. I've introduced him to my friend group and even the more sceptical people absolutely love him and think he's a very sweet, helpful person. In basically every stressful situation I've ever seen him in he's been deescalating, protective and helpful, and he has on several occasions been my first source of comfort when things went to hell.

Today I told my mum in an offhanded comment that I won't come home between Sunday and Monday and the situation escalated completely. She was crying, accusing me of ruining her month, saying I didn't care about this family, it got ugly. The main point she had was that I was staying out all night with someone who's a total stranger to her and she doesn't trust him at all. In the end we compromised that Tim and I would spend the night awake, but not in the city, at home.

I feel really humiliated by this whole situation and honestly, kind of betrayed, because I was promised stuff like this wouldn't happen, and it just hits in a much safer situation than ones I've been in before (I used to get blackout drunk and sleep at parties a lot.). I'm a legal adult, have been for years now and it's so disappointing that my parents still treat me like a child sometimes and are so judgy towards my friends too. At the same time, I'm wondering whether I've acted wrong too by not telling her about this earlier and not taking her concerns that seriously. I forget sometimes that I talk to Tim every day for hours, but my parents only briefly ran into him once, so of course their view of him is skewed.

PS: I should add that when I told him about this, he immediately apologized, asked if I needed anything or wanted to change the plan and decided to dig out the least offensive outfit he could find so he'd make a good impression on my parents. So he's definitely trying his best.

#am i the asshole #aita

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paperultra · 1 day

Text

HOME (TO THE OL’ BALL AND CHAIN)

(OR, THE PIÑA COLADA SONG)

Pairing: Chilchuck Tims x Fem!Chilchuck's Wife!Reader Word Count: 2,499 words Warnings: None Summary: Five years after leaving your first and only love, you take the plunge into the dating scene – and immediately regret it. Maybe you're too picky, but none of the men you go out with seem to fit the bill; they're too non-committal, or too eager, or too happy, or too sad, or simply just too much ... so after a particularly bad experience, your youngest makes a last-ditch effort to set you up on a blind date with someone who she insists deserves a chance. You reluctantly agree. read on ao3 | read on quotev

DATE #1: CASUAL LUNCH Estranged husband — 1 Estranged wife — 1 Everything left unsaid — as desired

There’s bacon grease on his shirt.

You can see it underneath his collar, round fingerprints staining the pale linen grey, and when he leans across the threshold into Fler’s home all you can think about is laundry day at the end of the week.

It would be rude to admit that out loud, though.

“Thank you for walking me home,” you say.

“When can I see you again?”

“I don’t know.”

Abelwood teeters forward still. “Well, don’t take too long, hear? You ain’t gettin’ any younger.”

Laughter erupts from the beer in his gut, and you laugh along with him. Abelwood is a rowdy drunk, you’ve learned, which is better than a cruel drunk or a lecherous drunk. It is not the kind of drunk that you are used to bringing home, even if he is only brought to the front door, but –

You smile, regardless.

“Goodnight,” you bid, closing the door inch by inch, your last bit of energy disappearing with the click of the lock.

You hold your breath. It takes three minutes and thirty-seven seconds for the man to leave your front doorstep, and you wait thirty more seconds after that to peek through the window, verifying that he is far enough away before resting your forehead against the door with a groan.

“Oh, boy.”

“I’m too old for this, Fler,” you mutter into the wood. “He was awful.”

Flertom lets out a sigh and closes the distance to squeeze you in a hug, pressing her cheek against your back like she’s done ever since she grew tall enough to do so. “I’m sorry, Mama,” she says.

“I’m sorry too.”

As you pat her hands and turn around to smile wryly at her, Puckpatti pipes up from the middle of the living room.

“He was a pig,” she exclaims. “Calling you by your first name! And he wasn’t even that handsome!”

“Looks aren’t everything, Puck,” you reply sharply, and she pouts, squeezing the lump of clay in her hands until it squishes out between her fingers. “He was a pig for the way he acted.”

“Well … that too.”

“He also smelled like one,” Fler says.

You detach yourself from your daughter to loosen the belt at your waist, frowning down at your dress and nice leather shoes. The dress feels just about as worn out as you do, the fabric soft and droopy from the humidity, the sunshine-yellow color less vibrant than it had been earlier this evening. The man had spilled beer on the floor of the bar and your shoes still look slightly sticky. Peeling them off just reminds you of the way he had laughed.

“Fler,” you say, “get me a wet rag, would you?”

“Sure, Mama.” Flertom turns to Puckpatti. “Puck, get a wet rag.”

“My hands are all dirty!” your youngest protests, showing her grey palms. “Mei’s closer to the water bucket.” She points to Meijack, who you now notice lingering by the kitchen.

Meijack blinks slowly, then silently fetches a rag, wets it, and brings it to you.

“Are you gonna keep trying, Ma?” she asks while you scrub the heel of your left shoe. “All these guys seem to be wasting your time.”

The chuckle that leaves your mouth is short and dry. “After this one, I don’t think so.” You glance up at your daughters and smile, straightening. “Maybe I should just take you all out on a girls’ date next time, huh? Forget about men for a little while.”

Meijack shrugs. Puckpatti nods eagerly.

“I just don’t know what’s wrong,” Flertom frets. “I’ve seen most of them at work before, and they seemed nice enough even when they were drunk …”

You shrug hopelessly and cross into the living room to sit on the couch. “Maybe it’s me.” As you lean back into the cushions, Meijack and Flertom join you on either side. “I’ve only ever been with one man my whole life. Maybe I don’t even know what I want …”

There’s a moment of silence. You look up at the ceiling of Flertom’s home, rubbing your temples and willing your frustration with yourself to not spill over while your daughters are watching. How embarrassing. Here you are, their mother, who is supposed to show them an example of a happy relationship, only for them to comfort you after another failed date. It should be the other way around. Half-foots don’t live long enough for things like this; your own mother had told you when you first left him that you should’ve just sucked it up.

Finally, Flertom speaks up. “Mama,” she starts, hesitant, and you look over to see her playing with her fingers, “Do you really want to date someone?”

“It’s been long enough, don’t you think?” you answer.

As you say so, a name resurfaces in your mind, unbidden, and the face that belongs to it. Your jaw tightens and you look down at your hands.

“Well … um … Papa wrote last week, and he said that he wanted to talk to you sometime. Just a little bit.”

Your tone hardens. “And what does that have to do with me dating, Fler?”

She flinches and her lips push out. “Come on, Mama! It’s been years, and after everything he went through, I really think he’s better now! Don’t you at least want to talk to him? You were so in love with each other before he started adventuring, and now that he’s retired from it …”

You hold your hand up, and her jaw clicks shut.

“I know what you’re getting at, Flertom,” you say quietly. “And right now is not the best time to bring up your father.”

Your daughter deflates, her cheeks rosy. “But –”

“I mean it.” Standing, you heave a deep breath and examine the cluttered workstation that Puckpatti had set up on the living room table. “Puckpatti, make sure to clean up after you’re done. I’m going to bed.”

While the girls mope, you head to your bedroom, doing your best to occupy your thoughts with work at the blacksmith’s tomorrow. You think about the chain mail you’re supposed to be making, the little metal rings to form and weave together, and hope they’re what you dream of, not self-absorbed dates or unwanted kisses.

You blame Flertom for the auburn hair and hearty laughs that plague your night instead.

—

A week later, Puckpatti accosts you as soon as you walk through the door.

“Mama, I found a man for you!”

“Oh?” you reply blandly, hand still clutching at your chest from having the living daylights scared out of it. “Who is it?”

“That’s a secret! But he’s really nice, I promise.”

Sighing, you remove your vest. “I don’t know, Puck. How did you meet him?”

“He bought one of my clay sticks.” You can’t stop yourself from frowning, despite your desire to support your daughter’s entrepreneurial spirit, and she giggles. “Oh, please, Mama, he didn’t believe my pitch. I think I just charmed him into buying it. He seems really clever!”

“Are you sure he wasn’t interested in you?”

She makes a disgusted face. “Eww! No, I told him about you and he seemed interested.”

“Oh, really?”

“Mama, you’re a catch. Of course he’d want to go on a date with you.”

“That’s sweet of you to say, honey.” You glance at her before heading to the kitchen to put away the bread and cheese you’d bought. “Is he a half-foot?”

“Maybe.”

“I thought I’d met all the half-foots in Kahka Brud.”

“Maybe he just moved here.”

She looks up innocently when you raise an eyebrow at her. “And you’re sure I’ll like him,” you drawl, more suspicious by the minute. (Of what, you’re not quite sure.)

“Positive.”

It is incredibly difficult, you think with equal parts pride and concern, to say no to your youngest daughter. It’s probably why you worry about her the most. “This is the last date I’ll go on, Puckpatti. It will be on you.”

Puckpatti cheers. She hugs you as you chuckle at her enthusiasm, jumping up and down. “Yay! I’ll get a time and day that’ll work best. It’ll be great! You’ll love him!”

“For your sake, I hope so.”

—

The day arrives with a mellow sun and clear sky.

You wear your green dress with the floral details, and Puckpatti picks a necklace to go along with it, a thin, simple one that you haven’t worn in years. Flertom does your makeup and Meijack does your hair.

And as you sit in a corner of the tavern fifteen minutes early, hands nervously clasped in your lap, you wonder, just as you have with every date prior, what you’ve gotten yourself into.

Maybe he won’t show up. It would be improper, and juvenile, but then you could go home and say that you did try. Your desire for a new romance has all but dwindled completely, and as you trace the scratches on the wooden table, you wonder if it was even a desire at all.

Footsteps approach from behind. You can tell they belong to a half-foot by the weight and sound – light and small – as they come around to the other side of the table. Your shoulders tighten. Forcing a smile, you look up.

Your heart promptly surges upward into your throat before plummeting to your toes.

Chilchuck gawks down at you, eyes wide. His mouth parts to utter your full name, and you feel your lungs squeeze at how it sounds coming from him, soft from years of disuse.

“You came,” he says.

“Chil – Chilchuck.” His name is ashy and sweet behind your teeth. “What are you doing here?”

He furrows his brow. “What do you mean? The girls said that you were willing to meet up.”

“No, I’m meeting with one of Puck’s customers.”

“What? That doesn’t …” he trails off, and the two of you seem to realize the same thing at the same time.

You bury your head in your hand as Chilchuck grits his teeth.

Those scheming …

“I’m sorry they dragged you into this,” you mutter as you get up from your seat, your voice cold and flat. “I’ll be going now.”

His head snaps up. “Going? But –”

You hurry past him, dodging the hand that you know has reached out for your own.

Home is a ten-minute walk away. You can clear your head in that time, then scold your daughters for meddling, though it’s partially your fault for not questioning Puckpatti about your supposed date more thoroughly. You just didn’t think that they would try something like this.

(Or that Chilchuck would bother to go along with it.)

You pull the door open with some effort and rush out into a downpour of rain.

Your hair gets drenched before you backpedal with a yelp. Pressing against the wall underneath the awning, you look out helplessly at the soaked streets, their gutters already filling with water and debris flowing down the incline. Is … is that a drowning rat?

The storm’s earthiness floods your nose, late in its prediction by half an hour. Just your luck.

You fumble with the clasp of your necklace to remove it, not wanting to get it wet. While you struggle, the tavern door creaks open behind you.

“So you don’t even want to talk. Even after all these years, you’re going to walk away again.”

“Do you know why I walked away the first time?” The damn thing won’t unhook. You scowl, the presence at your back making your usually nimble fingers clumsy.

“No,” Chilchuck says. “I don’t. Not for certain.”

“That’s why.” With each failed attempt to separate the rings, your fingertips grow sorer, your throat thickening. He’s too close. You hate how he’s watching you fail such a simple task. “You stopped knowing, Chilchuck. That’s why.”

Underneath the sharp sound of rain, you can hear his breath hitch, then quiet.

You bite your lip and let your arms fall to your sides, giving up on trying to take your necklace off. Your chest aches. You don’t want to cry in front of him.

“So, there, we talked like you wanted.”

He stops you before you can step out into the rain.

“Wait. What … what about your necklace?” he asks hesitantly, like it’s not what he really wants to say, but merely a way to stall for time.

This time, you look over your shoulder at him. “I’ll dry it real well once I get home,” you reply.

Chilchuck’s mouth presses into a fine line. He grabs the cloak folded over the crook of his elbow, and it is then that you notice the bouquet of blue and pink flowers in his other hand. The ache in your chest flares into a raw, pulsing hurt.

“I’m guessing you’d rather not have me walk you.” He speaks evenly, holding his cloak out towards you. “It’s not completely waterproof, but keep this over your head, at least …” his voice quiets, “please.”

Wordlessly, you take the garment from him. The inner lining is warm against your skin.

“I’m sorry,” he tells you. “For not knowing.” His fist tightens around the flowers, and he stares at you resolutely. “I want to again, if you’ll let me.”

Ah.

You swallow. “I … I don’t know.”

“It doesn’t have to be today. I can wait.”

Breaking eye contact and looking down, Chilchuck roughs his fingers through his hair, mussing it up. The cut is the same as it’s always been, auburn bangs thick and soft over his brow. And you recognize the shirt he’s wearing, a practical, clean wool shirt that you made some years ago. He’s taken good care of it.

It’s all the same. All the same, and yet, something that you can’t quite identify has changed.

You bring his cloak closer to your chest and bite your bottom lip.

“… Give me a week.”

His entire body loses its tension.

“Really?” He looks at you like he can’t believe it, and you avert your gaze, ears warming and moving back the slightest bit.

“Give me a week to decide,” you clarify. “Fler or Mei will let you know … this is really abrupt, after all …”

Chilchuck nods. “That’s fine!” he exclaims. “You didn’t know, so I understand. A week is – a week’s good.”

You nod back, hesitant.

The rain continues its heavy downpour.

“Right … well …” you turn slightly, casting him one last glance, “I’ll give your cloak back, regardless. Don’t get sick.”

“Okay. Stay … stay safe.”

With that, you wrap yourself in the thick fabric, rushing out of the safety of the awning. The run back home smells of woodsmoke and thyme, and when you open the door to three guilty daughters and three apologies, it lingers.

You hang his cloak near the fireplace. It’s evidence of a weak resolve that you stay until it’s dry, and even more damning that you know your answer long before it is.

#dungeon meshi #delicious in dungeon #dunmeshi #chilchuck tims x reader #chilchuk tims #chilchuck x reader #chilchuck #dungeon meshi fanfiction #reader insert #fem!reader #my emotional support middle-aged divorced father of three.......#throw this guy in a childhood friends to lovers to estranged lovers to lovers fic and see how he handles it #chilchuck's wife!reader let's gooooo

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fiveki · 13 hours

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Small Huskerdust story!

(Angst )

It was a rainy night, Angel felt weak, tired and used. As always.

He opened the hotel’s doors, immediately collapsing on the floor as soon as he got to the lobby. His whole body ached, he could still feel Valentino’s hands all over him. It was disgusting. Angel was disgusting.

The spider teared up, unable to just stand up and go to his room. He was too tired, really weak. The poor boy began to sob silently on the cold floor, he really was pathetic. Crying unable to do something for himself, as easy as just standing up and going up a few stairs to go into his dorm, cuddle with his pig and sleep. As he always does.

That time it felt different.

Suddenly, a deep voice spoke out loud.

“You look like shit”

Husk was sitting down on an armchair, he stood up, the look that reflected through the red windows form the hotel’s main windows allowing Angel to see him, his eyes were teary, so the image was kind of blurry.

“You let himself be used again? You made me wait for nothing. You always bitch to me about how much you hate Valentino, how much you hate your job but you’re fucking unable to do something about it. You’re just an useless piece of shit. The only thing that makes you slightly useful is your body, and look at it. It’s so fucking disgusting. I’m about to throw up.”

Angel’s eyes widened at Husk’s rude words, each of them felt like a stab in the heart, completely. Slowly, he tried his best to stand up, he fixed his soaked clothes; that night he didn’t have too much time to change, he was almost wearing nothing

“Husk what are you- what are you talking about I- I am confused is everything okay are you-…drunk..? What’s up with you..!”

The boy’s voice cracked, showing how pain he was holding and was about to let go.

“I am not drunk, I’m beating realistic. Do you know why I always drink when I’m with you? To forget I am next to somebody like you. You make me feel ashamed of even staying in the same place as you.”

Husk stepped closer to Angel, he was ready to receive whatever Husk had to give him. Valentino had taught him well to be prepared to get hit and not fighting back.

Husk made a quick movement, he was going to hit Angel.

As soon as Husk’s hand was going to collide against Angel’s face, he woke up with a loud gasp, trembling.

He immediately leant up and glanced around, he was terrified.

Husk woke up with Angel’s sudden movement.

“Angel..? What’s wrong, is everything okay..?”

The cat wrapped his arms around the spider.

“Bad dream again?”

The boy nodded, slowly starting to relax. He lie back down, hugging Husk gently yet tightly against his chest.

“Do you want to talk about it? I don’t like how tense you are”

The bartender lifted his head to look at him, his eyes widened in surprise when he saw Angel was crying.

“You’d never hit me right..? No matter- how pissed you are…”

Husk sighed, he knew what his nightmare was about now.

“Angel, my love… I’d never do that to you, alright?”

Angel nodded slowly, wiping his tears.

“I’m- it’s true… I’m sorry…”

Angel’s arm was grabbed in a gentle way by Husk, pulling it away. Husk’s hand cupped his face

“Dont apologise, I will repeat it as many times you need to make you understand or just remind you I’ll never lay a finger on you in a harmful way…”

A small smile was plastered on Angel’s face, he nodded, hugging him to show how much he appreciated that kind act, he kissed Husk’s head as well.

“I love you, Husk…”

“I love you more, Anthony”

#huskerdust #angel dust x husk #hazbin husk #hazbin hotel #hazbin hotel husk #angel dust #hazbin hotel angel dust #hazbin angel dust #books and reading #oneshots #small story #hazbin hotel alastor #valentino #hazbin hotel valentino #angst with a happy ending

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syrupfog · 7 hours

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Law being the most anemic fucking vampire.

Like he doesn’t pick up on hunger cues, especially when studying in med school and during his fellowship time. Will go days without feeding because he doesn’t notice he needs to until one day he stands up and just falls the fuck over

Like he becomes well known in his apartment complex because of the number of times he’s passed out on the stairs.

He doesn’t change his ways though until he comes to on the landing with his neighbour looming over him.

“Zoro says you’re a vampire” the neighbour says.

Law doesn’t know his neighbours he has no clue who Zoro is. “I’m a vampire,” he says, groaning as he sits up.

Neighbour nods, walks over and fucking HEADBUTTS the wall. Some cement crumbles.

Law gapes at him.

The neighbour walks back, looking mostly fine (definitely has a concussion) with a trickle of a bloody nose.

“Here you go!” He says brightly.

Law gives him a horrified face. He scrambles back when he thinks the neighbour is going to headbutt him too.

But the man just walks up to him and swipes the blood off his face and onto Law’s face, like you’re supposed to do to get kittens to eat.

He’s grinning. Very wide.

“Please don’t ever do that again,” Law says. He wipes the blood off his face.

The man frowns “I worked hard for that!” He says.

“I’m not rewarding bad behaviour,” Law says petulantly.

“You passed out on the stairs!”

“That’s beside the point.”

Law has blood bags at home. He doesn’t need a weird stranger’s blood. He probably has mad cow.

The man crosses his arms. “Well I think that’s rude,” he says.

Law sighs. He’s still lightheaded. “How about next time you want to donate blood, you ask me first? I can take some WITHOUT giving you a concussion.”

The man brightens. “Okay!!” He says, excited now.

“Im Luffy! It’s nice to meet you, vampire!”

“Trafalgar,” saw Law.

“Traffy,” says Luffy.

Law narrows his eyes. He senses arguing is futile.

Law never actually means to take Luffy up on his offer. He HAS blood, he just forgets to take it. Every time Luffy offers, he tells him he’s got blood at home, maybe next time.

That all changes when a summer storm rolls in and they lose power.

They’re out of power for almost four days, a sickly still and wet heat settling in the city. And when Law wakes up after passing out in his kitchenette, he realises he’s actually in need.

He doesn’t even know where in the complex Luffy lives, but it turns out not to be an issue.

He’s just made it down the stairs when the fire door in front of him opens and—

“TRAFFY!”

“Luffy,” Law groans despite himself.

“Do you need—“

“Yes.” Law grabs his wrist. “Come with me.”

Luffy obediently follows him back up the stairs to his apartment.

Law drags him in and sets him at the table. “You’re going to want to refill on protein and sugar after this,” he says.

“Okay!” Luffy says, expression bright.

Law sighs. He wipes down Luffy’s forearm with an alcohol pad before grabbing his wrist and sinking his teeth in.

Usually humans taste gross. Blood at the best of times is a neutral flavour, but skin and arm hair and sweat are disgusting.

But Luffy?

Luffy… tastes like honeyed ham.

Law pulls back, a wet noise as he pulls his fangs out. “Why do you taste like that?” He asks, alarmed.

“Like what?” Luffy asks.

“Like… glazed ham?”

Luffy laughs. “Silly,” he says. “Because I was eating glazed ham, of course!”

Law bit close to Luffy’s elbow. He also sanitised the area. How on EARTH did the taste permeate his skin so well?

With trepidation, Law goes back to feeding. It’s with horror he realises he… likes the glazed ham taste with the blood. It’s like drinking flavoured coffee; useless accoutrement but pleasing nonetheless.

When he’s drunk enough he’s confident he won’t be falling down stairs,

Law cleans Luffy’s arm and attaches two small round plasters to the holes.

“Fun!” Luffy says, looking at them. “Fang sized!”

“Thanks,” Law says. “You can go now.”

Luffy blinks at him. “Let’s hang out,” he says.

Law blinks back at him. “I have to—“ he gestures at his apartment.

Considering they are IN his apartment, he’s just sort of gesturing at everything.

“That’s cool,” Luffy says. “I’ll just stay here.”

Law… nods. “Okay,” he says. The power’s still out, it’s not like he was going to actually do anything anyway.

What Law doesn’t know is that once Luffy’s gotten into Law’s apartment once, he’s gonna always assume he’s welcome.

Even when Law tries to kick him out. S

ometimes (often) Luffy is just. Here now.

And unfortunately, like the glazed ham taste, Law realises he sort of likes it.

#lulaw #lawlu #my writing

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imagopirateversion · 2 days

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Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales; Why It Shouldn’t Exist

Or how I invested time and energy into an analysis of a relatively dead franchise instead of doing it for my actual media analysis university course.

An essay by: a bitter and obsessed PotC fan since they were 7, with a lot of free time.

Lads, this is going to be long. You have been warned.

The Beginning

At the very beginning of the movie, we see a young Henry Turner looking for his dad.

Now, we're not talking about characterization problems or how likely it is that a ten-year-old child would risk his life to look for a man he technically only saw once; we're talking about plot problems, actual logical fallacies. My questions are:

How? The Flying Dutchman is a legendary ship, impossible to be found unless She wants to be found. The only reason we see Her in Dead Man's Chest is because Davy Jones himself is looking for Jack to collect his debt, and in that occasion the Dutchman's captain wasn't even doing what he was supposed to do, so he was most definitely in the living world. Will otherwise, he's doing the job Calypso gave him, so he's constantly in between. Is the movie trying to convince me that a kid was able to do something no one in the history of piracy was ever able to do? And even if he did, why hasn't anyone explained me how? He simply looks at a map and throws himself on the bottom of the ocean. How did he know The Dutchman was there? How did he know it would've come to surface?

Where is his mom? We got to know Elizabeth in the first three movies; we know she's a smart woman and we can assume she's an attentive mother. She didn't notice her son preparing himself for a trip in the middle of the ocean to go look for his dad? Was she distracted? Was she outsmarted by a 10ish-year-old? Or is she just not contemplated in this scenario?

Why does Will look like that? Will is doing his job, so... why does he look like he's slowly corrupting? That kind of corruption is the punishment Calypso reserves to The Dutchman's crew when the captain fails her, which isn't the case. Did they forget about it? Was the idea of putting algae on Orlando Bloom's face just impossible to resist to?

Alright, this isn't actually from this movie but it's bothering me, so I have to write it; also, it would make this whole movie unnecessary, so it's somehow related to it. Why (and I can't stress this enough) can't Elizabeth be on the Dutchman? Why can't they do the job together? Is it because she's not a pirate? I'm pretty sure se actually is. Is it because she's a woman? Last time I checked she was the KING. She wants to stay with Will forever, Will wants to stay with her forever, they can literally live forever on the same ship. Why aren't they?

Whatever the Hell Happened to Jack Sparrow

Imagine creating a character that is so iconic whenever you ask a person who was a kid in the early 2000 to imagine a pirate, they imagine said character.

Now imagine fourteen years pass and you decide to ruin that character by making him the most hideous, annoying, idiotic person in the whole saga, and we're talking about a saga that has Philip the Missionary in it. Why? Jack Sparrow is THE anti-hero. Never on the right side, but never on the wrong one. You can tell he's doing something morally questionable, but you still find yourself rooting for him. He's stupid enough to make you laugh, but he's secretly clever enough to always get away with it. Now he's just... drunk. And that's not even an excuse for this horrendous new characterization, because he was always drunk. The guy FORGOT HE WAS ROBBING A BANK, the same guy just one movie earlier was able to escape from the King of England's palace and steal a lady's earring (by pretending to be a literal slut) in the process. He just switched from the iconic drunk bi bestie everyone loves to my cringe uncle that drinks too much at Christmas parties and makes everyone uncomfortable. Please, if the risk is ruining an entire generation's beloved character, either don't make the movie or find a better explanation than "Bad luck dogs you day and night".

The Pearl in The Bottle

So... what you're telling me is that Jack Sparrow, the guy who was able to defeat Hector Barbossa, Davy Jones and Blackbeard thanks to his slyness, and who loves his Black Pearl more than anything else in the world, had said ship in a bottle in his pockets for FIVE YEARS... and he never thought about breaking the bottle to free Her. That's what you're telling me. This is the pivotal point upon which the entire Jack's plot hinges. I... I don't even know what to say. Was this supposed to be funny?

What an Incredibly Lucky Coincidence

A guy needs a treasure to save his father. To find it, he needs the help of a notorious and legendary pirate. He looks for him everywhere, sailing on dozens of ships just so he has the remote chance to stumble across the pirate. The last ship he's been on has sinked, he's the only survivor. He's been found in the middle of the ocean and someone brought him to the nearest city. Which city? I mean, the one that has both the pirate he was looking for and a lady who's the only person in the whole planet who's able to find the treasure he was looking for! And, oh my... he finds the both of them! In that same city! Without even LOOKING FOR THEM! A hell of a coincidence, if you ask me. Also known as lazy writing.

What's Wrong With the Guards?

Now, I know Pirates of the Caribbean isn't exactly known for its accurate historical reconstructions, but why are the guards in this movie acting like they're some sort of hellhounds ready to kill anyone in sight? Even pirates and traitors as Jack and Henry were supposed to stand trial before being sentenced to death. It would've probably been an unjust and barbaric trial, but there should've been one. We literally saw it, in the previous movie. Why's Jack been sentenced to death for simply existing here? He gave pirate vibes and they decided that was enough?

Paul McCartney

This is not an actual point of the analysis, I just wanted to remind people that Paul McCartney is in this movie and that's the only valid reason to watch it.

Salazar

I am confused. Once again, I have questions.

El Matador Del Mar was so good at his job he had almost defeated piracy. "The last ones joined together to try and defeat me". The last what? Pirates? There were no pirates left? This happened when Jack was young, so a lot of time before the first movie, right? Where were, I don't know... Blackbeard? Davy Jones? Barbossa? All the other Pirate Lords? I might be wrong, but I guess Salazar didn't kill them, did he? Why weren't they there during that "last battle" in which "the last ones joined together"?

The Devil's Triangle. I just don't understand what's the logic behind it. So, this is a cursed place. Whoever enters there, can't get out. One would think it means that if you get there, you die; and Salazar does die, but he somehow also becomes a ghost whose only purpose is to find Jack Sparrow and have his revenge. So, do people become ghosts when they get in The Devil's Triangle? We have to assume people have gotten stuck in there before; otherwise, there wouldn't be legends around the place. So why isn't it like full of spirits ready to haunt people? Why are Salazar and his crew the only ones?

Poseidon or Calypso?

What's the Trident of Poseidon? Does Poseidon exist? Isn't Calypso the Goddess of the sea? Breaking the Trident, you break all the curses of the sea, so the Trident must be more powerful than Calypso, which leads to a question. Where is she? She IS the sea, right? So she must have known someone was about to find the Trident and brake all curses, including her one. She just decided it was okay? It really feels like someone decided to suddenly change the world's mythology without giving explanations.

The Compass

This is possibly the most blatant plot hole in the whole saga. Probably the most blatant plot hole I've ever witnessed, and man, I watched all the Harry Potter movies. In Dead Man's Chest, Jack meets Tia Dalma in her "shop" and he tells her he's looking for the Davy Jones' key. She asks him "The compass you bartered from me, it cannot lead you to this?", making another pivotal point of Dead Men Tell No Tales factually senseless.

That man couldn't have given his compass to Jack, because that wasn't his compass.

So either Salazar is lying while telling his tale or they forgot about that line in the second movie. Anyway, let's pretend that line doesn't exist; even if that captain gave Jack his compass in that exact moment, why would it be the key to free Salazar, exactly? How is the compass in any way related to The Devil's Triangle or to Salazar? In the movie, they try to explain it with a sentence: “if you betray it, your greatest fear comes true”. So, is Salazar Jack's greatest fear? I really doesn't seem right, Jack almost didn't remember Salazar when Henry mentioned him. To Jack, he's only a guy he outsmarted decades earlier. Also, Jack technically already gave the compass away, twice: to Elizabeth in Dead Man's Chest, to make her find the chest, and to Beckett in At World's End, when they're negotiating.

That's... That's Just Body Shaming, Mate

Let's talk about her. So, the woman's ugly. It can happen that a woman is ugly. Was it necessary to build an entire scene around some blatant body shaming? This scene wants to mimic the similar scene in Dead Man's Chest: Jack's on an island, running from the main villain, and he's forced to do things he doesn't want to do until someone saves him, then it was Will, now it's Hector.

Except in Dead Man's Chest it was LITERAL CANNIBALISM he was facing, and yet he looked LESS TERRIFIED and DISGUSTED. What's exactly the message here? Lads, is marrying an ugly woman worse than cannibalism? I don't know... that was just bad.

Justice for Hector Barbossa

If you know me (you probably don't, but if you do) then you know about my obsession with Hector Barbossa. I truly believe he's the best written character in the saga, and he's in my top five of the characters I love the most in all media. I watched The Curse of the Black Pearl when I was seven and I am autistic, so I had all the time to develop a literal relationship with these characters in my head. As much as Geoffrey Rush's interpretation was impeccable, as always, it really hurt to watch Hector in this movie. He just doesn't sound like him. First of all, why isn't he on the Queen Anne's Revenge? Why's he letting someone else sail around on his ships? He would've never. Why's he just sitting on a throne and shooting musicians instead of, I don't know... being a pirate? Being a pirate is the only thing that matters to him. He says it at the end of On Stranger Tides, and he even says it in this movie, to the witch. "I'm a pirate. Always will be".

So, why isn't he pirating? What happened to him? And what about the pact with the witch? He made her curse all his enemies; that's honestly the most out-of-character thing he could've done.

Seriously, watch this movie, and then The Curse of the Black Pearl and tell me he sounds like he's the same character. Then there’s his death... was it necessary? And I don't mean if it was necessary to the plot (it wasn't), but the way he died, did it make sense? He takes the sword and sacrifices himself to kill Salazar, but WHY? Salazar was back a mortal. They could've brought him to surface and then shoot him. What was the point of his death, Disney? I will never forgive you.

I would've preferred if they never showed him again. He's alive and living his best life in Tortuga, if you ask me.

How does Carina Smyth exist?

Let's do the math. Carina Smyth has approximately the same age as Henry Turner, who was born around nine moths after the end of At World's End. At the end of that movie, Barbossa once again stole the Black Pearl (he's iconic we stan a legend), so we have to assume it is during that time (between the At World's End and On Stranger Tides) that he conceives Carina. He stays with this woman during the whole pregnancy, bacause he says he was there when she died. So nine months, at least, right? Except; Jack makes it clear that he and Barbossa met Carina's mom, Margaret, together.

When, exactly, did this happen? It can't be between On Stranger Tides and Dead Men Tell No Tales, because Hector himself says only five years passed between the two, and Carina doesn't look like a five-year-old;

it can't be between At World's End and On Stranger Tides, because we know Jack and Barbossa weren't together, and Hector was too busy losing a leg and planning his revenge by working for the King of England; it can't be during At World's End, because Barbossa was too busy rescuing Jack and then slaying (literally and metaphorically) Beckett's men to save piracy; it can't be during Dead Man's Chest, because he was dead; it can't be during The Curse of the Black Pearl, nor during the ten years before it, because he was... he was a skeleton, I hardly believe he could reproduce, despite what’s written in some fanficions; it can't be before, of course, because Carina would be too old. The only chance, but it's a stretch, is that Hector and Jack met this Margaret Smyth years and years before, and that at a certain point (while he was still busy slaying, losing a leg or planning his revenge), for some reason he decided to come back to her and accidentally had a daughter. That would mean that Jack remembered Margaret Smyth's name DECADES after he met her.

The Post-Credit Scene: What?

WHY'S DAVY JONES BACK? The Trident technically broke all the curses of the sea. He is THE cursed man of the sea. AND HE'S DEAD. The only answer I was able to give me, is that the moment the Trident broke the curses, the curse that said if you stab his heart he dies was also broken, so he technically didn't die, but it makes even less sense, because if the curses just aren't real anymore, then a man shouldn't be able to... carve out his heart and put it in a chest, right? (Which by the way, makes Will Turner being alive senseless as well). Even if so, Davy should've come back as a human.

My conclusion is that this movie should not exist, and we, as a community, should pretend it was never made. Hector is alive. Bye.

Imago

#potc #pirates of the caribbean #potc analysis #dead men tell no tales #analysis #media analysis #pirates #jack sparrow #hector barbossa #carina smyth #henry turner #elizabeth swann #will turner #calypso #davy jones #salazar

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kaycares22 · 15 hours

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At 7:36 AM on a Tuesday, Draco stumbles out of her personal Floo. It sounds like he tumbles out, and Hermione gasps as she whirls around to face the hearth in her kitchen. He’s bent over with his hands on his knees, catching his breath. She’s never seen him look less put together.

“Draco. What’s wrong?” There’s a wild look in his eyes as he straightens, staring at her in a way that makes her feel more vulnerable than when he had her skirt hitched up around her waist seconds after he placed a silencing charm on the door to her office yesterday. She’s grown used to his touch, his taste, his presence in her life in stolen moments. But a wake-up call is outside the protocol of their trysts.

Not to mention that his face is currently whiter than the white blonde of his hair.

“What happened?” she asks when he continues to stare at her with wide gray eyes instead of answering her question. “What’s wrong?”

His hand shakes as he raises it to run it through his hair. “The tapestry,” he finally rasps. “The bloody fucking tapestry.”

“The…?” Hermione frowns as she watches his Adam's apple bob with the force of his swallow. He runs his hand through his hair again, and she thinks to herself that he looks spider-webbed, seconds away from shattering with the force of a breeze. “Here. Come sit.”

Draco’s hand still shakes in hers when she takes it, but he lets her lead him to one of the stools at her counter. He stares at some spot over her shoulder, almost despondent in his panic, until she presses her palm against his cheek. She ignores the voice in the back of her mind that questions why this feels like the most intimate way she’s ever touched him.

His eyes have that same wild quality when he stares back at her. “What happened to the tapestry?”

Rubbing a hand over his face, he mumbles something to himself that sounds like Didn’t think this part through. His hand covers his eyes for several long seconds before he finally lets it drop away. But then his eyes roam her body like he’s searching for an answer, and she wishes he’d cover his eyes again instead.

It catches her off guard when he asks, “How do you feel?”

“How do I feel?” she repeats, sounding daft even in her own ears.

“Do you feel… normal?”

Draco’s eyes scan her body again, and she crosses her arms over her chest to lessen that feeling of being laid bare before him. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“Is there something you need to tell me?” He shifts directions as he shifts uncomfortably in his seat. And Hermione feels exasperated.

“Draco, what the hell are you getting at?” she sighs.

He falls silent again, but at least this time he holds her gaze. Another swallow, another bob. Another shaking hand through his hair. And then his voice a thin rasp again when he says, “You appeared on my family tapestry.”

Her blood freezes in her veins. She has no idea what that means, and she’s certain she knows what he just said at the same time. But her brain refuses to accept that interpretation. “I- what?”

“Granger, you are now on the Malfoy family tapestry. Which could mean that when you got me drunk on firewhisky last Friday, I married you and managed to forget.” Her stomach flips at the easy way the word married rolls off his tongue, but something in her mind screams at him to stop there.

Marriage. Period. Full stop. As far as this train of thought goes.

But instead, he levels his gaze with hers again as a muscle twitches in his jaw. “But there would be a line connecting your name to mine. Not an empty circle with an hourglass beneath both our names.”

His eyes drop from hers to stare solidly at her middle. She rushes to cross her arms there, to hide it from his view. “That’s impossible.”

But even as she says the words, she hears the lack of sincerity. Impossible would mean she hadn’t been the one to kiss him first. Impossible would mean she hadn’t invited him back to hers that first time, telling herself the next morning that she had been a little too drunk when she hadn’t drunk at all. Impossible would mean he was still just her coworker, not someone who had traced every part of her with his hands.

It was very possible.

“You’ve been a bitch,” he adds, interrupting her thoughts.

“I have not!” She takes a step back to create distance. Her hand itches to slap him. He must sense it because his lip twitches despite the lack of color that remains in his face.

“You were all pissy with me last week when you misplaced your notes on the vampyr rights’ bill.” He waves a hand lazily towards her. “You’re pissy right now.”

“You called me a bitch!” she says, aghast. What had ever made her think it was a good idea to sleep with this man? And then to keep returning at various times for the last three months?

“Yesterday, my hand barely grazed your tit, and you flinched.” He cards a hand through his hair again. It looks unkempt now, and Draco Malfoy never looks unkempt. Neither of them. Neither of them ever looks unkempt because they are calculated and careful and intentional in everything they do.

Except for when she kissed him on an impulse after their co-authored legislation for the protection of centaurs passed.

Hermione has to fight the urge to raise her hand to her own breast to see if it’s still just as tender.

“Well, it’s impossible.” She sounds more sure of herself as she shakes her head and raises her chin. “I’m taking a potion.”

This time, his lip does more than twitch. It’s a sad kind of smirk he wears, and her hand itches again to slap it off his face. “Which would be canceled out by the antidote you took when you had that skin reaction to the asphodel.”

She had held her breath, waiting for him to point out all the potential flaws in her brewing her own contraceptive potion. But the way he takes his Double Mastery of Potions knowledge and easily points out the way her potions would counteract one another leaves her feeling faint.

Hermione feels the color leave her own face. But her stubborn resistance grows a reciprocal amount.

“Well, this is ridiculous,” she mutters as she storms across the room to her discarded wand on the counter. She turns back around to find that Draco is standing again, gripping the counter as if it’s a life raft. She waves her wand and mutters the detection charm, determined to prove him wrong.

And instead, a tiny gold light appears above her abdomen. Flickering like a rapid heartbeat.

Her knees buckle as her whole world upends. But Draco just stares at it with wide eyes, his expression a mixture of fear and awe as he whispers, “Well, fuck me.”

#dramione #draco x hermione #dhr #dhr fanfiction #dramione fanfic #draco malfoy #hermione granger #dramione drabble #my ficlet #guilty sinners #clever words

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scary-grace · 2 days

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Skin Hunger (Chapter 2) -- a Shigaraki x f!Reader fic

There's no such thing as a good night at work when you work in the world's most infamous brothel for monsters, but your night takes a turn for the worse when you find yourself serving drinks to visiting half-vampire Shigaraki Tomura. You don't mean to catch his interest, and you don't mean to start a conversation. You definitely don't mean to get him drunk. (cross-posted to Ao3)

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Life in Asylum continues, and in the endless scroll of days and nights, cleanups in empty rooms and mop-ups in private parties, it’s almost possible to forget about the half-vampire who will be back at the next full moon. Almost, but not quite. Vampires are a rare enough occurrence in Asylum that everyone’s talking about Shigaraki Tomura and his master, and since they’re going to be regulars, Overhaul provides more than a little education for the staff about the one type of inhuman next to no one has experience with.

Most of the workers don’t care, but you pay close attention. Your knowledge of vampires contains next to nothing concrete. You need to learn, if you want to hold your own during your next conversation with Shigaraki Tomura.

Vampirism is spread through a bite – true. Everyone who’s bitten becomes a vampire – false. Apparently, creating a new vampire requires intention on the part of the vampiric sire, which probably helps to keep the population down. The mechanism that causes half-vampirism is unclear, but what’s perfectly clear is that half-vampires are something unusual. They need to consume blood, just like vampires do, but unlike vampires, they also need to eat. They still have heartbeats, still need to breathe, still need to see the sun every so often. Beyond that, though, no one’s able to describe what powers a half-vampire has, or the degree of strength advantage they have over an ordinary human, or whether they can turn into a true vampire – or how they do it. The question of what Shigaraki’s capable of is one you’re not able to answer, and it bothers you. Then again, if Shigaraki had correctly guessed what you are, he’d be equally in the dark as to what you’re able to do.

Most inhuman species have some sort of biological limitations, just like humans do. Werewolves still need to eat and sleep, and while bullets will damage them, silver bullets are the true threat. Liches and demons can’t set foot on holy ground, no matter which faith has consecrated a given spot, and shapeshifters lose their forms if they get too tired. Everybody knows all about vampires and sunlight. Faeries don’t have limitations. Faeries have rules.

Faeries can’t lie. Lying has physical consequences. Faeries have given names and true names, and while the true names are the most dangerous, even knowledge of a title or nickname can grant some degree of power over them. Faeries are vulnerable to iron, but not in the same way werewolves are vulnerable to silver. A gift offered by a faery is never just a gift; either it comes in repayment for an earlier favor, or it comes with strings attached. Nothing your father’s people give is ever given freely.

And that’s where you got yourself in trouble. You did Shigaraki a favor by using your glamour on him. If that particular rule applies to you as a half-fey, you’ve bound Shigaraki to you until he can repay the debt.

All of that would be enough to deal with heading into the next full moon, and you feel like it’s possible to handle. But three nights before the vampires are set to arrive, the itching starts, and things go from manageable to impossible in the space of an hour.

The last time this happened, you took a few days off of work until it was over, but it’s occurring over a much larger area on your body – your entire left arm, shoulder to wrist, and it’s not going to peel away until it’s ready. If you try, you’ll open yourself up to infection, and if that doesn’t kill you, the way it’ll look once it’s healed will probably make you wish you were dead. You can manage not to scratch while you’re on shift, but when you’re off, you’re scratching constantly, and every last one of your coworkers has something to say about it.

“Better not do that where the boss will see,” Nemoto remarks as you’re all eating in the cramped servants’ mess. “He finds fleas disgusting.”

Nemoto knows damn well you don’t have fleas; he just doesn’t like you, because his demonic ability to force confessions doesn’t work on faeries, and that includes you. The maid you’re sitting next to recoils away from you, and across the table, Tengai rolls his eyes. “It’s not fleas,” he says. “Haven’t any of you seen a half-fey molt before?”

“It’s not molting,” you say uselessly. It would only be molting if you did it regularly.

“Of course none of you have seen it,” Chrono says. Usually he eats with Overhaul, but sometimes Overhaul can’t stand being around even his right-hand man. “Half-fey in general are rare, and her variety of half-fey is rarer still.”

Everyone looks at you. You can’t tell if they’re waiting for you to explain or thinking that they’ll figure it out if they just stare hard enough. Either way, your face turns red, and Chrono heaves a dramatic sigh. “For most of you half-breeds, it doesn’t matter which of your parents was the inhuman. It matters for faeries.”

Tabe burps. “Why?”

Why questions are usually safe to ask Chrono – asking Overhaul a why question results in either a flat, irritated look or a two-hour lecture about the minutiae of the topic. “It’s unclear,” Chrono says. “What is clear, however, is that half-fey children take after their fathers in appearance and lifespan, and their mothers in magical ability.”

“Huh?”

Chrono doesn’t have his mask on. This time you can see him roll his eyes. “Children of human fathers and faery mothers resemble humans, and have human lifespans. Despite that, they have significant magical abilities.”

“How strong are they?” Rappa asks through a full mouth. “Stronger than regular human magicians?”

Chrono shrugs. You, meanwhile, think about a conspiracy theory you read in one of Overhaul’s books – that all human magic-users are secretly matrilineal half-fey, whose mothers either abandoned them to their fathers or swapped out the child of an unknowing human couple for one of their own. If that was the case, nobody would ever know. Other than the magic, matrilineal half-fey are indistinguishable from ordinary humans. “Hang on,” Setsuno says. “If half-fey take after their fey parent in how they look, how come she looks so human?”

“She doesn’t,” Chrono says. He looks to you, and you lower your hand from your shoulder. You’ve been using the cover of the conversation to scratch to your heart’s content. “Show them.”

You give him a pleading look, which he ignores, and finally you rise from the table and back away. You’re still wearing your uniform, so you pull up the skirt on your right side, revealing your leg. The table recoils as a group, and you’re pretty sure everybody’s thinking exactly what comes out of Rappa’s mouth. “What the fuck?”

“Patrilineal half-fey inherit their father’s lifespan,” Chrono says, “and their appearance – or some of it. They appear to be completely human until they reach physical maturity, at which point they begin a partial transformation. You can see the patches where fey skin has grown in to replace human skin, creating a patchwork which renders the half-fey unable to conceal their true nature.”

It’s not just your skin. Your ears have begun to change shape, growing pointed at the tips, and the natural color of your eyes has taken on a strange iridescent overlay. You need to blink less than you used to, sometimes – other times, it’s a struggle to keep your eyes open in the light without sticky, pearlescent tears oozing from them. If your father had been one of any of half a dozen varieties of fey, you’d have seen changes with your mouth, with your hands, even with the way you breathe. But while your mother never told you anything concrete about your father, she was at least able to confirm that he didn’t have gills.

Your transformation is mainly cosmetic. That doesn’t make it any less terrible, and cosmetic is a relative term. “Due to their appearances and lack of other gifts, half-fey used to make frequent appearances in human freak shows,” Chrono continues. “Some also theorize that the reason they’re unwelcome in faery society is due to their ugliness.”

“Oh.” Your coworkers are nodding at this, like it makes sense to them. Nemoto’s looking right at you when he responds. “I get it.”

You know you’re not pretty, but that doesn’t mean you like having it hammered home. You drop the right side of your skirt back down and sit again, and spend the rest of the meal picking at your food. Your appetite’s gone, and your shoulder is still itching. Even though you’re exhausted from your shift, you’re going to have a hard time falling asleep.

You’re making a beeline back to your quarters, with the intention of trying to shower off the itch and falling asleep immediately afterwards, when Chrono catches up to you. “Aren’t you going to thank me?”

“Thank you?” Backtalking to your boss is a terrible idea, but you can’t hold onto your skepticism. “For what?”

“I explained your situation, so you wouldn’t have to.” Chrono looks pleased with himself. “I did you a favor.”

“You could have done that without calling me ugly.”

“Should I have lied? It’s not as if you’re unaware,” Chrono says. He reaches out, hooks the neckline of your uniform with one finger, and pulls it aside. “How much skin are you going to lose this time?”

“Everything on my arm,” you say. Chrono looks surprised, and you seize the opportunity to shy away from his hand. “Goodnight, boss.”

“Your arm,” Chrono muses. “That’ll be a sight to see.”

Yes, it will. The juxtaposition of smooth, perfect, oil-slick shimmering faery skin with plain human skin on the same body is enough to make anyone’s skin crawl, yours included. You turn away from Chrono, and you’re almost out of earshot, almost to safety, when you hear him speak again. “You’ll have to show me when it’s done.”

That’s not the first comment like that you’ve heard from Chrono in the past year or two. They’re becoming increasingly frequent, and you know what they mean, just like you know you don’t want anything to do with them. You mumble another goodnight and duck into the female servants’ quarters, shedding your clothes and slipping a faint glamour over yourself as you step into the shower. You’re pretty sure there aren’t scrying mirrors in here, but at the same time, you’re pretty sure that if any guests wanted to pay to watch the maids shower, Overhaul would find a way to make it happen.

The hot water helps dull the itch, for now. You dry off and change into your sleeping clothes, noting every spot on your body where your heritage has surfaced. Your right leg is covered, thigh to calf, wide sashes and ribbons of fey skin interrupting your skin, jagged and gaudy. Your torso is covered, too, but you were smarter with that – when it was time, you peeled your dying skin away in a single piece rather than clawing it to ribbons. There’s some on your lower back that you never tried to peel away at all, and as a result, the fey skin is pitted and scarred. It looks hideous. You look hideous.

You know it’s true, but at the same time, you know you’re lucky. You’ve seen photos of half-fey whose fey skin broke through on their faces, unmistakable and impossible to hide. At least you’ve got a prayer of hiding this. Or you will, once you’ve peeled this next sheet of skin away to reveal what’s beneath. You crawl into bed and close your eyes, hoping that the itching will wake you in the middle of the night, so severe that you’ll have no choice but to peel the skin off right then and there. The waiting is the worst part. You just want it to be over before the full moon.

But it isn’t over before the full moon. It’s the biggest piece of skin you’ve lost – the last big piece you’ll lose, if only half your skin changes – and it’s clinging on for dear life. You beg Overhaul to help you, to employ the magic he uses to reshape the workers’ bodies when they’re injured, but he refuses. “The reaction between your meager magic and mine is too unpredictable,” he says. “I can’t help you.”

“Then let me have the night off,” you plead. He shakes his head. “Please. I won’t be any use if the skin breaks through.”

“You have my full permission to take your break to remove it,” Overhaul says, and you bite back tears. You were barely functional after you excised the skin on your torso. There’s no way you’ll be able to work with your left arm freshly peeled. “Not only is it a full moon, it’s also the autumnal equinox. We’ll need your glamours if any of the half-dozen rituals scheduled to take place here get out of hand.”

The equinoxes are the only nights where ordinary humans are allowed into Asylum, and they’re barely ordinary – they’re cultists, devoted to the worship of specific demons, conducting rituals that would get them thrown in prison in the human world. “And even if that were not the case,” Overhaul says, “there is a certain half-vampire scheduled to arrive with his master, and I doubt anyone else will be able to get him drunk.”

You were already stressed about running into Shigaraki Tomura again, but the idea of seeing him tonight sends you into a near-panic. “Sir –”

“That’s enough,” Overhaul says, and you fall silent in a hurry. “The moon is about to rise in Kiribati, and you aren’t in uniform. Get changed.”

You won’t win this. You know you won’t. You leave Overhaul’s study, hoping that the skin on your arm will hold out for another twenty-four hours – and hoping that Shigaraki Tomura’s master decided to leave him at home.

The autumnal equinox is fairly quiet as far as equinoxes go, but it’s not often that it occurs on a full moon, and from the moment the moon comes up over an even slightly populated area, Asylum devolves into barely-controlled chaos. The casualty count for workers exceeds an average full moon within the first three hours, and for the first time in a while, Overhaul comes out of his study to help repair the bodies rather than expecting them to be brought to him. Chrono equips the workers with alarm sigils, which will trigger a warning if their heart rates drop below a certain threshold. It’s an unusual precaution, but you know better than to think it’s out of any concern for the workers’ health – more that if too many of them die, Asylum won’t be able to serve all the guests who are flooding through the door.

You’re doing some of everything – a little cleaning, a little mopping up, a little belting a demon in the face with a mop when they won’t let go of the badly injured worker you’re trying to take back to Overhaul. You’re busy enough that you can almost forget about the itching, about the faery skin that’s trying to erupt through your skin on your left arm. For the first seven hours of the night, you run yourself ragged, doing whatever Overhaul’s ordered you to do, racing from floor to floor and trying to spot trouble before it begins. You’ve lived in Asylum your entire life. There’s nobody who knows their way around better than you do.

At hour eight, Overhaul summons you to the makeshift infirmary. When you get there, you spot a pile of discarded gloves on his right, a bubbling cauldron on his left, and a newly healed worker sprawled out in front of him. “Get out,” Overhaul orders the worker, and she scrambles upright, falls, and crawls unsteadily towards the exit. The instant she’s gone, Overhaul plunges his hands into whatever’s boiling inside the cauldron.

You don’t want to know what’s in there, and based on the grimace on Overhaul’s face, you don’t even want to go near him. But he summoned you. You step forward. “Sir?”

“The first ritual is about to begin. You’ll be supervising it.”

Your stomach drops. “I can’t,” you say. Overhaul mutters a curse under his breath. “I can’t! I don’t have magic –”

“You think throwing more magic at an out-of-control ritual will solve the problem? Playing stupid won’t get you out of it.” Overhaul lifts his hands from the cauldron and you startle at the sight of them. His fingers have been eaten down nearly to the bone, and in spite of the fact that he’s repairing them before your eyes, you can’t help but feel nauseous. “There are supply kits in my study, with the measures necessary to contain a ritual. All that’s required of you is to deploy them. Go.”

“Sir –”

“I don’t have time for this,” Overhaul snaps at you, and you flinch. You’ve never seen him this stressed before. “Chrono is needed elsewhere. None of the others but you possess a sensitivity to magic, and no one other than me is able to perform the repairs. Succeed at this and you’ll be rewarded appropriately. I don’t need to tell you what will happen if you fail.”

You know exactly what will happen if you fail. You nod mutely. “The supply kits can be found in the furthest cupboard. Hold out your hand,” Overhaul says. When you do, he traces a rune into your right palm. “Use this to unlock them. Go.”

You have more questions – like how to figure out which countermeasure to use first, or how to tell when they’re needed in the first place – but Rappa’s coming through the door carrying another worker, and Overhaul’s attention shifts from you. He’s not going to change his mind, and there’s no one else who can do the job. There’s nothing for you to do but head for Overhaul’s study. Being expected to supervise a ritual is bad enough. Being late to it is probably worse.

The cultists are making final preparations for their ritual in the smallest of Asylum’s three gardens. You’re not sure which cult this is, but they brought their own sacrifice, bound hand and foot in spite of the fact that they’re unconscious. You try not to look too hard at them. You don’t look too hard at the cultists, either. You pry open the supply kit and study the items within. Now that you’re looking at it, they seem pretty straightforward. Salt and consecrated chalk, for sealing the paths leading to the garden off from the rest of Asylum. A set of wardstones to keep anyone from entering once the ritual begins. A sheet of runes to trace in midair, as an extra precaution. None of it requires more than the tiniest amount of magic. Maybe this is doable.

You confirm that all the cultists are in the garden, then get to work, starting with the salt and chalk across each path leading into the garden. Next it’s the wardstones. The cultists are using a pentagram in their rituals, which means you need a hexagram to contain them properly. Wardstones are simple enough to set. You set them spinning with a twist of your fingers and leave them to hover. A few more of these, then a few sigils, and then you’re all set. You can do this.

A single footfall and a shadow falling across yours are the only warnings you get before a familiar voice rings out from behind you. “If you don’t want people to think you’re a witch, you shouldn’t spend so much time casting spells,” Shigaraki Tomura says, and you nearly jump out of your skin. “Did you miss me?”

It takes an effort not to throw the wardstone at him. “I’m not a witch. And this isn’t a spell.”

“It looks like a spell,” Shigaraki says. He looks way too pleased with himself for reasons beyond your understanding. “That’s two spells I’ve seen you do. Your boss is a warlock, so I don’t get why you’d lie about being a witch.”

You were dreading meeting Shigaraki again, in part because you were sure he’d guessed that you were half-fey. Apparently not. “That wasn’t a spell, and neither is this,” you say. “I’ll show you.”

“Huh?”

You motion for him to come forward, and he does, looking way too suspicious. What does he think you’re going to do? You’re not the one who drinks blood. “Hold this,” you say, and push the wardstone into his hand. “Now, do this –”

You show him the proper gesture to activate it, and he tries it – and drops it, just like you did the first time you tried it. Before you can tell him to try again, he picks it up and looks at you. “Show me again.”

You show him the gesture, and this time he copies it much more closely. The wardstone spins out of his hand and hovers in midair, the last piece of the hexagram you’ve been constructing falling into place. Shigaraki looks surprised, then pleased with himself again. You’re less annoyed with it this time, mostly because it’s given you a chance to prove your point. “You can do it, and you have even less magic than I do. It’s not a spell.”

“This one isn’t a spell,” Shigaraki agrees. He’s mimicking the gesture again, even better on the third try. “The other one was.”

A glamour’s not a spell. If it was a spell, it could be replicated by anyone else, but your glamour is an extension of your nature as a half-fey. You won’t be able to convince Shigaraki otherwise without outing yourself, so you keep quiet, and you set back off around the garden, headed for where you left the supply kit. Shigaraki follows you. “I went to the bar. You weren’t there,” he says. “Are you avoiding me or something?”

“I don’t work in the lounge most of the time. That night I was just filling in.” You’re conscious, suddenly, of the fact that you’re in the maid uniform – and that the maid uniform doesn’t come with even the most useless of masks. “To be honest, I didn’t know you were here.”

Shigaraki makes an affronted sound, but you’ve reached the supply kit, and you have runesigns to trace. In the garden, the cultists are moving into position to begin their ritual. You hold the sheet in one hand and begin to trace the sigils in midair. “What do you do most of the time, then?” Shigaraki asks. “If you’re not down there.”

“I clean.” You make the mistake of gesturing at your uniform, and Shigaraki takes the invitation to look you up and down. “And whatever else Overhaul needs me to do.”

“Like this. What is this?”

“There are cult rituals happening tonight. Overhaul and Chrono are both busy, so they asked me to keep an eye on this one.”

“Huh.” Shigaraki looks away from you, into the garden. “My master had a cult for a while.”

You really don’t know what to think of that, except that if it had been relevant, it would have been the first thing Overhaul and Chrono told the staff about. “How old is your master?”

“Old,” Shigaraki says, which tells you absolutely nothing. “What about your boss?”

“Also old.”

Shigaraki snorts. “What about you?” You clam up instantly, and he rolls his eyes. “Come on. Either your name, what you are, or how old you are. Give me at least one.”

Out of those three pieces of information, your age is the one that won’t get you in trouble. That doesn’t mean you won’t make him work for it. “You first.”

“Come on,” Shigaraki complains. You wait, watching as the cultists pick up their unconscious sacrifice and lay him out on the altar they built out of bones they brought from home. “Not that it matters or anything, but I’m twenty-three. Your turn.”

“Twenty-three,” you repeat. You can’t tell if you’re surprised by his age or not, but the fact that he’s still counting it means he’s still mortal. Your age stopped mattering two years ago, but you’ve kept count anyway. “Me, too.”

“Was that so hard?” Shigaraki grins, just a little too widely. The only thing that keeps you from calling it a leer is an instinct that it’s not born out of triumph at getting one over on you. A moment later, you’re proven right. “I knew it.”

Why does it matter to him that you’re the same age? A low hum begins to vibrate through the air, and the sigil hovering just in front of you wavers. The ritual’s beginning, and you need to focus. Unfortunately for you, Shigaraki’s still here. You need to shake him off. “I’m surprised you’re not with your master. Aren’t you here to feed?”

“He’s here to feed. I’m here to learn,” Shigaraki says. Learn what? “This looks more interesting than whatever else is going on around here.”

The hum in the air intensifies. Beneath the sleeve of your uniform, you feel your skin beginning to crawl. “If you’re going to stay, keep quiet. I need to concentrate.”

“Right. Witches need to concentrate when they’re doing magic.”

You’ve decided not to respond to any more witch jokes. The cultists are chanting in one of the demonic languages, drawing in close to surround the altar and obscure the sacrifice. Now that you think about it, you’re not sure what kind of sacrifice this is, and regardless of whether it’s symbolic or literal, you don’t want to watch it. You especially don’t want to watch it with Shigaraki – Shigaraki, who’s standing next to you, head tilted to one side, scratching idly at his neck. Seeing him scratch makes you want to scratch. You peer down into the supply kit instead, wondering which of the objects inside you’re supposed to use first if things get out of hand.

“Is there food here?”

Out of all the things Shigaraki might have said, you weren’t expecting that. “Huh?”

“Food,” Shigaraki says again. “Is there food here?”

It feels like round two of the WiFi conversation, except this time, you’re able to give him the answer he’s hoping for. “Yes. Why?”

“After this. We should get some.”

“Um –”

“You get breaks, right? Even witches have to eat.” Shigaraki’s scratching harder than before, and he’s not looking at you. “I’m hungry.”

He is really skinny, but he’s also a half-vampire. You know half-vampires still need blood, and you focus on that question instead of the other, worse one. “Not thirsty?”

“I have money. I can pay for it,” Shigaraki says, ignoring you. “And you helped me out the last time I was here.”

“I’m the one who got you drunk.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean I don’t owe –”

“Stop talking.” You’ve interrupted him, but it’s not enough – he’s already opening his mouth again, and you slap your hand down over it before he can get another word out. “I mean it.”

Shigaraki’s red eyes are wide. You can’t tell if it’s with affront or with shock. His lips move against the palm of your hand, dry and rough, and a weird jolt travels through you, raising the hairs on your arms and the back of your neck. It’s drowned out a second later by a vibration through the air that makes you stagger. The sigil in front of you dissolves, unable to stand in the face of another wave emanating from the site of the ritual.

The wave abates, for a moment, and you think you’re safe – but the next thing you know, you and Shigaraki are both staggering as the vibration travels through the ground in addition to the air. You don’t need anybody to tell you that the ritual’s gotten out of hand, and you dive into the supply kit, searching desperately for something that can counteract a demonic curse. Something whips past you from the opposite direction, slicing your cheek. You don’t look up. You’re busy.

Shigaraki catches Overhaul’s message and pries it open, reads it aloud. “Your boss wants you to play a song. How are you supposed to play a song when phones don’t work in here?”

“Tell me you don’t really think that music only comes out of phones.” You pull a music box out of the bottom of the supply kit, dust it off, and open it. No music comes out – you must have to turn the handle. “Be quiet.”

Music begins to emanate from the box after two turns of the handle – a thin, quiet voice, singing what sounds like a lullaby in a language you don’t speak. You doubt the cultists speak it, either. But it doesn’t matter what the words are, or even that the singer is at least a little tone-deaf. All that matters is the glamour that drips from every note, stronger and heavier than anything you’ve ever called up. It’s a faery’s voice, and it’s already affecting Shigaraki. He sways sideways, falls hard against a column, the curse he mumbles more slurred than his voice was when he was drunk. The glamour is almost overpowering. If you weren’t half-fey, you’d fall prey to it yourself.

It’s strong enough to stagger Shigaraki and disorient you, but it’s not having much of an effect on the ritual itself. The vibrations are still traveling through the air, and worse, you can feel them in the ground beneath your feet. You keep turning the handle of the music box with no change in the strength of the demonic curse emanating from the center of the garden. Why isn’t it working?

The answer occurs to you just as Shigaraki speaks up. “It’s too quiet,” he mumbles. “Witch. Make it louder.”

You can’t. The despair barely has time to settle in before the answer occurs to you. You can’t make the voice from the music box louder, but you can make sure it’s not the only fey voice in the garden. You clear your throat, coat your voice in your glamour, and begin to sing.

It’s nothing – some song you liked when you could walk freely in the human world, the first thing that comes to mind. You make an effort to match the key the music box is singing in, and you project both your voice and your glamour, doing your best to build on what the faint fey voice is already providing. You think it might be working. You’re not sure.

What you do know is that Shigaraki’s figured you out. You can see him out of the corner of your eye, still slumped against the column, staring unabashedly at you as you turn the handle of the music box and sing. You’re able to console yourself with the thought that your uniform hides your patchwork fey skin before you realize what a stupid thing that is to think about – right now, or ever. Your throat is starting to hurt, your vocal cords straining under the weight of the glamour. You aren’t sure how much longer you can keep this up.

The vibrations from the ritual begin to fade just as your voice begins to crack, and it gives you the willpower to hold on a little longer, the notes you sing growing increasingly fractured and hoarse. By the time your voice gives out completely, the demonic energy’s faded to the point where the music box is enough to counter it. Your ears are ringing, so much that you almost miss Chrono’s footsteps as he approaches. He notes Shigaraki, then looks to you. “You should have called for help.”

“From who?” Your voice sounds awful. You cough. “I took care of it.”

“If that demonic energy had gotten into the flux field, it could have destabilized the entire dimension,” Chrono snaps. “Someone as weak as you has no business trying to contain –”

“If she can’t contain it, you shouldn’t have sent her to watch it.” Shigaraki levers himself upright. “Something was off about that ritual. Isn’t it your job to catch things like that? Or are you really okay with a bunch of human cultists sacrificing half-demons in your pocket dimension?”

“Half-demon?” Chrono swears. “They wouldn’t dare.”

“I can smell its blood.” Shigaraki shrugs. “She saved your ass. Give her a bonus or something.”

Chrono handles being told what to do by people other than Overhaul about as well as Rappa handles being told what to do by anybody. His shoulders stiffen, and his hand closes around your upper arm, venting a sharp jolt of magic into you rather than loosing it at Shigaraki. At least, that’s what you think he’s doing. Then the skin on your right arm, itchy and crawling since three days ago, erupts with an itch so sharp and acidic that it almost feels like a burn.

Your arm is on fire. You’ve felt this before, and you know instantly that you can’t leave it a second longer. “I need my break,” you say to Chrono, your voice strained.

He lets you go with a sharp nod. You turn and all but run from the garden, already clawing off your apron.

No time to get back to the servants’ quarters, but Asylum is full of places to hide if you know where to look. And you know where to look. With a master rune like the one you carry, you can open up passageways and closets that even the savviest of guests don’t know exist, and you’ve used them more times than you’d like to admit. You reach the nearest of the passageways and raise the rune to tap against the wall, only for the agonizing itch in your left arm to flare to new heights. Your body contorts in discomfort, and your right hand falls back to your side – and then, so fast that you barely register it, someone slips the rune from around your wrist.

It's Shigaraki, and he’s got enough of a height advantage over you that he can hold the rune out of reach just by extending his arm. You don’t have time for this. You really don’t have time for this. You can feel the fey skin beginning to eat through yours from below. “Give it back!”

“So that was why you wouldn’t let me say I owed you. You’re a faery, not a witch.” Shigaraki’s grinning like he’s figured something out, even though the clue you gave him was a thousand times more obvious than the clue you got a month ago. “Why didn’t you want me to owe you one? My master is powerful. You could have asked me for anything.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

“Except this.” Shigaraki studies the rune. You reach for it again and he holds out his other hand to forestall you. “You want this, and I want a straight answer. The ritual’s done. Do you want to go get food with me or not?”

The small part of you that’s not panicking, caught in the desperate need to get the rune back, to get away, notices how he’s phrased the question. He knows that faeries can’t lie, and for some bizarre reason, he’s decided to corner you on a question so mundane that you wonder if you’re hallucinating it. Why would he waste a question he thinks you’ll have to answer on something this stupid?

It doesn’t matter, because half-fey can lie as much as they want, and because you’re done playing around. You glamour your left arm, faking a clumsy feint, and when Shigaraki shifts away from it, you snatch the rune from his hand with your right. He’s between you and the wall, so you turn away, pressing the rune against the opposite wall and opening up the passageway there. You dive through it, the relief at being out of the hallway marred only by the fact that Shigaraki followed you in.

The passageway you were aiming for originally had space. This one is a close fit for one person, tight for two, but you’re out of time to be picky. You can’t get your arm out of your dress without unbuttoning it partway. “What are you doing?” Shigaraki asks, clearly startled, as you undo the buttons one-handed and draw your arm from your sleeve. “Are you transforming?”

Even the slightest motion of your arm sets off a wave of pins and needles, and you grit your teeth as you work it free. Bared from wrist to shoulder, your arm looks awful, mottled, bulging in odd places, almost writhing in others – like the fey skin really is trying to claw its way to freedom from the inside out. Seeing what it looks like only hardens your resolve. You dig your fingers into your shoulder, trying to pry up a piece of skin. If you get a good enough grip on the first one, you can peel off the rest in one sheet.

But you can’t get a grip. Your hand is shaking too much, or your nails are too short, or something. You remember too late that the only other time you peeled the skin back, you made the first incision with a pocketknife. Overhaul doesn’t let the staff carry weapons. You don’t have anything on you that’s sharp enough to cut through your skin, and if you can’t – there’s no way you’ll be able to scratch all your skin away before the fey skin eats through. It’ll be agonizing. It’ll take forever. And Shigaraki will be watching you the entire time.

Shigaraki. You turn to him, desperate and hating yourself for it. You know that guests are searched for weapons when they arrive, but maybe – “Do you have anything sharp?”

“Like a knife?” Shigaraki shakes his head. Then his expression shifts, and he raises one hand to his mouth, pressing the pad of his thumb against one of his incisors. You see blood well up where the tooth breaks his skin. “My teeth aren’t as sharp as my master’s –”

If they can draw blood, they’re sharp enough. You beckon him forward. “Please.”

Part of you is expecting him to bargain. Any inhuman would, if they had one of the Fair Folk at their mercy – they’d never get better terms for any deal they wished to make. But Shigaraki steps forward, closing the slight distance between you without asking what you’ll give him in exchange. His hands are dry, his palms rough like before, as they close around your wrist and raise your hand towards his mouth. “Here?”

His breath is hot against your wrist. You shake your head. “My shoulder.”

Some part of you is terrified at the thought of letting a vampire this close to your throat, screaming in terror at the thought of those teeth meeting your skin. Shigaraki edges even closer to you, as close together as you were when you were dragging him drunk down the hall. His mouth brushes against your shoulder, and you freeze in place. What is he waiting for? You don’t need him to peel the skin off for you. You just need him to –

At least one of Shigaraki’s incisors punctures your skin, and you flinch, hiss – less at the pain, and more at the fact that he’s touching you, one hand on your waist and the other around your wrist, keeping your left arm extended and keeping the rest of you close. But you’ve got what you needed from him. You dig your fingers into the breach, get a good grip, and pull.

It hurts when you peel your human skin away from the faery skin that’s grown beneath, but the human skin is already dead. As it breaks contact with your body, it goes ashen, then transparent. There’s next to no blood. The faery skin glistens, slick with serous fluid, as it’s bared to the air for the first time. You mess up a little bit at the end, peeling away a piece of healthy human skin on the back of your hand by accident. It feels like a hangnail, and your entire arm stings. The pain would be worth complaining about if you didn’t know exactly how bad it was before.

Shigaraki’s still way too close to you. You try to sidle away, and he lets go of your waist, but not your arm. He’s peering intently at it, almost fixated. You brace yourself for the kind of comments you’ve heard every time someone’s seen what you really look like. “Wow,” Shigaraki says. “It looks even cooler than I thought.”

You’re not sure you heard him right. “Cool?”

“Don’t fish for compliments. I’m getting to it,” Shigaraki says. He hasn’t looked up from your arm yet. “I thought it would look cool, and I was right. Do you have more of it?”

You’re feeling weirdly lightheaded. You nod, and you can tell Shigaraki’s grinning just by the sound of his voice. “How much more?” he asks. “Can I see?”

That question snaps you out of whatever fog you’ve been floating in. “No,” you say, and pull away from him completely. “You weren’t even supposed to see this.”

“But you’d have been in trouble if I wasn’t here.” Shigaraki’s eyes follow you closely, not just focused on your arm this time. You can feel his gaze roving over you. If you had to guess, you’d say he’s trying to figure out where else you’re hiding fey skin. “I helped.”

He helped you, after you helped him. “We’re even, then,” you say. “Is that why you did it?”

Shigaraki’s not even subtle in how he ducks the question, and before you can press him for an answer, you hear someone or something knocking against the wall outside – a sharp, uneven rattle that startles you both. You start wrestling your arm back into your sleeve. The serous fluid will glue the fabric to the fey skin and removing it will be painful later, but you don’t have a choice. You need to get out there, and you need to beg whoever’s knocking not to tell Overhaul that they found you in the world’s smallest secret passageway with Shigaraki Tomura and your dress unbuttoned.

The knocking intensifies. You miss a button at the collar of your dress and Shigaraki’s hands knock yours aside, undoing it and buttoning it properly again. Is he trying to get you in his debt officially? You decide that’s a problem for later and open the wall again. There’s no one there but one of Overhaul’s paper cranes, battering itself to death against the wall. You grab it clumsily out of the air. Overhaul’s message is blunt and to-the-point – he wants you to assist Chrono in containing the next ritual, which starts in half an hour. Shigaraki is peering over your shoulder. “I can’t read it.”

“That’s because it’s not for you. They can only be read by the person they’re intended for,” you say. Half an hour. That’s not much time. “Look, I have to –”

Another paper crane zips past you, headed for Shigaraki. He whips his head to one side to avoid it, but he read the trajectory wrong. The wing slices into the dry skin on the side of his neck and he swears, clapping his hand over the now-bleeding paper cut. You capture the crane instead and hand it to him. His expression, already annoyed, deepens into frustration and discomfort as he reads. “What does it say?” you ask.

“What does yours say?”

“Mine says I have half an hour before I’m supposed to help with the next ritual,” you say. “What about yours?”

“My master wants me to feed while I’m here.” Shigaraki scowls. “I don’t want to feed. I’m hungry.”

He’s hungry, and he helped you, and he’s a guest – but it’s not any of those things that decides your course of action. It’s something else, something you’d go mute rather than admit to out loud. “I’ve got half an hour,” you say. There’s almost certainly something else you’re supposed to be doing with that half an hour. Overhaul can be angry with you later. “We can go get something to eat.”

Shigaraki looks surprised. “Really?”

“Sure.” You can’t figure out where that surprise is coming from. He’s been bothering you about it since before the ritual went sideways. Was he not expecting you to say yes? “And we should cover that cut on your neck.”

Shigaraki pulls his hand away from it, grimacing. “It’s not that bad. I get worse all the time.”

From scratching? “It’s still not a good idea to walk around bleeding in here. Let’s go.”

You steer clear of the infirmary and make your way instead to one of the supply caches, using your master rune to open it, and then to open an alcove where you can patch up Shigaraki’s injury in peace. Shigaraki complains as you try to clean the wound. “Why does he fold those things so sharp, anyway?”

“So people will snap to it faster,” you explain. “Most of us would rather drop what we’re doing and do what he wants than risk getting a papercut like that.”

“Your boss is an asshole.” Shigaraki tilts his head to the side at your request, then freezes. “What are you doing?”

“I just moved your hair. It was in the way.” You don’t care that he’s uncomfortable. After what happened tonight, after how much of you he saw, you feel like he deserves it. You get a fingertip full of some salve from the supply caches and start daubing it onto the cut, to the tune of a sharp hiss. “Sorry. I’m trying to be gentle.”

Shigaraki doesn’t respond to that. It’s quiet as you fish through the supply kit for a bandage, a quiet that feels awkward but not necessarily tense. Shigaraki doesn’t speak again until after you’ve placed the bandage. “Can you use one of your spells on it? Whatever you did last time,” he says. “If my master finds out –”

“It’s a glamour, not a spell,” you say. “No problem.”

A phantom itch travels along your left arm as you set the glamour, fading before you can scratch it in earnest. You store the supply kit, open another passageway that will lead directly to the kitchens, and start off, counting on Shigaraki to follow you. The awkwardness follows, too, and just like before, Shigaraki speaks first. “I get it now. Why you wouldn’t tell me what you were.”

You find yourself tucking your left arm close to your body, shielding it. Shigaraki keeps talking. “You helped me just now. I owe you a favor again. Ask.”

Earlier tonight, you’d have asked him to leave you alone. Now – “We’re even. Don’t worry about it.”

“You can’t do that,” Shigaraki says. “I know how this works. You can’t just cancel a debt because you don’t want anything from the person who owes it.”

“I’m only half-fey. I don’t know which of the rules applies to me,” you say. “You’re off the hook.”

“What if I don’t want to be off the hook?”

You can’t imagine why he’d want to be on the hook. The Fair Folk are notorious for driving cruel and twisted bargains. Whether it’s due to their morality, which doesn’t map onto human morals particularly well, or due to a desire to hurt others, everyone who’s ever found themselves in debt to a faery has been keen to get out of it as quickly as possible. Why on earth would Shigaraki want to carry around a possible debt to you?

You don’t want to ask that question. You stay quiet. “I guess I’ll have to stick around, then,” Shigaraki muses. “See about paying you back.”

You glance at him and find him smirking, or grinning. You can’t tell which. Your glamour is shimmering at the side of his neck, obvious to you but subtle enough to escape his master’s notice, and his lips, which would have cracked at a smile this wide even an hour ago, look smoother than before. You have a bad feeling about why that is – and at the same time, you aren’t as worried about it as you were before. Now that he knows what you are, interacting with him is significantly less stressful than before. It’s not something you’ll look forward to. But it’s not something you’ll dread.

“I guess you have to,” you say, and his smile brightens. Even that’s not enough to dredge up the ambivalence you felt before. “Let’s get some food.”

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