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httpsserene · 6 months

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hey can I request something that’s angsty to fluff and then smut for Oscar where reader gets a ton of hate for dating Oscar so she kind of ghosts him for a bit and they figure things out

𝐛𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐢 𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐰/𝐨𝐩𝟖𝟏

📖𝘀𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗮𝗿𝘆: oscar really just wants to hear you laugh again. 📖𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴: 18+ only. angst. fluff. happy ending. reader is exhausted physically and mentally. reader's internal monologue is not not nice. bad eating habits. bad sleeping habit. self-deprecation. don't worry she's back on her bs at the end. reader neglects herself (?) and her relationship. implied self-sabotage. people are mean. don't worry oscar is meaner. oscar piastri is a good boyfriend. emotional hurt/comfort. tenderness. intimacy. baths and pampering. crying (non-sexy). implied sex. implied bath sex. logan and lando as plot devices. no beta we die like my will to live during finals. 📖𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗱 𝗰𝗼𝘂𝗻𝘁: 5.1k words. 📖𝗽𝗮𝗶𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴: oscar piastri x fem!reader 📖𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗿𝗲: oneshot w/ blurbs. 📖𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝗸: best i ever had • drake

𝗽𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗮𝗰𝗲: sorry it took me so long, i've changed this fic like multiple times :/ hope it fulfills you request properly :))) this is not my favorite thing in the world, i feel like if i went on a smaller scale i would've enjoyed this more but what can you do. this is also not very black reader coded? idk but feel like it's lacking there. i also apologize for my inability to write an oscar fic without including lando, he's such a willing plot device though even if he's a little ooc. i also couldn't find the mental space to write smut but there's smth for you at the end. dedicated to us women in stem! i hope you have fun reading this because i didn't have fun writing it :)

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oscar is worried. you haven’t responded to his texts for a week, he hasn’t seen your face for two weeks, and he hasn’t heard your voice for three weeks. four weeks ago, you told him you wouldn’t be able to fly out to see him at the austin grand prix, like you promised. you sounded exhausted and incredibly guilty when you explained that your course load this semester is extreme, and finals are rapidly approaching. oscar understood; he won’t ask you to sacrifice your education for one of his races, there will be plenty you can come to in the future. what he doesn’t understand is how you’re still functioning. it’s your senior year of university at an american ivy league school, you're pursuing an engineering degree, and you’re also working nearly five days a week as a barista. oscar thinks the last time he’s seen you relaxed is before your fall semester started, you spent your entire summer break with him, making appearances at the only three races you’ve been to this season (silverstone, hungary, and spa). the last time he recalls seeing your smile and hearing your laugh is in august—it’s the end of october now.

you’ve been ghosting him. oscar wants to believe that it’s unintentional, that it’s just a side effect of the amount of work and pressure on your shoulders—but he can’t accept that. if you were unintentionally missing his calls, facetimes, and texts, you’d spam respond to all of them with a voice message or paragraphs of texts before you went to bed or class. you would send him daily or weekly recap videos of how life is treating you, like you used to do. you would send him stupid videos of you messing around on your shifts during a pause of customers. you would send him thirty reels a day on instagram of brain dead shenanigans with little captions of how you reacted, or if you thought it would make him smile. you would send him fit checks every morning before you went to class, even though your outfit consists of a hoodie and sweatpants. you would send him tiktok edits of himself and tell him that he needs to stop being ‘so hot’ because you almost barked in the middle of class. you would ask him how he’s doing, you would respond to his texts the minute you could even if it's hours late, you would leave him voicemails if he doesn’t pick up, you would make an attempt to communicate.

except, you haven’t. so, he knows that you ignoring him is intentional, and that your lifestyle right now makes it easier for you to disguise your avoidance of him as accidental.

you didn’t say ‘i love you’ back.

“mate, what are you frowning for?” oscar jumps, eyes flying up from the phone screen and meeting lando’s. the brit is staring at him in confusion, the two of them are still in their race suits, tied around their waists. the sprint race ended an hour ago, and they’ve just finished celebrating oscar’s win.

“you’ve won a race, oscar—what could possibly make you sad after that?” lando says teasingly. but, the smile on his face is quick to fade as he must see oscar’s dejected mood.

the australian debates his next move for a moment, before deciding that telling lando isn’t a bad idea; they’ve been getting closer—they’re friends, oscar would say. he sighs, and hands his phone to lando, maybe he’ll tell oscar he’s worrying over nothing.

“oh,” lando says, eyes widening, “i’m sorry, mate.”

oscar brushes off lando’s words, and buries his face in his hands, “she’s pulling away from me. that was five days ago, and she hasn’t answered any of my calls. she’s only responded to my texts since then with one word answers or very dryly. she’s ghosting me.”

oscar feels lando fumbling for words, not needing to look at him to know that the older man has no idea how to go about reassuring oscar.

“look, mate, if it were me i’d go see her anyways.”

oscar huffs, “she literally said she doesn’t have time.”

“oscar,” lando stares at him in disbelief, “she hasn’t seen you in two months. i guarantee she’s probably dying to see you again, fuck whatever time she doesn’t have. she also can’t ghost you, if you see her face to face. you should go and try to fix whatever’s wrong, before you let her slip away.”

“maybe…maybe she’s just burnt out,” oscar suggests shakily, “i’ll go see her after the triple header–i’m probably just overreacting about this. she’ll be back to her usual self in time.”

oscar is enraged. he’s pissed off at his fans for attacking you in a sick twist of ‘defending him,’ ‘protecting him’ and the supposed ‘ownership’ they think they have over him. he’s pissed off at you deciding to ghost him instead of confiding in him about the hate you receive. he’s pissed off that his flight to you has been delayed for four hours. he’s pissed off at his race in brazil, if you can even call what happened a race. he’s pissed off at the fact that you can’t make time to see him before vegas. he’s pissed off that you lied to him about picking up extra shifts at the cafe.

he stalked through your instagram the minute after he was allowed to escape debrief, hunting down your roomates accounts from where you’ve tagged them in an older post. he innocently made a group message to the two girls, figuring it would be kind and proper to inform them of his impending arrival to surprise you. and the two girls you shared an apartment with responded eagerly to his message telling him that you’ve been extremely stressed and almost depressed this semester, and that hopefully his appearance will break through to you in a way they are unable to. oscar asked them if they knew your work schedule for the week, since you never told him when you're working–and learned that you lied. you didn’t accept any extra shifts, matter of fact, you got all of your shifts covered for the next two weeks. apparently, all you have been doing is going to class, working, studying furiously, and crying. when he asks if there’s any reason besides the stress from work and school that has you crying, the girls decline to speak for you, and strongly suggest that he asks you himself when he arrives.

oscar’s no longer pissed at you for lying to him or for ghosting him–he’s hurt, but, he already understands your motive. you don’t want to worry him, so you bottle it up and distance yourself to not make him aware of how you're struggling. he won’t let you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders alone anymore, he’s going to see you and he’s going to take care of you, and then he’ll sort out the ignorant people on the internet.

when he’s at your apartment, you’ll be coming home from your last shift before your time off. and then, once he has you in his arms, he can make everything right again.

your hands are shaking; a result from the mix of stress and exhaustion that has been plaguing you for a few weeks. it takes you four and a half attempts to unlock the front door to your apartment—this is an improvement, yesterday it took you six times. a trembling sigh of relief exits your lungs as you shut the front door, triple checking that you lock the door properly. you remove all of your outerwear and slip out of your shoes, half-heartedly making an attempt to neatly place them in the organizer you have by the door. (you fail to register how there’s only two pairs of shoes stored away; yours and a pair of shoes that look too big to be one of the girls you live with—the usual sneakers the girls wear are nowhere to be seen.) you grunt as you tenderly put on your backpack and slowly make your way into the kitchen, off-handedly murmuring a “hi,” in the direction of the living room since you can hear the tv playing, but you don’t even spare a glance to see which roommate it is—you can’t stomach anymore human interaction today.

your walk is more of a waddle; your legs and feet are sore from working nine-hour shifts five days in a row, and also from going to class four out of those five days. you place your backpack on the small island, and continue to gently meander towards the fridge. your stomach aches at the thought of food—which is unfortunate, considering you’ve only had one meal today. regardless, you will shove a sandwich down your throat, you need the energy if you’re going to study for three hours before you go to bed.

you pause before you open the fridge, a note is stuck on the door with a magnet. your roommates are gone; the two girls have spontaneously decided to go spend the weekend with their boyfriends—you’re not going to complain, you have the apartment to yourself. a brief wave of loneliness washes over you, you were kind of looking forward to venting about the week you had to the girls in the morning, and also, couldn’t they have texted you this earlier today? who leaves old-fashioned notes on the fridge anymore? you pull out your phone to send a text in your group chat wishing them a nice weekend, and see that they did, in fact, text you that they would be gone—three days ago. and, you never responded, because you never saw it. you shrug, and send the text anyways, you’ve been incredibly busy and you’re bound to miss a few texts (especially the eighteen texts from oscar that remain unopened).

you're just going through a little bit of a slump, and you’ve had a bad day. you accidentally messed up three orders today (out of the hundred you fulfilled, so three isn’t really terrible), your running off of four hours of sleep (you’re more energized when you sleep less, anyways), and a customer accidentally bumped into you as you were walking to bring coffee to a table, causing the hot liquid to spill and burn a little spot on the back of your hand by your thumb. well, you know it wasn’t purely accidental, as the girl giggled to the group of friends she was with after she “bumped” into you. based on the way she was wearing a mclaren hoodie, you can make several guesses as to why she did it—you’re kind of shocked that she noticed you even though you wear a mask at work (you have for about a month, too many fans have noticed who you are), her hate for a relationship that’s not hers should be studied for science.

incidents like these have made your coworkers start to…dislike you. the decrease in tips when you’re assigned to the register causes you to be forced to be hidden behind coffee machines the entire shift, only making drinks the entire nine hours you’re there. it’s better for you though, at least you can have a physical barrier blocking the prying eyes you feel are judging you the entire time. if anything, the recent atmosphere at work made you want to put in your two weeks—but, you have bills to pay. you’re just glad you managed to find a way to get two weeks off so you can focus on school and prepare for your exams—you can’t afford to fail, it’ll cost your scholarship and then you’ll need more than the job you have right now to finish school.

the buzzing of your phone pulls you back to the present—oscar’s calling. you squeeze your eyes shut for a few seconds, before you blink and silence the ringer. if you speak to him, you won’t be able to hide your troubles from him any longer; he reads you as easily as a kid’s picture book. he definitely doesn’t need to deal with your problems after whatever the hell happened in brazil. the noise of your phone startled you into a new thought, however. if the girls aren’t in the apartment, why the fuck is the tv on? who did you greet when you walked past the main room without a glance?

“i was calling to tell you that i’ve got takeout from the asian restaurant you like, if you’re looking for something to eat,” oscar says gently.

it’s a testament to how extremely exhausted you are: you don’t scream, you don’t fight, you don’t run—you just flinch slightly, and turn around slowly to face your boyfriend…the man you’ve been avoiding for nearly a month. at the sight of him (his fluffy hair, his soft sweater, the confused and concerned glint in his eyes) your lip starts quivering, and your eyes start watering. oscar’s gaze softens into something sweet yet empathic, and he says, “i know it’s been a while since we’ve last talked, but i didn’t think you’d cry at the sight of me.”

you burst into tears with a sob, and in a second oscar’s got you wrapped up in his arms, one hand soothingly massaging your back, while the other cradles your head on his shoulder. your borderline hyperventilating, your tears have started to soak his sweater, and you’re sniffling every two seconds to avoid getting snot on him too. oscar doesn’t try to quiet your tears, he doesn’t ask about what’s making you cry, he doesn’t even try to tell you that everything will be fine—he just holds you as you cry it out and presses kisses into your hair. eventually, the flow of tears dries and you focus on pulling in shaky breaths of air to calm down. oscar switches to holding you to his chest with one arm while he uses the free one to reach across the counter and grab a tissue. wordlessly, he wipes the wetness off your cheeks and under-eyes, he even uses another tissue to wipe your nose, clearing away the snot that managed to escape. you almost start crying again at the tender treatment and the matching look in his eyes, but you muster enough strength to keep the happy tears from falling over the waterline.

oscar nods once, deeming his cleanup complete, and clears his throat, “i’m going to heat up the food. then, we’ll eat and you’ll tell me what’s wrong and if that has anything to do with why you’re ignoring me.”

there’s no attempt from you to keep the façade up any longer, all you do is nod and step to the side so he can grab the food from the fridge.

oscar has already cleared his plate and you’re still picking through half of yours. the two of you are sitting on opposite ends of the couch, teen wolf is playing on a low volume, and your eyes are tunneled on the screen even though oscar can see that you’re not paying attention at all. one of the characters is screaming about having to get his arm cut off (stiles, probably) and suddenly you start talking to oscar.

“it’s been a shit semester. if i wasn’t graduating in spring, i honestly think i would’ve dropped out or taken a gap-year. and, i knew what i signed up for as an engineering major, and i knew that working was only going to add more on my plate—but, it’s not like i can quit my job, i have bills to pay. so, juggling school and work is difficult, and i was managing fine. but, i guess i made the mistake of scrolling through twitter—which is truly my fault i think—and everyone on the internet was calling me a ‘terrible girlfriend’,” oscar watches you scoff out a choked laugh, “and, i obviously didn’t believe i was. in the beginning, at least. i mean, it’s like they expected me to be at every race by your side, like i’m not working my way through a hellscape of a degree. i watched every practice session, qualifying, and race—they’re literally the only hours i don’t spend studying or working. i brag about you to everybody who would listen, i missed hours of sleep just to speak to you on the phone for five minutes, i work as hard as i can so i can finish this degree early so i can be with you as early as possible, and they say that you deserve a better girlfriend.”

you pause and rub at your eyes furiously, mouth opening and closing as you take time to find the words to continue. oscar quiets the flare of anger at your distress, and stays silent, not wanting to interrupt your speech, this is the most you’ve said to him in a month.

“the thing is: i-i i let their words get to me. i think it’s because i was being kicked while i was down—or whatever the phrase is. i was already mentally exhausted, and i already believe that i’m not doing my best this year, i’m disappointing everybody who knows me, i’m a shit student—and just seeing everybody agree, even though they’re just randoms on the internet, tore me down. i even deleted all of the apps off my phone,” your voice has shifted into something desperate, “so i couldn’t see what they were saying about me anymore, but it’s like once i saw it, it never left my mind. i feel like everybody is staring at me with condescending eyes, like they all think i’m terrible. and, logically, i know that’s probably not true. but, this semester has pushed me past the point of being able to rationalize properly. so as a result, i have become a ‘terrible girlfriend’ to you; like a twisted self-fulfilling prophecy.

“i avoid your calls, i leave you on delivered for days, i respond with one word, i lie to my friends and say i was up all night talking to you on the phone when i was really crying and studying at the same time, i hold back from bursting into tears in the middle of my shifts when one of your ‘fangirls’ spills their drink over me for the third time. and while doing all of this, i was hoping you’d do the hard part and just break up with me,” your voice rings out sharply and you refuse to look at your boyfriend, afraid to see the look on his face.

“because…” you whimper slightly, tongue flicking out to lick at your lips anxiously, “you do deserve a better girlfriend.”

oscar is lost for words at your conclusion; seeing you, one of the strongest women he knows break down, is a sight he never imagined. a sense of guilt builds within him, knowing that he’s added to the deprecating thoughts in your brain by postponing this intervention for weeks. you may think that he deserves someone better, but he hasn’t been the best to you either recently. if oscar was half the man you think he is, he would’ve never allowed you to avoid him in the first place. oscar stands up, collects your plate and his, and places them on the coffee table. he turns and drops to his knees in front of you, resting his hands on your thighs, and squeezes them gently to grab your attention. it takes a minute, but eventually you allow your eyes to fall to meet his, and oscar breaks further at the lack of light in your eyes.

“i think,” oscar starts quietly, “that you expect me to break up with you and leave—am i guessing correctly?”

you blink down at him and shrug, biting your lip to prevent it from quivering.

“i also think, that if i flew all this way to see you, and that if i listened to your heartbreaking recollection of how this semester and how the world has been incredibly unkind to you, and that if i sat here and still broke up you—it’s not me that deserves a better girlfriend; it’s you that deserves a better boyfriend.”

stunned, you stumble over your disagreement, but oscar steadfastly continues.

“you did the right thing by deleting your socials—and that would explain why all three hundred of the reels i’ve sent you have gone unseen,” he laughs lightly, “and even if their words took root, you prevented yourself from being able to see more of it every time you used your phone; so even if my pride is not needed, i am proud of you for doing that. i’m even more proud that you sat here and told me that you aren’t doing well, that you didn’t make an attempt to lie, and that i didn’t have to force you to tell me,” oscar says seriously, holding steady eye contact with you to make sure you're hearing him.

“i wish that you would have mentioned the hate you’re receiving as soon as it started, and that you would have told me your mental health was suffering too. you know i do everything in my power to avoid reading anything with my name in it unless it’s a credible article—so imagine my surprise, when i learned about what people were saying about you through a twitter thread logan, of all people texted me about,” you snort out a laugh at the feigned disdain in oscar’s voice when he mentions the american driver.

“you know i have no issues embarrassing people on the internet for their incorrect claims—and i’d especially tear them to shreds for trying to drag you down. we’ve been together too long for you not to come to me about things like this, even if it’s something that mildly upsets you—i want to know, because then i can make it better, or i can at least try to. you haven’t complained to me about the grueling lifestyle once, as i worked my way up to f1; if anybody could be perfect, it would be you. so, let me try to be as perfect as you, and support you properly and thoroughly as you finish up this degree, baby.

“we’re soulmates, aren’t we?” it’s a question, but oscar states it like a fact, “and i know i can’t magically make the self-loathing disappear with one conversation, but i'll tell you that you’re the best girlfriend i’ve ever had countless times, until you believe me unquestionably.”

oscar watches your nose scrunch cutely as you sniffle, unable to stop the tears that leak from the corners of your eyes. sweetly, he catches them with his thumb before they fall. he stands up and tugs you to your feet, pulling you into a tight, warm hug.

“i love you, kanga,” oscar coos as he kisses your forehead.

“i love you the most, roo,” you answer back, leaning up to press a kiss to the corner of his lips.

“i’ve bought some lavender epsom salt and an embarrassing amount of bath bombs. will you let me take care of you tonight?” oscar asks quietly.

he sees the mix of awed-disbelief and confusion as you stare up at him, like you can’t imagine why he’d want to love you tenderly tonight, and that hurts him more—the words of his ‘fans’ online have done enough damage to cause you to doubt him. maybe he can convince you to come to vegas with him so he can keep you close, but first, he needs to focus on caring for you here and now.

oscar grabs his duffle bag and smiles as you hold his hand to lead him to your room and the attached bathroom (rent is ridiculously expensive, but at least you don’t have to share a bathroom with your roommates.) oscar sends you to grab pajamas while he starts filling the tub, epsom salt already poured in. he fiddles with the temperature for a while before it’s set to the boiling-your-skin-off hot you enjoy. by the time you join him in the bathroom, he’s added the salts and soap in the water and has placed the bath bombs out for you to choose one. oscar can’t help the small smile that rises to his face at the sight of the serious furrow of your brow as you pick out your favorite from the bunch.

oscar hums as you hand him the jade-infused bath bomb, and asks, “can i wash your hair too? or will it mess up your schedule?”

“i actually really need to wash it,” you murmur with a humorless chuckle, “i’ve been so busy that i haven’t been taking care of my hair properly.”

oscar blinks and continues non-judgmentally, “i’ll give you an extra scalp massage to make up for that—you can start getting undressed now, the water’s nearly ready.”

he turns around awkwardly, he’s seen you naked before but he feels like it would be slightly perverse to watch you while you’re clearly in a more sensitive state tonight. he fumbles with the faucet for a few seconds before turning it off, and drops the bath bomb into the water so it can start dispersing. oscar faces you again carefully making sure he avoids staring at your body and locks eyes with you, he beckons you forward with an outstretched hand and holds your hand as you submerge yourself in the water. once you’re settled comfortably, oscar grabs your hair products (he holds up any bottle he thinks you may not want to use tonight, and you give him a thumbs up or down to decide), and then kneels at your side.

he starts to roll up the sleeves of the hoodie but your hand halts his motions, the water splashing loudly at the quickness of your movement, “you’re not getting in with me?”

“uh,” oscar stutters, “i-i wasn’t planning on it. i just wanted to give you a nice bath.”

oscar pinkens as you stare at him wordlessly and when your unimpressed gaze shifts to a slight glare, he finds himself shedding his clothes and sinking in behind you at an impressive speed.

his heart began to race as the two of you shifted into as comfortable of a position you could achieve in a too-small tub, but calmed at your pleased hum as you settled between his legs with your back resting on his chest. this may be the most romantic experience oscar has ever indulged in. sure, it’s not a candlelit dinner at an obnoxiously expensive restaurant but, it’s him detangling your hair, it’s him massaging shampoo into your crown, it’s him scratching softly along your scalp as the deep conditioner sits, it’s you playing with the water innocently, it’s you whispering every detail of your life that he’s missed out on, it’s you gently directing him through braiding your hair, and it’s him pressing kisses to your shoulder when he finishes. there isn’t a single moment where the two of you become unsettled during lapses of silence; the intimacy of his actions is loud enough to fill the gaps. oscar can’t imagine ever being this comfortable with anybody besides you, he hates that he almost allowed you to pull completely away from him. moments like these, where you allow yourself to be thoughtlessly vulnerable with him, are exactly why he’s completely enamored with you.

your body has loosened against him, muscles syrupy and lax from the effects of a toe-curling scalp massage, and oscar gently guides you to sit upright while steadying most of your weight with a single hand splayed against your abdomen. the sound of the cap of your body wash clicking open startles you into the present, and you shift around to straddle his lap. it’s amusing; he inaudibly chuckles at the sight of you struggling to complete your change of position without sending water over the edge. you make a triumphant noise when you’ve managed to turn around to face him, and oscar’s hands cradle your hips when you rest on his lap.

“can i–”

“shouldn’t you–”

oscar bursts into laughter and you into giggles, at the interruption of each other's sentences. it’s definitely not that funny, but oscar’s heart skips a beat at the sound of your laugh–he hasn’t heard that sweet noise in what feels like forever. he motions for you to speak, ever the gentleman, and eagerly awaits for our question with a smile still stretched across his lips.

“shouldn’t you fuck me before we wash up? so we don’t have to clean up twice?”

oscar chokes on his breath, his grip on you tightening in surprise, and he babbles, “what? no-i mean, yes, i mean—wait. i didn’t do all of this just to have sex with you, you know that right? i genuinely just wanted to pamper you–”

“oscar,” you cut him off, intentionally this time around, “after the semester i’ve had, and the less than kind words i’ve heard and thoughts i’ve had describing myself–i really do appreciate the bath, i feel reminded that you love me. however, i really think that having sex would help…solidify your devotion for me.”

oscar blinks up at you, he wasn’t quite expecting you to return to your normal sassy behavior as quickly as you did. but, he is thankful that you’ve opened up to him with no further hesitation–it’s actually incredibly attractive of you, how you’ve resumed complete comfortability in expressing exactly what you want to him. at least, that’s the excuse he’s telling himself to cope with being half-hard already.

“...at least let me take you to bed, then?”

“no,” you whine down at him, your hips sneakily twitching forward, oscar moans lightly at the light grind, “too far! saves time later if we don’t have to come back to shower.”

“you’re right,” oscar hums distractedly, moving his right hand off your waist to slip between your thighs and brush along your cunt, “i’ll fuck you here as long as you let me do all of the work.”

oscar’s blood heats at the sound of your whimpering moan and he takes his other hand off your waist to grab at your chin and he pulls you down for a kiss.

oscar groans when you pause before your lips touch his, and he feels the breath of your giggle ghost over his mouth, “mmm, i’ll never say no to that—and, didn’t i agree to let you take care of me tonight?”

taglist: @saintslewis @cherry2stems @lorarri @inloveallthetime @mindless-rock @biancathecool @barnestatic @my-ylenia @katekipshidze @darleneslane @lovingaphroditesworld @smoothopz

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xyriath · 6 months

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but seriously if you are at all blogging about the i/p conflict you NEED to read that standing together article from that post i just reblogged. please. please please please please please. these are the people who are actually doing something about freeing palestine and have been for years. And here's the thing:

IF YOU WANT PEACE IN ISRAEL, IN PALESTINE, THESE ARE THE PEOPLE IT'S GOING TO COME FROM.

Because yeah. The way this site is spreading around uncritical posts is a huge issue (and a reason I haven't been around since October). Standing Together is doing a hell of a lot more than blogging about it. They're on the ground putting in the work. Nine days before the October 7 attack, they were in Tel Aviv publicly protesting about the systematic oppression of Arabs (not just Palestinians) in Israel.

"The global left has to be synced with what we need." Trust me, the right is. Boy HOWDY is the right synced. I have gotten more support about my Judaism from the far right than the left and it's??? kinda fucked up??? Someone who worked for Pat Robertson should not feel safer than someone dedicated to activism, but here we are. I can feel how easy it would be to be radicalized towards the right, and I'm actively fighting against it. Now imagine that multiplied by millions of people, plenty of whom don't have the same desire to do so, or feel like they don't have the luxury of safety to do so.

Seeing Hamas being portrayed as sympathetic and talked about like they had a right to commit all of the atrocities that they have is making me lose my MIND. They're a group run by corrupt billionaires who actively started this conflict with the intent of silencing the Palestinian people who have been protesting their tyranny. They have been siphoning money from Palestinians for years and this entire attack is them deliberately throwing Palestinians into the path of slaughter to distract from that fact, the same way that Netanyahu absolutely took advantage of the threat and tragedy to try and get himself off the hook for his own corruption.

Also check out the google doc linked in the article. It's not just a good way to learn how to communicate, but a very good resource for finding out if something you're sharing is worthwhile. In fact, it does a really god job of breaking down why I've felt so uncomfortable about a bunch of the posts on my dash. Some excerpts:

This got way longer than I had intended, but hopefully does its job. Go read the article and, yes, if you need to, reevaluate your activism. Because if it's not what people involved actually want or need, then it's just for you. And that's kinda fucked up.

#xyri yaps #antisemitism #Israel #Gaza #Palestine #I/P Conflict #Activism #Leftist Antisemitism #Standing Together #i've been sitting on a lot of this for a while and i guess it all came out now

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loveluvrs · 12 days

Text

williams blue looks good on you l logan sargeant x reader

request/summary – hiiii can u please do a one-shot with Logan where y/n is Max's little sister and he's protective over her? You can go in whichever direction u want!!! Thnx!!!!

author's notes – lando win fic coming soon TRUST !! 🙏😭

you regularly showing up to support max in races since you two were very close, adorned with redbull gear head to toe

when Logan first saw you in australia, he was massively starstruck and couldn’t even get the courage to talk to you, so instead just ended up staring from afar the entire day. Oscar noticed the staring. since you were friends with Oscar, he did Logan a favor and introduced you guys

at first it started off with Logan asking you small stuff about yourself to try and get to know you better, but was met with a few dry responses since you were busy with uni most of the time. As time went on, he started getting more comfortable, with super sweet good morning and good night texts, and a daily supply of memes

it was for his home race that for the first time ever, you showed up in a non-redbull outfit, a navy blue dress on and Logan’s team cap on to surprise him

you didn’t even find Logan before Max found you, and you instantly took off the cap. he was immediately suspicious as to why you weren’t wearing your usual redbull attire, and you casually shrugged it off as needing a change from the boring outfits you normally wore

after Max left, you texted Logan to meet you in front of the Williams garage, and surprised him with your outfit as a way to support him, with playful banter between the two of you that it’d be the only time he’d see you without the red bull merch on

"williams blue looks good on you," he said with a flirty smile, a sentence that you could not get out of your head since that moment

i can see him being a huge acts of service guy, so he’d show you around his hometown and insist on being your (slight annoying) personal tour guide

you posting a slight soft launch which is “dedicated to the best tour guide.” Max knew you were hanging out with Logan so he immediately texted both of you, making a new gc. stay away from my sister??? he texted. you then prompted to kick Max out of the gc

Logan and you became super close eventually, going out on hangouts (not dates, Max insisted) with him almost every weekend. hed fly out to you whenever he could between races, and would do anything so he could see you more

sometimes Max would be a pain and when he was in the country the same time as you and Logan, hed almost always tag along to these ‘hangouts,’ insisting that ‘he didnt know you two were gonna be here at this time’

reluctantly, Max sat you down one day, and said that hed be okay with you and Logan being a thing only if he had permission to beat Logan up if he broke your heart. with a giggle, you accepted. “he’s not gonna break my heart, anyways, Maxie,” you said confidently

and so Max told Logan this too, so he finally asked you out on a date. hed gone the whole way; flowers, a nice dinner, dressed up all nice, and even insisted on not talking about fishing the whole night

still as Logan and your relationship developed, max would glare at logan any chance he got. logan would always feel a little anxious and uncomfortable when this happened, and you had to physically turn him around each time, slotting your hand in his to comfort him

#logan sargeant x reader #logan sargeant imagine #logan sargeant oneshot #f1 x reader #f1 fanfic

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l4long-winded · 3 months

Note

i really wanna see carmy groveling 🤭 might be fun, after a fight or something

how cruel... i like the way you think! i tried to write him as close to his character here while still adding in that groveling element. i hope i've done it justice!

o.s. a guilty heart's plea(s)

summary: carmen's said some unforgivable things to you. and yet here he is at your doorstep, pleading for you to forgive him (carmen berzatto x afab!reader)

reflection: as much as i pride myself in my ability to write scenes and descriptions, i still struggle a lot with making dialogue sound good while flowing with my writing. i think this has been good practice for me to really get inside this character's head and see what he could possibly say with a prompt as heavy as this. this took me about a week to write so i really hope i gave it the time and energy it deserves. thank you all for reading and feedback is always welcomed, appreciated, and encouraged!

warnings: cursing, angst, established relationship, implied smut, reminiscing, they're on a break, inner monologue, carmen's pov, rambling, self-loathing, carmen pleading, inability to express feelings, apologies, missed calls, insecurities, acts of service, sydney sweeney mention, smoking, somewhat happy ending (please let me know if there are other warnings i need to add)

word count: 2,132

( this work has been cross-posted to ao3 )

Carmen knocks on the screen door ahead of him. It’s his seventh time doing so, the clattering and aggravating sound of metal reverberating against the second door behind that one. Dust coats his knuckles because it transferred from the opaque metal, a small spot shinier than the rest of the door because he continued to rap at the same area. Maybe he should clean it for you later if you actually decide to speak to him again. His hands fidget at his sides, clenching and releasing, staring blankly as he thinks of all the times he’s come over. For his first initial visit, you unlocked the door, gave him a cautious glance over your shoulder, and then led him inside. During the second time, you held his hand as you stepped past the threshold, squeezing it in reassurance.

On Valentine’s Day, when he surprised you with an assortment of flowers from the farmer’s market, you greeted him with a deep kiss, tugging the collar of his shirt to pull him inside of your house. He didn’t show any resistance, blindly following your lead, dropping off the flowers onto your couch as your hands lifted his shirt, and your mouths departed from one another for a smidgen of a second before they found each other again, more impassioned and desperate.

“Open the door, come on, I’m sorry,” he says, more so to himself than your screen door. He’s been close to shouting at it this entire time, making his pleas, encouraging you to open it for him so he can have a discussion with you face-to-face.

He’s called you plenty of times. Each one has either rang for as long as the line allowed or went straight to voicemail. Two weeks have passed without seeing each other. Two long weeks of unanswered text messages he’s sent day by day and missed calls clogging up your phone’s notifications. You’re ignoring him and he knows he deserves it, guilty as the hand in the cookie jar, but he still can’t shake this overwhelming feeling inside of him to see you again. The albums dedicated to you in his gallery are not enough to satisfy this. His fingers twitch every time he swipes at an image and relives the sensation of running them along your skin. That’s when his nose begins to miss the scent that clings to your neck. That’s when his ears long to hear the lilt of your laughter and that particular way you say his name. That’s when his tongue rejects the nicotine and implores him for a taste of your chapstick, or the bubblegum flavor lingering in your mouth greeting him after a shift at work, or the giggles you fall into as he chases the subtle pecks you graciously feed him.

The door behind the one he’s attending to opens. There you are. He can’t see you since the sun is positioned right behind him, warming his back as it sets into the background. At most, he makes out the silhouette of your frame, recognizable to his eyes as he’s acquainted himself with every curve and slope of you, but he’s aware you fully see him on the other side. He wonders if you’re able to tell how little he’s slept since a look in the mirror this morning painted the picture of an exhausted man through dark rings under his eyes and a slackened jaw.

“What do you want, Carmen?” You ask. Not Carmy. Not Bear. Not any of that cheesy shit Richie pokes fun at him for. Carmen. He’s not sure whether he’s relieved to hear the sound of your voice or offended he’s lost every sweet moniker you’ve bestowed upon him.

“To talk,” he explains quickly, “I just want to talk. If you want me to fuck off, then,” he inhales sharply. It would kill him if you told him to fuck off, but he’s also not about to make you uncomfortable for an issue he caused. “Then I’ll fuck off.”

Unlike Carmen, you’re not rapidly firing away sentences in response to him. You’re quiet for a beat and it’s rather agonizing for him because even though there’s only a door separating the two of you, you’re still so far out of his reach. He’s tempted to cup his hands over his eyes and look past the individual holes of the door to check if you’re still there.

“Go ahead,” you say, interrupting his thoughts and refuting his fear you’ve stalked back inside your living room.

“Talk.”

He gulps. He was hoping to at least do this without a barrier in the way, but he’s not about to fumble the one opportunity and chance you’ve given him after two weeks of nothing. He’d be a fool to.

“Fuck… I…” Well, this is off to a great start. He tries to think about the texts he’s sent. He had time to sit down and write out apologies and yet none of them are splurging onto his tongue to save him the awkward discomfort currently stirring in his stomach.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what I said,” Can you let me figure this shit out without breathing down my fucking neck ringing in his ears, haunting him like a phantom stuck on his shadow because it’s one of the last things he said to you before you took off and rightfully gave him the cold shoulder.

“I was stressed and frustrated and, and I wasn’t thinking. Those aren’t excuses for being shitty,” he shakes his head so hard that his hair untucks from his hat and grazes his eyelashes, “If anything, they make me more shitty because only assholes do that and that’s what I am. I’m a fucking asshole and and and and…” He’s rambling, losing the point of this. He’s got a talent for berating himself. He falls into it naturally if he’s not careful.

“And I fucked up. I really, really fucked up. I didn’t mean any of it. I never wanted to hurt you.” But you did. “I don’t know why I do that. I don’t know why I ruin shit, I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me, but something is and you, you, you always… you’re always there and and and then you weren’t and…”

This is hard. He’s never been good at articulating his feelings. He wants nothing more than to just tell you how he’s fucked up and you’re one of the only people who doesn’t think he is, but after his true colors have splintered out of him and sliced at you as they have other people in his life he cares for, your perception’s possibly changed from that. He believes he’s confirmed every horrible thing he’s ever thought and said about himself and usually, he can handle that self-loathing and dissonance on his own, but consternation bubbles in his ribcage and sparks embers licking at the lining of his stomach at the very idea of you becoming desensitized to the version of himself you’ve fallen for. He wants to shove the curtains back into place, pretend you never stumbled upon the man behind them, and continue walking hand in hand with you in the reverie he knew wouldn’t last. But damn it. He wants it to last longer than this. It wasn’t enough time. He craves more of it, grasping for the seconds in his hands despite how much they’re attempting to evade him as the clock ticks and ticks.

“Fucking fuck,” he bellows, “Man, fuck me, fucking fuck me.” Vulnerability is so fucking repulsive. Who the hell invented it? He can’t finish a keynote to save his life.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” he settles on.

“I can’t fucking sleep, I can’t fucking eat, Richie keeps calling me a dumb shit like I’m not already thinking that. I-I-I need you. I’m sorry for making you feel like I don’t, but I do. I don’t blame you for leaving and I don’t blame you for ghosting me, but please, I can’t fucking do this anymore. I know I’m being a selfish fuck, but I can’t shake what you make me feel and I won’t leave until you talk to me.”

He stares hard at the door. The sun’s lower in the sky, making it more difficult to see if you’re still standing there listening to what he has to say, as jumbled of a mess that it is. His hands leave his sides, anxiously pressing palms first into the metal like it’ll ground him. An urge presents itself to rip it off its hinges and see it for himself rather than wait for verification, but he manages to remain steady where he stands. It’s about the same experience he’s had over the past two weeks of texting and calling to no avail. You’re not saying anything. You’re not denying his insecurities, you’re not soothing his temper, you’re not reflecting it, and you’re not engaging like he’s envisioned time and time again. You’re eluding him. You’re slipping past his fingers like liquid as he desperately grasps.

“Please, please, please say something.” His forehead leans into the surface, eyes shutting tight. “Tell me I’m not shit, tell me you never want to see me again, please talk to me.”

Please forgive me, he swallows. Please forgive me and take me back.

“Just… please… I… I want to fix this. I want to make it up to you. I’ll do anything to make it up to you. Please don’t shut me out. I’ll make you something? Yeah? Your favorite? What about that place you wanted to go off Lake Shore? Or, or that movie you wanted to see with, uh, that Sweeney girl? What the fuck was it?” Carmen’s eyebrows knit together as he tries to remember the name. “We can go see it… we can go to dinner… I can make dinner. I can take time off work and we can travel somewhere, we can take a trip like you wanted, whatever—I want what you want. Please…? Hello?”

Carmen speaks your name a few times among his pleading. His forehead slowly detaches from the door, indents of the mesh left behind on his skin. He goes quiet to listen for any movement, but he can’t even hear your breathing like this. He can’t hear anything besides the wind picking up, blowing cold over the tips of his ears sticking out from his hat. He steps away from the door, a lump in his throat alongside all the affection he doesn’t know how to let out that he swallows with great difficulty. Instead of walking away from your house, he sits on the cement step leading up to the walkway. He meant it when he said he wouldn’t leave until you talked to him.

He camps outside your house. One hand fishes for his carton of Sapphires, plucking a cigarette from the box. He’s got about two left since he’s been chain-smoking to fill the void. Carmen greatly considers trying to make his plea again on his knees in front of the door if that’s what it’ll take as he lights the end away from his mouth. The pressure of the cement will be a motherfucker, but he’s concocting another game plan to gain your attention since he’s already here and the walk back to his apartment is too long for him to jump at it. If that doesn’t work, then he can leave and come back in the morning before work. He can afford to be slightly late as his normal is showing up early and Sydney and Tina know the prep work that needs to be done.

All his thoughts fade as he hears the door behind him creak. He glances back suddenly, catching it as it slowly swings open. He’s in the midst of standing to his feet and flicking his cigarette into a patch of dirt when you come into view. Your hair’s messy, a white tank top on your torso, and a pair of fleece pajama pants he knows are new. His hands yearn to become acquainted with them as he has your other bottoms. Carmen stares at how you’re hugging yourself, presumably because the cold air is filtering into your warm house. The goosebumps littered over your biceps and forearms confirm his theory.

He’s on you in an instant. His arms wrap firmly around your frame, sighing out as his stress undergoes the mitigation of your own arms embracing him back. Your hand finds his hair, incidentally causing his hat to fall off to the floor, but he doesn’t care. He’s far too busy stamping your temples, cheeks, jawline, and lips with kisses he has weeks of time to make up for.

“M’sorry,” he mumbles into your hairline, “so, so, so sorry. Missed you.”

#l4l.writes #carmen berzatto #carmen berzatto x reader #carmen berzatto angst #l4l.oneshot #the bear fic #carmy the bear #jeremy allen white #a guilty heart's plea(s)

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inkskinned · 1 year

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the thing that gets you sometimes is the frustration. for every time someone else sees you being late, losing something, forgetting something important: there are hours in your day dedicated to it.

you have strange, fae-like rituals. the keys have to go in their special bowl, because if you forget even once, they will be gone forever. you stack items on a stool in front of your door so that you can't leave without touching them. you can't take your wallet out of your bag, ever, it will simply fade away.

everything has to be written down. everything, everything. whatever you need to do, you need to do it now. you check and re-check the busmap only to still get lost on the same route you've always taken home. you start getting ready to go 3 hours early and still end up 15 minutes late, unsure even of where the time has gone. don't sit down, there's something strange about your bed or the couch or the floor - once you sit down, you'll get stuck.

you are very used to operating without instructions. people say you're good at winging it but really you've never really known where the rules are coming from. you have to live in constant strange anticipation - when your brain does fail you, how can you predict every horrible outcome. maybe today you will have a minor curse, and forget to brush your teeth. or maybe today you will wake up - and no matter what you do, your whole body begs to return you back to sleep. maybe today you will break a glass and then just stand there, surrounded by the shards, frozen in place - because you need to go to the bathroom, but you also need to sweep.

and everyone else seems to have gotten the memo, and it's easy for them, and it never, ever gets easy for you. make plans and keep them. they roll their eyes when you say sorry it's too messy we can't go over to my apartment. they ask why did you leave something so big until the last minute. on instagram, your friend makes a reel where she says if they cared, they would change. they literally do not care. someone says it's a symptom, and in the comments, all they get is then go to therapy! it can't control everything you do!

so you go to therapy. and you work out to calm down and you do your self-care and you try to be grateful for the small things. and you structure literally your entire life around it, around the ways you can't live right. you have failsafe over failsafe over red flag. you have shelves of organizational manuals. you have alarms for things like did you remember to eat that you still manage to figure out how to snooze. you have time-blocked sites and deleted apps you get lost in and you are constantly trying. because you also want a life where you are not stepping over laundry. juggling knives, you spend your whole life feeling like you're ice skating.

and still. she sighs at you. i mean, it's just. i don't understand how you constantly miss all the small stuff. i mean, this is the easy part. you're just not trying hard enough.

#i ran out of meds today.#and like. it was a bad day for that #and i called them in on friday so it could just be that they're not like. u know.#filled yet. but BOY :)

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weebsinstash · 6 months

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When I say with my entire being in my heart of hearts that I know with certainty that this-this-this THING right here would do the absolute most unbelievable petty gross obsessive dahmer level shit to you

He's petty he's evil he's got a childlike fascination for seeing what breaks people down and I hate him I hate him I hate him but ALSO what that dick do tho? 🤔

Mahito is the yandere over here doing shit like imprisoning you for his own selfishness and perhaps genuine affection but making you live in absolute deplorable conditions because He's Not Fucking Human And He Doesn't Even Know How To Feed You. He locks you away and disappears for an entire day and comes back with like a single can of wet dog food that he watches you eat from a squatting position like 5 inches away looking at you like Harley Quinn and the egg sandwich. Motherfucker would take all your clothes because he wants to see more of "the natural shape of you" and then doesn't understand why you start shivering. Or he deliberately keeps you like that because he wants to see how long it takes you to crack and beg him for help. He wants to see the depths of your pride as you refuse to grovel, curious of the lengths you'll go, the limits of your body against the chill

This depraved fuck will do dehumanizing little emotional experiments on you where he does shit just because he wants to see how you think and feel and what you'll do and I mean like he'll do SOME REAL SHIT. I'm talking maybe he's stalking you and you can't fight or use cursed techniques and you think he's just like, a human shaped spirit or something who's just a trickster, he's not being violent or getting you alone or anything yet, and then you come home to your apartment one day and he's literally disemboweled your cat on your coffee table and he's playing with pieces of it and says you were giving it more attention than him and sits there pouting as you scream and even tries to like touch you or hold your hand or hug you with. The fucking blood covered hands. like he would be so fucked up on purpose, "awww do you need me to hold you? You're so sensitive but i dont mind :3"

This man out here like "wdym you want me to stay away from you, all I did was kill your cat kill your mom kill your neighbor kill your best friend kill your boss' cousins' landlords' newborn baby BUT WAS THAT REALLY SO BAD 🥺" and does something infinitely worse to scare/coerce you into tolerating his presence

I'm not really uh into body horror or gore but as a side detail I feel like. Uh. There's like a legitimate risk of him actually unintentionally REALLY hurting you and has to use his powers to heal you. Like the one good thing he does is if he were to have you on death's door or like horribly injured he could just. Fix it. He twists a limb in a way he doesn't know it's not supposed to go and breaks it and then puts you back together like a broken toy while ooo'ing and aaa'ing at the way your skin stretches over the grotesque misalignment. Dare I say the horror of "him putting things that are way too big or weirdly shaped in you" also yeah he's one of the things he's putting in you and he's got a really gross like fascination with learning all about that stuff

He's really living just to see how many different ways he can make you cry and how many different emotions he can get you to display, just absolutely dedicated to terrorizing you while also chasing his own internal weird repressed desire for his own sort of belonging. You could be sitting there sobbing and he's either borderline getting off on it or he's standing there MAKING FUN OF YOUR CRIES like deadass even fake crying back to you

And the worst part is he'll do all this fucking shit to you and then the night comes and he'll still be over here like "and you'll let me cuddle you while you sleep right? 👉👈" and he'll be doing that Every. Single. Night. And what are you gonna do, try and kill yourself? Have fun risking accidentally making yourself a Curse and being stuck with him basically FOREVER

#yandere x reader #mahito x reader #yandere stuff #yandere jjk #also sukuna would say disgusting shit out of yujis mouth face just to embarrass you both zend post #sinprompts

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no-droids · 1 year

Text

Another Rough Day

gif credit @chrishemsworht

Part Twenty of the Rough Day Series

Rating: Explicit

Word Count: 13.7K

Warnings: Angst, violence, canon-typical blood and gore, language, hurt/comfort

A/N: i wanna thank yall for sticking around during my hermit era, in the time ive been gone i am now officially a junior at a university majoring in aerospace and it’s a fuckin nightmare and i hate everything and god help us all literally kill me and I will be posting INCREDIBLY slowly because of that (I’m talkin weeks or months in between updates yall, im sorry I can’t dedicate more time to this but I am going to finish this fic within the next handful of chapters idk maybe 5 or 6 so you shouldn’t have to wait too too long). As a heads up there will be hard angst as we enter the final arc, there will be hurt and it’ll get dark but everything is gonna turn out alright so thanks for sticking with me and continuing to stick with me. im sorry if you dont like it or your expectations were subverted or if this isn’t what you’d hoped it would be after following and waiting around for so long but this was planned a long time ago and it took me a good year or two to recognize that I started writing this fic for me and now I’m going to end it writing for me and I hope yall can respect that

ALSO I asked my best BEST FRIEND in the entire world @cptnbvcks to collaborate with me for this after we both took a very long break from creating and she drew some GORGEOUS artwork for this chapter so it will be posted at the end, everyone please go follow her and say hello

ps brittany girl you’re a fuckin menace i had to use my own two ears and listen to ethan literally say the words “the mandalorian cums, hard” what the fuck was that im actually suing

anyways chapter below the cut lets get serious yall

---

You take two of them down before they even realize they’re being attacked.

Your aim is as swift and steady as if Din were behind your shoulder right now, calmly pointing out which stationary tree to hit next in rapid succession. You’re positioned perfectly at the bottom of the ramp to take full advantage of the ambush, the only thing running through your mind is strategy and the constant calculating of angles and ricochets. The other three troopers are trapped inside the open Crest and you’re right next to a large boulder that you can step behind for cover, but it proves unnecessary as the rumors were apparently true.

They’re… awful.

Not a single blaster is even fired in your direction—you think you see maybe one panicked red shot bounce around in the hull, but that’s it. The troopers fumble for their guns and trip over each other at the unexpected attack—a few scream like children through the modulators, but you’re temporarily deaf to anything besides the screech of your weapon hitting its target and the crumpling of armored bodies.

Later on, if someone were to ask you to describe exactly what happened—who died first, who ran for cover, who cried out for help—you don’t think you’d be able to. You don’t even really feel like a person right now. The entire thing is cold, robotic survival instinct, pure ruthlessness rising in your soul for the first time in your life. It feels sick. Wrong in your bones. Born from preemptive defense in fear of your life, but that doesn’t mean you stop. Not until all of them stop moving.

You empty the entire fucking canister for a handful of stormtroopers, firing plasma and char marks across every square inch of the pristine hull even after the last one drops. Your heart is beating too fast, your finger keeps pulling the trigger multiple times even after the blaster clicks uselessly, completely empty and beeping a warning that it must’ve begun emitting ages ago. Being out of ammo scares you—you suddenly feel vulnerable, even though the very far away logical part of your mind reminds you that they have to all be dead at this point and no physical threat was ever able to graze you.

Regardless, you quickly spin behind the boulder and grab another canister from your belt, giving it a spare check for leaks while the empty one slides and drops to the rocky ground. It’s the first time you’ve ever had to reload this weapon instead of just pointing and shooting, but the mechanics are relatively simple and your brain makes up for your lack of coherent thoughts with lightning fast perception. What's difficult is that your hands are starting to shake now that you’re not aiming, you’re not breathing correctly because you’re not really breathing at all. You can’t tell the difference between the adrenaline-fueled dissociative silence that muffles everything around you or if it really is just that quiet now. No more clatter of armor, no modulated voices or terrified screams. No blasters, no footsteps along the ramp, no birds singing.

You quickly pause to lift your elbow and check the enormous eyes blinking up at you, tiny claws still holding tight to the fabric of your tunic and completely unharmed, and then you force yourself to move. The blaster is held out in front of you while you walk forward and your finger rests on the trigger, begging to be pulled again. It’s suspenseful and terrifying in a different way than before—now it’s less about psyching yourself up for confrontation and more about the fact that any sudden movement could mean your very swift end.

Silence. Silence. You’re numb and raw at the same time, walking up the ramp as your eyes fly everywhere, not even registering the blood or gore, just searching for movement. You don’t know if you feel like a predator or prey, you’re that much more brutal and inhuman because of how fucking terrified you are. You count four stormtroopers in the hull laying crumpled and still on the metal floor, but the one in the far corner only has blood on his shoulder. You quickly swing the blaster around to remedy that, but then—

“P-Please don’t kill me!”

His words remind you of something. Reality, maybe. A world outside yourself and the kid’s survival, the living beings behind the bloody armor your enemies wear.

It’s a miracle your finger stays hovering over the trigger, and you watch him throw the blaster at your feet with a clang and scramble to show you his empty hands. “Please don’t kill me, please don’t kill me—I’m not loyal to the Empire, I don’t want to be here, please, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die—”

Behind the mask, your expression furrows. Stormtroopers are loyal to the bitter end, what is he saying? They embrace their expendiality, it’s the only thing that makes them any sort of a real threat. Kuiil told you horror stories about them during your childhood, the cloning facilities and the propaganda they’re force fed since infancy. It’s nearly impossible to find one who hasn’t been raised from birth to serve the Empire, no matter how crumbled and trace its remaining authority may be.

No, this is a trap, it has to be. Your expression twists with dread after hearing him speak, readjusting your aim with the blaster and preparing yourself for the years of nightmares that’ll follow—but then he cries out, “Wait!” and then removes his helmet with trembling hands.

You pause, staring down at him in shock.

It’s him, you recognize him immediately. It’s the same face from a hologram puck you bore into your memory, spent multiple days staring at so you’d be able to spot him under any disguise or circumstances. Oshua Ryler. Your quarry, the fifth puck, the one Din was out Maker knows where searching for before this entire mess happened. A stormtrooper? His puck said nothing about the Empire, this doesn’t make any sense. What is he doing here? Stormtroopers don’t have pucks, they don’t have bounties or relatives or loved ones searching for them. They’re brainwashed, replaceable, faceless soldiers in suits of armor and they don’t even have names.

“Please don’t kill me,” he begs again, staring at you with wide eyes even as he cowers. “I have a family, I-I just want to go home, please—”

“Shut up.” You can’t think straight with him crying like that and you’re wasting so much time just standing here trying to process when your brain had to literally shut itself down to even do the things you’ve already done. You have to kill him and escape, you have to—you can’t trust this complication, not with the tiny claws currently digging into your back and reminding you of your purpose, but it was so much easier when he had on a helmet. You hate looking at his face. It’s going to haunt your dreams now, just like the man you stabbed on Corellia.

“Please don’t kill me—please don’t kill me,” he screws his eyes up and breathes over and over instead, and your stomach wrenches with disgust. His posture and expression are so fucking pitiful, you can barely keep your eyes on him through the overwhelming nausea and aversion that climbs up your throat. He’s with the Empire, and they’re looking for the baby. You know what needs to be done. Pull the trigger, just one small movement from you and it’ll be all over. It would be the easiest thing in the world, it would be so easy.

But then instead, you ask, “Why are you a stormtrooper?”

“I’m n-not—I hate the Empire—”

“The Empire is ashes.” You don’t know if you’re yelling or whispering with how much blood is roaring through your ears. “They hold no power anymore. Why are you with them?”

“Because the one thing they have left is money!” The quarry shrills the words at you, ghostly pale to the point of turning green. “Th-They buy troopers now—they opened up a whole new market for the smugglers, there’s a base nearby that’s used for training and…” He stares wide eyed at you and gulps. “C-Conditioning.”

Your brain is already going a trillion lightyears an hour and it doesn’t have the capacity to empathize or understand anything beyond the child’s survival and the relevant details right now. “Were they expecting the baby?”

“W-What?” He squeaks up at you.

“Was the bounty put out on you a trap set by the Empire?” You ask him, lifting your free arm just enough to flash him the tiny child clinging to your side. “He said they’re coming after the baby, so tell me if this was planned from the beginning.”

“Who is ‘he’?” The stormtrooper asks, furrowing his eyebrows and looking around. “What are you talki—”

“Tell me if the bounty on you was a trap to take this baby!” You roar, your blaster shaking as you aim it down at him. Your mind is acutely focused on the tiny claws hanging onto your tunic, the continued safety of the kid and the life or death situation facing him that you were given absolutely no information about. “Now—”

“If it was I didn’t know!” He quickly cries out, pleading with you and clamping his eyes shut in terror under the barrel sight. “I don’t know anything about a b-baby, or a bounty! They just put blasters in our hands and told us to search for a ship and to bring back anyone we find alive, I swear!”

You’re silent for a moment, biting your lip under the mask and caught halfway between discerning and stalling. You could still kill him. You should still kill him, time is ticking down and more troopers could be heading this way any second.

Shit. “Who put the bounty out on you?” You ask sharply. It might not be a completely fair question, but he can’t exactly blame you for not feeling completely fair right now.

“I—I don’t know,” he gasps, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “Could’ve been anyone—my mother, Cyra, o-or my dad, Obediah, or Thia, or Benja, or S—”

“Thia,” you interrupt his rambling, catching the slurred word and repeating it back to him.

“Yes!” Oshua jerks his head up, tears and hope immediately filling his eyes at the sound of her name, “Yes, Thiadura Celi Ryler, that’s my sister!”

Maker, if he’s lying, then he’s fucking brilliant at it. You look towards the cockpit of the ship, biting your lip under the mask. Get to Nevarro, tell Karga and he’ll… something. Din was cut off before he finished. Help? Know what to do? You’re lost, but you have a clear directive and the precious seconds are sliding by. The controls are right up there, two steps to the ladder and less than a minute until you’re rising into the atmosphere.

But then you think back to the terror in Din’s voice. The blistering panic that made him speak faster and with more urgency than you’ve ever heard from him. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga. Get to Nevarro. Tell Karga.

You look back at the quarry. “How many of you are there?”

“At the base? Around three hundred,” he immediately spills. “Half of us are in the hole right now getting brainwashed, they do it in shifts, but they can be mobilized in a few hours. There were a lot of bodies outside when we were ordered to split off, maybe a third of our squadron, but the rest were still shooting at whatever was—”

“So around a hundred left,” You finish breathlessly, almost wanting him to speak faster and cut to the chase so you can calculate quicker. “How many were dispatched on the search?”

“Uh, there were eight groups of five sent in each major direction,” he informs you, still trembling on the ground. “Told us not to come back until we covered the entire sector.”

Of which, four you’ve already taken care of. In other circumstances, you’d be nauseated at the thought, but right now, it’s just another number to subtract, just more panicked math in Din’s frightening absence. That leaves at least sixty troopers left wherever the base is, minimum, and likely a couple more hours before they’ve combed the sector. If this wasn’t a preconceived trap purposefully set for the kid, then that means reinforcements haven’t arrived yet but likely will soon. And if this is a base meant for training and conditioning, then that also means there’s a chance not all of them will be loyal yet.

You make the decision immediately.

“Okay,” you announce, clicking the blaster’s safety switch and holstering it, sounding lightyears more certain than you feel. “Then you’re going to help me carry out a rescue mission, and I’ll take you back to your sister.”

“You…” He looks uncertain, blinking at your blaster and slowly lowering his hands. “You want to rescue the men?”

Ideally? Sure. Realistically? You don’t say anything in response. Instead, you kick his regulation firearm at your feet further away from the quarry just in case your judgment is flawed, and then turn around and grab one of the bodies behind you.

Your adrenaline is still blaring so fast that you only just barely note the severity of what you’ve just done and what you’re continuing to do. The corpses aren’t real to you right now, they’re inanimate things that you need out of your ship before you can close the doors to it. They are, however, heavy as fuck, but the only other adult here has a wound in his arm from the gun on your hip. Regardless, you have experience with lifting dead weight without a big, strong, capable man to do it for you.

“Help me out here, kid,” you mutter over your shoulder, and in response, you feel his claws dig in and climb up just a little bit until he can peek out in front of you. Thankfully, the burden is suddenly lifted and you can quickly slide the dead troopers down the ramp with ease. It takes hardly any time at all—you just yank and haul and release and all four of them tumble the rest of the way all by themselves.

When you stand back up, Oshua hasn’t moved and he’s looking at you with a pale, queasy expression. Glancing down, you see that your white robe is now stained with streaks and patches of rusty blood. Instead of swallowing back bile at the sight and bolting to the shower to scrub off every last remaining trace, you breeze past it, noting nothing more than a change of color. Dirtying your white, pristine clothing with the consequences of protecting this baby—you’d rather have blood-soaked fabric with an unharmed kid clinging to you than any other combination of those things.

“Can you make it up to the cockpit?” You ask the quarry, kicking his rifle off the ship before closing the ramp and then gesturing up the ladder. Your voice is calm and steady but your hands are beginning to shake again. “I need as much information as possible about the base.” You know that’s where Din is, judging from the wall of blaster screeches that drowned him out through the comm. Logically, you know you could be headed right into a trap, and every instinct inside you wants to find safety, but… you just cannot imagine flying the ship away from this planet without Din onboard. It isn’t fucking happening, you’ve made your choice.

Without waiting for a response, you climb the ladder and plop down in the pilot’s seat of the Crest. While Oshua finds some way to clamber up the steps behind you in bulky stormtrooper armor with one good arm, you hold the kid closer on your lap and begin flight checking. Din will be fucking furious, but the scolding you’ll be sure to get is the least of your worries right now. Following his instructions and going back to Nevarro is just making shit infinitely more dangerous for him, turning what could be a potential rescue mission into an undeniable suicide mission. Even if Karga somehow decides to send a few guild members along to infiltrate the base, it’ll be a war you want to avoid.

Besides. What did you always tell him about running away from him, even when he instructs you to?

It’s just… not really your thing.

---

They’re everywhere.

They crawl like flies out of the base, and for every single body that falls, three more spill from the open doors. Rapid fire plasma beams launch from the end of Din’s blaster, melting white armor with every twitch of his gloved finger. Their aim is terrible, as is to be expected, but the sheer number of them more than makes up for it, as is by design.

Din’s heart pounds with exertion, his breath comes in ragged huffs through the modulator as his helmet identifies and isolates which body is closest to him, which body he needs to bring down next. His blaster is so hot it nearly burns his hand, even through the thick gloves he wears. When he runs out of ammo, he holsters the pistol and swings his rifle from around his shoulder, spinning to catch a handful of troopers behind him in the obliterating blast.

He’s not thinking much. He can’t think, even though your safety and that of his son is currently dangling by a thread. If he focuses on that, he’ll be dead before he can even picture your faces. He just reacts, he maims and kills without a single thought in his mind. Blood splatters, screams and sirens blare as he becomes surrounded by more and more troopers. Din can hear the sound of plasma colliding and ricocheting off his armor; every single one of them is a potential injury he could currently have but might not even be able to feel right now.

His helmet starts beeping rapidly and he turns just enough to see, highlighted in bright red on the screen, two enormous artillery turrets slowly rising up out of the roof of the imperial base. He feels a fierce flash of anger burn in his chest, it’s like a lightning strike to his veins.

Din needs to go.

And yet… if he was another man. If he wasn’t a father, or a husband, if he had no family and no attachments like the creed declared he should, he would go. With just a twitch of his fingers, he could be launching into the sky and retreating as far away from this battlefield as he could reasonably get. He’s never been the type to run from a threat, but this isn’t just a threat. Dozens of troopers are gaining on him, they’re trampling their own dead to get within range. Plasma pings off his shoulder, another one hits his back as they flank from behind. He can feel the heat through the sizzling beskar, he can see them surrounding him on all sides, and the propulsion trigger for his jetpack is right there under his wrist.

Din holds his ground and continues firing, he plants his feet firmly to the dirt with only one thought in his mind.

Run, sweet girl. Run.

---

You type in commands to scan for Din’s signal, quickly locating it through the Crest’s computer onboard. Not far from here, three minutes or less. The ship rumbles to life beneath you, slowly lifting off the rocky ground and rotating in place as it hovers. It’s not on autopilot but you feel like you are, you can barely feel your hands as they move the yoke forward and the Crest takes off in the direction of Din’s blinking frequency.

“Tell me about defenses,” you instruct Oshua, restlessly bouncing your leg while the baby coos.

“Two plasma turrets on top of the base,” the quarry quickly answers. “There’s usually guards stationed around the perimeter, but everyone who’s capable will be outside right now.”

Your mouth twists downwards under the mask. Blasters don’t scare you much from this high up, but Din’s armor doesn’t cover every inch of his body, he’s not completely invincible. Doubt churns in your stomach, but you have to stay focused on one task at a time so you don’t get overwhelmed. The turrets, then. “Are they automatic?”

“Manual,” he corrects with a shake of his head.

“Radar?”

“Old. Only engages above fifty meters.”

You eye your altitude and dip the Crest considerably, beginning to weave through the rocky canyons and dodging crumbling cliffs while you travel. “What about ships?”

“None,” Oshua says, “except for a passenger shuttle used for transport. TIEs are flown in the Vesta sector, this base is remote and used for basic training only.”

“Anything else?” You ask, stomach twisting with the knowledge that barely four questions is all you’ve got. You’re planning to drop into an imperial base to save the man you love and you can’t think of a single other question?

The quarry shrugs, and your heart slams, does somersaults in your chest at the mere notion that you could fucking die here. Today, in two minutes or less, you could die here. The child in your lap looking over the ship’s front panel with a quiet determination in his eyes could die here. Din could already be dead—that signal broadcasts his location to this computer regardless of whether he’s still breathing or not. He could already be gone and you’d be flying the baby right into a trap without knowing any differently.

Whelp, you think while taking a deep breath, some strangely calm existential acceptance beginning to flood your soul. If he isn’t dead, he will be soon if you don’t make it to him on time.

You immediately lift your wrist and speak into the communicator. “Mando?” You have no idea if he can hear you, but you need to try anyway. Your voice is still firm, there’s a strength to it you don’t feel in your chest, but it certainly sounds convincing. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Try to figure something else out.”

That’s it. That’s it, improvise until you don’t have to. Even if you’re lacking confidence, you can at least scrounge up some conviction. Your arms gain feeling again while you veer the Crest through the stony terrain, the familiar reverberations under your feet begin to fill your body with a powerful sense of purpose. Your breaths begin to come steady, every falling rock you see through the transparisteel feels like it drops in slow motion, allowing you to evade them easily. It would normally be stupidly dangerous to fly this low with so many unexpected obstacles and hazards narrowly missing the ship, but considering what you’re flying into, a few boulders seems comical.

“Where’s your helmet?” Oshua asks out of nowhere, and for a second, you don’t think you heard him correctly.

But then it strikes you all at once what he’s attempting to imply, and the sheer lunacy of the thought is enough to make you laugh while you clutch the controls. “I’m not a Mandalorian.”

“You wear the armor of one,” he points out… rather fairly, you have to admit. “You cover your face like one. You have a blaster that fires Philithiorium, a rare and expensive gas native to Mandalore’s stratosphere, and you’re a bounty hunter—”

“I’m not a Mandalorian.” Your words are short and cutting, you have a daunting task to focus on and don’t feel like having small talk right now. “I’m not a bounty hunter, either.”

But then again, Karga made you a member of the Guild, didn’t he? He handed you Oshua’s puck and said this one is for you to find, and you are technically part of a Mandalorian clan. All of this seems like it happened without your knowledge. You may be marrying a Mandalorian, you may wear his armor and mother his child and shoot a blaster with his signet branded into it, but war isn’t in your blood. This robe was a costume when you first made it, this armor was a relic that was restored as a hobby. In a sense, it still feels that way. The mask covering your face lended itself to a temporary surge of bravery earlier, but beyond that, the only thing that’s keeping you moving forward now is your family. The man you love that may or may not be alive right now, the baby holding tight to your leg while the ship sways and weaves through the stony landscape.

Your eyes quickly flick down to the child in your lap, both of his three fingered hands clutching onto the stained fabric of your knee without moving a single inch. He’d know, you tell yourself. If his father is gone, he’d already know somehow. Din is still alive, and he’s counting on you.

---

There’s too many for Din to handle.

They swarmed him, overpowered his endless artillery with massive numbers and there’s nothing he can do anymore. The backs of his knees are kicked from behind and he slams down to the ground with a clatter, his sizzling hot blasters are ripped from him, and Din folds his hands calmly behind his back even as one of the stormtroopers barks out, “Binders,” to another one, who disappears quickly in response. In the meantime, a few of them apparently decide to just attempt holding his arms in place, and their measly combined grip is almost enough to make him roll his eyes under the helmet. These imperial soldiers are even more pitiful than they usually are, but his silent resolve to stall to ensure your escape is enough to keep him stationary and compliant for the time being.

Eventually, a few voices call out from beyond the crowd and there’s some movement from the back. Dozens of troopers with their blasters all pointed at him begin to shuffle to make way, careful to keep their barrels aimed at him while a path slowly forms. The crowd of white parts and a stormtrooper with a singular red pauldron on his right shoulder saunters confidently towards Din as he kneels on the ground.

An officer, he assumes. Conveniently missing from the firefight, the scanner inside his helmet would’ve caught the change in color and Din would’ve made sure to kill him first.

“Well now, what do we have here?” Comes his thin metallic voice through the tinny filter. The officer studies him curiously for a few moments, before slowly looking down by his feet, reaching out one cheap, plastic covered foot to gently nudge the body of a dead trooper on the ground with a sigh. “What a shame.”

Coward, he thinks, his lip curling with disgust under the helmet.

“This is an imperial training base,” he turns his attention back to Din to inform him when he doesn’t immediately respond, rather stupidly he might add. “How were you able to find us?”

Silence. The grip on hands held behind his back is even looser now. He just tilts his chin up slightly in defiance, the scanner inside his helmet locating each weapon strapped to the man’s body and highlighting it red. Small text boxes blink into existence under each one with a manufacturer and classification—a BlasTech E-11 rifle, a Merr-Sonn thermal detonator, a Kolvo vibroblade—and Din is severely unimpressed with the quality. The detonator is the only weapon that even catches his eye, and that’s only because the chamber inside that houses the explosive baradium has a release mechanism that’s completely dead. Useless, then. Good to know.

After a long moment of quiet tension where Din refuses to speak and the officer continues to confidently scrutinize him, in some strange sort of silent battle of egos that only one seems to have a genuine interest in, another stormtrooper makes his way to the front, shoving past his fellow soldiers to address the superior in charge.

“Commander, we’ve sent out an alert for an intruder,” he tells him, slightly out of breath from running through the crowd in the lightweight armor. Din wants to roll his eyes, but what he says next makes him snap to immediate attention. “The fleet informed us that Moff Gideon is currently on route.”

Gideon. The last time someone spoke that name, it was a quarry on Coruscant and you just barely managed to stop Din from suffocating the bastard for even saying it aloud before freezing him in carbonite. It would’ve meant half the return on a hunt that lasted nearly a month but he saw red and his hand was crushing his windpipe before he realized what happened. But he’s dead, Din thinks with a clenched jaw and fists tightening behind his back, he watched that TIE fighter explode and slam into the ground, crushing the man inside it. The wreck was unsurvivable, he can’t be alive.

“For what? This Mandalorian?” The trooper in charge scoffs in response, and Din remains completely mute.

“Yes, sir,” the other one confirms. “Orders were to capture him, alive.”

“Hm.” The officer turns his attention back to him, less analyzing and more musing while he tilts his head. “I see,” he eventually says, and he sounds like he’s grinning, before strolling slightly closer as Din stays completely still on his knees. “He must want the beskar. I’m sure it’s worth more than this entire battalion combined.”

All of a sudden, a gloved hand carelessly catches the rim of his helmet and tugs, and Din’s movement is explosive. He launches off the ground, arms easily slipping from the pathetic grip they were being held in and his fist colliding with the side of the officer’s flimsy white helmet, the plastic making a deafening crack against his face.

Multiple hands immediately rush forward to grab him and yank him back down again while the commanding trooper stumbles backwards in shock, and Din amicably drops to his knees and folds his hands behind his back once more like nothing happened at all.

“Binders!” A trooper behind him roars loudly once more, and a few men surrounding him begin trotting away this time.

The officer in red stands a few feet away from him now, grabbing his helmet and twisting it back to its proper position on his head where it was skewed. There’s a shattered hole near his jaw where the material splintered and busted like the cheap piece of banthashit it is, and while he might normally feel pleased with himself for being able to see his skin peeking through, it just fills him with more righteous fury. It’s such a punchable jaw.

After a few awkward moments of silence, the other one clears his throat and continues. “He… has inquired about the location and status of a child that should be accompanying him.”

Din inhales deeply through his nose and grinds his teeth. He wants to snap their necks one by one for even just mentioning his son, but there are just too many, more than even his whistling birds can neutralize. Still, he gave you as much of a head start as physically possible. You should be rising into the atmosphere right now, making the jump into hyperspace towards safety. Karga will know what to do—he’ll protect his family, separate you and the boy so the threat is evenly dispersed instead of collected all in one place, and arm dozens of trained hunters to keep watch over you both individually. It’s the best Din can do, and it’s the only thing keeping his knees planted on the ground and his body completely motionless while they continue speaking.

“We are combing the sector for a ship with as many men as we can afford to lose,” the trooper in red says, but his voice filter is shattered and now sounds like a puny little droid with a broken voice box, “but our numbers are unimpressive. Assistance may be required.”

It’s too late, Din thinks, mouth twitching under the beskar with a satisfied smirk. They’re wasting their time, looking for a ghost. You’re both long gone by now. They’ve got no idea you even exist—

“He also spoke of a girl.”

And then he feels his heart stop in his chest. Every single cell in his body turns to fire, it’s a fucking miracle he doesn’t move a muscle in response. His sweet girl, the one so far removed from the nightmare of the Empire that she made best friends with the orphans of it. How the fuck did he know? He shouldn’t even be breathing, let alone gathering information about you, how did he know?

But then Din thinks back, remembering your makeshift bed on the floor, your panicked eyes and heaving chest as the quarry taunted him with a sick little smile. Who’s this, Mando? She’s just darling, isn’t she? Does Gideon know your crew has a lovely new addition?

“A girl?”

The trooper nods. “Moff Gideon insisted that if the Mandalorian did not have a child with him, then a girl would likely be protecting him instead.”

He’s going to kill them, Din decides. Every single one of these imperial pigs, every single soldier standing right now is a dead fucking man. The blood pumping through his body suddenly turns to acid, deadly black hate poisoning his soul. His heartbeat morphs into a war drum, the armor strapped to his limbs is the barrel of a gun. He’s going to fucking kill them and leave an imperial base full of bodies to greet his old nemesis upon his return, and he’s going to enjoy every single second of it.

Except, then—

“Mando?” The sweetest voice in existence suddenly crackles through the earpiece under his helmet. “I’m coming to get you. Less than a minute to your location, do everything you can to get outside. If you can’t, I’ll just… uh. Figure something else out.”

And, as Din kneels there in surrender, surrounded by a crowd of enemies he thought he destroyed long ago, all the anger—all the fury and defiance and murder surging through his veins—suddenly morphs to fear.

The emotion is so foreign and old to him, it feels like a face he barely recognizes and a name he can’t remember. He’s panicked before. He’s been in situations where a threat has made him blind with rage, he knows what it’s like to look death straight in the eyes and say that he’s busy and to come back another time. This is different. This is ice cold that freezes over beskar.

He can’t speak out loud to warn you—he can’t move his hands to press the button on the back of his helmet and allow him to talk without detection. There’s plasma turrets on the roof of the base, he can see them right now. The helmet’s scanners say they’re manned and engaged, and though he is outside and this is how you retrieved him before whenever he needed a quick escape, he has fifty fucking imperial blasters trained on him and you know absolutely nothing about this threat. You’re flying right into a war zone and if either you or his son dies, he won’t ever be able to forgive himself.

Behind the helmet, his eyes fly to each and every trooper, wondering which blaster will be the one to do it. Which weapon is going to be the one he can’t block in time when you descend, the one that’ll kill him right in front of you. Which turret will be the one to obliterate the Crest with you and his son inside of it.

“Maker, where are those fucking binders—” he hears someone behind him snarl, but the white noise of pure terror roaring through his ears drowns them out. His chest starts heaving against his will, sheer panic begins to blur his vision. For the first time in his life, his armor feels too heavy, his lungs feel like one of these boulders are sitting on them instead of beskar.

All too soon, his helmet starts making a familiar sound that signals quietly in his ear, alerting him of an incoming ship, and the only thing he can physically do is count down the seconds to prepare himself for what is to come.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Like lightning, Din breaks the grip of multiple troopers and surges up, tackling the officer in red to the ground. There’s a clatter as they both slam into the rocky floor, but in the ensuing scuffle, he easily snatches the thermal detonator from his side holster and holds it up for everyone to see, before pressing the red button on the front and hearing it begin to beep rapidly.

---

You’re right on time.

The Crest rises up through the rocky cliffs surrounding the base and you spot the turrets you were warned about. Weapons controls are already engaged and you’re too low to be detected by radar—you fire once, twice, and blast both of them to smithereens from behind before they can even rotate around to target you.

Alarms start wailing but the guns are destroyed. It’s not comforting, though; blasters won’t touch you up here, but that doesn’t mean they can’t fire at Din on the ground. Your eyes dart across the sea of white, looking for a flash of silver anywhere, and then you spot him instantly in the chaos.

For some reason, the troopers in his vicinity all seem to be bolting away from him. Their rifles are down, clutched in their hands while they nearly fall over each other to run away as fast as possible, and your heart soars when you spot his jetpack firing up. Din launches into the sky while another trooper is revealed underneath him, seeming to juggle something in his hands and then throw it into the crowd of retreating soldiers, but the sight of the man you love rising into the air while a flurry of blaster shots from the far edges of the imperial structure follow him gives you the confidence to immediately turn the guns down towards the horde of troopers.

“Which ones are in charge?” You ask Oshua breathlessly, who leans forward and points out the transparisteel.

“Red pauldrons—” he barely has time to say it before you aim and fire at one of the troopers wearing red that was closest to Din, the plasma beam launching from the Crest so powerful and devastating that it outright obliterates the surface he’s laying on. Pieces of shattered armor fly and a smoking crater of rubble is all that’s left behind, but your mind is whirling and you’re already onto someone else wearing red at the edges of the complex, and then two more near the doors, and then another—

To their credit, you think the sixty or so soldiers in training seem to figure out that you’re not aiming into the enormous collection of them. If you were, the damage would be catastrophic and spraying everywhere, but you’re precise and meticulous with your shots, and the only ones who are loyal enough to the cause to hold still and raise their blasters at the incoming threat tend to be the ones you need to mow down anyways. The rest of them scatter in all directions, scrambling over each other to escape and then disappearing into the distant boulders surrounding the base—but you notice that not a single one of them runs back inside the safety of its open doors.

The hull dips with the weight of Din dropping in, and relief floods your soul even as you continue raining hell down on the superiors in charge. Any flash of color you see is a target, your eyes lose focus of everything, your vision blurs and turns monochrome as you just search for red.

“Lift up!” You hear Din’s voice roar from the hull. You can hear his rifle unloading through the open door. “Now! We have to go now!”

You press the button to shut the hull door with Din inside and punch it, rising so fast that the shove of gravity makes it difficult to keep your head up. Through the sudden surge of downward force, you just barely manage to raise your incredibly heavy arm to push the button that pressurizes the Crest and ignites the launch boosters, preparing the vessel for space travel. Outside the transparisteel, the gray sky begins darkening as the atmosphere eventually disappears. The ship’s engines roar, burning so much fuel at once that you’re actually accelerating through the climb, you’re boosting through the gradual ease of gravity as the planet’s curvature and glow becomes softer and softer below you.

As soon as the blackness of space begins to fill the windows, the slight subsiding of force allows you to plug in the coordinates for Nevarro with less difficulty, but you’re still moving, still rising, still escaping. You can’t find it within yourself to slow down, but then something catches your attention.

Claws suddenly dig sharp into your thigh, sharp enough to sting and cause you to wince, and you look down to see that the kid has gone incredibly tense. Deadly tense. Your heart is still pounding even though you’re away from danger, you’ve got Din in the hull, everyone is safe, and yet—

It flickers into existence all at once. One second it’s just space, just the endless depths of nothingness spread out for light years in front of you, and within the blink of an eye it’s suddenly there.

A star destroyer.

Your body freezes in horrified awe, having never seen a ship so fucking big in your entire life. It looks like a massive satellite, the size of an enormous asteroid instantly appearing in your vision and dwarfing the vastness of space around it. All the stars you used to dream about are suddenly blotted out within a fraction of a second, terror so immense seizes your soul that you stop thinking. You stop calculating, you stop being yourself for a split second that lasts an entire lifetime.

Before you can move a single muscle, the computer beeps quickly and lurches the Crest into hyperspace.

---

The stars streak across the transparisteel like so many times before. Utter silence nearly deafens you with how abrupt it is after so much noise, but the peace it used to bring does nothing to quell your fear. Everything is the same as it always was, same bursts of light as you hurdle faster than it towards Nevarro, same quiet, same rumbling hum of the ship. But now, everything has changed.

You hear the quarry next to you suddenly inhale and exhale loudly, and it shocks you a little bit, reminds you that there’s a person next to you and another is on your lap. Other people exist outside of the vision of death that just flickered out of existence just as quickly as it appeared. They’re breathing, Oshua is shakily unbuckling his seatbelt, life is continuing on in the quiet cockpit but you can’t seem to move like he is. You can’t seem to breathe like he is. It’s only when the baby slowly maneuvers himself around on your thigh and blinks up at you, placing a tiny hand on your stomach that you finally feel air enter your lungs.

After a moment, you reach down and click open your seatbelt with trembling fingers, scooping the kid up in your arms and slowly attempting to stand. Everything feels wobbly and dreamlike, you have to brace yourself on the headrest to prevent yourself from falling back into the chair again.

“That was…” Ryler mutters, his voice sounding foggy and distant, “uh. A close one.”

You look over at him, recognizing that he’s speaking but not quite able to understand the words right now. Red catches in your vision, and you blink down at the way he’s clutching his left shoulder, the smear of blood darkening the white armor he’s wearing. You blink a few more times at the sight of it, and though it feels like you normally would be sickened at the wound, somehow shocked out of your state of shock, it does nothing to you. When you look back up at his face, his expression seems strangely grateful, even when it’s screwed up in what you know must be excruciating pain. You did that, a quiet voice whispers in your mind, even though the rest of it seems incredibly blank.

Instead of responding, you stumble a few steps over to the ladder, spinning around and hesitating for a moment. You’re severely lacking in coherent thought, but one thing seems to break through. You’re not sure if you have enough coordination to do this safely right now. However, when there’s movement in your peripheral and you look to see Oshua gently offering his right arm to you, seeming to understand you’d like to use both hands for this, you snap back to your senses just the slightest bit and hug the baby tighter to your chest. Carefully, you begin making the slow climb down the ladder with the kid, still trembling with the aftershocks of adrenaline. Your limbs feel extra heavy, but eventually the floor meets your feet.

Din is standing there when you slowly turn around, armor gleaming and still as a statue, but he has his back to you. His helmet is tilted down at the ground, and when you follow his gaze, you’re met with the sight of the bloodstains of dragged bodies that leave dark red streaks all the way up the ramp.

You feel something this time. It’s… cold. A burning, searing cold that creeps into your skin. Like your heart decides to pump nitrogen through your chest instead of warm blood. You did that.

There’s a sudden urge inside of you to speak, to address him and inform him of your presence, tell him everything is okay, everything worked out, but you can’t find it in yourself to say a single word. You can’t find a single word to say. The kid twists as best he can in your clutch, his ears drag against your chest to greet his father, but for some reason, there’s still a strange sense of fear in your bones. It’s enough to wake you up slightly, it’s enough to tell you it’s not over yet. There’s a terror in your heart that hasn’t left since he first called over the comm and begged you to run, a crippling dread that you thought climaxed after seeing that star destroyer appear, but it’s somehow only increased after laying eyes on him like this.

You watch as his helmet turns, slowly meeting the pauldron on his shoulder, and for some reason, you feel yourself harden. Your feet brace against the metal floor like this is another threat you have to face, you let its unyielding metallic strength transfer up through the souls of your boots to your heart in your chest.

But the second you hear cheap white armor clatter as the quarry steps down the ladder behind you, Din bursts into movement. He suddenly spins and storms up to you in one single step while catching your holstered blaster on your hip. It’s out and aimed in the blink of an eye, and it’s a miracle you remember how to speak before he remembers how to kill.

“Mando—” you warn, just in time for the quarry to land on the floor of the hull and turn around to reveal his face.

Din holds there for a second, his helmet locked on Oshua’s features. His gloved fingers twitch wildly on the trigger of your gun held over your shoulder, like he has to remind himself multiple times not to. You hear Oshua’s armor clack while he likely raises one good arm in surrender, but then Din’s helmet moves a fraction of a millimeter to your face and holds there. He just stares down at you, and the air feels heavy, your body feels heavy, the feather light child in your arms feels heavy.

Slowly, he lowers his arm, lets it fall while he continues looking at you from behind the visor. You look back at him, unblinking, unfeeling, and there’s a few seconds that last an utter eternity where nobody moves. Nobody speaks, nothing happens, but then a soft coo comes from your arms before you can finally break eye contact, knowing there are still some things that need to be done.

You eventually turn around and lift your chin to address Oshua.

“You have to go into carbonite,” you inform him quietly. Your voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from outside of yourself. “We’re taking you to Nevarro, and then you’ll be transported to your home planet. When they unfreeze you, your sister will be there to collect you.”

He looks uncertain, one hand still raised while the other hangs uselessly at his side, and you don’t blame him.

But you also don’t feel like saying anymore, not unless he decides he doesn’t want to go in willingly. Normally you might’ve tried to empathize, offer him further reassurance beyond just a couple short sentences, but you don’t. Speaking feels difficult, thinking feels difficult. You’re still in survival mode, not active but reactive. There’s also no reason for you to lie to him about this, and you can see him glance at Din standing silently behind you, who hasn’t moved a muscle.

He eventually nods and you walk him over to the chamber without another word, watch him turn to face you as he backs into the opening while you reach up towards the control panel.

But then there’s a moment. One where you hesitate slightly, one where your vision flashes back to the sight of those bloodstains on the floor, and that burning cold fills you again, so cold it feels completely numb.

“I’m… sorry,” you whisper quietly to him, though your voice sounds so empty. There’s so much emotion that should be there but isn’t, so much regret and pain that should break through but can’t. “I’m sorry I… killed your friends.”

Later, you’ll think about how you felt absolutely nothing saying it. Your heart doesn’t constrict with remorse at the mere words leaving your mouth, guilt doesn’t flood into your soul, pain doesn’t wrack through your bones. You could’ve been saying anything at all and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

He blinks at you, flicking his eyes between yours for a second or two, but then you press the proper button and watch the gas quickly freeze him where he stands. He’ll be conscious the entire time, but Karga will send him to the correct location and you have no doubt that this elemental purgatory is leagues better than where he just escaped from. It’s a benefit being the last quarry to be retrieved—he’ll only have to spend a few days trapped in here before being reunited with his family.

When that’s done and Oshua is a complete statue in front of you, bulky white armor now colored a dull metallic gray and frozen in time, you will yourself to finally turn around to face the enormous mountain of a presence behind you. The baby gently reaches out for him, but Din doesn’t move from where he’s stood. Your blaster is still clutched tightly in his hand, and he isn’t looking at you.

Slowly, you walk over and stop directly in front of him in the middle of the hull, blinking at him while the helmet subtly moves to lock onto your face. The kid begins wiggling in your arms, making soft impatient noises while you both stand in complete silence across from each other.

After a few moments, you hear him flick your blaster’s safety on by his side and then toss it carelessly to the ground. It skids along the floor, light enough to be mostly quiet. Gloves reach out as he carefully takes the kid from you and settles him in the crook of one arm, and then he looks you up and down, still not saying anything.

Your eyes follow his movement, watching his arm slowly reaching out to you, and you think he’s going to cup your jaw, or brush your hair back. Give you some sort of physical reassurance since he hasn’t spoken a single word of it.

Instead, Din suddenly grabs the armor clinging to your chest and starts ripping it off you with one hand. It clangs to the floor so loudly in the silence of hyperspace, the kid’s ears twitch and flutter with each shattering bang. You hold still while he does it, you barely respond except the unavoidable movement your body experiences as the pauldron is yanked from your shoulder and thrown against the ground. The ammo belt is tugged over your head and hurled away, the thigh braces are snatched from your legs and they clang to the floor, and the pearly, opalescent fabric revealed underneath is stained in dead man’s blood, rusty and in such great quantities that it shows up as brown instead of red.

“Are you hurt?”

He sounds… dead. So monotonic that you can’t possibly gauge his emotional state. He doesn’t move. His fists don’t clench, he says every single word like it means the same exact thing as the last. If nothing at all was a person who could speak, they’d use his tone of voice.

“No,” you eventually whisper.

The helmet nods once, and then he spins around and walks away without anything else. Without saying anything, without touching you, or double checking you for injuries in case you were lying. You stand utterly still while Din climbs the ladder with the kid cradled in one arm, and you don’t even flinch when the door to the cockpit slides shut behind him. You have no idea how long you stand there in the splitting silence afterwards, numb and unmoving.

You feel… nothing. Absolutely nothing.

The hard defenses you strapped to yourself today to reconcile the things you had to do are still high and strong, guarding your soul even if he stripped away your physical armor. Self preservation is still animating your body, and your facial expression barely changes. Your first thought, as soon as you remember that you can have one, is that there are things that still need to be done. Tasks to complete.

Alone, you shower the lingering traces of blood off your body, the normally clear and refreshing water running a sickly, toxic brown. Alone, your stomach rolls and suddenly decides to empty itself of the very little that was in it as the scalding drops rain down over you—mostly liquid and bile that easily rinses down the drain. The water is too warm, it beats down on you like blazing hot sand pelting your skin in the desert. You feel like you did those first few months with Din, where the silence was suffocating, where you’d only interact with the baby if he was on a hunt or if you could tell he didn’t know how to calm him when he was fussy. If you were in hyperspace, you usually spent time by yourself in the hull while he lived in the cockpit, and if he decided he needed to be in the hull for whatever reason, then you’d trade places with him. It was… isolating. Lonely by yourself. The quiet used to haunt you before it became your cherished friend, but now it’s a betrayer, a ghost that whispers memories and nightmares in your ears.

When you finally finish rinsing the blood from your skin and get dressed, you see the sheets that used to make up your bed now have fried holes in them from your charred plasma marks, the inside of the hull is covered in them and the trails of dried blood where you dragged the bodies down the ramp. Your armor is still strewn about the hull, the kid’s hovering shield lays dead in the corner. Everything you meticulously cleaned and organized and collected and created, now the scene of a bloodbath. One committed by your hand, your blaster still laying uselessly on the floor forever linked to this atrocity.

You spare a glance towards the ladder, but you don’t want to come face to face with Din yet. You already knew he’d be furious, but… you had hoped that he’d at least…

What? At least what? Comfort you? Coddle you after you deliberately ignored his instructions? What exactly, in the past year or so of learning Din’s inner workings and intricacies, would ever give you the impression that he’d come give you a big hug after you purposefully defied him? You flew the kid directly into an imperial base after being told to protect him, you ignored every order he gave to you in the moments he thought would be his last, and though you did it to save his life, you have a feeling that Din has never valued his life even a fraction of what you do.

The misery stabs at your soul, but your mind is finally beginning to process things logically. He’s alive, the kid is alive, the quarry is secure, and you’re all onboard the safety of this ship hurtling through hyperspace where nobody, not even the Empire, can touch you. You weighed the consequences before making your decision, you did what you had to do. If he wants to be mad, then he can fucking well be mad and you’ll find some way to comfort yourself. At least he’s here being mad, at least he’s alive and safe and breathing and mad, and your rare act of disobedience is to thank for that.

Somewhere in the back of your mind, you realize it’s probably easier than it should be to reconcile the punishment. Right now, you welcome the exclusion, the negativity and sorrow beating itself into your soul. Four innocent people died today on this ship, gunned down under your blaster while they panicked and ran for cover. You keep hearing their screams.

So you start to clean up the hull, needing another task to focus your thoughts on. You work to erase every inch of the evidence of your deeds, make it disappear like the pool of blood Din once cleaned up while you were sleeping and never acknowledged again. You only allow the bloodstains to fuck with your head for a single moment, and then you swallow back the nausea until you’re a blank slate again and sink to your knees with a rag in your hand. After that, your vision stops focusing and it just becomes red contrasting against gunmetal gray, and you work tirelessly to get rid of all remaining traces of it.

Then you start on the blaster marks, you need them gone. After a few informed attempts at mixing cleaning chemicals, you find one concoction that allows you to wipe them away like they’re nothing more than dirt that got tracked in. The Crest’s oxygen recycling system works overdrive to constantly purify the air so you don’t get high or pass out, but your nose still stings. It’s fine, it’s sterile, it burns a bit but it smells sharp and metallic and keeps you hyper focused on the task at hand.

After that’s done, you pick up the charred blankets and ball them up to throw into the trash vent. You don’t feel anything as you do it. You don’t think about how long it took you to collect these over months and months of being stuck on this ship, how comfortable they were when everything else was industrial and rigid, how many nights you spent with Din curled up in their softness while he breathed easy and warm. Sheets are just luxuries, they can afford to be lost.

Next, you gather your armor and wipe it down with the rag, put it away along with your blaster. The stained robe goes in the trash, along with the sheets and the blood soaked cloth you used to clean everything. They’re all ruined, you’ll never be able to make them right again.

The hull is sparkling clean when you decide to take another shower. Nothing on you is dirty except your hands, but you feel filthy. Wrong, cold, numb, cold, stained, cold.

After scrubbing your skin raw under the water and changing clothes again, since you don’t really know what to do with yourself anymore, you slowly climb the ladder to the cockpit, keeping perfectly silent. When you reach the upper platform and come face to face with the closed door, you can just barely hear Din’s whispered voice speaking quietly to the baby beyond it.

You raise your hand for a moment, hovering your knuckles over the metal, but then it eventually falls. Instead, you look over and spot the corner, the same corner Din bunched himself into when he snapped at you for even suggesting going on a hunt with him, blew up at you for the mere notion of something happening like what happened today. You back yourself into it in defeat and slowly sink down on the floor, resting your head against the metal and hugging your knees to your chest since you don’t have a tiny baby to take their place.

You can’t sleep. You don’t even try, it’s pointless. The concept feels foreign the longer you sit here by yourself. You don’t hear Din or the baby anymore, but you feel… so fucking awful that it’s fitting that you don’t knock or go looking. You don’t want to hold that sweet child with hands that were covered in blood just a few hours ago. You killed more people than you can count on your fingers today, and of the ones who had done nothing wrong… They screamed like younglings, ducked for cover and were able to fire off one single useless shot in the mayhem before you closed their eyes forever and left their bodies to rot in armor that wasn’t ever their choice to wear.

You didn’t know they were kidnapped and smuggled and forced into that situation. You couldn’t have known, but that isn’t the point. In this case, knowing doesn’t make one bit of difference.

You also can’t face Din yet, not like this. You don’t want him to see you cowering, shattered with guilt over the decisions you made under pressure. How will you ever get him to forgive you for not listening to him when you can’t even forgive yourself for the result of your choices? Din is a hardened man who grew up in blasterfire and bloodshed, just because you love him doesn’t mean he’s going to magically become someone he isn’t. You’re here letting guilt sink sharp claws into your chest over four dead men when he had a good fifty or more corpses scattered on the battlefield around him. You decided to wear that armor, you decided to fly into an imperial base with the kid on your lap, and this is now your penance. You’ll accept it with your back straight and your chin held high.

Figuratively, of course. Physically, you’re smaller than you’ve ever been. Crumpled up into a ball, taking up as little space as possible, curling up as tight as you can like an animal protecting all your vulnerable parts during a brutal attack.

So, since he isn’t here to comfort you himself, you just try to think about what he would tell you. A long time ago, what would he tell you?

Din would tell you… that you killed someone. Multiple people, this time. He’d also tell you that it doesn’t matter what he tells you, what you could have reasonably foreseen or what you should have done. The end result won’t change. You own this now. You’ll carry their deaths with you.

You take a few deep breaths, self-soothing with the undeniable truth that would be murmured matter of factly from his quiet voice. He wouldn’t argue with you. He wouldn’t deny the decisions you made or the consequences of them. It happened, and at the end of the day, you either learn how to handle that, or you don’t.

And, for the four you did shoot, you were responsible for freeing ten times that amount. You’re responsible for reuniting Oshua Ryler with his family, even if your place in yours is momentarily shunned. You’d rather be out here alone than in there with the kid, wondering where his dad is or if he’s even still alive. You rescued Din and now he gets to be here to shut this door on you, hold his son, and whisper calm reassurances to him. If you listen really hard and imagine, you can pretend they’re for you, too.

That’s it. Focus on them both, alive and well together. Focus on the bodies wearing white armor that were moving, the ones that were bolting away from the imperial training base as fast as they could, free from the torture of imprisonment and conditioning.

Finally, you close your eyes and slip into unconsciousness. It’s not a testament to your exhaustion, but rather just how long you’ve been left to sit here by yourself. Hours, maybe. Time is strange in hyperspace.

You dream of a faceless man ringing bells.

---

When you wake up, a small baby has been placed in your arms, and you’re being dragged into a strong, secure beskar hold on the floor.

“Din,” you suddenly lift your head as soon as you’re conscious and nearly bonk it into solid metal, apologies rising in your throat before you even remember where you are. You did what needed to be done to keep your family alive and together and you’d do it a thousand times again if necessary, but that doesn’t mean you won’t apologize anyways. After the deeds you’ve committed today, regret feels as natural on your lips as speaking your own name. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I know you’re mad at me but I—”

“Shh,” he whispers, running his gloves through your hair. He’s still wearing his helmet, he hasn’t taken anything off yet. “Don’t say anything. Just… stay here, stay right here with me.”

“I tried to save you,” you croak, tears instantly flooding your eyes. You did save him. You saved him and the baby and yourself but you’re so physically and emotionally exhausted that all you can recall is your intent. “I tried. Wasn’t gonna leave you there by yourself. I tried to be brave, like you—y-you wouldn’t have left without me.”

His arms tighten around you, cradling you in such a strong embrace that you burrow into him, you find a place for your head on the hard metal strapped to him and bury yourself there, wishing that you had shovels of dirt being piled on you to justify the death you still feel staining your soul. Your heart is starting to pound now that you’re remembering, your body is starting to shake with tremors of shock now that you’re aware of your own skin again.

“I was so sc-scared, Din, I didn’t—didn’t know what was happening,” you lament through watery eyes, gasping it out in hopes that it’ll relieve the slightest bit of the gut wrenching guilt just mercilessly crushing you. It caught you before you could protect yourself against it, that armor you built around yourself isn’t on when you first wake up. “I-I didn’t want to kill them, but they were already on the ship and y-you said—you said they were coming after the kid s-so I had to, I had to—”

“Stop,” Din whispers, voice so quiet that you can barely hear him.

“I-I cleaned up the blood,” you turn your face against the cold beskar to let all the positives you listed for yourself before scrape across your throat. They don’t sound comforting anymore, they just sound like excuses. “It’s gone, it’s like it never happened, everything is okay now, I got the quarry, I protected the baby, I saved a bunch of people, you’re both safe—”

“Stop,” he chokes out. The modulator cuts off before you can hear his next breath, but you feel it shudder under your body. “St-Stop it, please.”

Your eyes clench shut so tightly you feel like the streaking stars outside are behind them, tears drop down against his pauldron and you press your face tighter to it like it’s a wound, like the pressure will somehow ease the bleeding.

“Listen to me,” he says very quietly, and you instantly brace yourself. The walls you just let down shoot right back up, your body physically tightens in preparation for another pain, another trauma, another scar you’ll carry, and you stop shaking. You stop breathing, even when his hand comes up to ease your face away from his armor.

“You,” he whispers, holding your chin so you’re staring right at him, and your eyes flick fearfully in between his behind the visor, “are a sweet girl.” Din’s leather thumb brushes along your skin, dragging over the tears below your puffy eyes. “Not,” his voice catches, “a Mandalorian.”

Your heart goes cold. Again, everything turns numb. It doesn’t matter that you already said this yourself out loud earlier today. It doesn’t matter that you acknowledged this fact, verbally insisted it more than once to hammer home the truth and felt some sense of comfort in it. For some reason, hearing the words from his mouth is a fucking knife to your chest.

“I taught you how to fight, how to shoot a blaster,” he murmurs, thumb catching every single tear that continues to fall as he speaks. “I taught you everything I know, everything that’s been taught to me. I taught you how to defend yourself, how to protect yourself when you’re in danger. I gave you your blaster, I gave you my armor, I gave you everything I could give you to keep you safe. And when I thought you were ready, I let you loose on Sanctuary II. Do you know why I did that?” The helmet tips forward the slightest bit at the question, probing deep into the most shattered part of your heart. “After all those months of fighting, and shooting, and training, do you know why I told you to run?”

You blink silently at him, a shaky breath quaking through you, and your expression wants to crumple under the reprimand. You’re so fragile right now, taking hit after hit after hit to the softest parts inside you, and you want to just give up. Let the guilt and remorse take you, let it wash you away. But then, instead…

There’s a flicker of something inside you. Something strong, endlessly strong, and it makes you want to revolt against what he’s saying. It replaces the hurt and fear and desperation for comfort with a strange sense of insurgence, like it did earlier when you were hiding behind a boulder, cowering and trembling and not wanting to die. You’re filled with a quiet urge to defend yourself in the face of this, stand up for yourself and refuse to be beaten down any longer.

“Because you needed to know how to escape danger,” he answers himself when you don’t. “You needed to know how to disappear, how to outsmart any pursuer and find safety, even the trained ones. Especially the trained ones. Anything else was meant to be your last resort. Not your choice. Not something you chose.”

“I couldn’t leave you,” you admit to him quietly, voice shaky and tears still coming even as you try to speak up for yourself. The regret you carry has nothing to do with this, and you decide right now that you won’t feel bad for saving him. Your hurt comes from the meaningless things, the ones without any need whatsoever, not the necessary ones, and you tried. You repeated his words to yourself over and over again, told yourself to run, told yourself to get to Nevarro, and it wasn’t going to happen. “I couldn’t do it. It wasn’t a choice.”

“It was,” he tells you. He says it softly, whispers it like it’s the gentlest thing in the world, but the power and inherent distance of the armor strapped to his body finds its way into the words. “And it was the wrong one.”

“What was I supposed to do?” You ask, just a hint of that rebellion swimming to the surface now, rising out of the waves of self doubt, the one that feels like a spine growing in your back, an energy coursing through your veins that makes your heart start to beat faster. Din’s hand slowly drops from your cheek but you don’t care. “Was I supposed to run away and just let you die?”

“Yes.” It’s quick and blunt and completely emotionless. Delivered like a punch to the vulnerable parts of yourself he taught you how to protect, and the utter silence following this single word is comparable to the physical pain you learned to defend against. It jabs hard against everything good and sweet and tender inside of you, and you’re left speechless even as he continues impassively. “That’s exactly what you were supposed to do.”

It takes a second, but then that unfamiliar feeling suddenly surges up, breaches with the power of an entire ocean. Your voices may be nothing more than whispers in the dark, you may be clinging to each other, holding each other with the softest, gentlest love in your hearts, but the strength of your conviction on this would rip metal apart.

“No.” The word holds the might of your entire being, and it stands alone and defiant in the face of everything you fear, everything that threatens you, him, and this child. Never. You’ll die before that happens. “I love you, and there’s nothing in this galaxy that would ever make me do that. Not fear, not danger, not the Empire, nothing. Not even you.”

Din stares at you. His visor reflects your hardened expression back to you, the force in your soul and the purpose in your eyes, and you don’t even realize the gravity of what you just said because like your love for him, gravity is a constant. It’s a fundamental truth cemented into the rules that govern your actions and it stays true no matter where you are, no matter what terror you face, or how scared you become. You have him, you have this little boy in your arms, and if that’s all you have, then you have everything.

After an eternity of this, of feeling his eyes pierce deep into you from behind the helmet while you refuse to wither under his stare, you watch him slowly turn and look down, landing on the sleepy child tucked between you both. He holds there for a long time, before finally whispering, so quiet that the modulator barely picks it up, “It was the wrong choice.”

You stay quiet. It happened. What’s done is done, you can’t change the past. He can scold and reprimand you about this as much as he wants, but you did the right thing and that decision is the only reason he’s even here to be able to do so. This exhausted child was reunited with his father because of your choices, and this exhausted father was reunited with his child. You won’t argue anymore, but it’s a certitude that lives deep in your heart now, builds a home there right alongside the both of them. Din eventually looks up, his eyes find yours again behind the visor, and his hand rises once more to gently cup your jaw.

“I… thought I’d enjoy seeing you in my armor,” Din finally whispers. It’s not what you expected, but his voice sounds… weak. Broken. “You wore mine once before, and it was…” He brushes his thumb along your cheek, and then his head shakes slightly, pushing the thought away. “It wasn’t real. It didn’t fit. It dwarfed you, it made you look out of place, it made everything soft and innocent about you stand out. I liked it because it wasn’t real.”

“Was it… really that bad?” You whisper back, partially to ease the tension just slightly but quickly breaking eye contact with him when you realize it doesn’t land correctly, it just sounds self conscious and sad. You try to find that conviction again, that strength and assurance that propped you up so sturdily before, but… Not a Mandalorian, he’d said. Of course not. Of course not.

“It wasn’t the armor.” Din gently tugs up on your face so that you look at him again. “It was you covered in blood. It was you purposefully putting yourself in danger. You killed multiple armed soldiers of the Empire, you dragged their bodies off the ship. And then you flew into an imperial base, where you killed the officers, too. You…” He shakes his head slowly at you while speaking, and although you can’t see his face, you don’t need to in order to hear the horror in his voice. “You… collected a quarry… in the middle of a massacre, sweet girl.”

Not a Mandalorian.

“You don’t chase down bounties,” he tells you. “You don’t fly into war zones. You don’t kill imperials, you don’t collect quarries, you don’t sacrifice yourself, or our son, to save me. You said you tried to be brave… like me.” His fingers tighten against your cheek, he dips his helmet to make sure you understand. “I’ll never ask you to be brave. I’ll ask you to survive.”

“I’m… sorry,” you finally whisper, and his arm drops from your cheek to join the other in wrapping around you and holding tight. They hug you and squeeze, encasing you and the baby in a beskar shield and staying there for a long time. Long enough for you to tuck your head back into its proper place under his helmet, long enough to start to feel okay with the silence again. It brutalized you the last time you were surrounded by it, it made you feel alone and desolate and barren inside. You greet it warily now, settling into it for an unknown amount of time until it’s forgiven once more.

After a while, Din quietly breaks it.

“How many?” He murmurs to you. You already know exactly what he’s asking, there's no more clarification necessary on his behalf.

You slowly close your eyes and think back to the smoldering craters, the blood soaked ramp, the fear in Oshua Ryler’s eyes as he begged you not to kill him.

“That didn’t deserve it?” You ask, clenching your eyes tighter at the memory. “Four.”

And maybe, maybe six or eight months ago, you would’ve begged for some guidance on how to reconcile that. Hell, maybe a few hours ago, you could’ve used his arms around you exactly like this, his low voice repeating the same things he’s already told you before, over and over again, if only for some semblance of stability when everything feels turbulent and uncertain. You’ll never be able to change it, though. This belongs to you now.

This time, all Din says is, “I’m sorry, too.”

And that covers everything.

The silence envelops you both again, but… there’s something else. Something that still sits deep in your worries, an image that isn’t a scar of what’s happened but a dread of what’s to come. You need to tell him. You don’t feel like saying it, you don’t want to speak it aloud for fear of bringing it into existence, but you need to tell him.

“Din?” You breathe out, and he makes a soft noise in his throat while cuddling you on the floor. “I saw…,” you whisper, every word sitting tight and reluctant in your throat. “Right when we made the jump, I was looking through the window and I-I saw…”

“A star destroyer.” He says it like… like it’s the worst thing in the world and also completely expected at the same time. He says it like he already knew, yet can’t even imagine. You lean every bit of your weight against him since you can’t hold him in return, squish him as best you can against the small corner and curl up even tighter in his arms for comfort.

He takes a deep breath, a shuddery sound you don’t think you’ve ever heard him make before. It holds untold anxiety, unsaid conflict, uncertain action, an unknown path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” Din eventually whispers to himself, to you, to the baby in your arms. His voice is barely a breath through the modulator, his fingers digging into your skin with how many emotions he’s repressing. “What do I do?”

He sounds so distressed that you automatically feel your soul find the floor—instantly, you become steady and calm and you locate all that rationality that kept you going today. All your worries still twist deep down, all the guilt and the turmoil wrestles with your soft, easy nature until you can only find bits and pieces of it in the most vulnerable places inside you, but if he’s struggling this terribly, then the least you can do is offer some good, true, unwavering faith in times of uncertainty. You’re in hyperspace, everything worked out, and it’s going to stay that way for right now. If he doesn’t know how to talk about it yet, then you trust him enough to wait for him.

“It’ll be okay,” you tell him with a newfound confidence and purpose, carefully easing the baby into one arm so that the other can find its way to the other side of his helmet and pull him closer. Din tucks his head and allows you to brush your lips against the metal, whisper the words soft and steady to him. “We’ll figure it out together.”

---

@cptnbvcks thank you so much for the incredible art!

#the mandalorian #the mandalorian x you #the mandalorian x reader #din djarin #din djarin x you #din djarin x reader #mando x reader #mando x you #reader insert #fanfic #star wars #rough day #no-droids

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asmolfolk · 1 year

Text

SNV!Humans as boyfriends.

I don't know why I decided to make it...

Qin Shi Huang

What is like to have he as your boyfriend?

He is the kind of boyfriend that puts you as a priority in the relationship, he would try anything in his way to make you happy - to crack a smile, to laugh... He hates to see you cry, he will do anything on his way to avoid it.

He seems to be the most experienced - and he fucking is. He is a fast learner and knows when and how to take hints, so you know that you don't need to even say something to make him understand what you want.

He is the emperor of helping you out in anything. You want to train? He will be your teacher. You can't say no.

Of course, if you want to have professional help, he would pay someone to help you out.

He is speeding a lot of money on you and he doesn't even care.

Does he get jealous easily?

He doesn’t get jealous, he knows he is better than anyone else [He is too full of himself to even think about cheating] and also, he trusts you with his own life and if you break his trust… Well, he isn’t one to just forget...

What does he call you?

I don't think he would use words in english- He would call you by the nicknames in chinese, like '女朋友' and others... He would call you by something in english if you want [but it would be really... Cheesy, like 'Babypoh']

What is his way to show love?

Acts of service is his way to shove you with love.

He will do the smallest but meaningful things - Like, if he knows that you like physical touch or you’re touch craved, he would always hug you, no matter where or how… You would receive daily hugs, kisses.

Even if he is far away from you, if you send a letter wanting something - he would give it to you at the same minute. He is devoted to you and his people, he wants nothing but to see you smiling.

How he would be with his S/O love languages?

If his S/O language of love is quality time, words of affirmation, or physical touch - he is BLUSHING! He loves to know and to be reassured that you love him in any of these ways, he feels like in heaven!

If his S/O language of love is acts of service or giving gifts, he is going to have to slow you down- He doesn’t like to receive gifts or to have you acting that way, he does things that are cute, but he doesn’t want you to spend your money on him… Even so, if you insist, he is not giving more lectures and will just start to accept it. [Even if a part of him says that it is wrong.]

(From what I know, it was common for the husband to give gifts or do anything for his wife, but the only thing that the wife needed to do was to take care of the children) - I don’t know a lot about those times, so that’s an explanation to his reaction.

(Bonus) How would he react to anyone trying to kill or hurt you?

The person should start praying. He won't let this pass, he would hunt down the person just so he can torture them - and, when he is done, he will let the person live... After all, when he is done with them... Being alive will be the worst punishment.

He is a good boyfriend, he tries to be the best he can for you. He would kill, disrespect gods if it means to show you how much he loves you.

Nikolas Tesla

What is like having him as your boyfriend?

He is pretty busy most of the time… He advised you that he wouldn’t be available for you all the time. To get in a relationship with him, you HAVE to be sure about that. He does try to make some time for you, he has one day in his schedule where he will stay only with you.

He does try to make up for the lost time, he handles conversation and everything else pretty good… But one thing he can’t control is accidents… So, It is possible that he would need to work on one of those days.

[He tries his best to make it up for you - Dedicating one entire week for you or giving a lot of gifts for ya.]

Does he get jealous easily?

He does. One thing is that… He wishes he could spare more time for you, he wishes that he could just let someone else do his whole job… And when he sees someone that could give you comfort, luxuries and all the time in the world… He is jealous of it.

He wants nothing but what you two could have together and he hates to admit it, but sometimes, he hopes that you never notice it. [Even if you have accepted being in a relationship with a busy man, he can’t forgive himself for not giving you the attention and love you deserve.]

What does he call you?

He has a lot of situational nicknames.

He calls you by English ‘nicknames’ like “My Dear”/”Dear” and “My Love”/”Love” when he is going to be away for a long time - if he is going to spend a whole month with you, he calls you by “My dearest”/”Dearest” and “My everything”.

If he is in the mood for something else- he calls you by “Beautiful”/”Handsome”/”Pretty” and “Wife”/”Husband”/”Partner” [Something else = Cuddles… And something +18 if you want it.]

In sex, the nicknames depend on what you like… But, he would mostly call you by your name <3

What is his love language?

His love language is giving gifts and words of affirmation. He does like shoving you with gifts and letters, because he knows that every single one of them is special…

If you EVER dared to tell him or someone else anything you want [“I want a Teddy bear”, “I want two sharks, two dolphins, two snakes and one monkey… Wait, better than that! I want A PANDA! The red one-”] You are getting ANYTHING. He doesn’t care for how much money he spends on you, he wants you to live happily… He needs you to understand how much he loves you and how much he misses you everyday.

He sends daily notes, all of them have the same structure - Telling about his day, telling if he is going to come back any sooner, some news and then… His full devotion for you.

Everything that he writes is absolutely sweet.

“I thought about you today… Not that I haven’t any other, to be honest with myself and you. I can’t take my mind off you. You are always here… And I got to ask, how? How did you manage to cast that… Spell? I’m rather happy that you think so highly of me… To keep a relationship like that.”

How would he be with his S/O love language?

If your love language is physical touch or quality time -

Being away hurts both of you like a pineapple hitting your head. He wants to feel it, he wants you to show him that you love him in the special way you do… But, because he is mostly busy, he just feels it for a day… And then, it’s over.

Sometimes, he feels like he could live for your touch, being around you, hearing you talk, noticing how long you have been listening to him ramble - and even if it was about job, you never seemed mad, angry… You are an angel to him.

If your love language is words of affirmation and giving gifts…

He feels so- Goofy? I don’t know how to explain/and he can’t either, but he does feel like you are being too much for him! Like, you two are matched in HEAVEN! How can you have the same love language as him? You don’t know how appreciated he is at being shoved with gifts and your kind words…

Sometimes, he would open your letter/poem - if you write one - and would read it a million times… He wants to keep that in his mind. [Everytime he is mad/sad/depressed, he will remember the letter… It’s kind of his own therapy.]

If you ever buy one bear or antiestres thing for him, he is going to use it A LOT. Everytime you go to meet him at his job, he is with the object-.

If your love language is an act of service…

That is the only one that he doesn’t like. He doesn’t like… Especially because he knows that it will hurt you - Because he mostly needs nothing, he would ask you kindly to just… Spend time with him, but that would be it - he wouldn’t and couldn’t ask you for anything else.

Bonus [What if his S/O starts a discussion about time?]

If you start a discussion with him, he is going to handle it well. He would wait for you to tell everything that is on your mind and so, he would say what he thinks about it. It always depends on how you are telling him that and in what you are saying.

If you are calm, he is calm and will not interrupt you.

If you are sad, crying or even trying to not cry in front of him, he will hug you close [even if he is doing something or at work, he will let everything down so he can hug you and try to calm you down so you can continue the discussion.]

If you are screaming in rage, he will keep a calm face and attitude, but don’t you think that he would let this go down.

If you ever mention the fact he doesn’t spend time with you, he is going to say “I know, it’s my fault. I told you when we confessed to each other, I told you all my flaws. I told you that maybe I would spend a whole month without seeing you… And you accepted me. If that bothers you so much, I suggest that we break off… I can’t imagine ‘opening this relationship’ or… Other stuff.”

He is a busy man, he has a lot of flaws - just like Qin. But both of them will try everything they can to make you happy… That’s everything they want…

And Tesla may be a lot busy, but if you are ever in need, he will do anything so he can be at your side.

#snv x reader #snv #shuumatsu no walkure #shuumatsu no valkyrie #shuumatsu no valkyrie x reader #record of ragnarok x reader #ror #ror x reader #record of ragnarok #Qin shi huang #Qin shi huang x reader #Nikolas Tesla x reader #headcanons #record of ragnarok headcanons #If Tesla wins the battle I will CRY #but not of happyness #team beelzebub

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damianbugs · 5 months

Text

(comic references under cut)

a personal and fav hc of mine is that following jason's death, yes, batman shuts down, yes, he becomes colder and destructive — going out every night and staying out for as long as he can because hurting is better than trying and failing to sleep. i don't think he would have done the same as bruce wayne, though.

bruce wayne pulls away from the public. galas and events are either cancelled by the wayne foundations or go ahead without the man in attendance. no one can really blame him, after the death of his sheltered and beloved second son. there are no comments issued by anyone in the family besides what is strictly necessary and after one unavoidable yet invasive investigation¹ to sedate public obsession, bruce wayne does not speak on the matter at all.

he does however say a lot through action.

within a couple months, a long standing project finally gets unveiled with no big event or publicity. the Jason Todd-Wayne Homeless Shelter, right in the centre of Crime Alley. the Jason Todd-Wayne Children's Fund, offering free lunch meals to school children from struggling families. The Jason Project, focusing on reading programmes in prisons and rehabilitation support. donations under the name Jason Todd are publicly given to a multitude of charities.

the public opinion on these actions are split. some find it wonderful if heartbreaking, how a child can be so loved that their parent will do anything to make their legacy leave a mark in time. gotham hasn't seen such abrupt change in — well, ever. bruce wayne is known for charity, of course, but this is different. this is for one person. this is the most expensive form of mourning.

others are a bit unsettled. if all of this could have been done, why not do it before? why use a dead boy's name to do good that will only benefit the living waynes reputations? is this some sort of ego thing? to make himself feel better? to make everyone else feel bad?

bruce doesn't quite know himself.

part of it feels useless, pouring money and time not spent breaking bones (his own and others) into fulfilling dreams jason had once had. the boy had always wanted to help in a way that was more than batman, more than bruce. is it invasive, to assume jason would have been grateful for this, that jason would have agreed? does he have any right to be so presumptuous?

part of it feels necessary. to implicitly tell the world that even before jason todd had publicly died, the city had lost a hero². that losing him is more than just an article for the front page of the daily newsletter. that gotham has lost someone intrinsically important. to make it clear that bruce wayne is only as good as what his children let him be. that they are the ones who can make change, at the end of the day.

most of it is selfish. the Wayne Botanical Gardens opens a new exhibit for the first time in decades named My Son. the Gotham Library dedicates an entire self to Jason Todd-Wayne. the third door in the living quarters of the Wayne Manor is always locked, except for monthly dustings. there is a lesson, locked in a glass case down in a Cave, labeled A Good Soldier.

¹ : Batman: Gotham Knights #45

² : Batman #125

#i think the psychology of batman of bruce after jasons death is something so very often simplified #and rarely ever explored in a nuanced way #this is just the surface of something i think would make it more compelling #and more haunting for jason #because imagine you come back and your death has done Good #but its not You who caused it. you come back but the city is not grateful for you. they are interested who you once were #who you died as #your father thinks similarly.#doesn't he?#bruce wayne #jason todd #character study #saki 2am rambles

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moondirti · 10 months

Text

11. SUCK IT UP

CHAPTER ELEVEN OF ANIMALIC | MIGUEL O'HARA X F!READER

↼ chapter ten / chapter twelve ⇀

summary: you aren't feeling too good. miguel helps you get over it, in more ways than one.

explicit (18+) | 6.7k words warnings: enemies to lovers, smut, cunnilingus, face-sitting, fingering, squirting, power imbalance (everything is consensual), miguel is... sweet (?), mild fluff, angst, very little plot, mentions of death/gore notes: inspired by this hysterical ask. twas supposed to be a bit of short fun but i am a chronic over-writer. thus, i present to you – a week late tangent about miguel's magical tongue! enjoy

The night ends with you riding Miguel’s face, panties ripped and cartons of food waiting idly on your desk. If you could shatter the pleasure that seizes your brain with a vice-like grip, you would take a moment to admit one thing.

You don’t know how you got here.

It’s not the fact of it that’s got you fazed; no, you’ve long since come to terms with the new perimeters of your relationship. Really, it’s been the only active component in your life as of late, serving itself in all your food for thought. You’ve contemplated it before going to bed, upon waking up, during your lunches with Hobie – where the spider critiques your mentor so often that you’ve learnt not to mention your less-than-professional relationship out loud.

And, well– For every moment in between, you’re caught up in this exact transgression.

If you’re being perfectly honest with yourself, it’s fruitless to attempt to rationalise it. The day’s happenings couldn’t have hinted towards this at all. In fact, your morning had started miles off from where you are now. Laying on the ground, ambition fried save for one goal:

To take a break.

Your dreams still burn on your eyelids when you blink them open. They’re feverish, ochre and plum and sickly green, a little too blurry to make out the details that would’ve otherwise helped you decipher their meaning. It was something about blood, something about patchouli, and a conclusive explosion that fizzled with bright light.

Though the latter might merely be ideation. You forgot to close your blinds before falling asleep – the only reason you’re awake being the sun bathing your room in white.

A migraine strikes at your temple, rhythmic and reinforced with stainless steel. It’s vengeful. Your entire body is, actually. Sour aches run up your muscles, swelling around your joints, digging into your bones. When you attempt to readjust, your spine screams in protest. So does your stomach, gurgling for either food or relief. It’s hard to tell really; the pain is so profound that blaming a particular area would be dismissing the others.

You do know who to blame, though.

That asshole.

He’s ruthless. An absolute implacable force that grills you almost every hour of the day. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have said that his concern with your training is due to a growing fondness for you. But you’ve seen enough evidence of his method to prove otherwise – he’s merely approaching it with as much dedication as he prescribes anything else. Like the fate of the multiverse relies on your betterment, like his seeing to it is some sort of commandment by God.

(Perhaps it is.

But not even you take gospel this seriously.)

It’s been a couple weeks and you’re still not used to it. Over the year since gaining your powers, you’ve never exerted yourself this much. You’re so weak, you find, that your strength can be likened to that of a civilian. The constant wear and tear hasn’t pushed that front, either – the first few sessions, you’d come dangerously close to throwing up from the sheer exhaustion of it all. Your gut turned into itself, gags coated with bile as you ushered Miguel away from your perimeter. The only thing that held you back was a lack of energy to actually commit to the issue.

That, and the promise of his fingers buried deep in your cunt.

You’ve begun to understand him, though. The scientist part of you can’t help but pick up on his patterns, storing them in one place for further analysis. Eventually, having enough data allowed you to draw up a trend.

It tends to go something like this:

He compiles an exercise to help you learn a lesson. It’s devised to push you both mentally and physically – a killing of two birds with one stone. To phrase it like that, plain cut and simple, makes it sound almost juvenile, like a look into a kindergarten teacher’s book of discipline. The punishment should fit the crime, or however it goes. But it isn’t easy, not by a long shot. He seems to see what you have trouble harrowing from yourself; those meaty flaws, fattened from neglect, maggot-strewn and pulsing with a verve of their own. They’re pinpointed, slated, and then he gives you the knife all expectantly, like you can kill it by yourself.

The beasts’ name has been resilience lately. According to him, planking for two minutes wasn’t a sufficient enough appeasement to it.

Because the next day, he always expounds upon the lesson from the last. The training is a developed form of the one that nearly just killed you, and he tests how you respond. Your enthusiasm or lack thereof doesn’t matter, it’s your perseverance despite it that he rewards. You can smile every time you fall, if you don’t get up, then he doesn’t grant you an orgasm.

If you do, however–

Then, fuck. It’s so good that you often forget the struggle it took to earn it in the first place.

A strict system. One with little room for loopholes or faults. You can tell he’s thought it through – every exertion is met with an upside, a failsafe tailored to the type of pupil you’re proving to be. It means that he’s done this before; is accustomed to the patience and regimen it takes to guide someone as wayward as you.

You add it to your tally of proof that he’s a father.

(He’s able to come up with detailed plans surrounding your weaknesses.

You, on the other hand, have to resort to contrived assumptions to get a glimpse into who he is.

The imbalance is present, glaring. Enough to irk you but not enough to implode just yet. You stuff it away for later.)

Solid system aside, it certainly doesn’t account for how much of it you can tolerate. You’re paralyzed, hollowed out by the endless workouts. And while, yes, you could go to the cafeteria to fill up with fuel that alleviates the effects, you physically can’t move out from under your sheets – limp as the mattress that cushions you.

You wonder what he would say if he saw you like this. It’s become harder to guess now that you’re unsure of his true feelings towards you. A Spanish taunt, likely; something along the lines of have I worn you out already? And you’d huff but secretly squirm under the prospect of disappointing him, a scolded schoolgirl caught with a lame excuse between index and thumb.

Hell, he’s not even around and you’re still plump with shame. Your room doesn’t feel nearly as comforting with the knowledge of what waits outside. Down the hall, up the staircase. Through the common room and across the lobby. In that little gym, hidden in a corner near the med-bay, where no one frequents when the more advanced training facilities are in another sector entirely. You check the alarm on your desk – 09:00. He’s probably there already, waiting on you with arms crossed.

In your mind's eye, he’s wearing that black compression top he seems to resort to on laundry days. Grey sweatpants too. You don’t know what to call the passing reflection – fantasy is all too mortifying a word. Wish? Absolutely not. You wish for nothing when it comes to him. Except maybe–

Thighs squeezing, you brush the objection away. You could get it easily if you’re able to muster the energy. Take it one step at a time. Change into your athletic gear. Eat a light breakfast. Show up, if not a little late. Miguel would make a passing comment about it but nod at the fact that you came at all. And it would be enough, that little assurement, to motivate you through whatever gruelling exercise he has planned today.

If you let him know, though – how hard it was for you to go – would he add to your reward? So far it’s only been his fingers on you, rubbing you while you run slick onto him. Deliciously thick as they fuck into you, long and perfect at pinpointing that one spot that makes you just burst. Certainly better than your own, but…

His touch is beginning to lose its novelty. Increasingly, you’re left wanting more. You come down from your highs gaping, clenching around the memory of a length that’s only ever been in your mouth. And if he’s able to make you see stars with just his hand–

Then you’d abandon the cosmos just to get him to fuck you.

(A proclamation you’d never say out loud. Even your conscious cringes at just how depraved it sounds.)

So, you try.

Really, you do. With the fear of failing him and the lust that’s taken root in your core, you kick your legs off the edge of your bed. The air is frigid, biting at your heels as they press to tile, which is just as cold itself. You let it diffuse into your feet, getting used to it while bracing yourself for the pain bound to reemerge. Black broaches your vision, blotting its edges. You opt to ignore the blatant warning, sucking in a hurried breath – resilience – before rising to a stand.

Two seconds pass. You go blind. Like a marionette with its strings cut, you tip over and collapse to the floor.

Whether a headrush or your muscles finally giving up on you, you can’t help but attribute the display to none other than your ‘mentor’ himself. Cocky bastard with his stupid fucking philosophies. Resilience my ass. Look where that’s gotten you now; capsized like a turtle with a shell too big for its own good.

Groaning, you flip over to your side. Your elbow had taken the brunt of the impact, yet your head rings with alarm nonetheless. You’ll just… You’ll just stay right here. Yeah.

He’ll understand.

(And, if not, then you’ve dealt with him in poorer moods.)

18:00.

You’re pathetic.

So much more than that, actually. Pathetic is a description reserved for the pitiable. A person has to actually sympathise with you in order for it to be true, and you’re sure that if anyone saw you in this state – God forbid – then they’d convulse in disgust instead.

You cycle through a list of viable synonyms. Miserable. Lame. An absolute tragic case of wasted potential. None quite fit like you want them to. They all feel wrong – mirrors so distorted you can’t make out your reflection in them if you tried.

It’s just… becoming of you.

If there were a word that specifically meant befitting to Wraith, then you’d clutch it close to your chest for how validating it would read. It feels like all the work you’ve put in thus far was for nothing. Despite how it may seem, you didn’t just do it for Miguel. If it had been, then you would’ve given in half a year ago upon realising just how attractive your pursuer was.

(You remember it, clear as a waxy moon on an ink-blot night.

He’d thrown you into dry-wall and you’d called him a coward for not looking you in the eye. It must’ve hit him where it hurt, because his mask drew back and before you knew it, you were phasing in and out to the beat of your fluttering heart.

It was the first time you saw him. Once you managed to escape, your fist suffered through its duty in muffling your moans, cut by biting incisors as you rubbed one out in a hostel bed.)

No. It was for you. To put distance between the inconsiderate menace you were before Earth-15 and the woman you desperately want to be. You’d started to notice the difference too. Mentally, sure – where your self-hatred was tamped to the background, and every action you took was opened with weighty contemplation. But even physically – your eyebags had faded and you looked much cleaner than you have in a long, long time.

Where’s that progress now?

Because you’re crumpled on the spot where you fell almost eleven hours ago, with the addition of a pillow to support your head. You’re much like a wad of chewed gum, spit out by some being greater than this dimension. Gross and regressive and littering this world with your very existence.

It’s a close parallel to how downtrodden you’d felt in that convenience store bathroom, bandaging your forearm where Miguel’s claws had dug deep into the flesh. Your throat had been tight with suppressed sobs, both pain and primal fear replacing the pus that surged from your wound. The wash area was filthy. Dirt-packed grout and grey tap water. Paper towels balled in wet wads. But it felt right for you at the time, like you deserved no better.

Of course, you didn’t. Don’t. You went out and got an innocent woman killed not much later.

You still think about her sometimes. Her blood had been piping hot, almost bubbling from the yawning hole in her throat. The rescue was half-assed – you could’ve incapacitated the robber after knocking him out – but you’d been so filled with false bravado at actually having done something that it never occurred to you. The instinct lacking. Your spider-sense, absent. If you’d ever considered grasping the reins to your powers, you could’ve prevented the bullet from phasing through you and meeting her instead. You’ve always been short-sighted like that; prioritising the now over the what if.

And that’s what you stayed here to remedy. But if the same thing happened tomorrow, what’s stopping you from repeating your mistakes? You’d been too broken this morning to process that.

You should’ve just sucked it up and went.

From your place on the floor, out the window, only the top of Nueva York’s cityscape is visible. The sky has darkened to the colour of a bruised peach – an oxidised sort of orange that reminds you of last night’s dream – and the nightlights of some buildings flicker on cue when the sun dips below the horizon. You can see the ninety-degree highway up to Second Base from here. It’s been your entertainment for today, with its little commuting cars and the train that zips back and forth.

If you focus hard enough, then you can trick yourself into believing that the space station is visible, floating just above the stratosphere – where gravity is weak enough to let it hold its place. But you’re a woman of science and you know that it's impossible, that the silhouette you’re picturing is a figment of your wild reverie and you’re still anchored to earth where dreams are just that. Dreams. Your eyes burn from attempting it, anyway, those damn dust motes cropping up again.

Christ.

Given that life’s slowed, you’re spotting them more often. Back in that empty storelot, right after being bit, you’d fixated on them for a brief instant. They fit in with the setting back then, lazy in a stream of sunlight. Colourful – pink, green, orange, gold – flipping through the shades in a way that made sense. But their appearances have lost that sense of cohesion. Now, they emerge when you least expect them. In shadows. Hovering in corners not too far away. Places where it’s unnatural for them to be.

You reach a hand out. There’s no purpose behind it. Just… an exploratory action. To test the unknown. Your shoulder aches when you do, and so you don’t notice how odd it feels at first. Like electricity, buzzing at your fingertips. The motes start to drift towards your skin, magnetised to something you can’t explain.

When you sit up to investigate it further, there’s a knock at your door.

Hobie?

Couldn’t be. He mentioned he’d be away for a while last you talked.

There are few others who know of your assignment. Reilly, but he hasn’t paid mind to you since introducing your room. Jess Drew, maybe, though that’s far-fetched.

So–

You look down at your dishevelled state. In just a plain shirt and your pair of oldest underwear, you’re hardly dressed for entertainment. Especially when it’s him.

Is he checking up on you?

It’s so stupid that even in a depressive slump you’re able to laugh at yourself. Check up is the only way you can put it without making things worse. If he’s passing by, then it would be in suspicion. You’re no idiot, after all, in spite of your dejection. He wouldn’t let you roam free without having measures in place to ensure you don’t leave. That may just mean looking in from time to time.

Though it’s practically guaranteed that it isn’t out of concern.

(You have to remind yourself; you wish for nothing when it comes to Miguel O’Hara.)

Another knock. It’s hastier this time. Three raps with sharp knuckles. Impatient.

Panic overtakes all motor functions as you scramble to a stand. Yesterday’s joggers are thrown over your desk chair, in need of a wash with all the fluids secreted in them. They’re the closest in your vicinity, though, and will have to do for now. You briefly fuss over how your hair looks, whether your unwashed face is visibly oily – all fixable things that you dismiss while tripping to the doorway. The waistband is barely over your ass before you swing it open, greeting Miguel with a grimace.

Idiot. You shouldn’t have opened it that wide. Now he can see your mess of a r–

“Bad time, I’m guessing.” Is all he says, voice lilting into a question. You can’t help but register it with a tone of condescension; the raised eyebrows certainly don’t convince you otherwise.

All you really want to do is tell him off for the impromptu visit. The chagrin is there, latched onto your throat. But before you can, and against your better judgement, you give him an extensive once-over, taking heed of his state. What’s ironic – a tranquillising point that promptly shuts you up – is that it’s worse than yours.

In the complete opposite way.

Three big rips run along his torso, interfering with the technology of his spider-suit. It glitches between static and a transparent condition, baring the bronzed skin of his chest. There’s blood there too, reiterating the crimson that peeks from beneath his floppy hair, which is sweat-drenched. Tousled. He’s tousled, like he waltzed directly from a fight. A particularly bad one at that.

(And of course he still looks better.)

“One can say the same about you.” You bite.

“Don’t be smart.” He says. It isn't the snap you take it to be, more a mumble with consequence to his fangs. His mouth doesn't sit right when they’re withdrawn. You run your tongue along your gums upon remembering how they’d felt, pierced in your neck. “I couldn’t make our session this morning. An urgent issue came up.”

Immediately, something fresh smooths over you, like a balm to the anxiety that’d been plaguing you all day. He wasn’t even there. You’re tempted to laugh, but your humour dims on its way out. And when all is said and done, you find the disquietude is still there, nestled between your ribs.

You just blink in acknowledgement.

His jaw tenses. “We can reschedule.”

“You don’t have to sound so guilty about it.” The joke contains perhaps more sarcasm than you intend for it. It echoes, spiteful, and you at least have the sense to be ashamed, for you follow it up with a small reassurance. “It’s fine. I never showed.”

“Sick?”

“Something like that.”

(Lie.

Look at you, just embodying ignobility today.)

He nods, scanning your dishevelled clothing and chapped lips. Your only drink of water all day had been from the bathroom tap in an especially lamentable episode. It smacks, as though it were filled with cotton, the inside of your cheeks dry paper.

You wait for him to say something, unease broiling in your core. He does the same, gaze shifting from the scars on your arm to your bedroom and everything in between. It lingers on the external hallway, scanning for passersby. You recognise the indecision. Deliberation. Still – the long stretch of silence that hangs between you is awkward, broadening with every passing second, a gluttonous sort of tension whose favourite meal is the undefined mess that is your relationship to one another.

Finally, Miguel speaks up. “I’ll be back.”

And then he leaves.

He just… fucking–

Walks away, off to whatever takes precedence over your less-than-invigorating conversation. Which, admittedly, could be counted as anything in the world. But seriously, where is the decorum? Showing up unannounced only to leave you waiting? You run through the various reasons he couldn’t stand to be in your presence any longer, and what he expects you to do before his return.

The most plausible is that his injuries needed tending to. If they were that severe though, then why he saw stopping by first a greater priority is beyond you. In any case, he’ll probably return refreshed. But for what? Your response couldn’t have been misinterpreted to mean that you wanted to reschedule the missed session for tonight. You’re still sore, thank you very much, and in a much shoddier mood than you had been previous.

(This is what you wanted though; a second chance.

‘Just suck it up.’)

Steeling yourself, you shut the door and hobble down to the back of your room, stripping on your way. You’ll tidy up after your shower – it's bound to wash at least half of your self-loathing.

You just hope your leggings are clean.

As it turns out, you were the one who misinterpreted things.

Dressed in your athletic gear with damp skin and your sneakers primed to go, the dread had started to ebb away into a begrudging acceptance. Yes, your body still tenses with lactic-mutiny, raging where you’ve exerted it in the past, and your head still sings in migraine tones. But they all came second to the split-second fluster that had risen when he’d knocked on your door. That fear of disappointment returned with a vengeance, your worry for regression packing the final punch.

And, really. What were you supposed to think?

He left without so much as an excuse. It was up to you to decide what he’d see upon coming back. Just based on the nature of your prior meetings, the answer heavily leaned towards your own durability. Ready to face whatever exercise he has to throw your way, supposed sickness aside. You were actually quite proud of yourself for it, directing a heavy-handed pat on the back for the nail you ‘hit on its head.’

Never in your blurry dreams could you have predicted this.

Your face burns hot with puerile embarrassment.

“Um–”

“I figured you haven’t eaten.” Miguel explains, curling the plastic bags up in a gesture akin to surrender. They’re solid white, those thin types that bend under the weight of the cartons packed inside. You’re unable to process it before your stomach does, growling in suppressed hunger.

“No.” You shuffle to the side to allow him in. He takes the invitation, carefully, traipsing within your quarters to place the food on your desk. “I haven’t.”

The air resumes its resting level of edginess, however you’re far too wrapped up in your own head to buckle underneath it this time. It’s cold, you ascertain, your skin puckering in a gradient from foot to toe. His survey follows the same line, regarding your changed appearance in intrigue, cheeks sinking with a downward smile. It looks positively smug.

“Sorry, I thought… You’re not here to dole out another one of your lessons?”

“You’re sick aren’t you.” He isn’t interrogative in the slightest. You can’t bring yourself to lie again, so you stay silent. “I see you got dressed regardless.”

“Well, that’s me. Just a sucker for appearances.” You scoff, shutting the door behind you. The room appears infinitesimal in his presence, collapsing into those broad shoulders. “Tidied the space too and everything.”

Tall, packed with undiluted muscle. No longer in his spider-suit, but clothes more casual. A bandage stretched across his forehead. It’s stark against his skin, white on bronze and you can’t help but follow the way he gleams under the warm lighting. Fresh – he must’ve showered too, further evidence found in the way his hair curls, dips, drops of water rolling down his nape. You dig your teeth into your lip. Any closer and you’re bound to hit a wall of patchouli, that aphrodisiacal scent that triggers you like an animal in heat.

“Is that so?” He prods, unconvinced. It’s dark outside and you feel confined to this box. “You weren’t just anticipating it?”

“Anticipation is a forgiving word. No one would look forward to torment.”

His brows knit together, the creases between them playful, like the very implication is offensive on the same magnitude as a low-life’s taunt.

“But…” There’s nowhere to back into when he takes a step closer, your bed hitting the back of your knees. “You got dressed regardless.” He reinstates, emphasising each word, syllables punctuated to make his point. If you weren’t cornered, snared in the clutches of a cat celebrating its next meal, you’d have been able to see where this is going.

As it stands, you’re blind.

“You know what I think?” He adds upon your reticence. You shake your head. “I think, it’s finally starting to hit you.”

“Hit… Wh–”

“The point. These past few weeks have been tough, I won’t pretend otherwise.” Miguel clarifies. “But it was only the first part of it. Withstanding struggle, that torment you speak so… fondly of.”

“Like you said,” You catch on, recalling the reality check he’d given you that day with the plank. “Y’know. Resilience.”

“Remind me of the other half of it again.”

“There’s… Withstanding struggle,” You repeat stupidly, working overtime to try and fetch his exact words. It’s an almost impossible feat, the gears in your mind turning on empty fuel. The initial lecture wasn’t that long ago, but it’s been intercepted by a million other philosophies. And he’s right there, ducked close to your level, keen eyes patiently waiting for you to continue. His breath fans across your cheek. The pressure worsens. You feel dumb. “And–”

You resort to context, then – grasping for the crux of his little tangent. What did you do to inspire it, anyway?

It hits you so suddenly your neck twinges with phantom whiplash.

“Recovering when you fall.” You complete.

“That’s it.” The whispered praise tickles you, like sand filling an hourglass. Your tummy sinks, heavy with it. It’s warm and dry and feels much like how his bare hand did, supporting your neck under rubble. Behind your back, your own wind together as you shoot him a vampish look.

“Who would’ve thought.”

He shrugs. “Was your faith that lacking?”

“There were a few times, yeah. You should’ve seen me this morning,”

“Oh, I can imagine.”

“Fell right to the floor. Almost died, I’m telling you. I stayed right here,” You tap the ground with your heel. “All day.”

“It was not that bad,” He insists, speaking with a levity you don’t often hear from him. It’s nice when he reciprocates like this. You’ve always reckoned that he took himself seriously one-hundred percent of the time. You find that you get along better when he doesn’t.

“I wouldn’t be so sure.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.” You pop the P, using the excuse to wet your lips. The guard you keep constantly raised bends to the contours of his face, curved elegantly around those high cheekbones and the jaw he must physically sharpen to get looking so pronounced. He’s studying you – you sense it, teasing your lashes, noting the way your eyes pointedly avoid his. They’re planted firmly to his neck, where corded muscles stretch under skin, so strong you can practically hear them creak.

Your heartbeat skips from between your thighs. When you rub them together, they glide easily, lubricated by the slick pooling into your panties.

“No logical reason you should continue putting up with it, then.”

It could turn out that Miguel’s voice is modulated and you wouldn’t be surprised given how pleasing it is to listen to. Deep, controlled from a low point in his chest where smouldering coal chars it until it’s rugged. You always pay closer attention to the letters through which his accent comes through; short O’s and throaty D’s. His mouth hardly moves when he speaks. You wonder when he chooses to properly utilise it. Whether he does at all.

Your kiss had been entirely one-sided. His rewards are so detached. There’s a lot you haven’t explored yet; with every passing second, the greater the urge is to push and find out.

“Except we can both appreciate why I do,” You breathe, throwing caution to the wind and catching his stare. An irrepressible smile blooms at the spirited expression he gives you. Eyebrows raised in a thick arch, forming an amused look that only bolsters you further.

“For your redemption?” He baits, only to interrupt your response. “Or…” Your nerves spark. “For this–”

And then he cups you over your leggings, pawing where you’re brim with molten arousal. Hips bucking, your jaw hinges to expel a high-pitched keen, pinched from the back of your gullet. You latch onto his wrist, eager to either neg him on or push him away – but with the torrid fuzz that gains control of your systems, you can’t work it out.

“Do you deserve it?” His ask caresses the shell of your ear, a whisper, fingers slowing until you land on an answer.

Distrusting yourself to verbalise it, you give a frantic nod, mortifyingly desperate. It’s as much of a revelation for you as it is for him, manifested with every needy rut you give his hand. Miguel lets you seek the pleasure, pinning harder to provide the pressure you need, before withdrawing just as assuredly.

You could almost sob. Your nose is stuffy and your lips bitten and you so badly wish to be filled with anything to help you forget your miserable day. When he taps your ass, you assign every ounce of remaining intellect to decipher the vague gesture – eventually falling back on your bed in a close measure of what you assume he means. It’s a sterling guess. Your shoes are shucked off in the process and he leans over you, one knee anchored to the surface as he tucks into the waistband of your pants. They slide off with his help, separating from heated flesh like velcro.

It occurs to you that this is the first time he’ll see you. So far, your body is familiar to him in touch alone – hurried, stolen and shoved under your panties in semi-public spaces while you fight to endure the conflicting sensations. There’s mind to currently faux humility – a game you liked to play with your college conquests. Batted eyelashes and babydoll modesty; a secret thrill present in watching them come undone at your relinquished control.

But Miguel is no lover, and you’re far too gone to play nice now.

You scoot back to your pile of pillows when he joins you. It’s unreal seeing him in such a domestic setting. Civilian attire, combed hair. In high nature. If it weren’t for the bandage on his temple and the shadows making allusions to the brawn he keeps at bay, then you could’ve fooled yourself into trusting his normality. That he isn’t larger than life – solely here because he’s like you, a person trying to make well for themselves.

As it is, though, he’s still impenetrable. Fully clothed while you lay bottomless.

(Again, you’re reminded that you don’t know him. The man sacking you of your underwear could have a spouse, for all you’re privy to.

It just adds another layer of distance you should be thankful for.)

Manic with lust, you’re barely enlightened to what’s coming when your mentor captures each leg in a separate grip. Big hands cradle their bends, under your knees where your skin is unconventionally soft. It poses a contrast to the calluses on his palm, worn by years of crime-fighting and swinging on reinforced webs. They’re warm and rough and scratch you, sending a nervous buzz down to your core.

He guides your limbs up. Your ankles sway. Definitely strong; he almost syphons the breath right out through your stomach. If you close your eyes, you can imagine that this is just another exercise, a preliminary stretch.

But you don’t. Folded with your thighs pinned to your chest, you can only fluster with real self-consciousness. Your cunt is exposed to the filtered air, biting the heated centre with its opposite degree. Perhaps more wickedly, however, is the way you’re spread to Miguel’s hawk-like gaze. He inspects the way you glow, humiliated, the sticky confirmation of your desire smeared across your puffy lips. Is he turned off by the sight – your eagerness a violation of the pseudo-professional boundaries marked around your deal?

No, you decide. He’s all too content when he ducks to face it, laying a heavy mouth to your throbbing clit. It’s intoxicating, the cool slice of oxygenated air after months of smoke inhalation. You forget your insecure tangent entirely, tipping your chin back to moan your encouragement.

Fuck, he’s good.

More than good. You scramble for a better description, hands clawing for purchase on your sheets. It’s indescribable in its obscenity – lewd and dirty and slow, mapping every fold and crevice with his tongue. The sweltering muscle, like velvet, swirls across your sensitive bud, taking in its high reactivity, before lapping at the hood above it. You hone in to every miniscule movement, raptured by its dexterity and unwilling to fully let yourself go.

Miguel hums, low, tasting the agony that pours from his skill. His fingertips paint bruises where they dig, holding your thrashing hips still. You find there’s nothing else you can do to bear it, your arms flailing pathetically, toes curling. You pant and it doesn’t help dissuade the indulgence building up within you, crashing against a dam that’s starting to crack. It’s almost as though you’re doing too much to seek it out, afraid he’ll turn to ash at any second and leave you wanting.

“Oh– O’h… Shit, shit!” You whine, pounding your heel on his broad back. He barely notices, peering up at you through dark lashes. “If I had… Don’t stop! Please, p–” His crimson eyes gleam dark and bloody, obscured in shadow. Sobbing, you suck in large gulps of heady air. “If you promised this earlier, I would’ve climbed up fucking buildings to earn it.”

“Mmm-” He ignores your plea, breaking away to bring two digits to his mouth. Your right leg flops uselessly to his side. “Good idea.” One lick and they’re covered in spit. You can’t help but notice the discolouration on his knuckles, deep red and purple, as he uses his index and middle to fan out your lower lips.

And then he’s back to eating you out. This time, though, he’s drinking from your weeping slit. Breaching it, exploring the perimeter that stretches to accommodate his pistoning tongue. Despite pursed lips, your scream still manages to sound through the way it vibrates your lungs. Rattling you, much like he does now, from inside out. His nose is pressed to your mound. You don’t doubt he can smell you, potent sex and clean sweat, contracting every joint until you’re an immovable board.

“Don’t do that,” Miguel groans, scorching the space he creates to reprimand you. Crying, you obey what he says, melting into a puddle of nectar. He strikes a fair point; things feel exponentially better when you aren’t tense, nerve pathways unobstructed in sending pleasure signals to your blank brain. Discerning the shift, he huffs. “Good.”

Stars and heaven above, your consequent wail is unhinged. Your hands fly to his hair, seizing the wavy tresses in a smarting hold. The praise serves as an amplifier to every sense. Hips bucking, free calf curling around his neck. His fingers plunge into you, scissoring your tight walls as he spits onto your pussy, gathering the pearlescent fluid with his thumb and using it as aid. Like you need the extra help.

Because you’re soaked. The dam is broken. Everything gushes out of you in an ugly mess, glossing his palm and the duvet below. He nips your clit, grazing his teeth along the swollen sprout, teasing, then places his mouth back onto you. Brown locks curl to his brow. You brush them back, shoving him harder, closer. Sort of power-drunk at the sight of him succumbing to your command.

It’s short lived. You’re about to cum when he chooses the inopportune moment to speak.

Growls, actually. “Hold on.”

Capturing you to his face, he makes sure you’re steady before relinquishing his fingers from your hole and upending you both.

Suddenly, you’re on top and he’s the one framed by your pillows. Your back bends and you almost crumble on top of him – an old building met with a wrecking ball of celestial proportions. You can’t hold your weight on your haunches. They’re practically useless like this, quivering with suspense. Where guilt would be the appropriate response at such a prospect, you’re bound by awe instead. He’s no doubt suffocated by your squeezed thighs and seated pussy – the force of which aided by gravity – but something tells you that’s what he wants. For the first time, his eyes flutter shut.

A sting – concentrated on the globe of your ass – registers only seconds later where he had slapped you. Go, it demands silently. You force yourself to muster the energy to do so.

You can’t last very long, anyway.

Pelvis waving, you ride his face, back arched away from his hand. It irons over your covered waist, wet and soaking the breathable material of your shirt. The position proves to be a workout in of itself, your core strength tested in the motions. For the first time, you find yourself thanking his training. You wouldn’t have persisted otherwise.

Your orgasm rises again, faster now that you’re properly edged. It floods up from your feet like a high tide, sweeping all the seaweed and shells and stability from your abdomen. Lost at shore, a stranded sailor waking up from a tempests’ shipwreck; dazed, sun-blanched on splintered wood. There’s sand on your skin – it clears that too. You’re renewed in briny water. Freshened, addicted to the feeling of the sea pulling you back into its gentle but firm embrace.

You take back what you said. About his mouth and how he chooses to use it. It’s none of your business so long as he keeps it on you, sucking and drinking the cum he milks for all its worth. It just keeps coming, no start or end in sight. It’s all you can do to withstand your weakened centre constantly clenching and still breathe, tears budding hot and heavy. Your nails scratch his scalp. Miguel gives a minute mmmm.

And in the wake of it, while he lays there and laps you clean, the echoes of your moans still rings from the walls.

Forget what you said. Technically, the night didn’t end there.

Much later, you’re both washed and warm. It took you a while to wipe the slick from your folds. He used your bathroom to cleanse his hands and face.

The same cartons of food now sit open between you, on the desk he’d manoeuvred off the wall to divide its chair from your bed. He’s much too big for the seat, but when you’d offered him the mattress, he brushed you off. You currently sit cross legged, cushions bare – sheets in the wash.

And it’s quiet. The empty type, strangely enough. Devoid of any of your usual sarcasm or awkwardness. Sort of… suspended between both, in the foreign land of amity.

Perhaps that’s what convinces you to ask. The inherent safety of the moment. There’s not much you can say to offend in the post-smut glow. Slurping the tail end of a noodle, you look away from your rapture with the illuminated highway outside to take him in. The train had just passed.

“Are you married?”

Miguel doesn’t reply immediately, chewing a mouthful of seasoned vegetables. Instead, he looks at you with mild amusement. Eventually, his adam's apple bobs in a thick swallow.

“No.” He says.

chapter twelve

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eusion · 2 months

Text

⋆౨ৎ˚⟡˖ ࣪nct wish hyung line as ur college bf ⌒☆

word count ⌒☆ 858

pairing ⌒☆ nct wish hyung line x reader

note ⌒☆ ive done it... save me

sion ⌒☆

walks with u to ur every class even if his own class is across campus

attends every club formal event with u bcus he cant let ppl see u without him!!! esp if ur dressed all pretty

despite wanting to be around u all of the time he will give u more than enough time to urself or w ur own friends

hes jumping into dance circles at parties but will periodically check in on u to see if ur doing ok

"did u eat yet" "ok did u wna go get food"

never gets jealous or competitive when he sees other guys flirting with u. hes v confident n trusts u 1000%!!

hes just better and he knows it

gets shy often so pda doesnt come easily

so when he holds ur hand while walking through campus u feel really giddy

doesnt let u eat in the dining hall bcus he thinks the food sucks so he tries n brings u lunch everyday

always there to lend support or advice whenever u need it

otherwise hes quietly cheering u on w the biggest smile on his face

he takes care of u a lot but u always make sure to return the favor!

he needs a lot of reassurance too so u always take time out of ur day to tell him how much u appreciate him

cup his cheeks n give him a kiss!!!!! he will smile so big...

hes v studious n never puts off his work

his good work ethic rubbed off on u but even during study sessions u both cant help but get even a Little distracted

laughs at all of ur jokes n ur not sure if its bcus ur funny or bcus he wants to make u feel better

riku ⌒☆

will do anything to take the same core classes as u so he can have a partner

if someone tries to take u as a partner first he will whine n cry until the other person gives in

designated study buddy even though u two get distracted 100% of the time

when ur rlly stressed from exams count on riku to be there to give u comfort n lots of hugs

whenever u get up for something as small as presenting or as big as mcing for ur club event, riku will always be there cheering the loudest for u

"THATS MY GIRLFRIEND!!!" then covers his face in embarrassment

randomly calls u over zoom just for fun...

works at ur campus bakery n passes u free bread n pastries even after getting in trouble w his boss

also jumping in the dance circle n will take 5 min breaks in between to chug his water n fan himself

dragging u to every campus event..........

when u two have sleepovers ur sharing his twin bed

he will hog the blanket n steal ur plushies + the entire pillow

drunk riku is either spitting out nonsense or theres a constant string of i love u's

u two are learning tiktok dances in ur free time n saving them for ur drafts just to look back on later

always at ur apt/dorm? unannounced?

but ur roommates n housemates are used to it

plays volleyball for fun w his friends n u come to his lil games to cheer him on

yushi ⌒☆

takes pottery as an elective n every piece he makes he dedicates it to u

begs that u visit him at work with the widest eyes

gives u free drinks all the time even after getting caught n almost fired

lets u take as many silly pics of him bcus he knows ur gonna post it on main....

and gets super Happy when u post him

u two are regulars at his favorite stir fry restaurant! the owners love seeing u two together n will always add on the unofficial college couple discount

lives on campus so u two have lots of sleepovers together..

dormmates recognize ur shoes n always expect u to be there

always tagging along when u need to run errands! whether itd b for groceries or returning a shirt he will b there!!

ur always studying when hes around :((( < yushi

ur laptop on the coffee table n ur back against the couch as u sit on the floor..

sometimes he will come over n just lay his head on ur lap while scrolling thru his phone

matching accessories.. lil things like scarves, gloves, etc

has a cute selfie of u two as his lockscreen and an off guard of u walking along the pier as his homescreen

part of ur schools dance crew along w sion

u love watching his performances! u never get tired of watching him and bragging to everyone about how talented ur bf is

"and u didnt bring me flowers?"

matching merch for ur college... just showed up once day with two varsity jackets for u n him

is actually on the unis soccer team n is one of their best! #allrounder

u go to his games in his jerseys all the time just to see how big his smile gets on the field

#nct #nct wish #nct wish imagines #nct imagines #sion #riku #yushi #sion imagines #riku imagines #yushi imagines #nct fluff #college au

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cjlinton · 7 months

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Defining spaces, work-play separation, and avoiding TTRPG burnout.

I’ve seen a lot of folks in indie TTRPGs talk about overlapping issues and experiences around feeling burned out, not being able to keep up with new games, playing games starting to feel—or actually being—always for work rather than for fun.

I have begun to think of this issue as a game is never just a game. Not in the sense that it can’t be, but that many people working in TTRPGs in some capacity don’t allow it to be. Play has become the secondary function, because the game's primary function is no longer play, but something else. Be that a playtest, an Actual Play (AP) recording, a charity stream, content creation fodder (a review, a blog post, a video essay), a self-imposed obligation to stay on top of industry trends, etc. Because it is for work rather than play, the game is no longer play.

My firmly held litany against that is twofold:

1. Name the purpose of the game.

A playtest or AP can be fun, but you can't trick yourself into believing that that instance of play is for the sake of it. There’s a book I love called The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker. One of the key takeaways is to be deeply intentional, for yourself and for the people joining you, in defining why you have gathered together. What does this do?

It frees you from the mismatched expectations that inevitably emerge when intentions are not set. The rules and expectations for a playtest are not the same as they are for play’s sake, so get everyone on the same page.

It allows you to fully take advantage of this instance of play for its primary function. Letting go of the notion that you’re “just” playing a game lets you set expectations different from those in a space where you’re playing for play’s sake.

Whenever I playtest, be that for one hour or an intended campaign, I am extremely candid with my playtesters about what I need from them. That the expectations of the space are different than when we play together for fun.

I ran a six-hour playtest of The Prince of Nothing Good a few weekends ago. If I was just running a game for fun, I would consider that a nightmare of a game length! I would never do that to my players!

But everyone had a blast with this playtest. Because we had set aside the entire day for that purpose, and said we’d play until it was done. Everyone came in with the goal of helping me iron out some kinks in the game, and was excited to do it. And that wouldn’t have been possible without defining why we were gathering at that moment, and what we were doing to make mode of gathering work for us (dedicated time, many short breaks, blanket permission to get up from the table to meet movement/food/bio needs, I bought everyone lunch).

2. Protect your time to play for the sake of play.

I believe the quickest way to kill your enjoyment of something is by making every instance of partaking in it work.

I’m aware there are Actual Play professionals who only play games as part of their jobs and not in their personal lives. That’s great for them, if they’ve figured out how to enjoy it (or earn enough money doing so that it doesn’t matter if they do), but the overwhelming majority of people in the game industry are simply not earning “only doing it for work” money. And until you are—and for most people in games, that will be never—you need to allow yourself time to just play games.

I’ve run a weekly home game since I got into TTRPGs, and I consider that space is sacred. Some of the players help me playtest outside of that game, but that weekly meeting is just for play, not work. Dedicating time for play to just be play makes it possible for it to be other things, too.

I’ve never experienced anything consider close to the TTRPG burnout, exhaustion, and frustration that I’ve heard many people talk about. I’ve done it to myself with other things! I used to read and evaluate theatre scripts for work. I’ve read literally hundreds of plays. And there was a whole chunk of time where I was still doing that and I absolutely dreaded reading plays. A friend invited me to a play reading group during the pandemic and I had to decline because reading plays was synonymous with evaluating them for what was honestly not enough money to do it.

So I just stopped. I don’t read scripts for pay anymore, and I stopped reading them for fun too, because I was at a place of deficit where even doing it “just” for fun was not appealing. I’m only now getting to a place where I am interested in reading theatrical work again. It is much harder to get back to a place of enjoyment than it is to never depart in the first place.

#ttrpg #indie ttrpg #everyone should read the art of gathering imo

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seraphimaa · 2 months

Text

Doll for a day - Part 2

Soft(ish)!Raphael x fem!Tav x Haarlep

Raphael sets out the terms for his forgiveness. After all, it’s not nice to feel left out.

Raphael makes her fuck his incubus in front of him and then tests her dedication.

Warnings: selfish idiots with feelings

PART 1

She can’t stop her face from cringing. It’s all the confirmation he needs and he falls into silence, processing. He is furious, yes, but he can’t help the faint relief that is flooding him. The board is still in play. Her mouth forms the shapes of letters but nothing seems to come out. She takes a breath, utters only the word, “leaving”, like he’s supposed to find reassurance in it, and turns to flop onto her stomach, beginning to drag herself by her arms towards the edge of the bed.

“No.” She feels his thighs clench to hold her own, the thick ropes of muscle halting her movement. Her face hits the silk and she lets herself simply collapse in defeat under the master of the house. “What the hells is wrong with you? You come into my house, look at my things, touch my things, fuck my things.” He’s spitting with rage the more he rambles and with every word she pushes her head further and further into the covers, half in an attempt to smother herself.

“Then you think you can just what? Scamper off? Tell me, Tav, is your sheer aptitude for being this insufferable nature, or nurture? Did somebody drop you on your head as an infant, or were you simply born this way?”

“Born...” Her words are barely comprehendible through the bedding. He grunts in acknowledgement and takes a break from frowning at the detailing in the wallpaper to look down at the fleshy heap. She looks pathetic and entirely resigned.

“And what, on all of the planes, were you ever hoping to achieve, pray tell?” Her shoulders shrug limply. “Hm.” He hums, unimpressed, and lets her stew in the silence until he hears her again, clearly desperate to move things along .

“No reason.”

“Oh thank goodness,” her ears perk at the happy tone, “I find so much comfort in knowing you would cause all of this chaos for no reason at all.” Never mind.

“And what did you plunder and soil?” He sniffs indignantly, “other than my sheets and incubus.”

He expects another short, mumbled response but instead he feels her begin to shake under him rhythmically. For a brief moment, he thinks she’s laughing like a maniac but then he hears her sobs.

Her head lifts just enough for her cries to ring clearly. “I’m sorry! Okay? I payed that lady to open the portal. I don’t know what I was thinking. I promise. I wasn’t going to touch anything, just look. Then I ended up here and you were here too and you were so nice but it wasn’t you but he looked so good and he felt so good and I didn’t want to stop, I couldn’t, I don’t know what I was thinking-I wasn’t thinking!” It all comes out in a jumble and her head flops down again as she shudders in another wave of sobs. Haarlep’s tail can be heard wagging against the sheets absently, only paying attention the indirect praise aimed his way.

For what feels like the hundredth time in one day, he heaves a massive sigh. It feels like an eternity that the scene drags on. Raphael ponders whether this is all a cruel, fated karma playing out. He considers what sins it were that landed him in the constant circus show that he appeared to ringlead daily. He looks at the three of them, on the bed, and thinks that they would fit perfectly on renaissance style painting. Haarlep is crouched with knees to the side, looking every part the demonic gargoyle of a creature that Raphael considers him to be, tail wagging in the air and looking very pleased with himself. His mouse is splayed dramatically on the bed like a tortured damsel, wailing and he is slumped in his own pose of enduring anguish. He considers giving her a further tongue wagging but she appears to be torturing herself just fine for now. Hells, you’d think she was the victim here.

Her sobs hiccup as she feels Raphael twist and rise from the bed. She cranes, terrified to see what kind of torture he is about to impose on her but her puffy, wet face is met with the curve of his bare spine and hips as he strides to the desk against right wall. She definitely doesn’t look at the jiggle of fat on his ass as he stomps over and throws himself back into the chair. She definitely doesn’t look anywhere in particular as he reclines back, neck craned at a sharp angle over the back of the oak. His eyes snap to hers, and he crosses his legs with a frown, and she averts her gaze to the wall beside his head for no related reason. He tears open a drawer and brings out a dusty bottle of vintage. He busies himself with uncorking the bottle, and pulls out a glass. He fills it without any grace, almost overflowing the rim then knocks it back, taking his time before he swallows it down. She’s tempted to ask him what comes next but the withering look he shoots her way as she intakes air to begin makes the words die on her tongue. She swallows with an awkward nod and settles her face back into the covers. She is good at ruminating and wallowing. This is fine. Even the incubus seems to pick up on the sudden lack of energy in the room and he flops back wriggling around, fluttering his wings and swishing his tail, as he gets into a comfortable position. His leg thumps her own and he whines until she shuffles over, half hanging over the edge. He mimics the brooding duo and lets out a sigh, his own airy and perfectly content.

Raphael is surprisingly the first to break the peace.

“Why did you sleep with it?”

There’s hesitation in his tone, almost like he couldn’t decide if he truly wants the answer. She is completely caught off guard and lifts her head after some thought, enough to respond but not enough to have to face him as as she does.

“It was just a really bad mistake.”

Haarlep seems to take offence to this, his tail whipping her leg as it beats back and fourth in protest but he stays silent, intent on listening to this play out.

“No,” his tone is wary but he speaks like this is something important to him, “you knew the risk. As much as you would like to galavant through life like a court jester, you are smart. What was it exactly that made you decide to take that miscalculated risk?”

“I don’t know! I was, I was just…” She seems to sway between deflection and truth but eventually finds her answer.

“I was just desperate.” He cocks an eyebrow as if deciding on how to perceive her words but when her face emerges pink and swollen from the sheets, intense and ugly, altogether striking, he sees the burning honestly. “Really desperate.”

“Excuse me!” Haarlep cranes to look at her, wings flaring, entirely offended. He is not reading the silent layers of communication happening amongst the rude guests of in his little sanctuary. “And just what, exactly, are you trying to imply? Don’t act like I didn’t have you mewling happy as a kitten, eyes crossed in bliss as you bounced yourself around dumb and drunk on my cock. Don’t act like you didn’t throw yourself at the chance to come undone under me, specifically. You said that you needed him, me, raw and undiluted. No rude lies on my bed, please.” It is the first time, in the short span they’d shared together, that she’d seen the fiend seem truly displeased. They both pointedly ignore his bruised ego and the implications of his words.

“And what was it, exactly, you were so desperate for?” She gives a small shake of her head in protest of what he is trying to drag out of here.

“I just wanted to be touched.”

“Then you would have gone to the brothel. Try again.”

“I wanted to be touched by someone who I knew.”

“Then you would have crawled your way into the tent of one of your willing companions long ago, I’m sure. I’m tired, little mouse.” She builds her courage enough to glance at him through damp lashes and he really is slumped in utter defeat. He’s nursing a new glass, and his face has never looked so tired. It feels violating to witness him like this, even more so than seeing him naked ever had. he takes in her face, full of fear and pain. She looks like saying it might break her, like it’s the last thing she wants to do. She looks at him like he is cruel, and she is begging him to spare her. His face hardens and he drains the last in his glass, not hesitating to empty the bottle in its place.

“I..” he trails off, before shaking his head and standing up, throwing his hand out dismissively.

“Forget I said anything. Go. Get dressed. I’ll organise a portal out.” She openly balks at him. “But what about-“ he doesn’t wait for her to finish.

“Please. You’ve done enough. Spare both our dignities any further blows for one day and just go.” He falls back into his chair, tapping his finger on the desk impatiently, staring into the liquid crimson in his hand. She swings herself up, sitting with her back to him and she is glad for the fact because once again, to her frustration, her eyes blur with tears. She feels like everything is crashing down upon her and the reality of the day is setting in, finally. This is unfixable. She’d taken a running jump over every boundary they constructed and respected until now. It was like a game. The flirting, the teasing, the goading. It was relentless, but they both played by the same unspoken rules. They were both smarter than to fall for the words the other spun. It had felt, in a way, safe. But she isn’t smart. Somewhere along the way she’d come to anticipate their next encounter. She felt a flutter in her stomach when he smiled down at her, so dashing and smug. She played their conversations over and over again when alone, trying to spy a crack in his performance, a subtle sign that he harboured his own strange fondness for her. She’d replaced the face of the imaginary companion with his when he brought herself to completion late at night. If she leaves now, there’s no going back. She decides to speak before she can change her mind. If she walks away then he’d take this as her final answer. It would mean whatever they had would be over.

“No.” She stands from the bed. She ignores the withering look she shoots her and strides around the bed. “I’m not going. You can’t make me.” He is close to reminding her that this is very much not the case but she keeps coming closer, stopping when her legs bump his knees and suddenly her hand is around the glass, brushing his, as she pulls it from his grip and tips it back. The liquid seeps around the seam and drizzles down her chin, falling and painting her nude frame. She finishes it with a gasp and sets it back into the desk, he holds his breath as she leans over him but she keeps her gaze detached from his. She plonks herself onto the bed, facing him.

“I was desperate for you. I just wanted you. I couldn’t have it so I took what I could. Im a greedy, selfish, depraved asshole and I know I really messed everything up but you can’t just send me away. You have to forgive me. I’m not leaving here until you forgive me. I’ll stay right here, as long as it takes, but you have to tell me what it is that I need to do. Please, Raphael, how do I fix it?”

She begins so doubt herself the longer he remains catatonic and brooding but at last he humours her.

“You’ve found a way to rewind time, my sweet little fool?” She shakes her head but isn’t willing to give up now that she had his attention.

“Without hindsight I’d have done it again, to be honest. Something else. Realistic, maybe.” She’s slowly gaining back that deplorable attitude and confidence.

“Watch your mouth, mouse. Remember exactly what has landed you here. If you want my forgiveness then I should know exactly what I am forgiving.” She quirks a brow at this, feeling an uneasy flutter at the way his face morphs to a determined smile, as if setting a challenge he expects her to fail.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well,” he crosses one leg over the other and his posture is creeping back into its usual confidence, “how could I ever forgive you when you went behind my back and now, when asked to simply take responsibility and admit to everything, you wail like a bairn. One would be led to believe that it was your form that had been violated so rudely from across the planes from all this hysteria. It’s madness.” They glare at each other as he lays his condition before her.

“I need to even the playing field, Tav. Any embarrassment you have caused me will be returned tenfold. You see, I’m starting to feel rather left out. Like the only one not in on your little joke. You will show me as everything that happened after you entered this room. Your recreation must be convincing enough to make me believe the words you say and you will show me every detail of how it happened.”

He watches as she rises at once with a yelp.

“I’m sorry, you want me to do what?”

“Haarlep does love to put on a show. Quite the performer. All you need to do is read the lines as they were written. You should be familiar with them as you did write them yourself, did you not?” Haarlep lets out a happy sound behind her. She falls to her knees, reaching for his legs.

“Please. Eternal torture, death, anything but this.”

His foot kicks to smack her beggar hands away.

“Oh feeling embarrassed? Humiliated? Violated? My, my, mouse, quite a turn of a tables, is it not?”

She glares up and tries to feign dignity as she clambers back onto her feet.

“And if I do it then everything will go back to normal? Forgiven and forgotten.” He considers her phrasing.

“Forgiven? Why of course. I am a man of my word after all.” She puffs herself up and turns, making her way to behind the pool partition. She emerges from the far side, walking in an unintentionally exaggerated manner, every single movement screaming discomfort. She gasps loudly in surprise at the incubus on the bed, lounging back in character.

“Gracious, Raphael, your buxom bosom is exposed to the elements.” She raises her hand to her forehead, feigning as if to faint at the sight. It draws a giggle from Haarlep and a groan from Raphael. Can’t please everyone, she supposes.

“That’s strike one. On the third I’ll drop you into the middle of the sea with a snap of my fingers. I swear it.” She gawks at him as he sneers at her, entirely unimpressed. He was definitely not in the mood.

At his instruction, she begins the scene agin, from the top. This time she echos her words, verbatim.

“Ah, Raphael! Why…are you dressed like that?” She was not born for the stage, but it will do. Haarlep is bristling with excitement as he begins his part of the act. Ah, Roleplay! How exciting!

“My, my. Is that a little mouse skittering through my house?” His grin is as devilish as she remembers it. “How very naughty. Come to serve yourself to the cat? What a surprising course of events indeed.” She studies him as she recites his greeting to her just as he had.

“You’re not Raphael. You look different. Younger. Who are you really?” Haarlep smirks.

“I’m impressed. Very perceptive of you, indeed.” He raises onto his knees, legs spread and muscles rippling as he balances his weight. His abdomen is adorned with keratin ridges leading and pointing down to-no. She wasn’t looking there. She had, but she will safeguard the shreds remaining of her dignity where she can. He doesn’t have to know that.

“My name is Haarlep. You’d do well to remember it for you may just find me drawing it from your lips, like prayer. Very soon.” His hands are spread wide, inviting her to bask in his form. He look like he’s carved from scarlet marble. Like an angel. She instantly remembers exactly how she’d fallen to ruin to quickly. He’s so convincing that she almost forgets that she hasn’t really been taken back to that moment. She does not have to fake the way she freezes under charm of the incubus.

“The master must attend to business. I’m afraid he’s currently buried so deep into his work. You should know that he likes to finish very quickly.”

Raphael grunts, storing this for when he next wanted to berate the demon spawn. Haarlep breaks character to throw a glare over his shoulder.

“What? You said to recreate it exactly.”

“Shut up, Harlot.” He sighs, waving his hand. “Continue.”

The incubus’s gaze is instantly locked back onto hers as he resumes his act and again, he drinks her in. it’s like everything else in the room disappears.

“How lucky you are little mouse. He should not be back for quite some time. You’re all alone with me.” She holds her ground, as dangerous as he looks when he falls onto his hands and begins to prowl towards her. “I propose a little game. One I simply insist you must play before you go. If you don’t, well then I’d just have to assume we’re not friends. If were not friends then you’d be intruding and I would simply have to tell.” Haarlep, and reaches to grab her hands, giving them a light squeeze. She’d looked so scared the first time.

“Come on. I promise it’s not a mean game. I won’t make you do anything bad. I promise. Trust me. Play with me.” His smile is so sweet and gentle that she melts all over again.

“O-ok.”

“Oh goodie! Here are the rules. I ask you one question. Just one! You must tell me the truth. I will know if you lie to me. That’s all.” She frowns, not believing that it could be so easy.

“Oh come now. I won’t tell a soul. Nobody will ever know. It’ll be our little secret. I promise.” She nods and the breath leaves her as the incubus surges towards her. She doesn’t flinch this time, as his face brushes hers. Instead of going for the kiss he teases near her open mouth, he presses his lips to her ear, hissing his question.

“Do you want to fuck me?”

As she had before, she turns, locking eyes with the sultry, demonic slits. Their faces touch from proximity. True to her actions, instead of answering aloud, she closes the distance. She’d been so lost in the spell he must have cast on her when they’d met. There was no other explanation for why she’d been so overcome. But then, why was she feeling it all over again?

The incubus sighs against her mouth as their tongues dance and she’s pulled on top of him. He had undressed her as she lapped the venom straight from his mouth but they are both already naked this time. She grinds and squirms on top of him as the venom begins to seep straight to her head and loins. A heat spreads through her abdomen, hot as coals, and she can feel the trial she’s drooling onto his hard abdomen as she grinds against the rough, leathery skin. The room spins and that drunk feeling washes over her all over again.

She almost forgets that they are not alone, so focussed on the forked tip of his tongue playing with hers and the friction his scaled body is offering. He flips them around and it makes her stomach clench as he pins her below himself. She pants as he pulls away from her, desperately trying to catch her breath and ground herself in reality. Her eyes open and her stomach flops again when she sees Raphael, watching her intently, upside down. Their eyes lock and his lips part slightly as he looks down at her. wild and flushed, completely under the effects of the tainted saliva.

Haarlep fills her view again, coming back down to capture her lips. His hands brush her, his fingers curling though her hair as his thumbs dance over her cheeks. He cradles her face, joining them once more. His hands trail down, one travelling her collar bone and down her arm. It captures her hand in his. The other trails from her collar bone, fingers teasing against the fat of her breast as it tickles down and comes to caress the hardened bud. She whines into the kiss as the smouldering heat flickers to burning and another wave of slick dools from her. His fingers pinch and flick as she grinds and thrusts up at him, desperate for more. She needs to be closer. She needs him inside. He growls a laugh as his hips slam back on top of hers, pinning her to the mattress. Gods, now she understands how they ruined the sheets.

“What an enthusiastic answer, little mouse. Have you been waiting for this? To feel me on top of you?” The first time he’d asked she’d been completely taken by the fantasy that he really was Raphael but now, she was absently aware of his presence elsewhere. His hand tails down the curve of her stomach, toying at the mound of her push, not quite close enough to where she needed it. Now he was truly Haarlep in her eyes and she burned for him all the same.

“Say it. Say that you’re desperate for me. Admit now that I was the only one that you wanted when you came here, that you wouldn’t have done this for any other. I won’t touch you again until you take back your cruel words from before.” She lets out a yelp, squirming with fury and glaring daggers into his beautiful face.

“You didn’t say that!” The incubus giggles and raises his eyebrows, waiting.

“Strike two. Last warning.”

“WHAT? That was him!”

“At least he stayed in character.”

The incubus is all shades of smug, tail wagging.

“Ugh. Fine.” A finger dipping just a breath from her clit drags her back into under his spell and he hums in anticipation.

“Yes,” she chokes, “I only wanted you. I only needed you. I just want you to want me too.” The words pull a hiss from the cambion who can’t deny himself the sincerity, for once, he hears in her voice and knows that her words are for no other than himself. Haarlep hums again, pleased. His finger rewards her, brushing over her clit and her hips jump as she gasps. He giggles again, and squeezes down on her hand. His finger circles around before dipping between the soaked, swollen lips. She quakes and sings out so sweetly as the incubus works to undo her. Raphael’s hand wanders like an independent entity over his clenched thigh, until it finally comes to rest on his groin, fingers ghosting at the base of his hardening length. He watches the flashes of her pleasure revealed to him through the flapping cocoon of wings curled over her. His hand, not by his own volition wraps around himself and he hisses again. His mind is plagued by the memory of how tight and wetly she’d wrapped around him and his hand feels like a pitiful substitute. Nevertheless, he finds his it working slowly, squeezing up and down his weeping cock. His sighs are lost in the chorus of the two menaces on his bed, singing so beautifully.

“My, my. Don’t you two play nicely together. I can see that any worries I may have had that this was a one sided encounter were truly misguided. It seems you both posses no higher rational thinking than the drive of your genitals. I can see why you two get along so well now. It makes perfect sense.” He’s talking more to himself than anyone else but his cock throbs at the whimper it pulls from her anyway. She comes back to her senses enough to realise that she has not yet given Haarlep any attention, too completely lost in the endless throes of pleasure he was wracking upon her. Her hand comes down and wraps around his length, pumping it with desperation, eager to make him feel nearly as good as he did her. The incubus keens and grins into the crook of her neck. He feels the spark of ecstasy from his master as his hips jerk from the seat at the ghost of her touch. His master is already worn out tonight. His hand comes to wrap around hers, halting its motion.

“Ah, ah, mouse. I think we might need to improvise. Wouldn’t want the show to finish before scheduled.” She tries to understand the implications of his words as he flips her over, pulling her ass high into the air. Her eyes are closed as she feels the fiend position behind her and she waves her rump through the air, drunkly whining at the lack of attention. Her eyes shoot open, mouth falling slack as for the third time that night, the shape of Raphael’s cock slides without warning inside of her. Her vision is filled with the man in question, teeth clenched as he takes the sight of them in, cock in trembling hand.

The incubus rocks his hips without urgency. She moans, long and low, with every drag his cock as it carves and stretches her walls around it. One hand is driving into her spine, bending her up and onto him while the other wraps around her hair, pulling her head up and exposing her fully to his master. she’s pulled up and back. He bounces her, leaning back to let her land onto his upturned hips with a wet smacks. She squeals his name, shrill and pitchy.

“Fu-fuck! Haarlep!” He groans in satisfaction, wings fluttering at the sound of his name on the lips of another. For all that he screams inside to just ruin her and drive her into the mattress like last time, he’s not prepared to meet Raphael’s fury if he embarrasses him now. He keeps the pace lazy and controlled, watching the other fiend intensely and reading his pleasure for the signs that he was getting too close. It is like wrestling a feral cat, trying to hold her still and stop her from throwing herself back onto his length without abandon.

Raphael seems to recognise his nearing end as he lets go of himself entirely, gripping the arms of his chair until his knuckles pale.

His voice is strained and gritty as he needles her one last time.

“You know I’m entirely unimpressed. You were so adamant that you wanted me but but it seems you’re able and willing to do little more than bounce on my incubus. It looks like maybe are just desperate, after all. Perhaps I was wrong, you will just throw yourself on any willing cock that asks nicely. how disappointing.”

She hates his stupid, condescending sneer and all at once, she has kicked and fought her way free of the now whining and complaining incubus and is clambering toward the edge. She throws herself from the bed, landing on the floor and crawls like a possessed person to his feet. Her face has an intensity to it that makes even him pause as she bares her teeth and howls in rage.

“Fuck you!”

She’s on top of him now, her hands in his hair, and his scalp burns as she yanks his head backwards.

“I wanted you! You never gave me anything!”

She spears him into her, feeling him shudder.

“You’re all I ever wanted! You’re the only person who makes me cum. You’re the only person I trust. I hate you.”

She’s riding him hard, throwing her weight into every thrust that brings her cunt to press on his pelvis.

“I fucked your incubus. You fucked me. Now I’m fucking you. Everyone can just get fucked!” He would usually be disgusted in her uncivilised language but holy shit, he’s never been so turned on. She is terrifying, and hysterical, and she looks like a queen as she rides.

“You’ve tried to humiliate me but guess what? It didn’t work. It didn’t work because I know you feel the same, don’t you? Am I the one that makes you cum too? You’re just as pathetic as me.“ He’s choking on a moan as she bring her face over his, staring down his eyes and breath venting across his neck.

“I did your fucking deal. You forgive me now. You ever want to get fucked like this, until you can’t feel your own cock, again? Then you cum for me right now and prove right now that you’re no better than me.” He wants to be angry, and hateful. To shove her off and smite her into the depths of hell but instead he flops backwards, body quaking and shuddering as he releases inside of her, her own orgasm milking his seed from him as she screams and collapses onto him.

They stare at each other, panting and trying to find their breath. She leans closer and for a terrifying second, he thinks she is going to kiss him. She doesn’t. She pushes herself up and brings herself to stand on shaking legs. The room is silent as she redresses. When she is done, she turns to look at Raphael expectantly. With a snap of his fingers a swirling portal forms before her. She pauses before disappearing through. She looks to the incubus, reclined back on the bed and gives him a small awkward wave.

“It was nice to meet you?” It’s asked like a question. He nods enthusiastically and waves back with a smile.

“Do come back! It’s been so long since I’ve had a friend! Ta ta now, little mouse.”

She looks to the cambion still flopped in the chair. He is back to his absent brooding. She opens her mouth to say goodbye, maybe apologise, maybe ask what the hells all of that means, but a pointed look tells her that she has done enough and now it is time to go. Happy to avoid the confrontation that awaits them at some point on the inevitable future, she simply gives him a nod and disappears from his home. Peace, at last.

“Well,” the incubus rises with a stretch and makes his way to the heated water of the pool, “wasn’t that just a delight. Do you think she’ll come back at some point? I really could use a play mate, you know.” Raphael again, ignores the ramblings of the lesser fiend and rises to leave. He needs his own bath and the sweet embrace of sleep. He most definitely did not have the energy to deal with the little demon right now. Before leaving the boundary of the room, he half turns to address the incubus.

“I was wondering, did you happen to-“

“Yep. I obviously wasn’t going to let her go without a little payment.” The voice of his little mouse echos from the steaming water with a laugh, like chiming bells.

“Good. Good job, Haarlep.”

He hears an excited intake of air at his praise and takes his leave.

“Get Korrilla to deal with the sheets before tomorrow. I don’t wish to be disturbed again tonight.”

He has forgiven his little mouse, as promised. That did not mean he was near ready to forget. There was no way she would keep herself from him now. Not when he was so eager to explore his new toy in the days to come.

Hello! I hope you liked it! It’s the longest thing I’ve posted and I’m terrified that it was a let down after the first part. Please lmk what you think, I welcome discussion and feedback. This was meant to be a softer, lighter take on Raphael, haarlep, and their mouse but I hope I still somewhat made them likeable and recognisable.

Also, poor Korrilla.

#bg3 #baldur's gate 3 #raphael bg3 #haarlep #raphael the cambion #baldurs gate raphael #bg3 raphael #raphael x tav #raphael romance #raphael x reader #raphael smut #raphael fanfic #raphael #haarlep the incubus #haarlep x you #haarlep x tav #haarlep baldur's gate 3 #haarlep smut #original content

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enkas-illusion · 6 months

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3, 2, 1… Blow The Candle

Fandom / Pairing: Jujutsu Kaisen / Geto Suguru x f!reader

Rating: NSFW/Explicit - MINORS DO NOT INTERACT

Genre/Theme: Established relationship; non-sorcery au

Content warning: fluff, eventual smut, oral (m.receiving), explicit sexual content, language, angst, sexually frustrated Geto.

Summary: What is the best birthday gift for Suguru, you ask? Riling him up till he reaches his breaking point before surprising him on his birthday with a gift he’ll never forget (aka, you give him the best head he’s ever received).

Author's Note: Hello, I was down bad for Suguru, wanting to give him the glock-glock 9000 and boom, this one-shot was born. I was too lazy to write the entire smut scene but let me know if you’d like a Part 2, I could use the extra motivation T.T

Thank you for reading!

~ Eren’s Birdie

Song Dedication: Religion by Lana Del Rey

Geto Suguru wasn't the kind to celebrate his birthdays with much enthusiasm — it's not that he hated them… he just couldn't care less about them. For him, it was just a reminder of another year passing. And although he never said it out loud for fear of sounding too cheesy, he cared more about the time he got to spend with his people.

So this year, you wanted to please your boyfriend in a way that he preferred, giving him a good time that would be hard to forget. You’d both taken leaves from work for tomorrow to get some alone time all day together before going out for dinner with friends.

With just a few hours till midnight, you were making mental notes of everything you had planned for tomorrow, ticking each item off your checklist. Last year, you’d gotten him an electric guitar, based on Satoru’s recommendation – which Suguru loved, of course, but he had joked that you could simply bake him a cake and he’d be the happiest man on earth.

Which was ironic coming from someone who’d constantly bombard you with flowers and presents for relationship milestones and celebrations that were days or even months away. Suguru was all for spoiling his girl but when it came to receiving, his love language was, more often than not, physical touch.

And that’s what you decide you’d do. Your plan was to make tonight extra special. So, while you had materialistic gifts lined up, you had other things in mind to please the birthday boy.

You’d asked a friend to bake a batch of hash brownies, paying extra for good quality stuff, since you knew that’s how Suguru liked it – he was the type to easily distinguish good quality weed from the subpar one.

You’d also ordered a custom made jersey of his favourite rugby team with his birth date ‘03’ on the back. Since Suguru can sniff out a surprise in an instant, you’d taken extra steps to get it delivered at Satoru’s address instead of yours.

On your way back from work in the evening, you’d received a call from your boyfriend, asking if you could bring take-out since he was too occupied with work to take on dinner duties tonight. You’d agreed, secretly cheering as it would be the perfect opportunity to make a few stops to pick up the brownies from your friend’s and the jersey from Satoru’s place.

When you arrive home to find him seated at the dining table, eyes fixed on the table, you almost fear that he’d gotten back earlier than expected.

“Baby, weren’t you working till late?” you question as you place the food parcel on the table before walking towards him to place a kiss on his temple. He brings his hand up to give you a side hug, not peeling his eyes off the screen.

“I am, I brought the work laptop home since I figured it’d take too long… would rather work here till late than at the office.”

“Will you be working late into the night?” you ask, feeling a bit disappointed.

“Oh no, I’d be done before midnight hopefully… I know your obsession with wanting to be the first to wish me.” he chuckles. You quickly make an excuse of freshening up to hide your handbag into the cupboard, before returning to the living room again for dinner.

When you’re done with dinner, he quickly gets back to typing away hastily on his laptop. You quietly make your way to the bedroom, locking it behind you. You take the jersey, the box of brownies and other gifts out of your fully stuffed handbag… thanking the heavens for the nth time that your boyfriend was too focused on work to notice anything odd.

After wrapping his gifts and stacking them away in the cupboard, you take your time to shower and shave for the special occasion. You put on a white, skimpy, lace lingerie that leaves barely anything to the imagination before wearing his rugby jersey on top. You twirl in front of the mirror, noting that the jersey nearly covers your ass but would ride up easily if you bent down.

Your heart beats faster as you place a pair of leather handcuffs in a red paper box with black ribbon, placing it next to the box of brownies on the bed. You knew things were going to get wild so you recall your safe word ‘monkey’ just in case, but don’t fixate on it much since you trusted your boyfriend to know just how much he can push you before it gets too much.

You had mentally prepared yourself for a sexually frustrated Suguru since you hadn’t allowed him to touch you for about 15 days now, which was the longest he’d gone without your touch ever since you started living together almost more than a year ago.

Usually you’d run to him to fuck you on your period since it always helped you with your cramps, but for the first week, it became an excuse to act cranky and bratty, which he took without complaining. You were aware that you probably shouldn’t press his buttons so much since his payback would be 10 times worse but you couldn’t help yourself since it was just so damn easy to rile him up. It revealed his animalistic side in bed, leaving no room for the gentle lover that he sometimes was, and you were a sucker for that.

You loved being ravaged by him because the aftercare was even better. Besides, it wasn’t easy for you either, to act so dumb and innocent in front of him while actively trying to seduce him throughout this whole week. You wanted nothing more than to jump his bones when he wasn’t even trying to seduce you. Your boyfriend was simply existing and it was enough to get you wet.

At the beginning of your relationship, he’d quickly realised you were on par with him when it came to being horny to the point of borderline sex addict. For a short time, he had your number saved as ‘my succubus <3’ briefly to tease how much you craved his touch all the damn time. It didn’t last for long however, since you made him change it back to your name when Satoru accidentally read it when you’d called Suguru’s phone and started calling you that out loud at insanely inappropriate times in public.

So imagine your boyfriend’s surprise and confusion when you, of all people, were asking for space because you ‘simply don’t feel like it.’ He respected your wishes, being a respectful gentleman, not wanting to overwhelm you.

Though you knew his patience was wearing thin and almost broke 3 days ago. You’d gotten out of the shower and dropped your towel to the ground as you paced around the room naked, taking longer than usual to decide what dress to put on, moving your hips seductively to The Weeknd’s more explicit and dirtier songs playing softly on your phone. He’d muttered a ‘for fuck’s sake’ before making his way to the bathroom for a quick shower, trying to calm himself down. He only stepped out of the bathroom when he was certain you’d left the house, a few moments after gently knocking on the bathroom door to inform him that you were leaving for work.

When Satoru had asked you why Suguru had been more irritated for the last two weeks, you told him about denying him sex to rile him up. Satoru chuckled, calling you devil incarnate… maybe so, but this devil was sure going to have the time of her life soon so it was a win-win for you.

As you spray on some perfume you know he loves, you hear his voice call out your name. You check the time and gasp – it’s 11:49PM. You place the red box on the bed for later, checking yourself out and fixing your hair one last time before opening the bedroom door.

“Baby, did you fall asleep?” Suguru speaks while sliding it into the bag and placing it on the coffee table. His back is turned to you so you think he doesn’t notice you tip-toeing into the living room.

“And here I was thinking you almost forgot it’s my birthd-” he abandons the joke, his words getting caught in his throat when his eyes land on you as he turns around.

“Hi,” you giggle sheepishly, suddenly conscious about the way his eyes roam over your body. But you snap out of it just as quickly.

Pull yourself together – you have a plan to execute, a mission to accomplish!

“Sugu, do you like your present? The jersey?” you ask, feigning innocence as you twirl in place. He’s checking you out shamelessly with a devilish look on his face, “Love it.”

“Hmm. Maybe you should put it on to see if it fits.” you reply as you seductively remove the top and toss it at him. He catches it, a cocky smile plastered on his face as he observes your antics in amusement – so this is what the forced abstinence was about.

“You’re right, we really should make sure it fits.” he peels off his own shirt before putting the jersey on in one swift motion.

“Perfect.” you smile at him as you walk to where he’s standing near the sofa, your hands landing on his chest as you caress the fabric gently to smoothen the crinkles.

You could melt under how intense his gaze feels. You bite your lip as you blush, hands moving up to rest on his shoulders. He gives your ass a firm squeeze before lightly spanking it, causing you to yelp in surprise as his arms snake around your waist, trapping you.

“Baby, you are in so much trouble tonight.” he brings his lips closer to your ear, biting your earlobe.

“I’m counting on it.” you giggle at the tingling sensation of his lips on your neck. You pull yourself out of his arms and he lets you, following behind when you guide him by his wrist to settle him on the sofa.

“Let me make it up to you, birthday boy,” you say, bending down in front of him, intertwining your fingers with his to pin them to his sides.

You kiss him softly and ever so slowly before letting it deepen. Even with you trying your best to not let him touch you just yet, you know it's a useless effort given that your strength is nothing compared to his. Suguru tightens his grip, fingers still tightly intertwined with yours as he moves your hands to your lower back to lock them there.

You try to wiggle your hands out of his hold and feel him letting go. You try to take back control but his rough grip on your hips indicates otherwise as he pulls your body onto his till you're straddling him.

You let out a groan as you put your hands on his chest and pull away to catch your breath, feeling his hard poke against your ass. Your hand reaches to your side to pull his wrist to your face as you check his watch, the screen lighting up just on time as 11:59PM turns to 12:00AM.

“Happy…” you give him a small peck on his forehead, “Birthday…” another one on the tip of his nose, “Babyyy.” last one landing on his lips.

He's smiling into the kiss as his grip relaxes a bit. You take the opportunity to slowly move down till you’re kneeling between his legs. You hastily unbutton his pants and he lifts his hips up to let you take them off completely.

Your hand strokes his dick as you lick the tip gently. You slide down his foreskin to reveal his wet tip, your mouth watering at the sight – Suguru might just have the prettiest dick you’ve ever seen.

“Missed this lil’ guy so much.” You tease and he lets out a snort, if there’s one thing that Suguru will never take an offence at is you joking about his dick, it simply doesn’t faze him – and why would it? He knows he’s big.

Your tongue rolls over his tip, causing him to sink down into the sofa, spreading his legs out further. You lick up the base before taking a few inches in your mouth as you hear your boyfriend let out a low groan.

He rests his head back as his eyes close, enjoying the way your tongue feels on his cock after so long. The peace doesn't last however, when his phone rings in the pocket of his pants.

Mouth still connected to him, you reach a hand down to where his pants are bundled up and pull out his phone to silence it, tossing it onto the sofa next to him. You look up at his face as your mouth moves up and down his length.

His phone rings again in a few seconds.

“For fucks sake…” he mutters as he looks at who's calling. You release his dick from your mouth, letting your hand take over.

“Who is it?” You ask, kissing at the base.

“Satoru.” he sighs, running his hands through his hair in frustration, “He's gonna keep calling till I answer.”

“It's okay, go ahead,” you assure him, your hands still.

He nods as he answers the call. But right as he's about to greet his best friend on the other end, you take him in your mouth, letting his tip hit the back of your throat slightly as you steady your hands on his thighs.

Suguru cusses out a loud ‘fuck’ as his hands move to your hair, gripping at your strands to steady your movements.

“Hello?” You can hear Satoru's confused tone.

“Sorry… I hit my… elbow.” Suguru speaks into the phone, almost mumbling the excuse, eyes closing as he tries to collect his thoughts.

“Happy birthdayyyyyy best frienddd!” You hear the blondie's sing-song squeal.

“Thank you Satoru.” Suguru says rather plainly, trying to sound as serious as he can. You’re determined to break him though, so you suck him the way only you know makes him lose his mind each time.

He moans as his hand wraps around your hair to take it in a makeshift ponytail. He yanks it… you know it's his way of asking you to behave.

“I was honestly gonna knock on your door with a cake at midnight… but my favourite bakery was closed since the owner's away… thankfully, she'll be here tomorrow so I'll see you in the morning with only the best cake ever! Soooo what were you up to?” you hear Satoru's rambling on the other end, loving that him being so talkative is wearing Suguru’s patience out.

Your hands move to massage his balls and the base of his cock while your head bops in a steady rhythm, earning a soft groan as he moves his phone away from his face, putting it on mute.

“Careful baby, this is your only warning.” he groans before unmuting. You release his dick with a pop.

Satoru is still going on when you hear him ask if he's the first to wish Suguru. Just as your boyfriend opens his mouth to speak, you lick at his sensitive tip, almost causing him to moan. He clears his throat to cover it up as he struggles to speak, “yeah… you are.”

“No way! So I beat your girl to it?!” Satoru rejoices.

“Yeah you did… She’s aslee- I’d hate to… wake her up… Bye.” Surugu cuts the call, not waiting for a reply. He tosses his phone to the side, eyes staring you down as you keep on blowing him.

“Baby, if you enjoy having your face stuffed so much…” his grip on your hair tightens while his other hand caresses your cheek briefly, deceitfully gentle, “... let me show you how it’s done.”

Before you can register his words, you feel his dick hit the back of your throat, tears instantly welling in your eyes. You choke, letting out a few muffled moans and whimpers as he face fucks you, taking back his control.

The intensity feels too much but not enough for you to bail just yet. For times like these, where you cannot speak, you had a safe gesture, tapping his ass thrice on repeat… he’d protested initially by suggesting you do something else but you’d justified it by saying this was the only action that would seem out of place. He has accepted by now that, when it comes to arguments, he can never really win against you. He gave in eventually, still confident you wouldn’t ever need to use it cause, “I’m sure you’ll take anything I give you like a good girl.” One would say he was being too cocky but his words were like holy scripture, you obeyed every single word.

Within minutes, he’s warning you that he’s about to cum, since he knows you’ve never really been a fan of swallowing. He’s about to pull out to cum on your tits but you swat his hand away, surprising him by sucking him even more fervently. Such a simple action is enough to make him lose his mind. He shoots his load into the back of your throat, warm liquid filling your mouth as you struggle to swallow it all.

When he pulls his cock out, a string of saliva connects it with your lips. You bring the back of your hand up to wipe your lips while he leans down to wipe your tears off your cheeks.

As he observes the black residue of mascara on his fingers, you grip his thighs for support as you stand up. He looks back at you, “God… I love you.”

“I love you too Suguru.” you smile at him as he digs his fingers into the flesh of your thighs, pulling you closer to kiss your abdomen. You giggle and run your fingers through his hair. He brings his arms up to secure them around your lower back before tackling you to the sofa in one quick motion, moving to position himself on top of you.

“SUGURU! I almost had a heart a-” he shuts up your complaint with a kiss and you let your words melt as you kiss him back, moaning at the way his hands rake whatever area of your skin they can find.

Your hands automatically move to his hair as he leaves hungry half kisses over your neck, making his way down to one of your breasts. He licks and bites the hard bud from over your bra, causing you to whimper at the touch. He repeats the action on your other nipple as wet patches form on the fabric.

Your breath hitches when you feel two fingers rub at your clothed pussy, already wet with your arousal.

“Wait… Sugu– please, wait.” you breathe out as he rubs your folds with more pressure.

“Baby, I don’t think I’ll be able to sleep without fucking you tonight.” he groans as his eyes find yours, his face contorted.

“Suguru, I’m not letting you sleep a wink tonight…” you reassure him, cupping his face in your hands to give him a quick peck, “... but please take me to the bedroom first, I might have another present or two for you.”

#erensbirdie #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jujutsukaisen x reader #geto x reader #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #geto smut #geto suguru #jjk geto

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