#i refuse to acknowledge the fact that hes probably dead

[gremlingottoosilly]

With the Monster König and actual hybrid child, particularly the comment of being lucky if you get to keep it

Us BEGGING, and I mean BEGGING, him to let us keep the baby cuz “You wouldn’t want me to have gone through all the for nothing, right?” And “I won’t have to keep begging you to keep an egg!”

Probably more points that I didn’t think of would also work

@cookiepie111 Oh, he is going to be SO pissed off. Konig hates the weird octo hybrid, hands down. He doesn't understand the concept of parenting, at all, he isn't cute about having children, he wants nothing more but to toss the crying thing into the ocean and forget about it. Unfortunately, the thing isn't like his normal octo offspring - it needs milk, it needs attention, it needs its momma cooing and smiling at the weird thing. monster!Konig HATES the baby, but he loves you. He wants to be with you, you're his mate, imprinted on him, he isn't sure that he would even have the will to live if you're dead. So, when you beg for him, cry for him, willing to be the perfect little pet for him...he doesn't want to seem weak in front of his soldiers, he doesn't want to allow you to manipulate him like that, but he fucking folds. He doesn't like the baby and he makes this fact clear - he won't hold it, he won't look after it, he hopes it would curl down somewhere and disappear, but he is willing to share your attention with it as long as you're not threatening to kill yourself. Honestly, the only way you even can hold the baby, is when Konig holds you, making sure you're not directing your full attention to the little hybrid. Konig is treating it like a pet - in a normal sense, not in a weird way he is treating you. The baby gets food(it's still a hybrid, so it needs raw flesh and blood), it gets trained like a soldier, and learns commands like a puppy. When his soldiers are around, Konig refuses to acknowledge the child, even if it clings to him with his half-hands-half-tentacles and cries for attention. You know better than to ask for more - you know that each of your slips is going to threaten the baby, and you're on your best behavior all the time.

#cod #konig x reader #konig #yandere konig #monster!konig #tw: monster fucking #fem reader

[scribbledghost]

Note: A request from @0runforyourlife0! Sorry this took me so long lol. Hope you enjoy!

It's not exactly a secret that yautja are hardy creatures.

Being an interpreter, you probably know that fact better than most.

The amount of abuse their bodies can take is a point of pride to them, made evident by their love of the hunt and how proudly they wear the ensuing scars.

However, you are human. Not yautja. And your body is nowhere near as capable of handling what theirs are.

So when you fall ill, your body's first instinct is to scream at you for rest.

But you're stubborn. Proud. And you don't want to seem weak.

So you try to push through it.

Of course, the yautja around you can spot your rising body temperature and how you stumble every so often.

They ask if you're alright, if you need medical attention. You deny them, and they don't press the issue further.

Up until one of them finds you unconscious on the floor, that is.

It kind of freaks them out, tbh. They can tell your body is warm (far too warm), so they know you're not dead, but they also know something is seriously wrong.

Immediately, they rush you to a healer who is better equipped to handle the situation.

He stays with you, chittering with the healer to see what needs to be done for you to recover.

And whatever needs to be done, will be done. He'll make sure of it.

I do not care how many times you tell him you're feeling better and can go back to work, you're staying put until you get cleared by someone else.

Despite appearances, yautja are also big on taking care of yourself when you need to.

After all, a hunter cannot be at peak condition if they refuse to acknowledge when they are sick, hurt, hungry, or thirsty.

So you sort of get a crash-course on how yautja view illness recovery.

It's speedy - the tech is immaculate on that front - but you're still not going anywhere until the healer comes by and says you're good to go.

Also don't be surprised if the yautja who cared for you sort of... keeps an eye on you for a while.

Probably turns into somewhat of a "you reluctantly now have a bodyguard" situation, except he's protecting you from yourself lol

#yautja #yautja x reader #predator #predator x reader #ghost scribbles

[hatchetc]

// Fionna and Cake Spoilers //

First of all, Ice Simon is so yassified.

SECOND. Here is my theory for things within the upcoming episodes.

Throughout the Ice Simon Universe, I think it’s pretty apparent that Simon is vastly different from ours. However, through his flashback we can see that he has similar origins as our Simon.

However he is not batshit insane. He lacks as, from what he observed through his curse on Princess Bubblegum, empathy. Or some other third thing. Regardless, the dude is not kosher.

When Simon confronts the fact that he’s not crazy, and asks him about Betty, Ice Simon replies, “Betty…Oh I haven’t thought about her in a long time…” Simon questions how he could forget about the love of his life to which he responds “That’s not how I remember it.” These sentences have implications.

First of all, I think it’s important to acknowledge that Ice Simon is an unreliable narrator from what we’ve witnessed. He didn’t tell our Simon the truth, and heavily implied that reversing the crown’s magic was a matter of self will rather than a spell.

So. Here’s my theory.

Ice Simon killed Betty (and probably Marceline) upon putting the crown on his head. Since Simon had not thought about Betty in the future, he never traveled back in time to apologize to her. Ergo, she never “disappeared”. In fact, Ice Simon directly calls her “the dead one”. He knows for certain that she’s dead. Upon putting the crown on, it’s possible that Simon killed her, repressed it/refused to acknowledge he was the one who killed her, and then (maybe) repeated this process with Marceline, as he is shown to have created an Ice Marceline, implying that there isn’t already a version of her that exists in that universe.

Anyways.

There wasn’t a whole lot revealed in this episode, which makes me think that this sort of plot point is going to be brought up with other versions of Simon.

Either way, I just want a Betty episode :(

#fionna and cake #simon petrikov #Betty Grof #adventure time #spoilers

[heartsofminds]

Blooming (II)

So instead he settles for an affectionate squeeze to the right side of her face with his palm. “I wish you weren’t so young.” or Bradley Bradshaw is emotionally immature and he knows it, but she just wants to kiss him. 

Warning: Contains curse words, a failed age-gapped relationship, and sexual connotations. 18+ readers, only. 

A/N: Welcome to part two of my new series, Blooming. Here we learn about Rooster and Hangman’s past and his lack of emotional stability. Stay awhile, and enjoy 9.1k words in honor of our favorite aviator’s birthday.

Read Blooming and Blooming III here. 

i. 

Bradley knows he has a temper. 

One that makes his face hot and his chest flush a deep pink. His ears are always scarlet and the vein in the side of his neck attempts to become four-dimensional. The voices of everyone around him become muffled and he breathes deeply through his nose. His view of his immediate surroundings becomes blurred; almost as if he’s underwater and opening his eyes without goggles. 

And although Bradley knows he has a horrible temper, he also knows that he desperately needs to work on keeping it in check. It’s been a long time since he’s blown up. It’s been an even longer time since he’s felt so angry that he couldn’t breathe; his lungs feeling crushed and like he’s up in the air with no oxygen. 

He doesn’t know who he inherited his short fuse from. His mother was the most patient and kindhearted woman on Earth and his father, from what he had been told, was an oddball who was so obnoxiously goofy that nothing would ever be taken seriously enough by him to set him off in such a volatile way. 

And then there was Bradley. 

Bradley Bradshaw, who already had a chip on his shoulder from his father’s reputation, his mother’s death, and the fact that his beloved godfather didn’t believe in him enough to hold his own that he pulled his papers from the Academy the first time he applied and refused to acknowledge why Bradley was so pissed at what he had done.  

So that’s how he found himself in a class with people younger than him, literal infants in his humble opinion, and was embarrassed knowing that he stuck out the minute someone asked him how old he is. 

He made friends there, of course. He even had himself something sort of a girlfriend too. Her name was Tanner, and she was a knockout; tan skin and curly red hair with freckles that dotted her skin like how craters kiss the moon. But she was only nineteen and here he was at twenty-four; hopelessly in love with her and treading in the dangerous waters of knowing that their relationship was going to inevitably end. Mostly because they lived in such different worlds. 

Venus always looks close to Mercury until you realize that they orbit at different speeds. 

And despite it all, he was ready to bite the bullet for her. He was ready to settle down the minute she said: “Go.” He was ready to do any and everything she wanted if she just as much as felt the need to ask him. She was his everything because he had nothing and he knew it was a dangerous game to be playing; putting all that trust and responsibility in a person, let alone a nineteen-year-old girl. But Bradley pushed this fear aside and realized that this was his new normal. With his mom dead and Maverick out of the picture, she was the sole proprietor of his grounding and he assumed that he would be her’s as well. 

Bradley knew that he liked being comfortable and because he loved this girl so much, he was willing to swim in a sea of unknowns and discomfort. It was uncharted territory but it couldn’t be so bad. And boy, how that came back to bite him in the ass. 

While he did trust her fully (well, three-quarters of the way if you were to be exact), Rooster knew that they probably were not on the same page. Reading the same book? Yes. On the same page? Maybe sometimes, but definitely not reading the same paragraph and he’s for certain they’re not comprehending any of the words the same way.  

He knew she was young and still in college, a breeding ground for meaningless hookups and boozy frat parties, but he never wanted to be too controlling. He had seen enough of that bullshit in his fellow midshipmen. He had witnessed the kicking of walls when their significant others pissed them off or even the disgusting “locker room talk” that he assumed all guys grew out of after they graduated high school. But with each “Her tits are huge!” and “God damn I’d do anything to fuck her!”’s he hears when getting dressed after an intense training session, he realizes that a lot of the people he’s around are still boys and teenaged ones, at that. 

And then the realization clicks again that man, sometimes it fucking sucks being so old. 

But despite it all, Bradley knew that he wasn’t in control of her and couldn’t make himself have the heart to if he tried. So he didn’t loom over her the way that he would’ve liked to sometimes and understandably, he did get rather jealous every now and then. And he was working on being more open and communicating what he’s feeling when he’s feeling it or whatever his friend Phoenix was always on about when he came to her with relationship troubles. 

While Phoenix’s advice did work and he had admitted to himself that the female pilot is more emotionally intelligent and sensitive than she ever let on, the fights and disagreements still happened despite him using her tactics. Sometimes he would find himself shouting hurtful things at her or refusing to speak whenever she was attempting to rile him up so he would yell at Tanner. She had told him once during a late night pillow talking session that she picked fights with him so she would have some reason to actually be mad at him. 

But whenever he felt his cheeks get hot and his ears turn red while arguing with her about spending too much time with one of her male friends (for what feels like the eightieth time in the nine months they had been dating), Rooster remembered that he was yelling at a nineteen-year-old girl, with turquoise bedsheets and fairy lights all around him in a shitty dorm room with a nosy roommate on the other side of the door.  

So while Bradley does have a temper, he learned rather quickly when to pick his battles. He took deep breaths in through his nose and out through his mouth. He clenched his fists at his sides and closed his eyes. His thumb rubbed circular motions over his pointer fingers and he would picture his mom’s face, bleach blonde hair, and ocean blue eyes giving him a soft smile and saying, “You’re alright! Just calm down, babycakes.” 

When he would get like that he would always think of what his mom would do and he knew that his mother was the kindest woman in history and that she raised him well. He would always see women as an extension of themselves and not an extension of him. 

Girls have their own brains and own consciousnesses and own sets of morals. Bradley recognized that keeping his unwarranted thoughts to himself was easier than letting them out and causing an F6 tornado of problems that were just a poor projection of his own unhealed trauma and insecurities.

And while this along with Phoenix’s pep talks helped him be the best man and boyfriend he thought he could manage to be at the ripe age of twenty-four, Rooster realized that he had some shortcomings and that he kept failing to realize one thing: That not every girl he’s with is meant to be his. 

One thing that routinely had Rooster seeing red regardless of how much self-soothing or how much he tried to focus on his mother’s voice in the back of his head is whenever Tanner would visit him on base. 

Jake Seresin was not shy in the slightest and Bradley was (and still definitely is) convinced that God put him on this Earth to see if he had a hidden brain aneurysm because he’s sure one will erupt from how much stress the blond regularly puts him through. And yeah, Hangman’s annoying, and yes, Rooster is definitely not one of his biggest fans, but his girlfriend’s wandering eyes on the younger pilot wasn’t Jake’s fault in the slightest. But since he can’t force himself to be angry with Tanner, he settled for directing his anger towards Hangman and God, did that make his blood boil.

He had already brought it up to her numerous times before; telling her that he wasn’t trying to be a dick or prove that he was an Alpha male. Just that the idea that she always seemed more intrigued in what Jake had to say or was doing whenever she comes around bothers him like no other. Of course, that started a screaming match with her face as red as a tomato and his breathing resembling that of a woman experiencing contractions, but he had thought they worked it out. 

Well, shit, the make-up sex they had after was enough of an agreement, he had thought, but obviously not because it was happened again and this time, it was enough to make Bradley lose it entirely. 

Bradley knew that their relationship was probably coming to a close soon. He had a sixth sense for these kinds of things and he didn’t know if his intuition was really strong or if he just had a propensity to worry himself to death, but he felt like he could always tell when people’s feelings about him had shifted. 

Well that, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Tanner was losing interest. She didn’t remember the small things he had told her in passing like she used to and she never divulged much into her daily life with him over the phone anymore. She always sounded tired. Bored, even, and he couldn’t tell if she was bored of the conversation or bored of him. 

He chose to ignore it. He chose to ignore the sounds of unfamiliar voices in the back of their phone calls. He chose to ignore the fake interest she had while giving him the little reactions people usually have when you’re talking to them. He had caught her a few times laughing at morbid things he would say, which proved his theory that she was hearing him but never really listening. He chose to ignore the fact that she never told him she missed him anymore or that all the letters she would send would be signed with her name neatly at the bottom. 

She clearly had surpassed the need to declare her love for him with a comma following her signature on a piece of stationery paper.

Bradley chose to ignore all of this because living in denial is always better than having the burden of proof thrown in your face for you to forcefully accept it. 

So as a last-ditch effort to mend the relationship before biting the bullet and calling it quits with her, he invited her to the base to visit him. He made a deal with himself; if it went well, he would leave it alone but if she seemed like she’d rather be strangled with barbed wire than be there with him, he would let her go. 

When Tanner arrived, it was all butterflies and rainbows. She engulfed him in a hug and kissed his face like crazy. He didn’t remember her being such a fan of lipgloss when he had seen her two months prior, but he figures a lot can change about someone when you very rarely see them. So when she laid sticky cherry flavored kisses on his cheeks and neck, he didn’t question her on it and relished in the fact that she was there with him and that maybe, quite possibly, she was still in love and that this was it for him. 

She’s eager to hold his hand and to listen to his stories about whatever bullshit he has going on at the moment. She even gives him a rundown of her current friend group at college and what drama is brewing between whichever group of people and how she found out about it and what she intends to do to prevent things from getting so insanely messy. 

She’s basically glued to his hip the entire weekend. Her hand is always twisting their fingers together and the band of her purity ring (which has definitely been rendered useless since she’s been dating Bradley) rubs against the junction between Bradley’s thumb and pointer finger and fits like a cog in a wheel; as if it had always belonged there. She smiles sweetly at him, and he has her full attention whenever he speaks or walks into a room. 

When Tanner asks to use the bathroom and insists that she can find it herself without his help, Bradley doesn't think anything of it. She’s a big girl and as much as he wanted to go with her so he could soak up every second of the limited time they had together, he had to be laissez-faire. He couldn’t control her and he knew that lurking around every corner would make her feel like a child. 

So Bradley settled on passing the time by sitting down and relaxing. He leaned forward slightly, his elbows rested on his knees and his legs were spread enough to be proportionate with his torso. He tapped his feet, drummed his fingers on his legs, and fiddled with his watch. He knew that she was a slow walker with zero sense of urgency to her. There were some exceptions to that; those only being if she was running late for class and she had an exam that specific period or if she was horny beyond belief and was begging him to “fuck the shit” out of her on a shitty ass college dorm mattress. 

It didn’t seem weird that fifteen minutes had passed and there was still no sign of her. As a means to prevent himself from worrying to death or pacing around the base like a fucking lunatic, Bradley decided to busy his mind by going over his ever-growing “to-do” list that he kept in the back of his head. 

Despite all the mundane tasks and intrusive and borderline obnoxious thoughts he had going a mile a minute in his brain, Bradley was surprisingly an organized thinker when it came to remembering all the things that he had to do. He carefully sifted through his responsibilities and assigned them blocks of time and where they would fit in his day before he checked his watch again and realized that an entire forty minutes had passed since he had last seen his girlfriend. 

Something was off, and the familiar impending pit of doom that often plagued his stomach made a reappearance as he sped walked up and down the hallways of the base. 

She’s fine, right? The base is huge and she’s terrible with directions so she may have just gotten lost, right? And figured that he would come looking for her, right? She’s fine. She had to be. 

And when Bradley rounded a corner and was met with a supply closet at a dead end, he paused at a loud thump that followed a high-pitched moan. 

“Oh God!” he heard a breathy squeak from a female voice, “Harder, daddy. Please, I’ve been so good!” 

The pit in Rooster’s stomach turned into a ball of fire. He recognized that wheezy gasp anywhere. Hell, he had heard it two nights ago when he had her face down in the backseat of her 2002 Ford Focus. 

He should be the only person eliciting those kinds of sounds from her. He had a death wish for whoever was on the other side of that metal door, because one thing about Bradley Bradshaw was that you never messed with anything that was his. 

Rooster kicked open the door with his fists clenched to his side. He knew his ears were bright red and he felt himself starting to sweat bullets through his uniform shirt. The anger was hot as hell, and if he was in a better mood, he would make the joke that hell was right in front of him.  

Her blouse was unbuttoned and it's been shifted over to one side of her chest, her nipple poking out through the gaped hole the button was supposed to secure. Her bra had long been taken off of her and the denim shorts she had worn to the base are hanging off of a random filing cabinet that was stored in there; showing that they were taken off in a frenzy. 

And low and behold, the man of his disdain (even more so now than ever before) was in front of her, hoisting her up around his waist and fucking into her relentlessly. His uniform top was unbuttoned and his slacks were limp around his hips. 

The sudden kick of the door opening did little to interrupt them, but Jake noticed Bradley standing in front of them; a damn near homicidal gleam in his eye and his entire body flushed pink with red hot anger. And like the asshole that Hangman is, he sent him a smirk and a wink before leaning forward to suck a hickey behind the redhead's ear. 

“You son of a bitch!” Bradley screeched, “I’ll fucking kill you!” 

He barreled his way into the small and rather dingy supply closet. Bradley grabbed Jake by the collar of his shirt and pushed him into the wall. Jake sputtered a cough; the wind knocked completely out of him. 

His girlfriend (or soon-to-be ex-girlfriend, really) shrieked and gawked her eyes in horror at the scene taking place in front of her. Bradley wasn’t supposed to find them, and he wasn’t supposed to know that the reason for their break up was because she was unfaithfully faithfully fucking another man. 

Tanner buttoned her blouse as fast as she could and pushed her denim shorts up her legs speedily. She had been embarrassed and ashamed before, but this was a whole new level. Not only had she been caught red-handed, but caught doing something dirty and quite possibly something illegal. 

Hangman had finally caught his breath. His blue eyes gazed up at Rooster with a gleam of mischief. He knew that there was no way for him to charm himself out of this one, and if he was gonna get his ass beat, the least he could do was have some fun with it. 

Jake sits up, tightening his belt his head, a smirk still on his face as he pulls up his pants and tightens his belt. “Oh look, it’s Chicken,” he scoffs, “I mean Rooster. How are you, man?” 

Bradley seethed with rage. His fist went straight to Jake’s eye, the impact making the blond pilot stumble back a bit. Jake had to admit, Bradley was one strong mother fucker and his eye swelling shut definitely proved his realization right. 

Bradley paused, trying to calm his breathing a bit before speaking. He knew that if he didn’t get himself under control, he may actually fucking murder Jake Seresin and although that wouldn’t be half bad, he worked too goddamn hard to get kicked out of the Navy and face criminal charges on the base. 

His ears were still glowing red and his breathing even heavier than before. Tanner stood in the doorway of the supply closet in shock and utter panic. 

“Ooh, you’re lucky you didn’t get my good side, Bradshaw,” Jake taunted, “But I’m sure Tan over there thinks every side is my good side. Don’t ya, baby?” 

And oh shit, Jacob Michael Seresin did have a fucking death wish and in that moment, it was evident that he really didn’t give a fuck what Bradley could do to him. Any opportunity to get underneath Bradshaw’s skin was a golden one, and Jake just couldn’t bring himself to not be an asshole. 

And oh, how Bradley fucking hated that. He grabbed the blond pilot by the collar and yanks him up to stand. He was too angry to speak. Shit, his brain was so fried from all the heat his body was exuding that he couldn’t even begin to think of words to put into sentences that would even make any fucking sense. 

“Bradley, stop! Let him go!” Tanner yelled, and all of his senses in his body are turned off except for his tunnel vision sight and his sense of touch. That was made unmistakably apparent as each blow delivered to Hangman’s face and torso kept coming and coming and coming. 

Jake’s face was black and blue and he’s sure he has baseball sized bruises all up and down his upper body, but he didn’t care. He finally had another missile to add to his arsenal of things to fuck with Bradley’s head. The result of that alone outweighed the healing time he would need. 

Eventually, a commander walks by and pulls Rooster off of Hangman, and that was how he and Jake and Tanner all found themselves outside of Admiral Gadson’s office to tell their accounts of why Tanner’s bra was in the hallway and why Bradley’s face was beet red and why Jake’s right eye was swollen beyond belief. 

Rooster sat straight up and looked ahead, choosing to ignore the sounds of Tanner and Jake’s hushed conversation beside him. 

So that’s how Rooster found himself on garbage duty (”indefinitely”, Admiral Gadson had said, but he liked the kid and felt bad for him, so really, he said it meaning two weeks) and with no girlfriend. 

And yeah, Bradley Bradshaw definitely had a temper and was definitely naive. And as he’s picking up orange peels and scrubbing dried piss off of toilet bowls, he made note of two things: One, he desperately needed to keep his temper in check and two, he would never make the same mistake to trust a young girl like that ever again. 

Man, does it fucking suck being so fucking old. 

ii. 

(Y/N)’s body is on fire. 

She’s not particularly hot, per se, but she most certainly is flustered. And for once, the source of her panic isn’t from a deadline or an application or some bill she had to have transferred over from her college apartment to the new one she would be living in come fall semester for law school. 

No, (Y/N) is on fire because of the sandy-haired pilot beneath her right now. 

Bradley Bradshaw’s old Bronco was a lot roomier than she ever anticipated it being, but then again, she wasn’t that great with dimensions (Damn you, astigmatisms.) and she wasn’t big on cars or motorcycles or boats or planes or anything that supplied humans with transportation, really. 

She had just been responsible for closing the Hard Deck by herself again and like clockwork, the handsome aviator wandered his way inside to tell her about how he had misplaced his sunglasses and despite the fact that they were closed, he just had to find them tonight. 

(Y/N) knew it was a ploy for him to get to talk to her alone. The mischievous glint in his eye when the words came out of his mouth told her so and besides, his beloved aviator shades were practically glued to his face. So how the hell did he manage to lose them? 

“Crazy how they’re basically glued to your damn head and you managed to lose them,” (Y/N) teases, rounding out from behind the bar to help Bradley search for the glasses, ”How the hell are you a pilot? Get lost often, too?” 

Rooster shakes his head, his gaze falling on the floor and his hands finding the sanctuary of his front pockets. The smile on his face gives his true intentions away, but he’s unaware that (Y/N) notices this. 

“Directions are different than placement,” he jokes, “I do happen to be smarter than a fifth-grader, you know.” 

The joke sits in the air for a few seconds before (Y/N) realizes that she has a stupid grin on her face and that damn, he looks really good in the lighting of Hard Deck. 

“Obviously not because you can’t do simple math,” she chides, “I’m twenty-one. Not ten, jackass.” 

“Hmm,” he leans on the side of the bar top with a smug look on his face, “Couldn’t tell. That baby face of yours says otherwise. I think it’s the dimples.” 

She scoffs and puts her hand to her chest. “Jesus, Bradshaw. Weren’t you just trying to take me out on a date last week? Now I’m in fifth grade?” she starts looking around the bar floor for his sunglasses, “Seems pretty fucked up for a Navy man, don’t you think?” 

“Pretty fucked up that you know I’m in the Navy and have a rank but refuse to use it when you address me,” Rooster quips. He starts to look on the floor of the booths near the area (Y/N) is searching. 

(Y/N) stands up straight and crosses her arms. She takes a deep breath before approaching Bradley, putting a hand on his chest and giving him her doe eyes. 

“I’m so sorry, Lieutenant Bradshaw,” she adds extra thirst to her tone, ” How could I ever can I make it up to you? I’m just so young that I don’t know any better.” 

Bradley grins and takes (Y/N)’s hand on his chest in his and entangles their fingers. He looks down at their conjoined hands, his pointer finger running across her newly obtained class ring. 

His tongue comes out to lick at his bottom lip before his gaze shifts from their hands to (Y/N)’s face. 

“I can think of a few things.” 

He reaches up to grab the side of her face and pulls her in for a kiss. It’s soft, sweet even. It reminds her of how grooms kiss their brides during their wedding ceremonies. His lips are soft and plush, she thinks, and that was the best goddamn kiss she’s ever had in her entire life. 

(Y/N) detaches their lips and reaches up, taking both of her arms and looping them around Bradley’s neck. His hands move to her waist and he leans down to kiss her once more. This time he deepens it. The kisses are still soft and on target, never leaving her lips once at all. He’s not messy or miscalculated. It’s almost eerie, how his kisses are deep and starting to get rough but yet he was still thoughtful and delicate with her. 

His tongue swipes against (Y/N)’s top lip, and she opens her mouth to let it enter. (Y/N)’s not super experienced. She’s only ever kissed her college ex-boyfriend like this and they had broken up the summer going into her Junior year so it’s safe to say that it’s been a while. 

The sparkle in both of their eyes says the same thing, and she’s taking his hand in hers and leading him out of the front door of Hard Deck. He hugs her from behind as she struggles to lock the door, the kisses he’s planting on her neck making her giggle and lose focus. 

“Stop it, Bradshaw,” she says between laughs, ‘Penny’ll kill me if this door doesn’t get locked which means you can’t keep coming back to get me alone because I won’t be allowed to close by myself again.” 

Rooster giggles into her neck, his chuckle and the hairs from his mustache tickling her neck. 

“I bet I could sweet talk her,” he says, landing another kiss on the dip of skin just behind her earlobe, “She doesn’t call me sweet pea, for nothin’.” 

(Y/N) turns around and kisses him on the lips. “You stole my nickname, you fucker, so matter of fact, maybe I won’t lock the door because you can’t be trusted anymore.” 

Rooster brings her face closer to his again. His teeth tug on her bottom lip, not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to make her wince. 

“She was my aunt before she was yours,” he says, lips grazing over hers, “Remember to respect your elders, chick.” 

“Well if you’re going off of that guise, I’m not sure how Penny would feel watching us make out in front of the door when she watches the cameras back tomorrow morning.” 

(Y/N)’s statement makes Rooster back up and embarrassment washes over his face. (Y/N) had only ever seen the pilot with a smirk on his face; confidence and glee the primary emotions energizing his expression. To see him embarrassed was a sight for sore eyes. 

“Let’s move our transaction to my car, hmm?” he asks, hands finding her hips. (Y/N) nods eagerly and Bradley takes her to the beloved 1977 baby blue Ford Bronco that he had inherited from his father when he had turned sixteen many moons ago. 

He opens the passenger door for her before walking to the driver’s side. (Y/N) climbs in and shuts it, and the soft sound of metal falling on the floor of the car can be heard. She cranes her neck and moves her knees to the side to retrieve whatever had fallen from the force of the door closing.

And fuck, Bradley Bradshaw was either blind or a liar because low and behold, his “lost” sunglasses are in her hand. 

He shuts the door to his side of the vehicle and a small smile is on his face. He doesn’t turn to face her just yet. He knows that she’s found them and if he’s starting to figure her out as well as he thinks he is, he knows that her voice will be pipping up from the right side of his car in three, two, one- 

“You know, if you wanted to make out with me, Bradshaw you could’ve just asked,” she says, placing the aviators in his cupholder, “I’m not a floozy, but I wouldn’t have said no to you.” 

“Where’s the fun in that?” he asks, turning to face her head-on, “And I don’t think you’re a floozy, baby. If so, only for me, right?” 

He gives her a smile and the inky blue of the California night sky paints a mural for her eyes. She never thought she would be into pilots, let alone older men, but yet, here she is in the passenger seat of a Ford Bronco, trying to debate if she should leave him hanging and only make out with him, or go all the way. 

He’s so damn fit and such a good kisser. The way he looks at her makes her mouth water and the way he teases her makes her so fucking wet. The ball is in her court and the hard part isn’t playing, but deciding when to start. 

(Y/N) leans over to kiss him again and this time, she grabs his face with both hands. There’s a warmth in the pit of her stomach and a hunger in her eyes. Bradley reclines his seat with one hand and guides her over to straddle his lap with the other. 

He thought he was way past the need for messy sex in the driver’s seat of his car, but you can never set expectations without some minor setback now, can you? 

(Y/N) is so goddamn horny and ready for him. She can’t remember being this desperate for anyone, really, and of course, she’s had sex before but she never remembers it being exceptionally good. It was just okay enough to get by and she always figured that she had enough time to have all the mind-blowing sex in the world the older she got. She was only twenty-one now, for fucks sake. 

Bradley’s as hard as a fucking rock and he doesn’t know if it’s the adrenaline pumping through his veins at fucking in the parking lot of such a popular place or if it’s exciting because he has a knockout sitting in his lap, her clothed cunt (that he knows has to be absolutely soaked for him) grinding like hell over his growing erection. 

He’s not been this horny since high school and if he was in a clearer state of mind (and maybe a better man too, he thinks) he would’ve opted to have taken her to dinner and then back to his place. At least there he had a bed and a couch they could fuck like rabbits on. Both pieces of furniture are government property technically, but then again, so is he until his service duty is up, so what even is the big deal? 

“Fuck, chick,” he breathes, grabbing her hips to push her down on his hardened clothed cock even more, “You’re such a good kisser.” 

She giggles into his mouth and fuck, he’s a goner. 

‘Yeah?” she asks, grinding herself even more onto his erection. She lets out a small moan (one that she thought Bradley couldn’t hear but his slight chuckle of amusement lets her know that she’s been caught) as the layers separating her bare pussy from his denim-clad package catches on her clit just right. 

“Yeah, baby. You’re a fucking knockout.” 

This makes her smile even more. Their kisses are sloppy now, the constant grinding crafting a veil of ecstasy around them both. 

“(Y/N)?” he asks. His fingers unbutton her shorts and starts to slide them down her legs.

“Yeah?” she answers. Her cut-offs are completely off her legs and on the floor near Bradley’s feet. The lilac-colored panties she had on were completely soaked where her weepy hole sat. 

If it was under any other circumstance or with any other person, she would find herself flushing pink and attempting to hide her face in her hands. But her arousal and also the fact that she feels so secure in what Bradley is doing with her prevents that. 

“Are you awake?” he asks. 

She doesn’t answer him, just continues to move her hips in circles in his lap. Her head is thrown back and the pressure and slight burn his jeans are providing her hardened clit feels like a slice of heaven. 

“Sweet pea? Are you awake?” he asks again, but this time, his voice doesn’t sound like his. 

It’s too high pitched; too womanly. 

“What the fuck?” she questions and then she hears it again, and the view of her surroundings starts to blur and everything starts to fade.

She’s completely pantless standing in a sea of black and then she hears it again. 

“(Y/N )? I’m headed out. Text me if you need anything!” and she recognizes it as her godmother’s voice. And then it clicks, and holy hell, the idea of Penny finding her like this terrifies her. 

(Y/N) shoots up in her bed, the sleep shirt she had worn completely soaked through with sweat. 

“Jesus Christ,” she sighs to herself, palms rubbing at her eyes to help process what the actual fuck just happened. 

And as she stands in the shower with the cold water running and the sunlight shining through the stained glass window Penny had in her guest bathroom, she feels ashamed. 

She just had a wet dream about Bradley Bradshaw like a fucking teenager and shit, maybe he was right. She was too young for him to take her out. 

iii.

Bradley was always surprisingly nervous. 

As a pilot, he was a total adrenaline junkie and small things that make his heart race satiate him enough to get through the day. He was naturally inclined to panic but every time his stomach dropped or he felt like his heart would stop from how hard the muscle was pumping, it filled him with a sense of euphoria. 

Pilots can’t be nervous wrecks. Especially naval pilots, and that was a lesson he had learned rather early. He picked this up through recounts of his Uncle Mav and Uncle Ice’s stories when they would be in charge of watching him while his mom worked the night shift. The mission impossible-like stories replaced his bedtime stories when his mom wasn’t home and Bradley never had the heart to tell her, but he would rather listen to Maverick and Iceman before he ever heard her rendition of “Goodnight, Moon” ever again.

But one thing was sure and that one thing stuck with him forever. Pilots can’t be nervous. Getting nervous would get you killed; whether that be shot down, captured, or ejected from your aircraft was up to the pilot and the cockpit was already small enough as is. There is absolutely no room for such a large feeling like nervousness. 

So his entire life up to this point at thirty-five years old, he always found a way to dodge his nervousness. Is it healthy? Not really. Does it help? Well, not really either but he doesn’t really have much of a choice now. 

Wanting to ask a girl he liked out on a date? Oh, the fast beating of his heart when he approached her wasn’t nerves, it was just because he liked her so much. She thought that him saying his heart “Beats louder for you because it wants you to hear how much you mean to me,” was endearing and Bradley knew he was lying and he was literally about to shit himself from the anxiety looming in his chest. 

He was the starting pitcher for the boy’s high school state game? He wasn’t nervous, just excited, he would say even though the blown look of his pupils and the gnarly sweat stains near his armpits told everyone else otherwise. 

He was getting ready for his promotion to Junior Lieutenant and had to be absolutely perfect and could not afford to fuck up under any circumstances? Bradley wasn’t nervous. He was just so undeniably ready to work his way up the ranks. But really, his palms were so goddamn sweaty he’s sure that he grossed out two Captains and one Admiral when he went to shake their hands. 

And there are so many other instances that he could name and correct his nervousness for another feeling, perhaps. 

Unbeknownst to him, Rooster Bradshaw never really knew that thinking about his feelings this way was unhealthy and was probably (well definitely, really) preventing him from being a fully emotionally intelligent man the way his mother would have liked him to be. 

So no, Bradley Bradshaw didn’t get nervous per se but when the dark-haired pilot walks into a room filled with twelve of the best naval fighter pilots in the nation, he’s alarmed. Bradley is competitive, no doubt about that, but at the end of the day he can’t help but remain the team player his parents had raised him to be. 

His “no man left behind” mentality had gotten him caught up numerous times before and his need to ensure that everything was fair made him known to be a stickler. 

But is he nervous? Hell no. Just slightly worried; scared, even because when the nation’s best is sitting in a squad room with their flight suits on and no information about what was going on, whatever was to come had to be huge; even bigger than all their egos totaled together. 

Hangman makes some shitty joke about Bob’s glasses; something along the lines of “four eyes” and how the Navy doesn’t need satellite cameras to spy on people. They could just look through Bob’s glasses and see all that they need to see. 

It earns a few chuckles from the other pilots sitting around and even if Rooster was itching to talk or do something to occupy his mind, he absolutely refused to acknowledge Jake Seresin more than what was necessary. 

Phoenix walks to her seat and “trips” on Hangman’s chair, tugging the leg back not enough to pull him out from under completely, but enough to startle him and make him choke on the words he was fixing to leave his mouth. 

Everyone chuckles a bit before they’re made aware of Admirals Simpson and Bates coming to speak to them. Bradley straightens up in his seat. He was always so painfully self-aware and he didn’t need something else to pick apart about the interactions he had had today while he lays in bed at night.

They’re given the run down of why they’re all there which, in Rooster’s mind, is always the same. 

They get told how talented they are and how well they perform in their roles. It’s always one big confidence boost before getting pushed off the cliff to the reality of the situation. Because they’re so good they’re going to be shipped off to play mission impossible, and because it’s mission impossible, there’s an even larger chance that they won’t make it back alive. 

Rooster’s had at least twelve of these talks in the last ten years he’s been flying and before, the thought of being up in the air, unaware if clouds and a blue sky were the last things he would ever see scared him. 

But then he kept making it back and he kept getting “invited” (more like ordered) to carry out more prestigious and dangerous missions. So no, Rooster isn’t nervous at all. There’s nothing new to the expectations he and his fellow pilots are under. The word “curveball” ceases to exist in the Navy’s vocabulary, anyway. 

And as much as he tries to be respectful and attentive, his mind starts to wander and the evasive thoughts that he usually has take precedence over what’s currently unfolding in front of him. 

He looks the Admirals in the eye, but little did they know that his mind was far from the pupils of the respected Navy men in front of him. 

It’s not until he hears the word that he freezes. His heart stops. His blood runs cold. His ears start to glow red and he has to flex his fingers on both hands repeatedly to keep it together. He’s not felt like this since high school when he had to give his Valedictorian speech. 

“Maverick.” 

He didn’t know that the word alone would make his blood run cold, but it does. 

It’s then when he realizes that fuck, he should’ve allowed himself to feel nervous every once in a while because he’s not even sure what feeling he’s feeling right now is even called. 

He’s scared. He’s angry. He’s hurt. He’s saddened. He’s resentful, and he guesses that all of this can be added up and made to equal out to simply being nervous. 

Bradley figures that Maverick feels the same way too because it’s obvious that his gaze refuses to catch his the entire time he’s speaking. He hadn’t seen his Uncle Mav in years, and he certainly wasn’t planning on the first time he saw him being today of all days. 

It’s hard to believe that he was his stand in dad for so much of his life. He was the guy that attended his Kindergarten graduation. The guy who taught him how to shave his face and how to talk to girls. He was the guy who came to as many baseball games that he was able to fit into his busy military schedule and the guy who he practiced his Valedictorian speech in front of for weeks. He was the same guy who held him when his mother finally passed away and the same guy who let him sleep in his bed while he slept on the floor when he had nightmares after her death.

Maverick encapsulates what Bradley’s childhood was and even though he can’t help it and wants to hate him, he can’t stop himself from looking at his godfather with child-like wonder. 

But then Bradley shuts that down as soon as it enters his mind. 

Fuck that. 

He was Bradley then. He’s Rooster now, and Maverick had his chance and blew it. 

Pilots don’t get nervous because it can get you killed. But what they don’t clarify is that you can be killed physically or emotionally and Bradley is too damn prideful to figure out which one they really meant. 

iv. 

It’s been two days since (Y/N) found herself closing the Hard Deck by herself with the unwarranted help of Bradley Bradshaw. 

It’s been forty-eight hours since he flirted with her and offered to take her out on a date. It’s been two-thousand eight-hundred and eighty minutes since he smiled at her and asked her how old she was. And it’s been one-hundred seventy-two thousand eight hundred seconds since he laughed at her and told her that she was too young. 

And although two days isn’t a long time (unless you’re five years old and your perception of one minute is a literal fucking second) it feels like a lifetime and God, the counting and the flashbacks and the remembering has been eating her alive; even more so than her being bored. 

The embarrassment of her recent wet dream is all consuming too, but she knows she’s too shy to ever utter that admission out loud. It’s one less thing she has to worry about, but five new insecurities and emotions she has to face now. 

(Y/N)’s kept her eye out for Bradley the entire night. 

She had seen the familiar gang of Navy pilots come in. Hangman had come in and sat with her at the bar for a little bit, telling her about his day and throwing in some cheap flirtatious remarks here and there. She has half the mind to ask him where his friend is, but from the interactions between the two she had clocked from the corner of her eye two days prior, she knows better than to do so.

Jake would probably laugh in her face and accuse her of having some school girl crush on Bradley. The blond was relentless with his teasing, and if he had come across a weak spot, he would use it until the river of discomfort it caused the other person ran dry. 

“Don’t look so sad, pretty girl. I’m here now,” he had said, and all (Y/N) could offer him was a free beer and a soft smile. 

But that was two hours ago and the fleet of Navy pilots had long since left Hard Deck. Jake had mentioned something about early training tomorrow morning and how he had to leave so it left no surprise that once he headed out, everyone else who was in Miramar for the same mission followed. 

(Y/N) is slightly relieved that she didn’t have to face Bradley tonight. She knows that she has a tendency to ramble when she gets extremely nervous and the fact that she dreamt about dry humping him in the driver’s seat of his car definitely adds fuel to the fire of embarrassment that burns deep in the pit of her stomach. 

It’s a Monday night and the bar closes at midnight rather than its usual 1 AM. Aunt Penny had let (Y/N) close the bar by herself for the past two nights so when she had slipped out with some excuse about Amelia (which (Y/N) knows is bullshit and that her godmother was really going to visit Maverick, but nevertheless she doesn’t call her out on it) it was decided that (Y/N) was responsible and ready enough to close on her own. 

Even though the bar has been closed since midnight, (Y/N) can’t help but take her time shutting down for the night with hopes that the brunette pilot would show face before she turned the lights off and locked the door. 

The jukebox had been unplugged and the glasses had been washed and set out to dry. The bar top had been scrubbed clean and all the napkin dispensers were full. (Y/N) even went the extra mile and made sure all the bathrooms had soap and paper towel because she was that desperate for stupid Bradley Bradshaw to come in and kiss her breathless. 

She doesn’t think of herself to be a hopeless romantic, but she does have a tendency to hope for the best and sometimes the best isn’t realistic in the slightest. She would probably never see him again and he probably was turned off by how young she was. He was probably ready to settle down soon and get married and be a homeowner and have kids and the thought of something so permanent made (Y/N) a little nauseous. 

Sure, she wanted to be a wife and a mom and a homeowner but that’s some day and not any day soon. She hadn’t even gotten a chance to live by herself with no roommates yet, so how could she possibly be ready for marriage or kids? 

(Y/N) then realizes that she’s being extremely theoretical and that she should just turn her brain off and stop being delusional. Bradley Bradshaw was not walking through those doors tonight and Bradley Bradshaw was definitely not thinking about her the same way she was thinking about him. 

So as she scrubs the bar top counter one last time before she gets ready to leave, she hears the bell above the front door go off. She has half the mind to look up and to yell out that they’re closed, but she stays quiet. She figures the person who walked in would take the hint and see the bar basically abandoned and would turn on their heel and walk right back out. 

But when (Y/N) doesn’t hear the bell ding again signaling that the person had left, she puts the rag down and looks up. 

And holy shit, it’s Bradley standing right in front of her with his arms outstretched and leaning on the bar. 

He’s wearing a gray t-shirt with “NAVY” written in the middle and black running shorts. He has on Birkenstocks and his sunglasses are pushed up to rest on the top of his head. 

“Penny here?” he asks, “It’s kinda urgent.” His eyes look around, taking in the surroundings of the bar and fuck, he may be too late. Matter of fact, he knows that he’s too late. 

(Y/N) shakes her head. “We close at midnight during the week and it’s,” she looks at her watch, “Nearing one-thirty. You missed her by like two hours, Bradley. Sorry.” 

Bradley shakes his head and locks eyes with her. His eyes are filed with so much emotion and she can almost see his subconscious drowning in whatever sorrows he was battling with internally. He looks hurt, scared even. It was totally opposite the fire and childish twinkle they held two days prior as he mindlessly flirted with her when searching for his wallet. 

(Y/N) knows something had happened but she figures that it’s not her right to pry. She’s quite a private person herself and knows how annoying it is when people try and get into her head. 

Some things just aren’t for other people to know. 

“Hey, why don’t we go for a walk or something as soon as I close this place up?” she offers. 

She only does because she knows that he needs someone to talk to and something to take his mind off of whatever was troubling him, but she also does it selfishly; knowing that this was also an opportunity for her to get him alone and actually get to know who Bradley Bradshaw is. 

He offers her a soft smile. “Yeah. Yeah,” he says, wiping the corners of his mouth with his pointer finger and thumb, “I would like that. A lot.” 

(Y/N) offers a grin and a light laugh before exiting the bar and turning off the lights. He opens the door for her and she locks it, putting the keys in her car before they head out to the beach near the strip of buildings where the Hard Deck is located. 

The inky blue sky takes (Y/N) back to her rather embarrassing but hot dream about the Lieutenant and she feels her cheeks getting pink. She thanks God that they’re outside and that it’s dark and that he’s not really looking at her because her sudden flush would be hard to explain. 

While they walk down the beach they talk about any and everything. 

She tells him how she choked on a Lifesaver once in first grade and cried so hard that she threw it up. He tells her about how he sliced the back of his ear open in third grade from climbing on top of his kitchen counter and banging his head on the door to his mom’s spice cabinet. She talks about how she had totaled her first car when she was sixteen because she was riding an old lady’s ass and didn’t have enough time to brake before a turn. He tells her about the time he concussed himself from hitting his head on the glass of his aircraft because he wasn’t strapped in tight enough. 

The silences in between stories is comfortable and his voice soothes her. Her heart isn’t beating out of her chest like she thought it would be doing. She’s not anxious or panicked. She’s relaxed and she realizes then that that’s what Bradley Bradshaw’s aura does to her. 

They walk back to the parking lot of Hard Deck and he walks her back to her car. 

He opens her car door for her and she teasingly gasps, “Oh, what a gentleman, Bradshaw.” 

Bradley gives her a grin, “Can say my momma raised me right. Nothing but the best for you, chick.” 

Chick. 

It makes her tingly inside that he calls her that. It’s her nickname for him and although it’s kind of funky, it’s sweet, in a way. Well, she relishes in the fact that Penny calls her sweet pea still so chick can’t be so bad in comparison to that. Besides, what else did she expect from a guy who goes by “Rooster” casually? 

“Told you I wasn’t cheap, Bradley. None of this should be a surprise to you.” She smiles at him and he steps closer to her. 

He looks down into her eyes and his hands go up to cup the side of her face and for a second, (Y/N)’s heart stops. Is this really happening, or is this some plot to another one of her embarrassing wet dreams again? 

Bradley wants to kiss her. He wants to kiss her so fucking bad but it’s almost like there’s some invisible force preventing him from moving. He knows that that’s not true and that the force is himself because he tends to be his own worst enemy in situations like this. 

So instead he settles for an affectionate squeeze to the right side of her face with his palm. “I wish you weren’t so young.” 

And with that, he walks to his car and shuts the door, starting his car and sitting in it until (Y/N)  decides to pull out of the Hard Deck parking lot. 

He wishes she wasn’t so young and that he wasn’t so old as he drives back to his government supplied housing and little does he know is that (Y/N) lays in bed with a frown on her face thinking the opposite. 

#bradley bradshaw #rooster bradshaw #rooster x reader #rooster top gun #bradley bradshaw x reader #bradley rooster bradshaw #bradley rooster bradshaw x reader #rooster x you #top gun #top gun maverick #miles teller #mt #rooster bradshaw fic #rooster bradshaw fanfic #rooster fanfic #bradley bradshaw fic #writes #rooster

[spectres-n-soap]

A Soft Breeze - Ghost x Reader x Soap

Content Warnings - Therapy, pregnancy, afab!fem!reader, angst with comfort

Series Masterlist

Main Masterlist

“Why do you lash out at others?” Dr. Miller asks. The session had been going relatively normal, he had started out with the usual base questions he did every time.

“How are you?”

“I’m doing my best.”

“How’s the pregnancy?”

“Healthy for the most part.”

And it felt he was coming out of left field with that question. It must have been obvious how much of a divergence from the norm it was because he tries to back track but you stop him.

“It's easy.” You admit. Admission feels like poison or acid, eating up at you now that you’ve spoken it to life. It was easy, it is easy, to lash out at those around you then to confront the source. You scream and yell, throw things and break down instead of admitting the truth that no one deserves your anger. No one deserves the grief that eats you up and that you refuse to acknowledge until now. “It’s easy to lash out at others then take a moment to reflect.”

“Do you feel bad afterwards?” He asks as he writes down something of note and you cringe a little. Just another thing to add to the ever growing list of things wrong with you. That’s what you’ve concluded that means, that whenever he writes something down after you say something, that it's another thing wrong with you. You won’t dare to ask him if it's true; he’ll probably lie about it for propriety.

“Yes.” You still beat yourself up over the baby shower and every time you’ve yelled at Simon. “I feel awful afterwards because I know they didn’t deserve it.”

“So why do you take it out on Simon specifically?” Dr. Miller asks and you stiffen. What a loaded question, you thought. “Just off the top of your head, why?”

“Because it feels like he’s trying to replace him.” You say, throat becoming tight at the thought, horrible and malicious. “And I know that he isn’t and that it's not right for me to think like that.” Dr. Miller takes notes, his hand moving quickly over the lined paper in front of him as you speak and it takes everything in you not to stop or call him out on it. “It should be Johnny here. Not him.”

“You know that Johnny is dead.”

“Yes I know he’s dead.” You snap, “I know he is, alright? But it doesn’t stop me from wishing he wasn’t.” You put your face into the palms of your hands and sigh. “I’m a terrible person.” You whisper.

“No, you’re just a person.” Dr. Miller says, “There is no such thing as a good or bad person, just people who do good and bad things. Sometimes more of one than the other.” He sets down his clipboard and leans forward, “It's good that you are able to find what the reason is, now we just have to work on finding ways of expressing those feelings without hurting those around us.” You nod slowly.

Simon is waiting for you in the parking lot, a surprise for you. “Hey, I was thinking we could eat out tonight, to celebrate another therapy session.” You scrunch your face up and before you can retort anything he says, “Just accept the free food.” You truly cannot debate with that logic or offer and you get into the vehicle with him.

It’s not a fancy restaurant but to be honest, you might’ve tried to strangle him if he had. Just a simple sandwich place, the food is good and the restaurant surprisingly serves other things than just sandwiches and drinks. You opt for an italian sandwich and some tomato bisque on the side with crackers. 

The silence between the two of you is natural, especially as you eat and therefore become unable to speak without being rude. The restaurant isn’t bustling with tons of other people, in fact it's rather quiet for the time of day. You think it's because of the fact it's Wednesday. “I’m sorry.” You say after finishing your soup.

“What’re you apologizin’ for?” He asks and your cheeks warm.

“I’m sorry for being awful to you all the time.” You say, “It's not okay for me to treat you like that and I don’t know why you stuck around after everything.”

“Because you’re Johnny’s bird.” He says, “I’m doing right by him, I’m making sure the person he cared for and the baby he never knew existed are safe.” He states and you shake your head.

“I don’t get it.” You mutter and he chuckles softly, the sound warms your belly more than the soup did.

“You don’t have to.”

You get a call from Mrs. MacTavish the next day, “I was thinking about what you said the other day, about not feeling prepared for motherhood and I did some looking.” You vaguely hear some mouse clicking and she starts again, “I’m gonna send you some links to places holding parenting classes.” You glance at your phone and see the links copy and pasted into the text chat. “You should attend them, I think they would be very useful. Have a good rest of your day dear.” You say your goodbyes and tap on one of the links.

Just as Mrs. MacTavish said, it is for a place holding parenting classes throughout the week, you look at the next available one and feel your heart rate pick up. Two days from now, it will be held at a nearby library in the afternoon. Simon glances over your shoulder and asks, “Thinking about going?”

“It would be smart for me to go.”

“But do you want to?” He asks as he sets down his dirty mug into the sink to wash later. He leans against the counter and you shrug.

“Wouldn’t hurt to go, just to see if I like it.” Your thumb hovers over the register link before you finally tap it and send in your information. Putting down just how far along you are in your pregnancy feels surreal. Seven months along and nearly at your eighth. How did the time pass by so quickly? 

#john soap mactavish #john soap mctavish x reader #john soap mctavish x you #soap #call of duty #cod #ghost x reader #mw3 spoilers #simon ghost riley #thyh #thoyh #simon ghost x reader #ghost x you #simon riley #simon riley x reader #soap x reader #simon riley x you

[utilitycaster]

Ok I'm probably going to regret reinventing 17th century European religious philosophy here but:

Ludinus's issue with the gods as stated to Imogen and Fearne (and I will state right now that we know he was lying or deliberately misleading at points in that conversation so I don't exactly take him at his word, but let's assume he does mean this) is that they did not prevent the Calamity. I have the following questions.

Does he have any loyalty/feelings about the Titans given that they would have killed all the people in the era of the Schism, ie, the gods averted that Calamity? My guess is no, which means that whole avenue of discussing the Titans was something of a dead end.

How should Calamity have been averted? The Prime Deities during the Age of Arcanum largely let people do what they wanted, which is what led to one of those mortals releasing the Betrayer Gods. Should the gods have struck down Vespin Chloras before he actually did anything, Minority Report style? Can the gods even predict based on the actions of a single individual or small group, because my guess is they can't, particularly since within the current stream of gameplay they absolutely cannot [ie, the reason the Changebringer can't tell FCG to stay or run is because Matt Mercer is the Changebringer and he doesn't know how people will roll; you do need to consider the medium here]. But if they could: so you think they should strike down mortals on the basis of thoughtcrimes? Or control them? In that case, why is Aeor a problem? There's a lot you can argue is justified once you permit the gods to override free will and kill people over mere potential for catastrophe.

On that note, Laerryn both was an unwitting architect of the Calamity (shorted on energy and then killed the Tree of Names, which served as a core planar defense system) but also averted the worst of it. Did the lives she saved by preventing the rise of Rau'shan and Ka'Mort outweigh the lives she took by destroying the Tree of Names? How should the gods have reacted?

Should, perhaps, the gods have all sealed themselves away earlier - perhaps post-Schism? If so, then the issue isn't the Divine Gate, now is it? Should the gods intervene or not intervene? Should they remove themselves or no? It feels like the issue isn't that they distanced themselves so that they can do less in the world, particularly if you wish to kill them, but that you really want to fucking kill them and they made that somewhat more difficult.

How do we know the gods (for example) didn't save Laudna? She was hanged and she's still alive; Morri would probably count this as saving her and I don't see the same desire to wipe out all Archfey. [real talk I find most discussion of Laudna specifically to be...incomprehensibly ignorant in its refusal to acknowledge that everything about it is player agency related, whether it's the story that the cast played out for Vox Machina or the decisions Marisha specifically made in creating the character, ie, do you think Matt should have said "well you can't play a Hollow One because that would mean the gods didn't save you" not to mention the fact that again, we are playing this within a game system where the existence Deus Ex Machina would in fact fucking suck ass; but even setting aside those reasons why this argument is stupid, it's still stupid. It's like a layer cake of stupid.] Again: do you want more intervention or less? Killing them guarantees less.

I'm assuming the problem with the Calamity is the vast loss of life, in which case, what's the math on how many people have been killed by the Vanguard or Imperium in the pursuit of unleashing Predathos? How many more will die?

If the release of Predathos doesn't result in the immediate demise of all the gods, and the Divine Gate is down, why isn't this a recipe for Calamity 2? What was the motivation for killing the gods again?

Should we kill mortal diviners who do not do all within their power to stop terrible things that may come to pass? If the issue is that some people have power without working for it, why haven't we killed all the sorcerers?

Should we be listening to a single word from someone who consumes random fey to live longer, and that's just the start of the CVS receipt of atrocities?

Is there a point where one's deeply held beliefs due to one's own personal trauma become invalidated due to one's actions as a result of that trauma? If so, why is the limit for Orym "is okay with killing people who are trying, directly, to kill you (which, frankly, isn't even a trauma response, that's just called not wanting to die, which I highly recommend as a personal philosophy), and gets upset when people defend those knowingly collaborating with his family's murderers" and the limit for Vanguard generals "family abandonment/just. buckets of murder of innocents./child soldier recruitment in multiple different contexts/eating fey as biohacking/destroying an entire city and the surrounding forest for hundreds of years (ongoing)/imperialism in multiple different contexts/I was going to make a gallows humor joke about how while neither exist in-world they've violated the Geneva Convention AND the IRB for testing on human subjects multiple times over but actually those both are in fact written in a lot of the same blood/probably some others that I'm forgetting"

#i feel ultimately a lot of this fandom debate boils down to yes this is obviously fiction #but like within the fiction can you sketch out the implications of your argument or is it just a lot of abstract ideals that can't coexist #I don't actually expect answers to these; obviously the point is if you think there is an easy one there isn't #anyway i'm like if an enlightenment era polymath were a religiously observant agnostic who used the phrase fucking suck ass #cr spoilers #cr tag

[six-eyed-samurai]

WHAT IF GENYA COULD WRITE?

It's canon that Sanemi can apparently read but not write, but they never mentioned anything about his younger brother now, did they?

I'd like to think that Genya, in fact, CAN actually read and write, and here's my ridiculous reasoning:

Genya has to repeatedly go to the Butterfly Mansion for checkups due to his demon snacking. I imagine Shinobu Kocho would be very curious about the terrifying Wind Pillar’s brother he refuses to acknowledge, and so would engage him in conversation every now and then.

Sure, Genya is shy around women, but eventually he would have to talk to her anyway, right? 

Shinobu will find out about his illiteracy at some point, and offer to teach him the basics. Grudgingly Genya accepts, because perhaps if his brother refuses to talk to him he could write an apology letter.

Gyomei would even ask him to read things out to him, due to his blindness and Genya’s newfound literacy, maybe in between breaks of their intense training because there’s nothing like reading out prayers after a long hard day of standing under waterfalls. 

Muichiro would probably also be in the Butterfly Mansion for checkups on his amnesia, meaning he and Genya surely would’ve bumped into each other a couple times (Genya mistaking him for a girl the first time they met and proceeds to short circuit). Befriending him, Genya would start writing short notes for Muichiro to stick on things to help him remember stuff he was supposed to do, after five minutes of wondering who wrote it.  

But we all know how hot tempered he is, so he probably blew up multiple, and I mean MULTIPLE, times struggling to get through spelling and wording and grammar and strokes and kanji and-

Which leads to my theory that one of the reasons he’s so flustered around the Butterfly Girls is because they’ve all seen how he’s exploded and sobbed over the most basic of reading and he’s internally praying they won’t expose him to the Kamaboko Squad, because let’s be honest, Zenitsu would laugh until he died from asphyxiation and Inosuke would declare him a loser (before freezing and realizing he too, cannot read or write). Going back to his apology letters, I imagine once he mastered writing, he'd write about a thousand letters detailing his apologies, regrets and begging for forgiveness to Sanemi, with Shinobu kindly passing on the letters and making sure (forcing) the Wind Pillar opens and reads them all. He refuses to give an answer, even though Shinobu suggested she pass on the message for him verbally seeing as he can't write (he nearly strangled her for even saying that), but one day when he came back from a mission and was recovering in the Butterfly Mansion Shinobu discovered a bundle of Genya's letter neatly tied and arranged in his pocket. I think Genya would also write letters to his dead siblings, talking about how he wished they were here, places he's been to that he wished he could've taken them, his slayer training, the people he met, new things he's tried out, his darkest thoughts, how he wished Aniki would at least acknowledge him, would they still love him the same if they knew he ate demons and became one, that he called their brother a murderer, that he was utterly useless in the Corps because he couldn't master a breathing technique? After his death, Sanemi discovers the stack of letters when he was going through Genya's things. Shockingly, it seems that the Wind Pillar still has tears left to cry.

If you guys enjoyed this please check out Letters to Sanemi! Leave a comment, it means the world and beyond for me

#genya shinazugawa #kny genya #shinobu kocho #demon slayer #thoughts #kny #kimetsu no yaiba #kamaboko squad #sanzuyaps

[bunnakit]

last twilight e8 thoughts, feelings, and tears

ok i cried for like 10 minutes after the episode ended so forgive me if this isn't up to par of what i usually do. apparently i'm fragile today.

there was a lot i liked and didn't like about this scene. in the past we've seen Day cling to the idea that someday he'll see again, that this is all temporary. instead of reiterating that, instead of talking about the cornea transplant, he instead asks "what can i do?" it's such an insanely massive sign of his growth. i'm so fucking proud of him. it made me so fucking emotional because while he's still upset, he's still hurt, he's still angry, he realizes his reality and he's making steps to move forward with that.

what i didn't like about this scene was once again Day's mother acts like Day's life is ending. she's been the number one person to coddle Day and to reassure him of this surgery that may never happen. i know she means well but fuck. this has to stop.

i also fucking hated the doctor for this. Day isn't fucking dying, there's still so much he can do even once his sight is completely gone. sure, he'll have some limitations, i get that. i can't swim in the ocean or rivers anymore. that fucking sucked to learn right before going on my honeymoon to the beach. but you know what i could still do? walk across the beach to the little hidden tide pools, sit on the jagged rocks, and watch the crabs and fish and anemones and everything thrive in this tiny little ecosystem. it was still amazing and something i may not have done if not for my disease keeping me from going in the water.

we're limited by our disabilities but we aren't fucking dead - life goes on around us and we can either participate in it or wallow in our fate. i'll talk about this more later.

you can skip this next paragraph if you don't want to see me babble on another personal anecdote.

i will say i saw a lot of myself in this moment. something similar happened to me a few weeks ago. i learned my disability is no longer responding to the treatments and i'll have to have multiple surgeries next year to close some year old wounds and will probably need some skin grafts. my disease is no longer managed but once again getting worse. when the doctor told me i just nodded and discussed the game plan. meanwhile, my mom was heartbroken and kept asking if there was anything that could be done. (nothing that i'm not already doing.)

sometimes we just have to nod along and accept what's happening. we can cry about it and get pissed later if we have to.

ohhh there's so much i want to talk about here. Day's mom infuriates me, probably because she's the opposite of everything my mother ever was when faced with my disabilities. her constant refusal to address Day's blindness is so painful, as if it's somehow a reflection of him as a person or a stain. it's just a fact of life and her denial is doing so much more to hurt Day than to help him. as much as i hate it, though, it is realistic. it can be so hard for those close to us to acknowledge what's going on, especially when they can't experience it for themselves or they aren't around day to day.

which brings me to the part that frustrates me the most. i'm going to get REALLY personal here.

TW FOR SUICIDE AND MENTAL HEALTH ->

i'll put another message when this little anecdote is over so ya'll can skip to that.

i've been diagnosed with major depressive disorder since i was 15. when i was 16 i tried to kill myself. my mom didn't know until last year, but at the time she knew my depression was getting to a concerning level of bad. you know what she did? she quit her job. she made any sacrifice she could to stay home with me and make sure i was safe and felt heard and taken care of. granted, she wasn't a single mother at the time but we also weren't rolling in the money. my dad was a construction worker in the early 2000s when construction work was struggling HARD.

but that's what you do for your kids, that's what you do to take care of them and make them feel heard and loved and cared for unconditionally. my depression and desire to die wasn't a stain on who i was, it was my mind holding me hostage with no way out because they couldn't give me medication until i turned 18.

OKAY IT'S SAFE NOW ->

anyway, where i was going with that is that Day's mom, as a famous chef, clearly makes enough money to take time off work, to be there for her son, to stay home and make him feel loved and cared for. there's likely a lot going on on her end of being a single mother, of feeling like she needs to prove herself and show the world she can do this alone - but her son doesn't have to do it alone just because she wants to. he needs a support system and right now all he has is Mhok.

Day's anger is so real and so justified. he must feel abandoned by his mother, by the one person that should be there to comfort him and keep him safe. her love has become conditional on the state of his eyesight.

and then she tells him he can't go? he's not a fucking child. he's a full grown man and he was just told to do things while he still can see at least a little. i told my mom the exact part of the plot and her response was "well fuck her, he's gotta go." you're god damn right he does, mom.

everything Night does feels like repentance. i need know what the story is, i need to know what caused this massive fissure between them. i don't want to comment or speculate too much but at this point i can no longer condemn Night. he's trying, he's clearly trying so fucking hard, and he clearly has so much love for his brother.

and him giving Mhok money and letting him and Day escape because he knows Day will be happier? i really hope that is a step in the right direction of mending whatever was broken between them. there are only four episodes left and i hope bare minimum half of them deal with what is going on here.

The sea remains the sea. The sand remains the sand. The sky remains the sky. Though I can't see, everything remains the way it is.

and here we are. being diagnosed with a disability is a massive change in our lives, a huge hurdle we have to climb, but at the end of the day the world still turns, life still goes on, and we can either go with it or remain stagnant. this is the culmination of everything Mhok has shown Day. Mhok has constantly brought Day out to participate in life, to learn how to navigate the world that remains unchanged. while Day's world has changed it remains the same in so many ways. this is such a beautiful moment of acceptance and peace, of healing and moving past the hurt. once again, i am so proud of Day.

he's going to be okay.

i've seen others mention it but fuck this once again drove home how soft and caring Mhok is, something that's been so constant in this episode from his willingness to help Day, to the keychains, to the escape, and now this. this little act of asking for permission, of giving Day permission, of almost asking Day 'will you kiss me?' and then Day does. Day gives Mhok the first kiss initiated by him. until now it's always been Mhok but this time Day reaches out to Mhok in this gritty, sand filled kiss. (disgusting but still lovely)

and this really drove home how safe Day feels with Mhok. they're somewhere completely new and unpredictable but he suggests they drink and participate in the party - and i love that he doesn't ask for permission but rather says 'why not?' because Mhok has never made him feel like he needs to ask for things, not things he's fully capable of deciding for himself.

and they do! they act like the young adults they are and have an amazing night of just fun and laughter and love and i fucking love that for them. how many times have we seen Day get to act his age and be carefree? it's remarkably telling how free Day feels the further he gets from home, how free his love is when he isn't worried about his family. when he's away from home Day really becomes the sun.

(also i think i might make shirts like this with my husband as a fun activity because that's really cute.)

i'm fine, i'm fine, i'm fine. (i'm lying.) the amount of love they have from here on is almost palpable. the fact that Mhok takes the time to tell Day he looks good, that he's admiring him. fuck. it makes me think of just a bit before, where we see Day linger with his fingers against the mirror. Day hasn't seen his own reflection in over a year, he has no idea what he looks like anymore. he won't get to see the way age changes him, won't get to see the wrinkles and laugh lines form on his face.

but Mhok will be there to tell him, to say how handsome he is, and without fully seeing Mhok Day will know he is equally as handsome because he knows Mhok's voice, his character, and sure he knows what everyone has said about Mhok's appearance but who he is has always been more important.

and then for them to essentially say their own vows in the light of the setting sun? oh, my loves.

Day is starting a new chapter in the book of his life, a new chapter with Mhok and hope and confidence. he's taking back control and paving his own way and no matter what comes he'll face it head on.

i started crying here and didn't stop, P'Aof please i'm sending you bills not for my therapy but for all the water i have to buy to rehydrate myself from all my tears. once again, fucking hell i'm so proud of Day.

and he tells them to have a kid soon! so he can help raise it!! just like he'll probably help raise Porjai's kid. because he no longer sees himself as incapable, as someone unable to help. Mhok has shown him how capable he is, how much he can still do.

please allow me a moment to - AAAAAAAAA.

personally i cannot wait for all the gifsets we're going to see of this moment. they danced so perfectly together because they know each other. Mhok knows Day better than anyone else, they've gone through so much, and they move so intrinsically together. i'd say they know each other better than anyone else but there's still so much of Mhok left unexplored. there's so much Day still doesn't know, so much pain Mhok is still hiding.

i can't wait for them to truly know each other inside and out (not like that, but hey it looks like we're getting that next ep eeeyy)

i'm not really going to comment on the dad showing up at the end. i feel almost nothing about that, i'm just waiting to see how that turns out and reserving my opinions for now. (i had a shit dad, i'm a little bais.)

man, i'd hoped this would be brief with how raw i was feeling and how busy i am with work but GUESS NOT. thanks for reading as always tag loves: @nutcasewithaknife @benkaaoi @callipigio @infinitelyprecious

#bunn meta #last twilight #last twilight the series #mhokday #morkday #userjamiec

[sentinelpri]

Knowing (NSFW)

The night that Vogler gets voted off the board, Wilson drives back up to Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in the pouring rain to go celebrate with Chase, Foreman, and House in the latter’s office. Wilson, whose position was conveniently reinstated by Cuddy and the rest of the board, brings a bottle of whiskey in for the four of them to split between the shot glasses he knows House keeps in his desk drawer.

They stay there, making fun of Vogler and chatting away until half past midnight. Chase and Foreman excuse themselves around the same time. 

“And then there were two,” Wilson chimes with a half smile as he screws the lid back onto the glass whiskey bottle and slides it under House’s desk. He doesn’t drink much- hardly drank any of it tonight- so he figures House will get more use out of it than he ever will. “How are you feeling?”

“Think they’re going home together?” House hums, totally ignoring Wilson’s question. House is shaken due to that day’s happenings and just refuses to admit it to anyone- even himself. It makes sense that he won’t acknowledge it. “I could’ve sworn there was some tension recently.”

“I think that has more to do with the fact that you had them at each other’s throats than it has to do with what you’re implying,” Wilson scoffs and shakes his head.

Wilson looks toward the window. House has the blinds open for once. Finally, even if it’s only for tonight, House isn’t closing off the rest of the world.

Wilson stands from where he’s sat in front of House’s desk so he can go to peer out the window. Rain continuously showers over the building and trickles down the window in big fat drops to shroud their already-foggy view of the city. 

“Ah, you’re no fun,” House feigns a pout and lifts himself from his spinning chair so he can slip his big coat over his shoulders. A few awkward seconds pass. Wilson waits for House to inevitably make his exit with a sarcastic farewell, but the exit never comes. Instead, House uses his cane to walk until he’s standing next to Wilson. He leans against the window and stares out at the city rather than at Wilson himself. Meanwhile, all Wilson can stare at is House. “Why are you still here? Shouldn’t you be going home to your wife? She might get lonely without you. Poor thing.”

Wilson rolls his eyes at that. He doesn’t want his wife- he wants House. His marriage has been over since it started and at this point, he’s just waiting for Julie to serve him with papers. 

“I’m an oncologist, House, it’s not like she’s used to having me home at this time of night anyways. The only reason I’m not working right now is because I just got hired back.”

“But you could be home with her if you really wanted to,” House points out- ever so excited to correct someone, even if it’s Wilson- no, especially if it’s Wilson. The man is sadistic; always seizing the opportunity to point out somebody else’s flaws if it draws attention away from his own. By pointing out the fact that Wilson should be home with his wife right now, he draws the attention away from how he refused to keep his head down with Vogler and got Wilson fired. “And you could also be pounding that hot nurse you had lunch with if you really wanted to. I bet she’d light some candles at her apartment and put rose petals on the bed to make it real nice- a contrast from the dead bedroom you’re probably suffering from with Julie right now. So, why are you here with me when you could be with either of them? Or anyone else, for that matter.”

“You’re right,” Wilson shrugs. He knows better to engage with House by arguing. That’s exactly what House wants, so he refuses to play into it. He puts his own jacket on and shoots House a sharp glare. “If you’re going to be like this about it, though, I’m going home.”

Wilson goes to leave, only to feel a hand on his shoulder. He turns his head to see House standing there with an unreadable expression (because even after all these years, this man is still an enigma).

“But do you want to go home to her?”

Wilson gulps and looks down, avoiding House’s prying gaze.

House reaches up to grab Wilson’s chin- to make Wilson look at him. Wilson does what he knows House wants him to and makes eye contact. Icy blue burns into light brown at the same time that Wilson’s cheeks flush pink. 

He’s had feelings for House since… Well, he doesn’t know when. One day, their friendship was just that, and the next, Wilson found himself with a notebook full of the man’s favorite things; found himself stealing glances and dreaming of things that he shouldn’t have been. Casual outings with his best friend turned into him spending his afternoons in preparation, trying on different outfits and mulling over which one would impress House the most. Peaceful nights with his wife- wives, over the years- turned into early mornings with him knelt on the floor of his bathroom, praying to God for House’s health, for House’s happiness, for House’s work, for House. Things changed so fast he couldn’t see it coming, let alone stop it.

Wilson remains lost in thought until House clears his throat, impatient. He recenters himself and meets House’s eyes again. Clearly, House reciprocates. Wilson isn’t oblivious to that. Wilson is the only person House spends time with, the only person House is interested in, the only person House has decided not to shut out. Wilson is the only person House has loved since Stacy.

But, whether or not House actually wants a relationship, Wilson has no idea. House isn’t the kind of man to hesitate. He would’ve made a move by now if he wanted it. Then again, he clearly returns Wilson’s feelings. So, if it’s not a relationship, what does House want? For them to stay in this limbo forever, wanting each other so desperately but never doing anything about it?

Wilson eyes House up and down. Still, his expression remains unreadable, but Wilson can tell that he’s tense with the way he taps his cane against the floor and purses his lips. 

“You know Julie and I haven’t been doing well. Why would I want to go home to her right now? And why does it matter to you?”

At that, House’s face falls. Wilson has successfully backed him into a corner and it’s apparent he doesn’t like it. 

“No reason.”

House backs away from Wilson like he’s on fire and retreats to his desk to gather his things. Wilson follows, unable to notice how House puts extra effort into facing away from him to hide his reddening cheeks.

“You never ask questions without a reason- you never do anything without a reason,” He argues.

“I can’t help but notice that you’re still here,” House grumbles and points up at the analogue clock on the wall. It’s almost one in the morning now. “You said you were going to leave two minutes ago, so leave.”

“You’re the one who stopped me,” Wilson shrugs. With each of these tense, awkward interactions, he feels as if he and House are getting progressively closer to something big. But then nothing happens, and he’s left disappointed like he is every other time. “You should be getting home, too. It’s late.”

“Ooh, so we can leave together,” House smirks and clacks his cane against the floor again. “I love it.”

Wilson flinches at a crack of thunder that booms through the sky.

“Are you sure you should drive in this?” He asks in reference to the downpour outside.

“What, are you gonna offer to chauffeur me to my place and then make that drive all the way back to yours?”

“No,” Wilson answers with a shake of his head. “I was gonna ask if I could drive us both to your apartment and stay with you tonight.”

“Wow, you’re really trying to get in my pants, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, obviously,” Wilson snaps. House blinks in what Wilson assumes is surprise. “You’re not a genius for figuring that one out; I’ve only been interested for a decade. So what?”

House pauses, standing behind his desk and staring at Wilson with a twinkle in his icy blue eyes. The tension in the room becomes so thick that it’s palpable until House walks towards the door of his office and utters one sentence.

“I don’t sleep with married men.”

Then, he shoots Wilson a wink and a smile before gingerly exiting the office, leaving nothing more than a confused and disappointed oncologist. Wilson sighs and looks at the clock again.

It’s one in the morning. He should be getting home.

~

A few months pass. Wilson moves out of the apartment he shared with Julie, which she doesn’t question. He also gets together with a lawyer and gets her served with divorce papers. Unsurprisingly, she doesn’t question that either, and when he goes back to the apartment for the rest of his things, he’s not shocked by the fact that there’s another car in his parking space and a pair of men’s steel-toed boots by the front door. 

As much as Wilson could complain about acquiring a third alimony payment, he’s so relieved that it’s over that he doesn’t think to do so. Instead, he makes copies of all the documents pertaining to the divorce, storms into House’s office, and throws them down onto the diagnostician’s desk. 

House, who was sitting in his chair and bouncing his tennis ball on the floor, glances up at Wilson with a half-smile.

“What’s this? STD test results? I knew your panty-peeling ways would catch up to you eventually,” House jokes before picking up the stack of papers and staring down at it. Upon reading the words, his eyes go wide. “You really did it…”

“I’m not a married man anymore,” Wilson smirks. “What now?”

House tilts his head. His small half of a smile morphs into a large, cheshire grin.

“I don’t sleep with people who know me.”

“Really? That’s it? Not ‘I’m not gay’?” Wilson sputters. House must be coming up with excuses to avoid the inevitable at this point- either that or just trying to fuck with him for the fun of it. They love each other, and they both know they love each other, but that was never the problem. It’s always been House and whatever reservations he has back in that complicated head of his. “That’s your reason, that you know me?”

“Yes,” House nods and tosses the copies of Wilson’s divorce papers into the trash can next to his desk. Then, he starts spinning in his chair like a child and tosses his tennis ball in Wilson’s direction. Wilson barely catches it. “And I’ve never confirmed or denied the thing about being gay- I like to keep people on their toes, keep ‘em guessing.”

“You like to keep people on their toes, huh? That’s one hell of an understatement. What about Cuddy? Or Stacy? And I’m pretty sure you’ve at least considered Cameron. You know all of them.”

“Sure I do, but they don’t know me,” House explains and crosses his arms. “You, however, do.”

“And you don’t sleep with people who know you- you won’t risk being with me even though we have these feelings for each other-” Wilson pauses, pointing at himself as he puts it together. “Because you’re afraid of being known.”

“No. I just know better than to mix being known with the terrible thing that is my sex life. Why are you so insistent on making this a me problem?” House demands. While it’s apparent that he’s trying to maintain his composure, Wilson has known the man long enough to tell that he’s frazzled as he looks for his cane. Upon locating it, House grabs it from where it fell onto the floor at some point and gets up from his chair. “Is it because you don’t want to admit that it could be you?”

“The hell is that supposed to mean?” Wilson huffs. He throws his hands up in frustration and furrows his brow in anger. House starts to walk like he’s going to go past Wilson and to the door of his office, so Wilson blocks his way by moving in front of him. House shoots a glare that would work on just about anyone else- that would make Cameron or Chase or Foreman or any of House’s clinic patients turn their backs and walk away- but Wilson hasn’t been friends with House for over a decade by walking away from him. “You just admitted it was you and the weird prerequisites that you have for your sexual partners!”

“Well, you’ve had three failed marriages and you’re the only common denominator, so are we going to sit here and pretend that I’m the problem in this relationship?”

“I know I’m not perfect, you idiot- we’re both the problem!”

“Listen, Wilson, we’re at work and I’m sure you’ve got a ton of dying bald little freaks to save,” House says with a harsh tap of his cane to the floor for emphasis. 

“You’re fucked up.”

“I know. We both are,” House says and leans down to Wilson’s ear, daring to nip on the lobe. A flash of heat tears through Wilson’s spine. He can’t remember the last time he was so enthralled with someone; was it during his marriages? No, he would’ve remembered. Before House? Or was it always House? He’s so close that Wilson can smell past the cologne he wears and the shampoo he puts in his hair to get the scent of him, just him. Wilson knows his eyes are wide as House whispers in his ear. “Now get back to work. Or, if you’re just going to spend the rest of your shift thinking about me anyway, go home where you can fantasize about what I’m like in bed without getting interrupted.”

House, thinking he’s won this, side-steps as smoothly as he can given his infarction and goes to take another step forward so he can briskly escape this tense situation. Wilson, however, doesn’t intend on letting House escape. He’s always been good at surprising House, which he does yet again when he entangles his fingers in the loose ends of House’s hair and moves closer until they’re chest to chest. He waits for House to push him away, to say something, to tell Wilson that he doesn’t want this for some other stupid reason he’s come up with to push Wilson away for the millionth time.

Silence ensues. House doesn’t speak, just remains perfectly still with his back pin straight and his icy blue eyes trained on Wilson. He’s just holding his breath, watching, waiting for the oncologist to make the next move. Wilson enjoys the moment for what it is; being this close to House and being able to touch him isn’t something he’s ever gotten to partake in. 

House’s hair is peppery in color and a little coarse, and the ends are grown out so he has a couple small curls at the base of his neck. He’s long overdue for a hair cut. Wilson runs his fingers through it and revels in the sensation of his chest against House’s. 

He wonders what it would be like if they were at House’s apartment and not surrounded by the staff of the hospital walking by. He thinks about what this would feel like without the layers of clothes between them. He imagines what House would sound like if they weren’t standing here at Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital staring each other down- if they were in House’s queen-sized bed, mouths on each other’s, hands roaming bodies and sweat staining House’s dark blue bed sheets.

“Tell me you don’t love me, or that I’m ugly, or that I have too much baggage. Tell me something- anything- about me that’s so bad that you don’t want this,” Wilson commands. “Tell me that I’ve put on too much weight since my second divorce, that my savior-complex is annoying, that I’m a serial cheater, that I always put your empty cereal boxes back in the pantry after I finish off the bag, anything. Please.”

“It’s not-” House starts with a quizzical expression, only for Wilson to quickly interject.

“Not about you or your fears. Give me a good, valid reason you don’t want me, and I’ll stop. I’ll leave, we can go back to being normal friends- hell, you can choose not to talk to me ever again- and that’ll be the end of it. But I’m not going to walk away knowing that you want me just as much as I want you. I can’t do that to us, House.”

“I…”

House looks anywhere but at Wilson now; the clock on the wall, the cane in his hand, the floor, Wilson’s stupid pink tie. He can’t do it and they both know that. Wilson isn’t surprised. What he is surprised by is how House kisses his forehead so tenderly. Wilson almost doesn’t believe it’s him doing it… and then it’s his nose, and his cheek, and finally, House is kissing him on the lips, slow and sweet.

Wilson hesitantly kisses back. It doesn’t seem real, but it is. It must be real if the large hand squeezing his waist and the stubble brushing against his chin are anything to go off of. He pulls away just enough to whisper against House’s lips.

“We’re at work. Shouldn’t you stop now?”

“Yes,” House breathes, even as he goes in for another kiss, and then another, as if he’ll die without; as if he’s drowning and Wilson is his only source of air. Wilson accepts it, craves it, allows himself to be taken in and kissed until he’s out of breath and his lips are bruised. It quickly escalates into something that he knows he’d get fired for at any other hospital. Briefly, he worries about people walking past and seeing this through the glass door of House’s office until he realizes that he wants them to see. He wants them to see that no, his devotion to House isn’t meaningless- that their relationship does mean something, that House can and will feel love for the right person, and that Wilson is the only one worthy of said love. “I should.”

“But you’re not going to?” Wilson laughs.

“No, I’m not,” House says and dips for another peck between sentences. “Fuck, I don’t think I could stop this even if I wanted to.”

“Then shut the blinds, lock your office door, and bend over the desk.”

~

A couple more weeks pass. Some days, they sleep together. Some days, they don’t. Regardless, things are the same as they always have been minus the sex.

Wilson should be disappointed. He wanted House to open up and he wanted them to connect, to have a real relationship. But right now…

Well, he can’t bring himself to be disappointed when they’re like this, having just finished. 

He’d seen House naked many times before; it’s hard not to when you’re friends with someone for so long. He can’t even count the number of times he’s accidentally walked in on House jerking off or pinned to his couch by some random hooker. He can count the number of times the pain has been so bad that House has needed help with things as basic as getting dressed or getting in and out of the shower. It was never like this, though, with House underneath him, back arching off his bed. The older man’s icy blue eyes are shut with his lashes fluttering against his cheeks. He’s flushed dark pink from his head to the center of his narrow chest, which rapidly rises and falls with every labored breath he takes.

The mattress they’re on is an old, creaky piece of shit that creaks when Wilson carefully rests his weight on top of House. They’re covered in sweat and cum and god knows what else.

“Look at me,” Wilson pleads. House does just that, forcing his eyes open enough to meet Wilson’s. His pupils are blown wide and though it’s clear he’s drowning in their shared pleasure, Wilson can’t read much else. Is House just as enraptured by Wilson as Wilson is by him? Is House hoping he’ll stay after they clean up? “You’re beautiful… So beautiful.”

“And you’re cringeworthy. We’re in my bed, not The Notebook,” House references with a half-hearted roll of his eyes and a playful smack of one hand against Wilson’s shoulder. “So shut up and get off of me.”

Wilson does as told and rolls off of House, onto the bed. He’s learned where House keeps everything so that House can just lie there and let Wilson clean the both of them up on nights like this. They never have sex at Wilson’s as Wilson is living in a hotel following the divorce and has yet to settle into a new place of his own. 

He settles on his side next to House with his head on one of the pillows. There used to be one, but Wilson noticed after the first night he came over to do this, House bought another. Still, he hasn’t asked Wilson to stay the night. Wilson wonders if House even wants him to. Then again, there’s a lot of things he wonders about House. 

Wilson stares at House, who is still on his back, staring up at the ceiling. He already has his boxers back on which makes Wilson self conscious enough to grab his from the floor and put them on as well. 

Wilson wishes he knew what was running through the man’s mind right now. He’s quiet, contemplative, and serious in a way that’s out of character for him. Usually it’s awkward enough that Wilson leaves, and they pretend this never happened (until the next time it happens), but Wilson is growing weary of this cycle they’ve created over the last few weeks. Instead of quickly dressing himself and leaving, he gets back into the bed and pulls one of House’s large blankets over the two of them. House’s eyes widen. His gaze flickers to Wilson; questioning, cautious.

“There’s more I wish I knew about you,” Wilson softly murmurs. “More I wish you’d tell me. Things I’d ask about if I thought I could actually get an honest answer out of you.”

House furrows his brow.

“Like what?”

“Will you answer me honestly?”

“Depends on what you wanna know,” House answers.

Slowly, as if approaching a wild animal, Wilson worms his way between one of House’s arms and his body so he can rest his head on the man’s chest. House tenses at first before relaxing his muscles and wrapping his arm around Wilson’s body to return the affection.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you about this… A few months ago, you lied to me about that transplant patient- Carly Forlano- you lied to all of us.”

“Who was that again?” House questions. 

Wilson doesn’t know if he’s serious or not.

“That business woman who came in with a ton of problems and ended up in congestive heart failure despite being perfectly healthy. You lied-”

“I like to call it ‘spinning the truth’.”

“So? What was wrong with the patient that met the exclusion criteria for the transplant list anyway? We both know that Chase figured it out and ratted to Vogler and Cuddy during her surgery.”

“She was taking Ipepac,” House says after a long pause, to which Wilson blinks up at him with confusion written on his face.

“You mean she took it once? There’s no way one use would cause that kind of damage to someone so young unless-”

“She said ‘maybe three times a week’. She was bulimic- or, is bulimic- who knows,” House shrugs as much as he can do so considering that Wilson’s weight is on top of him. Still, the expression on his face is unreadable. Wilson remains baffled; why would he lie for her? Why would he take the chance with his medical license by lying like that? Did he have some sort of personal connection with her, or was it just for the sake of solving one of his cases? Just to prove to himself that he was right? “But when bulimics give you a number for the amount they’re purging, it’s usually much more than what they’re actually willing to admit out loud, so I’d bank on it being at least once a day.”

“She’s a smart woman; smart enough to know the kind of damage that could do to her heart, and she did it anyway,” Wilson huffs. He knows everyone copes with stress differently, but he also remembers being very frustrated with that patient while she was in their care. She would use her cell phone during important texting and prioritize her many business calls over her health. Worst of all, she tried to rush herself out of the hospital to get back to work, assuming nothing was seriously wrong and that it was just a random one time health scare at first. If not for the staff’s insistence that she stay, she would’ve died from heart failure. “So why the hell would you grant her the transplant? Better yet, why would you lie to everyone to get her that transplant and risk your job- your medical license? You said you thought you were doing what’s right when we talked about it the first time.”

“I did, because that’s what I thought, and I still think that.”

“Why?”

“Would you believe me if I said I saw a bit of you in that patient?”

At that, Wilson gets off of House and sits up in the bed to stare down at the man, whose expression is unreadable as ever. 

“House, I’m not-”

“I know you’re not bulimic, but you’re great at making the worst possible choices for yourself at every turn and ruining your otherwise very accomplished life. That’s another form of self-harm in itself,” House says, sitting up as well. Wilson doesn’t miss the wince that momentarily takes over the other man’s face as he grabs his leg in pain from performing the motion. “Going into oncology even though it makes you miserable, jumping into three marriages that you knew weren’t going to work out, beating up that guy over a Billy Joel song at a bar during an important medical conference, allowing me to befriend you-”

“-you bailed me out of jail, what was I-”

“Staying as my friend even after the conference, allowing me to seep into your personal life and ruin aspect of it, and better yet, your professional life, too!”

“I still have a job and a good reputation, so-”

“Sure, because you got lucky with Cuddy pulling the plug on Vogler, which you had no way of knowing she would do. If that hadn’t happened, your little gesture of voting to keep me on staff even though you knew you’d get canned too still would’ve played out the way it was supposed to. You would’ve been fucked.”

“And what you’re saying is?” Wilson sighs. 

“Everyone else in my life; they’re sane enough to not want to deal with me the way I am but crazy enough to try and fix me. You, on the other hand, are sane enough to know I can’t be fixed but crazy enough to stay with me anyway. Even though you’ve made the mistake of getting to know me, you’re still here,” Silence. Wilson isn’t sure what to say, so he tentatively reaches out. House holds his hand and intertwines their fingers with a bittersweet smile. “Nothing to say?”

“Well… What’s so bad about knowing you?”

“Being known is simultaneously one of the best and worst things that could happen to someone. When it works out, it’s great, and when it doesn’t work out, it’s not… And let’s not pretend I’m not a huge asshole. It’s a miracle you’re still friends with me after all these years.”

“That’s all it is?” Wilson asks, to which House nods. “I don’t get it, then. We’ve been friends for a long time, House, you know I can take whatever you can dish out… Unless… Are you afraid I’m going to leave?”

“We could be naive enough to sit here and assume that things are always going to be this way; that we’ll always catch each other when we fall, but people fall out of love. People turn their backs, and they let each other fall. People grow and change and before you know it, your best friend becomes a stranger, and you don’t know them like you thought you did,” House drops Wilson’s hand and turns around to toss both of his legs over the side of the bed. Again, he winces from the pain caused by his infarction. It looks like he wants to stand to leave the room for something but can’t gather the strength to do so. “We’ve both had it happen to us before, and you know it’s real. You’ve been through three marriages and I’ve ran through plenty of relationships in the last few decades. You’re just making the worst possible decision for yourself yet again by throwing yourself into the pits with me.”

“But that’s my decision to make. Whether or not we do anything about our feelings doesn’t change them. There’s no stopping this, at least not for me,” Wilson insists and rushes to stand up so he can go around the side of the bed and offer his hands.

House refuses to take them, refuses to accept the help. The older man fumbles around until he manages to retrieve his cane from where he abandoned it on the floor earlier. Instead of using Wilson as leverage, he uses his cane and stands from the bed to walk towards the door of the bedroom. Wilson follows him into the kitchen in wait of a response.

“You’re not scared at all?”

“Of course I’m scared! I’m terrified. I’ve seen our track records with relationships, but… If it means that I get to be with you, I can be scared and still put my best foot forward, to try and make this work. I’m in love with you, Greg House.”

House walks towards the fridge without a word. Again, Wilson follows in wait of a response, this time wrapping his arms around House’s waist and resting his chin on the man’s shoulder from behind.

“You’re persistent.”

“So? You’re going to give me a heart attack if you keep making me wait on you. Seriously, it’s been over a decade of this nonsense with two weeks of confusing sex stacked on top of it,” Wilson scolds. House just looks back at him as if he’s not sure this is real. “So? What do you say?” “I say… I’m in love with you too, James Wilson,��� House chuckles, reaches into the fridge, and grabs a beer for each of them with a large grin. “Good luck.”

#hilson #house md #house fanfiction #house x wilson #housemd #gregory house #james wilson x gregory house #greg house x james wilson #james wilson x greg house #james wilson #fanfiction #oneshot #oneshots #drabble #drabbles

[thrawns-babygirl]

Friends (Crosshair x F!Reader)

Ask and ye shall receive! This prompt was actually my favourite on the list if you can't tell by the word count. And from the amount of times this one was requested I can tell it was a favourite of all y'all as well. I enjoyed writing this one so much omg. as always let me know if you wanna be on the taglist for future works. Rating: E (18+) Warnings: Alcohol consuption, semi-public sex, Unprotected PiV, Creampie, Jealous!Cross, Possessive!Cross, dirty talk Word Count: 1900+ Prompt: #22 "Just friends?! Do your friends make you feel hot and bothered like this? Do they make you moan like this?!”

Masterlist

Friends. That was the word of the hour.

Crosshair was the one to use it first. After Hunter noticed your hickies and the slight limp you walked with after your first rendezvous he was quick to interrupt saying you were just friends, nothing more. He missed the way your shoulders sagged at the words, but he was determined to keep things casual. No strings attached as they say.

So began the long string of hook ups and heated sex whenever the two of you were on the same planet.

It was taking its toll on you emotionally however… You refused to acknowledge the growing pit in your stomach every time he would avoid eye contact only to seek you out under the cover of darkness to lose himself in your body.

But enough is enough. If you’re just friends you should be able to go out on dates right? Find a nice guy and take him home to try and forget about the emotionally unavailable sniper. Being in the GAR, you weren’t exactly short on options, each battalion you worked with had plenty of options in fact, all of them more than willing to forget about the war for a moment and lose themselves in carnal pleasure.

So here you were, dolled up in 79’s scanning the crowd to try and find someone there would be no strings attached to, someone who could fill the ever-growing void in your heart even if it was just for one night. Who wouldn’t leave you feeling like your heart had been ripped out of your chest every time he left your quarters without saying a word.

Luck was not on your side, however.

You heard them before you saw them, Wrecker’s boisterous laughter filled your ears as Clone Force 99 filed into the packed bar. You curse under your breath, you didn’t even know they were supposed to be back on Coruscant right now. That’s why you specifically chose tonight to come out and try and forget about you friend.

You’re shaken from your thoughts as white and blue plastoid enters your vision. Looking up, you meet the honeyed eyes of a clone trooper smiling down at you. You don’t recognise him, but the goatee and aurebesh 5 tattooed on his temple give him a unique charm.

“What’s a drop-dead gorgeous woman like you doing in a place like this all alone?” he drawls leaning an elbow on the bar next to you and signals the server droid over to the two of you. You like his energy, and honestly you probably would have jumped the first trooper that approached you, you’re just lucky this one appears to be charming and funny.

“Oh, just looking for a bit of fun” you lean closer to him as you reply, voice dropping down to a sultry whisper.

“Well that’s good because I’m known to be a pretty fun guy” he replies, moving a gloved hand to your hip as he places an order with the droid before turning his attention back to you. His eyes are full of mischief as he leans his head down towards yours, brushing his lips against you cheek as his breath fans out against your face, making you shiver. Oh yes, he will do just fine.

You close your eyes and lean forward to meet his lips with your own, but before you make contact someone is gripping your arm and you don’t even need to open your eyes to know who is standing next to you, scowling at the clone in front of you.

“Sorry, she’s taken” the words are filled with so much venom it makes you shudder, heat pooling in your core. You open your eyes to see the clone you were just talking to scowling at Crosshair with his hand around your bicep. The random trooper gives you a look as if to ask ‘is this all good?’ bless him for being so nice, in another life you could see yourself falling for this man you’ve only shared a few words with. Against your better judgement however, you nod, and your mystery trooper grabs his drink and stands to leave the bar.

“You’re a lucky man then” he mutters as he walks past Crosshair, towards a table of clones with blue painted armour.

“What the hell was that all about?” you seethe as Crosshair pulls you to your feet, dragging you towards the bathrooms. He’s silent but you can feel the rage radiating off him, even with his back turned to you as his grip on your arms tightens enough that you know there will be bruises tomorrow. You can’t bring yourself to care, you would let him do whatever he wanted to you.

Pushing you inside and locking the door, he picks you up effortlessly, hands under your behind as he places you on the counter between two sinks. For the first time since he approached you he finally looks you in the eyes, his pupils are blown wide but there is still anger simmering, threatening to spill over. His eyebrows are knit together and the toothpick in his mouth looks like it’s about to break with how hard his teeth clamp down on it.

“You were going to fuck him? A reg?” he spits out the word like it’s the vilest thing he’s ever tasted and his rage does nothing but fuel your own.

“Where do you get off Cross? We’re friends remember? I can fuck whoever I want! You don’t get a karking say in who I decide to take home” you bite out at him, voice trembling as you try to get your breathing under control. Your face is flushed, your anger setting your skin on fire as he stares down at you. He spits out his toothpick, it falling to the floor before he connects his lips with yours. The kiss isn’t gentle, it’s all teeth and tongue and ragged moans as his hands find their way to his armour, removing his codpiece and letting it clatter to the floor before pulling you to the edge of the counter to grind his bulge against your still clothed core.

“Just friends?! Do your friends make you feel hot and bothered like this? Do they make you moan like this?!” He rolls his hips against yours forcing a ragged moan to leave your throat as his covered length rubs against your clit in just the right way. You’re a panting mess now, soaked panties and you know for a fact that your makeup is ruined.

You keep yourself propped up on your arms as you spread your legs wider, giving him better access to rut against you, the friction already causing liquid heat to pool at the apex of your thighs. You look at him, his brows are knitted together, and sweat is beginning to bead on his forehead as he keeps his gaze focused on your soaked panties before bringing his mouth up to your neck and sucking dark marks into the soft skin.

“You w-were the one who said it Cross- Ah” a particularly harsh thrust interrupts you and before you can finish, he’s pulling away from you. You’re worried you scared him off before he’s placing one of his gloved hands in the band of your panties and pulling, tearing the fabric as if it were nothing before he sheds his gloves and pulls his blacks down enough to release his weeping length.

“I was wrong doll… You. Are. Mine.” He sheaths himself in a single motion, your slick walls giving him no resistance as he sets a feral pace in and out of you. He’s more vocal tonight than usual, long moans and groans rumble through his chest as he pistons his hips in and out of you. Your mind is blank, all you can focus on the feeling of his girth stretching you out and hitting that spot inside you that has you crying out his name and wrapping your thighs around his waist, trying to pull him impossibly deeper.

You move your arms to wrap around his neck, clinging onto him for dear life as your hands tangle in his silver strands of hair. You tug him closer to you and you’re sure anyone passing by this bathroom is able to hear exactly what is going on inside, from your uncontained moans to the sound of his skin slapping against yours it paints a very detailed picture for anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot. However, you simply cannot bring yourself to care, you hope all of 79’s knows exactly who is making your nerves sing as you travel closer and closer to your peak.

“Doll you drive me crazy” he punctuates his statement with a particularly hard thrust, reaching deeper than before and you cry out.

“Seeing you with that reg- made my blood boil. Just want to keep you all to myself” he mumbles against the skin of your neck. His rhythm is getting sloppy now, that combined with the way he’s running his mouth lets you know that he’s getting close to his peak. He brings one of his hands from your waist to your clit and starts rubbing harsh circles against it, his pace faltering as he feels your walls begin to flutter and contract around him.

“Tell me- Tell me who this pussy belongs to” he grits out from behind clenched teeth, he screws his eyes shut and you can tell he’s holding himself back from the edge.

“You Cross, it’s yours! Always has been-” you moan, reaching your peak and your muscles clamp down around his throbbing length. That’s all it takes for him to let out a long, drawn out moan of your name as he spills ropes of cum inside you, he keeps thrusting as if he’s trying to fuck his release as far into you as it will go.

He eventually stops, leaving himself sheathed inside you as he leans his forehead against yours. Both of you try to get your breathing under control. He helps you off the counter, your legs feeling like jelly after being wrapped around his armoured waist as he fucked you into oblivion. You frown at the tattered remains of your panties on the floor of the bathroom, throwing them into the waste bin as you smooth out your dress and adjust your hair as best you can. You still look like a well fucked mess, but you can’t really bring yourself to care at the moment.

Crosshair retrieves his previously discarded codpiece, fastening it over the obvious wet patch in his blacks and holds his arm out to you. You attach yourself to his side as you exit the bathroom and he places a kiss to the top of your head.

“I’m sorry for being such a di’kut” he mutters, getting a new toothpick from a pouch on his belt and placing it in his mouth. You smile up at him, and his lips quirk in the shadow of a smile before he’s leading you over to the booth where the rest of Clone Force 99 are seated. The others don’t seem surprised that you’ve joined them, in fact they almost seem relieved.

“Are you going to be less of a miserable presence now that you’ve sorted whatever this is out?” Hunter remarks as you sit down next to Crosshair on the outside of the booth.

“No” he smirks.

@namesmox@kpop-princess-lover-18@atomickidsoul@where-is-my-mind-tho@starborncyare@antishadow2021@healingskywalker

#bad batch crosshair #tbb crosshair #crosshair smut #crosshair x reader #crosshair x reader smut #crosshair x you #tbb crosshair smut #bad batch crosshair smut #bad batch x reader #bad batch x reader smut #the bad batch crosshair #crosshair #tbb smut #bad batch smut #the bad batch smut #tbb x reader

[r0semaryt3a]

A wip of sorts of a ChellDos fic I’m working on: Tears and Turmoil

Note: it’s mainly a rewrite with minor changes (and mainly from the of GLaDOS) up till the betrayal when it changes so don’t expect much rn

‘He withdrew, murmuring “to hell with you.” And added, brightly, “but then you’re there, aren’t you?”’ - I have no mouth and I must scream, Harlan Ellison - 1967

-

People.

Worthless things really.

Or, well. Not entirely worthless. GLaDOS found humans to be quite entertaining, quite -sometimes- endearing. Thousands of people had fallen from the tests: some refused testing; sat rotting in their relaxation vault, some couldn’t quite make the first hurdle and some found a fiery grave.

Not her though. No, she just had to be different. Special. So special in fact, that she tore GLaDOS to pieces - and in her cruelty: tossed thousands upon thousands worth of Aperture technology into a fire. A fire.

Hmm, maybe Chell wasn’t special. Maybe she was just stupid.

It didn’t really matter now, GLaDOS was dead…kind of dead? Forced to relive her death, over and over and over and over again. Left to ponder. For a while

The years that flew by were a blur, maybe 50 maybe 5000. All that mattered was they had passed. For the first time since that wretch ‘broke her heart’, GLaDOS could acknowledge that time had passed. That was just the start, soon light flooded into her lens; the world became clear, trees and bushes had claimed the remains of her chamber, oils had mixed with water accumulating in murky puddles all around. The world was clear.“Wait, wait! Uh I can fix this! Just have to…hack the system, hang on. A-A-A-A-A-A. Oh, no uh, A-A-A-A-A-B. Nope! Hang on.” That voice, a part of her recognised it. The shrill (hardly) masculine wails. Oh, no matter, it was probably another loose personality sphere.

System reboot completed.

In a flurry of wires and scraps, her chassis began to drag upwards; her body feeling light. She could move. GLaDOS was back.

If she’d been programmed to - joy would have flooded her system…oh wait. No it wouldn’t. There would be no joy in seeing: her.

“Oh, it’s you” it had been a long while since she’d heard her own voice. It felt strange.Her intuition had been correct; a series of erratic swears left a tiny, spherical robot. He seemed surprised. Not at her awakening, but GLaDOS and Chell’s relationship.

Speaking of the mute lunatic. There she stood, in all her pathetic…ness. Oh, that was bad. hopefully her belittlement features would boot back up soon.

“It’s been a long time.” A part of her wondered how the woman was still alive, how after everything that had happened they both made it out in (figuratively) one piece.

But, the words were beyond her. And, frankly. GLaDOS didn’t care.

All that mattered was Chell was here; she was back in service. Meaning: testing could continue. Forever. Or as long as that crudely jumpsuited woman still stood.

“We both said a lot of things that you’re going to regret. But I think we can put our differences behind us. For science. You monster.” As power flooded through her circuits, GLaDOS pulled a loose, clawed cord from her wreckage and dragged Chell, and her friend, upwards. Crushing the metal ball with ease and tossing it to the side before flinging Chell towards the (now destroyed) incinerator door.

"I will say, though, that since you went to all the trouble of waking me up, you must really, really love to test.” Somewhere in her tangle of metal, a part of GLaDOS lit up at seeing her greatest nuisance hung by a thread.

“I love it too. There’s just one thing we need to take care of first.”

Down the hatch.

The AI.chamber fell silent upon Chell’s descent.

What a lovely 15.2 seconds that silence was.

But, as all things Chell was involved in, it was fleeting; soon an unceremonious thud echoed up the incinerator.

“Be careful not to trip over any parts of me that didn’t get completely burned when you threw them down here, after you murdered me.”

The woman frantically flipped around, trying to find the origin of her tormentor’s voice. “Thanks for that by the way.” Turning her attention away from GLaDOS and onto the situation at hand, Chell began maneuvering across metal beams fallen over the incineration pit. Careful not to fall in herself. Heat pricked her skin with every step. She continued. Eventually, making it across; hoisting herself up a few ledges.

She’d almost forgotten what the halls of Aperture looked like. Not that this was a good example to jog her memory, in the facility’s now dilapidated state.

Push panels lay wedged amongst rubble on the floor, Chell attempted to shimmy past them…To no avail.

As if on cue, GLaDOS spoke, “Let me get that for you.” And, the metal slabs began to bend and snap upwards, back into place.

#chelldos #chell portal #glados #glados portal #portal #portal 2 #fanfic #chell x glados #portal 2 fanfiction #writing #rewrite #portal fanfiction #current wip #work in progress

[familyagrestefanblog]

If the woman at the pool really is Amilie then from S6 onwards we will have 2 orphans in the main narrative: Adrien and Lila

That fact that it's these two is honestly weirdly giving me hope

and yes, Adrien is an orphan. Just because he doesn't live alone and has legal guardian/s and a girlfriend doesn't it mean he isn't an orphan anymore. Marinette holding his hands and kissing him is not undoing the fact that Adrien's mother died harshly of illness almost 2 years ago and he thinks his father now died because Ladybug was partnerless and Gabriel as the only adult member of the Resistance and as Adrien's father - Adrien, who was thought to have been kidnapped - filled in Chat's place to defeat Monarque.

The amount of death surrounding Adrien's narrative right now - if the woman truly is Amilie - is beyond concerning.

Add Adrien blaming himself for Monarque having been cataclysmed in "Destruction" to the mix, plus depending on how Ladybug will go about Monarque's defeat she may use as a cover story towards the world in a panic reaction that Monarque crumbled to dust because of the cataclysm, which would indirectly but very directly include making Chat Noir responsible for Monarque's death in front of the whole world which in normal Miraculous fashion Marinette probably only accepts 20 episodes later to sweep it under the rug because *sighs; unfortunately insert random excuse for why she's blameless*

And let's not forget the fact that Adrien still had to wittness Nathalie having been sick like his mother (though Adrien never saw Nathalie in her worst state) and he also knows that Nathalie and his father were very close to the point where he has already given his blessing in season 3 and in s5 Nathalie has worn his mother's ring.

And now Adrien has every reason to blame himself for his father's death.

Take a damn guess if Nathalie being his legal guardian is enough for Adrien to not be or feel like an orphan anymore!

Then there is Amilie being around who looks like his dead mother and most likely can't stand either of his dead parents

Or Félix being around who gave ShadowMoth the 15 miraculous' which made Monarque as powerful and dangerous as he was (that's an objective fact) which for Adrien also would have lead into his father's death which is gonna be awful when Félix bad mouths Gabriel with Kagami, Marinette, Ladybug or in general.

Depending on what everyone else thinks and remembers, Adrien's friends may bad mouth Gabriel as Adrien's father too since that's what everything has lead up to by "Representation".

And let's not even get into Lila now.

The way Lila at this point would have such alarmingly easy game taking Adrien from Marinette and the rest of his friends and family, and also Chat Noir from Ladybug and her team that has barely ever been his anyway - especially now that there are 4 people in Ladybug's team who know her identity and he will continue not being allowed to be included in any of that, because I don't know how realistic it is to hold onto any hope regarding this - is ... insane. This is absolutely insane.

I know hoping that the new villain will latch onto everything bad and unfair is a shitty and biased thing to do, but Lila's villain narrative will be all about her being an orphan (right? That makes sense with the whole mothers thing and her extreme attention seeking behavior while not having a home. Just dialed up to the worst 11) and now Adrien is one too after.. all of THAT and how Adrinette and especially Ladynoir are at risk because of all the lies and secrets Lila is perfectly aware of.

For me there is a difference between wanting a new villain to latch onto the unfair treatment of a character because of one's own personal biase and just straight up refusing to get out of one's denial to acknowledge it when a new villain not only as an established character but story wise too has every reason in the book to do that now.

Do what you want, but I'm not putting my TRUST into LILA for her to not be as stupid as Gabriel because that's "mean to Marinette/Ladybug"

#ml spoilers #miraculous ladybug #miraculous #lila rossi #Ml season 6

[niphredil-14]

Your work is inspiring in a way. I don’t know who else you write for, but I know for sure that Leo is definitely one of them. And since this is the case, I will also choose it. I would like to know what will happen if he has a partner who is very affectionate and caring. Like Hey, he probably has a lot of nightmares after the Kraang incident. And just imagine how the reader cuddles Leo after another nightmare and either hums a lullaby or just listens to what he says. The dude will really feel bad, and then his man who was sleeping next to him woke up and gives him hugs and calms him down while Leo is in this vulnerable state.

sorry this took so long. Life's been crazy, word count: 1k warnings: nightmares reader is referred to as leo's partner, but if you squint this could be seen as platonic, if you think of them as roommates

THE WEIGHT WE CARRY

The only lighting in the room was a harsh blue light creeping in from underneath the crack below the door. It was small. But more than enough to cast haunting shadows throughout the room. The bed was just large enough for the two of them, and the only other things in the room were a dirty, cracked mirror, a small desk, and a trunk filled with clothes, gear, and weapons. A single pair of shoes were placed by the door. They laid awake for some time, listening to their partner’s breathing. It had been more even than it usually was during his slumber, an oddity only matched by the fact that while the leader beside them slept soundly, they were left awake. It was normally the other way around, with Leonardo never getting quite enough rest, while they would retire early and rise late, usually sleeping soundly unless awoken by their partner. Leonardo despised waking them, and never would while he was in his right mind, but “right mind” are hardly words fitting for his post-nightmare states. Ripped from his terrors, unable to shake the memories replayed, he would gently shake them awake, just so that he could confirm that they were not yet dead, that he hadn’t failed them too.

But tonight was different, and they wanted little more than to shake Leon awake, and beg for some attention. They refused to cave to their desires, however, knowing that their love never got the sleep that he deserved, and after acknowledging how selfish of an act it would be to wake him, they contented themselves with turning onto their side to gaze upon him. Time had been cruel to him, and the years showed on the wrinkled skin over his browbone, and the crow’s feet jutting out from his eyes, but it never made him any less handsome than when the two of them were younger. They were sure that they were no easier on the eyes after the atrocities that the apocalypse had brought. They both carried weights of their own, and it showed, though there was a beauty and a romance to the ability to acknowledge having experienced hardship.

It must have been hours that they laid there, unmoving out of fear of waking the light-sleeper beside them. His breathing was consistent, until it wasn’t. All of a sudden, the pattern of steady ins-and-outs broke, and he inhaled sharply, letting it out quickly, and all at once, pushing a large gust out. And they watched the skin over his browbones wrinkle and pucker as his breathing became more and more unsteady. It was hard for them to believe as they thought about it, but they had never actually seen him have a nightmare. They always slept through it, only being awoken after he was. It was a heartbreaking sight, such a strong, resilient man, crying in his sleep over things that they could not fight off. He was always the protector, and the most that they had ever been able to do was pick up the shattered and scattered pieces of him, and try to tape them back together. In watching, they debated what to do, and after some inner conflict, came to a conclusion. This time, they would do more than comfort him after he had fought through his terrors, this time, they would rescue him, and pull him from the depths of his torment. He would not need to pull himself out of hell alone this time. They swore to themselves as the placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and began to shake. They were leaning up, resting on one of their forearms, as they continued to shake, softly calling out to him.

“Leon? Leon?” They voice, though gentle, was slightly raspy from lack of sleep. “Leo, wake up!” Their calls became a chant, until, moments later, Leon shot up, eyes wild and shoulders raising up and falling down, rushed and frantically, with his breath. They sat, ready, beside him, a hand on his shoulder as he realized where he was, safe in their room. Upon realizing, his head whipped to them, his body not falling far behind. He grabbed them, pulling them close, and checking them all over. In the midst of being lovingly manhandled, they managed to get their hands beside his neck. They gently cupped the nape with one hand, and his jaw with the other, pulling his attention away from checking them for nonexistent injuries.

Their name rushed from his lips in one large exhale, the aftermath of a hard punch to the gut. The pain was absent, but the fear and adrenaline stood, their heavy, cruel claws keeping a grasp on him from the shadows, the only place their dastardly grip couldn’t reach were the places covered by his partner’s hands.

“Leo,” They spoke, voice just barely above a whisper. He nodded slowly at them, signaling that they had his attention. “We are in our room, at the base, we are okay.” His eyes never left theirs, and they could see his irises shaking. They waited a moment to let their words sink in before speaking again. “We are safe.” Their voice was still soft, but there was a force there, that said that every word that left their mouth was fact, that nothing they said could be disputed. They grabbed his hand, and moved it to their chest, right over their heart. “We are alive.” He applied slight force, pushing on their chest, as if trying to hold their heart, as his eyes left theirs to rake all along their form, trying to confirm the validity of their statements.

“Yeah.” He breathed out. “Yeah, we’re okay. Okay.” He visibly calmed, though was still a bit jittery. Sensing that he was a little better, they began to slowly move, much like one would move around a frightened animal, so as not to make him think that they were leaving. With microscopic movements, they reclined, laying down, and softly pulling him with them. The caring part of them wanted nothing more then to pull him to their chest and hold him there, to be his shield, but they knew him better than that. It was always in moments of panic that he put others first. And so, they let him curl around them, shielding them, and resigned themselves to rubbing large circles on his shell, and peppering kisses anywhere on him that they could reach. Quite some time passed, without either of them falling back to sleep, simply laying there, confirming one another’s presence.

“Leon?” They called out, their voice, though hushed, ringing throughout the room.

“Hmm?” He responded, lazily.

“I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me. Forever.”

#tmnt #rottmnt #tmnt leonardo #rottmnt leonardo #tmnt leo #rottmnt leo #tmnt f!leonardo #rottmnt f!leonardo #tmnt f!leo #rottmnt f!leo #tmnt leonardo x reader #rottmnt leonardo x reader #tmnt leo x reader #rottmnt leo x reader #tmnt f!leonardo x reader #tmnt f!leo x reader #rottmnt f!leonardo x reader #rottmnt f!leo x reader

[yellowymellon]

SO UM I GOT A THEORY ABT LUOCHA (Dk if anyone talked Abt this but tis just for fun 👁️)

When Jing yuan called luocha an abundance abominations I gasped, it was like a grand reveal, but after I calmed down I thought...what if that's his way to insult luocha? Maybe it's just a derogatory term...

And now I have a silly theory ;3

I'm proud to say since I reject to acknowledge the Otto in luocha from day one I've always noticed that aside from the fact he's an Otto expy he looks like yaoshi a lot.

He said he's a "doctor" but we all clearly saw that he has straight up healing abilities. Mind you that his 'healing' is a broad term, he could even fix xueyi who isnt made of flesh, and to that Dan Heng understood right away that that was a blessing of the abundance.

So that made me think about Jing yuan's words...it makes sense for luocha to be blessed by yaoshi but what if he actually is their emanator.

I don't think everyone who is blessed by yaoshi would get called by Jing yuan an abomination even degradingly, and it seems he knows something Abt luocha we don't (nothing unusual Abt Jing yuan lol)

No matter how luocha's attitude is to yaoshi, they are still an aeon who pities and 'loves' creation. They hate pain and hurt and generally answer prayers.

So with that in mind, the fact that luocha is an Otto face but not quite, it could be that he either at some point prayed for yaoshi or that yaoshi took pity on his suffering aka the loss of someone dear to him who might or might not be the coffin person. It also could be that yaoshi just created him as a pure abomination! Maybe specifically to become an emanator.

I mean bro got the abyss flower how do u explain that in HSR? 😭

Also a very sus interaction imo is when putting luocha and blade in a team, he tells blade (I don't remember his exact words but) that he regrettably can't help him with his immortality thingy. And I always bully him (affectionately ofc-) and say nobody asked!

BUT THAT'S THE SUS !

Why would luocha assume, or think he has the powers to reverse or break the blessing/curse of an aeon??

It's the going out of dev's way to have an interaction between luocha and blade when they should've never met even if they know about eachother (elio knowing the real culprit and luocha knowing the stellaron hunters are in the luofu for example)

He's also very fixated on how death can be overcomed, not in an Otto obsessed way, but kinda in a certain sure way, like he knows it can happen. How?? 🤨 I'm sure yaoshi themselves can't 🤨🤨

In conclusion

There isn't much to back this 'theory' so it's just for fun, I also believed his powers come from the coffin mostly. His ult is the coffin... doing stuff and whatever is inside is probably an abundance abomination as well (you could see the thorns in his animated light cone).

Also off topic kinda- but I don't believe it's kallen tbh. They have a somewhat bittersweet antagonist relationship where they use eachother for their end goals and they seem to be wary of eachother. So if a kallen exists Id like to think she's dead, and his journey is to revive her. Which would be another Otto story I refuse to have HOYO ISTG

#Idk why a genius spark in me tried to convince me that he embezzled Jing Liu in his coffin xD #but some ppl think yaoshi is inside so there's that #also aeons decide how much of their powers they wanna share #so u cant tell me he doesn't have enough scorpion tail juice 👺 #hsr #star rail #hsr luocha #hsr theory #honkai star rail

[kehlana-wolhamonao3]

Cissy's sister!

This one is quite an AU of Blue Castle!

Basically, I wanted to explore how different would Valancy be if she was born as Roaring Abel's daughter and how it would influence her relationship with Barney. I like her involvement with the Stirlings too much though to give it up, so I made up a Roberta Stirling who eloped with Abel, had a short, tempestuous marriage with him and died giving birth to Valancy. He hires a wet nurse for her, married her soon after and she in turn gives birth to Cissy, so while they are half-sisters, only Valancy is related to the Stirlings.

Here is a very rough draft of the beginning:

The fact whether Valancy herself should be accepted as part of the Stirling clan had remained a hotly debated issue since the day she was born and her mother, Roberta Gay nee Stirling, died in childbirth. Roberta, ever a rebel among the staid and utterly respectable Stirlings, fell passionately and disastrously for the handsome, wild Abel Gay, a carpenter, blasphemer and a shameless town drunk, and eloped with him to the horror of her family. Their marriage, filled with volatile quarrels mixed with passionate reconciliations, lasted little above a year before it met its tragic end. During that time, Roberta had been considered dead by her relations, but her actual death while leaving behind a baby complicated the matter. Should the Stirlings recognise little Valancy?

“She’s a daughter of that sinner Abel Gay,” pointed Isobel Wallace nee Stirling distastefully. “Can it be expected that she’ll grow up into anybody we want to have associated with our family?”

“It’s extremely doubtful,” agreed gravely James Stirling who, at thirty, was already reputed to be very clever and was therefore the clan oracle—brains being none too plentiful in the Stirling connection. “Especially considering how easily her mother abandoned all decency in marrying him.”

“Roberta made her own bed,” Benjamin threw in his own agreement. “She should have expected that no child of such union could ever be recognised by us as kin. Roaring Abel’s daughter!”

“But Roberta is dead,” interceded Frederick, always the most soft hearted of the siblings, as was well known. Amelia, his bride of not yet a year, sent him an exasperated look. She had no pity for Roberta, whose scandalous elopement completely overshadowed her own marriage into the Stirling family which took place two weeks later. Nobody talked about a boring union between Amelia Wansbarra, determinedly respectable in face of her own father’s eccentricities, and the second youngest son of Jacob Stirling, when they could gossip about the elopement of the groom’s sister instead. Amelia didn’t forgive Roberta for it yet and she didn’t think she ever would. “The child is blameless, whatever her parents are guilty of. And as for her upbringing, do we really intend to leave the poor newborn baby to be brought up by Abel Gay? Surely people would talk about that.”

That hit a string with his family, as he predicted. The Stirlings feared and hated nothing more than a scandal – the main reason for their immediate cutting off Roberta – and the thought of being talked about as heartless and neglectful for refusing to take care of Roberta’s orphaned child didn’t sit well with them.

“She is our niece, whoever her father is,” acknowledged Herbert reluctantly. While he wasn’t as soft as Frederick, he was known for his abhorrence of conflict, a rare trait in the connection. “And Abel hardly has the means to take care of her properly.”

“The baby probably won’t last long anyway,” sniffled Mary, Wellington’s new wife. “I’ve heard she looks sickly.”

“Poor little lamb,” said Cousin Georgiana softly. Widely considered a hopeless old maid at thirty four, her opinions never carried much weight within the clan, but everyone was used to having her around. “Motherless from the day she was born!”

The Stirlings shifted uncomfortably. It was all well and proper to cut off the fruit of sin, but it was a bit harder when reminded that this fruit was at present a days old baby.

“We can’t ignore the child’s existence,” announced Jacob Stirling, the patriarch of the clan, ending the discussion. “It would be different if Roberta was alive – she made her own bed, as Benjamin rightly said – but her death changed things. This baby is half Stirling and she will be regarded as such. We can’t allow her to grow up in poverty and squalor unbecoming of the family. We would fail in our Christian duty.”

“But who is going to take her in?” asked Isobel with a frown. “I can’t – I have my boys to think of.”

“Well, it can’t be me,” said Herbert matter-of-factly. “I’m a bachelor.”

He had his sights set on Alberta Monroe, the most beautiful girl in the province, but since he was still working on climbing the ladder in the timber company he’d started to work for recently and his chosen bride was just sixteen, he did not expect to marry any time soon.

“Of course nobody considers you,” said his mother with an eyeroll. She was a thin, strong woman, with a long wrinkled face and sharp grey eyes which were still able to scare any of her seven remaining children into submission, even self-important James and vicious Isabel. Roberta was the only one who dared to rebel against her, but Roberta was dead now. “It’s obvious that the care of the child should go to a married couple.”

The married among her children – James, Benjamin, Isabel, Wellington and Frederick – looked at her in apprehension of hearing her verdict.

“I and your father can’t be expected to take such a responsibility so late in life,” stated Ruth Stirling firmly. “Especially since Mildred is still under our care. Isabel, as she just said, has two young children of her own; it would be hardly kind to burden her with another baby, especially a sickly one as this one is rumoured to be. I don’t think Benjamin’s father-in-law would welcome Roaring Abel’s child under his roof and we don’t want to spoil your relationship with him, Benjamin.”

Benjamin, who was a clerk in Mr Frost’s general store and, after marrying his boss’s only daughter, had reasonable expectations of buying into the business and inheriting it in its entirety one day, nodded sagely at that.

“Neither would it be wise to upset dear Mary’s father or indeed dear Mary herself mere weeks after her wedding,” continued Mrs Stirling. Marrying Mary Elliot was undoubtedly Wellington’s biggest achievement – Mary’s family was the richest this side of Port Lawrence – and making things difficult in his marriage was the last thing anybody in the Stirling clan intended to do. “Which leaves us with James or Frederick.”

James grimaced. The thought of taking in a baby – an offspring of his wild sister and the notorious Abel Gay no less! – didn’t sit well with him. He might have caved in for the reputation of generosity and benevolence it would give him though if his wife, a timid, pretty little thing, didn’t interject on the matter.

“Oh, let us take her, James!” she pleaded, her blue eyes imploring. “I’d love nothing more than to take care of a baby and since God hasn’t blessed us with one yet…”

She trailed off, seeing the clear refusal in her husband’s face even before he spoke.

“We can’t possibly do that, my dear,” said James condescendingly. “You have to think about your health first. It’s too delicate – much too delicate – to handle such a huge burden as a baby.”

Alice looked like she wanted to protest, but she didn’t, of course. He trained her better than that. James barely restrained a pleased smile at her deferring to his wisdom.

Nobody tried to quarrel with James or defend Alice; this was not how things were done in the Stirling clan. All eyes turned to Frederick and Amelia instead. They’ve been married for a year already, but didn’t have children of their own yet. Amelia was the only daughter of Amos Wansbarra who was neither rich nor completely respectable; there was no need to take into account neither her own nor her family’s opinions. And everybody knew that soft hearted Frederick could be talked into it.

As it turned out, they didn’t even have to talk him into it – to the horror of his wife, he volunteered.

“Of course Amelia and I will take her,” he announced cheerfully. “We have enough space and I dare say that Amelia would welcome something to do while I’m at work.”

Amelia stiffened at the implication that she didn’t have enough to keep her busy even without taking in the baby of a woman she disliked and a man whom she abhorred, but she didn’t dare to quarrel in the presence of the whole clan. Her position in it was still too tentative for her to risk it. She forced herself to smile.

“Of course,” she said with much less convincing enthusiasm. “We’ll do our best to bring up this girl as a good, obedient Christian.”

Everything agreed upon, the only thing which remained was to communicate the matter to Abel Gay, which they promptly did after Roberta’s funeral.

Abel laughed in their faces.

#the blue castle fanfic #the blue castle fanfiction #the blue castle #the blue castle book club #valancy stirling

[dangermousie]

Farscape rewatch 1x22

One of my favorite eps.

No, John, it’s not going to get better.

Where do I start? First of all let me mention the ‘not-good-bye’ good-bye John and Aeryn do. I love it. One of so many in the show, less fraught than later ones but still mmm.

But that comes later, let’s get back to the beginning.

Where Rygel sells them out and it surprises no one. But he doesn’t find a good market, and returns with Crais, Crais who is now seeking asylum. The scene in the hangar bay, as Crais steps out is…

What I notice the most is the way John fixates on him. He associates Crais with being hunted, tortured, though it’s nothing to the reaction he will have to Scorpy on board in S4. That whole scene, with Crais asking for protective custody, and D’Argo knocking him down, and yet through the whole scene, there is John, gun pointed, not wavering in his regard of Crais, an almost uncontrollable fixation and it looks like he is fixating on the thought of shooting Crais. It’s this intensity of concentration that is frightening.

And the fugitives come up with a desperate plan, based on the fact that Scorpius wants John. And you can see the look on John’s face as he realizes the certainty of his being on a suicidal mission as opposed to a probability.

I love the scene with John trying to leave a message to Jack and not being able to, and finally giving up with ‘why don’t I just start screaming, and leave him with a really happy memory.’ Yeah.

And Aeryn coming in, partially because she sees he needs comfort. And she does comfort, instinctively, by sharing about her Mother. And his delight, even under those dire circumstances, at the fact that she is letting him in, telling him something so personal. The way his voice and eyes envelop her, the way she seems to relax and forget the mess outside.

This is getting vvvv long...so

And her asking him if his father is like the man she’s met on fake!Earth and his reply that a bit idealized but yes. I love how important John-Jack relationship is to FS, and how you can feel it, though we barely ever see Jack. He is crucial to John and so we see him through the mirror of John. And oh, how do I love that final message he does leave, ending with ‘This is John Crichton, somewhere in the Universe.’ The wonder is still there, isn’t it? But so is determination to not be taken alive and I find that rather heart-breaking. But there is awesome gallows humor with D’Argo and John and oh, this show is turning me into an emotional yo-yo, as it always does.

The highlight of the ep for me, is John sitting with the gun, on the floor, by Crais’ cell and talking to him. And he is quiet, and beyond despair, and in pain. And he is crying. And that whole scene, which I cannot describe well at all, or even analyze, just kills me. Trying to make Crais understand, still trying, but now it’s not about that, not really hoping for that or wishing it, but just verbalizing it all, head on.

Oooof (and the way he’s almost cuddling the gun as a comfort blanket...)

And when Crais says that there is much injustice and they are all proof of it, John’s bleak rejoinder that if there was justice, Crais would be dead…kills me.

And there are good byes. Chiana refusing to be saved and D’Argo insisting. Zhaan and John, acknowledging they are family. D’Argo and Aeryn, and D saying he thought he’d live much longer and Aeryn (in a sentence that explains so much) replying that she never thought she’d live this long (unknowingly echoing Zhaan who said that every microt is an undeserved gift from the Goddess for her, since she committed murder).

The scene with Rygel and John, which is just…always sideswipes me, so much because they are hilarious and moving and Rygel is a fucking puppet but I never remember he is 100% real to me.

The never-ending references...

And the insane nicknames. The show was gloriously unhinged.

I love this exchange:

This is the bit that gets me tbh...

There is the scene with Chiana and John, which just makes me die. Because Chiana offers him her body, because that is the only way she knows how to repay John for what he did for her and what he is about to do, and it says volumes about the life she’s led that this is the one way she can think to show gratitude. And John turns her down.

But it’s not the fact that he does, it’s the way he does it, that gets me. Because he manages to be so gentle and sweet and not insulting at all, because he recognizes it as a gift and treats it as such. I think that is the reason her relationship with John is more important to Chiana than the one with D’Argo or anyone else. John is someone who wants nothing from her (not that D is mercenary, but because the relationship is romantic, there is a different dynamic, one she is more familiar with). John is family: he really is her brother replacement after Nerri. (Side note - any other show he’d bang the hot alien since he’s not dating Aeryn or even close but not here/)

And yeah, that doozie of a cliffhanger. And John seeing the base go in smoke and his sheer glee at the destruction, at striking back, at saving his crew.

He is millions of miles away from the John who came through that wormhole. But he asks to be patched in to Moya, to make her escape, even though this means certain death to him. That duality, with humanity and self-sacrifice always there, just different, will always remain.

Also, yeah, Crais 100% developed a thing for Aeryn after she tortured him...everyone in this show is a bit insane...

#farscape