#like in some cases it has to do with something they have in common or share

[seresinhangmanjake]

He Will Hope

Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen x reader

Summary: Feyd is obsessed with his bride from the moment he sees her, but on their wedding night he finds out she might not feel the same. (Angst, but hopeful ending)

Warnings/Notes: Feyd POV, pre-smut and smutty-ish intentions (if that makes sense? idk, ignore me), instantly-in-love Feyd, unwanted marriage, baby(heir) talk, typos. Can absolutely be read alone, but also serves as something of a prequel to Do You Love? (same world, but big time skip), so I tried to kind of echo that with specific lines.

Words: 1500

Feyd-Rautha Masterlist

You’re so…beautiful. He didn’t expect a peace offering to be this perfect. Yes, he knew his bride would be a daughter of a Great House, but you are one of many sisters and Feyd did not imagine your father would send him the loveliest of his bunch. 

It’s a loveliness that has you sticking out like a sore thumb on Giedi Prime. Hair and makeup and wedding dress styled in the traditions of your home world glue all eyes to you as you walk down the aisle, and he likes that there is so much attention on you. It makes his inability to cease staring more acceptable. 

Harkonnens are not meant to be enthralled by their brides at first glance. Discouraged, even, from caring about their appearance at all. ‘Brides are meant for breeding,’ his uncle told him as a child, ‘It does not matter what they look like.’ But he was not told what to do or how to act in the event the bride makes his heart involuntarily skip a beat. 

Maybe if your heart was reacting in the same manner navigating this new feeling would be less intimidating, but the tears streaming down your cheeks suggest that's far from the case. You can barely look at him and he’s not sure you would be able to speak if it was required of you, but thankfully, verbal agreements are not part of marriage ceremonies on Giedi Prime. 

When he takes hold of your hand and slices your palm with his knife, you give no indication of pain. You are supposed to do the same to him but you seem nervous enough as it is, so he makes the three-inch long slash in his skin for you before pressing his palm against yours. The mixing of blood is a swearing of fidelity from husband to wife and wife to husband; a tradition and promise that wore down with time as concubines became more common. But he will not do that to you. You will be his one, his only, and if he can help it, he will be yours. 

He barely detects the words declaring you married. They're dull and bubbly in his ears as if he's sunk under the surface of his bath water because he's too focused on your mouth. Your plush lips are pink and plump and glistening, and he wants them. So he takes them before he's told to do so.

You taste different than the Harkonnen women he’s had. There is salt from tears, but something distinctly you seeps through. It's sweeter. A bit intoxicating. The kind of taste that collars and leashes the unruliest of men, and he wants more. Much more. But there are too many eyes, some of which are full of relief at the match finally solidified while others are prying and suspicious. If he keeps his lips on yours too long, questions will begin to form from certain witnesses—Does he like her? Does he want her? Can she be used? Can she control him?—and the answer will be plainly obvious.

When he breaks the kiss, your eyelashes flutter with the gentle opening of your eyes and he knows then that nothing—no convincing from advisors, no threats from his uncle, no hatred on your end—could ever have him willing to detach himself and use you for the sake of an heir only to discard you later. You are his wife now, you will be the Baroness upon his uncle’s death, and he will protect you from anyone who values you for the sole purpose of providing a child. 

—

He sees that your assigned servants have quickly learned to manage your hair and clothing. By the time they deliver you to him, the pins have been removed from the twist on your head, letting the strands hang loose to frame your face, and you’ve been unstitched from that heavy gown to be dressed in night clothes from your home. He provided you with a nightgown, so he wonders if wearing the thin dress was your choice or your parents' idea to make you undeniably enticing, but either way, it’s effective. 

What drapes over your body is nothing like the opaque blacks and straight lines of Harkonnen attire. It's intricate both in color and design; flowing fabric that shimmers when you make the slightest movements and, at the moment, does little to hide your shape and curves. 

As you stand in front of him, patiently awaiting instructions, he can only stare at what’s on display. Pebbled nipples, a plane of smooth skin down to your navel, your slit and the folds between your legs—he wants it all. All of you. Now. Here. Wherever he can have you. 

Rising from the chair where he’d been waiting, he dissolves the space between you. His arm snakes around your waist. His hand slides across your cheek to the back of your head. Lips slam into yours, chests meeting despite that sliver of fabric, and he tastes that taste again, instinctually feeling a need to lift his chin, bare his neck, and let you tighten that collar.

It takes you a few seconds but when your lips start to move, he kisses you harder, pulls you closer, weaves his fingers through your hair and lightly tugs. He guides you backward toward the bed, skin warming at the image of sliding the nightgown down your body. That warmth fans into pure fire and he can’t stop kissing you, can’t stop taking from you, collecting what little you’re willing to give him. Two of his fingers tuck themselves under one strap of the nightgown and begin to slip it down your shoulder. 

But then he stops. 

He stops because your lips freeze.

He stops because you're starting to shake under his fingertips.

He pulls back to look at you and it’s undeniable, so terribly undeniable, and he feels a bit ill. “You don’t want this,” he states. 

You don’t answer; you just stare up at him with those doe eyes that he can now see are full of fear, and his heart squeezes. His gut tightens. He suddenly has the urge to throw things, break things, watch things shatter to pieces because you don’t want him. His own wife doesn’t want his touch and he does not like this—not at all—but you’re scared, and he doesn’t like that even more. 

Sighing, he resets the strap on your shoulder, drops his hands from your body, and steps away. 

“I'll leave you alone,” he says. But as he passes by you, you grab onto his wrist. 

“We have to,” you rush out. “They'll know if we don't.”

He shakes his head. “They won't know anything that happens between us unless I allow it,” he tells you.

“B–But they expect an heir.”

“Yes. And eventually, we will have to produce one. That does not mean we have to share a bed tonight if that is not what you want, and it's clear that is not what you want,” he says a little too harshly. He isn’t trying to be snippy, none of this is your fault, but it hurts, and not in the way he enjoys.

You suck in a sharp breath as if preparing to argue, but then something shifts in your eyes. Instead, you say, “Where will you go?”

“The adjoining room,” he answers, nudging his head to the door on the opposite wall: the room for the concubines that he will never take. You turn to get a look.

“Oh,” you swallow. “O-Ok.” 

He grants himself a few more moments to study you, to soak in your soft and delicate features and the swollen lips he cannot have before he walks away, leaving you behind for the bed he had no intention of ever sleeping in. 

When he reaches the door, he glances over his shoulder to get one last look. You’re facing away from him, sitting on the mattress with your head low, your back arched forward and arms wrapped around your middle. You look small like that, slowly huddling into a ball, and he’d do anything to make it stop. Because you are his. His wife. His na-Baroness. He’s well aware he’ll fall for you in no time—it’s already begun—and he wants you to be happy with him. 

But you're not. And that already threatens the predictability of your future together. These foreign feelings he has for you are not guaranteed to be requited; something he isn't sure how to accept, and yet he may not have a choice. He cannot force your affection. He cannot demand you grow to love him. All he can do is try and hope that one day, he will win you over.

So that is what he does.

---

@avidreader73 @alwaysadreamingoptimist @lost-in-fiction-like-ur-mom @workof-a-rr-t

#feyd rautha x reader #feyd rautha x you #feyd rautha #dune part 2 #austin butler #dune 2 #dune #feyd rautha harkonnen

[bbyseok]

at first sight? — GOJO SATORU

pairing: gojo satoru x gn!reader

word count: 10k (idek i was possessed)

banner by @/bbyseok , dividers by @/bunnysrph !!

a/n: um hi. its finally here ! thanks to all who liked the teaser, this is my first jjk/gojo fic ever but i really think everyone needs some comfort after jjk chap 261.. and fuck u gege !!

content: soulmate au, gender neutral reader, minimal use of they/them pronouns for reader but gender is not specified, sorcerer reader, nicknames ‘sweetheart’, ‘pretty’, ‘baby’, fluff, mild angst with a happy ending, slowburn??, several pov switches, suggestive/implied nsfw at the end but nothing explicit, brief swearing/explicit language, brief violence/injuries, alcohol consumption, reader gets mildly drunk but nothing else, implied satosugu as past soulmates: can be interpreted as either romantic or platonic, fic takes place after jjk 0 but before the show starts

analysis: this is a world filled not only with curses, but soulmates—in which you know someone is your soulmate when you first make eye contact with them. but for your case, things can get a bit complicated when someone is wearing a blindfold.

here, in this universe, you can tell that someone is your soulmate by simply looking at them. so with that, the saying of “love at first sight” is actually pretty accurate here. you see them for the very first time and barely know the person and yet, somehow, they’re the one you’re destined to be with.

with that, you’d think it’d be pretty common for two random people to run into each other while crossing the street or something and bam! suddenly you’ve found the supposed love of your life!

and you? well, for you, that hasn’t happened yet.

to be fair, it’s not like you’re actively trying to look for your soulmate. handling curses as a jujutsu sorcerer is difficult enough. (maybe you’ll run into them one day after saving them from a curse or something. how romantic!)

it’s better to leave it up to fate. it’s fate who decided your pairing anyway, right?

your transfer to jujutsu tech had been fairly smooth. after being stationed in kyoto for a while, tokyo was a nice change of pace.

coincidentally, you had been out of the country during the incident known as the night parade of a hundred demons. a scary event that proved the threat of curse users to be formidable.

because of that, your decision to transfer to tokyo seemed like the right thing to do. and so far, it’s been decent.

it’s a nice change of scenery. the students are aspiring; while maki and megumi aren’t the friendliest, they’re warming up to you. toge and panda are gradually improving.

nanami’s pessimistic outlook on jujutsu society and shoko’s overall unenthusiastic demeanor are certainly interesting for the most part, but your coworkers are pleasant to be around.

well. except for one.

gojo satoru knows that you are his soulmate. he has indeed known this fact right from the very start, ever since your first meeting.

even with his blindfold on, he could see your own eyes before him. his six eyes can see everything. the thing is.. he didn’t know he could have another soulmate.

his situation with geto suguru is something he doesn’t talk about with anyone. maybe shoko at times, but even then, it’s rare. it’s not that he doesn’t want to, but it’s pretty hard to talk about.

after suguru defected, gojo could still obviously feel their bond. even though they were no longer together as the strongest duo, did it really matter when their souls were still connected to one another? it was a factor that played in avoiding (and perhaps meeting up with) each other as the years went by.

satoru felt their bond die that day after the events with okkotsu and rika. and it had frightened him. that lingering presence of the bond was no longer there.

so imagine his surprise when he sees you.

a new sorcerer in kyoto, now transferred to tokyo. normally, gojo doesn’t seek out the new recruits, but yaga had dragged him over regardless. besides, he might as well get to know his possible assistant teacher that would be helping him out with the new first years.

“i guess i can check out some new faces,” he relented with a sigh, adjusting his blindfold and looking to the side as yaga’s steps slowed as they approached you.

gojo rolled his eyes–not that you’d see it anyway–as yaga introduced you with your name and your sorcerer grade. he stopped to stand next to the principal.

you extended your hand to offer a handshake, and gojo finally turned his head.

that feeling as his gaze fell upon yours beneath the blindfold was familiar—frighteningly so—and unfamiliar at the same time. as if he could breathe for the first time in ages. your eyes are unaware, but they’re so revealing to him.

satoru stuttered in his movements, reluctantly taking your hand. the skin that touched yours felt like it was on fire. he briefly held on to see if you felt it too.

but you simply smiled up at him.

“it’s nice to meet you, gojo,” you said, blissfully unaware of the revelation currently dawning on the man before you and the turmoil it brought as he abruptly retracted his arm back.

gojo stiffened. he merely offered a curt nod before turning on heel and walking away briskly. he could faintly hear yaga protest about his sudden departure before apologizing to you hastily. satoru shook his head.

how was this be possible? how could the universe give him two soulmates? he didn’t even know that was a thing that could happen. he wondered if there had been a similar occurrence before.

gojo couldn’t help but feel nauseous. was this the world playing some sort of sick, cruel joke on him? or was it perhaps giving him a second chance?

and truthfully, it wasn’t like gojo even wanted another soulmate. not after what he had been through with suguru. he hadn’t given it much thought.

was it really worth it?

what if he couldn’t protect you too?

so satoru had decided on one thing that day: the blindfold stays on. concealing his eyes from the world not only for him, but for your sake too. he was certain in his choice; he would never tell you the truth.

as far as you were concerned, you haven’t met your soulmate yet.

and never will.

your first meeting with gojo wasn’t exactly unpleasant, but it wasn’t something you could describe as good either. you’ve been left with the impression that he’s cocky and indifferent.

and that he doesn’t like you.

it’s been around.. two? three weeks? it’s been a while since your encounter with the white-haired sorcerer, and you’ve only seen a few glimpses of him here and there on campus.

okay, he doesn’t display any outright mean or ill intention towards you. on the very rare times the two of you do interact, he is obviously curt and clipped. seems like he’s deemed you worthy of the only either nods or one word responses.

you’ve yet to actually participate in a lesson or mission with gojo, but you prefer it that way. providing individual training and advice for the upcoming second years has been going great. at this point, you’re sure it’d only be awkward.

besides, the strongest sorcerer alive doesn’t necessarily need assistance in dealing with curses after all. that much is understandable.

you’re currently in the teachers’ lounge room with nanami. even though he isn’t actually a teacher, he pays visits sometimes. he’s good company anyway.

“it’s nice to hear that you’re settling in well,” the blonde says with a nod. he loosens his necktie absentmindedly as he adjusts the newspaper in his lap. “especially with that gojo around. he can be a pain in the ass sometimes.”

you frown at the mention of the sorcerer, crossing your arms. you’re seated across from nanami, watching him idly look through the newspaper.

“oh, well, actually, he isn’t too much trouble. for me, at least,” you reply, brows furrowing, “he barely talks to me.” (in fact, he seems to avoid you like you’re carrying the plague or something.)

nanami looks up, raising a brow. “huh. you should be grateful then.” he then hums, “but maybe that’ll change once there’s actually new first year students to teach. you both are assigned to them after all.”

you lean back in your seat, your shoulders committing to a halfhearted shrug. “maybe. it’s not like i never did anything bad to him though..”

nanami sighs gruffly. “don’t think about it too much.” before he can continue, there’s the sound of footsteps. nanami brings his newspaper back up, muttering, “speak of the devil.”

“nanamiiii!” gojo’s voice sounds from around the corner. it almost startles you how lively he sounds. you realize you’ve never actually heard or seen how he acts without you around.

nanami doesn’t respond, rolling his eyes.

gojo strolls in enthusiastically, blindfold on. “heyy, nanami, we should-” he cuts off when he presumably sees you, falling quiet and stopping short.

you blink, a bit hurt. does he dislike you that much? but you don’t let it show, resorting to greeting him politely like you usually do when you occasionally pass each other.

“good afternoon, gojo,” you muse, offering a little wave.

nanami notices his reaction too, but doesn’t comment on it. he continues to ignore the sorcerer’s presence in fact, eyes still roaming over the newspaper.

gojo clears his throat and resumes his pace. “afternoon,” he responds, focusing his attention back on nanami. he reaches the two of you, giving you no further acknowledgment.

you don’t care if he can see you looking at him, you opt to stare at the black blindfold covering his face. you have a hunch that he can see, or at least feel, you staring at him.

“can i borrow you for a sec, nanami?”

nanami emits an exasperated sigh, but stands nonetheless to follow gojo out of the room for some discussion not meant for your ears apparently, leaving you alone with your thoughts.

do you make gojo uncomfortable? you don’t know what you could’ve possibly done so though. from what you’ve heard from the others, he can be rather eccentric and overbearing.

does he just not like you? perhaps he views you as inferior, too below his level and power to actually converse with you. while it seems a bit of a stretch, you’re sure it’s not out of the possibility also based on what you’ve heard about him from others.

your frown returns. before you can dwell on it any longer, nanami comes back into the room. “well, i certainly see what you mean from what you said about gojo earlier,” he announces.

his words do nothing to falter your frown. “right.” you then shrug once more, “it’s okay. it’s just a bit.. strange.” you then shake your head, trying to be a bit optimistic. “but also like you said earlier, that might change! who knows?”

who knows, indeed.

megumi tucks the cursed tools inside their designated box and closes the lid. he moves on to the next one right as gojo enters the shed, beaming a smile.

“hey, megumi. you almost done wrapping up things here?” satoru asks, undoing his blindfold naturally. there’s a pair of glasses in his hand ready for use.

the teen nods. they had used a few cursed tools during training session today, and the storage did need a bit of tidying up. “almost done.”

satoru makes a noise of approval as he places his glasses on. “great! do you need help setting up your dorm room?” he looks excited at the idea, still grinning.

meanwhile, megumi looks disinterested at his offer. “no thanks. i think it’ll be easy enough. it’s not like i’m decorating it anyway.”

“oh, boo.” but gojo doesn’t insist on it any further. he actually falls strangely quiet, which causes megumi to glance at him curiously.

his teacher looks.. distraught. it’s hard to actually tell, but he seems to be looking at the floor, maybe lost in thought. before megumi can say anything, gojo’s expression changes and he starts talking again.

“you’re, uh, with the new teacher for tomorrow,” gojo then informs. he shoves his hands into his pockets and kicks at the floor absentmindedly. (he’s fidgeting. subtly.) “it’ll just be you two, i think, on a small mission. so they can get used to actually working with students on field. it’ll be good for the both of you.”

megumi nods. he tilts his head afterward. “you can say their name, you know. it won’t kill you,” he says a bit pointedly, “and they’re not technically new anymore. it has been a few weeks now since they’ve joined the school.”

“right, right.” megumi’s face scrunches up as gojo’s hand comes down to ruffle his hair gently. (a habit that has not died since his younger days.) “whatever you say, megumi.”

despite your minimal interactions and his rather closed off demeanor, megumi is actually one of your favorite students. (and yeah, maybe you shouldn’t have favorites, but oh well.)

your mission with megumi, or rather, the mission you’ve been assigned to supervise the student on, is rather simple.

there’s been reports of a low grade curse roaming the premises of a supermarket neighboring a nearby cemetery, so megumi is to obviously exorcise it under your watch. the area has been closed off with a small veil. megumi had decided to check the parking lot first for any lingering traces, so here you are.

“i think we’re good here,” the teenager confirms as his demon dogs return to his feet, seemingly in the clear. you nod and let him lead the way towards the inside of the store.

as the two of you begin to walk down each aisle with one of the demon dogs trailing behind, megumi says your name in an inquisitive tone. “what do you think of gojo-sensei?”

the sudden question has you blinking in surprise. your eyes scan megumi as you both continue to trek down the aisle. “what makes you ask?”

“no reason.” he doesn’t meet your gaze.

you bite down on your lip in contemplation. you’re not sure what brings this question to mind for him, but you’re willing to indulge him for now. “well.. i think he’s.. alright.” you pause. “as a sorcerer, i admire his strength. though, i think a lot of people think that obviously.”

“and as a person?” megumi presses, turning to investigate the next aisle. he still doesn’t glance over to you, still preoccupied with searching for the curse.

(hell, for a teenager, he sure is perceptive.)

you choose your words carefully, thinking it over with a brief pause.

“i’ll admit, i don’t think i know him well enough to be sure. as a person, i think he’s.. self-centered and rude. sometimes, i see him act very carefree in a way. he’s.. obscure, i guess.” you clear your throat and reiterate, “but again, i don’t really... know him.”

you can see megumi go over your words silently. the quiet continues. the conversation seems to be dying, but it doesn’t matter when monstrous gurgling sounds up ahead.

a curse appears in front of you, the shelving of the aisles toppling over as it gargles some unintelligible roar. megumi doesn’t hesitate, using his technique to summon his demon dogs once more to swiftly engage in combat.

the fight is easily handled in three minutes top. (they weren’t kidding when they said it’d be easy.)

after the commotion has settled, you allow megumi to do one more check up around the store just in case. just as you are prepared to exit and bring down the veil, you decide it’s your turn to ask him now.

“and what about you, megumi?” you inquire lightly, giving one of the demon dogs a few head pats for their good work. “what exactly do you think of gojo?”

megumi hums.

“i agree with most of what you said actually,” he answers honestly, causing you to chuckle in amusement. the teenager tilts his head and finally looks at you. “but i also think he’s kind when he wants to be.”

his frontward honesty surprises you once more. this kid sure is something. you believe his words; he has no reason to lie to you, especially about gojo of all things. still, you poke at him teasingly, “really now?”

you don’t really expect him to answer, but then megumi says in a mumble so quiet that you nearly miss it.

“well, he did sort of raise me after all.”

“i just don’t think he likes me, shoko,” you puff out a sigh, watching as she puffs out smoke. “i’ve seen the way he is around other people, and he’s not like that with me.”

she’s on break right now, so you thought you could talk to her about a certain blindfolded sorcerer who’s been plaguing your thoughts.

it’s interesting to hear about the different sides of gojo satoru from your peers. from nanami, you’ve learned that he’s pretentious and troublesome. from megumi, that he can be caring in his own way. and shoko?

“he’s crazy.” the doctor waves her cigarette at you with a shrug of her shoulders. “but it beats me on why he doesn’t particularly like you.”

you groan, slouching in one of the chairs set up in the infirmary. “maybe i should’ve stayed in kyoto,” you mumble. it’s more of a joke than anything; your.. weird terms with gojo isn’t enough to actually deter you.

but shoko puts the cigarette back to her lips and tilts her head. “want me to ask him about it?”

you straighten your posture abruptly and look at her. “what? you don’t have to. he might think i asked you to or something.”

she shrugs again. “your call.”

your brows furrow. “maybe we just got off on the wrong foot somehow. even though all i did was shake his hand.” you snort. “maybe i can get him something to break the ice. what does he like?”

shoko doesn’t even hesitate. “sweets. he likes his sweets.”

oh. oh, okay! you blink and nod. who would’ve thought? the strongest sorcerer in the world likes sweets. “i can handle sweets.”

you, in fact, cannot handle sweets.

why are there so many? you’re at a local bakery staring at the rows and rows of pastries they have on display, looking as if you’re trying the decipher the world’s hardest math problem.

shoko never specified what kind of sweets he liked during your conversation with her a couple days ago. cake? ice cream? cookies? you might as well buy the whole damn store at this point with your luck. the last thing you want is to buy him something he won’t actually eat.

“oh, fuck it,” you mutter and finally decide on a small piece of cake. it happens to be your favorite kind of cake, but oh well. if he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like it! it’s the thought that matters anyway, right?

as you exit the shop with your newly acquired dessert, you try to devise a way to give it to him. do you just.. hand it to him? or maybe it’ll be better to leave it in his office. or have shoko give it to him!

ughh, who knew how hard it’d be to give a man a cake? okay, okay. you’ll simply give it to him in person since he’ll know it’s directly from you. problem solved.

well, actually, problem is not solved. how are you supposed to give the cake to gojo in person when you have absolutely no clue where he is right now? after returning to the school, he’s no where to be found, so you eventually turn to yaga for help.

“he’s on a mission where??”

you stare at yaga with wide eyes as he names some city so far away you’re pretty sure you wouldn’t be able to find an affordable ride to get you there in a reasonable amount of time.

“oh, alright,” you say, feeling a little disappointed. the cake suddenly feels a little too big and heavy in your hands.

the principal’s gaze flickers down to your little intended treat for his former student. “these kinds of missions are no trouble for satoru. i’m sure he’ll be back soon, so you can leave that in his office.”

you brighten up at that and nod. “thank you, yaga.” you then dismiss yourself with a polite bow after he informs you where gojo’s office is exactly, and you start to make your way there.

it’s only a few minutes until you get there. you open the door and catch sight of a desk. it looks rather plain, which is understandable since it doesn’t seem like he uses this space often. (though, there is a chair that looks more expensive than your entire rent.)

either way, you walk inside and set the container down on the desk with a small sigh. hopefully the gesture is appreciated! if he really does have a sweet tooth like shoko says, you’re not sure why he’d turn it down. again, you can only hope.

you sigh again and turn to leave when the sound of the door creaking open sounds again. you freeze in place when it swings out fully, revealing the very man you were thinking about.

(yaga was not kidding when he said that gojo finishes his missions pretty fast.)

gojo perks up at the sight of you in his office, and even with his blindfold on, you can tell he’s got a surprised look on his face. “can i help you.. or do you have a reason on why you’re snooping around in my office?” he inquires, walking in.

while not evidently hostile, his appearance and words suddenly have you anxious. “oh, well, i-’’ you want to mentally smack yourself for fumbling over your words. “i’m sorry for intruding. i, uh, just wanted to leave you a little something.”

it’s only then does gojo look past you and makes a small noise. you can’t really decipher it, but you watch as he walks by you to open the small packaging to see the slice of cake meant for him.

and when he makes a small noise again, you can tell it’s one of delight. “you got me.. cake?” he asks, looking to you again questioningly.

“i did,” you clarify with a small nod, summoning a small smile and rubbing the back of your neck a bit sheepishly, “i didn’t know what kind of sweet you would like, so i just ended up choosing my favorite cake. um, i really hope you don’t mind the flavor, but if you don’t you really don’t have to eat it so-”

“kikufuku.”

you stare at him, confused. “what?”

“kikufuku,” satoru reiterates, and it’s his turn to smile. (it nearly catches you off guard because although very small, it’s pretty.) “s’my favorite. or.. one of my favorite sweets. crepes are good too.”

his newfound friendliness has you smiling a bit more evidently, pleased that this interaction is your most pleasant one with him so far in the weeks you’ve been here. “oh, okay,” you chuckle, “noted.”

gojo opens the container and unwraps the plastic fork that had came with it. he takes a bite of the cake and hums in approval. “can see why it’s your favorite. it’s not bad.”

your face lightens up at that. “oh, i’m glad.”

he hums, popping another slice of cake into his mouth. “any particular reason on why you’ve decided to give me cake, if i may ask?”

you falter once more, now nervous in telling that you’re hoping to.. resolve this one-sided tension with you. ultimately, you decide to be straightforward, inhaling deeply and looking at him. (well, his blindfold.)

“well, i’m not an idiot, gojo. you haven’t exactly been.. friendly to me. i’m not trying to win you over or anything, but if we’re going to work together with the first year students, consider this a gift for a truce. or um, a peace offering so we can act somewhat decent with each other.”

the white-haired sorcerer falls silent at your confrontation. you’re half expecting him to brush you off and walk out of the room entirely. especially since he seems to have stiffen up (similarly to the way when you first met, you had noticed).

he seems to contemplate for a bit. you don’t know where he’s looking at; the floor, the cake in his hands, you? it’s suddenly nerve-wracking.

“you’re right,” he finally speaks up, “i.. i’m sorry for my previous behavior towards you. can we start over?” he places the cake aside and walks back over to you to hold out his hand.

“gojo satoru.”

your eyes flicker to his blindfold to his hand, then back to where his eyes are hidden underneath. the rumored powerful and breaktaking six eyes concealed from your ever so curious sight.

against your better judgment, you repeat your name and take his hand.

“it’s nice to meet you, gojo.”

your new relationship with gojo is steadily becoming better. he’s no longer curt with you, and actually engages in conversations even with no other people around.

though, you can’t help but feel like he’d avoiding looking at you for some reason. which is pretty far off since you can’t technically see where he’s looking, but it’s a hunch you have nonetheless.

but hey, it’s progress, progress that you’re somewhat happy about.

like now, as satoru leans over your shoulder to peer at the clipboard in your hands. you’ve just finished wrapping up a lesson with the soon-to-be second years out on the field.

“ooh, what’s on the agenda for tomorrow, teach?” he pries.

“assistant teach,” you remind him teasingly, going over the contents of the clipboard. “more sparring. oh, and the registration for that new first year.”

“the one from the countryside?” gojo hums.

you nod. “yep. a.. kugasaki nobara. we won’t actually get to meet her, but arrangements for her arrival are getting finalized.”

“oh, boo. s’just more paperwork,” the sorcerer beside you whines, kicking at the grass.

“at least megumi isn’t the only one now,” you point out and finally turn to him.

just as you expected, satoru glances away to look at panda and toge finishing up. you squint at him narrowly but don’t comment on it.

“that’s true. not like that kid cares anyway, but it’ll be good for him,” gojo agrees airily, shoving his hands into his pockets.

you eye him. “hey, gojo?”

“yeah?” his head remains turned to the students. (further proving your point! you feel like you’re collecting evidence here; the gojo satoru cannot look at you in the eye!)

you hesitate. “wanna grab some kikufuku?”

he perks up at that. (like a puppy, really. it almost makes you laugh.) “mm, whatever happened to not trying to win me over with sweets?” he teases.

you laugh at that then, shaking your head in soft denial. “no- that’s not what i-”

“well, you did said kikufuku.." satoru interrupts you with a dramatic sigh and heave of his shoulders, “so how could i ever possibly resist?”

satoru doesn’t dare to look down at you.

“care to join me?”

but you smile up at him cheekily, and he hates the way the sunlight is hitting your features just right. it looks like the color of your eyes is glistening.

you’re just.. lying down on the grass of one of the training fields, admiring the drifting formations of white clouds on the blue canvas that is the sky.

satoru keeps telling himself that shouldn’t be doing this. his first mistake was accepting your cake. allowing himself to get closer to you. but when you look at him like that, he feels like he can do anything. which is odd, becaues really, he can do anything. it goes without saying as his status as the strongest.

but with you, it’s starting to feel a bit different.

when he doesn’t give you an immediate answer, you tilt your head and continue to blink up at him. “you can see the sky even with your blindfold on, right?”

he snorts. “yeah, i can.”

you pat the space on the grass next to you welcomingly, a beckoning that he just can’t resist again. “well, come on and join me,” you persist.

he hesitates, shifting his weight on his legs for a moment. against his better judgement, he joins you. it’s surprisingly comfortable, he finds, as he kicks out his legs and sighs.

it’s a comfortable silence that it’s almost startling. how easy it is just to be around you. (which is the exact reason why he had been avoiding you in the start, in fear of slipping up around you. he still might.)

“you get headaches, right? if you don’t cover your eyes.”

he chuckles at your question. “yeah.” it’s a half truth, half lie. he does get headaches, but for another reason now. you can’t get out of his head. (he’s got a suspicious feeling it’s because the soulmate bond is incomplete. but again, that’s just a theory of his.)

“‘m’sorry. that sucks.” you pout subconscously, still looking up at the sky to admire it.

he scoffs fondly, clapsing his hands over his stomach. “it’s no biggie. you think headaches can take down gojo satoru?”

“hey now, tough guy. they can take down me sometimes.”

(he’d fight off headaches from you if he could.) his heart is thudding against his ribcage, warning him. but he doesn’t heed the warning, and continues to lay down with you on the grass.

it’s a nice feeling. he doesn’t feel like the greatest sorcerer in the world with his colleague. it feels like he’s just satoru, pointing out the different shapes and animals you can spot in the sky with his soulmate.

“hey, that one looks like you!”

“hah?!”

“i’m guessing you and gojo-sensei are getting along now,” megumi bluntly comments.

it catches you off guard slightly, and you can’t help but laugh. (of course he had noticed how the both of you interacted from the beginning.) “oh, uh, yeah.”

and as you watch satoru go down the steps of the stairs to head over to you both whilst waving an arm with much more enthusiam than needed, you can’t help but smile.

“yeah, we are.”

this is a mistake. he shouldn’t be doing this.

but satoru can’t help but be so selfish, selfish in indulging in your looks, in your scarce touches. when you had confronted him with your peace offering as you had so called it, he had given in.

and now he’s spending more time with you. be it after lessons with the students, on random days where you have nothing to do, during weekends when there’s no authorities to bother him—he can’t help it.

was it the bond wanting to be complete? you were still unaware of his true identity, of what he could possibly mean to you, so why does he feel like he needs to be so close? he gets antsy at times when you’re not in his sight. it’s starting to affect him.

the soulmate bond, or lack of it—that has to be the only explanation for it. because he knows that you’re his soulmate, he’s subconsciously drawn to you and your presence. (it’s definitely not because he likes the way you smile, or laugh, or-)

fuck.

after a relatively tough mission, you’re obviously sent to see shoko. you’re not fatally harmed, maybe a scratch here and there. and okay, maybe a gash on your shoulder..

it had been enough to sort of knock you off your feet, but you’re fine. totally. exorcising a semi grade two curse at 1 a.m. in the morning was no biggie at this point.

once she’s finished tending to your wound, she dusts off her hands and places them on her hips. “you’re all set.”

you smile gratefully. “thanks, sho. can always count you to patch me up.”

she snorts. “well, it is my job.”

gojo suddenly appears right next to the table and you yelp, startled by his teleportation. shoko, on the other hand, looks unfazed, as if she’s used to this.

“gojo!” you blink, your voice taking a scolding tone soon after, “geez, you scared me! what’re you still doing awake??”

the blindfolded man falters, looking apologetic. “sorry. heard you got back from your mission.” he sounds worried, but before he can voice his concern, shoko rolls her eyes.

“they’ll be fine,” she says.

gojo’s shoulders finally drop down and he plays off his previous display of concern with a laugh. “ahaha, yeahhh, i knew that,” he scoffs with a wave of his hand, “i can’t bless you two with my presence?”

shoko gives him a displeased look before she turns around to tidy up her tools. you chuckle at her annoyance. “thanks for checking up on me, satoru,” you say sincerely. your eyes go over his appearance; he’s dressed more casually: a pair of dark slacks and shirt that expose his collarbones. not that you’re.. particularly looking.

but his shoulders seem tense again at your words and he hums quietly. (huh, strange. at least he’s not refusing to look at you anymore, you think.)

“well, i say this calls for a little celebration,” satoru suddenly purrs in delight, waving his hands in the air.

“celebration? for me getting kinda beat up?” you blow a raspberry at him, only for him to blow one at you right back. even though you had done it first, you can’t help but giggle at his childish antics.

he grins at that, then shakes his head. “heyy, i heard you beat up a semi grade two curse!” he says, “i think that does call for a celebration, does it not?”

you stare at him, unsure on whether he’s joking or not. wait, how did he even know that? well, maybe he had gone through the mission reports and assignments. still, you’re surprised that he knows. “you can wipe those out in less than a minute, gojo,” you point out with a raised brow, “don’t try and humor me.”

his grin lessens. “well, yeah, s’kinda easy for me, but i think that goes without saying. you’re telling me don’t wanna celebrate an accomplishment of yours?”

you look to shoko who is almost finished with cleaning up. she just shrugs. you look back to satoru and shrug yourself whilst rolling your eyes. “alright, we can celebrate.”

gojo fist bumps the air. and here you are again, giggling at him.

eventually, when he leads you out of the infirmary and to the teachers’ lounge. he digs through one of the fridges and hands you a bottle of what seems to be alcohol.

“i didn’t even know this was allowed here,” you mumble, settling down on what of the high chairs near the counter. you wiggle in your seat to get comfortable as gojo takes the one next to you.

you offer it to him but he shakes his head, nose scrunching up a little. “i don’t drink.”

“wasn’t this your idea?” you blink. “suit yourself, more for me.” you shrug and open the bottle to pour yourself a glass. and another. and another. and then another.

(you don’t know what particularly drives you to keep drinking as you talk with him, but perhaps it’s the way you know that satoru’s eyes are lingering just underneath the blindfold. you can practically feel his stare.)

and gojo watches you gradually drink yourself to being mildly drunk.

“okay, no more for you,” he laughs as he takes the bottle away from you and holding it above your head when you try to reach for it.

“awh, man.” you pout and rest your head on your arms on the table, looking at him the best you can. “you meanie. you got me drunk on purpose. give it back.”

he snickers, amused and endeared by your drunk antics as he pushes the bottle aside. “sorry. you’ll thank me later, pretty.”

pretty. he’s never called you that before. you wanna hear him say it again. (amongst some other things.)

“pretty.. you’re pretty. i bet your eyes are pretty too,” you say into your sleeve, your other hand reaching out to his blindfold, “everyone else says they’re v’ry pretty.”

he leans back to avoid your hand, heart pounding in his chest a little too loud for his liking. he wonders if you can hear it. “sure. i guess they are,” he says softly with a small chuckle.

“i wonder who my soulmate is,” you then mumble out. maybe it’s the alcohol, maybe it’s your incoherent slurring, but you sound.. sad.

before he can dwell on it, you’re slurring out another question that has come to your head.

“d’you have a soulmate?”

satoru’s eyes widen under the blindfold. he knows that you’re drunk. that you’re just saying things. but your hazy eyes stare up at him with a glint that makes his heart lurch.

and you won’t remember a thing in the morning, right?

before he can answer, you’re out like a light.

you wake up in the morning with a splitting headache.

with a groan, you sit up in what seems to be a bed that seems way to be to be your own, legs kicking the sheets that had been draped over you in alarm.

you have no idea where you are, but there’s a glass of water along with some painkillers on the nightstand beside you, which you down gratefully. there’s also the smell of food coming from outside the room.

you can piece two and two together that you’re probably in the home of someone you know.. your brain racks for information of what had happened last night but it’s only causing it to ache even more.

gojo.

you shake your head and make your way to what seems to be the bathroom to tidy yourself up. you notice that your’re still clad in your clothes of last night, so gojo had done the courtesy of tucking you in.

after you’re done, you take a deep breath and head outside.

you navigate your way down the hallway and follow the smell of food. as you turn the corner, you catch the sight of satoru in the kitchen. not that you doubted that the greatest sorcerer could cook, but for some reason, he looks so domestic.

he’s simply wearing sweats and a loose fitting shirt, your back turned to you as he tends to the stove, but the mere sight of it has your heart leaping into your throat. you have a feeling that it’s a sight meant for you, for you to see.

you don’t no how long you stand there, but suddenly a laugh rings through the kitchen from satoru teasingly. “take a picture, sweetheart, it’ll last longer.”

you yelp, embarrassed. (sweetheart? you try not to think about it, but you hate the way it makes your heart leap again. he’s just.. messing with you.) “erm.. sorry. good morning, gojo.” you approach the kitchen and take a seat at the counter.

when he finally turns to you, he’s not wearing his usual black blindfold, but instead what seems to be white bandages. you haven’t seen it on him before, but you don’t comment on it though.

he says good morning back before serving you some food, which you thank him for gratefully. “thank you for the painkillers too. i didn’t do anything embarrassing last night, did i?” you inquire, half jokingly.

you try to remember what had happened last night, but your memories are still a bit hazy. all you can recall is talking with him about things and staring at him. (you’re not going to tell him that though.)

“nah,” he waves off, “just told me your darkest secrets, s'all.”

you straighten up. “what?”

“kidding, kidding!” he snickers.

you groan and drag your plate to you. “i didn’t know you could cook.”

satoru looks mildly offended, emitting a dramatic gasp as he waves the spatula at you in a petulant manner. “hey now, i’m no expert. but i can at least make some sort of breakfast.”

(he totally did not look up a tutorial on how to cook for you. definitely not. but he’s a natural at everything, so at least his naturally gifted skill is in his favor this time.)

“thank you, gojo.” a smile tugs at the edges of your mouth.

“satoru.”

“what?”

“c’mon, you’re literally eating breakfast in my kitchen,” he laughs, sliding a mug of coffee (probably with extra cream and sugar because it’s gojo) towards you across the counter. “satoru’s fine.”

you test the name on your tongue, paying little attention to the way it makes the man before you stiffen up as you grab the coffee. “satoru.. thanks, satoru.” you think you can get used to saying that.

(he does too.)

satoru turns away back to the stove. “you’re welcome.”

“hey satoru, what did you say what you wanted again? i’m thinking bubble tea but i dunno..”

he likes the way his name sounds from you.

“uh, satoru? satoru? helloo, earth to gojo satoru? satoru!”

oh.

fuck, he hadn’t realized he had spaced out. gojo lifts his head in a sudden motion, making a surprised noise. he smiles sheepishly. “what’s up?”

“you feeling alright, satoru?” you tilt your head.

keep saying his name.

“awhh, i’m feeling more than alright, sweetheart.” he shoots you a grin, liking the way your eyes reflect the café lights, giving it a warm hue. “i’ll have whatever you’re having.”

“you seem to be in a good mood lately,” megumi points out. ijichi, in the front see, looks at the two of them through the rear view in silent agreement.

(a lot of people have noticed actually.)

gojo pauses, halfway through unwrapping the plastic of a popsicle. it’s the same one he used to consume during his youth, but his taste really hasn’t changed after all this time. “oh?”

the teenager eyes him narrowly. “yeah.”

gojo merely hums and pops the icy treat into his mouth.

“heh, i guess i am.”

you can hear gojo and shoko’s voices coming from the infirmary, causing you to smile absentmindedly. you didn’t think you’d be enjoying their company this much in the recent months—especially satoru’s.

(strangely, it feels so natural to be around him, you can’t help but wonder if he feels the same. you try to write it off as spending so much time together for a while now, but you can’t lie when you say he doesn’t make the stomach churn with butterflies.)

you turn the corner and announce your presence to the two with a smile and wave. you catch sight of them when they glance over to you, noticing something different.

shoko is wearing her usual white coat with a cigarette in hand, but she’s got her hair tied up in a rare bun to keep any strands from her face.

but that’s not what’s different as your gaze strays to the man next to her, the familiar frame of gojo catching you a bit off guard.

he’s wearing his glasses.

you’ve never seen him wear anything but his blindfold.

how does he look even more breathtaking than without it? you can’t see his eyes still, no—it’s a deep, deep shade of blue that still blocks his gaze from anyone else. but it’s a more casual look, seeing as his hair isn’t being help up and a few strands fall down and you can see his sharp facial features a bit more and-

and then he’s gone.

you audibly make a sound of confusion and hurt, because one moment he’s there and the next he’s no where to be seen. he had vanished without a single world.

he’s fucking avoiding you again; the realization of it makes your throat close up. after all you had been through with satoru.

“what the fuck was that?”

shoko stares at the space gojo had just been standing, just as lost as you.

there’s a distance between the two of you again. it’s painstakingly familiar to when you had first met gojo and he had kept himself strictly professional with you.

and you don’t know why.

it’s back to the cold shoulder from him; you’re seeing him less and less around campus, and those times where you did hang out off duty are practically a thing of the past now.

satoru is going to be the death of you one day, you’re sure of it.

and you and satoru aren’t even.. a thing.

then again, you’re not even sure what you are. you’re friends, yes, that’s much more than clear, but why does it feel so much more intimate than that despite the fact that the two of you have never even done anything?

however.. a part of you knows that you want more. more of those days lying in the grass with him, more of those mornings eating breakfast with him in his home, more of those afternoon café runs, more of everything with satoru.

is that why does it hurts so much now that he’s pushed you away again?

satoru is praying that you’re not in there with shoko as he approaches the infirmary a week later. she had called him over, and though he could’ve easily refused, he found himself obliging anyway.

“hey, what was that the other day?”

shoko is blunt and straight to the point once he arrived, striking him with a petulant and expectant gaze with her tired eyes.

gojo blinks innocently, tilting his head at shoko. “what was what?”

shoko then rolls her eyes. “you know what i’m talking about. what was that. you just- walked out like they we’re going to kill you or something.”

that’s the thing. you just might.

the white-haired man frowns and continues to feign innocence. he’s starting to wonder why he bothered coming here. “i have no idea what you’re talking about.”

his avoidance causes shoko to frown as well and she crosses her arms. “you’re doing the same thing that you did with them when they first joined here.”

when he doesn’t say anything, she continues, “avoiding them, pushing them away. i thought you didn’t have any problems with them. at this point, make up your mind because you’re just toying with their feelings and it’s not going to-”

“we’re soulmates,” satoru blurts out.

shoko is cut off, staring at him all wide-eyed for once. “you’re kidding.”

satoru falters. “i’m not. s’why i always wear the blindfold. and that’s why i.. i ran last night. just my glasses was too risky.”

what if he had angled his head the wrong way, what if you saw his eyes, what if you finally realized that you were fated to be together at the whims of the universe? he couldn’t do that to you.

“how long have you-”

“since we first met. i.. i could see it because of six eyes,” he explains, running a hand through his hair. “i don’t know why. i didn’t think i could have another one after-”

the two fall quiet at the mention of suguru, a heavy feeling hanging in the air between them.

“what are you going to do?” shoko asks quietly.

satoru sounds wrecked. “..i don’t know.”

“well.” shoko smushes her cigarette against the surface of the metal table. “you better do something before it’s too late.”

unfortunately, the higher ups have also noticed.

(the push and pull that has been going on between the pride of the gojo clan and a random transferred sorcerer from kyoto. nothing goes unseen by their tight hold on jujutsu society.)

and you are none the wiser when you’re an assigned a mission late so at night, at a secluded edge of tokyo. you would’ve questioned it, but after looking over the details, it seems easy enough since it was a low level curse.

ijichi drops you off near the location and bids you luck. the night is dark, with the shape of the moon only peaking out every now and then due to the clouds to offer minimum light, and then the veil is coming up.

it’s fine though, as you start walking to get this over with. the faster, the better.

what the fuck? the cursed energy here is much stronger than you had anticipated, almost as if it’s suffocating. now uneasy, you continue your search with more caution.

a low growl sounds from somewhere behind you, and you turn on heel to brace yourself in case the curse decides to catch you off guard with an unexpected attack.

your heart drops.

it’s a grade one curse.

something’s not right.

satoru can feel it. he can sense it in the air. something is lingering, a presence that makes even him feel uneasy, and he doesn’t know why. nothing makes him feel uneasy. but it’s a gut feeling, it’s the bond tugging and tugging and-

you.

something’s not right.

and then gojo is teleporting and finding ijichi in record time, giving the poor man a scare. gojo’s voice is on edge and leaves no room for argument as he demands the assistant director where he had driven you minutes prior. the veil still stands, undisturbed.

fuck, fuck, fuck- shoko was right. he should’ve done something before it was too late, because now it might actually be too late as he steps through the veil.

it’s too quiet for his liking, but the lingering silence only lasts for a few heartbeats before he hears you scream.

you’re going to die.

you don’t want to think that, but you’re definitely not going to make it out of this unscathed as you dodge the curse’s scarily accurate attacks, as if it knows where you’re going to move and land.

the curse screeches out something ugly, and you’re too stunned to react in time as one of its malformed limbs swings down with a speed that you can’t comprehend.

your throat cries for help even as the air out of your lungs, but then there’s the sudden brilliant flash of red that blinds your vision.

satoru?

you can’t see and your body aches everywhere while the sounds of the curse fade out. it’s replaced by the sound of someone speaking frantically. it is satoru as he crouches down at you, hands coming to lift you up gently. his infinity is off. “hey, hey it’s me,” he voices, “it’s me, sweetheart.”

satoru, it’s satoru. satoru is here.

you emit a sigh of relief, cloudy vision gradually focusing. you try and focus it on satoru, tracing over his features repeatedly, trying to engrave it into your memory.

“shit. those damn higher ups,” gojo grits his teeth into an angered scowl. the higher ups? were they behind this? you don’t know, but you know that you’ve ever seen him this furious before. “i am going to rip those old geezers apart limb from li-”

“satoru, we need to head back.”

he looks dazed, tufts of snowy hair now hanging a bit loosely over his blindfold compared to when it’s normally pushed upright. he even sounds dazed, the great gojo satoru, when he says, “yeah. yeah, okay.”

he’s holding on to you tight and suddenly everything seems to get blurry for less than a second before you blink. you realize he’s teleported you both not to the school, not to shoko’s infirmary, but to his penthouse.

the interior is at least familiar: white walls, a little messy, a couple of decorations, and—

“my place,” he clarifies, as if he had read your thoughts. he sets you down on his couch, uncaring if you’re staining the color of the cushions. but he doesn’t let go, hands still cradling your form so tight that you don’t know if you’re still shaking or that he is.

“are you okay?” you utter out weakly and scan him for any injuries while clutching at his arms, which is ridiculous because he’s untouchable. but you’re not in the right mind right now, and you have a feeling he isn’t either.

“i should be the one asking you that,” he retorts, and you also have the feeling he’s doing the same thing with you with the help of his six eyes.

“i’m alright,” you try to reassure him with a small shake of your head. it only aids you in wincing, but the pain is the last thing on your mind. especially with him here. “it’s fine.”

“it’s not fine,” he argues, his hold tightening even more on you, if that was even possible. is that a slight tremor in his voice? “you almost died.”

“and why do you care?” it’s not a malicious question from you. it’s more of confusion, of genuine. after all you’ve been through with satoru, you’re not sure where he stands. what he feels.

he seems startled by your question, like he can’t believe you could ask such a thing. “of course i care! why-”

you clench your fists in your lap, eyes tracing over his face repeatedly. “i don’t know what you want anymore from me, satoru! you’re not- you’re not telling me the truth.”

“i didn’t want to hurt you,” he tells you hoarsely. god, you wish you could see what he’s thinking. what’s going on in that head of his.

“you did hurt me.”

gojo trembles. “i know.”

“you seem to know a lot of things.” your voice sounds tired. your hand goes to rest on his chest, where you can faintly feel his heartbeat underneath. (oh, to be the only one who can touch gojo satoru like this.) “what are you hiding from me?”

“i can’t hide anything from you.” he draws a slow intake of breath. he then whispers,

“but how am i supposed to tell you that we’re soulmates?”

your heart skips a beat.

gojo satoru is your soulmate?

astonished, you now stare at him with wide eyes. “why- why didn’t you tell me??” you ask, voice cracking. to think, all this time, your soulmate had been right there, right beside you, right in front of you.

then it all clicks. his off-standish behavior, his reluctant interactions, his avoidance. his blindfold. he didn’t want you to see his eyes.

he’s known all this time somehow—and oh, oh. his six eyes. your lips part in realization as you stare hard, as if you could see his damned eyes beneath the cloth that hides you from the truth.

“i thought that if you knew that we were soulmates, you’d-” satoru shakes his head. “something always happens to the people i love.” he hesitates, “you still have a chance. you can find someone else.”

“what if i don’t want someone else??” you say out softly in protest, gripping the lapels of his uniform.

gojo shakes his head again. despite this, he doesn’t let you go. like he can’t, like he doesn’t want to. “we’re not bonded yet,” he says your name shakily. “please.”

still gripping the collar of his uniform, you tug him closer to you desperately. it’s so clear, so obvious that he wanted this.

“satoru, have you thought about what i wanted?” you breathe out, feeling tears well up in your eyes, “that maybe, there’s a chance that i want to take the risk? that i want to be bonded to you?”

your eyes flicker down to his lips momentarily. “that i want you too?”

satoru’s breath stutters.

“you haven’t seen my eyes.”

you cup satoru’s face in your hands, swiping your thumb under the space where his eye is hidden with a fierce tenderness that makes him listen.

“satoru, i didn’t need to see your eyes to fall in love with you.”

your confession has him stilling.

(all the times he had stiffened up in your presence, he had been falling for you, bit by bit. you know that now.)

his hand comes to cover yours, the one that’s still resting on his cheek, fingers smoothing over your knuckles. and then his hand continues to go up, up, up, and-

he tugs the blindfold up and over his head, revealing his eyes to you at last.

his eyes are gorgeous, a blue that seems to spill into your vision and take over your senses. a blue that you can get lost in, a blue that reminds you of the summer sky, a blue that tethers your soul to his, and you both can feel it.

the bond between you is so electrifying that you nearly forget how to breathe.

and then satoru is surging forward, closer, even closer, until your breath is his and you forget how to breathe for a whole different reason entirely.

he’s kissing you.

he kisses you like you might disappear right before him, his head angling into yours to capture your lips with a force that makes your world spin.

and you return it tenfold, one hand still cradling his face while the other sneaks to dig its fingers into his undercut, and he’s making a noise into your mouth with fervor.

you’re all too aware of his heat against you, the frantic touches he’s now giving into as he draws you closer. the surface of the sofa dissipates into nothingness and then-

suddenly he’s teleporting you both again—or maybe he’s kissing you dizzy. but you realize you’re now in space that’s not overly familiar with you, but you can tell it’s most likely his bedroom based off of the feel of the lush satin sheets underneath you.

less than an hour ago you were fighting for your life, and now you’re fighting for your life on gojo satoru’s bed.

“satoru, s’toru, wait-” you’re gasping for air, for something as he engulfs you with his presence. he’s everywhere all at once, and it feels as if the bond is intensifying everything he’s doing to you.

“nuh uh. think we’ve both waited long enough for this, baby,” he gasps against your lips, like it’s impossible to be separated from you again, “don’t know how much i wanted this, wanted you. drove me crazy.”

his words makes your head all fuzzy. you don’t even know if it’s the bond anymore, or just the way he makes you feel. maybe even both. your lungs feeling like they’re burning, but even then, you manage to get out,

“you have me, ‘toru, you have me.”

“yeah?” when he pulls back, it’s not even a few inches, his nose brushing against yours. his alluring eyes glimmer in the darkness of the room, and you’re almost so mad that you feel like kissing him again because he’s kept them from you for so long.

your hands hook over his neck again. when your fingers run over his undercut again, you can actually feel him shiver, causing you to giggle in delight. “yeah, ‘toru.”

“yeah, pretty,” he sighs out and he’s losing himself in everything that is you once more so willingly. your eyes, your very being, compels him to give you everything, so he does. “y’have me too. all of me.”

his confession rings through your ears before he’s kissing you again, kissing you breathless. it’s a blur on what happens next; feverish touches and passionate symphonies, but one thing’s for sure,

the magnetic glow of his eyes in the dark of that night is something that you’ll never forget.

as your stir amongst the tousled bedsheets, you can feel the warmth of a certain someone creeping over you, like a cozy cat searching for cuddles.

your eyes peer open to meet the blurry sight of the ceiling, along with the sight of messy white hair tickling your chin.

“good morning to you, sweetheart,” a voice says cheekily, followed by cascading kisses down your jawline, prompting you to giggle softly.

you watch sunlight spill over into the bedroom, engulfing the man above you in an angelic glow as he finally pulls back to look down at you.

so maybe you didn’t fall in love at first sight with gojo satoru.

that’s okay.

cause as you stare up into your soulmate’s pretty ceruleans in the morning light, you think you can fall in love with him like this a little more.

BONUS!

“you owe me.”

nanami drags a hand over his face as he digs into his pocket for his wallet. “this is the first and last time i make a bet with you,” he grumbles.

shoko merely smirks. “you have such little faith in gojo.”

“bet or not, can we go back to before they were together?” nanami looks like he’s close to investing in a pair of one of gojo’s glasses that can block any normal person’s vision.

satoru is clinging onto you like a sloth.

“babyyyyy,” your boyfriend whines, resting his chin on your shoulder with his arms wrapped around your torso. you can’t help but giggle, endeared by his clinginess. (he had claimed it was to make up for the way he had acted in the past and for lost time.)

he’s like another part of you now. not that you mind. being his soulmate is everything and more—from the tender touches to the passionate ones, to the talks of everything: to the mundane to the serious. after all, your soul is his, and his soul is yours.

(and then his hands are sneaking off to places they shouldn’t be.)

“‘toru, not here!”

nanami heaves out another sigh as his hand comes to pinch the bridge of his nose. “is it too late to quit being a sorcerer again?”

TAGLIST : @spn-obession , @deepestartisanhumanoidshark , @scarasw1f3 , @kalopsia-flaneur , @90s-belladonna , @peachipeachy , @chrystinaamanda , @kalulakunundrum , @hunnyheavenn , @dekusdante , @dontmindmelove , @cherries-lostgirls , @rv19 , @etherealstarlightqueen

+ a/n: this fic ended up being way no longer than i expected omg.. but thanks to all who asked to be on the taglist !! some didnt work so im sorry about that </3

like this fic? feel free to go ahead and check out my other works here! -> masterlist

#gojo x reader #satoru x reader #satoru gojo x reader #satoru gojo x you #gojo satoru x gn!reader #gojo x gender neutral reader #gojo x gn!reader #gojo x you #satoru x you #gojo satoru x reader fluff #gojo satoru x you fluff #satoru gojo x reader fluff #satoru gojo x you fluff #gojo x reader fluff #gojo x you fluff #satoru x reader fluff #satoru x you fluff #gojo satoru x reader angst #gojo satoru x you angst #satoru gojo x reader angst #satoru gojo x you angst #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen x you #jujutsu kaisen x gender neutral reader #jujutsu kaisen x gn reader #my writing #rain’s writing

[dira333]

The Soulmate Theory - Todoroki Shouto x Reader

I welcome you to my probably last-ever Soulmate fic. As much as I love reading this trope, it's gotten harder and harder to write. I hope you like it. This is for @shoulmate

Trope: You share your Soulmate's pain.

Soulmates used to be a thing. 

A long, long time ago, way before the first ever Quirk was documented, Soulmate bonds were just as common as Quirks are nowadays.

Your grandmother used to be fascinated by it, told you stories about her grandmother who was convinced she shared a soulmate bond even though not one case had been documented in the last hundred years before her.

It’s only natural, you’d say, that you didn’t realize you had one. After all, why would you think that?

-

Pain has always been part of your life.

Your wrists hurt and your legs hurt and your back hurts and your stomach hurts… all the time. The doctors cannot find anything, some even accuse you of pretending for attention. You’d gladly trade all that attention against a pain-free day.

Your Quirk’s Telekinesis and you’re so glad about it, because how else would you be able to move that pen and write that notes when your hands hurt like this?

You’re getting better at it too, threading a needle or picking up the last grain of rice with your thoughts alone. 

-

A dull ache has settled behind your left eye after what has been the most intense pain flare you’ve ever had. All you want to do is rest. 

But your mind is reeling, craving an outlet for all the thoughts inside your head.

Your restless eyes find some fabric in the corner of the room. Soon enough a few needles are working their magic, a creation coming to life before your eyes.

You might not be able to walk around most days, but at least you can still create outfits you’d love to flaunt in.

-

Years later

-

“Can you take over my student?” Kameko asks, “He wants a completely new costume.”

“What year?”

“First year. And his old one wasn’t even destroyed.”

“So? Maybe he found something out about himself.”

She huffs. “Please? I still have to finish Amajiki’s new design and you know how anxious he gets.”

“Yeah, no problem. Can you take another first year off my plate then? His name is Midoriya and he ripped it in half, it seems.”

“Oh yeah, give it to me.”

Someone clears their throat. You look up from your work into a set of heterochromatic eyes, one blue, one grey.

“Yes?” You ask. “How can I help you?”

“I’m here for my new Costume.”

“Are you Midoriya?” You point at the green fabric on your desk, or rather what’s left of the costume.”

“No, I’m Todoroki Shouto.”

“Ah,” Kameko doesn’t even look guilty at being caught. “You’re with her then. Do you need the think tank?” She points at the cubicle where you can go and plan outfits.

Todoroki looks like he isn’t quite sure, so you carefully slide off your chair and shuffle over.

“Come, come,” you wave at him, “It’s never wrong to brainstorm.”

“Are you hurt?” He asks and has the decency not to point at how you clearly favor your left leg. 

“Not more than usual,” you try to joke and though he looks a little confused, he doesn’t ask more questions.

.

Todoroki is a quiet individual. He’s not shy, that you perceive immediately, but he makes sure to check if he’s allowed to speak before he opens his mouth.

He’s also insanely pretty, the red, rough skin over his left eye giving him even more appeal. But he’s also one year younger than you, so you keep those thoughts locked away in the back of your head.

“If you want to change the design, we can do that, no problem.” You remind him when you’ve finally found something he seems almost happy with.

“I don’t want to cause you more work.”

“If you don’t cause me any work I’d have nothing to do,” you joke and he looks at you quietly for a while. You wonder if he’s ruminating over your joke or waiting for you to talk on and sadly, you’re more than likely to ramble in a confusing silence.

You gesture, somehow now talking about the importance of fresh orange juice for the human body, a topic you didn’t even know you could talk about beforehand when your hand connects harshly with the door behind you. Your wrist catches the doorknob and the pain is immediate, sharp and cool, like you’d imagine being stabbed with an icicle would feel like.

Todoroki hisses behind you and you’d compliment him on the empathy if it wouldn’t hurt like that.

When you turn, hand pressed against your chest, he’s cradling his own hand before dropping it. “Musclespasm,” he explains quietly, offering you a hand that is covered in ice. “Do you want me to cool it? It helps.”

-

“I’d like to add some more details to my costume,” Todoroki approaches you with a Bento Box in hand.

You nod, unable to speak for a moment as you focus your Quirk on a particularly tough seam.

“No problem, as I said. What’s it about?”

“Could we use the think tank?”

You turn to check but it’s clearly occupied.

“Sadly not. Is it more complicated then?” You nod at the Bento Box. “Do you think it will keep us occupied during lunch break?”

“No, this is…” Todoroki hesitates for a second before holding it out to you. “It’s just something I wanted to give you. My sister made these.”

 You open it with curious fingers to reveal twelve perfectly shaped cookies.

“That’s lovely, but why me?”

His cheeks turn pink and his lips curl into an adorable pout before he eventually talks.

“I mentioned that I was pleased with the changes and she told me to say thank you.”

“Aww,” you coo. “Your older sister then?”

“Yes,” the pout exaggerates, “I would have said thank you without her intervening.”

“Of course you’d have.” - “But my cookies didn’t turn out good.”

You both speak at the same time, or rather you accidentally interrupted him and he still talked on.

You stare at him now, mouth agape as you process his words.

“You made cookies for me?”

“Yes,” Todoroki nods, “I wanted to say thank you.”

“It’s my job.”

“I still want to say thank you.”

“Next time,” you joke, not quite realizing what you’re saying until it has left your lips and your brain has caught on, “just bring me the Cookies you made. It’s the thought that counts.”

He stares at you with wide eyes for what feels like eternity before a soft pink blush blooms on his cheeks.

You hide your own face in the box of Cookies, hope that he won’t hear the thunderous beating of your heart over the noise of you eating one.

They’re delicious. Of course they are.

-

You don’t know how or when or even why, but clearly, there’s a friendship growing between you and Todoroki Shouto. He’s stopped claiming he’s only dropping in for new additions to his costumes and in turn you’ve tried quite a few of his food creations, each one of them worse than the last.

But he’s cute and honest and real about it and you couldn’t do better if you tried anyway.

Your pain, however, doesn’t stop just because you’ve found work you enjoy or friends to spend your time with.

There are days where you cannot get out of bed. Days where strong painkillers allow you to get to school only for everything to go past you because those painkillers leave you loopy and tired, falling asleep over some costume in the early afternoon hours.

At least you’re not in the Hero Course, you think on the worst days, because you’ve seen the bruises Training leaves on Shouto’s arms and legs.

That’s before you realize that Training is the least of all his problems.

-

Third Year

“How are you?” You ask, because what else do you ask your Crush Slash Good Friend you haven’t seen in months?

Shouto’s got new scars, he’s grown, and he’s fought in a war while you were bedridden from pain, your mother scared out of her depths that you’d die in an attack, unable to move.

But you survived and so did he and if you can believe what you’ve heard on the news, he’s found out some things about his family too.

“Tired,” he admits, dragging a hand through his hair, “I missed you.”

You wonder how hard it was for him to admit that. 

 “Think tank?” You ask, slipping off your chair when he nods.

The last few days have been painless and even though you’re anxious about what’s to come after that, you can’t help but enjoy it.

When the door closes after him, you realize just how small that cubicle really is. 

Or maybe it’s just that Shouto doesn’t step away like he used to do, staying so close to you that you could count every single one of his long lashes if you wanted to.

“Can I hug you?” He asks and you nod, unable to say anything, even less when he pulls you in.

He’s tall and strong, cool on one side and warm on the other and your face nuzzles into his neck like it was meant to be like that anyway.

You don’t speak for a while, just hold each other in the semi-privacy this room provides.

“I want to take care of you,” Shouto whispers at some point. “Can I?”

Somehow it doesn’t surprise anyone that you two end up dating.

-

Your third year is almost painless.

Sure, there are frequent days where you’re sore for no reason whatsoever, but that is nothing against the blinding pain that had tied you to a bed for weeks before. 

Sometimes, Shouto pouts about that. He thinks it’s his job as your boyfriend to look after you and what good is he for if you don’t need looking after?

His friends tell you that he’s less reckless now - as if he’d ever been - making sure to keep himself safe because you need him.

You’ve met his sister, one of his older brothers and his mother, all of them nice, though maybe a bit distanced. 

Emotional vulnerability doesn’t seem to come easy to them.

Shouto, however, likes to talk about his feelings in depth. And he wants to know how you’re feeling too, listening with wide eyes as you explain.

Should it be weird that you’re dating someone younger than you? If so, you’re doing it wrong. 

-

The first(?) hint

“Do we need anything from the store?” You ask, phone crammed between your ear and shoulder as you grab your stuff from the passenger seat.

“I was going to get the groceries,” Shouto huffs on the other side of the call and you can see it, how he pouts at the thought that you’re doing it instead of him.

“I was already on my way. You can do the laundry.”

“I hate doing the laundry,” he groans and you giggle. “I know. I’m going to help you with it, don’t worry.”

“I could cook,” he offers and you giggle again, opening the door to step out. “As much as I love you, Shouto, I don’t love your cooking.”

“Fine,” he says, sounding exactly like a child that didn’t get its way, “But we do face-masks while doing the laundry.”

“Of course. I’ll call you back later, okay? I need both hands for shopping.”

“Sure. I’ll buy you more headphones in the meantime.”

There are a few more teasing remarks, a last “I love you” and then you shove your phone back in your purse and turn to where you think the shopping carts are located.

You don’t see the step in front of you before it’s too late and then you’re tumbling through the air. It happens slowly and then all at once and you’re not really sure what hurt first and what hurts the most. 

For a moment you’re just lying there, face down on the pavement, trying not to puke, collecting your thoughts as if they scattered on your floor just like your open purse.

Your phone starts ringing and that seems the most manageable task so you pick it up from right in front of you and press it against your ear.

“Yes?” You ask.

“Love, are you okay?” Shouto sounds worried.

“No, I just tripped and fell,” you pick your head up from the asphalt and squint at your stuff in front of you, “in the middle of the parking lot.”

“Just after you hung up I felt a lot of pain and I just… I knew it was you.” 

-

It keeps happening after that.

It doesn’t help that you’re clumsy, but maybe that’s for the best now, as you try and figure out this weird coincidence.

If you hurt yourself, Shouto feels the pain.

If Shouto hurts himself, you feel the pain. 

It’s only after he almost gets buried by a collapsing building that you actually tell a Doctor. Or rather Midoriya unloads all the Data he has collected on the poor, unassuming Recovery Girl.

The most likely answer, as strange as it might sound, is the Soulmate Theory.

“Since you’re the first documented case in hundreds of years we don’t have anything to prove this theory. But I’m quite positive that more cases will follow.”

You blink back at her, not quite understanding. Shouto’s left hand, one of the few places of his that are not covered in bandages, squeezes yours.

“You know what that means, right?” He asks.

“Yeah. We’re most definitely never going to break up.”

His eyes widen in a way you’ve grown familiar with. No matter how long you’ve been dating, you still seem to be able to surprise him.

“No,” he presses out weakly, “I meant… That all the pain you went through as a child and teenager, that was me. It’s my fault.”

You lean down to press a kiss to the little spot above his eyebrows that has come away unscathed.

“I’m not saying it was nice, but if I could take at least a little bit of the pain you went through, I’d say it was worth it.”

-

You’re pretty sure Shouto would disagree, but in your eyes Soulmates are not quite as fancy as they’re made out to be.

After all, you found him on your own, didn’t you?

#my writing #shouto todoroki #todoroki shouto #shouto x reader #todoroki x reader #todoroki fluff #mha x reader #mha fluff #mha #bnha x reader #bnha #bnha fluff

[rivalsforlife]

Ace Attorney News Roundup

Very behind on several of these, but news doesn't always cross over from twitter to tumblr, so I thought I'd recap some things here:

AAI 15th Anniversary

First: today marks the 15th anniversary of Ace Attorney Investigations! Tatsuro Iwamoto, the art director for AAI, made a celebratory sketch of Kay to commemorate the occasion (link to tweet):

Iwamoto has also been drawing fanart of minor characters throughout the ace attorney trilogy on his twitter page. These include: April May, Dee Vasquez, Yanni Yogi (and Polly), Richard Wellington, Turner Grey, Moe the Clown, Max Galactica, Oldbag (alien mode), Matt Engarde, Doug Swallow, Luke Atmey (and Mask☆DeMasque), Viola Cadaverini, Valerie Hawthorne, Lisa Basil, and Glen Elg. Technically these aren't official art, but it's always good to have more art of obscurer characters!

The Great Ace Attorney Hit A Million Copies

Some big news: The Great Ace Attorney's 2021 port hit a million copies sold, making it the second ace attorney game to hit Capcom's platinum titles list, the first being the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy from 2019! This comes just under 3 years since the release of the duology in July 2021. In comparison, the original AA trilogy hit a million copies in December 2020, shortly under two years since the release of the game in February 2019.

The update to the platinum titles sales shows that Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy has reached 3.3 million copies sold, which means that it has sold over a million copies in less than a year! (My last post that had information on sales, where I said the trilogy had sold 2.3 million, was in September 2023.) It also makes it the 30th highest selling title for Capcom, which I think is pretty impressive considering giants like Resident Evil, Monster Hunter, and Street Fighter are making up the majority of the top 30.

So, the AA trilogy made its first million in approximately 22 months, but now it has sold a million over the last 8 months. I don't know anything about game sales and so this next part is just speculation, but I wouldn't expect it to be very common for games to sell more years out from their release compared to at release? I think that's really saying something about the long-term staying power of this series, and its increasing popularity over the last few years despite not having any new releases (aside from ports - and porting the series to all platforms probably has something to do with the popularity.)

The AA Twitter Is Very Active Right Now

Here are a couple of bullet points with no relation to each other:

-The official ace attorney twitter has been VERY active, particularly the last week. They've been doing the same "weekly book club" for each case that they did for the Great Ace Attorney duology, but that wrapped up last week and now it's just been memes, at least one a day. In most of my time following this account over the last uhh six years, they mostly ramp up marketing around new releases but are kinda silent the rest of the time, with the occasional meme, but definitely not at this frequency.

-Summer Game Fest is next week.

That probably means nothing, as it has every other time I thought we might get some big ace attorney news, but I think it's worth noting.

So, lots of stuff happened this week! Thanks for reading.

#ace attorney #news #my posts #wanted to just share the kay drawing but then it became a whole Thing

[ckhaine]

O1, intro: montréal | montréal

ᝰ playing montreal by the weeknd. pairing badboy!jk x afab reader genres best friends + fluff angst smut

( intro ) montréal﹕where you and your best friend want to help each other, but don't want to accept it, leading to complications, hurt and a strong sexual desire.

ch. content MATURE, vulgar language, suggestive speech, the beginning of their friendship which takes place in high school, namjoon cameo, degradation, mention of alcoholism, weed, a small argument between jk n joon, daddy issues, usage of weed while being underage ...

may contain some grammar mistakes, please ignore them!

send your thoughts · montréal mlist

> hello, first chapter to montréal, are we excited? would love to know your thoughts. have fun reading this mess, love you!

“… But, common sense, why would I give someone weed for free all ‘cause we have a mutual friend, y’know what I mean? I don’t even know them yet they're talking like we’re all cool. Like, seriously man!” Christian blabbers to Jungkook, using an unnecessary amount of hand gestures.

The words go through one of his ears and right out the other.

Jungkook’s too busy gawking at the beautiful girl two desks away from him, watching you lean to the side to grab something out of your black bag, plump tits tight within the white blouse required for the school uniform, looking like the buttons are close to busting.

Christian nudges his arm, raising a brow. “Hey, do you even hear me?” He frowns, earning a heart-breaking, neglectful wave from Jungkook who  brushes him off. “Yeah, no, I agree—the prices are stupid ass hell. Look, I’ma catch y’later, see ya!”

Just like that, he flies out of his chair, leaving his friend sitting all by himself. Jungkook walks towards your desk, clearly his throat and adjusting the tie hanging loose around his neck.

Two large hands are placed on your desk, and you see a tall boy looking down at you.

“Hey, uhhh, think ‘m your partner in science, no? Didn’t know we had a few of the same classes.” You turn your head at the sound of his voice, and Jungkook can feel his heart beating against his rib cage, a bright grin on his lips.

He’s handsome, sucks you didn’t check him out earlier. Taking in his appearance, his messed yet neat slicked-back hair. His white button-up that imprints his defined torso, the black pants paired with simple black shoes.

As if that wasn’t enough, Jungkook has a few, small moles on his face, and one at the side of his neck that you’d love to kiss. Eyes round and dark, lips thin and smooth. Hands mannish while the prominent veins travel up his arms which makes you pray you’re not leaking onto your seat.

“No, no. I remember you.” You chuckle. “Jungkook, right?” You ask, watching him nod as you hum softly. “Nice. What’s up, need something?”

“Nah, I don’t need nothin’, kinda wanted to talk a little … ‘bout the work, that is. You busy?” He asks, slightly tilting his head to the side in question, lips puckered cutely.

Jesus, he’s perfect.

You shrug, “No, we can talk. ‘M finished my assignments for this class, anyway.”

Fuck, you’re smart too.

+

“Yo, Kook. Who’s that girl you been talking to?” Namjoon grins, a laugh from Christian coming from his side. “Walked past her and lemme tell you, she’s a fuckin’ angel.” He continues.

Jungkook rolls his eyes before glancing both ways in case of a teacher, bringing a joint between his lips once the coast is clear.

He shakes his head, sighing while letting out a light cough. “Yeah? I don’t know, she’s…” Jungkook trails off, chuckling. “She’s beautiful, yeah, but I’on wanna get too close to her,” Jungkook explains yet his brain lags at his own words.

“I don’t wanna care ‘bout her—like, I don’t want her involved in my personal life. If I’m able to avoid her knowing that this is how, more like who I am… that’s what I’ll have t’do.” He sighs, a hand gesturing to himself.

Christian breathes out a cloud of tobacco smoke, raising a brow at his friend. “Why, though? You really think she’d judge you for all of this? I mean, It’s weed, so what?” He asks.

Jungkook shrugs with a light shake of his head. “Drugs,” Jungkook adds. “I don’t see why she wouldn’t. She seems pure ‘n whatever, would probably distance herself from me.”

“Doesn’t mean she is, man,” Namjoon pitches in. Jungkook’s already uninterested. “Haven’t you seen the way she carries herself? Like a lil’ slut but she plays like an angel. She gets along with everyone.” He scoffs.

“Fuck’s she done to you? You’re always sour when one of us got a girl ‘n you don’t, tsk.��� Jungkook spits before walking away, leaving Namjoon and Christian looking like a specific duo.

Dumb and dumber.

+

Within a few weeks, you and Jungkook grew closer. He’d be at your house, sometimes sneaking through your window late at night for so-claimed “studying” yet it turned into rambles and convos which made you adore him more and more.

You got to know more about him, like the childhood he’d lived and it hit awfully close to home. Drunk parents, favouritism, a horrible start to depression—you name it. Though it felt embarrassing to admit or to talk about, Jungkook made you comfortable while he soothed your worries and, well, related.

“… I mean, damn, all I do is depend on pills and cigs—weed, too.” You laugh, watching his eyes twinkle with a soft light, perfectly mirroring a dark night with stars. “I’m sorry, weed? Pills? Cigs?” He asks, thick brows scrunched together.

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” You pout, “don’t you smoke too?”

Jungkook thickly swallows, muffling out a throaty chuckle as he nods. “Shit, yeah. Wanna tell me how y’figured that out? Was it that obvious?” He asks, accidentally stacking up questions, curiosity and a bit of defeat seeping into his tone.

You look at him like he’s dense, features falling as your laugh dies. “Are you serious? It’s so apparent on your clothes; makes me confused how the fuck your parents never commented on it… well, so you say.” You state in a duh tone, watching his eyes widen and go rounder than they already were. “I—yeah, they never did.” He sighs.

“I mean, shit, why would they care? My dad was the one who introduced me to weed, said it was a “father and son” bonding time when I was younger,” Jungkook states casually; like it was the most normal thing to humankind.

“I’m sorry—retreat. You said your father did what?” You blurt out, eyes wide and potent with crisis.

© ckhaine 2024.

#ckhaine 𓃭 #jeon jungkook #jungkook x reader #jungkook fic #jungkook fanfic #jungkook imagine #jungkook angst #jungkook fluff #jungkook smut

[thebisexualdogdad]

With the new rookie season you gotta do more Lucy!!!

Maybe something like Lucy meets a PI who’s working a similar case as her and the two slowly flirt and nerd out on common interests.

Lucy Chen x Male!reader

● as a private investigator you were hired to follow a man who's wife was accusing him of cheating

● lucky for her he wasn't cheating, unluckily for her he became entangled with a gang selling drugs and now he's missing

● which is how you meet officer Lucy Chen

● “Excuse me? What do you think you're doing? This is a crime scene you can't be here,” she questions as you're looking at the faces of a bunch of newly deceased individuals after a drug deal gone wrong trying to ID your clients husband

● “I'm a private investigator, Y/N Y/L/N, I've been hired by Mary Jameson to track down her husband Luke Jameson who is involved with all this”

● “do you see him here?”

● “no but-”

● “then I'm gonna have to ask you to leave”

● you don't actually leave, you just hang around outside the crime scene tape waiting to get any more information on where you're missing guy might be

● “he's still here?” Harper asks Lucy who has been keeping an eye on you for the last several hours

● “yeah he thinks I'm gonna tell him details about the case because he's a PI”

● “PI's are the worst,” Lopez chimes in

● “I thought lawyers were the worst?”

● “they are but I'm not married to a PI,” she laughs, “he says he's looking for a guy who deals for this gang right? Lucy take him to the station and find out everything he knows, he may actually be useful in helping us fill in some missing pieces”

● back at the station Lucy has you in an interrogation room, questioning you about Luke

● you tell her you've been tailing him for three weeks, he went missing two days ago handing over the photos you have of him dealing drugs as well as meeting up with the leader of the gang

● you actually were quite helpful for Lucy

● and even a little bit flirty

● and to your surprise Lucy was flirting back

● you find out you like the same TV shows and music artists

● you spend a little too long talking about the latest season of your favorite show

● but just as you're about to ask her on a date to get to know her more Lopez and Harper interrupt bringing your attention back to the case at hand

● Lucy relays all the information to them and thanks you for the help

● and after you leave Lopez asks her, “were you flirting with the PI?”

● “no of course not that would be unprofessional”

● Lopez and Harper simultaneously “they were flirting”

● you show up at the station again the next morning with coffee and breakfast sandwiches to see if they have any new leads on Luke

● “you brought me coffee?”

● “with almond milk and a shot of espresso”

● “how did you know that's how I drink my coffee?”

● “I'm a private investigator remember, it's my job to know those kind of things”

● you and Lucy end up working together to find out that Luke is being held captive by a rival gang

● the cops raid the warehouse and free him though he is arrested in the process due to your photos of him dealing drugs which his wife is certainly not going to be happy about

● “Guess this is the end of our team up,” Lucy tells you when she returns to the station with another officer towing behind with Luke in handcuffs

● “Seems so but it doesn't mean it has to be the last time we see each other right? Can I take you out to dinner sometime?”

● “yeah, that would be nice”

● “great, I'll get us a reservation at the blue orchid”

● “that's my favorite restaurant how did you- oh right private investigator,” she laughs

#the rookie imagine #lucy chen imagine #lucy chen x reader #x male reader #headcanons

[dr-futbol-blog]

The Defiant One, Pt. 1

I've thought about where I would have placed 38 Minutes (S01E04) that seemed to fit ill so early in the season, and I think it would have made the most sense between the mid-season two-parter and The Defiant One (S01E11), discussed here.

The Genii siege visibly changes something between Sheppard and McKay, and we get to resolve that a little too fast in this episode that follows directly after. 38 Minutes has that strange almost-confession to Weir,* which would have made more sense here as Weir and Sheppard seem to grow closer at the end of The Eye (S01E10) although, I argue, it is precisely because Sheppard needed to create distance between himself and McKay that they did. He was using Weir to create distance, in effect hiding behind her, because Kolya figured out after like a minute of talking to Sheppard that McKay was the best way of getting to him. Sheppard was reminded of the fact that being important to him put McKay in mortal danger.

In 38 Minutes, we also have Sheppard's own near death experience and everyone working so very hard to save him, McKay worrying so much about him, the way that they look at each other, that something unspoken lingering between them, McKay's agitation over what ever Sheppard wanted to tell Weir; all of that would have made sense between these two episodes. The Iratus bug could have symbolized Sheppard's internal anguish: the way he's in agony at first and then the pain gets so bad that he gets numb and loses all feeling. It all would have made so much sense.

But regardless, we start the episode with a driving flying lesson (which, incidentally, also would have made the most sense following the events where both Sheppard and the other designated pilot were incapacitated at the same time). McKay received the ATA gene therapy and Sheppard is teaching him how to fly the puddle jumper. Where the previous episode ended with Sheppard very clearly wanting to create distance between them, here they are all cozy with each other again. Or s it seems.

Clearly, this is important. As mentioned previously, they need more pilots since there are few people with the ATA gene (two that we know have the real gene, a few others through gene therapy), and only a fraction of them know how to fly. It's important not only for the mission and taking the pressure off the commander having to do transport flights, it's also important for the team to have another person capable of doing it. And apparently neither Teyla nor Ford are able to do it (toward the end of the episode, they have a random soldier having to fly them over) which makes McKay not only the best choice but also the only one.

So whether he wanted to or not, what ever he was feeling inside, teaching Rodney how to fly the jumper was something that needed to be done. And here we are.

What Sheppard says is very interesting.

Granted, we don't know anything about his background at this point, often the way people talk to others reveals a lot about how they've been talked to in the past. It indicates that when ever he did something wrong as a child, he was corrected by snapping at him. My guy, you're in space. What could possibly happen if he lets go of the controls? You're going to veer off and crash into some more space?

It's also notable that he uses 'parents' instead of 'dad' or 'father' (both being that he is a guy and as dads are much more likely to be the one teaching kids how to drive; also, he himself was clearly taught by a driving instructor but teaching your kids how to drive is actually pretty common, it's a loving thing to do, and parents are supposed to be teaching their kids even in the case that they have an instructor, as kids learn by watching their parents whether they want it or not). So, you know. He has a mysterious past and a sad childhood, looks like.

Granted, McKay also seems to have had a pretty crappy childhood and, what's worse, seems to think it was all completely normal. We hear him reveal all manner of child abuse casually, here and there. It seems that they both were lonely and sad but for different reasons. McKay's immediate gut response "Snapping doesn't help!" is likewise telling, indicates that there was a lot of pressure put on him from a very young age.

Sheppard's use of the word 'parent' also creates distance between him and one or both of his parents. This man has been court-martialed, he has clearly been traumatized by something. He does not think he has anyone waiting for him back on earth. We know at this point that several people he served with have died, and that he blames himself for every one of these deaths. And he's not good at dealing with emotions, especially difficult ones. He says as much in Sateda (S03E04):

Sheppard: Look, Teyla. I'm not really good at, uh... Actually, I'm... I'm terrible at expressing... I don't know what you'd call it, uh... Teyla: Feelings? Sheppard: Yeah, sure,

He is terrible at expressing feelings. He especially has trouble verbalizing them.

When he is feeling difficult emotions, he uses self-soothing techniques (see the lip thing). One of these self-soothing techniques is creating distance between himself and the object of his emotion. So, instead of father he says parent (mom+dad) because he essentially uses the less significant, less painful thing (mom) to conceal the more significant, more painful thing (dad). Using the less significant object to create distance to the more difficult object forms like a barrier between him and an emotion he does not want to or can't face or deal with just then. Just like, in the previous episode, he used "Weir and McKay" instead of McKay. He was using the less significant, less important thing to mask the more significant, more important thing. It lessens the impact of the emotion attached to it. We see him do this a lot especially in connection to Rodney ("Even Rodney"). Again and again and again.

You can see him do the self-soothing lip thing before engaging McKay (like he's not sure he should say anything, like he wants to not have to say anything; he just can't help himself when it comes to this man):

Here, he is creating distance between himself and one or even both of his parents (and let's face it, it's probably the dad) but he's also, at the same time, creating distance between himself and McKay both by using the passive voice and lumping McKay into the category of kids. See previous episode as to why he desperately needs this distance between them.

But what he is actually saying here is that he is emotionally too close to McKay to be able to be an effective instructor to him. That's what he is saying. He's emotionally compromised. Now, whether you think his feelings are fatherly (he does not look at McKay the way a father looks at a son), friendly (he does not look at McKay the way a friend looks at a friend), collegial (he does not look at McKay the way he looks at Ford and Teyla), or whether you believe he thinks of himself as McKay's second uncle third removed, this is what he's saying in the scene. That he's too close to McKay to be able to teach him. He feels that he is too close to McKay.

It's possible that the whole reason as to why he's teaching McKay how to navigate the jumper is that it would allow him not to have to accompany him on these kinds of missions, harmless and scientific. If McKay knows how to fly a jumper, they would be able to spend less time together. Spending less time together would mean less emotion, would mean less pain, less of a chance for him to get McKay hurt or killed. This is foolish to think, of course, since absence has a tendency of making the heart grow fonder, as the saying goes. But we saw him start creating this distance between them at the end of The Eye (S1E10) and this is on par, is a logical continuation of that.

Humour, as it turns out, is another way of creating distance and coping with difficult emotions.

We are again reminded of the fact that McKay does not know not to keep it straight. Sheppard can do it in the air but not on land.

So, the thing is. As much as Sheppard wants to create distance between them, Mckay wants the opposite. He wants to connect with the Major. He's not making it easy for Sheppard. In this, he is defying him.

McKay tells Sheppard that he's touched by his sentiment. Keeps glancing at him. He refers to the puddle jumper, for all intents and purposes Sheppard's puddle jumper, as baby. He wants to see what this baby can do. Baby is a term of affection used most often by men to indicate that they see something or someone as soft and beautiful and needing to be taken care of in a gentle way. There is definitely something flirty in McKay using this term for Sheppard's puddle jumper.

But then Sheppard picks this up from McKay and also calls the jumper baby (yes, he's amused by the way McKay said it and ribbing on him, but picking up vocabulary from the object of your affection is yet another classic sign of attraction). They are taking care of the baby together. Parents, kids, babies. Freud probably would have a lot to say about the things they say and their subconscious desires.

Freud might also have something to say about Sheppard's fear that McKay is going to "snap the damn things off" if he doesn't ease up his grip on the control stick. But he doesn't want McKay to take his hands off them, either. He's instructing McKay on exactly how it likes to be held.

(We are also reminded of subconscious desires by the control display popping up, seeing how the puddle jumpers respond to Sheppard's mind; his desires.)

They are accompanied on the mission by two red shirts, random scientists we have never seen before but who we are to believe have worked with McKay previously and know him pretty well.

So, maybe it's because of the intense, borderline erotic look of concentration on McKay's face or his tone of voice, or what ever, Sheppard seems to start gravitating toward McKay. Even in front of two people he barely knows that work for the other man. Here, he turns back to look at Dr. Gaul, clearly amused by how different this scientist is from his scientist, but what he's doing at the same time is lean closer to Rodney:

He looks... turned on, frankly. And he sure as hell is not turned on by Dr. Gaul, sweating though he may be. The reason that he turned back to look at the nauseous scientist behind him might actually have been just to look away from the sex faces McKay is making while he's concentrating real hard.

Then he leans in even closer, to whisper conspiratorially to McKay. And McKay, well. He leans in, as well.

Sheppard: Why'd you choose this guy for the mission? McKay: Brendan's the one who discovered the Lagrange Point satellite was out here. Elizabeth felt he should see it for himself. Sheppard: Don't let go of the controls!

Sheppard snaps in a sudden jolt of panic. And it may not be McKay letting go of the controls that made him do it. It's that he mentioned Elizabeth, reminding him of why he needed to not be that close to Rodney. Just like McKay used Elizabeth's name (yelping "Elizabeth!" in near panic) when Sheppard was getting too close to him in his lab in The Storm (S01E09). They both seem to be using Weir as a... weir between them.

And again, as he will many, many times in the future, Sheppard needs to be touching something, needs to have his hands pressed against something, when he's near McKay:

Then they arrive at their destination and switch seats. They move seamlessly together, Sheppard needs only to mention his name and McKay does exactly what he wants, and is only too happy to oblige. We've seen this happen in movies between a man and a woman. It has never not been erotic (underlined by McKay's line "This thing is enormous!"):

Here, it's McKay that keeps glancing back and back at Sheppard as they're approaching the humongous ancient weapons platform. A weapons platform that should be a pretty interesting thing to look at, all things considered. But his eyes keep on being drawn back to Sheppard who, it should be noted, is wearing only a t-shirt.

Sheppard is trying not to look at McKay, catches himself several times before he does. He's not allowing himself to do it. That's until they come upon the wraith distress call from the planet below.

They look at each other. They communicate in words but they also communicate with their eyes. Suddenly, they are one mind again.

Continued in Pt. 2 (NB this episode focuses entirely on Sheppard and McKay so this is in 10 parts)

.* Actually Weir's whole "I didn't think so!" schtick would have made sense if it was about her knowing that Sheppard had been using her to create distance between himself and Rodney. Like she was telling him that she knows the half-hearted flirty smiles at the end of The Eye weren't really about her (same with the nurse right then) but were an attempt to build a defensive barrier between himself and the thought of losing someone important to him again. Because she knows.

Also, we would just have had a similar confession from Rodney where he was trying real hard to tell something to Weir and she wouldn't let him finish. Those almost confessions would mirror each other.

McKay: If this doesn't work... Weir: It will. McKay: I'm just saying, if it doesn't work... Weir: It will. McKay: I'm sure it will, but in the unlikely event that it doesn't, I... Weir: Rodney! Please.

---

Sheppard: Listen, uh, I'd like to say something while I still can. Weir: Don't! You're gonna get through this. Sheppard: If I was ... he wouldn't have let me go. Weir: Who wouldn't have let you go? Sheppard: The Wraith.

Sheppard: What I wanted to say was ... Weir: Save your strength, John, and tell me in person. Sheppard: This is important. Weir: I'm listening.

#stargate atlantis #sga #sga meta #john sheppard #sheppard is bi #rodney mckay #rodney is gay #ep. the defiant one #ep. 38 minutes #ep. sateda

[natrogersfics]

The Anthology - Chapter 3: Down Bad

Artwork by @faith2nyc Read on AO3

He’d made it all up.

It’s the only explanation Steve can conjure as he finds a seat in the corner of the café and picks up this morning’s copy of The Daily Star that’s laying on the table, his trusty baseball cap and aviators providing some semblance of cover from the blinding sunshine and the sharp eyes of other patrons.

NAT'S NIGHT OUT!!

He thumbs through the pages until he finds the images promised on the cover. Not only are they grainy from the zoom of the long lens being pushed to its limits, but also a touch overexposed. In any case, it doesn’t matter. He sees them all the same as he runs his hand over the shot of Natasha seated at a booth in a nightclub with a cocktail in hand. Of her dancing with her friends. And finally, of her leaving at the end of the night with a jacket draped over her shoulders that’s at least three sizes too big to be her own.

The last thought ties his stomach in knots, but truthfully, it’s the common denominator in all of the photos that’s most excruciating – the way she’s beaming from ear to ear. Not that he would ever begrudge her for finding happiness. It’s all he truly wants for her. And yet, he’d be lying if he said seeing her having the time of her life doesn’t make him feel as though there’s vice in his chest, slowly but surely squeezing the life out of him.

Since she inexplicably shut him out, his mental real estate has been consumed by trying to understand why. His nights have been divided between ruminating on what he could have done wrong and worrying that something had happened that she’s too afraid to share. Though seeing what’s in front of him now, he realizes that maybe the answer isn’t as complicated as he thought. For that shift between them, that cloying desire for more – be it time, touches… all of it – could have very well been one-sided. Perhaps he had assumed, wrongly, that the feeling was mutual. A severe miscalculation on his part when, in reality, it’s merely something his mind had fabricated to keep him from noticing that little by little, he had been covertly surrendering pieces of his heart to her.

Ah, hell.

His hand flies to his face at the gravity of the revelation, and he pinches the bridge of his nose. Hearts were never supposed to be part of the deal. And up until this very moment, it hadn’t occurred to him that he had jumped the gun. Not this irrefutably, at least. But while it’s taken him this long to figure it out, it’s evident that she had seen it first, her actions since then making her stance on the matter loud and clear.

“God, I thought I’d never make it to the end of that line.” Bucky’s complaint interrupts his thoughts, and he looks up in time to see his costar walk up to the table, offering him one of the to-go coffees in his grasp. “You owe me for that one, pal.”

“Add it to my tab,” he says dejectedly, accepting the cup as he rises from his seat. “You ready-”

“And what do we have there?” Bucky says, his lips curling into an approving smirk, and he follows his gaze to see him eyeing the magazine on the table. “Looks like someone had fun last night.”

“Seems so,” he says, and if Bucky is at all offended by his dismissive tone, he doesn’t show it. “Come on.”

They manage to exit the café unnoticed, but it’s as they turn the corner that they hear the telltale clicking of cameras. Next to him, Bucky scoffs. “You’ve gotta be shitting me.”

He looks up to see the hordes of paparazzi gathered at the end of the block, and with a sigh, he grips his coffee tighter, keeping his head low as he and Bucky begin to approach. As grateful as he is that he gets to do what he loves for a living, it’s times like this that truly made him miss being back home in Brooklyn, where people didn’t pay him any mind so long as he wasn’t blocking their way.

The commotion grows louder as they near, and they’re bombarded by questions the second they enter the melee.

“Steve, how are you doing today?”

“Can we get a smile, James?”

“Is this Cap’s final movie?”

“Excuse me,” he says firmly, bringing his free hand up to push away the lens when the paparazzo that asks the last question gets a little too close for comfort.

“Oh, come on, Steve!” the man says as he continues to follow him. “Just give us a scoop!”

“No comment,” he says, the exasperation evident in his tone now.

“If not about the movie, then something about your costars! There’s gotta be something. Your leading lady doesn’t seem interested in working-”

Anger flashes through him like lightning, and in an instant, he turns, his coffee hitting the ground as both his hands reach for the man’s collar. “What did you just say?” he says practically through gritted teeth. Vaguely, he’s aware of the voices and the clicks of the cameras intensifying as he tightens his grip, but he can’t bring himself to care. “Say it!”

Before he can get a response, Bucky is there, trying to wedge himself between him and the paparazzo. “Steve,” Bucky says, his voice all but pleading. “It’s not worth it, man.” He nods towards the crowd. “Come on, let go.”

He glances at the sea of cameras and phone screens that’s amassed around them before looking back at the man in his grasp who still has a smug look painted on his face. With a final glare at his captive, he shoves him away.

“What the hell has gotten into you?” Bucky says the second they're in the safety of the gym's lobby, placing a hand on his shoulder in an attempt to stop him in his tracks.

His only response is to shrug out of Bucky’s grasp as he heads for the lockers. What did it matter, anyway.

Chapter 2 | Chapter 4 (Coming Soon)

#Romanogers #The Anthology #Steve Rogers #Natasha Romanoff #Captain America #Black Widow #steve x natasha #Down Bad

[icewindandboringhorror]

If you became super rich and could design your own house, but could only add THREE unnecessary/random/expensive home additions (like how people will have bowling alleys, movie theatres, closets with museums of shoes, car display rooms, spa rooms, wine cellars, etc. in their mansions) - what three would you choose?

#I think I would have: an indoor pool (but like heavily customized with a faux weather system so I could get the feeling of swimming in #rain or fog or snow etc.). a very small arcade consisting only of skee-ball and DDR machines. and an old Library Room with authentic #historical furniture/interior design to store old books/tapestries/study room equipment/whatever other antiques I'd collect. It'd be #like some fully intricate movie set or something that would feel completely like stepping into another world/time. #Though I might would trade out the arcade for a roller skating rink.. i DO love skating.... #And I wouldve put rock climbing gym because I love indoor rock climbing but.. as I understand it they have to change out the rock things #on the walls every once in a while so that you can have new routes and it doesnt get boring. and I'd rather have an activty room thats like #self sustaining and doesnt require me to hire some person to come switch things around once every month. Otherwise I would #totally do that instead. #I'm also personally not counting ''craft'' type stuff like having a pottery room kiln sort of thing because #that doesn't count as 'unnessecary' to me. since stuff like that would not at all be just a hobby I 'happen to #do sometimes for fun' #but would definitely be a career sort of thing. Like if I had the money for a fully stocked sculpture room and and a sewing room #with a good machine and etc. then I would literally be professionally selling pottery and designing clothing and etc. #so I wouldn't count it as 'just a random side room I dont need' etc. #The same way that if I played tennis professionally or as a very intense hobby that takes up most of my life/time #then I wouldn't count having a tennis court in your house to practice in as 'unncesscarry' etc. #wow that is the worst I have ever spelt that word ghbjh #Un Cess Carry #ALSO would obviously have an underground bunker of some sort with food and emergency supplies which also does not count as unnecessary to m #since it's literally like... survival.. And I thought most health organizations literally reccomend that even #the common person has a small 'go bag' prepared in their house. and like an evacuation plan in case of fire or other things #It WOULD be an unnecessary rich person thing to have a full on undergRound village or something stocked with 9000 guns and #whaetever. but I think just a basic emergency room with basic supplies could still be counted under the 'not unnecessary' requirement. #Like I would say that a sprawling courtyard of flower gardens and fountains and hedge mazes that takes up like a hundred thousand #dollars a year in maintenance would count as one of the three 'unnecessary and expensive' things. But having a small garden in the #back yard with a few planters in a little greenhouse or whatever would not. The 'excessiveness' of the thing matters lol #ANYWAY!!! #Just curious what other peoples Three Main things would be... hrrmm

[bijoumikhawal]

"leftists don't fall for/into right wing hate campaigns for other groups as much as they do for antisemitism" is a really funny way of broadcasting which groups you pay attention to. Anyway we all do remember V*ush and his sycophants constantly claiming "land back is a call for ethnostates" and baiting WOC to intentionally misrepresent their politics on race up to and including claiming they want white genocide, right.

Acting like somehow people on the left are often progressive about every other thing but are antisemites is absurd. It happens, but its not common. An antisemite is often also a racist, a xenophobe, religiously intolerant overall, etc. There are plenty of racist, xenophobic, shithead leftists. Anyone who's actually a leftist would know there's constant tumbling online with shithead leftists and they never have just one shithead opinion.

#cipher talk #V*ush is also an antisemite but his hate campaigns to my knowledge focus on people of color #Antisemitism is more like a sickening bonus he pulls out in these debates #Also! This sort of shit in my experience is more common than isolated 'leftist antisemitism' among actual leftists #The people following V*ush's lead consider themselves leftists #Some examples of 'leftist Antisemitism' people pull really feel like they saw an antisemite express one progressive opinion and screamed #'ITS THE DAMN LEFT AGAIN' #I promise you. A lotta people doing that are not leftists #It annoys me because there are actual common tropes of leftist antisemitism I experience but it feels like people only bring up the idea #When talking about Zionism #Actual things I've experienced have like. Nothing or little to do with that. It's more 'a lot of shit c*ntrapoints has done' and militant #Or utoptian atheism (the latter being something I've had other marginalized religious people tell me was making them uncomfortable but that #They didn't feel comfortable speaking up about in leftist spaces) #Or like. People who didn't grow up in the West saying offensive shit because they know what a Nazi is but never got a proper education #About Jewish history- generally they aren't trying to be offensive. They literally do not know better. It doesn't make it okay #But it's not the same as the other shit #Or in some cases they're like. A hypocrite who believes in anti colonialism but only for themselves #Such as that one guy who saw me speaking about Coptic issues and the importance of leftists to not cede ground to Zionists by letting them #Coopt ideas from MENA indigenous groups and said 'shut up Jew'. He didn't know I was Jewish. He was making an unfavorable comparison to #Shame me into silence #Admittedly it was funny and I still think it's funny because jeez man. At least say a slur! But it was antisemitic regardless of the fact #That I found it to stupid to be upset by #It's also notable there that like. The guy was not primarily mad because of Judaism. He was angry because of a Copt existing and talking #The Copt happened to be my freak ass and Coincidentally was what I am

[andthebeanstalk]

Tbh there is a good chance that Pigsy's wife would have eventually been fine (or more than fine) with him being a pig monster, if he wasn't also a stupid selfish asshole.

Maybe I'm just a monsterfucker, but by far the least fuckable thing about Pigsy has got to be his personality. XD

(That said, I haven't gotten to the end of the story yet - maybe he improves!)

#original #journey to the west #zhu bajie #pigsy #monkey king #jttw #it is hard to balance pigsy being a lovable oaf and also a man-eating creep. #he does always make me laugh tho. i find him easy to like. #it is just rough when his creepiness is shown as being fun and charming and harmless in some adaptations #like clearly the writers and directors are aware he is doing something wrong but they don't think it's THAT wrong #this is common in a lot of media tho. #the amount of indescribably creepy british and american action heroes who the writers clearly don't think have a problem is wild #it is practically a standard of the genre actually #so it isn't surprising it is just like THIS AGAIN #aka The Sanji Effect #one piece is great but has a serious misogyny problem #sure pigsy worked hard in the fields but how was he to fucking live with?? #best case scenario he is mansplaining 24/sev

[feminist-space]

Cat in the Hat:

"The German Health Minister gave an important update on the Covid situation yesterday.

I’ve written up the section of his speech from the video below for easy reading.

It’s immensely refreshing to see a government minister warning of the harms of Covid in such a transparent way."

https://x.com/_catinthehat/status/1732092683508678954

Prof. Karl Lauterbach

Health Minister, Germany

4 December 2023

"This second (long Covid) round table was very interesting, lasting three and a half hours. It serves as a unique forum for dialogue among scientists, researchers and those affected by long Covid, facilitating the exchange of ideas.

There are many new findings about long Covid. Not all of them are good news. One piece of not-so-good news concerns the fact that long Covid is actually still a problem for those who are newly infected. One estimate that has been put forward is that the risk of contracting long Covid now, even after vaccination, is around 3%. Now you may say, "that's not such a big risk" , but there are tens of thousands of people who are repeatedly affected in a short period of time. And so, the long Covid problem has not yet been solved.

We have also established that there really are many subgroups of long Covid and that we do not yet have a cure. And it was clearly pointed out that we are also dealing with problems here that will challenge society as a whole, because vascular diseases often occur after long Covid. Throughout Europe, we are currently seeing an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease in the middle-age group - from 25 to 50. This is associated with the consequences of Covid infections.

We also very often find cognitive impairment in older people. And one participant pointed out that it may well be like the Spanish flu, where 20 years after the Spanish flu there was a significant increase in Parkinson's disease and probably also dementia.

This is something we must pay attention to, as the past infection afiects how the immune system in the brain functions, as well as the brain's blood vessels, potentially increasing the long-term risk of these major neurodegenerative diseases. This is why we need to conduct very intensive research. This research has played a major role.

What is the overall assessment of the situation now?

We have to be careful. Long Covid is not curable at the moment. We also know that over 40% of those who have several manifestations of long Covid, for example, five or more, still have symptoms after 2 years, so it doesn't seem to heal spontaneously. We also know that those whose symptoms are more pronounced at the beginning are less likely to heal.

So some of what we know from the demographics of long Covid has been confirmed, and we now know more precisely which mechanisms in the brain, but also in the blood vessels and the immune system, are responsible for this. Professor Scheibenbogan will explain this briefly later.

At this point, I can only say the following - this is particularly important to me:

First of all, long Covid is a disease that stays with us and that we cannot yet cure. And we are seeing an increasing number of cases as the waves of infection continue to affect us.

Secondly, Covid is not a cold - with a cold, you don't usually see any long-term effects. You don't see any changes in the blood vessels. You don't usually see an autoimmune disease developing. You also don't usually see neurological inflammation - these are all things that we see with long Covid. Therefore, one should not assume that Covid infection is just a common cold. It can affect brain tissue and the vascular system, and we still lack an effective treatment, making these studies crucial.

Significantly, we know that the risk of long Covid decreases when you're infected but have been vaccinated. That's why it's concerning that only 3 million people have been vaccinated with the new, adapted vaccine. That is a very bad result.

Please protect yourself from severe infections.

Please protect yourself from long Covid.

Currently, the danger posed by Covid is indeed being underestimated. Nothing is worse than infecting someone at Christmas who then becomes seriously ill and may not fully recover."

Alt text is included in all images of this post.

#covid #not a cold #please wear a mask #pandemic #pandemic not over #long covid #Karl Lauterbach #Germany #German health minister

[inbarfink]

One common Undertale misconception that really frustrates me is when Sans is portrayed with a strong innate sense for RESETs and alternative timelines. Like, that he remembers the RESET timelines better than the other characters who only have occasional feelings of deja vu or even that he can sense when a timeline is RESET.

And that’s, like, almost the opposite of the actual text of the game. While pretty much every main character can have slightly-different dialogue in a Not-True-RESET, especially if the Player had previously befriended them, based on the idea that they have lingering memories/feelings from before the RESET - 

Sans has no real dialogue changes based on this conceit. All of his changes are based around noticing Frisk has different reactions based on their memories of the precious timelines. 

Other characters do also make observations like that about Frisk, like Mettaton and Toriel. But Sans is distinctive because this is the only way his comments change between RESETs and there are a lot of them from him.

Because that is what really frustrates me about this misconception. People mention it as one more thing that makes Sans cool - but the actual truth is far more badass. Sans is one of the people in the Underground who remembers RESETs the least. I think memory-resistance to RESETs is probably tied to Determination. Flowey, the second-most Determined person in the Underground after Frisk, can remember everything perfectly.

Everyone else has some vague feelings and deja vus. And Sans, he’s the least motivated person in the Underground - both in the sense he’s lazy and in the sense he’s fucking depressed.

That probably means he has very little Determination. Thus, he doesn’t remember anything that happens between RESETs.

And yet, he is still the character most aware of them. Because he has the technological know-how to read and analyze timelines.

And because he has the observation and analytical skill to notice a RESET from other people’s reactions and behavior. Whatever it’s Papyrus thinking he recognizes someone or Frisk’s behavior implying that they know something they shouldn’t have. Sans main RESET-related skill is just being able to identify these moments and come to the correct conclusion about them. And with that he manages to be the most aware character in the entire Underground.

Like, the one point where it might seem like Sans remembers something from a previous Timeline is the Fake Spare scene during his boss battle. 

But it’s all pretend. Unlike the previous lines from other characters that I mentioned, this dialogue plays even if the Murder Route is the first time the player touched the game. Sans isn’t remembering anything in this scene. But he makes an educated guess that the Immoral Time God probably tried using their powers for good at first, so they were likely ‘friends’ in a previous timeline. And in most cases, his guess is right on the money - tricking many players into thinking this is another case of the game actually reacting to their past actions.

And as always, Sans can only tell if his lil’ trick worked or not based on the expression of the Player Character.

Arguably, Sans even uses his lack of Determination and cross-RESET memory to his advantage in his boss battle. After all, the whole point of this fight isn’t to kill the Player - Sans understands this is impossible. This is a war of attrition, trying to get the Player so frustrated and annoyed with the unfair fight that they just ragequit or RESET the Timeline. And this war of the Player’s patience versus Sans’ stamina and will is infinitely easier for him when he doesn’t actually perceive all the Player’s previous attempts against him.

Like, for the Player this might be the billion time they go up against him, they’re aware of some of his patterns and tricks now but they’re probably also frustrated and angry and exhausted. Meanwhile, from Sans’ POV, this is still the first time this is happening. He knows it’s not from the Player’s behavior and Frisk’s expression - but he doesn’t feel it like the Player does. 

He doesn’t feel the frustration and repetition of the endless stalemate. So he’s always as fresh as a daisy no matter how rugged the Player is getting.

And that’s part of why Sans is so cool in the first place, like, in general. He’s technically the weakest person in the Underground, lacking in every standard evaluation of power in the setting - no ATK, no DEF, no HP, no DETERMINATION. But he’s darn clever enough to overcome these weaknesses and even use them in ways that make them into strengths, enough to be one of the most dangerous and most aware guys in this whole setting.

Sans can’t remember anything, and that makes him awesome.

#undertale #undertale meta #sans #sans undertale #undertale analysis #sans ut

[zillychu]

I’ve gotten a WAVE of asks about this AU, so I decided to flesh it out some more and answer some of those questions!

I’ll probably polish this extended summary up at some point and submit it to AO3. But for now, here’s a rundown of my thoughts–please feel free to send more questions! I’ll update this post if I get any more. But if you’re someone who wanted to write fic for it, don’t worry, you don’t need to take my headcanons as gospel. It’s a pretty basic AU honestly lol

Summary:

The portal accident results in a violent explosion that wipes out the whole block, and condemns all of Amity Park. Danny haunts the city for 100 years, before Sam and Tucker find him. 

Setup:

In the 1920’s, 19-year-old Danny went into the incomplete portal on his own, hoping to help out his parents. Ripping the portal open through unnatural means created a huge burst of energy that resulted in a massive explosion. A good portion of the Amity Park population died, many were injured, and the ones on the fringes relocated–Amity was quickly deemed too dangerous due to the excess ectoplasm in the area that attracted ghosts. 

While the disaster was in Amity, the fallout was seen around the globe. Before, natural portals were rare, short-lived, and rarely allowed ghosts to fully slip into our realm (the most severe cases being on par with poltergeists that most people didn’t believe in). Now, natural portals pop open frequently around the world, large enough to allow the entirety of a ghost into the physical plane. They’re more common the closer you get to Amity, but they happen enough elsewhere that this change was something of a small apocalypse before people settled back down and found out how to combat at least some of their new, permanent neighbors. 

Danny is unaware that he’s only half-dead, believing he’s a full ghost. He ends up sticking around Amity, unintentionally making it his haunt. His grief and guilt over causing the death of his loved ones (and many others) makes him isolate and avoid human contact. Though he has, at times, scared nosy people away from the city in a mix of territorial instinct–and to get them to leave before a less friendly ghost finds them. 

Ghosts are much more of an uncontested danger in this AU. Lesser ghosts are practically mindless, and while stronger ghosts are capable of reason, their interests are limited. They’re highly territorial, possessive, and often destructive. Most worrisome is that they also like to snack on the life force of anything alive. No one is sure what dictates a ghost’s propensity to attack or hunt the living for their life force since ghosts don’t exactly experience hunger. At least, not the way we do. If a human is rescued before their life force is fully drained, they can make a full recovery–though humanity has still not yet found what this “life force" is. 

And since the Fentons’ research died along with them, there aren’t many tools available to the public to protect them from ghosts. Most homes have standard ghost shields and some weapons are available on the market, but certified ghost hunters are required to take care of anything more powerful than your average spook. 

Sam and Tucker met in high school, and are now rooming together for college very close to the Amity border. Rent is surprisingly cheap when you’re a stone’s throw away from a condemned area crawling with ghosts. Sam is the one who drags Tucker along with her fascination over finding out more about the city, and its largely mysterious demise. Sam is aware of the danger, but feels ghosts have a place in this world just like everything else, and does exercise caution–like one would while foraging in the woods with a known tiger population. 

What she and Tucker weren’t expecting was to run into a ghost that felt almost human. One that hasn't hurt them, not for lack of trying–while being powerful enough to walk past ghost shields without so much as a flinch. The long white hair is familiar in the whispers of the ectobiologist community, but there’s no way it could be the rumored ghost king Phantom, right?

About Danny:

He has very long hair, claws, and black sclera. His hazmat suit is more torn and ragged, with exposed hands and feet that fade into a burnt black.

His hair tends to float a lot on its own. It can start morphing into fire under duress. 

He does still technically have gloves and boots, they've just charred and melted into his skin towards the ends. He can't take them off in his ghost form. His hands and feet have a leathery texture that's tougher than the rest of his skin.

The white of his hazmat suit is both supposed to look like flames, and also a battered look representing his more violent, explosive death.

Overall, he appears rather listless and sad, with an unnerving air of danger around him–even for a ghost. 

Danny’s “ghost sense” comes out as white smoke.

He does breathe black smoke at times, usually when agitated. 

He's already fought and defeated Pariah Dark by the time Sam and Tucker find him, technically making him the Ghost King. This is heavily speculated by ghost experts, despite there being no real proof beyond a massive battle that scarred Illinois. He has not donned the Ring or the Crown, and captured sentient ghosts are hesitant to answer questions surrounding him. Danny basically has the throne but doesn’t do anything with it, and finds it meaningless enough to routinely forget he has the title. He only fought Pariah because he knew otherwise, humanity would have perished. A lot of ghosts are scared of him because he's so hard to figure out, and he's strong. 

Danny is usually very quiet and speaks softly, because his lungs were damaged in the blaze that half-killed him. He's technically healed since becoming a ghost, so it's more of a compulsion due to the traumatic memory. That, and he’s just… very forlorn and distant, shy around humans who don’t seem to understand how dangerous it is to keep hanging around him.

His memories pre-accident are extremely fuzzy. He knows the very basics of who he was, but specifics have been muffled due to trauma and isolation. He routinely forgets human habits, etiquette, etc. and tends to act more like a full ghost with some odd quirks. 

He does try to scare Sam and Tucker off numerous times. Unfortunately for him, they realized they shouldn't have been able to escape a ghost that strong–but they did, because he let them. 

Sam and Tucker think he's mute at first! He doesn't speak a word to them until several encounters later, when he fumbles his whole scary act and saves them from another ghost. 

He’s still half-ghost, though he doesn’t figure this out until Sam and Tucker come along trying to unravel the mysteries behind the Amity catastrophe. Physically and emotionally, he’s been stuck for 100 years–so his human form is still 19. It’s unclear at this point if he can age normally like a human as long as he stays in human form, or if he’s immortal. 

Danny's family did not turn into ghosts, though he sometimes worries he'll find them in the afterlife as shells of their former selves. He doesn't know if it's better or worse that he's not sure he'd recognize them. 

(Danny also still has some living family. Take a guess.)

Yes, he knows how to Wail. Understandably, he very rarely uses it. You do not want to witness this.

Danny :) is not immune :) from the allure of eating a human's life force :)))

#danny phantom #au #zilly art #I just wanted to draw a boy with long hair and claws how did this happen #fire core au

[justanotherbirdbrain-blog]

Geology of Natural Disasters and How to write them into your fictional universe.

So, you want to write about a natural disaster to advance your plot and torture your players/characters even more? Let me tell you how, accurately.

I feel like unless it is a volcano, natural disasters are a pretty slept on plot drivers, and some of them are really cool and unique! Today, I will talk to you about land slides, earthquakes (And earthquake related disasters), and volcanoes.

Landslides: Probably one I see the least in stories, but one that would be incredibly interesting to write into a plot where they believe in curses. Landslides can happen along ocean bluffs, slightly hilly areas, and highly mountainous areas, this means it is something that can happen in most landscapes. But what can trigger a landslide? Mostly all you need to trigger a landslide could be just abnormally large amounts of rain, excessive deforestation (with a little bit of rain), or an earthquake. If you don't want to use deforestation or an earthquake as a catalyst, a really cool indicator that the land is slipping and may be prone to a collapse is J hooked trees.

This indicates that there is soil creeping slowly over time, and it may lead to a major landslide.

2. Earthquakes: Probably one of the easiest things to write, earthquakes can happen anywhere, but they are most common in places that are tectonically active areas. There are about three types of environments you can expect earthquakes to be common. The first is just rugged mountains, if your landscape looks like this, you should write in earthquakes. Associated hazards could be landslides, avalanches, and large falling rocks.

The next landscape could be a thin mountain range, next to the ocean, very scenic, but very dangerous. Essentially, I am describing a subduction zone environment.

Earthquakes in these areas could equal a couple different associated disasters. Scenario one: A very large earthquake happens, and the ocean begins to recede. This is a tsunami, enough said. If you are writing a tsunami though, please, please, do not write it as a large wave, thank you. Also, a common way people are hurt by tsunami's are from them going into the ocean because they don't understand a tsunami is going to happen.

Scenario two: A large earthquake happens, your characters are in a valley and suddenly the ground begins to liquify as the ground shakes, once the shaking stops, the ground becomes solid like nothing ever happened, except everything has suddenly sunk into the now hard ground. This is called liquefaction and it typically happens in areas that have loose dirt or lots of saturated soil.

Scenario three: There are a lot of small earthquakes, they do not cause a lot of damage, but you begin to notice that one of the isolated mountains has a plume rising. Earthquakes can indicate lava moving underground and the filling of magma chambers.

The next environment that can host lots of earthquakes would be regions that have a lot of really deep valleys and small mountain ranges (not cone volcanoes), but overall seems pretty flat.

This indicates a transform fault like the San Andreas. If you want to hint at there being earthquakes in the area, you can show fence posts that are suddenly several feet out of line at a dilapidated farm or something similar.

(These earthquakes are different because they are cased from sideways movement, not an up-and-down movement this hint can only be used for this environment). Volcanoes would not be found here, but liquefaction and landslides could still occur here.

4. Volcanoes: If you thought earthquakes had a lot of information, volcanoes do too. First you have to ask yourself, what kind of volcano you want to have, what kind of eruption style? So lets break down the kind of eruptions you can have and what their landscapes look like. Hawaiian Shield volcano: This will produce a smooth fast lava, the landscape typically is pretty flat, but there will be small cones and the rocks can have a ropey or jagged texture and the rocks will be almost exclusively black to dark red.

Stratovolcanoes: These will be solitary mountains, typically, that look like perfect cones (Picture shown in earthquake section). These will have large ash cloud eruptions and pyroclastic flows, they may have some lava, but typically most damage is done from the pyroclastic flows (think Pompeii). Some hints of these, other than describing the cone features (which can be hidden by other mountains), would be to talk about petrified wood! Trees can get fossilized in the ash and I imagine it would be very strange to find this rock that clearly looks to be a piece of wood, but its a rock. Subcategory- Calderas: Used to be a large stratovolcano, but they erupt so explosively that the entire cone collapses and creates a basin.

There are a lot of kinds of volcanoes out there, so forgive me for just putting an infographic and then talking to you about these really rare types of eruptions that I feel like people should know about.

Okay lets talk about blue lava (kind of) and black lava

You will notice the lava is still red in the middle of this image, during the day these would look like a normal eruption, but at night the burning sulfur would make it appear blue. Some cool features other than this, would be that any water in the area would become very acidic and burn the skin due to sulfuric acid. This would again be really cool if you are trying to describe a 'cursed' land.

Black lava: This happens only in the east African rift I believe, but it is a carbonatite lava, but if you are writing in a rift valley (where the continent is tearing apart to form a new ocean) this might be a cool feature. The lava will cool white and will quickly erode, it makes for a very alien landscape!

Anyway as always, this is supposed to be an introductive guide for the basics of writing geology to create cool landscapes/features into dnd or fictional universes, if you are a geologist please understand my oversimplification of tectonics, I didn't want people to run away.

#geology #rocks #stem #dnd #dnd worldbuilding #worldbuilding stuff #fictional world #worldbuilding #fictional writing #writing resources #creative writing

[echoekhi]

I’m Declaring War Against “What If” Videos: Project Copy-Knight

What Are “What If” Videos?

These videos follow a common recipe: A narrator, given a fandom (usually anime ones like My Hero Academia and Naruto), explores an alternative timeline where something is different. Maybe the main character has extra powers, maybe a key plot point goes differently. They then go on and make up a whole new story, detailing the conflicts and romance between characters, much like an ordinary fanfic.

Except, they are fanfics. Actual fanfics, pulled off AO3, FFN and Wattpad, given a different title, with random thumbnail and background images added to them, narrated by computer text-to-speech synthesizers.

They are very easy to make: pick a fanfic, copy all the text into a text-to-speech generator, mix the resulting audio file with some generic art from the fandom as the background, give it a snappy title like “What if Deku had the Power of Ten Rings”, photoshop an attention-grabbing thumbnail, dump it onto YouTube and get thousands of views.

In fact, the process is so straightforward and requires so little effort, it’s pretty clear some of these channels have automated pipelines to pump these out en-masse. They don’t bother with asking the fic authors for permission. Sometimes they don’t even bother with putting the fic’s link in the description or crediting the author. These content-farms then monetise these videos, so they get a cut from YouTube’s ads.

In short, an industry has emerged from the systematic copyright theft of fanfiction, for profit.

Project Copy-Knight

Since the adversaries almost certainly have automated systems set up for this, the only realistic countermeasure is with another automated system. Identifying fanfics manually by listening to the videos and searching them up with tags is just too slow and impractical.

And so, I came up with a simple automated pipeline to identify the original authors of “What If” videos.

It would go download these videos, run speech recognition on it, search the text through a database full of AO3 fics, and identify which work it came from. After manual confirmation, the original authors will be notified that their works have been subject to copyright theft, and instructions provided on how to DMCA-strike the channel out of existence.

I built a prototype over the weekend, and it works surprisingly well:

On a randomly-selected YouTube channel (in this case Infinite Paradox Fanfic), the toolchain was able to identify the origin of half of the content. The raw output, after manual verification, turned out to be extremely accurate. The time taken to identify the source of a video was about 5 minutes, most of those were spent running Whisper, and the actual full-text-search query and Levenshtein analysis was less than 5 seconds.

The other videos probably came from fanfiction websites other than AO3, like fanfiction.net or Wattpad. As I do not have access to archives of those websites, I cannot identify the other ones, but they are almost certainly not original.

Armed with this fantastic proof-of-concept, I’m officially declaring war against “What If” videos. The mission statement of Project Copy-Knight will be the elimination of “What If” videos based on the theft of AO3 content on YouTube.

I Need Your Help

I am acutely aware that I cannot accomplish this on my own. There are many moving parts in this system that simply cannot be completely automated – like the selection of YouTube channels to feed into the toolchain, the manual verification step to prevent false-positives being sent to authors, the reaching-out to authors who have comments disabled, etc, etc.

So, if you are interested in helping to defend fanworks, or just want to have a chat or ask about the technical details of the toolchain, please consider joining my Discord server. I could really use your help.

------

See full blog article and acknowledgements here: https://echoekhi.com/2023/11/25/project-copy-knight/

#ao3 #fanfic #copyknight #theft #copyright