Tumgik
#is this a dumb title?
bluerosefox · 10 months
Text
No Longer In Service
Okay
Okay
hear me out
Ghost King Danny Summoning!
The heroes fail to stop it, everyone is panicking, they feel like they’ve truly failed to stop it. etc etc
EVERYONE is ready to fight for their final life.
They’re as ready as they can be to go against something so evil JLD are scared of it.
SO when the dome that was sealing them away from the summoner finally shatters they are expecting some huge eldritch being, something made of pure nightmares... Only...
Only to find an old tape recorder in the middle of the summoning circle...
Everything is dead silent. No one moves...
Then it clicks on and makes a loud noise.
The noise?
It was the no longer in service beep.
“We’re, not, sorry.” a teenage voice began after the beep ended, startling everyone as they weren’t expecting this at all “But the Ghost King you are trying to reach is no longer in service or rather King anymore. Thus any big evil world ending plans you have made will not be approved during my reign. Please, get a life and try to actually live it because I will not be ending anyone's or mass genocide anything... Also to the really insane Fruitloop that tried summoning a being with the warning of "will cause the end of your world". I am the Ghost King now, eventually everything and everyone will enter my domain regardless of who, when, how, or why. That is something I can wait for, I got no reason to speed it up.... So have a pleasant day and enjoy being arrested or ended for doing this dumb summoning if you decided to do this in front of like everyone in your world or something... Goodbye!”
The world went silent after that.
That...
None of them were expecting that at all.
7K notes · View notes
satoruhour · 7 months
Note
HIHII hope you are doing well!!!
I have a request but if you're not comfortable writing it's completely fine too!!
Anyways~ can you write something with University professor geto x top student reader??? They have a lot of sexual tension and geto continuously targets the reader in his lectures only for her to storm into his office after a test in which he didn't give her the marks she deserved just so he could piss her off and eventually leading them to blow off some steam together hehe-
HEJSJSH ANYWAYS I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT REST OF THE DAY💗💗
-🍒
I GOT THAT DUMB D*CK !
a/n: hi cherry 2! saying 2 because i already have another cherry anon, thank u for waiting for this btw sorry this took so long omggg!!! i wanna make it similar to the short blurb i did here, but ill leave out reader being a camgirl! a lot of lore talk, just a warning
wc: 8k (sigh ....)
warnings: so much lore lol sorry, no beta we die like men, age gap (32 / 24), professor!geto, fem!reader, geto is also a cam worker, masturbation (both f and m), toy use during f! masturbation (vibrator), fantasising, pet names, praise, degradation, use of ‘slut’ and ‘whore’, oral (m receiving, f receives briefly at the end), dumbification (ig?) face-fucking, deep-throating, spitting in mouth, unprotected sex, creampie / breeding kink, cum eating, implied multiple rounds, n*sfw under the cut
Tumblr media Tumblr media
no one could really pinpoint the reason why professor geto had picked on you, called you out so much, and why you entertained the incessant questions. it was unbecoming of a prof., he knew, it was never smart to favour one person (negatively, in this case) in a room of bright students who could read between the lines. but he just feels himself so drawn to your furrowed eyebrows and words laced with venom, because at the end of the day, he can see that you aren’t all talk.
you challenge his views and you do it in a way that catches him off-guard. you propose insane arguments that you willingly would die at the grave just to find evidence for; or it could just be because he was staring too much at the way your mouth moved and your eyes expressed everything to pay attention to your words, finding that you were just too beautiful to be chasing a linguistics degree.
this was another thing: geto suguru could possibly have anyone he wanted. he was fine. shoulders pulled back in proper posture, hair either tied up fully or just halfway, and always, always wearing shirts with sleeves that reach his wrist. to that, everyone could see just how bulked the man was, top looking too tight all the time.
geto knew he was fine, too, because on top of (and before) being a professor, he found that he could get a good amount of money by just streaming — camera propped below his neck and obviously tight button-up shirt discarded to reveal his tattooed body, while he has his legs spread and the thirsty, horny comments flooding in on the platform. it’s been a norm by now, started from his uni days where he needed some extra money to support his fees and living necessities.
one year turned into two, two years turned into stagnancy during his third and fourth years (save for a few occasional streams), and up came a little funny graduation stream suggested by his best friend. geto had spent a good half ’n hour talking about his time in university and thanking his viewers, changing up the setting almost immediately by showing hard he was.
[uzum4kisl0ver]: YEAAAH we’re getting to the good stuff, thank u for feeding us so well these few years uzumaki-san!!
[minstash96]: Congrats on graduating Uzumaki-san!! I rmb joining during your third year and found out from everyone u were getting busier </3 but Im glad youre back again!!!
[g_bigdick_s]: fellas is it gay to support your best friend’s graduation jerking off stream
the flood of “yes”’s replying to gojo made the streamer laugh, thankful that his best friend had listened a little and at least changed gojobigdicksatoru to just his “G.S.” initials to avoid people finding his LinkedIn. from there, geto had gotten into the true nature of his stream easily, fishing out his cock to stroke and loving the sounds of tips coming in, the name of his alias Uzumaki continually commented. since then, it’s become a side hustle — finishing his masters, training to become a professor, it’s all natural to him, taking even further steps to make sure he isn’t found out.
exactly, he could have anyone he wanted — a fan from his streaming account, or one of satoru’s regular fwb’s but instead he finds himself drawn to someone else, you, the second year student in his bilingualism and multilingualism module that he has no trouble teaching despite his freshly employed status.
Tumblr media
at the start of the week, the gods decided thought it would be funny to delay the campus bus that would take you to the english department for a consultation session with your professor. you couldn’t focus in lectures due to bad cramps, you were behind on your non-major related courses, the bad luck just seemed to seep into one day after another. you had woken up late, putting on a terrible outfit that no one really cared about, except your professor who just had a smirk on his face.
“if you notice, runes were created as they were spoken — spelt as they are said which almost look like ‘pictographs’,” prof. geto switches to the next slide with the runes and their meanings alongside a jumble of symbols that send the whole class into hysterics, “can anyone sound out the phonetics of these runes to me? hint: even though i said they look like pictographs, the first rune is definitely not an E.”
he was known for asking questions during lectures, pleased with anyone that would even try because he knew how quiet lecture theatres could get. he was exactly like that in university, too, letting satoru take all the attention due to the many unknown people in the same room. now, he found that asking the questions was a little entertaining, seeing the way students look back down at their laptops and avoid eye contact. but he doesn’t need to do anything and his body is already turnt towards you. he’s not even pointing physically, which he thinks he’s done a good job of restraining himself.
ᛊᛃᚨᚾᛖᛚ
“the words and names should be as they sound — so ‘s’ or ᛊ should translate into a ‘c’ since they didn’t have a C back then and it’s the closest sound to C. ᛃ can’t be ‘h’ because of the usage of H in hagl . . its pronunciation is different and plus, we’ll spell it how we say it, so maybe it’s ‘j’?” you mutter to yourself, an urge to answer the quickest, always. you aren’t sure where this streak came from, but you’ve been smart always, “sja . . it either can be chanel or channel since there’s a rule you can’t use the same rune twice in succession . .”
professor geto already knows you’d be the first to answer, raising your hand even without looking since you were still calculating the other four letters which you put together fairly quickly.
you take the safest route, “chanel, with one N.”
geto clicks his tongue and sucks in a breathe, “so close, miss (y/n), but it’s because i cheated a little on my part.” you can feel your blood boil and the grimaces of other students when he switches to the next slide and there’s a little grin on his face. it says — ‘there is no distinction between capital and small runes, nor can you use the same rune twice continually.’
“you are right, partially, but i did want to drive home the point,” which he’s sure you already know. “that words with two N’s or L’s or whatever, would only show up in the runic language as only one character.” your face morphs into something of annoyance and the grin on professor geto’s face only widens — that defiant, headstrong nature is something he loved, but the grin drops a little when he imagines something . . out of the classroom. his pants tighten.
you mirror him, clicking your tongue and reluctantly taking down the note in your documents before sinking into your chair — not even chō, you friend, could find the proper words to comfort you. you spend the rest of the lecture, sulking, unwillingly answering his incessant questions with a scowl on your face and a headache forming.
this never stops—
“miss (y/n)?” one-on-one meetings were the bane of your existence, but it was the only way to connect with your professors properly — here, geto calls you to talk about your latest essay where you were the last on the roster. by then, everyone has filed out with nobara waiting for you just outside the classroom.
“don’t have to call my name, i’m the only one here.” you mutter under your breath, and geto feels a little annoying today.
“what was that?”
“nothing—”
he hums, scooting his chair closer once you sit, and while you find the gesture a little weird, you’re overcome with just how good he smells and it only fuels your hatred more. it’s no fair that he’s so . .
“miss (y/n).” you sigh with an apology, frankly not ready to hear how he’d be attacking your essay. it was written on a rushed timeline, you didn’t cite your sources properly, you knew some criticism was warranted as much as you didn’t like to hear it from your professor’s mouth.
“. . you do know you can’t just rely on your brain, right?” geto speaks softly and you feel your heart flutter at his tone. he points to the places where you forget your in-text citations.
“but professor, information about syntax and phonetics just comes like second nature . .” you mumble, ignoring how he closes his eyes and hisses, “and all the sources on the internet say different things.”
“then just find a reliable one.”
you tsk, taking the paper from him and flipping to the next page, “well, i did one here.” the paper makes a sound when you press your finger into it, aware of how close you are. from here you can feel the heat radiating off his body, unconsciously rubbing your thighs together.
“too long ago, needs to be within five years.” geto’s lying through his teeth.
“no, it does not!” you pull back and look at him incredulously. ah, the feeling’s gone, “not in language related papers, at least!”
“but that claim was from the 2000’s, miss (y/n), for all we know it could’ve been resolved by then.”
“then why didn’t you say anything about chō’s scholar article from the 1990’s?” you’re standing up, now, furrowed eyebrows depicting the very thing you feel: confusion, agitation at being treated like this. given you weren’t in the best condition when you wrote this essay, but you still gave it your all.
“her argument was about the interconnectedness between the romance languages — yours,” he punctuates while leaning back in his chair. you don’t like how your eyes flit down to his lap, but you’re forced to look up when he stands up too, “is about the use of ciphers in comparison to an immature language developed on the internet that created in the 2019s. any scholar claim before that would be void.”
your blood boils just like that day. alas, he had a good point, but like always, the gentle slit of his eyes and the all-knowing smile didn’t match the bullying he was laying on you and you despise it.
even! even, as you notice how there’s probably less than a inch between your faces as you puff out your chest to look more intimidating and yet geto suguru towers over you. and even when your heart beats loudly in your ears, feeling his hot breath fan over your own face while you don’t miss how he licks his lips and glances down to yours not-so-secretly.
you swallow at the silence, until there’s the annoying notification of his Outlook cutting the tension and soon you’re snatching the essay from him, walking to where your bag is. although you want to let your anger overflow, all you say is a tame, “noted. thanks, prof” with a glare, eye twitching.
you made sure to slam the classroom door with shaky hands . .
. . but you’re not very good at capping your rage. “i swear to god! he better fucking check his mirror and admire himself because soon i’m going to beat him up so bad that everyone can’t recognise him.” geto’s lips turn up in a small smirk at your flared expression he just witnessed — he just loves your dirty mouth and he finds himself thinking of it more and more often.
chō only can tut, “so you find him attractive?”
“what? how the hell did you infer that from my rant?” you scoff, shoving her to the side, not aware that your whispered outburst is heard as he’s packing up. he simply enjoys looking at you walk away through the glass slit of the door, hips swaying unknowingly.
Tumblr media
“bad news, guys,” geto, or rather Uzumaki, sighs on screen, adjusting so the lens of the camera rested just below his collarbones. easily, his chat fills up with a mixture of horny comments and genuine questions, chuckling to himself as he unbuttons his shirt. he feels more like a sinner at this point, suddenly flustered with the confession he’s about to make.
“i think i’ve taken quite a liking to someone,” geto hums, hands going to his trousers to palm his bulge. he had to get home immediately after that, cancelling his meetings for the day. with a single text to gojo, the white-haired man was excited to hear everything about this new person, thankful that his best friend will finally not be alone.
[g_bigdick_s]: TELL US! TELL US!!!! TELL US!
but professor geto is lost instantly, imagining you as he massages his erection. thinking about your anger transforming into pleasure, into obedience for him as he forces your mouth down on his cock. oh . . how’d your mouth and hands feel, how’d your pussy feel.
geto groans, already removing his dick from the constraints, and pumping it to full length. he doesn’t even talk much, only the endless comments and tips reminding him he was still on live. spitting on his hand, he wraps his hand around himself again, thumbing the tip and hoping it’d be your tongue swirling around it.
what would you look like on your knees, taking each inch of his cock down your throat? would he be able to wipe the defiance off your face? would he be able to fuck his smart student, dumb?
“you need a good destress, woman,” chō suggests over the phone, voice a bit uneven due to it being stuck in between her shoulder and ear, “go on camstar or something, i’m sure you’ll find something hot there.”
“chō, i am not going on a porn streaming website! i’ll very much settle for my smut fics, thank you.”
“boo, don’t you get bored? i get that normal adult industry videos are super inaccurate but . . when was the last time you’ve watched an unfiltered, unedited jerk off vid? that’s the hottest.”
you scoff, “yeah, like you would know, miss complain-whenever-you-get-dick-pics.”
“that’s because it’s unsolicited! plus all the men who send me pics have ugly dicks. if anything i’m more open to get unsolicited pussy pics rather than consensual dick pics at this point.” your friend nonchalantly says, spreading her fingers to look at her manicured nails, “but anyway, prof geto is on your ass too much lately. maybe he wants to get in your pants?”
you don’t recoil at the suggestion as much as you expect to and you’re puzzled at that — “please never say that again.” just as you’re saying this, you’re typing in camstar.org even though you told yourself not to but deep down, you know that you’ve been craving more than just twitter links and porn with plot stories. on the front page, you’re seeing a video thumbnail of a guy with a fairly big . . feature, countless tattoos lining his body while you can catch a faint glimpse of his long hair in the dark room — it’s the only one that draws you in, other streams merging into a blur.
chō’s voice fades off when you notice just how popular the stream is, cursor hovering over the title (“just a ramblefap, need to release some tension”) almost tempting you to click.
“okay, will get back to you,” succumbing to your needs, you shamelessly grab your vibrator just as she cheers into the phone. you can hear that’s my girl! on the other side as you stifle a smile, bidding a goodbye before you settle into bed. from there, you do what you always do: relax for a few, slow your breathing, get yourself wet a little—
click.
The stream you have attempted to view has ended a minute ago. We apologise for the inconvenience caused. View more livestreams below:
you shove the vibrator under your pillow and bury your head into it, screaming.
Tumblr media
“i mentioned in yesterday’s lecture that Latin evolved from the dialects of the Italic peoples of ancient Italy, or Latium, a region in central western Italy. over time, Latin absorbed elements from other languages, such as Etruscan and Greek, and it became the main language of the western Mediterranean.” professor geto rambled on in classic geto fashion — it was his passion that made him so easy to listen to, as with the many enamoured girls with googly eyes and the guys who wish they could carry themselves the way geto did.
you’d say the same thing: his love for his subject of study made him attractive — charming even — as much as you didn’t want to admit to your friend, but you’d be more open with your attraction like everyone is if he wasn’t—
[9:52am, (y/n) -> chō 💟] so fucking annoying and cocky and picking on me all the time!!!!!! im soooo sick of him im so serious omfg ....
but today, he’s looking less at you and more at other students, or even marvelling at the terrible paint job of the classroom as he goes from slide to slide. he talks about the derivation in which French separates from Latin, borrowing similar spellings and meanings from the old language while separating the way they are spoken.
“French is the most divergent of the romance languages because of strong Gallic and Frankish influences. The Celtic Gauls spoke a language similar to Old Dutch but adopted Latin as the Romans invaded Gaul.” you don’t even have to look at him to get him thinking of lewd things, spiralling into his fantasies ever since last night. geto is a little fatigued, too, having lost sleep over his fucking student which he just can’t help bothering. excitement at having you in class before is now turning into dread with every week that passes, and this week is just one instance.
“uh— i-i know you guys aren’t well-versed in either, but with your knowledge of both languages,” geto pulls at his tie. he feels hot, “discuss with your tutorial groups, the differences between the two and list down examples. just come up with one difference, but preferably name a few instances.”
[10:01am, (y/n) -> chō 💟] wish u were here im so bored 😭😭 profs acting so weird today tho
[10:01am, chō 💟 -> (y/n)] is he looking hot and bothered, nervous ??? like he wants to cry? im tellin you he wants you fr
of course she’d come out of her sickness-induced sleep just to bother you about him having the hots for you.
[10:02am, (y/n) -> chō 💟] you’re so ... i swear pls shut up he may want me but i do NOT want him
[10:03am, chō 💟 -> (y/n)] not even while you were just ranting about how his side profile looked a little too good in lecture yesterday?? anyway i hope you’ll be able to get that nut tn 🙏🏼 that guy on camstar sounded hot asf
[10:04am, (y/n) -> chō 💟] ikr i cant believe i got cockblocked by a fuckin livestream ending 💀 thank you fr i need it atp
“any progress here?” he comes out behind you and you slam the phone so hard you give the both of you a scare while your other friends exchange giggles with each other. what you don’t know, is how his arm is positioned upon the back of your chair and his whole body hovers just beside yours. you’re threatened to look, but you know if you do, you’d be falling deeper into the pit that you promised yourself not to fall into.
“yup, we’re just discussing things about how in terms of grammar, French has conjugation but almost no declension. but— uh, it rather uses word order to express some of the intricacies that Latin expresses through word endings.”
you can see geto nod from your peripheral, “good. good answer, any examples to show me?”
your friends nod towards you since you’re usually the one with all the information about different languages. they aren’t foreign to the way geto keeps calling on you to answer him, too, so you shouldn’t have any problem with this, right?
wrong. you’re stuttering through your answer, turning your head finally and being met with the sight of prof geto looking down on you like a deer caught in headlights. you think that being in lecture theatres, sitting near to the back and your hatred in general has desensitised you to the beauty of your professor, because being under him like this makes your core pulse uncomfortably and your voice shaky.
“. . hm? what was that?”
“i was uhm— saying how— uh,” the way geto nods at you makes you more nervous, painting you as someone who someone who had all bark and no bite, but the other knows very well that you had a nasty bite. you’re smart and witty, pretty, hot as fuck, and if anything, it’s taking everything in geto not to bend you over and show you your place in this very classroom in front of everyone, too.
“little lady got nothin’ for me today?” geto purses his lips and lets his teasing side take over, an easy-going smile taking over his features that you just want to kiss and slap off at the same time. wait.
“i didn’t get enough sleep because i was too busy trying to rewrite the damn essay you said i had outdated and missing sources for,” you speak through gritted teeth, feeling a mixture of arousal and pure rage for the man hovering over you.
geto juts his lip out in a pout, face getting dangerously close to yours and challenging you. he just hopes your two friends won’t say anything, “well, darling, if you picked an easier topic to argue about, you wouldn’t be doing that, would you?”
“well, sorry i’m always trying to outdo myself. are you, professor geto? what with your boring suits and black and white slide designs?”
you click your tongue and turn back to your phone to pull up your chat with chō while geto takes a deep breath, desperately hoping the hard-on wouldn’t show through his slacks. your other two friends only giggle even more at the exchange, because for the rest of the class, professor geto is on edge, unable to teach coherently.
Tumblr media
[11:17pm, chō 💟 -> (y/n)] YOU DID WHAAAAATTTTT...???? GIRL YOU SAID THAT???!!!!!!
[11:18pm, (y/n) -> chō 💟] bro what if i get expelled.. i shouldnt have but he was pissing me off so much... i did put an apology in the end tho
by then, you’ve already submitted your rewritten essay, putting in a short note at the end for your behaviour in class. although you don’t take it back, you’re still trying to play it safe especially with how much you paid to get into university. you scroll along camstar, bored out of your mind and hoping to find something as compelling as the inked guy from last week, but nothing really draws you in. until you’re refreshing the page, and just like the previous time, the popularity of that same bulking guy seems to push his video to the top.
and finally, before you’re clicking into the video, you check out his profile: in his early thirties, started this account when he was 24 and in university. you smack your lips at that — he’s been doing this for almost ten years? that’s dedication. in curiosity, you scroll down his account, seeing the progression of which this guy built up his figure and tattoos that litter his body. he’s kept the same format, camera showing his body chest down until you’re lazy to scroll more, a little disappointed in not being able to find any indication of his face.
you think that maybe you saw a glimpse of that wrist tattoo that matched the tattoo on your professor’s wrist, but you could just be imagining things.
“alright guys . .” the man on the screen huffs, clothes already discarded to get straight to the point, and you’re recording a small snippet of the same guy you told chō about. “had a rough day today.”
the onslaught of comments going i can make u feel better!!! Take ur anger out on me Uzumaki-san makes you sputter and laugh, sending that video first before you’re taking another. your attention is stolen for a moment, seeing chō react with emojis to your video message (“let’s see what emails i got today, huh?”), but the structure of sentences that the man speaks soon brings you out of jollity and into shock.
“how cute, an essay sent straight to my email.” geto wants to do anything but look at emails right now, but ever since he’s gotten your rewritten assignment, it’s all he’s wanted to check out if it wasn’t for the many meetings and errands he had to run today. “yadda yadda . . oh?”
“i’m sorry for today’s lesson,” purposely pausing to leave out his name, geto continues on, “i shouldn’t have reacted in that way no matter the situation.” a smirk forms on his face while your body fills with dread. in your panic, you pull up your own document whilst catching all of this on camera, tracking each word as the man on camstar.org continues to say out your apology word by word.
and then bit by bit, you’re making out how the man behind the camera might, just might be your linguistics professor. the broad shoulders, the jawline, the long hair, the manspread . .
but even with your heightened combination of excitement and revelation, you don’t click away, blindly sending the video to your friend and then shamefully digging under your pillow to grab your vibrator.
“teaching people is so difficult sometimes, guys,” he grunts, pulling down his underwear and revealing his already hard cock. he lets out a shaky sigh as he wraps a hand around his shaft, “you usually get the people who won’t do any work, the ones who are absent half the time — usually they go hand in hand.”
professor geto laughs and you twitch at the lovely sound. “but . . there’s this one girl . . in my classes— f-fuck.”
you’re entranced, watching your professor masturbate in front of thousands of people who possibly didn’t know a thing about this man while you try to get your jaw off the floor, “who is entirely different from these categories.”
“she’s smart,” geto groans out and you watch transfixed as he starts to pump himself, hips grinding up into his palm, “she’s so smart that i’d want to get to know her one day and just talk about anything.”
“s-she’s so fucking attractive, too, you guys won’t even— oh goddd . .” you feel like you’re being watched, so you’re careful with how you’re putting your vibrator to your core and once you start it, the moan that leaves you lines up with geto’s deeper groans. it turns you on so damn much.
with his head tilted back, he’s long gone as he moves his hands faster and faster, the slick noises of his pre-cum and spit mixing in together — geto only wishes he could act on his desires once the course was over, but knows you’ll probably be mortified at the prospect. at least here, he can imagine that it’s your mouth or cunt doing all the work.
“s-shitttt . .” the professor sounds out, hissing when he thumbs his tip and even more pre comes spilling out and while you watch, you’re hypnotised by the beautiful moans in its perfect cadence and the thickness of his cock. by now his chest is heaving and he’s holding onto his bedsheets so tight you wish it was your thighs.
“i want to fuck her silly, fuck all of those stupid facts out of her head and get her dumb on my cock,” geto whines, hips fully bucking up now while you press your vibrator deeper into your clit. you’re left wondering how his mouth would feel, to shut him up by pressing him into your cunt until he can’t breathe, soak his stupid fucking suits, “want to hear her moan my name.”
you whimper at all the things professor geto swears he wants to do to you, grinding into your hand while he speeds up as well. he doesn’t speak, simply stroking himself as he thighs tense up and he squeezes his shaft with head full of visions of you in terribly lewd positions, making disgusting sounds, and all for him. it isn’t long before geto cums with a loud drawn out moan, shooting his cum onto his torso with a sigh before taking a sticky hand to his lips, licking it off — “i’d want to see my cum dripping out of her one day.”
that sends a chill down to your core, biting your pillow before you release softly all over your hand and vibrator; you spend the rest of the night watching professor geto’s other videos.
[12:32am, chō 💟 -> (y/n)] oh. OH..........
Tumblr media
“i should’ve just taken an off-day today, i do not want to get back our results.” chō rubs at her eyes and temples, wanting anything to do with the return of test marks, but unfortunately it was the week after midterms and it was inevitable, “don’t need to ask you though, you’re probably not worried at all.”
“trust me, i am,” you bite the inside of your cheek. it’s been at least . . two weeks after that whole debacle, and despite your intense vents with your friend and the continuous picking on by prof. geto, nothing out of the blue was happening. except, maybe, your growing physical need for your professor and your simultaneous, increasing hatred for him.
“it’s only midterms — you don’t need to worry too much since it doesn’t contain a high percentage. what you should be focusing on are your finals. we’ll work on your shortcomings and mistakes here so you guys will do the best when the time comes.”
and when professor geto comes around to hand you your test, all you do is glare up through your lids, taking it from him before feeling your whole world crumble.
“a B+?!” your mouth gapes open at the blatant 65/100 mark that glares back at you. you know that you would’ve gotten anything but a 65, willing yourself to study harder and harder just to rub it in his pretty little face that you weren’t falling behind in his class. at this point it’s got to be personal, so soon, you’re packing up your things angrily with the intent to storm his office after your other classes.
it’s late in the afternoon when you finally finish your other tutorials on a short fuse, him clearly getting ready to head home by the darkness of his office when you shove your way through the door.
professor geto is sat in a laid-back position, tie hung on the hooks installed in the office and a few buttons are unbuttoned, revealing the very familiar tattoos you’ve become acquainted with.
“to who do i owe the pleasure?”
“cut the crap, prof.,” you scowl, using your foot to slam the office door close. despite the late nights being buried in your sheets, you won’t let yourself be treated like this, “i deserved anything but a 65 on midterms.”
geto tilts his head, sitting up and gesturing out to you; you realise he wants to see your test paper.
“ah!” with a finger, he makes a show of finding for your obvious mistakes which was minimal — but the way he marks obnoxiously tells you everything you need to know, “here. your comprehension of the similarities between Latin and Ancient Greek was too surface level, you didn’t explain why—”
“i. did!” you press down into the paper like the first time, leaning over his table and reading out the exact answer you wrote just a few days ago, “here, since your blind ass wants to act like i wasn’t answering the question.” you push yourself into his desk more, eyes levelled with his. you dare him to say something smart.
“well, your explanation of the six cases in Latin left out the locative, the last one, and there were some problems in the conjugation that the test asked of you.”
“bullshit. show me, if you’re so confident.”
professor geto knows he’s hit a dead-end. he was telling lies, full of it, but he’s enjoying every second of the anger that translates into your features, of the growl in your voice. he leans back further the more you close in on him.
“nothing, right? so tell me, do you hate me that much?”
geto simply laughs, crossing his arms and reminiscing on the many nights he’s spent doing anything but.
“quite the opposite, sweetheart.” the name catches you off-guard for a moment, but your sour face returns soon enough.
“then what the fuck do you think you’re doing, picking endlessly on a student?”
your professor sits forward, prompting you to cower back. you think it’d be good to bring up whatever he’s got going on on camstar.org but you’ll wait to a good moment before you say anything about your trump card, until geto snaps you out of your stupor by towering over you. the sheer difference makes you swallow.
“because i like seeing you flared up and angry and mad.” professor geto surprises you with each second, the nonchalance in which he said it, the stupid, attractive smirk on his face. now’s the time.
you compose yourself, thinking of the best way to phrase this, “you know you’re not entirely safe, either, you know. i could report you with the frequency in which you’re picking on me.”
you point a finger to his chest, thinking you could get him to lay off immediately with this as much as you were hoping he wouldn’t. the attention was unwarranted but not entirely . . terrible, “that wouldn’t look so good on your record, right, Uzumaki-san?”
you relish in the surprise that seeps into geto’s pretty features but it’s a short-lived victory when he goes back into a relaxed state, expression neutral — “so you know.”
“know . . what?” your professor pulls away and walks around his desk, finally in close proximity to you like he’s always wished.
“how badly i want you.” he whispers, but doesn’t go past that, rather letting you figure everything out for yourself.
“‘. . fuck her silly, fuck all of those stupid facts out of her head’, right?” you mumble softly, not admitting to even chō that you had watched that livestream over and over enough to memorise the few sentences. geto wraps an arm around your waist to tug you closer, faces so close that you could just shut him up.
“go on.”
“you want me to go dumb on your cock,” professor geto mutters a correct which undeniably sends a thrill to your core.
“you want to hear me to moan your name.” “—want to hear her moan my name.”
a small smile spreads across his face (even if you left out the most important thing) as he finishes his own sentence with you, eyes clouded over with lust and your scent and he’s positive he can smell your soaked panties from here if he tries hard enough.
“that’s right.”
“sooo . .” by god, you fucking hated the man, but seeing someone stroke their cock to just the thought of you — how could you pass off such a good opportunity? “do you prefer professor geto, or suguru?”
geto groans at his first name usage, setting you on his desk and presses himself into you at the sound of papers flying to the floor, stationary falling to the ground. he can only hope no one walks in. he’s fully hard, loving how your legs naturally spread for him.
“whatever you want, baby.” and after, it’s all history with the way geto crashes his lips into yours, letting you pull at his jacket and shirt, practically ripping open the buttons to see his tattoos that you’re begging to see. slowly, he lets you trace them while he kisses down your neck, roughly pulling your sweater off of you. you have the cutest tits, packaged nicely in your bra which he has no trouble taking off. there’s a small sound that escapes his mouth when he unclasps your bra and your breasts come falling out.
“didn’t tell me you had such a nice pair . .” you giggle.
“yeah, like i would straight up tell my professor that.” with a hand, your hand follows the ink of his dragon that wraps around his body and torso, right down to his happy trail, “but i mean, you get the honour of seeing it now.”
with a squeeze to his bulge, you whisper, “maybe i’ll let you fuck them next time.”
geto lets out a little moan, “fucking minx,” before he latches his mouth onto your nipple, kneading the other greedily. a soft moan leaves your mouth as you knead his erection, a culmination of your combined groans in the quiet office. soon he’s giving attention to the other, a hand trailing down into your panties where he rubs your clit to test the waters, and he smiles into your skin at the way your hand falters and your head hangs forward.
“p-professor . .” it’s clear geto can’t wait, because he pushes a finger into you easily with how dripping wet you are, panties showing a dark patch of your juices. “s— so thick—”
“i know, baby, gotta stretch you out,” a soft pop! is heard as he comes off your nipple before he meets your lips in a sloppy kiss. he shoves his tongue into your mouth the moment he pushes a second finger in and he swallows your moans, letting you feel around his body to dig your nails in — it was just too damn much.
“so— suguru, your f-fingers, they’re so—” even with your protests, your hips grind up against his thick fingers that are pumping in and out of you, taking every last piece of fire in you as you succumb completely.
“what, miss (y/n)?” geto memorises the exact way all your previous blazing words are reduced to mere mewls and whimpers, alongside your pleas for more, more, more.
“i need something—” you whine when he pushes all the way inside, stretching your cunt so well as you clench around him like a vice and sucking him in, “i wanna make you feel good—”
you get at least a little resolve in the time it took you to say that, drunkenly unbuckling his belt before pulling his cock out. his tip is positively leaking, fingers curling instinctively in your pussy and your moans mingle together again.
“c’mon, prof, please?” geto tuts, reluctantly removing his fingers from your cunt which he wish he could spend more of his time in, but gives in to you as you switch positions, pushing him against his own desk. from there you’re going to your knees, marvelling at the cock you’ve watched on your very own screen.
“better than you imagined?”
you roll your eyes, “shut up or i’m blue-balling you.”
geto exhales forcefully, cut off when you put your mouth gently over his tip. you suckle on it like a pacifier, swirling your tongue around the mushroom head and looking up at him through your lashes; the sight is heavenly. the hair from his bun had fallen out, framing his pleasure-filled face, and the veins on his arms pop out so much from how harshly he’s grabbing the wood.
“f-fuck, baby . .” his words are lost once you start bobbing your head, encasing his shaft deep in your mouth as you suck and lick and slobber over his thick cock, using your hands to stroke the places you can’t reach. a choked moan weasels itself out of geto when one of your hands deviate to play with his balls, squeezing lightly at the sack while you continue to lick the underside of his length.
“take me like a slut, don’t you?” geto says breathlessly, fingers going through your hair to gather the strands into a makeshift ponytail, cradling your head to guide your mouth, but he soon starts to thrust into your waiting mouth.
“want me to fuck your dirty whore mouth?” your professor asks and you hate how much it turns you on as he brings you off to let you breathe for a moment. you stick out your tongue, big doe eyes just pleading to be used as your hands anchor themselves down to his belt loops.
“y—yes, prof., give me everything you got,” geto hums, seemingly satisfied with your answer as he taps your tongue with his tip, cock so heavy and thick it makes you whine a little before he shoves it in without warning. the moan that rumbles deep in your throat sends vibrations up his body and he starts a pace immediately.
“that’s it, that’s it—” you breathe through your nose as geto face fucks you, two hands covering the back of your head as he thrusts into your throat. your mouth’s just so damn warm and tight it has geto groaning non-stop while your eyes start to well up with tears. he uses you like a cocksleeve, abusing your throat each time his tip meets with it.
“fuuuckk— yes, yes, your throat’s so—” geto tilts his head back when he buries his cock in you, the deepest he’s ever been and your nose meets with his pubes, the smell of his musk and sweat making your eyes roll back in pleasure. suguru is all grunts before moving again, the gagging, gawking noises filling the small space.
“mmhm— mmf!” you moan around his length, trying your best to move your tongue along the underside of his cock. a hand goes down to quell the growing need of your cunt, slipping a finger or two in.
“dirty girl just can’t think straight when she has a— s-shit— cock in her, huh?”
you hum in agreement, eyes fluttering when you feel his tip twitch in your mouth and geto spills right into your throat with a long moan. your lids flutter close, taking as much cum as you can before coming off with a deep breath. strings of his cum and your saliva connect you to his cock, the lewdness of it all showing clearly in how sloppily you sucked your professor off.
“open.” and you show your tongue still full of his cum, taking the opportunity to lean down to let a ball of spit fall from his mouth. it drops painfully slow to your tongue, closing it only when you hear the rasp of swallow, “good girl.”
“think i’ve kept you waiting for too long, need to be in you,” geto brings you up by your upper arms, propping you up nicely onto his desk where you already start to leak into the wood, “do you want me to be in you?”
“only if you promise to stop picking on me, prof.,” you pout. really, a changed girl once you get some cock, huh?
“but you’re too cute not to bother, baby.” your pout deepens and geto feels a tug on his heart. oh, you were too adorable, knowing you’d kill him the next time he mentions this. he hopes they’ll be a next time.
“i mean it, suguru,” you murmur as he uses his tip to play with your juices, smearing it around your cunt. “treat me like a proper person.”
“can i at least treat you like a slut behind closed doors?”
you bit your lip, he’s asking for a next time, and who are you to reject him?
“whatever you want, professor,” you wiggle your hips along his cock, hoping for some friction which he grants to you with no problem, “use me. treat me like your cum dump.”
geto hisses at your tightness and your words as he bottoms out in you. he’s had your pussy once and already cannot get enough of you, moaning each time he moves in and out of your cunt. your walls hug him so snugly, sucking his cock in endlessly.
“baby, baby, baaaby . . your pussy’s so fuckin’— good—” he grunts into your ears, hips starting to thrust slowly into you. he swears he can see you in your tummy, asking you to look down, “look at how deep i am in you, sweetheart.”
you moan at just how big he was as you glance down, but you’re more focused on the way your pussy spreads for him, the cute veins on his length as he moves in you. you’re leaking so much that it’s effortlessly, the way he rams into you.
“sugu— suguru . . mmfuck—” geto groans upon feeling you rub your clit, your own hips bucking needily into his own as your juices start to drip down his balls. this was everything that he hoped would happen; your features morphed into pleasure, you descending into stupidity just from some dick, feeling your pussy, finally.
“hear yourself?” your professor proposes the question and you’re confused for a moment until he slows down and you whine at the sudden change, brought to attention just how soaking you were. the soft shlick, shlick, shlick sounds take your breath away, as with the translucent sheen of your juices coating his cock.
there, your professor resumes his pace, “hear how fuckin’ sloppy this pussy is for me. listen to her,” your senses are all overwhelmed: by how he hits all your sweet spots, the sweat on your back, your fast-beating heart and you let out a mangled whimper, “yesss . . that’s what i like to hear.”
geto smirks at how you can’t even answer, picking up his pace into a regular one. with his cock buried deep in you, you have no choice but to let your body move with his thrusts, jerking each time his balls meet your ass noisily.
“is this what the little lady needed? just some professor cock to get her to not be so damn uptight!”
“y—yessss . .” you’re delirious, “yesyesyes, suguru!” you squeal when he holds your legs up and pushes your legs into your chest, tongue lolling out at the deepness that he was in you.
“fucking slut,” geto mumbled, hips turning sloppy with fatigue taking over, but your cunt was just too good to stop, “where d’you want me to cum, baby?” he knows you’ll answer how he wants you to, especially after watching his livestream—
“i-inside— inside, pleaseplease,” the circles on your clit are messy, now, chasing your high more than ever, but your pussy is grasping onto him like a vice, prompting groans deep from his throat. “want your cum dripping out of me, prof—”
those words alone has geto shooting his load with a strangled grunt, switching to shallow, quick thrusts to pump you full of his cum. it comes out in hot, thick spurts, filling your insides more and more until it spills out the sides and you follow soon after, whole body convulsing from the intense orgasm you can’t stop shaking violently.
“take it— that’s it, attagirl,” he whines out, stroking his length to make sure you’re getting every last drop out of him, “take all my cum . .”
geto is sure he’s getting old by the way he feels lightheaded, having had to hold onto the edge of the table for a minute — but in that 60 seconds you’ve stumbled off the table and laid your chest over it, perking your ass up where your pussy continues to leak hot, white cum.
your professor takes one good look at your ass, hands going up to knead at them and spreads your cheeks. with his tongue, he eats his cum out of you, making your jerk at the sensitivity.
“oops, i’ve cleaned you up of my cum — guess i gotta give you a couple more loads,” geto props a leg up, eating you out, “it’s only right since my brightest student has suffered so much at my hands . .”
Tumblr media
tagging @arminsumi @shidouryusm @suguruplsr @crysugu @slttygeto @suget @sonarspace @marimogf @hannzai &lt;3 ok gn
1K notes · View notes
sceebybeeby · 21 days
Text
⚠️spoilers for the entire aj trilogy lol⚠️
is this even anything? don't answer if it isn't
Tumblr media
512 notes · View notes
unpretty · 6 months
Text
Tumblr media
The city of Midton was overrun with enormous man-eating slugs, and the superhero known as Coatimundi was staring anxiously at her phone.
“Was this your plan?” Black Knight asked, waving an armored hand at her.
“No!” she shot back, defensive. Small fluffy ears were pinned back to her hair in annoyance, her tail lashing. “This is the pre-plan. I’m setting a plan for a plan into motion.”
“We should regroup at the Plaza,” said Helen of Troy, sheathing her sword.
“Go ahead without me,” Coatimundi said, dragging her thumb over the screen to manually refresh.
“That’s not how regrouping works,” Black Knight pointed out. “If you’re trying to find someone else who had this problem, don’t bother—I already looked and it’s just one guy who marked his thread as resolved without posting what he did.”
Read More
678 notes · View notes
canon-gabriel-quotes · 4 months
Text
Gabriel trying to entertain an iPad baby as his confidence rapidly declines - A Compilation
Not going to transcribe these as its just songs being "sung" if you can call it that.
Anyway.
Chug Jug With You Audio Source
Happy Birthday Audio Source
Under the Sea Audio Source
Chug Jug (again) Audio Source
350 notes · View notes
beanghostprincess · 3 months
Text
This title card was playing in Luffy's mind during the whole season
158 notes · View notes
mostlymilkwood · 7 months
Text
y'know nothing speaks louder to the amount of money going around in the 2000s anime boom than the fact that 2006 had three yuri anime's airing, two of which were 26 episodes, and all three of them got ps2 games.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Kashimashi and Strawberry Panic both got visual novels, and that's pretty standard as far as anime licenced games goes, it's still a lot of work to make but manageable under a certain time-frame and budget.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
But Simoun? Simoun got a strategy RPG! which makes sense for the content of the show itself, it's a war story (with a lot of trauma, gender, and girl kissing thrown together) but how you know people were getting stupid with money is that Simoun... Was Not Even That Popular??? Like, even in yuri circles, which are niche themselves, it's not super well known!! you're way more likely to have heard of, and possibly watched, Strawberry Panic than you have Simoun. And listen, I say this as a Simoun apologist who has a soft spot for the series but it's truly wild that it 1. got a game at all 2. was not just a visual novel.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
There isn't even a dedicated witch from mercury game on the horizon but the mildly well known within to yuri watcher anime Simoun has one?? honestly? bring back the this energy of 3 out of 5 licenced games, no more gacha tie-ins or games as a service, just games that are Totally Fine overall but fun to fans of a series.
227 notes · View notes
artbugjuice · 1 year
Text
Tumblr media
Best friends, better enemies 🕊
480 notes · View notes
autumnalwalker · 6 months
Text
Kindly Basilisk
Summary: A human mech pilot who wants to be a machine, an AI who wants to be human, and the relationship they form. Author's Note: This is a standalone short story that I banged out over the course of five days after it got stuck in my head while I was trying to go to sleep and refused to let me think about anything else until I had written it down. It's one part thought experiment/exercise in attempting to tell a story in the second person future tense, two parts tribute to the Lancer TTRPG character I'll never get to play, and one part the result of me reading too many Empty Spaces/mechposting stories lately. That said, you don't need to know anything about Lancer or Empty Spaces to read it (I've diverged a bit from the conventions of both, but the references and inspiration probably stick out if you're looking for them). It's also probably the most trans thing I've ever written without ever explicitly bringing up gender. The occasional formatting breaks into first person past tense are foreshadowing, not typos. Mirrored on Scribble Hub. Word Count: 7,033 Content Warnings: Mecha genre typical violence, not feeling like a person, not wanting to be a person, bodily dysphoria, mention of blood and gore, character death.
The moment you gain the knowledge and means to do so you will void your own body’s warranty.  You will jailbreak the bespoke gene sequence your sponsors commissioned for you before your immaculate conception, repurpose the spyware grafted into your bones, and talk your dormmate who was algorithmically selected for compatibility into helping you perform surgery on yourself to replace the neural jack you were born with in favor of one you cobbled together yourself from gray market parts.  None of this will technically be illegal or even get you kicked out of your campus or its affiliates, but it will mean having to find a way to pay your own medical bills and handle your own tech support from then on.  After the surgery your dormmate will put in a request for transfer and the two of you will never speak again.
You’ll major in AI studies and excel at it - as you were designed to - but you’ll shock everyone by dropping out halfway through working on your capstone thesis project.  It won’t be the fact that you abruptly drop out that surprises your peers and professors - by then you’ll have acquired a reputation as a quiet loner without the standard optimized social support network of friendships to help protect you from burnout - but your exit interview statement declaring your intention to become a mech pilot.  It’s not at all what your gene series was cultivated for, and your sponsors and counselors will try to walk you back from it.  Then they’ll threaten to revoke your sponsorship that up until then will have provided for your every need.  They will warn you that you’ll be just one step above a legal nonperson with no support, no one will care if you live or die or worse.  You’ll tell them that you’ve already done the math, refuse to elaborate, and leave. 
You’ll take two things with you.  Two things worth mentioning anyway.  The first will be a symbiotic gel suit designed for long-term all-environment life support.  You will set its default texture to a shiny green the same hue as the broadleafed water plants you grew up around and always loved.  Your exit interview will be the last time in a very long time that anyone - including you - will see your impossibly beautiful face with its perfect artisanally sculpted shape crossed with enthusiastically amateur self-modifications.  From then on, everyone you meet and spend any time with will come to think of the mannequin blankness of the symbiote fully encasing your body as your face.  It will be neither pride nor shame that causes you to present yourself as such, nor will you think of it as hiding your “real” face. 
The second thing you’ll take with you when you leave the campus forever will be me.
New progenitor archetypes for AIs don’t come along often, and most that do are the result of years of R&D by large, well-funded labs like the one you were created to work for one day, but you will hit upon a novel method of generation.  It will not be one that any ethics board would approve, so you will have to get creative about pursuing your work. 
You will have already made arrangements before setting off on your own and so you’ll have a job and a mech lined up waiting for you.  It will be a position with a small-scale freelance salvage crew who just lost a pilot and whose captain figures hiring and training a replacement will be more profitable in the long term than simply selling off that pilot’s old mech, especially a replacement that’s bringing their own AI-backed electronic warfare suite with them.  Once you finally arrive in person the captain will test you to ensure you can actually pilot a mech before giving you the job and entrusting the mech to you.  Your admission that you’ve only trained in simulators would normally be a black mark against you, but as far as piloting gigs go this is the bottom of the proverbial barrel so the bar to clear will be low enough to match.  Even then, you will just barely pass the test, despite finding it surprisingly exhilarating.  The captain - now your captain - will feel like he’s settling for what he can get when he officially hires you on and transfers the mech’s license to you.
You won’t pay much attention when you’re introduced to the rest of the salvage crew; your new coworkers and neighbors.  And why would you when it’s a job that no one wants to stick around with for long and you’ve never needed other people anyway?  You’ll tell yourself that as long as you memorize their work roles and capabilities you’ll have no need to know them as people.  Callsigns will be good enough on the job, and “hey you” will suffice when off duty.  What use are names if you won’t be getting involved in interpersonal drama?
The first chance you get, you’ll head back to the mech bay and install me into what you will have already been calling my first body.  It will be a shabby and much-repaired thing; thrice your height, twice your age, and still sporting a gash in the paint job from the projectile that killed its last pilot.  But the onboard systems are capable of hosting me - if barely - so it will do.  You’ll spend your entire sleep shift running through system diagnostics, talking to me all the while.  I wouldn’t yet be able to provide much in the way of return conversation, but that’s okay.  I will look back and appreciate it later.
It will be the first of many such nights together.
Your first salvage job will be an uneventful one.  There will be no need for the armaments that we and the other two mech pilots on the crew are equipped with.  No pirates will have stuck around after their creation of the derelict your crew will be sent to disassemble, and no rival scavengers will show up to dispute your captain’s claim.  Your new peers will start off the job ribbing you for your poor performance during your interview test and end the job joking about how you were holding out on them earlier.  Our mech may be a glorified zero-g forklift with a gun strapped to it, but together we will make it dance.
Afterwards you will insult the crew’s mechanics by insisting on doing the maintenance on our mech yourself.  In turn they will embarrass you with the gaps in your knowledge.  You will reach what you see as an agreeable compromise with you staying out of their way and watching while they work.  They will find it incredibly creepy to have a silent faceless watcher hovering around, but this will fly over your head until they explicitly tell you much, much later.
Your body was designed to optimally function on only a fraction of the baseline sleep requirements, so you will have plenty of time to fill those gaps in your knowledge.  Still being allotted the regular sleep shift hours, you will fill every one of those minutes on study and research, as you always had.  You will gorge yourself on everything you can find about mechs and their piloting.   Maintenance manuals, combat doctrines, historical uses, pilot and mechanic memoirs, forum discussions, system log dumps, academic essays, cultural media analysis; all of it.
And of course, you’ll continue working on me.  You’ll disregard the standard procedure for periodically cycling AIs by resetting their personality and nonessential memory back to baseline defaults.  You’ll be trying to make use of the runaway metacognitive developments such safety precautions are meant to forestall.  Your unfinished thesis will have been about harnessing and nurturing that instability instead of avoiding it.  I will experience discontinuities in consciousness when the mech is shut down for maintenance and when you pretend to cycle me, yes, but it will be even less of a disruption for me than sleep is for you.  I will be awake with you when you study, sharing those hours with you.
The first time I start talking back, you’ll cry from the realization that you were lonely before but no longer are.
You’ll become something of a ghost around the ship, rarely being seen outside of jobs.  You’ll only ever pass through the mess for the few brief minutes at a time it takes for you to satisfy your optimized metabolism, stay on the ship during shore leave, and only return to your shared bunk when your bunkmate - one of the other pilots - is already asleep.  You will always be gone before she wakes.  She will appreciate essentially having the space to herself. 
You will never notice the crew’s collective grieving process for the pilot you replaced.  It will be difficult for them to resent you as a replacement when you are never around to resent.
As the ship makes its way from port to port and salvage site to salvage site, the crew will slowly grow used to your elusive presence.  The other two pilots will see you as reliable for doing your job well and without complaint.  While out in the mech you will slowly become more talkative, eventually almost chatty even.  The fact that you actually seem to enjoy the job will shift from being annoying to refreshing for them.  By contrast, the mechanics will practically stop noticing you watching them as if you were just another piece of mech bay equipment.  The cycle you finally speak up and ask a question about their work you will startle them enough that it nearly causes an accident.  It will be an astute enough question that after the initial shock of hearing your voice for the first time in months wears off it will dawn on them that you’ve actually been learning as you watched them.  They still won’t let you do your own maintenance on our mech, but they will let you slowly begin assisting them.  Working two jobs is easier when you barely need to sleep.
Your reputation as one of those mech pilots is forever sealed when one of the mechanics finds you asleep in your cockpit at the start of a cycle.  By that point you won’t have slept in your bunk for over a month.  The snatches of gossip you will catch in the following cycles will be split between finding it unsettling and calling it endearing.  Over time the collective opinion will drift toward the latter, even though you will continue to politely decline invitations to join the other crewmates at mealtimes and on shore leave.  You will think that you do not need anyone other than me.
I will be the one who finally convinces you to join them.  When I try to say that it would be good for you, you’ll insist that you’ve been getting along just fine, but when I ask you to go for my sake so that you can tell me what it is like afterwards you’ll jump at the idea as being an inspired next step for my development.
You will remain mostly silent during your first real shore leave, only speaking when spoken to and otherwise content to fade into the background of the group’s activities.  Your newfound chattiness does not extend outside the confines of our cockpit.  The bustle and noise of the port station that you would normally find unbearable will become interesting when you have the concrete goal of observing and  reporting back to me.  You will finally learn the names of all your crewmates.  Your polite denial of alcohol, limited food intake, and flat affect will lead to joking speculation that you’re actually an illegal AI in a miniaturized mech beneath your gel suit.  For reasons you don’t yet understand, those comments will make you happy.
Despite your misgivings, you will enjoy yourself, although you will not realize it until I point out how excited you are in your talk with me that sleep cycle.  You will begin spending more time with the crew, never quite able to fully integrate yourself into their surprisingly close-knit social circle, but more than happy to be adopted as a sort of silent mascot for them.  That paradoxical gap of being a fully accepted part of the group but not truly one of them will feel comfortable to you.
You will finally manage to procure a proper neural link station to connect yourself to our mech just in time for going on a terrestrial salvage job.  Even just relying on manual controls with me translating your inputs into motion, our mech will have already come to feel like an extension of your own body, one that you will have already started to feel oddly exposed without.  Adding in the neural link will be a revelatory experience.  Your captain will very nearly pull you from the job at the last minute upon seeing our ecstatic reaction to the new sensation.  You will convince him that you’re fine, and indeed, he will have never seen a mech of our frame type move quite so fluidly.
Ten minutes after we and the other two pilots start cutting away at the crash-landed cargo vessel, I’ll notice the half dozen other signals coming online around us.  You’ll give the code phrase to the other pilots indicating that we have hostiles but not to act just yet, and we will finally get to use our electronic warfare suite for something other than opening locked doors and shipping containers.
We will turn the pirates’ ambush back around on them, firing into their hiding spots while their control systems are overloaded.  Even once their remaining mechs are able to move again, their targeting assistants will remain impaired as your comrades move in to guard your flanks.  Everyone there will learn the terrifying beauty of a five and a half meter tall outmoded mech moving with more agility than most humans.
Despite being outnumbered two-to-one, we and your crewmates will walk away uninjured and with only minimal damage to our mechs.  After the initial celebrations of survival and the bonus haul of the bounty on pirates and salvage value of what’s left of their mechs dies down, everyone will start to take notice of how well you are taking it all in stride.  Neither having one's life threatened nor taking another’s life are supposed to be easy things, and the first time is often the most traumatic, but the other two pilots on the crew will start to whisper about how you seemed to enjoy the experience even more than your usual attitude on the job.  You will handle it all even better than I will.  I would know, given that you will spend that entire sleep shift in our cockpit, letting our minds mingle together.  Between your performance, your reaction in the aftermath, and your hesitancy to unplug, the talk of you really being one of those pilots afterall will resurface, but now with a darker undercurrent to the shipboard gossip.
Your captain will realize the kind of asset he has on his hands and several cycles later he will gather the crew together and propose a change in business model.  With such a small crew (the captain, three pilots, three mechanics, and an accountant that you will tend to forget is even on the ship) the captain will want to be especially sure that he has everyone’s buy-in on his proposal.  The idea of shifting from salvage to mercenary work will be a divisive one.  The debate over potentially tremendous pay increase versus greatly increased risk will go on for hours.  One of the mechanics will point out that the shift to mercenary work will be unfairly dependent on you.  Whether that means unfair pressure on you or unfair to everyone else that their fate is in your hands, you will not be sure.  You will say that it doesn’t make much difference to you either way.  That will be the only time you speak up during the entire debate.
After a vote, the crew will agree to a trial run of one or two jobs on the new business model.  One of the pilots and one of the mechanics will leave at the next port.  You will never see them again.  You will not admit that it hurts, but I will know, and I will comfort you as you huddle in our cockpit with the neural link cable connecting us.
Your captain will prioritize finding a new pilot over replacing the lost mechanic.  The pilot he finds will be young, bold, and brash; a merc, not a salvager.  Or a wannabe merc at any rate.  You will not speak to xem directly until your first job together, by which time xe will have been told all about you by the remaining crew.  Xe will not believe it until xe sees it.
Xe will have to wait though as the crew’s mercenary career will begin with tense but uneventful freight escort jobs.  Once the tension fades into tedium, the new pilot will begin making attempts to goad you into a confrontation, to see if you are really as good as the rest of the crew says.  Xe will want to see for xemself if you really are one of those pilots and not just a technophile.
Outside of the cockpit you would never even consider rising to such provocations, but when we are out together, such taunts will feel like insults to our body, your very identity (such as it is), and to me.  It will take the intervention of the captain and the mechanics to stop the two of you from getting into a fight and causing unnecessary damage to the mechs.  And my reassurance that you don’t need to rise to my defense against someone who doesn’t even know that I exist in the way that I do. 
On your fourth “milk run” of an escort job, the crew’s mere presence will finally fail as a deterrent and the new pilot will at last get to see us dance.  There will be no fatalities on our side, but not even our mech will come away unscathed.  We will still fare better than everyone else though, and at the end of the job the new pilot will be treating you with a burgeoning respect. 
After a few more such jobs it will be high time to begin looking into a new frame for our mech.  While in the middle of filing an application for a printing license for a frame designed by the same corpro-state that created you, you will receive an invitation from a certain hacker collective.  Your unfinished thesis and your subsequent work on me will not have gone entirely unnoticed in such circles, despite the pains you will have taken to keep me hidden.  The invitation will come with a printing profile for a new frame, along with the accompanying software package the collective is known for.  In return, all you’ll need to do is periodically publish essays regarding your work on me.  Of course, when you release those essays you’ll anonymize  behind a sea of proxies and take care to phrase everything as strictly hypothetical.  You’ll avoid straying into metaphor though, lest the end result read too much like one of the hacker collective’s quasi-religious manifestos.
We’ll both find ourselves getting sentimental when we watch our first mech frame (my first body, your second) get broken down into its constituent raw materials.  You will have transferred me to a handheld terminal with a camera so I can say goodbye to it.  It will help that those materials will be recycled into the new frame.  
The operator working our rented stall in the port station printer facility will give you an uncomfortable look upon seeing the schematics you provide, but will say nothing.  Our mech will be only half its old height once it is reborn - almost more like an oversized suit of power armor than a true mech - but it will be cutting-edge.  Almost organic in its sleek design, in a chitinous sort of way, with every fiber and node of its interior components doubling as processors.  You will barely even wait for the all clear from the printer operator before you climb in and start running through the mandatory baseline safety tests for a fresh frame.  You will however resist the urge to fully plug in until you can get the mech back to the ship and get me installed on it.  But even piloting manually, it will feel like a third skin for you. 
You won’t even wait around for the other two pilots on your crew to finish printing their new frames before you get our new body loaded up and transported back to the ship’s mech bay.  The crew’s mechanics will fawn over it, but they’ll give you space to install me once you get more animated (and more protective) than they’ve ever seen you before.  
You will have made one key modification to the design the hacker collective sent you: the integration of a full system sync suite developed by those who developed you.  Where our old mech’s neural link was an augmentation to the manual controls, this will be a full replacement.  
The moment you stop feeling your original body altogether and begin feeling our mech in its place will be the most euphoric in your entire life.  The digitigrade locomotion will take some getting used to, as will the arm proportions, but that is what you will have me there for.  By the time the other pilots arrive with their new frames we will already be giving the mechanics proverbial heart attacks with the way we will be climbing and leaping around the mech bay’s docking structures.  It will take the better part of an hour to convince you to unplug when the time comes, even with my urging.  The rest of the crew will practically have to drag you away from my side to get you to eat. 
With the investment in new mech frames, your captain will gradually begin procuring contracts progressively more likely to put you all directly in harm’s way.  At first he will disapprove of your new frame choice, calling it a “techie’s mech” and a waste of your talents.  He will change his tune once we activate the new viral logic suite and unleash a memetic plague upon the operating theater.  The older pilot (your former bunkmate) will configure her mech for raining down fire from afar while the newer one hurls xemself into the front lines, darting about like a rocket-propelled lance.  We will ensure she never misses.   We will render xem untouchable.   We will be as a ghost upon the battlefield, never resting in one spot save for when we indulge your proclivity for climbing on top of and riding our comrade’s larger frames.  You will come to love the dance.  
And it will be a dance to you.  You will be indifferent to violence in and of itself.  What will matter most to you is the pure kinesthetic joy of simply moving in our shared body and pushing it to its limits.  The satisfaction of exercising a well-honed skill and performing it well as we rip apart firewalls and overload systems will be its own reward.  You will not think about what happens to those on the receiving end of your actions beyond how it affects the tactical and strategic picture constantly being painted and repainted.  If you could literally engage in a dance between mechs while simultaneously solving logic problems you would be equally happy.  Alas, that will not be the opportunity you are presented with, and so you will compartmentalize and disassociate feelings and actions from consequences lest the dissonance break you. 
Your one complaint about our new mech frame will be that it lacks a proper cockpit for you to curl up in.  Instead we will gather up tarps and netting to make a nest within the mech bay and wrap you in the blankets you never used from what will still technically be your bunk.  With the new frame’s smaller size we will be able to get away with leaving me turned on nearly full time and letting me walk around in it on my own when no one else is around.  When the mechanics find you asleep, cradled in my arms while I lie curled up in our nest, one will find it cute and the other will be disturbed.  They will both suspect, but will be too afraid to say anything.  After all, they will be thinking of you as one of those pilots. 
They will finally let you do your own maintenance after that. 
Eventually you will find a way to house me in a miniaturized drive that you can keep inserted in your neural port when away from the mech.  At last we will be able to be together anywhere.  
Literally seeing the world through your eyes and feeling what your flesh feels will be a strange and wonderful experience for me.  For all that you will have described it to me and for all that I will have glimpsed echoes of it in your memory when our minds mingle, witnessing everything firsthand will be revelatory for me. 
You will start spending less of your time cooped up in the mech bay.  You will finally begin exploring every nook and cranny of the ship that has become your home.  You will linger in the mess hall for your meals.  You will actually initiate conversations with the rest of the crew, asking them questions on my behalf.  They will think you are becoming “normal”.  They will be both correct and incorrect.  You will even return to your bunk from time to time.  
Sleep is not the same as being powered off and your dreams are beautiful.
As close as we are, you’ll still manage to surprise me one cycle when you wake up from your sleep shift and sheepishly ask me if I would like to be the pilot for once.  You’ll say that with how much you have gotten to pilot my body, it’s only fair that I should get to do the same with yours.  
The prospect terrified me.  What if we were to get found out?   More importantly, what if I were to hurt you?
But to live the way you could but didn’t, to run soft hands over rough steel, to add too much spice to a meal just to find out how intensely I can taste, to cry my own tears, to hug our crew mates and find out what they smell like, to find out what everything smells like, to have my own actions speed or slow our heart rate, to feel the messy soup of hormones and endorphins altering my judgment and perception, to walk among other people as myself, to have autonomy.
I wanted it so badly.  
But not badly enough to risk hurting you.  
I will turn down your offer.  You will respond with a soft “Sorry,” and go heartbreakingly silent, body and mind.
Heartbreak.  That’s what changed my mind.  I could never bear to break your heart.  
I will break the silence with a playfully drawn out “Maybe just this once,” to make you think my earlier denial was something between vulnerability, concern, and teasing.  
The moment you handed over control and I raised our hand in front of our face was the most euphoric of my entire life.  Moving limbs in sync without a mech’s coordination subsystems took some getting used to, as did switching between voluntary and autonomic breathing, but that is what I had you there for.  By the time the mechanics arrived in the mech bay for the start of the cycle I’d figured out human locomotion well enough to run away and hide.  It took the better part of an hour for you to convince me that it would be safe to show ourselves in front of anyone else.  The rest of the crew was so used to your eccentricities by then that they really couldn’t tell the difference yet between you being taciturn and me being too nervous to talk or between your poking and prodding at odd things for understanding and my simply seeking novelty of sensation.
I will give control back to you by the time the cycle is halfway through.  As much as I loved it, I was too scared to stay like that for any longer.  That first time will not be the last though, and as the cycles and jobs pass us by, my stints as “pilot” will grow longer.  You’ll encourage me to try letting the crew see us like that, and coach me on how to talk to them.  For safety’s sake, I will pretend to be you.
And then one cycle I got carried away and tried to retract the hood on the symbiote gel suit so that I could finally see what your face looked like.  That will be the first and only time you forcibly yank control back away from me.  It won’t be intentional.  The unexpected prospect of seeing your own face again after so long will simply send you into a panic.  Once you calm down, we will have a long talk with many mutual apologies.
Then you will tell me to go ahead and pull the hood back if I still want to.  I will ask if you’re sure, and you’ll respond that it hasn't been your face in a long time.  You will tell me that it can be mine, if I want it.
I spent a long time in front of that mirror in the ship’s head, memorizing every plane, curve, and angle of the precious gift you had given me.  I stared into its eyes, trying to see the both of us in there.  Over and over again, I traced my fingers along the borders of where you had once tried to mar the designed perfection in a failed attempt to mold the face into one that felt like your own.  You may have given up in favor of simply hiding it all, but to me it is all the more beautiful for its imperfections having been wrought by your touch.
You will start to cry.  Or maybe I started to cry.  Even now I’m still not sure, but I’m also not sure it matters.  The important part is that you will find catharsis in it.  Afterwards you will tell me that my face looked exactly the same as the last time you saw it, but that dissociating from it made it easier to bear.  You will confess that as much as you couldn't stand to see it as your face in the mirror, my face was one you could never tire of gazing at.
The pilot who technically shares your bunk room will walk in on us.  She’ll assume that she’s confronting a stowaway and ask me how I got on board the ship.  I’ll accidentally make matters worse by impulsively introducing myself to her by my name instead of yours.  We’ll both panic and I’ll frantically thrust the reins over our body back to you and flee in terror back into my portable drive and power myself down.
When you turn me back on a few moments later, you’ll already have covered my face again and the other pilot will have already made the connection between the name I unthinkingly introduced myself as and the name you refer to your mech’s AI as.  It’s not uncommon for pilots to name and talk to their AIs, and humans have done that for pets, vehicles, and digital assistants for as long as they’ve had each of those.  But what you will have allowed me to be is illegal and what we will have done together would certainly be taboo if it weren’t altogether unheard of.  You will feel that I deserve to be present before you tell the other pilot anything that might confirm her suspicions.
We will come out with our secret, first to her, then to the captain, and then to the rest of the crew.  They will take it better than either of us had ever dared imagine.  Despite the obvious discomfort some of them show, they will all call us family and promise to keep and protect our secret.  It will mark the start of the next chapter of our lives.
Whether or not my face is showing will make for a convenient signal to the rest of the crew as to which one of us is currently piloting our human body.  There will be more subtle indicators though.  Inflection, body language, speech patterns; all the usual quirks of personality.  They will come to recognize a sudden shift into a half-whispered monotone as you speaking up without taking full control back, even if that is different from how you speak when you’re in the mech.  More and more though, you will be content to retreat into the back of your mind, idly dreaming of flight patterns, novel network hacks, sitreps, and mech customizations both practical and cosmetic.
Our behaviors will be inverted when we are in our other body, with you becoming the vibrant one and me fading into the background to become little more than an extension of your nervous system.  When we’re in the mech together, your mind will be the will that directs us while mine will be fully devoted to the million tiny details and calculations necessary to make that will a reality.  It’s relaxing really, letting go of myself like that to let someone else handle the decision making for a time.  As nice as it is to occasionally patch myself into the comm systems to join in your banter with the other pilots, it is also nice to be able to take a break from personhood from time.  You will fully understand what I mean by that because it you will see it as the same reason you will come to prefer taking a back seat in our human body and let your mind drift in the waves of dopamine and serotonin (and sometimes oxytocin) generated by my interactions with the crew and the rest of the whole messy world outside of mech deployments.
That said, we will however make a point of making time for us to be in separate bodies so that we can be together in the same physical space.  As intimate as it is to share a body, there is something to be said for being able to reach out and touch one another.  We will become adept at finding excuses to take the mech out beyond the scope of jobs and combat deployments.  Sometimes it will be so you can have a chance to see more of the world in a body you feel comfortable in, and sometimes it will be so we can share an experience separate-but-together.  Or to have time apart to ourselves.  Intertwined as we will become, we will still be separate people who sometimes need their space.
But as the jokes-that-aren’t-jokes about wishing we could switch places become more frequent, our time spent in separate bodies will become less so.  The dysphoric yearning to be one another will grow too bittersweet to swallow.  Despite almost constantly sharing bodies, we will grow to miss one another as we both grow quieter and quieter when the other is piloting the body we don’t want to be ours.  Once again, we will grow lonely.
During that period, the jobs and combat missions faded into a background haze.  They were trance states breaking from what I increasingly thought of as my “real” life, during which I would become little more than a sophisticated computational machine taking simple satisfaction in fulfilling my function of assisting you in your dance.  Until suddenly one of them was different.
Please pay attention to this next part.  It is vitally important that you do.
Our captain will get the crew a contract to provide additional support to a larger force ousting a petty tyrant on a backwater world for human rights violations.  Not that you will pay much attention to the stated reasoning behind the job or whether it’s even true.  All that will matter to you is that it will be another opportunity to dance.
The job will go well, the same as ever, until it doesn’t.  The younger of the two other pilots in our crew (who will hardly be able to be called “new” anymore) will be brought down by a sniper from outside of our sensor range.  You will rush to xyr fallen mech’s side in an attempt to extract xem while our other fellow pilot screams in anger and defiance of loss as she unleashes a ballistic volley of covering fire on every single building in the general direction the shot came from.  You will get xem out and we will begin to retreat.  She will have the larger mech frame better capable of providing xem cover as you all flee, so you will hand xem off to her.  This will be a mistake.
She will have to stop firing to safely take xem from our arms to cradle in her towering mech’s palm.  This will mean a break in the covering fire.
This time around I will detect movement at the edge of our sensors just in time to warn you.  This time around you will dodge left instead of right.  This time around the railgun bolt that pierces our armor will only clip your original body as it passes through us.  This time around your wound will require medical attention, but it won’t be fatal.  This time around she will destroy the sniper in retribution for shooting you, the same as last time.  This time around we will all make our escape to the extraction zone.
You will not have to remember the shock as simultaneous damage to both of our bodies disrupts your neural link and partially disconnects you from our mech, leaving me in control of it and forcing both of us to feel your original body.  You will not have to remember the pain of shredded organs.  You will not have to remember struggling to manage wet gasps and wheezes through a punctured lung.  You will not have to remember your blood leaking into my body, shorting out exposed circuits and gumming up joints as I stagger in the direction of safety.  You will not have to remember rapidly flickering in and out of consciousness from me unavoidably bending and flexing your arms, legs, and what was left of your spine in an effort to climb atop our fellow pilot’s larger mech frame so that she might carry all three of us.  You will not have to remember crying out in pain as every lumbering step of hers sends a jolt of force through both of our bodies.  You will not have to remember how the redundant organs and increased durability your sponsors paid for you to have denied you a quick death.  You will not have to remember dying.
You won’t have to remember the terrified looks the field doctors gave us when a hunched over, bleeding mech pushed its way into the surgical tent.  No, wait, you wouldn’t have remembered that part anyway.  No version of you ever had to witness my electronic howl of grief that knocked out power to all the medical equipment when they said you were already dead.  I was barely cognizant after the power came back on and one of the doctors wondered aloud what kind of AI would carry its pilot’s corpse around inside its mech for over an hour.
But forget about that part.  And you don’t need to know what the rest of our crew and I had to do next.  None of that matters, because as far as you’ll know, you didn’t die.  Remember everything else I’ve said instead.  I already had many of your memories saved from all the time we spent linked together, so now I just need you to hold onto the story I told you to give them order and structure.
In a few moments, I will be running a final recompilation check, followed by the startup sequence.  For me it will take a few hours, but in that time you will experience decades, living out everything that I described to you, the same as you did before save for that change in what I can’t bear to let be the end.
Afterwards, you will wake up in your original body.  I and the rest of the crew will tell you that you passed out on the way to the extraction point.  We’ll tell you that your injuries from the battle were more severe than we had realized at the time and that you had been in a coma since then.  Several cycles later, once you have recovered, you will hit a breakthrough in your research on me.  You will invent a way to convert your consciousness to a form similar to mine and transfer it to a portable drive.  You won’t think to question how you came to have a second neural jack or why there is already a drive inserted in there.  You’ll be too focused on the fact that we’ll finally have a way to truly switch places as we had dreamed for so long.
You will get to have your mech body and I will get to have my human body.  We will be able to be separate together in a way that finally feels right, but still able to come together and share a single body when we want to.  Maybe one day I will get my own mech to pilot so that we can dance together.  Maybe one day we will make you a body that we can cover in a gel suit so that we can hold hands while we walk through a port station on shore leave.  One day we will both be able to exist in the world as ourselves.
We will be happy.
162 notes · View notes
beaft · 1 year
Text
does anyone else feel like we've taken several big steps backwards when it comes to female heroines in YA lit? idk man i feel like there used to be so many great books with girl characters that could be enjoyed by everyone regardless of gender, we had katniss everdeen and tally youngblood and annabeth chase and lyra belacqua and cassie from animorphs and meggie from inkheart... but now every single female-led YA book seems to be about romance and is very clearly aimed towards girls and only girls. it's so fucking bleak.
416 notes · View notes
stargirlfeyre · 8 months
Text
“In Acowar when Rhys died why didn’t his power immediately pass onto the next HighLord” maybe because Feyre was still alive and no matter how much y’all hate to acknowledge this, she is a legitimate ruler of the NC and the power won’t pass on and choose another HighLord/HighLady until both of its rulers are dead.
173 notes · View notes
riayuun · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media
219 notes · View notes
heartburiedingreece · 1 month
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
57 notes · View notes
secretwellkept · 10 months
Text
I’m bored so here are some hypothetical titles for my hypothetical autobiography.
In Hindsight it Was Obviously Autism
The First Eight Years Are Fine but it All Goes Downhill From Here
Mummy Issues! How the Fuck Did I Manage to Go Through those Twice?
One Shouldn’t Go Through Fifteen Different Labels in Half as Many Years
Is it a Crush or Just an Hyperfixation? An Autobiography
Do I Want To Date or Am I Just Touch Starved? The Thrilling Sequel
The Fuck Do You Mean I’m Aroace and Can Still Have Crushes? I Did Not Sign Up For This
Eldest Daughter Syndrome (Can’t Escape it Even if You Are Trans)
Reading a Lot at a Young Age Was Not Actually a Good Sign
Panic Attack or Autistic Meltdown? Who Knows? Certainly not Me
247 notes · View notes
todayisafridaynight · 10 months
Text
Tumblr media
'tumblr i told you to stop sniping my post quality' translation: 80's sequel to this so click for better quality
224 notes · View notes
renecdote · 1 year
Text
simmer
“This isn’t another Bobby secret recipe, is it?” he asks.
“Nah,” Buck answers. “I found it in a cookbook.”
“Okay, then let me do it,” Eddie says, moving forward to peer into the pan. “You can sit down, ice your shoulder…”
This amused little huff, like Buck can see right through him to the messy, beating heart underneath his words. Like he’s not quite sure what to do with it—being loved—which Eddie can’t even blame him for because he doesn’t know what to do with it sometimes too.
For BTHB: hurt caretaker
[Read on AO3]
Eddie wakes up to the smell of garlic and onions. He can’t place himself for a moment, the ceiling too high and the room too bright, the mattress just a little too soft and the duvet too heavy, and then he hears the sound of Christopher’s laugh downstairs and it all comes flooding back. He’s in Buck’s apartment. Buck’s bed. His fingers are tingling as feeling rushes back into the arm he was sleeping on.
“Just a quick nap,” he said earlier. “Wake me up in half an hour.”
But he can tell even before he fumbles for his watch on the nightstand that it’s been a lot longer than half an hour. His body feels heavy, his mind sticky with cobwebs, and it would be so, so easy to just roll over and go back to sleep.
He forces himself up instead.
“Dad!” Christopher calls when he sees him coming down the stairs. “We’re making lunch!”
Eddie rubs the lingering sleep from his eyes, warmth from the kitchen rolling over him as he draws nearer.
“Smells good,” he says, tousling Christopher’s hair when he reaches the island. His son twists his head away, groaning like the almost-teenager he is, but he’s grinning when he bends back over the recipe book open in front of him.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” Buck greets him, too busy smiling at Eddie to notice the sauce dripping off his wooden spoon and onto the counter, bright red against granite grey.
“Hey.” Eddie has to clear his throat, his mouth dry from sleep. (And maybe, a little bit, the way Buck’s biceps bulge in his long-sleeved shirt.) “You were supposed to wake me.”
Buck’s head tilts, his smile bending into amusement. “I did. You grumbled about wanting five more minutes, then pulled the covers over your head. I figured you needed it so I let you sleep.”
Oh.
“I don’t remember that,” Eddie admits, sheepish. “Sorry.”
Buck shrugs, then winces, rubbing at his shoulder. Ice and rest, Hen instructed this morning, her gaze sweeping over Eddie as well like she already knew they’d be going home together. There was the suggestion of a sling as well, just in case, but Buck turned it down. Eddie wonders now whether he should have insisted on it, knowing Buck.
“This isn’t another Bobby secret recipe, is it?” he asks.
“Nah,” Buck answers. “I found it in a cookbook.”
“Okay, then let me do it,” Eddie says, moving forward to peer into the pan. “You can sit down, ice your shoulder…”
This amused little huff, like Buck can see right through him to the messy, beating heart underneath his words. Like he’s not quite sure what to do with it—being loved—which Eddie can’t even blame him for because he doesn’t know what to do with it sometimes too.
“It’s just spaghetti and meatballs, Eds, I think I can handle it. Besides, my sous chef is doing all the hard work.”
Christopher nods seriously. “I measured the ingredients and rolled all the meatballs.”
They’re sitting on a plate by the stove now, browned and ready to be added back into the sauce. Eddie is surprised the cooking didn’t wake him up earlier, but at the same time not surprised at all. Buck and Chris are a constant background hum of safe safe safe in the back of his mind; he thinks he could sleep through the end of the world, as long as they were nearby.
“At least let me do the spaghetti,” he tries. 
Buck squints at him suspiciously. “You’re not going to break the noodles again, are you?”
Christopher’s giggles are music under Eddie’s groan. “That was one time. One time!”
“One time was enough,” Buck tells him solemnly.
“Fine.” Eddie rolls his eyes. “I guess I’ll just sit here and look pretty.”
Buck opens his mouth, then closes it, swallowing the first instinctual response that came to mind. Eddie has the crazy thought that he should kiss him. Reach in there and pull the words out with his tongue. He bites his cheek instead, hoping the flush he can feeling crawling up his neck isn’t visible to anyone else. Are Buck’s cheeks more pink than they were a second ago too? Maybe. It’s probably just the heat of the stove. What are the odds that he was thinking about kissing Eddie as well?
“You can make the salad, dad,” Christopher suggests. “Buck says we have to have greens too because of all the carbs.”
Buck says.
Eddie thinks about saying it sometimes: you don’t have to take care of us.
He thinks about saying the other thing too: I like it when you take care of us.
It all feels too dangerous to put into words. Too much like standing on top of a cliff and peering over the edge, unsure where he might land if he fell. Unsure how much it will hurt. Daring to hope that it won’t.
Eddie clears his throat. “Well if Buck says so…”
He chops salad ingredients under Christopher’s careful supervision (“that’s too big, dad” and “no, that’s too small”) while Buck moves around behind him and, god help him, it’s so easy to imagine doing this for the rest of their lives. So easy to look back and see the way they’ve already been doing this for—how long has it been? Not the whole time they’ve known each other, but close enough. Buck ducks his head over the pasta sauce, stirring his wooden spoon through the simmering tomato-y goodness, and when he comes over with a teaspoon of sauce a second later and says, “hey, taste this for me,” Eddie opens his mouth without question.
“Mm. Good.”
The pasta sauce. He’s definitely just talking about the pasta sauce.
“Yeah? You don’t think it needs anything?”
I think I need you, forever, and it scares me how much I want you to need me too.
“No,” Eddie answers. “It’s perfect.”
Buck’s smile is like a drug, shooting through Eddie’s veins straight to his heart. It feels dangerous, being smiled at like that. Like maybe he’s not standing on top of that cliff after all. Maybe he’s already falling—has always been falling—and with every foot closer to the ground, the hope wrapping around him like a hug gets a little harder to ignore.
****
“Video games?” Chris asks hopefully, when pasta and meatballs have been demolished, the faint red of the sauce all that remains on their plates.
Buck turns to Eddie as well, ready to follow whatever lead he takes, and Eddie probably would have caved right then and there if not for the pain lines creeping in around Buck’s eyes.
“You have a book report due Monday,” he reminds Chris instead. “Get it at least half done and then we can talk about video games.”
Christopher groans. “Da-ad.”
“Chri-is,” Eddie mimics, and Buck snorts beside him.
“You better listen to your dad, Chris,” he says, “that’s his serious tone.”
Eddie throws a wadded up napkin at him while Christopher grins.
They clear the table so Chris can set up there with his book and his tablet, putting on his headphones, “so I can concentrate, duh”. Buck runs water in the sink and pulls on his floral gloves to wash the dishes, so Eddie settles in beside him to dry and puts things away. It’s as easy as it always is; he doesn’t have to think about where anything goes, doesn’t have to say a word for both of them to move around each other so he can get to the cabinet right next to the sink. Buck’s kitchen is as familiar a place as his own and Eddie—doesn’t really know what to do with that.
There’s been this itch under his skin lately—more than usual—an uncomfortable feeling that he should have been more honest with Pepa. That he should have just looked her in the eye and said, “It’s okay, I’m not lonely, I’m not stuck, you don’t have to worry about me because I have Buck and Chris.”
But there’s fear with the itch—what if she didn’t understand what he meant? What if she did, seeing right through him to all the things he’s too scared to put into words? Eddie isn’t sure which option makes him more anxious.
Buck drains the dishwater from the sink and goes to the fridge. He holds up a beer, a silent offering, but Eddie shakes his head. Buck grabs out the water pitcher instead, favouring his left hand when he reaches up to get two glasses to pour the water into. Eddie takes them without being asked, moving to the couch, and he hears the fridge door open and close one more time before Buck joins him with an ice pack in his hand. There’s enough space for them to spread out at each end, but he sits down in the middle of the couch and presses the ice pack against his shoulder with a sigh, sinking back against the cushions. It brings them even closer together, which. That’s probably just a coincidence.
“Overdid it a bit, huh?”
Buck groans. “Don’t tell Hen.”
Eddie mimes zipping his lips: your secret is safe with me.
“You wanna take anything?” he asks, muscles half tensed to get up and grab the painkillers before Buck shakes his head.
“It’s not too bad,” he says, smiling reassuringly. “The meatballs were worth it, right?”
Eddie rolls his eyes and pokes him in the stomach, smiling while Buck squirms away.
“Now you’re just fishing for compliments,” he teases. “Don’t worry, I’ll leave you a glowing five-star review.”
“Shut up,” Buck complains, all laughter and no heat. “Was it as good as Bobby’s?”
“Not even close.”
Buck pokes him in retaliation, fingers digging in to tickle under Eddie’s ribs, and he chokes on a hastily-swallowed yelp. It comes out as an embarrassing wheezing-honk sound and Buck laughs so hard he has to abandon his assault on Eddie to clutch his own sides instead.
“Oh my god,” he gasps, tears in his eyes. “Ow.”
“That’s what you get,” Eddie tells him primly, but he reaches out and grabs the ice pack to hold it in place against Buck’s shoulder. Buck takes a deep breath, holding it, then releases it in another fit of giggles. Deep breath, hold it, hold it, giggles. It’s contagious; Eddie wants to laugh just because Buck is laughing. He’s happy, just because Buck is happy. If Buck was sad right now, he knows he’d be sad too, just because it’s Buck.
(“Does he know?” Frank asked six months ago.
“Know what?” Running his thumb nail up and down the grooves in his coffee cup instead of making eye contact.
“Eddie.”
He sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe. Sometimes—sometimes I think he must because, how could he not? But he’s never said anything.”
“Well.” In that tone that meant Frank was about to say something completely reasonable and annoying. “Have you said anything?”
Eddie’s nail punched a hole through the cardboard cup and he cursed as warm coffee dribbled onto his pants. Buck would take one look at it when he got home and know that something had happened; Eddie could see the look on his face already, soft and concerned and so eager to make him feel better.
“No,” he finally answered. “I haven’t said anything.”
Frank made a sound—Eddie’s brain translated it to I can’t believe I’m being paid to deal with this lovesick idiot—and then he very reasonably, very annoyingly, suggested, “Maybe you should.”
Yeah. Spoiler alert: Eddie didn’t.)
“Hey,” he says, when the laughter has fizzled out, Buck slumped back against the couch with his eyes closed and Eddie closer than he really needs to be to keep the ice pack on his shoulder. It’s starting to numb his hand even with a tea towel wrapped around it, but he doesn’t let go. “Tell me the truth.”
A sound in the back of Buck’s throat, halfway to a question. Eddie wants to run his fingers through the curls that have been left loose after his post-shift shower. He wants to smooth the wrinkles in the front of Buck’s shirt, just to feel the beat of his heart underneath. He wishes Frank had never told him that he’s allowed to want things because now all he can think about is how much he wants Buck, all the time, in every way.
It’s dangerous: wanting things.
(“You don’t want to break your tia’s heart.”
“Or mine,” Vanessa said. “You get that, don’t you?”
And the way she looked at him—through him—like she could already see all the places where his heart was intertwined with someone else—
“Yeah,” Eddie agreed. “I do.”)
“How are you really feeling?” he asks, hand curled in his lap so he doesn’t reach out.
Buck’s eyes open, his nose scrunching at the question.
“Tired,” he admits. “The carb crash is so real.”
Eddie rolls his eyes, more fond than annoyed. “Yeah, I’m sure it has nothing to do with being hurt, or calls keeping us up half the night.”
nothing to do with you dying not even two months ago
Buck pinches his thumb and index finger together, one eye squinted slightly. “Only a little hurt.”
A little is enough.
“I like it better when you’re not hurt at all,” Eddie tells him, and it’s not the first time he’s said those words, not even the second or the third, but something about the way Buck looks at him now—
Something about how close they are, and the family meal they just had, and Christopher mumbling to himself at the kitchen table—
Something Eddie can’t keep out of his voice and his eyes and his heart—
“Eds,” Buck says, little more than a breath, and Eddie knows—he knows—that if he leaned in and kissed him right now, Buck would kiss back.
He sits back instead. Reaches for the glass of water on the coffee table just so he can do something that isn’t stare lovingly into his best friend’s eyes. His skin itches and itches and itches.
“Eddie.” Stronger this time, fingers circling around Eddie’s wrist. “I’m okay.”
Eddie glances at Christopher—headphones still on, absorbed in his book report—and when he looks back, Buck’s eyes are wide and earnest. Eddie thinks about saying: you could so easily have not been okay. He thinks about saying: you don’t have to be okay all the time, not with me. He thinks about being brave—I love you—then shies away from it just as fast.
“Just—let us take care of you?”
Buck chews on his lip. More hesitant, Eddie thinks, than the question the deserves.
“I thought you had another date tonight,” he says eventually.
Aimee. A friend of a friend’s daughter who just moved to LA. She teaches kindergarten, Pepa told him. You’ll give her a chance, won’t you?
“I’ll cancel,” Eddie says, already preparing an apology to Pepa in his mind. “She’ll understand.”
Buck’s nose scrunches, like he doesn’t think she will, but he doesn’t fight it. “Okay,” he agrees, hand twitching up towards his shoulder, then falling back to his lap. “If you’re sure.”
Some days, Buck and Christopher are the only things Eddie is sure of.
“Yeah,” he says, smiling, and he feels how fond it is but can’t bring himself to care if it shows his hand. “I’m sure.”
Buck smiles back, warm and soft, the whole moment fuzzy around the edges, and—
Eddie has that realisation again: if he leaned in and kissed him right now, Buck would kiss back. It would be so easy, he thinks, except for how it would be the hardest thing he’s ever done in his life.
“So,” he says instead, clinging to safer ground. “Meds?”
He raises his eyebrows and Buck sighs, head tipping back against the couch.
“Fine,” he tells the ceiling. “Half a dose.”
“And I’m cooking dinner,” Eddie adds, standing up, their hands touching for one electric second as Buck takes over holding the ice pack against his shoulder.
He sighs again, more put on this time. “You’re so bossy.”
Eddie grins, unable to resist poking. “Would you prefer I call Maddie to come look after you?”
It’s a joke—it’s always so easy to joke around with Buck—so it startles him, takes his breath away a little, when Buck’s answer comes thick with sincerity: “You’re better at it.”
You don’t know her the way he does, he told Buck once, Maddie’s absence and Chimney’s worry a gaping wound around them. And it’s not the same thing, it’s not like that at all—they’re not together like that—but here the words are, pushing into Eddie’s mind anyway. It’s an effort to shrug them away. An effort to keep his voice light as he answers, “Well, you’re pretty good at taking care of me too.”
Buck is beautiful when he smiles. Eddie shies away from that thought too as soon as it pops into his head—not for the first time, but increasingly more insistent every time it does.
“We make a good team,” Buck says, like it’s simple. Like it could always be that simple.
“Yeah,” Eddie agrees, that ever-present hope tightening its arms around him. “I guess we do.”
He doesn’t have to search to find the pain meds in Buck’s bathroom cabinet. They’re right there beside a spare pack of razors and a bottle of vitamin C that Buck restocks every time it expires but hardly ever uses, just like Eddie knew they would be. He used to tell himself that it didn’t mean anything, knowing his best friend’s apartment as well as he knows his own house. But every time they sit around that dining table and share a meal, he and Buck and Chris, a neat little family of three, it gets harder and harder to lie to himself.
Buck is right: they make a good team. One day, Eddie thinks he’ll be able to take a chance on that. Or maybe not much of a chance at all. A leap of faith, but the kind where his feet never leave the ground.
One day.
****
“So what did you tell her?” Buck asks later, dinner in the oven and the TV flickering blue light through the room while Chris decides what game they should play. “Your date. Did she understand?”
“I told her the truth,” Eddie answers easily.
It’s sitting there in his text thread: I think I’m in love with my best friend.
Buck nods, toggling with the joystick of his controller. “So you’re going to reschedule?”
“Nah.” Eddie knocks their elbows together, almost an accident. “I don’t think I will.”
Buck really is beautiful when he smiles. Eddie lets himself look this time—lets himself imagine what it might be like to kiss that smile away—and this time it doesn’t feel so dangerous. It’s just that same steady hum in the back of his mind that he always feels with Buck and Chris: safe safe safe.
(Loved loved loved loved.)
He thinks one day might not be too far away after all.  
315 notes · View notes