#i think here you can really tell what my immediate reactions were based on how the review is written fbfjfjd | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

usedpidemo · 1 year

Text

Anywhere but home (Red Velvet Seulgi)

“So can you tell me why you decided to stop by here, out of all places?” you ask, intently gazing at your uninvited guest.

The thing is, you’re also an uninvited guest.

You’re inside a hotel room, not your home.

The woman leans back on her chair, smiling radiantly, mirroring that same deep stare back. She takes a moment to ponder through her answer, let her eyes linger on you a little longer.

“I missed you.”

“Do your members even know of your wheareabouts?” you say, worried. She should be anywhere else but here.

She strongly shakes her head, waves it off as a non-concern. “No, but you shouldn’t worry about them at all.”

“So they—”

“They’re too busy having fun by themselves.” Kang Seulgi has this dour expression on her lips, as if you’re asking beyond what you’re supposed to. “Again, you shouldn’t worry about any of them.”

“I’m surprised they haven’t caught on about our secret—yet.”

Seulgi chuckles, running through fond memories in her head. “I keep my promises, remember? And you haven’t.”

It’s not easy to defend your case to Seulgi, even if the reasons are justified. Back then, you were both young and reckless, and based on how she acts and sounds now, she still is. Of course you still remember the promise you made, much clearer now that she’s suddenly back in your life again than when you first spoke about them years ago. Life really finds a way to make sure you hold up your end of the bargain, pursuing you even as far as the ends of the earth.

“You know very well I couldn’t stay longer than a year,” you say, sitting on a dinner chair across from her.

“Then why did you promise me that you would come back then?”

She rolls her eyes.

“Look—” you pause and catch a breath. Note the sudden lump suddenly stuck in your throat—a byproduct from years of pent-up feelings from a lack of closure. “Life happened. Shit happens. I didn’t willingly forget, I just didn’t get any opportunity to see you again.”

“Sure, sure. Willingly forget, right.” Seulgi scoffs at your answer, as if you weren’t going through difficult circumstances like she had, as if you had no battles to fight. “I bet you were doing better once you left me to go home, like they always do.”

“Did you not hear anything I just said?” you reply, raising your voice. “I told you life happened!”

“Okay, let’s remove the part where none of us could fly for a year, maybe two. How about the rest?” Seulgi retaliates with another question, and it leaves you in utter disbelief at how stubborn she is. Perhaps that’s the one thing that brings you two together: just how headstrong you both are. “Did you even try to reach out at all?”

Your eyes immediately stray away from hers, much to her audible disdain. No words required to imply anything else.

“Okay, I guess I did forget about you,” you say, and it’s a half-truth, primarily because you want to avoid any more of this unnecessary drama resurfacing, especially when you’re on vacation out of all times. A nice five-star hotel in Los Angeles, a place you don’t have eager thoughts to travel to, apart from the occasional leave and maybe the multiple team playoff games in the spring. “What do you think happened when I tried to get another visa?”

“Should have asked me for help. I could have vouched for you,” she replies, as if that’s going to improve your chances whatsoever. It doesn’t help in the slightest now. “But what’s the point in talking about that now? I’m here now, so we can catch up on what we missed out on.”

You let your annoyance be known in the form of an indignant sigh. After a brief pause, you quietly retort, “You should have led with that to begin with.”

“Well sorry I’m not the same girl I was four years ago,” she says, tone miffed. “I mean, just look at yourself.”

You fall back on the chair, covering your mouth, preventing more damage. Point heard and taken. Your appalled reaction elicits a quiet giggle out of her.

“So unserious. You’ve always been like that,” she adds, clenching her hand into a fist, observing as you crumble and fall apart before her. “We’re both stuck in the past, but at least I grew; became a better person out of it. And you?”

“Seul,” you say, hoping that maybe, just maybe, she stops this personally charged attack on your character, but she doesn’t stop; she lets her mouth run every thought, every unspoken word built up from four years of waiting. It’s almost comical how she talks about you, like she has an audience listening to her, you included, and you can imagine all the laughs and jeers as she talks. She knows how to charm anyone with the right words and a dash of charisma added in between. Most of it, both insults and playful jokes alike, obscured behind those cute eyes and puffy cheeks that capture your attention whenever she smiles, having lost her anger somewhere in that impromptu rant.

And it ends like it always has. A show of affection, a little kiss, then you’re both back in each other’s arms, as if the passage of time was a mere afterthought. It’s the oldest trick in the book that you know.

And it works as it always has. To a fault.

—————

“Gotta say, I hate it when you do that. It’s like cheating and I really fucking hate it,” says Seulgi, between impassioned kisses, tasting each other’s lips like water in a desert. “That’s the one thing I don’t miss about you.”

“Yet you’re still kissing me,” you reply, pecking her lips rapidly, like you have a point to prove. You caress her bare shoulders, while your fingers play with the spaghetti straps holding her shirt together. She mirrors you with your own shirt, tugging at its fabric, itching to undress you as much as you.

Kang Seulgi can complain all she wants, but she falls for it every single time.

“Shut up.” Seulgi rests her warm palms against your cheeks. With a tight press, you’re puffed up, blushed as bright as the sun.

You make out with each other hungrily, urgently reaching for the bedroom, where you end up pushing her onto the mattress. It’s only then you remember just how hot Seulgi looks when she’s at her simplest: in a pink camisole and really short jean shorts. She really had this all planned out, knowing she’d be traveling the States all summer long, and California isn’t the most inviting place to wear her typical clothes.

Or maybe she learned a thing or two from Joy about wearing skimpier clothing in public.

“You’re staring,” she comments, snapping you out of your lust-filled daze. Seeing this, she spreads her toned, slender legs apart, as if inviting you inside them—an offer you absolutely won’t refuse. “I don’t have all night to wait, baby.”

“Hm, how long are you here then?” you ask as you undress right in front of her.

She doesn’t give an immediate answer; her eyes linger on the growing tent on your bulge, before she scans up to your face as you hover above her on the bed. “Gonna have to be more specific. We’ll be here for a month before heading home.”

“Here. Los Angeles, I mean,” you quickly comment as you lift her slinky arms over her head and kiss down from her temple to her neck.

“Mmm—” Enraptured by your soft lips, her words crumble into nothing but a whine against your ear. “Five days. Practice tomorrow and on Thursday, then two shows the days after.”

“And do you have any free time in between schedules?” You whisper against her neck, slowly lifting her shirt over her head, leaving only a simple pink bra to cover her. You sneak a finger between her shorts, dig between the fabric to brush her folds, wincing at a newly wet sensation.

"Oh." Seulgi says, voice deep and breathy, shuddering as you press into her slick. Her thoughts go haywire, your long-forgotten touch so fresh and foreign to her, even though you’ve had her in this position countless times.

"Between practices maybe?"

"God." Seulgi sucks in a gasp of air, chews on her lip, and says what you're both thinking: "I need you to fuck me so fucking bad."

“Answer the question first, Seul,” you tease, stroking her sensitive clit with your digit, then placing a second one to overwhelm her. “I really want to know so we don’t waste whatever time we have left.”

Much to her chagrin, the moans and quivers she releases do just that. It’s not primarily her fault when you’re the one instigating. Still, she can’t help but become helpless beneath you.

“Mm—mm—please—just—fuck—” she cries out, tilting her chin as her words are reduced to nothing but helpless mewls and moans. It’s almost cruel to watch, but you’re enjoying every moment of this, relishing the sight of a pleasure-laden Seulgi squirming as you finger her. Part of it might have something to do with the brief argument you had earlier, but as she said, you never really became a better person out of your brief little fling.

And perhaps for your sex life, it was all the more better for it.

She really had no time to waste, hectic schedule and all, but you had all the power and freedom to pin her down like this as long as you wanted. You hated Southern California as much as the day job that allowed you to vacation here in the first place, but you’d happily request a transfer here if it meant you could fuck Seulgi like this as often as you could. You certainly know that this isn’t the reality, but at least for one night, and God willing, the next few days, it is.

“Answer the question, Seul,” you repeat in her ear, every word laced with venom, as your fingers increase in pace stroking her slick cunt. Even with the obstructive layers of fabric around her groin, it only serves as a minor distraction as you pump your digits inside her, never letting up even in rapidly growing heat. As for Seulgi, it only makes her needier, whine louder and her figure squirm more violently, keeping your fingers in a harsh lock. Unable to keep herself together, her fingers squirm at air, then at the sheets as her climax quickly approaches.

“Mm—oh—oh—gonna cum oh my—”

It takes only a few more pumps before she lets up, giving in to her first of hopefully many orgasms tonight. Slack jawed, neck exposed, she utters a deep, echoed moan as her juices coat your buried fingers between her folds, staining her underwear and shorts in the process. You keep your digits tucked in her heat, slowing your pace to a stop as she rides down her climax, heaving and gasping for air.

“Didn’t expect you to cum so fast, Seul,” you say, withdrawing your newly drenched fingers from between her legs before putting them in your mouth, tasting her delicious slick. “You still taste so good after so long.”

While she recovers from her orgasm, you pick away at the remainder of her clothes. Shorts and underwear go flying off your hand, and her nakedness reveals the true aftermath: an endless flow of juices dripping from her cunt down to the sheets. As you undress her, you notice the sticky puddle built up on her panties too.

It isn’t your problem.

You hover up to a limp Seulgi, who’s still reeling from her orgasm. An ear to ear grin forms on your lips as you repeat the process. Kiss down her neck, to her collarbones, until you lay your face against her cleavage, playfully teasing her breasts with a hint of tongue, if not for the bra you’ve purposefully left in place. She’s too weak to resist or respond, having turned into a shell of herself, an outlet to satisfy your personal desires. Hungry for more, you sneak those same fingers back into her folds, forcing weak, shrilly whines out of her mouth.

“Mm—baby, we don’t have enough time—” she blurts, desperate, before drowning in her own moans as you slowly finger her again. You know she’s wrong, you know you have all the time in the world, and you certainly won’t rush, not when tomorrow is uncertain.

You struggle to unclasp the hook on her bra, having buried your face deep into her skin. It’s only after Seulgi regains a little control of herself that she assists you, intertwining your hand with hers before you work together to finally undo the obstructive piece of clothing. She slips the straps off her shoulders, tossing them aside before you dive head first into her now bare chest again, kissing and fondling her breasts.

With every deep kiss, she reciprocates with a whine, and every mewl dripping from her lips comes out a note higher than the last. She clings to your shoulders while you make out with her, like you’re the only reason why she would want to be here. You feel the same way, too. Her eyes flutter open and close like window curtains, mouth pouting and puckering with hunger yet to be fully satisfied, as curved and cute as that smile is.

She eventually stops you dead, cups a warm palm on your cheek, redirecting your eyes and meeting hers.

“I didn’t come to make love tonight,” she says, panting between words. “I came here to get fucked. Hard.”

The way she articulates such filthy thoughts leaves you breathless. Sure, she’s said it countless times when you were still together, but you’ve never seen her sound this passionate, this desperate, this needy, that it’s almost uncanny. Up until this point, you thought she was here to reignite a flame, but it seems as though time has burned those fond memories away.

Suddenly, you find yourself lying flat on the bed. It happened so fast; you were caught unawares and in awe of Seulgi’s newfound strength. She flipped you over then proceeded to straddle herself on your lap, resting her lanky arms on your bare chest. There’s nowhere to look except for those glazed eyes, staring you down hungrily. Even as she slowly slips off your underwear and your cock springs free, tapping the edges of her folds, your gazes remain locked toward each other.

And God, Seulgi’s figure is so fucking perfect.

You wonder just how much better her body could look when it was already flawless. The way she used every curve, every muscle, and every subtle movement to hypnotize you couldn’t be any more convincing. Now you wanted to fuck her as hard as she wanted, maybe rougher, and give her a good reason to stay a little longer.

She catches you staring doe-eyed, smiles with an audible giggle. “God, is this the first time you’ve seen me naked like this? Be real. This is nothing new to you.”

It sounds insulting, and it probably is, but even her voice sounds sexier now to your ears, and that overlooks the intentioned insult.

“Oh, I get it. None of these girls fucked you as well as I did, huh?” she continues, leaning her face—and the rest of that fucking body, its immaculate figure—ever close to you, pinning you deeper into the mattress. Her lips inches away from yours; you want to kiss them again so bad. “Gonna make sure you won’t ever consider anyone else except me.”

Right before you make a move, she asserts herself over you, drawing back her figure, lifting herself before slowly descending on your raging erection. It’s a difficult, agonizing watch, like watching a car crash in slow motion, only this is something you want to happen immediately. You want her tightness to suffocate and consume you. You want to fill her up with every bit of load you missed out on.

As you take a deep breath, preparing yourself for the inevitable, you gasp. Your tip brushes between her folds heavily, sucks every bit of air out of your lungs. If she buries herself down to your hilt, you might as well die. A much better fate than slowly being grinded down to the dirt for the bare minimum by work.

Seulgi’s eyes slam shut, and through gritted teeth she whines, feeling your cock for the first time in years—might as well be forever. The hands that were glued to your chest make their way to your shoulders, pressing on them tightly, as if the idea of letting go would kill her. Slowly but surely, she penetrates herself, inch by inch, until her whole cunt is consumed whole by your cock, burning your loins with her heat.

You both release a harmonious moan as you let the wondrous feeling settle—the feeling of being one again. She draws a hand back to brush off a wave of dark hair covering her face, then she gingerly leans down to kiss you passionately. Even after all these years, she’s still incredibly tight, incredibly hot, that it brings you back to the first time you took her.

It wouldn’t surprise you if you ended up like this for the rest of the night. The best case scenario, just the two of you tangled up in bed. Of course, her body has other things in mind.

“You have no idea how much I missed this,” says Seulgi, breathing heavily as she continuously brushes those annoying strands of hair covering her beautiful face. “You have no idea how many dildos and people I’ve fucked because of you.”

Your eyes widen. Forget the dildos, that’s a long-running secret between you two. People?

You immediately echo your thoughts into words. “People?”

“When we got here the other day, I was so desperate. I tried so hard. Club after club. Then I saw you roaming around the poolside and I just knew I had to have you.” Her hips begin to move, to buckle around your cock. After a prolonged whine, she adds, “God, I don’t know if I can leave you after I make you cum in me again. I just—”

The motion around her hips accelerates, and Seulgi loses herself in growing pleasure, letting her body do the rest of the talking. The way she lifts and sinks herself down, using your cock to stretch her out clears out every question or thought you have. She feels so fucking good, and you’re more than satisfied watching her make you hers.

Hands on her waist, you watch as she relishes in you, groaning as she rides you in rhythmic motions, bouncing up and down your cock. You don’t even have to do anything; your hips move on their own, thrusting up and meeting her halfway.

“God, you feel so fucking good, so fucking big.” Seulgi slowly leans her body back as she fucks herself on you, enabling you to ogle your now wet cock disappear and reappear between her slick folds.

With each plunge, you find your collective moans join the wet flaps of your flesh slapping flesh, and it leaves you even more breathless. Swallow your throat. You don’t know how much more you can take. The erotic sight and sound is quickly becoming too much to bear. You want the moment to last a little longer.

Not that it’d ever, ever be up for you to decide.

At least Seulgi is gracious enough to recognize this. She continues to impale herself on you, experiment with angles on your cock between thrusts to maximize her already surging pleasure. She isn’t fast nor slow, but perfectly paced to make sure both of you feel good. One hand remains firmly planted on your chest, again, while the other pinches her breast to keep you on your toes. A sight that drives you crazy, now you’re the one breaking rhythm with your now wild strokes.

“I’m gonna lose it, Seul, I swear—” you mutter, aroused by her teasing. She giggles. It’s as she intended.

“Yeah, maybe that’s the point—” she says in a singsong tone, “Maybe I want you to fuck me like this. Maybe I want you to use me like a fleshlight. Maybe I want you to fuck me like a whore.”

At this point, the only feasible thing that could happen is the first one. You’re giving her hard, deep strokes, aroused by the sight over you. Seulgi has you completely under her spell. It doesn’t help that you’re so close, hanging on by a thread, using every bit of your willpower not to burst right before she says so, even though nothing is at stake here.

“I’m so close, Seul,” you say between gasps, caught in the heat of the moment, and it might have been the worst thing you could have possibly said. “I am so close.”

You swear her ears perk up as you spit those words out, as if they were the extra fuel she needed to recharge her. A hand runs across and down your neck, pinches a nerve or two, strains a few breaths in the process. She rides you vigorously, slamming herself against you like she has some kind of resentment against your cock, but it’s out of lust, not hate. At this point, you’re both crashing your bodies into each other, racing to see who gets to cum first, to find out who wants each other more.

“Yes, please cum, I want you to cum—” Seulgi rests both hands bare on your chest, angles her face where your lips can function as a safe cushion for hers when it happens. She smells of everything sweat, sex, and alcohol, her hot breath tainted with the shot or two before making her way to your room. “Please fucking cum for me—”

The remainder of her words gets lost at the tip of her tongue as she fucks herself on you, losing herself in the ecstasy of sex for the final time, every nerve and muscle in her body quivering as her heat suffocates you beyond any point of escape.

Seulgi goes limp, rigid at a point where your cock pokes directly at her womb, and she orgasms. Her mouth slowly dips, producing a whiny, elongated moan while a fresh torrent of her slick creams your shaft and leaves you completely breathless. You grip your hands on your svelte waist, still thrusting through the fading embers of her climax, preparing yourself to follow shortly after hers dies down.

She regains a little composure, and then she proceeds to pull the plug on you.

Seulgi lifts her hips up, right at the moment you expected to reciprocate your cum to fill hers as she did to you, and pulls herself from the depths of your cock as you orgasm. It feels like a knife was stabbed, twisted, then pulled from your gut, and the sight is almost unbearable to watch. Your aching cock gushes. Bursts of your seed geyser around your shaft, violently throbbing as you cry out in agony, agitated and deprived from what you really want.

Her eyes glaze down, as if she’s seeing blood on her hands. After the joy comes the immediate regret. She’s trembling, and you don’t know whether it’s from the aftershock of her orgasm, or from guilt.

“Oh my god. Fuck. I-I’m so sorry—”

“Why the fuck would you do that?” You shout, rolling your eyes as far as the back of your skull and gasping as your orgasm meets an unfortunate end, your cock gradually shrinking as it throbs until nothing spews from your tip.

“I—I didn’t know what came into me,” she says, tone remorseful, as she gently scoots next to you. She’s on all fours, unwilling to rest beside your tired, splayed out figure—unwilling to bring you more misery and pain than what you’re experiencing now. “I guess I just wanted a little payback for ghosting me like that.”

The freezing glare you give her is half-annoyed, half-furious. You had little to no strength to do anything about it, unfortunately, and this is the best you can do.

“Well what can I do about it, jerk,” you blurt, turning your glance the other way, wishing you’d never let her in—both inside this room and back into your life.

The bed lightly quakes, and you feel the warmth of an arm outstretched over your figure. “You can take my ass instead. There’s lube in my bag, go get it if you want.”

You refuse to budge an inch, leave her dry for a few minutes, completely unresponsive toward her. She tries to draw you back in, cuddling and kissing your ear softly, playing with your hair, nuzzling her face against your cheek. As much as you want to push her away, you can’t—both from a lack of strength and a lack of willingness to turn her away again, at least completely.

Seulgi redirects your face to the ceiling and the corners of her face. Caressing your shoulder, she whispers, “I really didn’t mean to. My emotions got the best of me. I never wanted to hurt you like this. Please.”

You briefly glance in her direction, catch her eyes twinkling, nearly at the point of tears. You still don’t entertain her.

“C’mon. I will let you punish me. Use me. Let me make it up for you.”

Still, you don’t bother. Seeing how none of efforts have been working, she slowly hops off the couch and limps out of the room. You’re annoyed that she didn’t close the door on the way out, and a little more after she returns and rejoins you after a moment with a bottle in her hand.

Smiling, she presents the bottle directly in your gaze, confirming it is, in fact, lube. “See? You can fuck my ass. Isn’t this what you always wanted to do with me? Let me warm it up for you.”

You utter an involuntary gasp when Seulgi straddles herself atop you again, her toned, slender legs spread out wide, giving you full view to her cunt and her ass. She strews liquid from the bottle into her hand and coats her holes with the lube, giving you an alluring stare, grinning ear to ear, as if it’ll convince you.

As soon as she finishes glazing her tight holes with lube, you lift yourself from the bed, cupping her face and meeting her lips for a passionate kiss.

“You better not.”

“I wouldn’t think of it.”

Seulgi can’t keep her mouth off you, your chin, your jaw, affection overflowing until she sees your glow underneath the bright lights. Now, she’s flat on the bed as you keep passionately making out, her hand snaking down to your cock and stroking it back to full mast, eliciting a string of moans from your mouth into hers. Pumping your length and finding it hard, she breaks off the kiss and pushes you away.

Turning her body face down, Seulgi clambers atop the bed on all fours, arching her slim back and sticking her wet, curved ass directly in front of you. She’s clearly mastered the art of using her flexible body to seduce and hypnotize. She’s practiced the motion that it’s routine, like it’s a regular music show performance to her.

It’s moments like this when you wish there was a mirror available.

“Whenever you’re ready.” Seulgi looks over her shoulder, brushes off stray locks of hair aside, giving you that ‘fuck me’ stare that overpowers you every time. She says she’s down whenever you are, but you know she has anything but time available.

Still, you were going to indulge in her and make the most of fucking her ass until the sun rises.

You grab a handful of her flesh, stroke your cock with the other hand. Brushing your tip against the entrance of her folds, it’s enough to make her fold, make her crumble. Low whimpers exhale from her mouth, impatiently waiting for you to enter her, to ruin her tighter hole.

“Mm, God, please, put in me already—” she whines, her head spinning—both literally and figuratively. “I don’t know how long I can take it without you inside me.” “I thought you said whenever I was ready?” you jest, poking fun at what she said moments ago. Hearing the neediness in her voice compels you to tease her. Just your cock against her wet folds has her cries reaching higher. Up, down, and her tone pitches.

“Stop that! Just because I said what I said doesn’t mean I want it as much as you do.”

“I wasn’t complaining this much when you forcefully rode me,” you reply, spanking her ass with a quick palm, forcing a yelp from her. The more she goads, the brighter her cheeks smolder.

“Please just put it in already, oh my God.” Seulgi turns to you, gritting her teeth, so desperate for her cock to be filled. Another slap, another cry of pain and pleasure.

“Keep complaining. I like it when you complain like that.”

“Mm, fuck!” With every word she tries to utter from her lips, your hand meets her flesh with a powerful smack, disrupting her train of thought. You could write poems, lyrics, sonnets, with the syllables she's stuttering out, until even the slightest of noise is enough to warrant another slap of her ripe ass. Soon enough, her cheeks are burning the brightest of red.

And you still haven’t put your dick anywhere inside her.

“Enough teasing! Fuck me already—mmmph!”

You take her by surprise, nudging your cock against the tightness of her smaller hole, and making her moan the loudest she’s ever moaned so far tonight. Her body tries to resist, to push you off before you can fully sink yourself deep in her ass, but the wetness of her entrance is enough to help you nudge yourself inside. Seulgi’s groan drags out as long as the time it takes for you to penetrate her backside, slowly but surely burying yourself to the hilt.

When you finally reach the depths of her ass, you groan in agony as you drown in the sensation of her tight walls stretching against your cock. Hands firmly gripped on her ass, you swear you can feel your shaft breaking in half as you struggle to move inside her, but after a moment to acclimate yourself, the torturous feeling of her tightness mellows out, and the pleasure kicks in.

“Oh God, Seulgi. This ass feels so fucking good, oh my God,” you rasp, leaning forward to whisper and grunt in her ear. “You’re so fucking wet and tight, you’re going to break me.”

She angles her head, unable to face you, but her side profile says everything you need to know. Her body trembles wildly as her very foundations crumble with your presence inside her, yet she’s still able to maintain some semblance of composure to say something back. “And that’s what I want. I want to break you. I want you to ruin me, too. Use me. Fuck me.”

As if you needed any more convincing, she wiggles her ass against your buried cock, making you squirm.

Drawing yourself back into position, she moans as you pull your cock away, the tightness of her ass making it difficult, and her wetness making it easy to plunge back in. It also helps that Seulgi herself leans back against yours whenever you take her, urging you to slide deeper and deeper inside her.

So with a steady rhythm, you fuck her, reveling in the sight of Seulgi’s perfectly arched back and toned body rocking with yours. You had no intention to break her as she wanted, you wanted to let the feeling of her tighter hole linger longer than her pussy as compensation. The sensation of her asshole is so otherworldly, so different from fucking her cunt, that they’re almost completely separate entities. It’s neither better nor worse, it’s in its own league.

But maintaining this level of poise proves to be almost difficult, if not impossible. She urges you on—with loud moans, with enticing jiggles of her ass as you fuck her, with occasional demands from her needy lips—compelling you to take her harder than what your limits are. She pushes all the buttons in your brain that it drives you crazy, and you can’t help but give in, even when she’s the one allowing you to take her like this.

It’s sinful. Out of control. Your pace becomes disrupted, frenzied, and completely erratic. You’ve got both hands gripped to her waist, hammering away at her tight hole as lube and slick coat her outer layers, and the room is filled with the sounds of her lewd noises echoing all over the place backed up by the wet smacks of your flesh slamming against her skin. Forget that the whole establishment can hear you fuck, they have no idea who you’re even entangled with. Seulgi can scream and cry all she wants; they can do nothing to make both of you stop.

“Yes, fucking ruin me, fucking use me, keep fucking me like this—”

Resting your head over her shoulder, inhaling the scent of sweat, sex, and alcohol from her, you rasp in her ear, “I’m so close to cumming again.”

To make sure she doesn’t try anything funny, you fuck her as hard as your body allows, force her deep onto the sheets. You lay flat on top of her, hammering her with hard, mind-numbing thrusts while you cling to her shoulders, grab a fistful of her dark locks, kiss and nibble her ear—find anything to distract you from the inevitable. She’s screaming and mewling, forcing your attention to her, screaming about how she wants you to empty your seed inside of her, which you intend to do.

Either way, you don’t have a lot of time left.

You rest your head beside her ear, peck her sensitive skin. You’re fucking her ass so hard it’s almost cruel. Each stroke twists that expanding knot further and further until it’s beyond your control. “Gonna fucking cum again, Seul.”

She nods, bites her lip, eager and ready to receive you. “Inside,” she says once, and it only takes a handful more of pumps into her tight hole before you’re hilted deep inside her. The sound from your throat is primal, borderline animalistic. Your bodies tremble violently as you fuck your cum with each withering thrust, making sure not a single drop goes to waste, until you find yourselves frozen in a state you wish would last forever.

When your orgasm finally dies down, so does the rest of your body. Going numb, you press yourself against her lithe figure, lock her in a tight embrace, finding solace beside her head. A calm, peaceful quiet follows, with your collective deep breaths the only stir for minutes, maybe hours.

“I guess we can call it even.” Seulgi breaks the silence, turning her head to meet yours.

“Still didn’t cum in your pussy though,” is your immediate response, still unsatisfied, despite filling her ass with a hot load. “So no. We’re not even.”

“Relax. I’m here for five days. You know this place very well, right?” Seulgi pushes you off her and you settle on opposite ends of the bed, meeting each other’s gazes, her eyes twinkling with a rekindled fire and renewed lust. “We’ve got plenty of opportunities to fuck till then.”

Her cute face glows from the brightness of the sun beginning to rise over the city. That can only mean one thing: a new day has arrived.

“Or we can start right now.”

“Even better.”

—————

(A/N: The irony of naming this fic Anywhere but home when the actual inspiration is one of Seulgi's other songs from the 28 Reasons album. Specifically, Los Angeles. It's also the best song on there as well. I've been itching to write a fic with those pics she took when she was on vacation, but realized most of them didn't really fit the city setting of the story XD Thank you for reading!)

#smut #kpop smut #red velvet #seulgi

902 notes · View notes

vroomvroomcircuit · 5 months

Text

The World did not end

(A/N): 'ello and welcome to my first F1 fic. I'm quite new here (not to fanfic or tumblr, I mean F1), but I want to give back to the F1 community, since you all helped me out tons during a really rough period these last couple of months.

Pairing: Lando Norris x platonic!reader

Warnings: mentions eating food, death of a loved family member, grief, it sounds sad, but it's actually pretty sweet and hopeful (it's based on a tiktok trend), English is not my first language btw

Wordcount: .7k (she is a shorty)

Masterlist ______________

Finding Mclaren’s reserve driver crying in the cafeteria wasn’t what Lando expected to stumble upon, when I went to check out where the repeating music came from. It sounded like a sad song that could land a high spot on his next Spotify wrapped.

“Uhm, (Y/N), what’s wrong?” he asks gently as he approaches the table. After a startle she turns off her phone, which has been playing the music. Frantically, she wipes her tears. It still does nothing against the fact that she has been crying and that her blood shot eyes are very visible.

Lando shakes his head. When people think Oscar is an introverted person, she is the masterclass of introvertedness. Like, the last stage of a pokémon evolution. That’s why seeing (Y/N) cry in a semi public place like the cafeteria calls for concern.

“There has to be something. The food here is not that bad. I mean, I have the same reaction when I see fish being served, too. But today I felt like the meals were rather good. So do tell. What’s bothering you?”

First she shrugs, the twenty year old not being able to find her voice immediately. “The- the world didn’t end when I was 13.” The tears are coming back again, restricting her voice once again.

Lando gathers her into his arms. even though he doesn’t understand what is happening at all. Does that matter right now, though?

The girl needs another minute or two until she is composed enough to explain the reason behind her crying. “There is this Tiktok trend going viral right now. It’s about people saying what mundane things they are able to do, or-or which things they have achieved, and all that because the world did not end when they were a certain age. They mean they got through some heavy event in their life. And because they got through this, they are able to do said things or achieve this.”

He nods, understanding the bittersweet and hopeful outlook this kind of videos can bring. “And something heavy happened to you at 13?” He probes while trying to keep a cautious tone, not wanting to overstep any boundary he doesn’t see.

“My, you see, when I was 13, my grandmother died. This was the first time I felt real grief. I wished for the world to end, because nothingness would have felt better than this immense amount of grief. And this led me to thinking of how many times I wished for the world to end. Because there were important and life changing events approaching me so quickly. When the world ends, I wouldn’t have to go through them, right?

And suddenly I’m 18, writing my final exams in school and it felt like the biggest task in my life. it felt like make or break. But the world did not end. I was able to graduate.

Then I got into the drivers academy, I am training, studying, and meeting people. I’m doing everything and anything. Because the world did not end when I was 13.

And it didn’t end when I was 16, overwhelmed with studying for school. It also did not happen when I was 19 and put under contract to be a reserve driver for Mclaren.

The world never ended. I begged and cried for all of this to stop. To have peace. Because I thought that I would only feel at peace, when nothing happens anymore. And the world didn’t end and now I sit here with you, talking about a tiktok trend.”

Lando understands her train of thought and sentiment immediately. “You know, I’m happy it didn’t end. These past couple of months with you here were pretty fun. Even Oscar admits it! With that true little smile, not in that monotone tone of his. These interviews and the media stuff is much more fun with these silly remarks of yours. And you are an amazing human being. I’m really glad that your world did not end, because meeting you made mine better.”

(Y/N) laughs, the tears being gone and cheeks heating up at that confession. “I’m glad too. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to ravish my way through the mountain of pasta minutes before you came in.” They giggle, knowing they share similar food preferences and have the culinary plate of a four year old toddler.

And all that, because the world did not end.

#lando norris x reader #lando norris x platonic!reader #x reader #x platonic!reader #reader insert #formula 1 fic #f1 fic #lando norris imagine #lando norris fanfic

119 notes · View notes

dailydragon08 · 3 months

Note

headcanon post idea: everyone’s reactions when you tell them you’re proud of them (ex. after a tough mission or bc they’ve been having a hard time mentally/emotionally)

Although she’s used to the spotlight from being royalty and a revered leader in the rebellion, Leia isn’t very used to genuine praise. She’s usually the one praising someone else (or yelling at them, more likely) and the most she’s gotten in the last few years is a quick “good work” when she delivered the plans for the first Death Star before the Battle of Yavin. So when you first make her look you in the eye and genuinely tell her that you’re proud of her, she freezes for a minute. The last time she really heard that from someone who meant it was her parents, so it hits her a bit harder than she expected and she doesn’t completely know what to do with the feeling. She’s so used to being the rock for everyone else – and keeping her inner thoughts a secret was part of her job and how she stayed safe for a long time – that she takes a while to show any sort of big emotion in front of people, and even then will only do so in private. She gives you a small smile, nod, and quiet thanks before redirecting the attention to you, how much you helped, and says how she’s proud of you. But she will concede to an “I’m proud of us” before giving your shoulder an affectionate squeeze.

Luke also hasn’t heard a genuine “I’m proud of you” in a long time (not that the OT gang isn’t proud of him, they just typically don’t say it in words), but he tends to be a bit more emotionally available than his sister on a more regular basis. He can’t keep the emotion off his face and for a second, you’re afraid you said the wrong thing as his big, blue eyes start getting glassy. It means the galaxy to him, especially from someone who knows everything that happened with Owen, Beru, his father, and the emperor, not to mention all the weight on his shoulders in regard to rebuilding the Jedi Order from scratch. He collects himself soon after, but still gives you a warm smile and “thank you” before wrapping you in a tight hug. He tells you he’s proud of you as well and there isn’t anyone else he’d rather have on his team, holding the hug for a bit longer than you expected (but you, of course, would never be the first to let go).

Han pretends to be affection-averse, even though he isn’t – but, hey, he’s got a reputation to maintain. He splutters for a minute before recovering and saying something along the lines of, “Yeah, I am aware how awesome I am, kid, and I’m glad you’ve finally realized it, too. Ya know, I’m gonna remind you that you acknowledged my greatness next time you get on me for somethin’ – in fact, here,” he holds his comm right in front of your mouth and hits record, “why don’t you say that again so I have some proof?” You bat the comm away and tell him how insufferable he is before you both go back to what you were doing before. But, when he thinks you’re not looking, you can see the dopiest smile across his face.

Lando takes it the most in stride. He looks surprised for a minute, before smiling, thanking you, and putting a hand on your shoulder and giving it an affection squeeze and light shake. “You’re not so bad yourself,” he says before remarking on how you two make a great team, even going so far as to list specifics of exactly why you work so well together. He wraps his arm around your shoulders as the two of you walk back to base, a new spring in his step that you can’t deny is adorable.

Chewie (platonic) immediately says something in Shyriiwook that you think (hope?) sounds happy before enveloping you in a bear hug that almost crushes your ribs. You hang on for dear life, half laughing and half struggling to breathe, patting the Wookiee’s back before begging him to put you down before he accidentally crushes you. He mumbles something that almost sounds like the cadence of an apology in his language before setting you down and affectionately petting your head.

R2D2 (platonic) chirps, whistles, and wobbles on his two outer legs happily and is then adorably glued to your side the rest of the day. Han and Lando tease you about how you’ve found yourself your own personal servant, but Leia and Luke think it’s adorable, and even Luke comments on how much R2 loves you when he’s out of earshot. C3PO translates at some point, telling you how much R2 appreciates the compliment and that he enjoys working with you before the astromech is zipping away again to refill your water bottle for the third time.

C3PO (platonic) gives you a surprised “oh, my” before thanking you profusely. He even gives you a little bow and says, “You’re too kind. I enjoy our work together as well and you do a marvelous job at everything you set your mind to.” You give him a smile and a thanks before turning back to what you were previously doing, laughing quietly to you overhear him walking down the hall going, “Oh, Master Luke, you won’t believe what just happened!”

111 notes · View notes

youkaigakkou-tl · 3 months

Text

The TRUTH behind the soul pieces

Preamble: I started writing this expecting nothing, but I actually found something??? not clickbait???? gone right???

Warning: the expected reaction of reading this is “damn. I’ve never seen someone grasp harder at straws” and “I dunno about this one chief”

So. "The soul pieces aren't exactly what we're told they are" is an idea I've had for a while now. (I wouldn’t even call it a theory, it’s just a passing thought.) Not that "they're manifestations of Haruaki's traits" is wrong, but I think there's more to them than immediately obvious. I just haven't talked about this much because even I don't fully buy into it and it kinda verges on horoscope-type confirmation bias territory. It’s kind of a, I THINK there’s more to it but I don’t know what exactly is more.

A brief recap

First one shown is his "worldly desires", animal trio vs Seiryuu.

Second is his "freak athleticism", that Kurahashi's team and Ebisu just ran into.

With just these two he runs off to find Sano

Third is his "cowardice", found by Sano's team and Byakko, which gets away and hides in Sano's pocket.

Fourth is his "memory", originally found by Hijita's team and Genbu, which gets picked up by Genbu and then the whole Heian flashback happens.

And last is his "intelligence", which for some reason is also the one that can use his exorcism power.

So immediately a couple details stood out to me.

Why is "memory" here?? I wouldn't call that a trait exactly??

Also, when it first broke apart and flew off in five directions, it's specifically pointed out that it's "like a five pointed star" (even though it's not really if you look at the actual locations on a map lol)

And the sticking point, if it was as clean and simple a split as “Haruaki’s traits”, why do the traits bleed into each other? “Athleticism” is into sailor uniforms too, and “Cowardice” and “Intelligence” are pretty quick by themselves. Also, even without his “Memory” at the time, he remembered that conversation with Seimei in ch87.

The five pointed star detail, considering everything in the arc heavily relates to the Four Gods and Seimei's star, which relates to Wuxing, almost begs to be referencing that too.

What is Wuxing?

Wuxing, five elements, five phases, gogyo, whatever other name for it: I’ve talked about it briefly in my Kyoto arc analysis

(Wait. Is this actually all I mentioned regarding Wuxing in that analysis???? This tells you nothing!!)

(Tbh I think I had a longer explanation about it but I cut it because I thought it was irrelevant)

Wuxing 五行, roughly translated as five elements or phases, is a concept that comes from Taoism. The five elements are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal and Water and describes the interactions between them. Here’s the wikipedia page if you really want to get into the details.

The “xing” means movements/moving, and the entire concept of Wuxing comes from the five classical planets’ (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn) movements affecting… things? In general? (It’s horoscopes)

In fact, the names of those five planets in Chinese and Japanese are tied with the Wuxing:

Mercury = 水星 water star

Venus = 金星 metal/gold star

Mars = 火星 fire star

Jupiter = 木星 wood star

Saturn = 土星 earth star

You’re taught these as a kid but not the reasoning behind it (because it’s hella irrelevant lmao) but I guess it kinda makes instinctual sense? (Venus = yellow, Mars = red, Jupiter = stripes, like tree rings?? Saturn = brown. Mercury = it looks like there’s rivers? idk how much detail they were seeing in the BC times)

And just to sate curiosity, the planets that were discovered after telescopes were invented are just based off the English names

Uranus = 天王星 sky god star

Neptune = 海王星 sea god star

Pluto = 冥王星 underworld god star

By the way, this is also why the days of the week are named after elements in Japanese; it’s not actually the elements, rather it’s referring to the celestial bodies: those 5 planets + the moon and the sun. It’s the classical Chinese system that Japan adopted around the 5th century AD, and they haven’t changed it since then. (Chinese uses stuff like “weekday 1” for monday now.) And China itself adopted the Greco-Roman system of the 7 day week, days named after celestial bodies around the 4th century AD, which is also why the planets and days line up if you look at the English and Japanese names now.

Would be crazy if they independently decided to have 7 days in a week and name days after celestial bodies and assigned the same planets to the days huh.

(Also, TIL from looking at this chart that the sun (taiyang) is indeed called that because it’s the “great yang star”, and the moon is called the “great yin star”, you know, like yin-yang)

I’m remembering why it’s so hard to research and write about this stuff now. Everything is so inextricably connected to everything else its hard to talk about one thing in isolation. Thanks for indulging my astronomy tangent I love astronomy.

(I always got saturn on da mind when I think about Seimei cus of this art…)

The only useful part of this essay

So. Wuxing. Here’s a pretty standard diagram of it so it’s easier to visualise

There are five types of processes Wuxing describes:

Generating: Wood feeds fire

The reverse side of generating: Fire burns wood

Regulating: Wood grasps earth

Excessive regulating (destruction): Wood depletes earth

The reverse side of regulation (exhaustion): Earth rots wood

And here’s a full list of it, from wikipedia

With this in mind, you’ll notice that it pops up all over the place in Kyoto arc!

If we take lightning as aligned with metal (because Byakko = metal = lightning user), this is the regulating interaction of metal -> wood

Metal cuts wood, but wood also dulls metal

Water… nourishing wood….???

Water destabilizes earth

(“This is just pokemon lol” WRONG!! Pokemon types and every other element system in videogames came from Wuxing!! (Or Godai))

Back to the soul pieces

So you see, it’s incredibly tempting to connect the five soul pieces with the five elements of Wuxing. It’s basically begging for it. The Wuxing has been associated with lots of things that come in sets of five, including things like senses, tastes, smells, emotions, mental qualities, periods of one’s life, body parts. It has applications in divination and traditional chinese medicine after all. If there was a clear, 1-to-1 match between the soul pieces and the elements, you bet I would have talked about it more by now. But the connections are tenuous at best, and even I don’t really believe it. They might, probably, just be the traits we’re told they are. So this really is just to humor myself, and maybe someone can glean something more from this.

Let’s lay out the things surrounding the soul pieces:

“Desires” was at Arashiyama (a bamboo forest) and Seiryuu was present, both associated with Wood

“Athleticism” was at Ginkaku-ji (silver pavilion), none of the four gods were present, no obvious element associations here.

“Cowardice” was at Mount Kurama (mountain = earth?), Byakko was present (metal?)

“Memory” was at Kiyomizu-dera (clear water temple), and Genbu was present, water association

“Intelligence” was at Kinkaku-ji (gold pavilion), and none of the four gods were present initially. (gold = metal?)

The other thing I’ve yet to mention is all the soul pieces seem to be of different points in Haruaki’s life. (Well. Four of them at least.)

“Desires” and “Athletics” seem to look and act younger (as much as you can tell with chibis…), both wearing simple t-shirts, and “Athletics” t-shirt and shorts look like what Haruaki wore as a kid in the Miki arc flashback. Adding on to that, we’re constantly told how into sailor uniforms Haruaki was as a little kid (literally whenever his childhood gets brought up: Mamaaki talking about it in ch8, him saying his first cry as a newborn was “sailor uniform” in ch43, the ch51.5 extra) (ok to be fair. his sailor uniform fetish gets brought up at every opportunity. but i feel like it’s Pretty emphasized here) Also I feel like “Desires” especially talks like a kid.

Meanwhile “Cowardice” and “Memory” are dressed the way he currently does, and “Cowardice” seems to parallel the way Haruaki was at the start of the series. It’s Sano’s team that runs into him, he acts like how Haruaki did early on just amped way up, and he ends up hiding on Sano.

IQ-kun… still don’t know what to make of him and how he fits into this lol

Put like this, doesn’t it almost seem like, in the order they appear, they represent points in Haruaki’s life too?

Or, this could all be nothing, because they’re all wearing the same thing in the jacket for Volume 14.

So anyway, from this angle, it seems like Desires and Athletics line up fairly cleanly with Wood and Fire respectively, but Cowardice, Memory and Intelligence are a little murkier. Cowardice only somewhat lines up with Earth, and both Memory and Intelligence could align with Water, while Memory could also be Metal. (I dropped the quotation marks bc they were getting distracting)

Here’s a diagram to illustrate.

(See it’s kinda, pick-and-choosey, horoscope-type shit)

Immediately a couple problems arise. First and most majorly is the horoscopey-ness of it all. And then there’s the matter that, if the four gods represent four out of five of the elements and earth is the outlier, wouldn’t it also make sense if IQ-kun as the outlier would be assigned that?

There’s also the possibility that the first four are a set, and IQ-kun makes up the “yin” to the rest of Haruaki’s “yang” (But then what would the first four correspond to individually? idk….)

We’re getting nowhere with this analogy, so let’s look at some adjacent philosophies in sets of five, just for fun, and see if they line up any better.

Traditional Chinese Medicine

This one is the most related to Wuxing, there are five main “organs” in TCM that have associated Wuxing elements. They might be called the same names as the anatomical organs, but they’re actually more like concepts only roughly correlated with locations on the body. This is stuff codified thousands of years ago before modern knowledge of the human body, mind you.

Heart (fire): stores the “aggregate soul” (the mind)

Spleen (earth): governs transportation of qi and blood, and governs muscles and limbs

Lung (metal): stores the “po 魄” (physical soul)

Kidney (water): responsible for willpower or fear

Liver (wood): governs free flow of qi, blood and emotions. Stores blood, which stores the “hun 魂” (ethereal soul)

(The wikipedia page I linked has more in depth descriptions)

And if we sorta line up the attributes…

Desires = Liver/wood

Athleticism = Spleen/earth

Cowardice = Kidney/water

Memory = Lung/metal

Intelligence = Heart/fire

Something like this? It doesn’t line up particularly nicely either, and certainly doesn’t line up with the first theory…

But reading up on this actually brought something useful to my attention: the concept of “hun” and “po”

See, there’s this Chinese compound word “hun po 魂魄” that generally just means “soul”, but if you get really semantic they’re two different types of souls?

The “hun” is the yang-aligned “ethereal soul” typically understood as the wits/mind of a person, whatever constitutes the personality, and is the part of the soul that leaves the body on death.

The “po” is the yin-aligned “physical soul”, sometimes described as the “baser animal spirit” of a person, and is attached to the body.

This could explain why Haruaki’s soul is also Seimei’s soul, but also Seimei is in the underworld?

This scene I got real hung up about in my Kyoto arc post?

It lining up and being a reasonable explanation is one thing, but whether sensei is deliberately referencing a property of Chinese linguistics that doesn’t have an equivalent in Japanese kanji is another thing. And honestly, I could see Tanaka “I’ll have to read up on Chinese history, but off the top of my head Byakko and Seiryuu are from 4000BC and Suzaku and Genbu are younger” Mai could and would do it. (Good god, what I wouldn’t give to see sensei’s notes. Yohaji fanbook explaining every cultural reference PLEASEEEE IM BEGGINGGG)

Godai

Godai (“the five great (elements)”), while also a thing with five elements that features prominently in Japanese culture, differs from Wuxing in that it originates from the concept of Mahābhūta in Indian Buddhism, and features Fire, Water, Earth, Wind and Void. It’s a more inert definition and describes the elements as building blocks, contrasting with Wuxing which is more concerned with the balancing and interaction between the elements and the changes they cause in each other.

Godai also isn’t ever depicted as a star (and Wuxing is only depicted as a star as a byproduct of all the arrows denoting the interactions, sometimes the 5 elements are arranged like the 5 side of a dice with lines connecting everything) and is typically depicted as a Gorinto, a stone structure.

In order from top to bottom, it goes Void, Wind, Fire, Water, Earth, and represents the structure of the universe in Buddhism.

So. Attributes and if they line up any better.

Earth: unmoving, stability

Water: fluidity, adaptability, motion

Fire: passion, power, energy

Wind: growth, freedom

Void: the spirit? thought? there’s not really a clear description of this one. To begin with, originally in Buddhism, it’s just said that “from void emerged air, from air emerged fire, (etc)”

I could see wind = Memory and void = Intelligence, but the rest… I dunno man

The five aggregates in Buddhism

And now, following the thread back from Godai, to the Buddhist concept of Skandhas, or the “five aggregates of clinging”, described as the five factors that make up a sentient being’s personality. (Hey, this sounds like it could be onto something here!)

The five aggregates are:

Form or matter: the material form of a person

Sensation or feeling: the five senses + intellectual sensation, and the feelings that occur whether pleasant, unpleasant or neutral

Perception: cognition and recognizing what has been previously noted

Mental formations: dispositions, or something that motivates a person to take action (or sometimes described as the influences of a previous life?!)

Consciousness: cognizance, or the base that supports experience, sometimes translated as mind, intelligence or life force

Wait… This kinda… lines up…? No way…?

Form = Athleticism

Sensation = Cowardice

Perception = Memory

Mental formations = Desires

Consciousness = Intelligence

This… kinda works? They all basically line up and it’s not too tenuous, and there’s enough matching details in the descriptions of the five aggregates that it’s kinda scary…?

I’ll be real, prior to writing this section I hadn’t actually read the descriptions of each of them too carefully (I had the tab open and roughly noted the descriptions kinda worked) and I entirely expected to end this essay with a “in conclusion: no conclusion i learned nothing lol” but there’s actually something here????

And Tanaka Mai is known to reference Buddhism a lot, so this could entirely be intentional…??? I’m kinda shaken rn tbh

I mean, I guess I should have looked to Buddhism first considering sensei’s track record, what with how the arc opened with Haruaki getting put under a waterfall to get rid of his worldly desires, and how 3 out of 5 locations were Buddhist temples, but Buddhism concepts usually use their Sanskrit names and I don’t know how to google for that… (making excuses. classic)

Um. Hope you enjoyed reading this and that you learned something? Here’s all the relevant wikipedia pages if you want to go down your own rabbit hole:

Wuxing (Chinese five elements)

Godai (Japanese Buddhism five elements)

Mahābhūta (Indian Buddhism five elements)

Hun and po (two concepts of souls)

Skandha (five aggregates that make up a person)

Twelve Nidanas (didn’t mention this one, but it’s related to skandhas)

If you read all this you should read all my other long rambly things too if you haven’t, they’re all under the #rambles tag 👍

#youkai gakkou no sensei hajimemashita #a terrified teacher at ghoul school #yohaji #rambles #analysis #i had a whole character arc writing this #there was ups and downs

81 notes · View notes

yourlocalmerchgirl · 2 months

Text

The War Within - Part Two

Briefly Joel x Neurodivergant Reader Then Tommy x Neurodivergant wife reader

Part 1

Summary: The time has come after all these years for you to face Joel again. But when a conversation goes wrong and leaves you reeling after he finds out you and Tommy are married, your fierce protectiveness comes out as you defend Tommy after Joel accuses him of taking you from him

Warnings: 18+ MDNI, Reader admits to not wanting to be alive anymore in the last, Angst- Lots and lots of it in this chapter, Verbal fighting- lots of it , course language and lots of swearing, emotional, talks of anxiety, depression, Panic attacks, Neurodivergant reader. No use of y/n. Reader goes by the nickname Birdie. Use of typical pet names.

A/N: I hope you all love this new multi part journey I've been working on, I'm extremely proud of this story. I understand that this storyline/ themes aren't for everyone.

There is a possibility for a part 3 if everyone is interested that would be a look at Reader and Tommy's relationship and the love they have for each other and how they take care of each other following the events in this chapter so please let me know if you are interested in seeing that happen.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Your chest tightens, your thoughts dizzying as you try to comprehend what Tommy’s telling you.

“W-what?”

“He arrived today with some Firefly kid Marlene hired him to transport out here to some base. He immediately started asking about you, askin to see you.”

The look of panic in your eyes as you try to steady your breath has Tommy engulfing you in his warm embrace pulling you to his chest.

“I-I don’t think I’m ready to see him Tommy, I don’t think I can handle it”

“Sweet girl it’s ok, but I put him in his place, told him he had no right to demand to see you and that you had the right to decide. If you don’t want to see him you don’t have too, nobody’s gonna make you”

——————————————————————

Joels zoning out during dinner, they’ve been in Jackson for a couple of days, him and Ellie leave the day after tomorrow and he still hasn’t seen you much less heard anyone mention you. He’s starting to feel like you’re not here but that nobody wants to tell him. He’s pulled from his thoughts by Ellie’s constant chatter.

“Are you paying attention Joel?” Ellie teases

“Huh?”

“ I said I made a friend here at the stables?”

“Oh yea? The kids here do seem pretty nice”

“Not a kid dummy, an adult lady. She works at the stables and the barn”

“Ellie what did I tell you about bothering the people here?”

“I’m not bothering her, she’s really nice, pretty too. I’m not sure how old she, definitely not as old as you because you’re like ancient”

Joel chuckles at Ellie’s dig at him, but she doesn’t miss a beat.

“I met her the other day, I was trying to find somewhere quiet away from the other kids to eat and I ducked into the stables and she was there taking care of the horses and she said I could hang out in there. She’s been letting me help her feed the animals and talks with me. She keeps telling me I can come back and she teaches me more about the animals.”

“She sounds very nice, this mystery girl have a name?”

“Here’s the thing, she said her names Birdie, which i gotta admit at first I thought that was a friggen weird name but then she said everyone calls her that because of her love of animals which i think is pretty cool!”

Joel’s in shock, his mouth falls open when he hears your name, hears that you’re still going by that all these years later. Birdie was a nickname him and Tommy had given you before the outbreak because of you love of all animals. He’s able to snap his mouth closed before Ellie noticed his reaction.

“She has a radio in there and has these cassettes that my friend found when we were back at the QZ that she lets me listen too.”

“You should meet her, I bet you’d think she was pretty cool”

“Oh ah yea maybe, I’ll have to see if I can make it over there before we leave. I wouldn’t want to bother her.”

“Hey will you be alright here for a while? I gotta go talk to Tommy about some stuff before we depart”

“Oh yea sure, I’ll read more of those diaries I found in the bedroom”

Ellie hardly gets her answer out before Joel’s grabbing his jacket and racing out the door.

You’re already upstairs when you hear the frantic knocks at your front door.

You’re shutting off all the lights when you hear another frantic series of knocks before you hear him.

“Tommy you in there?” Joel’s muffled voice shouts through the door from the other side.

Tommy glances up the stairs to see you peeking downstairs from the darkness.

“What’s going on Joel? Everything alright?” Tommy asks as he opens the door.

Joel says nothing, just pushes past him into the house.

“Please Tommy just tell me where I can find her, we leave day after tomorrow and I just want to see her”

“Joel I don’t know what to tell you, I don’t think she wants to see you”

“Tommy please” Joel’s voice sounding more and more pained as they moved around the main floor of the house.

“Look I’m not sure if I’m gonna make it back from my journey. I ain’t what I used to be, I’m getting old, I’m slower than I used to be, I can’t think as quickly. Don’t hear so well out of my one ear. Im failing in my sleep Tommy, every morning when I wake up I feel like I’ve lost something. Please. If I’m gonna die I don’t want too of never seen her again.” Joel’s voice cracks as the tears start to well.

You’ve never heard Joel speak like that, with that kind of desperation and pain.

“I-it’s ok Tommy, I’ll talk to him” you say from partially down the stairs.

Joel stops, heart beat racing at the sound of your voice.

“She-she’s here?”

Tommy nods his head.

“Stay in here and let her come down on her own when she’s ready.”

Tommy heads up the stairs to meet you, he can tell by the way the dim light seeps into the stairway that your already crying.

“Ill be right up here if you need me sweet girl” Tommy whispers as he places a silent kiss on your forehead.

You wait a few beats before you slowly head down into the living room, taking a seat on the couch. Youre so quiet that it seems as though you’ve popped out of thin air when Joel looks up to see you sitting there eyes glued to the floor.

“Birdie?” Joels voice is just above a whisper, but you still hear it.

You pick your head up to look at him but quickly whip your head back down because the tears start as soon as you make eye contact with him.

Joel slowly makes his way to the couch, so quietly it’s as if he might scare you if he moves too quick. His work boots, the same boots he always had come into your life of vision.

“C-can I sit?”

You nod your head yes, still unable to get any words out.

“Birdie its-its so good to see you, I never thought I’d see you again”

“You too Joel” your voice is meek, your trying like hell to keep it together.

You can feel his gaze on you even though you’re not looking at him.

“I wish you would have told me you were leaving, we could have fixed things…. We can still fix things. I just don’t understand”

His emphasis on we can still fix things makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

“We couldn’t talk about things without getting into a screaming match Joel, how were we supposed to fix things?” You say finally letting your eyes meet his, tears rolling down your cheeks.

You flinch away when Joel reaches up to bush the tears away, but a couple of his fingers make contact, smoothing along the curve of your cheek.

“Sorry, force of habit” you mumble when you see his hurt expression at you flinching. Never in all your time with him had you ever flinched away from him.

“I just….I just don’t understand why you left.”

“You didn’t see my note?”

“I did I just….I would of done anything to figure things out. I would of done anything to take care of you”

“You say that now Joel but do you not remember telling me that night during our last fight that you should be taking care of Sarah instead of me, that for the Hundredth time you were upset that I was crying during our argument. Reminding me that I was too sensitive for the state of the world”

“I will never fuckin’ forgive myself for saying stuff like that in the heat of the moment that I never meant.”

“I know and take responsibility for the fact that I was a lot to deal with. I’m not trying to blame you solely for our issues. I know that i spiraled when the outbreak happened. Forcing me to cold turkey not to have therapy, to not have the schedule and consistency that I desperately needed to making it through life day to day. I know that my panic attacks, anxiety and dissociative tendencies where thrown at you all at once when you where trying to navigate the loss of Sarah.”

You pull your gaze back down to your feet before you continue.

“You have no idea how badly I wanted to of had the chance to show you those parts of myself slowly, in a different way. But our relationship was doomed from the start, we’d only been together six months When the outbreak happened. Nothing we could of done to fix anything, we just weren’t meant to be Joel and that’s ok.”

Joel scowls slightly at you. You didn’t mean for your words be be painful but they clearly stung him.

Joel sighs, rubbing his face with both of his callused hands.

“ I loved you. I hope you know that”

“That’s unbeknownst to me Joel”

“You can’t be serious”

“I’m not a fucking mind reader Joel. There are times when I thought you did. But we were together for years…years Joel and you never once told me you loved me. I told you everyday that I loved you. Hell I told you I loved you even on the days where all we did was fight and fuck. The only time I ever heard you say it was.” You stopped your self before you could finish your thought. You didn’t want to go there, to dig up all again.

You should of known Joel wasn’t going up give up so easily.

“The only time you heard it was when?” Joel pressed, eager to know what you had to say.

“ it doesn’t matter Joel, just drop it.”

“No I wanna hear it, I wanna figure this out”

“Please Joel just drop it, it’s not going to do anyone any good bringing all this up again. it doesn’t matter”

Joel sits back a little bit folding his arms over is chest. “ please just continue I want to hear it”

“ Fucking a Joel FINE, if you really want to hear it. The only time I ever heard you say I love you to anyone other than Sarah was the night I came home to see you buried deep inside Tess. Hearing you call her baby girl, telling her how much you loved her as you fucked her.”

You’re seething at this point. Burning so hot with anger that you feel like you could just burst into flames. Joel on the other hand looks like he’s just seen a ghost as all the color drains from his face.

“Oh my god…you-you saw that?”

“Of course I saw it Joel, I came home after being out all night looking for you to that”

“That’s why you were weren’t home? You were out looking for me after curfew? You shouldn’t have done that, those places are dangerous, you could of gotten hurt without me there to protect you”

“I shouldn’t of done that? No Joel you shouldn’t of fucked another women in our bed. I’m sorry that I risked myself to search all over the dark and seedy areas of the QZ for you because I was scared to death about the fedra guards catching you and beating the shit out of you when you were likely to drunk to defend yourself”

“I can’t keep having this conversation, it doesn’t matter Joel because in the end you both got what you wanted, Tess got you and you got someone you didn’t have to take care of”

You can feel the panic seeping in as your chest tightens and your heart races. Your desperately trying to breath deeply, trying to calm yourself as the panic spreads throughout your body. Joel notices your having a hard time and moves to wrap you in his arms, to try to comfort you the way he always should have.

“Ple-please don’t fucking touch me Joel, give me room to breath” you breath out as you snap your head up.

Tommy’s there before you in a flash. Running down the stair two to three steps at a time when he hears your breathy tone. The way your voice sounds when a panic attack is coming on, When he knows you need him without you having to express it.

Joel watches how good Tommy is with you with guilt and admiration. Seeing how Tommy’s able to help you through your episode, with the care that he himself should of shown you.

But those feelings are quickly replaced with red hot anger when he notices the matching rings you are both wearing when you bring your hands up to cup over Tommy’s hands as he cradles your face.

“Christ are you two fucking married!” Joel shouts, unable to hold it in.

Tommy feels you tense and whimper under his touch as Joel stands.

“We are, but now is not the time to discuss this” Tommy says in warning as he looks up at Joel, but his hands never leave you as he smooths his thumbs back and fourth on your cheeks to sooth you.

“This is why you stopped messaging me back isn’t it?”

“Enough Joel”

“It is isn’t it? Because you were ashamed to tell me, to admit that you took the one thing I had left away from me”

“Isn’t it?” Joel continues to press, seeing red and really unsure about what he’s even saying at this point.

You let out a strangled whimper, all the yelling and emotions overstimulating you, becoming to much to bare.

“It’s ok baby, don’t listen to him, just focus on my voice. I’ll protect you.. we can get through this” Tommy whispers as he rests his forehead against your head. He knew he wouldn’t take it well, and he was prepared to take all the verbal jabs, all the yelling and anger from Joel. He’s taken it before this time would be no different. All he cared about was shielding you, protecting you the best he could. It’s all he ever cared about was protecting you, keeping you safe. Tommy was terrified how damaging this was going to be for you.

“C’mon Tommy let me hear you say it! You never could stand me having something you didn’t.”

That what the final straw for Tommy.

“Fucking a Joel that’s enough, I said! You’re really going to do this in front of her even though you can tell she’s distressed.”

“I think she should hear it too, because I really have a hard time believing she just left without being persuaded”

Tommy’s standing now, facing Joel and directly in front of you as if he’s acting as a shield trying his hardest to protect you from the blow Joel is about to deal.

“What exactly are you tryin’ to get at Joel?”

“She wouldn’t just go off by herself, she was always by my side, to nervous to wonder around on her own much less leave the fucking QZ without me.”

“Funny, she might of never left you’re side but you ever think about all times you left her fucking side Joel?” Tommy snarls. Tommy feels you gripping his leg from behind him at the sound of him defending you.

“She was fucking fragile, always havin’ those episodes…”

“They’re not just fucking episodes Joel, they’re panic attacks” Tommy cuts Joel off, getting madder by the second. The fact that Joel is talking about you this way, insinuating what he’s insinuating.

“My point is she was fragile, she wasn’t of right mind, there’s no way she would of just decided to leave. You were around all the time, you knew she wasn’t ok and you used that to get her to leave”

Your squeezing tighter on Tommy’s leg.

“Enough Joel! This ends now. Do you even fucking hear yourself?

You let out a strangled guttural noise as you gripped Tommy’s leg to stand up on shaky legs.

Tommy turns giving you his full attention

“Baby it’s ok, dont push yourself. It’s not worth it”

“No I need to say something that he needs to hear” you say pulling away from Tommy, your piercing hazel eyes locked on Joel.

“ Your not the only one in pain Joel, your not the only one that’s hurting, that’s lost a loved one or experienced death. Did you ever even consider what it was like for Tommy to loose Sarah too? Or how going through the outbreak and doing some of the things we’ve all had to do to survive could have brought back horrific memories of his time in the military?”

Joel can’t do anything but stare back at you like a deer in head lights. So you take a deep breath and press on.

“The fact you would even think that Tommy would be capable of using my mental state to manipulate me into leaving you is low Joel, even for you. Like I can’t even fathom that you think he would do that to you and I. I’m going to make something very fucking clear to, I’m the one that asked him to join the fireflies. I’m the one that showed up at his door that early morning after seeing you and Tess because I needed to get away and I had no other options. Because if I’m being honest I wouldn’t have lived much longer if I stayed at the QZ.”

Joel arches his eyebrow in a concerned manner “wh-what do you mean you wouldn’t of lived much longer?”

Taking a ragged breath in as the tears begin to cascade down your cheeks you reply.

“I-I I didn’t want to live anymore. I was being suffocated by life, everyday the weight on my chest got heavier and heavier. Somedays it was nearly impossible to breath. I didn’t even feel like I was in my fucking body anymore. So i made the decision to leave on my own because I was fragile, because I didn’t want to die but I wouldn’t of survived feeling like that. To hear you admit you knew how fragile I was, how off I was is a special kind of hell thats going to take me along time to heal from.”

“Birdie…. It hurts me so much that I hurt you so badly” Joel moves forward to try to embrace you , to comfort you but you pull away from him.

“I always felt so small and weak compared to you. All I ever wanted was a fraction of the love and support I gave you in return. For someone to tell me it was ok, that I’d get through it. Just someone to fucking be there for me. The love between Tommy and I came slow. I agonized for 2 years about leaving, feeling selfish for not being there to care for you. But I had to think about taking care of myself.” You said before running up the stairs into the dark abyss of your room.

“ I hope your fucking happy with the damage you caused with what ever kind of point you were trying to make. I suggest you get the fuck out of this house before you cause anymore trauma for her, because I can guarantee you she will be reeling from this for a long time.”

“Tommy please I…”

“ I’m not messing around Joel get the fuck out. I need to go check on her and make sure she’s ok and I’m sure as hell not going to continue to fucking go there with you tonight” Tommy shouts as he slams the door.

Taglist:

@hiddenbabynyc @frogjumps-world @kaleidoscopewritings19

@coolchris77 @caitlynsixxx @natasharoblesjoneshi @jarman147 @bobgirllll @lovelessamai @hydralicious-bucky

@bellaramseysbitch @rav3n-pascal22 @saltymagazinecreation

@oriborealis250 @tybsbnbn @mellowbananacowboybandit @f1shb0nez @d19evyn @cafeznha @gigachadcowboy

@racheldon @elkenenvy @mirandablue1 @jellybeanxc

@adrien8097 @sweetlemonade11 @clownd1ck @nightmarebeforchristmas @moravalentine @silv3rmind

@miniatureangelhoundsoul @nopenopenope10484 @harryscumcloth @morgaussy, @kalllistos @spikershoyo @musings-of-a-rose @alongfortheridereader @princessmk21

#fanfic #gabriel luna #the last of us #tommy miller #tommy miller x reader #pedro pascal #joel miller #tommy tlou #neurodivergent #tommy miller x f!reader #joel miller x f!reader #joel miller x reader #protective tommy miller #angst #fanfic writer

66 notes · View notes

fizzingwizard · 6 months

Text

I was genuinely looking forward to Lupin vs Holmes in part 6, but what a disappointment it was. Actually, disappointment is too weak a word. In my opinion, it was pretty much a disaster.

There were so many reasons to be hyped for that crossover. You've got Holmes, the greatest detective of his time, and Lupin, the greatest thief of his. They're both canny, eccentric, and always a step ahead of everyone else. They're also both independent and live by their own set of morals. Holmes picks which cases he'll take without concern for money, and lets people go even if they're guilty if his own convictions say they don't deserve punishment. Lupin always does what he wants, doesn't let himself get pushed around, and enjoys wreaking havoc among inhumane criminals just as much as he enjoys flouting the law.

They're even perfectly matched in the ways they're different. I was open to them either liking or disliking each other (though I feel convinced they'd definitely have respect for each other), because I can see either take making sense. Holmes is calculations with a pinch of chaos, Lupin is chaos with a measured dash of calculation. Holmes eschews relationships aside from a very few - Lupin enjoys social interaction (but prioritizes just a few). Holmes is functionally asexual. Lupin is never not horny.

Even the supporting cast was so promising! To tell the truth, from watching previous seasons I didn't really think the rest of the Lupin gang or Watson would have much to do. But I hoped they would because there was so much potential.

I mean Jigen and Watson are both war veterans in their own way. It's not the best comparison (Watson was a doctor, and got shot almost immediately... but he is also a "man of action" and does have a lot of fight and pluck, even if he's not going to be a match for Jigen in terms of marksmanship). And they're the right hand men of two pretty difficult geniuses... couldn't they spend a moment commiserating lmao.

It could have been awesome to see Fujiko interact with Holmes because her usual tricks wouldn't work on him. I admit it isn't unlikely the show would have been like "Ahh, but this time they do work on him, just like Irene Adler!" and totally ignored that book!Irene impressed Holmes with her wiliness and not her sexiness... But I'm talking about my fantasy here. And in my fantasy, Holmes would have had a similar reaction to Fujiko's manipulation and acting skills similar to how he did with Irene. It would have been pretty cool to see Fujiko interact with a man who was NOT into her, but was just as smart and brave and perhaps wiser than Lupin.

Even Goemon would have had something to do. He could have had a super cool kenjutsu vs baritsu ("what even is that?") battle with Holmes. Extra points if Goemon walks away saying "I respect the skill of that fellow warrior, even if he can't spell his own martial art correctly."

And of course Lestrade and Zenigata's shenanigans at Scotland Yard are a nobrainer. But serious bonus points if they both pine away with equal envy and admiration for their respective smart ass thorns in the side hahahahahahaha.

I mean. There was SO MUCH there. How, HOW do you mess that up???

(Answer: By knowing absolutely nothing about Sherlock Holmes to begin with and basing everything on your memories of inaccurate movies from fifty years ago x'D)

So instead we got: perpetually sad, somber Sherlock Holmes, who isn't working the job that he literally loves anymore in favor of looking miserable a lot and raising a child. And the child is Watson's kid, who Watson can't raise because he's fucking DEAD, and mom can't raise because SHE'S dead (just say Holmes is her mom. Come on. We're in the future. Just say it). Also Watson is dead because Lestrade killed him like WHAT. Of all the twists they could have gone one, they definitely surprised me with that one. Was it a fun surprise though? ... No, no it wasn't.

Add to that the extremely dull characterizations of everyone, the heavy reliance on the danger to a little girl who isn't even a canonical character but is very cute, and the slow, slow pace of the episodes... What a mess. It was memorable, sure, but for the wrong reasons.

Like the only thing I can think of that I didn't hate about the whole arc was Lily taking her first steps as Holmes's assistant at the very end. Fine, that's adorable, and makes me feel ever so slightly better about Watson being dead. And I'm desperate for something to like here so let's go with it.

("It's not really Sherlock Holmes anyway because of the generational difference, it's his great grandson who has his exact same name and job! Same with Watson and Lestrade and sexy Mrs Hudson and and and-" I'm gonna stop you right there we all know it's Holmes. Whatever excuses they make, no matter how they have to bend time and physics to make it happen, it is Holmes Prime in every way that matters lol.)

A melancholy sigh for the Coolest Crossover Ever That Wasn't. As a Lupin fan and a Sherlock Holmes fan, I'll regret it till the day I die.

#lupin iii #honestly fuck part 6 lol #a very grave and serious post about very grave and serious matters

71 notes · View notes

strawberrysands · 1 year

Note

ouu! can i request you write a nate x reader(in a relationship) where theyre in the odessa catacombes w sam and colby? :)

Odessa Catacombs - Nate Hardy

Roughly based off of this video

This is my first request ever ashakjht thank you so much anon! I hope you like it :)

Disclaimer: The video and the story take place before the whole war thingy. I just want to say that I am not in the slightest way ignoring anythinig that is happening at the moment and that my heart goes out to everyone there <3

Summary: you join Nate, Sam, and Colby to explore the Odessa Catacombs in Ukraine

Word count: 3.8k

Warnings: fluff, mentions of death and hauntings, sum kissing, again not proofread lmao

“Babyyyy.” Nate drawls out the last syllable. A small smirk forms on your lips, knowing that he only did that when he wanted something from you.

You’re currently sitting on his couch, feet on the coffee table, mindlessly scrolling through your phone. Nate walks closer to the couch and hugs you from behind, burying his face in your neck.

“Yesss?” You say innocently in the same tone that he did.

“You would do anything for me, right?” He asks, voice muffled by your hair.

You laugh. “Depends on what you want me to do, babe.”

“Sam and Colby are going to Ukraine for a video and asked me to come. Come with me?” He says, and even though you can’t see him, you know that his puppy eyes are on full display.

You pretend to think about it for a moment. “What’s in it for me?” You tease. “What do I get in return?”

You feel the corners of his lips curl up against your neck. “I can think of a few different things.”

He starts placing kisses on your neck and you immediately know you’re a goner.

“Pretty please?” He pleads. You let out a breath of air when he kisses that particular spot on your collarbone, and he smirks at your reaction.

“Not fair, Hardy.” You huff and you turn around to face your beautiful boyfriend.

“As long as I get the window seat on the plane there.” You say.

So here you are, in Ukraine, countless hours later. You had met up with Sam and Colby as soon as you arrived and are now preparing to start the intro to the video.

“Today, we are going to be visiting the Odessa catacombs, the single largest group of tunnels and underground city in the world.” Sam says to the camera.

“During Odessa’s industrial ‘boom’, they started digging for limestone underneath the surface. But because there were no regulations, they just dug at random.” Nate says.

“Which basically created a massive labyrinth that’s only like, half mapped. So it’s like, really easy to get lost in there.” You add.

“There were literally like 2 people found dead this year in here.” Colby states.

“Wait really?” You ask. “No one told me about that part.” You chuckle but the fact kind of creeped you out. One of your worst fears about this place was to get stuck down there and never find your way out again.

Colby nods and continues. “Yeah, this isn’t like from ancient times. Even today, people get lost and there’s even cults down there.”

“Right now, we’re at the catacombs museum, a pretty popular tourist spot, but later today, we’re also going into the uncharted catacombs.”

“The wild catacombs.” Nate says dramatically and you snort.

“Wild, seriously? How can a bunch of tunnels be wild?” You ask. Sam had cut the camera by now and you start walking towards your guide.

“Babe, I know a wild thing when I see one.” He smirks as he puts an arm around your shoulders. You playfully roll your eyes at him, and you see Colby in front of you who had turned around to listen to your conversation now turn back again with an odd expression on his face, making you chuckle.

“Alright everyone, this is Ivan, our tour guide. He’s going to be helping us through the tunnels since we have no idea what we’re doing.” Colby says. “Can you maybe tell us some history about the museum and the catacombs itself?”

“The museum here was built in 1960 to remember the partisans who were hiding here during the second world war.” Ivan starts. “But the catacombs are actually just stone mines. Odessa was basically built from this material.”

“If the mines are that big, isn’t there a high risk of it collapsing while we’re in there?” You ask slightly worried, and you feel Nate take your hand in his own.

Ivan nods. “In these types of things, there’s always a risk involved. In fact, there are still many bones of miners buried underneath the collapsed parts. But hopefully everything will be safe today.” He says with a small laugh.

“Hopefully.” You mutter. You feel Nate give your hand a gentle squeeze before he turned to Ivan.

“Do you believe this place is haunted?”

The tour guide shrugs nonchalantly. “Yeah, maybe.”

Sam laughs. “He’s just like, oh whatever.”

“Dude, it’s so much colder in here.” You remark as soon as you step in the tunnels, your worries from earlier disappearing to the background.

“Yeah, it’s gonna be cold like all day.” Sam agrees.

Ivan takes you through numerous rooms and you already feel like you’re completely lost. You learn that the miners often take horses in here and that they would eventually go blind because of the absence of light. After discussing what this place would do to your biological clock and seeing the shooting range, Ivan takes you to the partisans’ hospital.

“Isn’t this like, way too small for all the people that lived down here?” You ask.

“Yes, of course. I am convinced that there are lots of other hospital rooms like this one throughout the tunnels. Obviously they won’t have like the beds in them because this is just part of the museum, but there are lots of places that could have been a hospital like this one.” Ivan says.

“C’mon dude, get it up.” You hear Sam say. You look over and see that Nate was messing with a blood pressure device thing.

“A lot of guys struggle with this, okay.” He says.

“I can help if you like.” You say seductively, winking at him. You see Colby fake gag and you’re pretty sure that if it hadn’t been for this odd lightning, Nate would have been blushing.

“Wrong website, guys!” Sam shouts laughing,

“Join xplrclub for only one dollar this week for more exclusive content.” You say at the camera, wiggling your eyebrows.

---

The hospital was the last stop of the museum tour, and you had to take a different entrance to go to the uncharted catacombs. What you didn’t realize, however, is that you had to walk up like 5 flights of stairs just to get back to the surface.

Once you get to the top, everyone’s panting heavily.

“Oh, fuck me.” You say, since that was more physical than you thought it would be. You realize how your exclaim sounds and you hold up one hand to Nate. “Don’t you dare make a joke out of that.”

He chuckles as response and puts both of his hands up defensively.

---

Once you get to the other entrance, you instantly notice the difference with the tunnels from the museum. The ground is muddy and slippery, and you have to carefully pay attention so you don’t end up on your ass.

“Somehow, you have to get down.” Ivan says, and we all let out a laugh.

Colby goes first. “It’s doable.” He says after he gets down. “I only caused like one avalanche.”

Once Nate had safely gotten down there, he extends a hand to you which you gratefully take.

A few meters further, Ivan stops and scans the area. “The entrance of the catacombs is blocked because of the flood. We’ll have to get in this way.” He says, gesturing to a tiny hole in the ceiling.

“We have to fit through that?” You ask perplexed. You turn to look at Ivan, but he was already gone.

“Bro, our guide just disappeared.” Sam chuckles.

Once again, Colby decides to go first on this one. After a couple of moments of struggle, he had disappeared, and it almost looked like the ceiling had swallowed him. Sam is up next and then it’s your turn.

“Wish me luck.” You say and Nate kisses the top of your head gently. You hand him your go-pro and start climbing up.

“Did you hear that?” Colby asks as soon as you get your head up through the hole.

“What?” You frown, pushing yourself up as gracefully as you could.

“Dude, where did Ivan even go?” Sam wonders while looking around, the sound now completely forgotten.

You lend Nate who was right behind you a hand and pull him up.

“He went left, for sure.” Nate says, going in that direction. And sure enough, you suddenly bump back into Ivan, making your heart skip a beat.

“I checked and the lower levels are ruined from the flood. A lot of small tunnels, so probably not the best idea to go down there.” Your guide says and Sam’s eyes were already screaming ‘hell no’ at the small tunnels part.

“So, I propose we climb up.” Ivan continues, pointing a big gap in the wall about a meter and a half up. He shows us how to climb up and makes it look way easier than it would turn out to be.

“Why do I always wear skinny jeans when we do these types of things?” Colby sighs before holding onto the wall and climbing up. Nate is up next and this time it’s his turn to stretch out his hand for you. Your foot suddenly slides off the wall and you feel Sam’s hands supporting your butt in order to not make you fall.

“Were you seriously groping my girlfriend’s ass, Golbach?” Nate asks once Sam gets up as well.

“Would you rather she broke her neck?” Sam says and Nate begins laughing. “Dude, I’m joking. Thank you so much for saving the life of my one true love.” He says dramatically, putting a hand over his heart.

Even though he had a playful tone, you couldn’t help but smile at his words.

---

You gather around the camera to start explaining the ghost stories of this place.

“It’s not just the biggest labyrinth in the world, on top of that, it’s also haunted.” Colby laughs.

“It is. There are a lot of ghost stories from here, one of them being Masha.” Sam says.

“Masha and her friends decided to explore the catacombs here late at night. They were drunk, it was New Year’s eve, and they were just some teenagers looking for some fun. They ended up spending the night here, and when they woke up, Masha wasn’t there anymore. Her friends tried to look for her but they never found her, and now she’s rumored to haunt these tunnels, still looking for a way out.” Colby says.

“Damn, that’s sad.” You say. Nate nods and continues the story.

“There were a lot of search parties sent out to look for her. A while later though, a group of young explores thought they had found her body and took pictures in front of it. A lot of people believed that this story was all a myth. So much even, that a journalist had to pressure the police to get the body out. From the looks of it, she had spent three days in pitch black and cold trying to find her way out before dying to dehydration.”

(A/N: I did some research on this story and there are a lot of different versions. Some of them say that Masha went in alone, others say that her friends went with her and ‘abandoned’ her in the tunnels. Some even say it never even happened. I just went with what I wrote here)

“Another entity that supposedly haunts this place is Bout.” You say. “He is said to protect any treasure from these tunnels. Bout was an officer from Odessa who was on board of the Titanic. They rescued him and he made like a small Titanic out of gold. He hid it in these catacombs and never came back for it.”

“For three generations though, people have come here to look for treasure. As the legend goes, if you took anything from here, Bout would cause amnesia and make whole tunnels collapse to make sure you never got out again. If you died here because of that, you would become the next Bout to protect the treasure here.” Sam says.

“There are actually a few versions of this legend. Another one is that it’s Brigantine, and not the Titanic. We’ll see some pictures of it later.” Ivan says from behind the camera.

“Obviously there are many ghost stories from this place, but I think the last one we should talk about is the White Hunter.” Sam says. “A long time ago, there were two guys down here and one of them got trapped. His friend ended up not helping him get out.”

“You guys better help me get out of here.” Colby says, looking at us.

“Yeah, 100% dude.”

“Oh hell no.” You say and Colby looks at you with a fake shocked face. “You put green hair dye in my shampoo. I’m still not over it.”

“For the record, that was three years ago, as a revenge prank. She had swapped my toothpaste with soy sauce.” He says while looking at the camera, and you grin at the memory.

“Anyway, this guy had so much anger at his friend that he came after anyone that was in here. If you didn’t, like, make the right offering, he could make you the next White Explorer.” Sam continues.

“Then, there’s another version of this story, that if you do make the right offering he would actually help you get out.” Colby says.

“Do we have anything to offer though?” You ask.

“We have Nate.” Sam deadpans and we all burst out laughing.

“Oh hell no, I don’t want his angry girlfriend putting ketchup in the coffee maker.” Colby says, looking at you with a scared expression.

----- Tiny time skip yall im sorry lol -----

“I can give you, like, a small task to test your orienteering skills if you want.” Ivan says, “if you go left on each crossroad, you should end up right here where we are now.”

“You’d be able to find us if we got lost though, right?” You ask, slightly nervous about going into the catacombs on your own.

“Yeah, I hope so.” Ivan says and everyone starts laughing uncomfortably.

“I’m going to need that hat of yours for this.” You say, taking Nate’s hat off of his head and putting it on your own.

“You look better with it anyway.” Nate flirts and Colby groans.

“Sam, why did we invite the lovebirds?” He says, seemingly annoyed, but you know he doesn’t mean any harm with it. While Colby was the one usually complaining about you and Nate being all cute together, he was also the one who rooted for the two of you the hardest when you weren’t dating yet.

“This is like, my worst nightmare.” Sam says and you immediately agree with him.

Nate places an arm around your waist and pulls you closer to him as you all start to walk into the dark tunnels.

“If we don’t find the way back, at least we’ll die together. That’s kind of romantic, right?” He says, probably attempting to comfort you a little.

“Dude,”, Colby says, “since when is dying together romantic?”

Nate rolls his eyes. “Have you ever heard of Romeo and Juliet?”

You take the first left turn before Sam replies. “Juliet was literally thirteen years old.”

“Guys!” you say loudly. “I don’t see any of you getting comforted by your significant other. Y’all are just jealous.”

Colby laughs. “Fair point.”

---

“Are we sure this is the right way?” Sam asks as Colby and Nate had already climbed through a hole in the wall.

You shrug, “It’s the only way to go left here.”

“Alright, so far we’ve taken two lefts and now we’re taking a right. So that means we should take two more lefts to make a square.” Sam says, slightly confused. “No wait, one more left.”

“So after three lefts, straight should come here.” Sam continues, pointing at a brick wall. “So if we take a right, we should take one more left.”

You laugh. “I didn’t understand anything of that and I’m pretty sure none of the viewers did too.”

“Wait, guys look.” Colby says, walking to a small hole in the wall.

“We’re not going down that, right?” You say as your eyes go wide.

“Yeah, no, Ivan said we’d come through that massive hole. If the massive hole is through the tiny hole, there’s no fucking way bro. I don’t want to go down that.” Sam says, and he looks just as scared as you.

“So we must have taken a wrong turn.” Colby says, thinking, and you nervously fumble with your hands. Nate notices and takes both of them in his own to calm you down.

“But we only took left?” Colby wonders, looking confused as shit.

“I guarantee you, the big hole is through the little hole, but I don’t want to go through the little hole.” Sam says, letting out a laugh.

Just as his sentence ends, you hear a bang down the small tunnel, making you jump. Nate lets go of your hands and hugs you from behind, leaning his head on your shoulder.

“Did you hear that?” Colby says with wide eyes.

“Yeah I heard that too.” Sam confirms.

“If this doesn’t work we’ll just go back the way we came, right?” You ask and you feel Nate nod against your shoulder before letting go of you to go first.

Nate attempts to shuffle through the small tunnel, and as he’s almost at the end, he quickly tries to get back as soon as possible.

“Did you hear that?” He asks, still halfway in the hole.

“Dude, that shook the ground. It sounded like giant rocks falling.”

“That means something collapsed, right?” Sam says.

“Ivan!” Nate yells through the tunnel.

“That’s got to be him, right?”

“Oh! Ivan, what’s up?” Nate says relieved as he pokes his head through the other side of the tunnel.

You let out a breath and Sam laughs. “Oh man, I was scared for a moment.”

Sam’s up next and after he tried to crouch through the whole thing, you start to go, but Colby holds you back.

“Wait, let’s mess with them for a bit.” He says and you grin at the idea. After dimming your flashlights, it didn’t take long for your friends to start calling out for you.

“Colby? Y/N?” You hear Sam’s voice. “Guys, are you coming?”

“Y/N? Please, this is not funny, okay?” Nate shouts and you almost feel bad for him.

“Nate really doesn’t give a shit about me.” Colby whispers, laughing, and you snort before covering your mouth to stifle the sound.

“Should I go check?” Ivan says, his voice muffled by the rock between you.

“Nah, we’re just messing with you.” Colby says, turning on the flashlight and you hear the others starting to laugh.

Once you got through, Nate places his hands on your hips and pouts. “Don’t do that to me, okay?”

You put your hands on his shoulders, looking into his adorable puppy eyes. “Aww, I’m sorry. A kiss to make it up?” You ask, eyeing his lips.

He grins and connects your lips, lightly squeezing your hips. Your hands make your way up to his hair and you forget where you are as that glorious tongue-

“They’re definitely dying here together.” Sam says and you notice his voice sounds a little too far away.

You pull away from Nate to see that the others had already started to move further down the catacombs.

“Forever lost in eternal love. It’s a good headline.” Colby snickers, looking at the two of you.

You shake your head at your friends before looking back at Nate who had the most adorable expression on his face.

“So it’s totally the hat, right?” You say, smirking. Nate usually wouldn’t let himself go this far when his friends where near.

“Yeah,”, he breathes, “it makes you look really fricking hot.”

--- time skip to the rituals lmao ---

“We are here, us four, all the way from the United States, to talk to any sort of spirit down here.” Sam says.

You were all set up, equipment scattered through the room and candles on the table in front of you. Not to mention the burning goat heads on the walls that made this place look even creepier.

“We don’t mean any harm or disrespect, we just want to hear your story.” You try.

“Woah, look!” Sam exclaims, pointing to the thermal camera that Nate is holding. “That just shut down!”

“And it has like no automatic shut down, right?” Colby asks.

“Yeah, after what happened at the conjuring house I checked, and it didn’t.”

“If anyone is down here, could you maybe try to communicate with us using one of these devices?” Nate asks. “You can come up to them and touch them, to let us know you’re here.”

After getting no response, you tried again with Ivan translating, but that didn’t seem to work either. You decided to move on after about thirty minutes, but then one of the candles from the goat heads fell down.

“Woah, holy fuck!” Sam shouts, walking over to where the candle fell. Just then, another one in the back of the room tumbled down.

“Look! That one as well!” You say, both scared and excited that something was finally happening.

“What?”

“Dude, two candles just went down, it was like the devil just winked at us.” Sam says.

Almost immediately after Sam said that, a cloak that hung on the wall fell down too, right next to Nate.

“Did you just hit that off?” Sam asks, pointing at the cloak.

“No, it just fell down right next to me!” Nate says with wide eyes.

“Nothing has ever happened before you, so maybe we should just go.” Ivan says from the side of the room, his eyes going between the cloak and the music box going off every now and then.

“Bro, it smell horrible in here.” Colby says.

“Honestly, let’s just get out of here.” You say, now definitely on edge.

“Yeah, if Ivan wants to get out, so do I.” Sam agrees, but another candle falls down.

As Sam and Colby are shouting about it, you grasp Nate’s hand and he squeezes back, just as scared as you are.

“Alright, I’m done.” Ivan says, and everyone agrees to get out of the tunnels.

After the fifteen-minute walk all the way back, you are finally able to breath in fresh air again. You close your eyes as the sun warms your skin, and Nate swears you had never looked more beautiful. The afternoon sun makes your hair look like it’s glowing and a peaceful expression on your face.

“Dude, you’re whipped.” Colby says with a smile, patting him on the shoulder before getting ready to film the outro to the video.

A smile forms on Nate’s face just by looking at you. “Yeah, I am.”

#nate hardy #nate hardy x reader #nate x reader #nate hardy imagine #sam and colby #sam golbach #colby brock #xplr club #odessa catacombs #fanfiction #fanfic #nate hardy fluff #fluff #idk what else to tag

426 notes · View notes

hairstevington · 1 year

Text

Stranger Therapy - part 2!

Eddie Munson x Steve Harrington

Summary: Based on this text post, Steve and Eddie match on Tinder and decide to go to couple's counseling on a first date to see how long it takes the therapist (Murray) to figure them out. Chapter 1, Link to Ao3

Word Count: 3k again!

Warnings: This one has a moment of actual therapy lmao, nothing TOO serious but Eddie has low self-esteem and Steve is closed off, modern day AU, aged up, brief Robin cameo, Matchmaker Murray.

A/N: OMG I was NOT expecting such a big reaction to part 1!! Here is the much requested part two, and I plan to continue for probably another two or three chapters. Thanks to all who have read so far!! PS I really did look into the counselor code of ethics for this one lmao

“So, how’d it go?” Robin asked once Steve got home.

He had no idea how to answer that question.

“It was…” He wandered to the fridge to grab a drink, wondering how much of the experience he should share with Robin. Generally, they told each other everything, but wasn’t therapy usually a private thing? So it wouldn’t be too terribly weird to not tell her, right? “Did you know he went to Hawkins High with us?”

“He did?” she asked, just as confused as Steve had been. “Like, at the same time we were there?”

“Yup. Eddie Munson ring a bell?” Robin thought about the name for a second before her eyes widened.

“Oh my god! Yes I remember him!” She laughed, then continued once she’d settled down. “Okay, yeah. He’s definitely the kind of person who would want to do the first date fake couple’s counseling thing. He was always a little…outside of the box.”

“Come on,” Steve replied. “You say the meanest shit to me, and the best you can come up with for Eddie is that he’s ‘outside of the box?’ Robin, he’s never even seen the box.” She laughed again.

“Okay, sure,” she agreed. “I’m guessing it didn’t turn out to be a good match?”

Steve hesitated again, because no, that wasn’t it. He wasn’t sure if they were a good match, honestly. He ran through the events of the day in his head, then realized just how batshit insane it all was. And Steve had agreed to it.

And he didn’t even regret it.

He imagined telling Robin, and her relentlessly teasing him about it like she always did. This would give her enough ammunition to last a lifetime. It probably would be even worse than the fateful day at the mall when Steve had accidentally ripped his pants while attempting to hit on a girl. Robin had a front row seat for that one, and she still brought it up.

Steve agreeing to go to therapy with an actual stranger, pretending to date said stranger, and working on actual personal issues together? Yeah, no. Steve was gonna take this shit to the grave.

Except, he wouldn’t, would he? Because he had an accomplice. They also weren’t strangers, not really, but they were still acquaintances, at best. An acquaintance that Steve had intermittently thought about kissing ever since Eddie mentioned it with Dr. Bauman.

Ohhh, this is bad I think.

“Earth to Steve,” Robin said, interrupting his thought spiral. “Are you going to see him again or not?”

“We’re gonna get coffee next week,” Steve lied. He never lied to Robin, and he felt immediately horrible about it, but he couldn’t tell her, right?

He almost broke and told her the honest truth, because sitting with the lie was so uncomfortable. Instead, he told himself that if he actually got coffee with Eddie next week, then he wouldn’t be lying. Loophole!

“Oh,” she said, surprised. “I really didn’t expect anything to come from this.”

“Yeah, well he’s -” Steve tried to think of what exactly it was about Eddie that was so enticing. He was hot, obviously. Charismatic. He was able to take Steve off guard, and they rolled with each other’s bullshit pretty smoothly. It was strange how connected he felt to Eddie in the session. Like they really were in tune with each other. Like they were an actual couple. “He’s cool. We had fun.”

“I know you’re not telling me something,” Robin said, eyeing him suspiciously. “But I guess it’s not my business. Plus, confidentiality and all that.”

Unlike Steve, Robin had been to therapy before. She had always told Steve he should go, too, but he never had.

Until now, of course. But first, he had to cover his bases.

Steve: Do you wanna get coffee before our appointment?

Eddie: Sure, gives us a chance to get our stories straight

Eddie: Hold on let me make the joke before you do

Steve: ?

Eddie: About our stories being gay and not straight!!

Steve: I wasn’t gonna make that lame-ass joke

Eddie: Sure you weren’t

Steve: And if I was, my delivery would have been way better

Eddie: oh shit

Eddie: Steve’s biting back today ;)

Steve: Well I gotta keep up with you, don’t I?

Eddie: Mmm i see how it is. Noon work for coffee?

Steve: I’ll be there

Eddie had recently been told by a close friend that he needed to get his shit together. The couple’s counseling wasn’t a whole master plan on Eddie’s part - he really did think it sounded fun, and it was - but the thought of talking out some of his issues was appealing, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it.

This close friend of Eddie’s - the one who suggested Eddie had an attitude problem and low self-esteem - had mentioned Dr. Bauman a few times in the past. He apparently worked wonders on couples, even the ones who argued all the time. His success rate was remarkable.

Thinking back on it, maybe Eddie did kind of want to do couple’s counseling with Steve and Dr. Bauman for a reason.

Like, come on. There was a spark there, right? There was something, at least. Who else would have gone along with Eddie’s crazy this much? Steve understood Eddie, and while he kept calling this whole thing ‘insane,’ it didn’t stop him from agreeing to it. Because there was something there between them.

But mainly, Eddie just wanted to see a therapist, he didn’t really want to do it alone, and for whatever reason Steve seemed like the right person to be there.

Okay, yeah. Steve’s right. This is insane.

The cafe down the street from Murray’s office was small and cozy, and had fancy syrups for the coffee that Steve secretly loved. He came here sometimes, under the guise that he was getting a strawberries and cream oat milk latte for Robin, even though literally none of the workers cared.

“Your usual?” the barista asked when Steve and Eddie got in line. Steve tried not to notice Eddie’s amused expression and the way his eyebrows were raised expectantly, desperate to know what Steve ordered so often the workers had it memorized.

“Uhhhh…” Steve wasn’t sure why he was blushing. He never cared much about being seen as masculine, and he was literally going to therapy with this guy, so things were about to get a lot more embarrassing than a coffee order. He looked at Eddie. “Don’t judge me, it’s delicious.” Eddie laughed.

“I don’t give a shit,” he said. “Whatever it is, own it.” Steve turned to the barista.

“Yes, the usual,” he told her.

“I’ll get the same thing,” Eddie chimed in. Steve felt a flutter of something in his chest, somewhere between anxiety and flattery.

They got their drinks and sat down. Steve took a sip and tried not to show on his face how happy this stupid beverage made him. It was a simple joy, you know?

“Okay, so you wanted to come up with some kind of game plan, right?” Steve asked as he waited for the caffeine to hit.

“Yeah, I mean -” Eddie shifted in his seat uncomfortably. What the hell is he nervous about, Steve wondered. “If Murray figures us out now, he’ll drop us. So we have to be a bit more convincing.”

“How are we supposed to be more convincing? Do you want us to start making out on the couch or something?” Steve suggested it as if he wouldn’t be extremely happy to do so.

“If it comes down to it,” Eddie teased back. Steve blushed once again. He was so much better at flirting than he was being flirted with. “My favorite color is black or red, depending on the day. I still mostly eat canned foods and TV dinners because I never figured out the whole meal prep thing, but it works out fine because my favorite food is mac and cheese. I play a lot of video games and I have a Dungeons and Dragons group. I’m kind of amazing at the guitar -”

“What are you doing?” Steve asked, not getting it. Eddie sighed.

“I’m telling you about myself, what do you think I’m doing?” He shook his head and chuckled. “So you have context, or whatever. So we’re not just making shit up.”

“Oh, okay,” Steve responded. “What about your family?”

“Yeah, we’re not gonna touch that subject with a ten foot pole,” Eddie muttered. “Your turn.”

“Fair enough. Okay, well my favorite color is blue, I guess. I live with my best friend Robin. I…I’m not really good at this.” Steve took another sip of his drink and wondered why he couldn’t come up with more facts about himself.

“College?” Eddie asked. Steve shook his head. “Me neither. Do you like music?”

“Yeah,” Steve answered. “I took piano lessons for a while and then I taught myself the rest.”

“Impressive,” Eddie noted. “Do we ever play music together?”

“I guess we could,” Steve said with a shrug. It was fun, coming up with a backstory like that. “Aren’t you going to drink your coffee?”

“Oh Jesus, no. It’s got way too much sugar for my taste.”

“Then why did you get one?” Eddie smiled.

“Because now -” Eddie slid his cup across the table until it was directly next to Steve’s. “-you have one for later.” Steve stared down at both cups, perplexed.

“That is…like, incredibly sweet,” he said.

“Just like that abomination you call coffee,” Eddie replied.

After intake, Dr. Murray Bauman examined the counseling code of ethics, and unsurprisingly there was nothing in there saying it was unethical to continue treating a couple who were lying about being a couple. He didn’t have proof they were pretending, of course, but clients lied to therapists all the time. If they showed up for their appointment, Murray was going to counsel them. That was his job. Truly, it would have been unethical not to work with them.

They did show up, and they were right on time. Immediately, Murray noticed something was different. They were more comfortable with each other, and Steve in particular looked much less terrified.

“So,” Murray began, “tell me how your week has been.”

“It’s been good,” Eddie answered. “You really helped us out a lot.”

For a fleeting moment, Murray believed him. He thought that maybe his instinct had been wrong, and they actually were a couple, and they’d somehow managed to get over Steve’s affair in a matter of forty minutes.

But it was only a moment. Murray was a great counselor, but nobody was that good. His suspicions were confirmed when Steve opened his mouth.

“We actually think our relationship is solid, and we kinda just want to focus on our own individual issues,” he said.

It was far too polished of a statement for it to have not been planned. Which meant one thing - Steve and Eddie were just looking for individual therapy, and were going at the same time for…emotional support? Cost-effectiveness?

Murray nodded. This was all a first for him, and he loved uncharted waters.

“Okay, what would you like to focus on first?” he asked.

“I’ll go,” Eddie offered. “So, I have this friend that says I have self-esteem issues, but it doesn’t really make sense to me because I feel like I’m pretty confident. Like, I haven’t really mastered how to be a grown-up or anything, and I’m kind of a mess sometimes, but it’s all part of my charm, you know? I’ve always been a little crazy, but I also think I’m awesome, so…”

“If you think you’re awesome, why does someone else’s opinion matter?” Murray asked.

“I dunno, aren’t you the one who has the answers?” Eddie asked. “Just skip to the part where you tell me what’s wrong with me.”

“Well, that’s not usually how this works,” Murray began, “but I think I do see what’s going on.”

“Enlighten me,” Eddie said.

“You just said you were confident but called yourself a mess and a little crazy in the same breath,” Murray replied. “You can exude confidence all you want, but it doesn’t mean you actually believe those things about yourself. Steve, what do you think about this?”

“Uhhh -” Steve looked absolutely unequipped to answer the proposed question. “I think Eddie knows how hot and charming he is, actually. I don’t think it’s bullshit.”

“I didn’t say it was bullshit,” Murray countered, noticing that this time Eddie was the one to blush. “But there is a difference between ego and self-esteem. It’s not just about confidence, it’s about self-respect and worth. Eddie, do you feel valuable?”

“Like, in this relationship?” Eddie asked.

“No, in this world.”

This question stopped Eddie dead in his tracks. His face went pale, and he became visibly nervous at the prospect of being so vulnerable.

“Fuck,” Eddie said at last. “I mean, uh - not really, but it's not personal, I don't think. Just feels like we're all specks of dust on a rock, you know?"

There was another shift in the room, but Murray couldn’t pinpoint exactly what.

“Can you tell me a bit about how you grew up?” he wondered. Family history was a standard line of questioning in these early sessions. Eddie froze.

“Actually, I really wanna focus on my thing now, if that’s okay,” Steve interrupted. Eddie seemed relieved to pass the torch, so Murray went with it.

“Of course. What’s going on with you, Steve?”

“Uhh, well, I - um -” he sputtered, his leg bouncing rapidly. “I keep having this nightmare - like, every night - where there’s a monster in my closet. What do you think that means?”

“Well,” Murray said, leaning back in his chair. “Dream psychology isn’t really my specialty -”

“Okay, but I reeeeally wanna talk about it,” Steve persisted. "Like, is the monster a metaphor about my sexuality or is it supposed to be my dad? Help me out here."

While Steve babbled about his obviously made up dream, Murray caught Eddie staring at the man beside him. There was a completely unmistakable twinkle in Eddie's eye that told Murray everything he needed to know. Whether these boys knew it or not, they cared about each other.

“As you wish,” Murray conceded. They used the rest of their time focusing on much less heavy subjects, and it was pretty clear that was intentional. He understood, though, that it was important not to take these things too fast. Before long, the color returned to Eddie’s face, and the boys were riffing off each other again flawlessly.

This was getting more and more interesting by the minute.

“Things were intense for a bit in there,” Eddie said as they walked back to the parking lot.

“Yeah,” Steve agreed. “You okay?”

“M’good,” Eddie replied. “Your dream thing. Was that real?”

“Uh, no. I just thought you needed a break.”

“Oh,” he said. “Normally I’d give you a spirited monologue about how you don’t know me and therefore shouldn’t make my decisions for me.”

“What are you gonna say instead?” Steve asked.

“Well, considering you’re technically paying for this, I don’t really have a leg to stand on,” Eddie chuckled. “And also, as weird as this whole thing is, I’m glad you were in there with me.” He tried to play it off as a lot more casual of a statement than it was.

Being in therapy together and actually taking it seriously was an incredibly intimate thing. Steve wasn’t sure he could actually be as open as Eddie had been.

“I think we’re skipping a whole lot of steps, here,” Steve said, attempting to return Eddie’s light tone.

“Yeah, well I’ve always hated steps,” Eddie replied. “I tend to trip over ‘em.”

“Right.” Steve chuckled. “So…same time next week?” Eddie flashed a genuine smile and nodded.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Oh, but next time - you’re in the hot seat. No fake dreams, I’m talking real shit, okay?”

“Oh, you’re making demands, now?” Steve asked, amused. “What happened to you not having a leg to stand on?”

“Huh,” Eddie responded, pondering this for a moment. He shrugged. “I guess I can fly.”

Steve had no intention of actually diving into real shit, especially after he’d seen the way Murray dug into Eddie during the session. Steve wasn’t ready to confront anything. He refused to admit there was anything to confront in the first place. But he would go - of course he’d go, because something deep within him told him he’d regret it if he didn’t.

Steve and Eddie weren’t a couple. They weren’t strangers. They weren’t friends. But damn, they were something.

(next chapter)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

@escapingthereality @imfinereallyy @raisedbylibrarians @samthemissfit @chaoticvictorianspirit @elizbaehth @despoenaandpyromania @cr0w-culture @bagofgreentea @f1ct1onwh0re @novelnovella @thing-a-ling @bisexualdisastersworld @practicallybegging @soldiers00 @beckkthewreck @fandomz-brainrot @shrimply-a-menace @justanothergirlwithobsessions @freshflowers-and-dryingherbs

@paintballkid711 @abraca-fxckyou @allbimyself26 @jellybabiesforall @allbymyselfexceptformycactus @justaloadofgarbage-blog @alliemunsonsstuff @undreamingscatworld @thefruityfours @hobbitnarwhal @calivanus @wreckmyplans-thatsmyman @antheia @goodolefashionedloverboi @lillemilly @missmagillicuddy @steviesbicrisis @gamerdano @menamesniall @eyeslikewildflowers111 @callmesirkay @stringischeese @eds-trashmouth

#steddie #steddie fic #eddie and steve #eddie munson x steve harrington #st fanfic #writing #stranger things #stranger things fanfiction

258 notes · View notes

savlina · 3 months

Text

companion with paws 🐾

Description of what is happening:

Sofia had to bring the dog to the base due to certain circumstances. By the way, they all meet with this joyful animal not for the first time (this can be seen from such a vivid reaction of the dog to Kyle). Soap has always said that this dog is the complete opposite of its owner)

But the first meeting initially looked different. (events that occurred about two months ago)

On one of the most ordinary days, Ghost, Soap and Kyle, as usual, gathered in the common lounge, but Sofia was not with them. They didn't really wonder where she was, because before that Price had warned them that Sophia needed to leave, but she was supposed to be back this morning. He couldn't tell them exactly where she had gone because she hadn't explained it to him, but she said it was very urgent and would only take a few hours.

Soap: Why did he let her go without explanation?

Ghost, making himself a cup of tea, replied: I think there are reasons for that.

Soap: But it's almost noon, and she's still gone.

Kyle: Maybe something happened.

Soap: Don't be ridiculous; what could have happened in those few hours?

Ghost: And in less time, everything is possible.

*woof-woof*

All of them suddenly twitched.

Soap: Fuck

Kyle: Did I just hear barking?

Ghost: A dog?

Sofia was standing behind them. Her grin could be seen through the mask: I just wanted to cheer you up a bit) Kyle: After a few hours of training, it was optional)

While everyone was greeting each other, Goust still couldn't take his eyes off the dog. Sofia noticed this and said

- Oh, by the way, don't be surprised. I don't have time to explain, because I urgently need to go to Price. Pointing at the dog with her eyes, she continued: She will sit quietly with you in the corner for now, and please do not pay attention to her and do not touch her.

*And then, less than a second later, Sofia left again*

*They were left alone with this dog*

Kyle: Did I understand correctly, that she brought the animal here and asked me not to pay attention?

Soap: I didn't promise not to pet her dog, did we?)

And Ghost just kept looking at this magnificent animal.

Without taking his eyes off them, suddenly the dog abruptly moved from his place and moved to a corner without any commands. But her big glass eyes wouldn't stop looking at them.

Kyle: Just like Sofia said before.

Ghost: And the eyes are exactly like the hostess's.

Soap: Where does she even have a dog? She never mentioned her.

Kyle: Not surprising. She never mentions anything.

Ghost: Are we really not allowed to approach her?

Soap: What? Are you ready to forget Sofia's request?

Ghost: No. I'm just. Asked.

Soap: Yeah, I'm laughing. I think if we stroke her, no one will know about it, right?

Kyle was already at her side. And after a while, three grown men run around the room and play with a four-legged friend like children. But they underestimated how silently Sofia moved. And now the girl is standing in the aisle and watching them. A serious and rude voice echoed through the room: What did I ask you for?

All three men turned sharply at her, and the dog immediately ran away from them from the same corner in which it was originally sitting.

- Did you have to ignore my request?

They stood as if their mother was scolding them.

Soap: We just couldn't resist.

Kyle: There's nothing scary about playing with a dog.

Ghost: Excuse us.

Sofia didn't say anything; she just called the dog with a hand gesture and led her to her room.

Soap: So... a very strange reaction.

Kyle: I think we have another workout right now.

Ghost just silently headed for the exit.

Soap: Yes. Good idea.

#sofia nyx #cod oc #task force 141 #ghost simon riley #kyle gaz garrick #soap mactavish #john price #sofia nyx olhovskaya #dog #little story #call of duty #companion with paws

26 notes · View notes

inkblackorchid · 10 months

Text

I was gonna try to keep my mouth shut, but I can't. I just can't. I have to go on another Aki rant because I feel like I'm going to explode. It's about this scene:

This drives me insane and I'm putting this under a readmore. Expect incoherent screaming, all ye who enter here.

Ok. Ok. I have so many issues with this scene. Specifically, with the way it develops later, when Aki's busy trying to figure out how to save a child from being swept up by a storm:

And I just. Look, I think the fact that I already wrote a fic that basically completely turns Aki's reaction here on its head should basically tell you everything. But! But. Allow me to defend why I think this whole scene is one big heap of horseshit, with a bit of analysis of canon and actual evidence to back up my claims and shit.

The thing is, I have seen people give this scene a charitable read. I've seen people be happy for Aki to enjoy freedom from the psychic powers that have given her so much trouble in her life. And the thing is, if this were season one or season two Aki, I would be completely on board with that take. Unfortunately, this scene is preceded by the pre-WRGP arc. But more on that below.

Moreover, I can make an educated guess about what they were going for here (in terms of messaging, because this is a kids' show at the end of the day and messaging is something you have to be properly concerned with when it comes to these). I can imagine it running somewhere along the lines of "you don't need special powers to be a hero". Or even "you can grow past the hurt and/or the mistakes in your life and still become a good person or even a hero". And really, I wish I could believe that take. It's just. The writing simply doesn't add up. I wish it did, but it doesn't.

This is where we get back to the pre-WRGP arc. And not just that, actually, but the timeskip between the dark signers and pre-WRGP arc, too. Because the thing is, the last time we have seen Aki in anguish about her powers on-screen by the time the episodes above (108-109) arrive was during the DS arc, during the duel with her father, which happened during episodes 40-41. 40. to. 41. This was over sixty episodes ago at this point. And after that, that's it. As far as the DS arc is concerned, Aki's conflict about her powers is resolved the second she controls them for the first time when her father tries to interfere in her second duel against Yusei.

(Yeah, remember this moment? That was literally the last time we saw Aki in conflict with her powers.)

And I know some people would argue "but what about the dark signer duel with Misty?". And yes, I get it. Misty does accuse her of having murdered her brother with her powers and Aki gets incredibly (understandably) upset about it. But the thing is, we know that's fake, and during the duel, Aki knows that, too. She goes as far as insisting that there were no casualties at the duel where Misty thinks Toby died.

(Yes, I have screenshot proof for literally every dumb little thing in this show, why do you ask?)

It's only after Misty keeps pushing and backing her into a corner during their duel (and literally gaslighting her) that she begins to believe Misty's version of the events. Which is why this doesn't "count" as Aki being in conflict with her powers the way her second duel with Yusei does. At least not to me, feel free to debate me over this if you wanna.

Okay, but what am I driving at here? Fair question. Let me hop back to after the dark signers' defeat.

So, we know there's a half-year timeskip between the DS and the pre-WRGP arc (which was allegedly enough for NDC to connect the city and Satellite, deal with all the social issues that entailed, and also build a giant duel network, which I will never believe but I digress). Unfortunately, what exactly our main characters did during that timeskip is never addressed, it's just kind of there to segway immediately into the WRGP setup. So the only thing we can do is guess at what they got up to based on where they are as people by the time we get back to them during the start of the pre-WRGP arc. So where's Aki at when we see her again after the dark signers' defeat then?

Oh, she's attending duel academy again now! That's nice. So that probably means the student body isn't scared shitless of her anymore and she's not being ostracised anymore.

Wow, she's an exceptional student! That means she must be a really good duellist. So she got the hang of her powers, then?

...Ah.

Do you start to see my problem? Past the DS arc, we are not being given any indication that Aki is still struggling with her powers or still resents them or herself like she used to. You could be forgiven for thinking that she's healed in the meantime. She's fine. She has accepted herself and can now use her powers safely. Which makes her later claiming "she no longer needs that cursed power" a bit... hmmm. And another thing. The fact that she refers to it as "cursed" rubs me the wrong way. After the defeat of the dark signers, she literally never does that even a single time before the moment in the hospital during the storm. (I'd post all the screenshots to prove it here but for one, tumblr doesn't allow it, and for two, I hope you'll believe I did my due diligence without it.)

And it just irks me. If the powers are still a "curse" to Aki by episodes 108-109, why give us the moment above?

And why give us this moment, where she saves Sherry, Yusei, and herself with those powers?

And why give us this moment, where she literally uses her powers at a public event to protect people, and is evidently not cussed out as a witch for it? Neither of these moments do anything to indicate that Aki still hates her powers. They don't indicate that she sees them as a "beast of burden" or necessary evil of a sort, either. On the contrary, I don't think it would be too out there to claim all these moments make her look rather badass. Like a small celebration of "hey, now she can finally use these powers for cool and not evil things!".

Yet, somehow, we still end up with episodes 108-109, where the writers expect the audience to buy that Aki was secretly still hoping she might eventually be rid of these powers after all. And maybe this would be easier to swallow if there weren't also the fact that they later literally go back on it to add to this confusing mess. Because the thing is, we all know the finale scene after the three-way duel with Sherry where Aki protects them with her powers (which have suddenly reappeared, aha!) again and also finds out she can use these powers to heal. So not only is the framing of Aki suddenly being glad to have lost her powers extremely weird, it's also temporary anyway!

So my question is. What was the point. What was the point of all this if the writers ended up going back on it anyway? Because I want to believe there's a reasonable, charitable explanation that also makes sense with what they show us in terms of Aki's characterisation past the DS arc, but if there is, I cannot for the life of me find it. If anything, this whole thing feels like it completely contradicts itself.

First, they tie up Aki's conflict with her powers with a neat bow after she manages not to hurt her father anymore. Then, they launch into the pre-WRGP arc and blatantly tell us that she can now control them. No questions asked. Indisputable fact, and we get nothing that contradicts that, either. Then, we get a bunch of setup showing her using her powers, too, and what's more, we get other significant players in the cast taking notice of it, too, as though it might become relevant. Because Sherry isn't the only one who gets curious about Aki's powers.

(I will never understand how Placido's hood works together with his horn-thingies and have stopped trying at this point.)

The literal, central antagonists of season 3-4 also take notice of it. Like that means something. Like it'll come up again later. But, well. We know it doesn't.

Instead, she suddenly loses her powers out of nowhere (and we are never given a reason for it, either, which does nothing to make this writing decision seem anymore understandable). And, look. The thing that upsets me most about this isn't even the fact that it feels a little inconsistent with Aki's character post DS arc. If that were the only problem, I could still suspend my disbelief far enough to go along with the idea that she secretly still hated her powers quietly in the background and wanted them gone anyway. What really pisses me off is that it reeks of zero setup and knee-jerk decisions in the writing room ten miles against the wind. If they wanted us to believe Aki's glad to be rid of her powers, why give absolutely no indication that she's at odds with them past episode 41 anymore? Why let her state outright that she can now control them? Why show her on several occasions using them to her own and other people's benefit, the way a hero would? And if her powers are supposed to vanish and it's supposed to make sense, why is there no reason for it? They already used cyborg timetravel at that point, they could have literally come up with any nonsense related to that and it would have probably made at least more sense than just letting her powers vanish for no reason at all. Also, if the message behind all this is supposed to be either of the things I mentioned way above—if the idea the audience is supposed to be getting is either "you don't need special powers to be a hero" or "your past and/or your mistakes don't define you and you can heal and grow past them"—why reintroduce the powers, which, in this reading, would be a symbol of Aki's pain, of her mistakes and her dreaded past, at the very end, during the finale, then? It just doesn't add up, and it frustrates me to no end.

The writers wanted to make the moment Aki realises she can help people (well, one person, a child) without her powers seem triumphant so bad, but every time I watch it, it just completely falls flat for me. This isn't a triumph, this is a hot mess of bad writing decisions. All I'm saying is, if they wanted me to buy that Aki would be happy about losing her powers here, they were missing a hefty amount of setup and also shouldn't actually have given them back to her during the finale (no, not even as healing powers).

Moreover... I'll freely admit I also have a personal problem with this scene. I've seen this show and these episodes several times by now, and during my last rewatch and my current one, something about this scene has been creeping up on me, and I think I've figured out what that is now. So I talked about the possible message behind this scene already, and the reading I've given so far was fairly forgiving. But the thing is, there is another reading that has occurred to me that I can't unsee anymore. As much as you could make a valid case that this scene is trying to say that people don't need to be special to be heroes and save others, that past mistakes don't define us, and yadda yadda, there's also a much, much less pleasant way to interpret this scene: "You're better off if you don't stand out." And I'll freely admit, this interpretation probably occurs to me specifically because I was considered a "weird kid" at school, singled out by bullies, and avoided by "popular" kids (take a wild guess why I relate to Aki so much!). And over the years, you learn to downplay that "weirdness" because you become desperate to be accepted by someone, anyone. And given everything the show gives us about Aki's relationship with her powers, it'd make sense that this idea would be buried somewhere in her head, too. It's better not to stand out. Don't be weird. Sand down your edges so there's no chance people could get upset about them. You're better off being whatever everyone else considers "normal" than being whoever you are. It doesn't matter if this is a part of who you are, just become someone else. Someone who's easier to accept. Who's easier to love. You don't need your "weirdness".

You don't need this cursed power.

You know, the "cursed power" that Aki had from the beginning of the show, that was a part of her for years, and that the show didn't give any indication could vanish. The power that we were led to believe would just be there forever, because it was simply a part of Aki, not a conscious thing she (or the narrative) could choose. The power that we were, for all intents and purposes, led to believe she had mastered and maybe even accepted along the way. But sure, let's get rid of that. It's better if she's """normal""". And more convenient for the writers, too! After all, if she doesn't have powers anymore, they can't cause plotholes (of which the WRGP already has enough) and can't possibly give Aki any more badass moments, which makes it that much easier to sideline her. And let's package this weird, shittily set-up moment in a message about how she's better off without her powers anyway. She's happy! It makes complete sense that she's happy. She's finally normal like everyone else. Ignore the way people who might relate to the character could possibly interpret this moment differently. And ignore how none of the writing surrounding this moment makes sense.

...Sigh.

Okay, I think I've let off enough steam. I just. Yeah. I'm sorry, but I cannot for the life of me view this scene in a favourable way and watching it today made me want to chew glass tbh. My only solace is that they went back on this trainwreck writing decision in the finale. Which, really, just makes this whole mess really, really pointless, doesn't it?

For anyone who stuck around this long, thanks for reading. Sorry if this got extra-rant-y. Idk man, I just think “it’s worth the effort to accept yourself as you are, even with all the bits you might not like at first” would have been a better message than whatever this turned out to be.

#yugioh 5ds #aki izayoi #akiza izinski #ygo 5ds #5ds #character analysis #orchid watches 5ds (again)#episode 108 #episode 109 #orchid rambles

85 notes · View notes