#mind you i don't think either of these relationships are abusive

[tina-mairin-goldstein]

What points do you think a lot of people get wrong about Will Graham?

Oh, another very good question given to me by an anon! Thank you. I'll try not to sound too petty. But this is personal opinion, keep in mind!

I think one thing they get wrong about Will is that he would not be submissive to Hannibal. I've seen fics and such where Will is totally submissive and compliant to Hannibal, and he would not be. He didn't fight tooth and nail to end up at Hannibal's side just to submit to him. He always pushed against Hannibal and met him. He wouldn't just give into this man's every whim. He would demand to be treated as an equal.

2. Another is that they believe he doesn't love Molly and Wally. He does. He just loved them differently than Hannibal. You can tell by his interactions with Molly and Wally that he did love them. You can love many people many different ways.

3. That he lets Hannibal spoil him. I think there is a line to this. He would, and he wouldn't. He would allow Hannibal to treat him like he's special, but not over-the-top or in a way that makes him uncomfortable. Hannibal would respect his boundaries.

4. Small thing, again fic related, but Will's connection with his dogs is deep. He would NOT give them up because Hannibal doesn't like them (and we have seen Hannibal being affectionate toward them, so I don't understand where that comes from) or only keep Winston. It's him and his dogs, or neither.

5. Will's relationship with his dad. I don't think it was the best, especially when he got older, but I don't think it was extremely bad, either. I don't think his dad abused him, though Will DID get extremely defensive when he thought Hannibal implied he was abused by someone other than himself. I think that could be because people thought his dad might have abused him in the past and he's tired of it. Not all bad relationships have to be abusive.

6. That Will would revenge abuse/harm/disfigure/aggravate the injuries of Hannibal post-fall. No. It's not in Will's nature. He did send Matthew after Hannibal, but that was in a state of deep emotional and mental despair, triggered by Hannibal killing Beverly.

7. That Will isn't every bit as dark as Hannibal. He is, in his own way, and he definitely Became with killing the Dragon. He isn't a wide-eyed innocent anymore. That was season 1 Will, and that is not who he is now.

That's all I can think of for now, and I hope this answered your question! I thought long and hard on this, so sorry for getting the reply back later than I wanted to.

#ask answered #nbc hannibal #hannibal #will graham

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

having a lot of thoughts about how people use 'normalize' when they mean 'destigmatize' or 'make the nature of into common knowledge,' and how they conflate 'the perception of this thing as normal' with the thing actually being a normal occurrence, and how it is in fact incredibly harmful to try to convince people that an ideal situation is normal when that does not map onto their lived reality or the dangers they need to be aware of to avoid. it is 3:33am though so writing up an actual poast about it will have to wait for later

#whosebaby talks #this post brought to you by 'spreading awareness of what an abusive relationship is and looks like compared to a nonabusive relationship' #'is fantastic and i support it fully and think it's deeply important. giving people the false idea that abusive relationships are uncommon' #'and are flukes that go against the grain of society functioning as it normally does; is insanely dangerous to people who are potential #targets; and incredibly alienating and isolating and cruel to people who have already been targets' #'in uniquely awful ways depending on whether they're already aware of that or aren't. don't fucking do that' #it applies much more broadly than that; but it's an instance i think about A Lot and it's what led me to this line of thought to start with #there's also 'normal does not mean good and saying so has incredibly unbelievably harmful implications keep that shit out of your mouth' #but that is so obvious it boggles my mind that it has to be explained to anyone on this site; and it is talked about often enough #that i would rather focus on the parts i don't really see talked about much; if at all #also like the fact that 'statistically average' normal vs 'things are functioning as they usually do' is a critically important distinction #they are closely related and interplay heavily with each other but they are Not the Same Thing #and how 'normal' can refer to different layers and aspects of a subject--people with rare health conditions are not statistically average #and that by itself is fine. and those people having conditions that are disruptive to the usual functioning of a space or system #is avoidable in some cases by establishing as much infrastructure as possible to integrate their more common needs smoothly #and unavoidable in others; which means the normal functioning of a system/space that accommodates people with unexpected needs #has to account *for its normal functioning being disrupted sometimes* #and bend around that disruption without either breaking down or rolling right over the disabled people who Cause Problems #and at the same time 'rare health condition' gets applied to health conditions that are not rare *at all* to not only justify not bothering #to make the system integrate their needs in general when it could do so easily; but make it so that accommodating their needs anyway puts #immense and unnecessary strain on the system; so there is zero margin for anything you didn't specifically fight tooth and nail for already #anyway it's a really extensive subject and a fascinating one. for later. sleep now #abuse cw #ableism cw #the salt files #is there a name for that tag

[kiwisbell]

Red Light [landlord!joel miller]

The men you keep bringing home are no good for you. It's up to your landlord Joel to protect you from heartbreak. 

my masterlist!

pairing: joel miller x f!reader

rating: 18+ (mdni)

tags and warnings: AU - no outbreak/modern day, obsessive!joel, dark!joel, but also soft!joel, landlord!joel, violence, death, murder, stalking, jealousy, truly creepy behaviour, unprotected sex (lead by example; just not mine), creampie, dubious consent, reader’s serious lack of self-preservation, sexual tension, abuse of power, spanking, spitting, squirting, praise kink, degradation kink, joel is a munch, somnophilia, possessive behaviour, dirty talk, a smidgen of gaslighting, the general filth you should expect from me by now, a spoonful of genuine intimate connection™️, implied age gap, submissive reader, dominant joel, daddy kink, knives, mild torture, light anal play, voyeurism, unreliable narration, inappropriate use of a necklace, panty sniffing, ambiguous(?) ending

word count: ~ 15.8k (uh, oops!)

read on ao3!

hello, all! this fic has been tossing and turning inside the proverbial sheets of my head for a while now. when i tell you it's darker than anything i've written, i mean it, so please, please mind the tags. this story does not depict a healthy relationship; joel is a total creep and both he and reader are heavily delusional. with that said, please enjoy this (super long) one-shot!! xoxo

PREFACE

Stars, hide your fires; Let not light see my black and deep desires. — Macbeth, I.IV

~

THE TENANT

You're beginning to think it’s a built-in bad luck charm. A microchip implanted in your skin or a flaw you have yet to pick out. Every single one of your prospective boyfriends has disappeared off the face of the Earth since you moved into town. 

It isn't you. It's not. There is nothing wrong with you. It isn't your fault that either they decide after one date that you aren't worth seeing again, or they stand you up before the date can even begin. Your profile pictures are decent. You followed the rules meticulously: a shot of your face, a group picture to show you have friends, a selfie, a candid. You've examined them time and time again for flaws and find none that a man would care about. You're pretty. Sexy. Confident. They're just intimidated. Fuck, you're turning into your mother.

And yet—

Since moving into this apartment—this beautiful, once-in-a-lifetime deal of an apartment—your luck with dating has abruptly ended. 

It's a lovely building. A stout brownstone with wrought-iron stairs and an old, but functional, elevator, it's traditional and charming. Perfect for a single woman. 

Six months. This is your first second date in six months. David is just fine. He's handsome in a frat-initiate kind of way, with a nice smile and a good sense of dress. He doesn't ask many questions about you, and he's a little pretentious about films you don't give a shit about, but he likes you. You didn't have a horrible time on the first date: he wasn't afraid to spend his money on you at the nice restaurant. And he has a car. 

Raised as an optimist, you learned to see the good parts of a situation. David can work out. 

On the way out of the elevator, you spot your landlord Joel speaking to the concierge. You instinctively smooth down your hair and wave at him as you walk by, shrugging your purse onto your shoulder. “Hi, Joel. Hi, Sam.”

Sam the concierge waves back, but Joel puts his back to the conversation and gives you his full attention, bracing his hands on the edge of the desk. Your heart leaps and your head goes fuzzy with nerves. You barely manage to force a giddy giggle back down your throat. Relief coats your bones when Sam excuses himself to take a call.

Joel Miller’s an older guy, his tousled dark hair threaded with silver on his head and in his beard. One look at him and a person could know that he works with his hands for a living; he’s broad-shouldered, strong, with big arms and a capable air about him. He’s proven his mettle a hundred times over already with the miniscule repairs he’s made to the building. He turned it into a good place to live; he even trims the hedges outside and polishes the doorknobs when they get rusty. 

He’s wearing a green T-shirt today, which is another member of the typical summertime circulation of blue and grey T-shirts, and a pair of jeans. “Evening,” he says, his rich brown eyes sparkling. Sometimes, you can see him smile when his mouth isn’t showing it. It’s charming. Enthralling. “How’s that new lock workin’ out for you?”

You grin. He remembered. Joel installed a new deadbolt on your door last week, since the chain on the last one broke. “It’s perfect,” you tell him. “Are you in a chocolate or lemon mood this time?”

His gaze flickers down your body, taking in your yellow dress, before meeting yours again. “Lemon,” he says.

You bite the inside of your cheek. Talking to a handsome man feels like tossing your heart in the air and trying to juggle. Flirting with a handsome man is like toeing a tightrope between two mountains and forcing yourself not to look down. Your stomach swoops with the path of his eyes over your body, and you cannot convince yourself that you imagined it. “Lemon squares it is. Thank you again, Joel.”

“Just my job to keep my tenants safe,” he says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. You can see a pair of keys in his pocket along with his cell phone. The mere sight of his belt makes your cheeks hot. Why are you looking at his belt? You’re going on a date with another man, for God’s sake. Relax.

“Helps when I like my tenants so much,” adds Joel, and you forget why you were scolding yourself in the first place. 

“Yeah?” You tilt your head to the side. “Maybe you should be baking for them, instead.”

Joel steps away from the desk, working his jaw as he seems to fight down a smile. “It’s for the best this way, believe me. Can’t cook for shit.”

“Big, strong man like you can’t work a stove?” you tease. Don’t look down. 

“I only fix ‘em.” There’s a crooked smile on his face now, and your heart beats your ribs to shrapnel. “You look real nice. Goin’ somewhere?”

That simple validation calms your nerves more effectively than a half-hour of repeating affirmations into the mirror before leaving your apartment. You give the skirt of your sundress a little swish. “A date, actually,” you say, feeling sheepish. Your landlord certainly doesn’t need to hear about your track record as of late. “He’s taking me to Sunfest, in the park.”

A minute twitch of his brow is the only reaction he gives to the news. “That so?” he says. “Lucky man.”

“More like lucky me,” you say with a small laugh, tucking your hair behind your ear. Stop talking, you plead to yourself. Too much information. Shut up, kindly excuse yourself, and leave. 

Joel shakes his head, and now is the first time you notice that his eyes haven’t once left you. It warms your body. “He’s the lucky one. Trust me.”

“Okay. I concede.” You chew on your lip for a moment and, sure enough, his gaze hones in on your mouth. The air in the lobby crackles white-hot. You clear your throat, turning your head to find David’s car parked on the street outside. “I should go. But I promise I’ll get started on those lemon squares soon.”

It’s a possibility that you only imagine Joel’s eyes flitting from the car outside back to you when you turn your head back to face him. “Do me a favour?” he says, a scrape to his deep drawl. 

“Anything, Joel.”

A muscle in his jaw ticks. “Be safe,” he says. “You have my number if anything goes wrong.”

You give him a grateful smile. “I’ll be safe, Joel. And if I’m not, you’re the first person I’ll call.”

“Good. That’s…” He trails off, still watching you, his eyes trained in their path across your face. “You’re good. Smart, beautiful, good. You deserve to have somethin’ real.”

The simple, small praises melt your bone marrow and recast it in the shape of him. The old chandelier hanging from the ceiling casts him in a soft light, stark against the hard muscles and profound depths in his eyes. He's breathtaking. You've always known it, but…

He sees something in you, too. 

David honks his horn and makes you jump out of your stupor. You walk backwards out of the lobby just to keep looking at Joel for as long as you can. “For the record,” you say, “you’re a good man, Joel.”

“Don’t be so sure, honey,” he replies, his tone playful. 

You laugh, hurrying out to David’s car as the door closes behind you. 

“This place is beautiful,” you said to Sam, the concierge working the front desk of your prospective apartment. The appropriate paperwork was in your arms, your eyes scanning every inch of the old building. Of all the places you'd seen in and around the neighbourhood, this was the most promising. You hoped to get a glimpse at a unit before you signed, though. Assuming the landlord even wanted you to live here. 

Sam smiled at you. “Lots of people just see the cracks.”

“There's so much character,” you replied, admiring the crystal chandelier. The walls were a calming, aged white, the floors genuine hardwood. The lobby was decorated with plush chairs upholstered with burnt orange fabric, the corners filled with real potted plants. 

The door opened behind you, and you turned to see a handsome stranger, dressed in a pair of dirty jeans and mud-caked shirt, wiping his forehead with his forearm. Behind you, Sam said, “This is Joel Miller. The landlord.”

“Oh!” You were flustered, floundering to stretch out your hand to shake as you introduced yourself. “I’m sorry to catch you at a bad time. This building is gorgeous. You've done a great job with it, Mr. Miller.”

The landlord did not once look at Sam, his eyes fixed solely on you as he wiped a hand on the cloth slung over his shoulder and shook your hand. His hand engulfed yours, warm and rough. The touch jolted you like an electric shock. Your hands must have been clammy and shaking with nerves, but the contact steeled you. 

The intensity of his gaze, however, made you shift on your feet. He didn't waver, didn't stray, like a man set on a mission. Nothing about him was shy. He drank in the sight of you, indulging without shame, his eyes travelling to the next destination once they'd had their fill. It made you feel stripped to the bone.

“It's nice to meet you,” he said. “Sorry for the dirt. Just finished weeding.”

You shook your head in dismissal. “You really take care of this place.”

“It's good work,” he said plainly. “Serves me well. I like gettin’ my hands dirty, fixin’ things.”

“Where were you when my sink broke every week at my old place?”

“Fixing the sinks in this one.”

You laughed. “Well, for what it's worth, the outside is beautiful, too. Not a weed in sight.”

“Pleased to hear it,” said Joel, his dark eyes glittering under the chandelier. 

“You're from Texas!” you said suddenly. Oh, God, kill me now. I sound like a stalker. 

But Joel smiled, a raspy laugh leaving his mouth. You wondered if he laughed often. He looked like a serious man. “You familiar?” 

“I was born there,” you supplied. “Left when I was young, but my dad lived there all his life.”

“Lookin’ good on you already,” he said. “It’ll be nice havin’ another one of us around.”

“Does that mean you're considering me?” you couldn't help but ask. Fuck, you wanted this apartment. 

“I've already considered,” said Joel, his eyes sweeping your body. “You're the only applicant.”

Your hands were trembling and your heart thrummed with excitement. “Oh, God, thank you!” you gasped. “Joel, thank you.”

You could swear his chest swelled a bit at your graciousness. “I can show you the unit, if you’d like. It needs some TLC, but I’m happy to help with the process as best I can. Unless you have someone to…”

You realised what he was hinting at and shook your head. “Oh, no, it’s just me. I’d love to take a look.”

You noted the slight drop of his shoulders and followed him into the elevator. A part of you was surprised to see there was no gate that closed you in; they were plain, somewhat modern elevator doors. “Fixed it last month,” Joel said, looking sideways at you. “Just in time, apparently.”

You grinned at him, bouncing on the balls of your feet. “Nice to see there's no creepy operator in here.”

“Just me.” He punched the button for the third floor and rode with you to the top. 

This was the start of your new life. 

You shut the passenger’s side door and situate yourself inside David’s Lincoln. He’s dressed in a pair of black shorts and a clean Henley. “Hey, beautiful,” he says, leaning in to kiss you across the console. 

You hum, smiling against his mouth. “You clean up nice, too.”

He places a hand on your thigh and pulls away from the curb. He's a touchy person, which is perfectly fine considering how long your latest dry spell has lasted, but at least he isn't inching his way up your dress to cop a feel while he drives. 

The festival is bustling with people, tented stands, and the smell of fried dough and beer. It’s almost dinnertime, and your stomach growls. When was the last time you ate? You spent hours agonising over what to wear until you were sweating and had to shower all over again. You wish you’d snuck an apple into your purse. 

David pulls you into him as you both walk through the winding paths between vendors. “It’s a beautiful night,” you say breezily. 

David squeezes your waist. “Mmm. You’re beautiful.”

A bit too corny for your taste, but you let it slide. “Don't tell me you're allergic to powdered sugar, because I’ve been eyeing the elephant ears.”

“God, if I eat that shit, I think it’ll set me back a month at the gym,” he laughs. “Let’s get one for you, though.”

Great. Now you're the expensive date who eats while her date watches her stuff her mouth with an elephant ear. “Uh. Maybe later.” 

You stop at a jewellery vendor and spend a good while eyeing up a beautiful gold necklace and the heart-shaped pendant dangling from it. David doesn’t notice your staring and breezes by with your hand firmly in his. “Let's check out the grand stand. My buddy’s band is playing before the fireworks display.”

“Sure,” you say, turning your head to watch the necklace disappear slowly from view. 

The gigantic domed stage houses a group of musicians currently tuning up their instruments. David sidles right up to the front and releases your hand to execute an elaborate handshake with his friend, who’s fine-tuning his bass. 

“Hey, man,” greets the bass player. “Good to see you. Who’s this?”

You open your mouth to introduce yourself, stretching your hand out, but David says, “My date for tonight. Baby, this is Ray, of Uncontrolled Bleeding fame.”

The bass player shakes your hand politely. “Very nice to meet you.” 

Because it doesn’t seem to matter much to David, you decide it’s worth the time to tell Ray your name. “It’s nice to meet you, Ray. I’m excited to hear you play.”

Not that you've ever heard of a band called Uncontrolled Bleeding. Still, Ray seems nice enough, and you're on a date. You should give them a chance. 

David squeezes your waist and kisses you lightly on the temple. “You mind if I go backstage for a bit to say hi to the other guys? Won’t be long.”

What?

“Oh!” you manage to eke out over the great swooping nosedive your heart has just performed. He’s here to see his friends. He’s not on a date. “Of course. Take your time. I’ll just… walk around.”

David departs with Ray for a personal backstage tour while you bite down on your tongue and turn back in the direction of the main strip. A few vendors catch your attention, and you take your time because God knows David is taking his. A little bit of you revels in your own petty victory when, a half-hour later, Uncontrolled Bleeding begins to blare their metallic, screaming anthems across the park and you haven’t returned to the grand stand. 

You find your way back to the jewellery vendor to ponder over your favourite necklace some more, but your night gets worse when you find that it’s disappeared from the headless display mannequin. You solemnly slide your wallet back into your bag and pause when you hear your phone ringing.

“Hello?”

“Where are you?” It’s David’s voice, presumably, though it’s so loud on the other end of the line that you can barely make out his words. “I can’t… where… left?”

You plug one ear and look vaguely in the direction of the grand stand across the park. “I can’t hear you very well, David.”

“… afterparty… downtown… going… Uber home?”

You press your lips together and look down at the ground: at your pretty sandals, your new dress. Your entirely wasted potential on a guy who wanted you to find your own way home. “Yeah, David,” you say tightly. You don’t particularly care if he can hear you. “You have fun with your friends.”

“Can’t hear… talk later… okay?”

You hang up and wander back toward the vendor selling elephant ears. 

~

“Miller.”

“Hi, Joel.”

“Honey, it’s loud. Can barely hear you. Are you safe?”

“I’m safe, Joel, I promise. It’s just—Uncontrolled Bleeding.”

“What?”

“No, I mean, the band. They’re really loud. I hate to ask, and I know it’s late, but—”

“What do you need?”

“I, uh… I need a ride home. I can’t get a cab, and all the Ubers around are taken, and the busses are rerouted all the way—”

“I’m comin’ to get you. You just wait for me at the entrance, okay, baby girl?”

“Thank you, Joel.”

“You know I said you could call me for anything. I meant it.”

“Okay. I’ll see you soon.”

“I’ll see you soon.”

“Oh! Wait—”

“What? What is it?”

“Do you want an elephant ear?”

~

Joel is white-knuckling the steering wheel when he arrives to pick you up. Despite the congestion around the festival grounds and the fact that your apartment is at least fifteen minutes away, Joel makes it to you in a mere five.

“Did you blow every red light to get here, Mr. Miller?” you ask with a playful smile as you secure your seatbelt and settle on the truck bench.

“I was in the area,” he says with a crooked smile, looking your way. “May have pushed forty a couple times, though.”

You sheepishly extend a cardboard takeout box filled with fried, powdered dough. “Will you take this as my sincere thanks, or will you expect a separate batch of lemon squares?”

Joel answers by dipping his head and taking a bite of the flattened, doughy bread. You watch every minute movement, his strong jaw working as he chews, indulging you even though he’s already done far too much to get you out of this rut. He doesn’t once break eye contact while he eats; you begin to chew subconsciously on your bottom lip.

“Ain’t bad,” he declares at last, and your shoulders deflate with a kind of relief, “but if you let me take you for some real dinner, I’ll forget about that extra batch.”

You tentatively reach for his mouth and swipe some powdered sugar from his moustache with the pad of your thumb. You feel his eyes scanning your face all the while. “Look at me, the lucky girl,” you say softly. “One date goes wrong, and there’s a strong, handsome man waiting to take me on another.”

From the very first day, Joel Miller has always taken his time when it comes to looking at you. It’s a penetrative stare that makes your skin heat up from the tips of your ears down to your chest. His eyes are so dark, pools of warm melted sugar, and you feel yourself leaning, trancelike, slow, into that cavernous gaze. Your body is not your own. It seeks the subtle warmth, the familiar scent—sawdust, coffee beans, rich, dark cologne—and the violent torrent of sensation that erupts from the contact point when he cups your cheek in one hand. 

You’re in the throes of attention, warm as a candle weeping fat waxen tears.

“Told you before,” says Joel, his thumb sweeping fondly across your chin, “you deserve somethin’ real.”

“Yeah,” you sigh happily, feeling all-too complacent under the touch of his rough palm, “maybe I do.”

Behind you, a car honks its horn, and Joel curses, pulling away from the curb. He takes you to Turner’s, a bar by campus that would be crawling with students if it weren’t for the festival. Joel comes around to the passenger’s door and opens it for you, helping you hop out with your hand enclosed in his. His palm is a steady weight on your back as you both walk inside the dim, stuffy bar. 

The back is bustling with activity—drunk folks playing pool or watching the Huskies’ football game or splitting their attention between both—but the bar itself has enough spaces open to fit the two of you. Here, the light is burnt orange, and it makes the strands of grey in his hair shimmer gold. His eyes observe his surroundings with a military precision before they flit back to you, magnetic.

“Shame to waste this dress on that asshole,” says Joel, sweeping his gaze down, back up, barely perceptible. “You’re too goddamn pretty for any of ‘em.”

You’re deliciously abuzz with the incisive way he compliments you. It feels like being punctured down to your very soul; you will never forget the shape of the stain his words leave. “Do you spy on all my dates, Joel?”

He smirks. “Don’t need to spy on ‘em, baby. They’re a bunch of obnoxious kids.”

You huff, resting your cheek against your palm. “I just don’t get it. I thought David was just fine. Then, he takes me on a date just to abandon me for his friends and tell me to find my own way home.”

Joel shakes his head, scoffing as he runs his fingers through his beard. He does that when he’s frustrated sometimes, and you wonder if his hair is soft or coarse. “Piece of shit doesn't know how good he got it.”

“You must know something I don’t,” you say mirthlessly, watching the bartender approach from the other end of the long honey-oak block. “I haven't been able to get a second date since I moved in.”

Joel is silent, eyes still firmly fixed to you, until the bartender arrives, a charming middle-aged woman with a particular Texan twang you could recognise from a mile away. “What’ll it be, Joel?” she asks, giving him a sweet dimpled smile. “Hi, honey. This old man botherin’ you?”

“Only in a nice way,” you reply, squeezing his shoulder. 

Joel hides his grin with a swipe of his fingers over his bottom lip. “Coffee for me, Rina. Drivin’ home.”

Rina’s eyes slide to you, and you ask for the same. You don't want to drink alone. She reappears moments later with two small, chipped mugs of dark roast in her hands. Setting them in front of you, she takes your food orders: a BLT for Joel and a veggie burger for yourself. It’s almost ten o’clock now, too late to eat, but your eyes droop sleepily and your stomach growls for a taste of real food. The powdered dough, shockingly, did not suffice. 

“You ever miss Texas?” Joel asks once you're halfway into your respective meals. You notice that he only digs into his sandwich when you aren't eating, and abstains briefly to watch while you take your bites. It's an exchange of energy, a steady vigil by your side, the hypnotic pull of his warm body. You cannot scoot any closer to him, but your leg brushes his where you rest your foot on his barstool. 

“I wish I remembered more of it,” you tell him. “I grew up a big city girl. Even lost my accent a year into being away. My dad would tease me about it all the time. Said I’d been gentrified.” You fondly shake your head. “Miss him like hell.”

“I can still hear it sometimes,” says Joel, tilting his head to the side, “when you get all passionate about somethin’. Like the time I installed your deadbolt and you tried to explain away your Backstreet Boys CD.”

You put your head in your hands. “Oh, God. I thought you'd forgotten.”

“Nuh-uh, baby, you ain't easy to forget. And I like when you get excited. You get this look in your eye.”

“Yeah?” You slide your foot up his ankle and bring the leg of his jeans with it. Up, down, you keep going, letting the relative darkness embolden you, his sweet little pet names and his silent adequacy enabling what is most definitely inappropriate behaviour. “Tell me about this look, Joel.”

He rests his elbow up on the bar and squares his broad shoulders to you. They eclipse all the other patrons behind him. “You've got pretty eyes,” he tells you. “First thing I noticed when I met you all those months ago. Saw how they lit up when you smiled. Heard your happiness when you told me about Texas. It was nice to be the reason you smiled, ‘n’ I just wanted to make it happen again. I couldn't say no to you. Don't know how any man ever could.”

The revelation stuns you in your seat. His expression telegraphs little save for his attentiveness, his posture locked parallel with yours, singularly focused on the way you react to him. 

You try for a joke. “And I was the only applicant.”

It crumbles, sand in your mouth. Something has shifted. Joel isn't the type to shy away from a conversation, but his gaze hasn't once shifted from your face. It feels like flames licking your cheeks, the heat of that look pushing in on both sides, inescapable. You find that you enjoy the way his attention makes you preen; you want him to look at you. 

He thinks you have pretty eyes. 

“You know that ain't the reason why,” he says, whisper-quiet and gruff amid the vague chatter in the bar. 

“Why, Joel?” you ask, spine straightening, teeth sinking into your bottom lip. As you suspected, his eyes flick down your face, lashes obscuring the precise shade of his irises. 

His Adam’s apple dips. “‘Cause I like you,” he says, the feeling of it like the slide of suede down your spine, “and I wanna keep you safe.”

You shrug slightly, giving him a smile. “I feel pretty safe.”

Joel’s hand drops to the bar top and his fingertips brush yours. The touch jolts your sleepy mind awake. “You're too good for every single one of those assholes you bring around. You know that, right?”

“I’m beginning to understand.” 

“You deserve someone who's gonna be good to you. Give you all the attention you need. Make you… happy.”

You swallow thickly, the candle flame pressing in, sucking the oxygen from your lungs. “Thank you, Joel.”

His fingers begin to creep up every ridge of your knuckles, slowly turning over your palm so it faces the ceiling. The rough pad of his thumb traces the long lifeline inside. 

“Repeat it.”

His eyes lift to yours, and for a moment, there’s something in them that ignites an instinct inside you to flee. There's danger in those eyes: the careful, measured restraint of a man who knows more anger than he lets show. A flicker, brief but incandescent, passes through your head, an electrical current. 

He’s the reason you never had a second date. 

It disappears the instant it comes, the Paterian glimpse of an idea in its entirety fleeing for the horizon, and the instinct recedes in favour of the warm, melting sensation his fingers disseminate through your bones. 

“I deserve someone who will be good to me,” you repeat, like a mantra. “I deserve someone who’s going to make me happy, and keep me safe.”

“That's right,” says Joel, brushing his thumb along the veins in your wrist. You feel the shiver, but you're locked to him, your eyes unable to take in any information apart from the way he feels, looks, smells. “You're a good girl, baby.”

Your lashes flutter and a sweeping rush of pressure descends on your core at the way those words sound on his tongue. You picture him directing you to your knees and calling you a good girl while you take his big cock between your lips, imagine the way he would hiss through his teeth, good fuckin’ girl, that’s it, baby girl, while he fucks you from behind, merciless. Hands and tongues and limbs would mould into one another, amalgamate, becoming indistinguishable. 

He would be good to you. You know it. He’s always been good to you. 

“Joel?” 

“Hmm.” Fingers still make idle patterns on your forearm. 

“I think you should take a look at my sink when you get a chance. It might be broken.”

No amount of coy suggestion could make him ignorant to your desire for closeness. You can feel your body screaming for it, grasping at him with buffed claws. Joel smirks, looking down at your foot making a path up and down his ankle. 

“I’ll take a look tomorrow.”

~

It’s two o’clock in the morning when a shuffling outside your bedroom door guides you out of a decent sleep. In total silence, the most minute noises can be deafening. But it sounds, to your sleep-addled brain, like the hasty retreat of footsteps. 

You blink awake, shifting onto your other side to peer above the darkness of your doorway. Through the bleary haze in your eyes, you notice a tiny red light in the upper corner of the room.  

You squint, rubbing your eyes furiously to pry them open wide, but your vision is the static grain of an old television, and your eyes refuse to adjust. Instead, you grumble, pulling your comforter over your head, and go back to sleep. 

You’ll tell Joel tomorrow.

THE LANDLORD

He cannot wait until the morning.

The nighttime, he discovered long ago, is a friend. It’s the gentle descent of darkness, the horizontal fall of the golden-hour sunlight scanning the entirety of the apartment before it at last succumbs to silent, tar-black night. Occasionally, a car will pass below, or the honk of a horn will tear jaggedly through the quiet, but most times, Joel can sink comfortably into the dark and assume his post.

Six months ago, he showed some restraint. 

Of course, the connection was instantaneous—the pretty girl standing in his foyer with a radiant smile on her face, drinking in the chipped paint and ancient railings and furniture imprinted with years of use, arrested all movement of his heart. You wore a white dress and a pair of strappy sandals, not suited whatsoever for walking the city but perfectly tailored to make an impression. You arrived punctually, all smiles and handshakes and Southern politeness despite your insistence that you'd left it all behind. You shone. And when Joel slid his rough, work-worn hand into yours, dipping his gaze to watch the way he dwarfed your fingers, he felt a tremor roll gently from your body to his, thunder over a mountain. He wanted to chase the next lightning strike. 

It began leisurely, like a hobby, something he could go to when life got a little much. He watched you come home, examining the way your shoulders rounded slightly when you were upset and the way you wiggled your fingers in a wave to those passing by when you were happy. He watched, typically from the garden out front, as you pranced about your balcony on cool mornings to the electronic croonings of Britney Spears, curled up in a chair with a blanket over your legs and a coffee mug warming your hands, or watered your thriving plants from where they hung in the direct morning sunlight. Your day-to-day became his day-to-day. 

And then, he was doing more than merely watching. He was following. 

Your favourite coffee place by the apartment building, just a block away. He lingered far behind that first morning, his fingers twitching in your direction before the rest of his body steered him. The neighbourhood wasn't so great back then, prone to muggings and the like. He wanted to keep you safe. That was all.

You ordered something cold, too sweet for his tastes, and sat for a while as you worked. The barista spent the rest of your time there eyeing you up whenever he could. Joel scoffed. He wouldn't know what the fuck to do with you. Just a goddamn kid. 

He followed you to work and back, on those rare days he wasn't occupied maintaining the grounds. You sat in a corner cubicle with a decent amount of sunlight and typed away on your laptop all day. Joel monitored the company’s publications just so he could have a glimpse of the way you wrote; he wasn't interested in makeup, but he bought a subscription to Viva because he wanted to trace his fingers over your name in those small italic letters. MANAGING EDITOR. 

Your writing is clean, efficient, and smooth. It reads like velvet. He keeps a pile of magazines and newsletters tucked in the back of his bookshelf. For the August edition, they printed your interview with a local prizewinning novelist; you beamed in the picture, photographed in your favourite coffee shop, so happy and so generous, sharing your talent with others. 

He was so fucking proud. 

Five months ago, he watched you bring a date home for the first time. 

It blindsided him. He could not prepare, plan, or sabotage. He could not do a thing as you guided the man—a fucking kid with a too-big ego, grinning smugly for his imminent conquest—inside the elevator. Joel could only watch helplessly, wiping his brow from his precarious place on the ladder, as you walked past him with no more than a soft, sweet smile. He never forgot the painful imprint of that smile on his eyelids. It still burns his eyes late at night, when he stays awake inside his office, monitoring his dual screens. He will pinch the bridge of his nose and close his eyes just to replay the memory of that look. 

The kid left the next morning, before you woke. He never contacted you again. You trudged into the lobby that day, a weariness in your eyes that did not match the vibrant colour of your dress. You spoke idly to another woman in the elevator about your broken thermostat, hugging yourself to keep warm. 

It was working perfectly a few hours later, and there was a bouquet of roses waiting for you at the concierge’s desk. Fiddling with the red ribbon, tears welling in your eyes, you asked who the admirer was. Sam shrugged his shoulders, but when you turned to look out the front windows, you saw Joel tending to the red roses in the garden bed. 

It earned him the first taste of your baking. Biting into one of those moist, warm brownies felt like melting a little piece of you down and moulding it into the shape of his mouth. It felt like taking a piece of the girl he’d coveted for weeks and rolling it over his tongue, keeping it. Swallowing it down. There it rested inside his stomach until the next time he did you right. 

He wanted to tell you no. To insist that he would do anything to make you feel good even if you wanted nothing to do with him. To make it clear that he did everything for you, not for some feeble professional relationship between a landlord and his tenant. He breathed you. He needed you. 

So, four months ago, he began to watch you through the cameras.

They’re small, discreet, tucked into holes in the wall that have been spackled over, repainted, re-sanded. He ran the wiring while you were at work, listening to your CDs on loop to get a better sense of the earworms you hummed on your way out the door every morning. One in the living room, one by the entrance, and one in the bedroom. 

He could keep you safe this way. This way, he would know if those men you brought you home were treating you right—fucking you like you deserved. 

You were so goddamn pretty when you came. For months Joel had sat in his office, slicked-up cock in his hand, jerking himself hard and fast to the pictures of you in Viva. For months he’d spilled over his fingers, on his belly, on the glossy pages of the magazines. The heady, cloying scent of his own sweat and cum stuck to his nostrils. It wasn’t enough. He could imagine wrenching open your tight little pussy all he wanted—the slow, heavy drag of his cock between your hot, wet walls and the sweet noises he’d steal from your tongue—but it wasn’t the satisfaction he needed. 

Joel needed you. Your body, your smile, your voice. He needed to wrap you tight around every vein, a tourniquet, squeezing until all feeling was lost.

You would be his, in time. He just needed to make it so.

The first time he watched you pleasure yourself, rain pattered gently against the window panes and thunder echoed in the distance. A couple grids had already lost power, and Joel had a backup generator if the apartment was next, but you did not seem to mind one bit that the storm drew closer. You clicked off the television, retired to the confines of your bed and its soft white linens, and slipped your hand beneath your flimsy shorts. Joel sat upright, his back creaking in protest, his knuckles white around the edge of his desk as he watched, unblinking, the way your fingers gently circled your clit. 

He didn't touch his cock once that night, no matter how deeply his own need tugged at him. He couldn't look away from the camera feed for fear that he may miss the moment you reached your orgasm. 

When it arrived, it was delicious to watch. Your back arched, your lips parted, and your eyes fluttered shut, fingers rapidly rubbing your slick pussy as you seized under your own ministrations and slowly settled, melting into the mattress. He needed to see more. He needed to be there. 

You were a chiaroscuro of savoury, sultry magnetism and the ichor of the morning sunlight. You were kind and thoughtful. You were gentle, patient, attentive. You were one hell of a baker. You were so fucking sexy it made his tongue prickle with the prospective taste, the anticipation of touching your soft skin engulfing any sense. Reason had no place in Joel Miller’s mind when it came to the sweet girl upstairs. 

Three months ago, you had recovered from the evident betrayal inherent in expecting more from your date than a one-night stand. The next man was older, a partner at a law firm, and took you to dinner at a nice restaurant. He asked questions about you and reciprocated your enthusiasm for good cuisine. He was kind and treated you well. But an incendiary rage ignited in Joel at the sight of the bastard’s hand on your lower back. Another man was touching you. Another man was getting close to you, making you smile, whispering in your ear. Another man was attempting to claim what was rightfully his. 

Joel followed your date home that night instead. He lived in a high-rise downtown, the sort of building that had a doorman and a valet. 

Joel followed him down to the underground lot with a lead pipe in hand. 

“‘scuse me.”

He shut his car door and turned around, giving Joel a polite smile. “What can I do for you?”

A calculated sheepish scratch on the back of his head. “Just… ah, shit, I don’t mean to bother, but my engine isn't turnin' over and my phone died. Mind if I used yours?”

He patted his pockets for his cell and gave it enthusiastically. Joel did not take the phone. He used the proximity to pull the man close and bring the pipe down across his head. 

Blood bloomed, pretty and potent and rich as the roses he planted for you. The body made little noise, the skull shattered upon impact, the legs crumpling. It could never have been much of a man, going down so fucking quick. Should've put up a fight. 

The man must not have liked you very much to let himself die. Joel, whose eyelids were tattooed with your radiant smile, would have crawled his way back out of a certain grave. Joel loved you. You belonged to him. This was a necessary consequence. 

The pipe was dented by the time he was finished. Joel sank to his knees once the body fell, bringing it down again and again, the meticulous arc of the rusted metal uniquely stirring. It felt so fucking good, battering the skull to pieces, blood and brain and bone fragments accumulating on the ground and the pipe and his face. It felt good knowing he had kept another man from betraying you, hurting you, fucking you only to leave in a blur. He was being altruistic. He was becoming a good man for you. 

Joel, kneeling in the pool of warm blood until his jeans were soaked crimson, rubbed his hand down his face and smeared the blood across it. Chest heaving, he let the grin stretch his face. 

He had found his calling. 

Two months ago, he slipped inside your apartment while you were asleep.

You had a rough day. Your boss insisted the company could not afford to give you a raise despite skyrocketing share prices and all the fucking work you’d done for them. The rain started just before you left the building, holding back tears, and a car splashed icy, muddy water on you during your walk home. Salt in the wound. You were sniffling as you let yourself into the apartment, your hands trembling with the effort of shouldering your bag and your misery. Joel approached you from behind and lifted the bag onto his shoulder. 

“Hi, Joel.” Sad and soft and still so polite despite it all. 

“Hey.” He opened every door for you on the way to the elevator and rode it up with you for good measure. “Wanna talk about it?”

You just shook your head and sidled up next to him, your cheek resting on his shoulder. He held his breath, overcome with the sensation that if he moved an inch, the spell would break, and the comfort you sought from him would slip between your fingers. Your arm brushed his, your dewy lashes fluttering as you finally let yourself relax. Joel inhaled, and the scent of you cleaved him down the middle: rain and perfume. 

“Would you give me a raise?”

He looked down at you and smiled. “For a batch of those cupcakes, I’d give you whatever you like.”

It was a half-truth. He’d give you whatever you wanted, cupcakes or no. The sound of your laughter dripped into his bloodstream, saline. It cleansed him of the wrongs he'd committed. He was doing what needed to be done. The world had to realise it turned for you, and then all would be right. 

Hours later, when the sun finally dipped below the horizon, shrouded by distant skyscrapers, he sneaked his way inside. His master key made easy work of the lock, but he had to pull the chain lock off with a pair of pliers because his hands could not reach between the gap. He made clinical work of it and stepped inside. 

There was a chair in the corner of your bedroom for days you felt like reading by the window. Joel lowered himself into it and began his vigil. 

It was a science to study the way you slept. He began to learn the patterns of your breathing, the minute movements of your limbs and how they translated to the moods of your dreaming. The amount of times you turned around, groaned, or hummed correlated directly to the sort of day you'd had. He began to map your tells in his head, drawing them out, formulating blueprints of the simple things that made you. 

To Joel, it was like connecting a red string between thumb tacks, like pouring the varnish over a finished painting, sealing a promise, closing an envelope. He enjoyed the satisfactory slotting of each puzzle piece into place, creating your image, finally knowing you.

By then, he’d caught the virus. He’d let himself get close, and now he was infected with it—that insatiable need to be near, to watch, to admire from mere feet away. 

He continued to acquaint himself over the weeks with your sleeping self to supplement the time he could not spend with you while you were awake. On more than one occasion, he got careless, letting himself succumb to sleep in that corner chair, joining you in the dream world. In those dreams, you were wrapped up in his body, warm and soft and tight, and he was taking. He was behind you, on top of you, beneath you, forcing you to look in the mirror as he spread you open on his cock and wrapped his fingers around your throat. In those dreams, your eyes rolled back and your lips moulded to the shape of Joel, yes, oh my God, and he'd whisper back to you—my sweet girl, my good fuckin’ girl, all mine. 

And you were. You were his. 

Tonight, he followed you to the festival. 

He watched you make a beeline for the necklace you wanted only to pout when you saw it had disappeared. He watched your face fall as David’s rejection sank bone-deep. He reeled in his own gnawing rage, pushing deep down that urge to storm right in and rip out the asshole’s throat with his goddamn teeth, and waited until you called him. 

He knew you would. You trusted him. You needed him. You needed a strong, capable man to take care of you the way you deserved. So he waited inside his truck by the phone, happy to at last hear your sweet voice on the other end of the line. 

Thank you, Joel. 

He tucked those words under his ribs, letting them flower and spread. Those words gave him purpose, made him buzz with erratic energy, validated all his actions. He was doing everything right. 

Your dress was so fucking pretty. Jesus, he wanted to slip his hands under the hem, finger the waistband of those pink panties he knew you were wearing, and bunch the fabric up around your hips as he stuffed you full of his dick. Fuck, he would fill you up with his cum and tuck your panties back over your abused pussy, keeping all of him safe inside. You’d be so happy. You’d get drunk off his cock, begging for it, crying for it. He’d give you everything. 

You do feel safe with him. You said it yourself. 

Now, leaning against the doorway in your bedroom, Joel turns the heart-shaped pendant over and over in his palm, rubbing his thumb over the smooth gold surface. It’s cool and quaint and will kiss your skin beautifully. But he needs to wait for the right time. He needs to make sure you’re ready. 

The sense memory of your fingers on his skin, gracious and gentle, the way you always are, is pushing at the edges of his control. 

There's no one like you. He’s never been more certain of anything. 

You're so goddamn sweet in those tiny silk pyjamas, your body curled up on the bed and your leg slung over a large pillow. You may feel cold and lonely at night, but that's only for now. He won't let you feel alone much longer; his body calls to you, singing your name. He has only so much restraint, and he's been waiting for six months. 

Your lips are slightly parted, your face smooth and serene under the spell of sleep. You're the reason he fixes what's broken. The world needs to be better for you. It needs to be safe and bright and perfect. 

He planted tulips today. You’ll appreciate them, he thinks. He wants you to wake up to vibrant colours every morning and go to sleep knowing that he thinks about you. 

You shift slightly in your sleep, a soft moan leaving your mouth as you hug the pillow closer. Joel straightens in the doorway, wondering if your mind can sense him nearby. He doesn't know what he would do with himself if you were dreaming about him. His eyes move from your pretty face down your chest, barely concealed by the tiny top you're wearing, to find the apex of your thighs, temptingly spread on the mattress. 

He won't. He can't. You’ll never trust him if he loses himself to desire. Joel grits his teeth, his cock achingly hard in his jeans, and unbuckles his belt as silently as he can. He pulls out his dick and squeezes himself at the base, staving off what he knows will be a too-fast orgasm. You move again, your body stretching out on the bed. Joel spits into his palm and begins to stroke his cock. 

He can see a sliver of your waist where your shirt rides up, half of your ass where your leg is slung over the pillow, and your tits smushed together just over the hem of that scrap of a top. You're all of his fucking fantasies rolled into one. Joel breathes hard through his nostrils, his fist tight around the tip of his cock. 

He wants to shuck down those little shorts and put his face in your pretty pussy. He wants to grab your hips and guide his cock inside you. He wants to slide into your addictive cunt until you forget your name. Until you forget every name but his. Your soul will be stained with him. His has never forgotten your shape.

God, your tight pussy would feel so fucking good around his cock. He jerks himself roughly, bracing his hand against the doorframe when a little whimper leaves your mouth. Fuck, he mouths, gritting his teeth so hard that his jaw begins to ache. He fucks his own fist, sloppy and unrefined, eyes fixed to your waiting pussy between creamy-soft thighs. His cock dwarfs your slit, eager to spread you open—he’ll fix so nicely once he gets you ready. 

Joel feels his stomach tighten, his balls pulling up, his jaw taut as he brings himself to a high over your body the way he has so many times. He switches so he can jerk off into the hand around which his gift to you is coiled, spilling his cum all over his fingers and the necklace as he bites into the heel of his palm. His spine decompresses and his cock slowly softens in his hand, the tension briefly relieved. His fist gradually loosens around the cum-slick necklace; the heart has imprinted its shape into his palm. 

You stir, turning over in your bed, and Joel hastily departs, tucking his cock back into his jeans. He has enjoyed this brief interlude, but he has work to do. 

Besides, he’ll see you in a few hours. He knows damn well the sink works just fine, but he’ll take any excuse to see you again. And it seems you’ll do the same. 

~

Joel keeps him in a spare apartment in the building, one whose walls have been padded for soundproofing. 

Joel’s sleeves are rolled to his elbows and he's occupying the chair across from David, who's taking his sweet fuckin’ time waking up. Joel’s been pacing for a half-hour, rubbing his fingers over his bottom lip, contemplative, but the bastard won't move. 

So Joel takes a seat, grabs a fistful of the kid’s hair, and yanks it forcefully so he’s staring him right in the face. 

One eye is already blackened—Joel got a little carried away. The sedative worked perfectly, but David has a punchable face. It took all he had not to keep going. 

“Mornin’, sunshine,” says Joel as the kid slowly blinks awake, bleary and unfocused. “Eyes on me, now. Don't want you slippin’ away again.”

David only stares for a moment, gears grinding gently to life in his brain Once that animal instinct kicks in, the kid starts writhing against his restraints, bucking hard in Joel’s unrelenting grip. It's useless, of course. He’s tied by the wrists and ankles. Helpless. 

Good. 

“What—why the fuck… let me fucking go, man, please,” groans the kid. 

“You made a mistake, David,” says Joel. “Think I’m gonna forget about that?”

David whimpers, flexing his hands subconsciously as pain undoubtedly prickles his scalp. Joel hasn't let go of his hair. “Please just let me go, man. I swear I didn't do anything. If you want money, I’ve got money.”

Joel smirks, a scoff slipping out. This is rich. The delectable flame licks up his throat again, indistinguishable from the pleasure of a good meal, a good fuck. It's craving. It’s darkness. He sinks deeper. 

“You think it's manly to leave your date for your friends and leave her to find a way home herself? You think it's funny to treat her like a little toy and then leave her when you're done?” Joel sneers. “You didn't even call her back, David.”

He whines out another please, his ankles ineffectually kicking out. “I don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Just let me go. Fuck, it hurts.”

“You don't know,” says Joel, repeating it, slow and savoury, rolling it around in his mouth. “You wanna know the most insulting part, David? You don't even care. You made her upset, and you didn't get on your goddamn knees to beg her forgiveness. You didn't do everything in your fuckin’ power to get her back.” Joel brings the knife from his pocket and idly pushes the tip into David’s cheek. “You think she ain't worth that, David? Tell me the truth, now.”

David shrieks, hysterical, the terror and pain so fucking delicious that Joel gulps it down and yet still wants. 

“Are you fucking kidding me? No bitch is fucking worth it. She was cute, but that's it, I swear. I didn't know she had a boyfriend. I wouldn't have—”

The knife digs, gouges, splitting skin and prodding muscle. Joel can feel the edge of the blade slot between the kid’s teeth. He howls, screaming for help to nobody that can help, not quite gone enough yet to realise his utter hopelessness. Joel will have to rectify that.

“Oh, I ain't her boyfriend yet,” Joel says calmly. “But I am hers, way she's mine. And you hurt what's mine. I can’t forget that.”

The knife retreats to admire its handiwork. The cheek is split, the edges jagged, spitting blood. The kid’s tears slip down his face and dip into the wound, salty enough to hurt. He screams and he cries and it’s beginning to get on Joel’s nerves.

“Please stop,” he cries, watching his assailant rear back and grip the knife tight, like an ice pick. “Please… fuck, please—!”

He’s getting real sick of that word. Please. A mere please can’t excuse the look he put on your face last night. A please will not absolve him of the cardinal sin. 

No one—no one—makes you frown. 

Joel sinks the knife into David’s knee, using both hands to drive it to the hilt. The kid’s face is ashen, white and grey as clouds rolling in, and his frail screams begin to peter out; he’s losing consciousness. Joel won’t have that—not until he’s finished.

“Stop whinin’, David. A real man falls in front of his woman and makes things right. A real man fixes what's broken. And a real man”—he twists the knife, gorging, glutting on the feeling of making amends on your behalf—“does everything in his power to show her he loves her.” 

“Please…” The final, feeble attempt of a doomed man to return from the cliff’s edge. 

Joel stands, adjusting his grip on the kid’s hair, and brings his knife just beneath his chin. When he drives it upward, he can see the shimmer of the blade through David’s slack, open mouth. 

“I told you to stop whinin’.” 

~

He’s in your bedroom again. 

He felt the need calling to him, vibrating with a particular intensity he could not ignore. He rarely comes to see you twice in one night, but now that he's here, he knows it was the only way to settle his nerves. 

You're asleep, lips parted against your pillow and a piece of hair fluttering in front of your face with every exhale. Joel approaches your bedside and tucks it safely behind your ear. You don't wake, but you hum sleepily, hugging your pillow closer. Joel smiles, satisfaction sinking deep and assured into his core. He's done right by you. You’ll go happily to him. Moth to a gemlike flame. 

He wanders around the edge of the bed, gaze lazily indulging in your body as he goes. His cock twitches again with a need he cannot yet meet, the desire to move your panties aside and fill you with him. He does not. He kneels at your bedside, closest to where your legs have scissored apart beneath your sheets. The temptingly sweet call of that warm place between your thighs has Joel shifting your comforter aside and ghosting his fingers across the soft skin of your calf. 

Your breathing deepens slightly, like you're sucking in a long mouthful of air, and then you settle. It's the only indication you give that you can feel his presence. And then it’s gone, and he’s hooking his fingers in the waistband of your pretty panties and bestowing upon himself what he's only seen through screens for months. 

You're spread open and glistening, an indication of some preceding dream or fantasy playing out in that keen, busy mind. Your body is wholly pliant, so soft and glowing in the faint silvery light streaming in from the window, and it would be so easy to—

No. He will not taste you. If he does, he won’t stop. You need to trust him. There is blood on his hands that hasn’t yet washed clean, and he will not imprint those rust-red fingerprints on your body. You’re his world—what kind of man willingly imparts such pain onto a world he loves?

Some infinitesimal fractal lodged in Joel’s head obliged him to return to you tonight, to cleanse himself of the events that transpired under the illicit cover of night. The very sight of you reminds him what he’s doing this for. He crushes his nose into the wet spot that darkens your panties and inhales deeply, acquiring some sense of what you will taste like. The smell makes his head go fuzzy, intoxicated, tang and sweetness and impending gratification. In your sleep, you sigh, melting against the mattress.

Joel brings your panties back up over your pussy and thinks, Tomorrow. 

THE TENANT

You're miserable when Joel knocks on your door the next day. 

“He hasn't called me,” you tell him, letting yourself stew, sulking from the feeling of yet another man deciding you weren’t worth a follow-up phone call. “Am I repulsive? Am I a total freak? Is it something in my perfume?”

Joel looks down at you, lips parted as if on the precipice of a response, sweeping his gaze up and down your body. You’re wearing a simple sweater and skirt, but fuck, he can make you feel naked. His gaze penetrates deeper than flesh. It’s only then you realise he’s holding coffee. 

Two cups of coffee. 

“Oh, Joel,” you sigh, licking your bottom lip. “How did you know?”

“Lucky guess,” he says with a crooked smile, his voice a bit raspy, as if caught off-guard. He hands you your favourite drink—caramel macchiato, double espresso—from your favourite place down the block, and you could kiss him with how good it feels to hold the cool, condensation-slick cup in your hands. Your entire body deflates with the first sip. 

“You’re my hero,” you tell him. “I mean it.”

Joel shakes his head fondly. “You got a funny sense of heroics.”

“They taste exactly like this,” you say playfully, tracing the rim of the plastic cup. “Thank you, Joel.”

He swipes his thumb across your chin. “It’s only coffee, baby.”

Since last night, something is inexplicably different. A new, once-forbidden boundary has been crossed. It may be technically inappropriate for your landlord to bring you coffee, touch you so intimately, call you baby. But it makes you feel like warm melting honey, and who is to say a feeling like that is wrong?

He’s wearing a blue T-shirt today. His hair is tousled like he slept on it, and your fingers tingle with the anticipatory sensation of how it would feel to take fistfuls of his locks in your hands. He’s stunning. And you catch yourself staring too late, tearing your gaze away the way one retracts their hand after burning it on the stovetop. Your heart skittering, you direct Joel to the sink and plan some excuse in your head for why it has miraculously fixed itself overnight. 

But he doesn’t even spare a glance toward any of your appliances. He’s only looking at you. 

“I got somethin’ else,” he says, almost shy, reaching into his pocket for a tiny box. 

He grimaces when your eyes, wide and obviously panicked, meet his. “Jesus, I didn’t really think about how this looks. I’m not… proposin’, I swear.”

You both release a nervous laugh, but you cannot deny that your nerves are still fluttering at the sight of that simple suede box in his big hands.

He opens the lid and you gasp. It’s your necklace—the very same heart-shaped pendant you had been eyeing up at the festival. It’s shiny and polished and precisely, undeniably, the same one. “Oh my God,” you whisper, gently sliding your finger over the cool golden pendant. “It’s beautiful. Joel, how did you…”

“Turn around,” he says softly, the gentle direction guiding you better than any hand could. You obey, and Joel steps forward until his hard chest is flush to your back. He’s warm and sure and smells so good—cologne and coffee and mint and something potent, like iron—and all your questions fizzle to sparks in the air. You can no longer grasp for them. You reach out and you only find him.

His touch is careful. The heart-shaped pendant settles against your breastbone and shimmers in the afternoon light. Your chest briefly shimmers with the thought that you were made to wear this necklace. His large, rough hands ghost across the back of your neck as he secures the clasp, and you shiver. A single knuckle trails slowly down your spine, bumping every vertebrae on the way. 

“It ain't your perfume.” His deep, grumbling voice is equivalent to the scratch of his beard against your temple as his jaw moves with each word. “And you're nothin’ close to repulsive. Look in that mirror and tell me what you see.”

There is a mirror, a full-length one by the entrance to your apartment, and it's surreal to watch your own body turn to face it, to watch yourself defer entirely to the man behind you. It feels nice to just let him steer you every which way. 

“I see you,” you tell him, your hand lifting to the pendant on your throat. “And this.”

Joel clicks his tongue, his nose sliding up your temple. “What else do you see?”

You watch your lashes flutter, your head listing slightly to the side. “I see myself.”

“Hmm.” It’s a sound of approval, his palm now sliding around your waist and his arm banding across your body. He presses his hand to your hip bone and pulls you back against him. “Such a beautiful girl in that mirror. Ain't that right?”

“Joel, I…” You can feel his swelling erection prodding your ass and your head feels hazy with a heady, lustful desire you can no longer ignore or dismiss. “I don't think we should be…”

“No?” His mouth curves against your temple and you shiver at the coarse scratch of his moustache on your skin. It feels deliberate, premeditated. “I won’t tell a soul,” he murmurs, his thumb stroking your hip right where the hem of your sweater begins to inch upward. You can see a strip of your own bare stomach in the mirror. He’s making your eyes droop, your lashes flutter, your body light up from one nerve ending to the next, a closed circuit.

Oh, God. His touch is measured, gentle yet barely restrained. It is dipping a finger into the water just as it nears its boiling point. Months of staring and dreaming and retreating to your bed to touch yourself to thoughts of someone you cannot touch have led you here: his necklace, his gift to you, sitting prettily on your throat, his capable hands moulding you slowly to the shape of him. He’s touching you. 

“You like me?” His voice rubs hard on your ears, sanding you down, smoothing the rough edges. He lets you linger on the precipice, a firm grip on your hand, letting you make the choice: to let go, or to reel yourself in. 

“I like you,” you whisper, snapping the tether and plummeting to the warm, wet earth below.

You watch Joel’s eyes close in the mirror, something like a prayer falling from his lips. It does not take the shape of words—it is gruff and yet soft, hardly loud enough to discern over the ringing in your ears—but it’s so reverent that you can picture yourself falling to your knees at the sound of it. 

His hand skims up your waist until he finds your throat, gently pinching your jaw so he can direct the turn of your head. You go easily, tilting your gaze back to rest your temple on his shoulder, as his other hand slides up from your hip to your ribs, grazing the underside of your breast. “You like me enough to touch you like this?” 

You gasp, finding an anchor in the deep brown—nearly black, now—of his eyes. They’re warm  but they’re dangerous; once you look, the cage door slides shut, and you’re trapped. 

This must be one of your many dreams.

“Yes, Joel.”

“Mmm.” He smirks, teasing his tongue across his plush bottom lip. You watch the movement and feel yourself tightening, want want want a chorus in your ears. “You wanna kiss me, baby girl?”

Silently, you nod, your fingers gently sliding through his silky locks while your other hand seeks the strong balancing force of his shoulder. His smile sobers to a deep, stunning severity, and you cannot think to let it frighten you when you’re already slanting your mouth over his. 

It starts slowly. His mouth is soft, his hands deftly returning the fervour with which you hold him, cupping the back of your neck with his other hand warming your ribs. A small gasp escapes you, and a rumble of satisfaction passes from his chest through yours, and it flips an ineffable switch inside him. 

Joel turns you in his arms, his chest pressed to yours, his hand shooting out to brace against the wall as he walks you back toward it. Sufficiently cornered, you let your body melt into him, his palm now warming your lower back, his tongue feverishly seeking the seam of your lips. You let him pry you open, tasting the coffee and mint on his breath and inhaling the rich scent of him, sticking it with greedy hands to the walls of your brain. You’ll never tire of him, of this. 

He kisses you like a glutton seeking more fulfilment, like an aesthete seeking that exhilarating, fleeting moment in time, desperate and unwavering and famished. Tongues slide together, hands grope and wander, fabrics shift. You can feel your sweater lifting at the same time your fingers finally find the hem of his T-shirt, but he beats you to the chase. You’re dizzy by the time he breaks away to remove your shirt, but you dutifully lift your arms to help him. 

You seek his mouth again to resume the kiss, but Joel is decidedly feeling pious. He kisses his way down your throat, the necklace dangling from it, your sternum, your belly, sinking to his knees as he goes along. His hands are firm on your hips, squeezing, keeping you in place, while his mouth draws a map of you, eliciting the honeyed sensation of warm water dripping down your body.

“Oh, God,” you whisper, your head knocking back against the wall. It's so much. You've never been the object of attention quite like this, the marble statue at which the devout kneel, obsessive in their worship. You've never had a man fall to his knees to put his mouth all over you. 

Has he wanted you as long as you’ve pined for him? 

Joel grunts, his lips dragging open-mouthed kisses from one hip to another, his fingers hooking in the waistband of your skirt and yanking it down. You yelp, grasping his shoulders. 

Joel only growls into your skin, his hands dropping to your ass and kneading you while he continues down past your hips. “So fuckin’ beautiful,” he grumbles. “So goddamn pretty. Don’t know how I waited this fuckin’ long. Jesus, baby girl, you're perfect. Goddamn perfect.”

His ramblings are poison. Every word infects, squeezing out your healthy cells, replacing them with the delicious scrape of fire against the ceiling of a room. The scratch of his beard. The sweet nurturing sound of his voice. The cared-for sensation of being kissed and touched and spoken to like you're someone worth a second date. Like you're worth the price of all the world and a couple stars, too. 

And so the words slip out, shy and whisper-quiet and your cheeks burning hot enough to blister. 

“Please, Daddy…”

Joel’s hands tighten on your body, a fractional movement that kicks up the frantic beating of your heart. He tilts his head back to gaze up into your eyes and you feel more naked with that single stare than ever before. 

“That what you need, sweet thing?” he says, pressing his lips to your inner thigh. “You need Daddy to make you feel good?”

“Mhm,” you whine, the pitch of your voice pathetic and needy. You watch him crush his nose into your inner thigh, nipping at your sensitive flesh, and his name leaves your mouth in a sob. 

“‘m gonna need words,” he commands, biting you again in reproach. “Talk to me, baby girl. Tell me what you want.”

“I want you to make me come,” you plead, grasping his soft greying hair in your fingers. “Please.”

“You gonna call me what you wanna call me?” he prompts, smacking your thigh. “C’mon, baby, lemme hear it.”

“Daddy!” you cry out, your hand tightening in his locks. “Fuck, Daddy, please make me come.”

Joel growls, bringing your soaked panties down your legs. Your knees nearly knock together, but he’s shouldering his way between them, bringing one up onto his wide shoulder. You're spread open like this, bared plainly for your landlord to feast upon at his will. The sight of his lips parted, waiting and ready to take your pussy into his mouth, has you trembling. 

He gives a slow, experimental lick, sliding the flat of his tongue through your wet slit. You shudder, your head lolling against the wall. One teasing drag of his tongue and you’re butter, humming and whimpering for more, Daddy, please as he takes his fucking time tasting what you have to offer. 

“Goddamn sweet,” he grumbles, his blunt nails digging crescent moons into the flesh of your ass, pulling your body flush to him. “Waited so fuckin’ long for this.” You watch the fire ignite from red- to blue-hot in Joel’s eyes, his gaze shuttering as he loses himself, devoted entirely to the process of unravelling you. 

The next time he dips his tongue between your folds, he does it deliberately, calculated, as if he has already memorised your shape and now seeks to pry you open. He parts your lips to make way for his mouth, hot and soft against your clit. Softly, you cry out, watching as he presses a featherlight kiss to your pearl. You try to grind against his face, needing more, but a resounding slap to your ass stops you dead. 

“No takin’ what I don’t give,” he says. “You understand me?”

You pout, but you nod your head anyway. 

He decides it isn’t good enough and abruptly takes your clit between his teeth in a scolding bite. 

“Repeat. It.”

“I’ll only take what you give,” you tell him. “I’ll be good.”

Apparently satisfied, he hums, diving back in and finally—finally—sucks on your needy clit. “Oh!” He’s eager, sure, but he’s practised. He’s meticulous in the way he applies pressure to your clit, lapping at you greedily and pulling back to draw your pleasure into measured tidal waves. You crest only to recede from shore, and then his lips suction to you again, his hand snaking around to your front and pressing down on your lower belly. 

“Fuck!” you squeak, your stomach tightening as the dizzying pleasure overcomes you. “Joel, I’m gonna—!”

The orgasm pulls you under, drowning you with a forceful hand, your lungs sucking in mouthfuls of air. You seize, your heel digging into Joel’s muscled back, your fingers fisting his hair, your cunt clenching desperately around nothing, begging to be filled. Joel keeps his mouth on you all the while, licking you through your high, and you think it’s a benevolent act until your orgasm gently fades and he continues to make out with your pussy as if it never happened.

“Ah! Joel, please—” It’s so much. Too much; your pussy contracts relentlessly at the endless attention from his tongue, happily licking your clit and relishing the faint throbbing underneath it. It’s like he’s starved. His eyes are closed, his beard glistening with your wetness, his fingers dimpling your flesh as he pulls you right along to another high. 

Two thick fingers gather up the juices you’ve leaked onto your thighs and push them back into your hole, insistent in their desire to enter. You gasp, your heart in your fucking throat: “That’s only two?”

He chuckles, but the vibration only makes you jump, letting his fingers sink inside your cunt to the knuckle. “Oh, fuck, fuck, Daddy, that feels so good, please make me come again, I need it, please—!”

Joel groans into your pussy, curling his fingers toward him so they press against a spongy spot inside you that sends your head spinning, your mind folding in on itself. All you know is the next orgasm, the best way to get him to give it to you, the fastest way to reach that indelible place once more, just once more—

Joel’s hand applies more pressure to your belly, and you scream, clawing desperately at his shoulder as you give yourself over to something much, much stronger than an orgasm. It’s foreign, the creeping sensation of an invader taking up residence in your body. You cannot see, cannot hear. It assumes control, tearing a cry from your mouth and locking all your limbs tight and splashing your wetness all over Joel’s chin, beard, shirt. 

You think he only stops because you begin to list; he catches you around the hips and presses a soft kiss to your used little clit. “Mmmmm,” is vaguely how you manage to thank him, your eyes peeling slowly open. 

“I know, baby girl,” he says, stroking your hip bone with his thumb. He litters kisses all over your thighs, coaxing you through the minute twitching of your muscles as they relax. “You did so good for me, pretty girl. So fuckin’ beautiful. My sweet girl.”

You shiver in his grasp, watching as he makes his way back up your body. He swipes his forearm across his wet beard and you moan a little at the sight. “Nobody’s ever…”

Joel crowds you, his hand cupping the back of your neck so he can guide your gaze up to him. “That's what you don't understand, sweetheart,” he says. “You can try to find another man to make you happy, but he won't be me. I’m the only one who’s gonna treat you right.”

“Joel…” Sense begins to push at the edges of your brain, but you only slump further into his touch, letting him secure your hair behind your ear. “This isn't right,” you whisper. “I pay you every month to live here. People will know. People will talk about me.”

“People have suffered worse for a hell of a lot less.” 

You have no time to decode his words because he grabs your hand and presses your palm over his chest. Beneath the shirt and the warm, tanned skin, you feel a strong, rapid heartbeat, hammering away at his ribs. He maintains eye contact, the gaze incisive, peering right into the cluster of wiring inside your head that calls his name. “You feel my heart and you tell me this ain't real. You think this ain't love? You think it's obsession? Infatuation? Think I can’t see you lookin’ at me the way you do?”

His words pin you to the ground. They’re possessive, covetous—jealous. He wants you, and he knows you want him. All these months, he’s wanted you the way you’ve craved him; all the comforts and the roses and the baked goods in lieu of payment for substantial repair jobs; the times he’s let slide some late payments because I know it’s tough sometimes, the inexplicable kindnesses in your everyday. 

Joel Miller dedicated himself to you the second you arrived to see the prospective apartment. 

“You’re mine,” he says, his thumb stroking your jaw. “And I wanna hear you say it.”

People will call you a whore. They’ll think you’re pimping yourself out for cheaper rent. They’ll send you filthy looks. But the man in front of you makes you feel wanted. Desired. You’re better than all the dates that failed. You’re better than a shitty boss who won’t give you the raise you deserve. Joel is good to you. He’s always been.

“I’m yours, Joel Miller,” you say, resting your forehead against his. “Now please take me to bed.”

He grins, taking your hand and leading you to your bedroom. You get grabby straight away, fingering the hem of his shirt with a pleading look in your eye. You can still see the evidence of your orgasm staining the collar. “You can take it off, baby,” he says with that cocky smile, letting you lift the shirt over his head. In the sunlight, the grey in his hair shimmers, and his chest is bared to you. You lick your lips, placing your hands on his broad shoulders just to feel the way your palms contour to his dips and curves. 

You lean in and put your lips to his neck, tracing the shape of him down to the hollow of his throat, He tastes faintly of fresh air and sweat, and he smells like you. Your hands admire the warmth and strength underneath them, his body so tangible when only yesterday it was a distant dream. He lets you indulge, though his hands flex at his sides, and your fingers fumble with his belt buckle. 

“Help,” you mumble against his chest, bumping your nose into him. Joel chuckles, relieving you of your burden and shucking off his belt. It clinks along the floor somewhere nearby, and you can unbutton his jeans to bring them down, freeing his hard, throbbing cock. 

Your mouth waters at the sight. He’s thick and slightly curved, the tip leaking precum onto his belly, his balls heavy with the need to come. During those long nights after long days of work, you would imagine, for hours on end, what lingered just below his belt; the little trail of hair leading down his soft belly to your destination; the way his wide shoulders would bracket your body, shelter you from all the tough shit you could possibly suffer. You would picture all the ways you could thank him. You bite your bottom lip and ready yourself to sink to your knees, but Joel is having none of it. He attacks your mouth, kissing you deeply, his hands sliding up your back as if he's trying to count every vertebrae. He doesn't relent even when your knees hit the edge of the bed and you collapse backward onto the mattress. He only crawls over you and pins you beneath his hard body. 

“So pretty like this,” he says, lowering his head and nudging your chin upward with his nose to give himself better access to your throat. He sucks and nips at you all the way down, pausing at your heaving breasts. His fingers gently toy with one stiff nipple while his mouth occupies itself with the other, teasing it with his tongue and his teeth. You moan softly, content to watch him explore your body, squeezing your tits before he migrates downward. 

“Daddy,” you whisper, stroking his hair away from his face, your head falling back onto the pillows as his fingers part your folds once more. “Fuck, please, touch me. I need you inside me.”

Joel settles in between your open legs and takes his cock in his hand. You mewl for him, determined in the face of his big cock to fit it nicely inside you. “Mmm, you ready for me, baby girl? You need Daddy to fill you up, use you like a pretty little toy?” 

You’re nodding frantically, the words igniting you. “Please take me.”

Joel slaps the head of his cock against your clit, once, twice, watching your thighs twitch. Spreading the slick wetness from your pussy onto the tip, he finally guides himself to your hole and notches just inside. 

“Jesus,” he utters. “Jesus, you're a fuckin’ dream.”

“It’s real,” you pant, “I’m real.”

He begins to disappear inside you, wrenching you open, your poor pussy disused from going so long without decent sex. You feel the pinching pain give way to a delicious pressure in your core as he eases into you, taking it slow despite his taut jaw, his gritted teeth. Your cunt forms a tight seal around his length, your arousal lubricating his entry, and you feel lightheaded. He’s so fucking big—and he’s still going.

“Oh, my… Joel—”

“I know, baby.” He brings his thumb to your clit and helps you relax with every circular swipe. “I know what y’like.”

You keen up against him, your thighs squeezing his hips. He's only halfway inside you and it feels like being filled up to your throat, choking on the air you breathe. Your head falls back, your hands flying up to your tits and squeezing. 

“Daddy…”

One of Joel’s hands overlaps yours where it grasps your breast. “That’s my girl. You can take me. Always knew you could.” Still, he's panting with the exertion of holding back. 

“You thought about me?” you say coyly, trying to pull him deeper inside you. He obliges, if only because you're being so petulant, and his hips finally knock into yours. You release a bone-deep sigh of relief.

“All I do”—his hips thrust shallowly, baring his teeth as he paws at your thighs—“is think about you.”

You cry out at the angle, the depth he reaches, how thick and heavy he sits inside you. Your pussy sucks him in, begging for more, and Joel obliges by hooking his hand in the back of your knee and pushing your thigh toward your chest. 

Your vision whites, a ragged cry leaving your mouth. “Oh, fuck! Yes, yes, yes, that feels so good—”

“‘s right, baby girl. I’m the only one’s gonna fuck you this good,” Joel grits out, dragging his thick cock along your walls, spreading you open, forcing himself to fit. The head of his cock kisses your cervix with every thrust, measured in their intensity, just enough to drive you up the goddamn wall but never enough to sting. “I’m the only one you want.”

Your mouth is open and his pounding urges a steady rush of ah, ah, ahs up your throat. Joel leans over you and tilts your head back with a hand in your hair to slant his mouth over yours. He lets you pour your cries into his mouth and he swallows them down, fucking you so hard that your hips begin to ache. 

He smatters your jaw with sloppy kisses. You lift your hand to his face and trace the patches in his beard, your brows drawn together in your perpetual haze. 

“I dreamed about you,” you whisper, taking his earlobe between your teeth to make him growl against your skin. “Touched myself thinking about you.”

“I know,” he says, his hips grinding hard against yours, rubbing up against your used clit. He answers your gasp by nibbling your throat, and you keep him fixed to you with your hand at the back of his neck. His soft hair is matted with sweat and you want to bury yourself here, etch the shape of him into your stone. He's strong, capable, so present in this moment that your heart begins to throb to the beat of his. 

Joel surges upward and takes you with him, forcing you to sit on his lap. At this angle, his cock reaches deeper, somehow, your mouth falling open and your forehead dropping to his shoulder. His palm is a soothing presence on your sweaty back as he tells you things that make you flush from your chest to your ears. 

“Thought about takin’ you on the goddamn bar last night,” he grunts, guiding your ass in a rolling rhythm along his lap, his cock gliding slowly along your walls. You moan, your thighs shaking around his hips. “Thought about spreadin’ you over my desk and fuckin’ you dumb with my cock.” 

You sob into the crook of his neck, grinding down on his cock, the pressure of his navel against your clit sparking hot in your lower belly. “What else?” you ask, nipping at the strong muscle where his shoulder meets his neck. Your tits are pressed up against his chest, his warmth engulfing you, your body slowly lowering over him as he guides you the way he likes. 

His palm coasts down your spine until he finds your puckered asshole. His name is jagged and rubbed raw on your tongue. 

“Shhh, baby girl.” The pad of his finger teases your hole with just enough pressure to ooze electric ecstasy down your spine. “Feels good, doesn't it?”

Fuck, his voice is so gentle, so knowing. You curl your fingers in his hair, your nose tickled by the locks that curl over his ears. 

“Mmmhmm,” you mewl, lifting your hips as best you can despite the growing aches, telegraphing your desire to be touched by him—played with. 

“Thaaat’s it,” he coos, his nose nudging your cheek as he turns his head. His finger continues to prod your asshole while his hips buck up into you. “Openin’ up for me like a good girl. You’d let me take you wherever I want, hmm? Whenever I want?”

“Yes, Daddy, yes,” you moan, your mouth perpetually open against the skin of his neck. You can’t think. You can't breathe. You can only drink down mouthfuls of him and let your body succumb to the delicious weight of his cock inside you. “Yes, I’ll be your little slut. I’ll be whatever you want. You make me feel so good.”

He seems pleased with your babbling, grinning into your cheek as he keeps you spread wide and pounds up into you. His finger continues to tease your tight hole until he feels your body contract around him and apparently decides that he isn't quite through with you. 

“Turn around. Hands and knees.”

Who are you to refuse?

You lament the brief loss of his cock as you shift into your knees, resting your forearms on the bed and teasing him with a wiggle of your ass. Joel hums appreciatively, sidling up behind you and grinding his hard cock between your asscheeks. You jolt forward, but he catches you around the waist and warms his palm at your ribs. 

Something warm and wet lands in a glob on your asshole, and you realise he fucking spit on you. Your head spins, dizzied by your own arousal, and soon, the warm, wet head of his cock slips back inside your hole, and you relish the refuge of being taken by him all over again. 

“You wanna know what else?” He begins to fuck you hard and fast and almost angry in its intensity. His thrusts knock against your ribcage and rattle the bars, your heart floundering for a way back to the surface. “I thought about knockin’ on your door every goddamn day and putting my dick in this pretty fuckin’ pussy. Thought about your tight fuckin’ body every single time I saw you walk by and a long time after. I thought about the noises you'd make and Jesus, I was right. So goddamn sweet.”

You’re drooling onto the pillow, your eyes rolling back in your head, your fingers uselessly clasping handfuls of your white sheets. Joel is an animal, mounting you from behind and taking you hard, deep, the slick squelching noises of your coupling so crude and indecent that they burn through your ears like a lit fuse. It's wrong. You never should have kissed him. But wrong shouldn't feel like this. 

Wrong shouldn’t taste like mint and coffee, shouldn't smell like roses and sawdust. Wrong shouldn’t feel like his cock sitting snug inside your pussy, some obscene jigsaw, seeping saplike pleasure down your spine. 

This must be right. 

His hands are rapacious, one wrapping around your hair and the other guiding the bend of your back, arching you perfectly to fit him while he takes you the way he likes. “Such a tease in those pretty dresses. Such a prim and proper girl ‘til she gets the right dick. You’ll get on your knees for this dick, baby girl, won't you? You’ll beg for it like a goddamn whore.”

“I will!” you moan, your cheek pressed into the mattress. The force of his thrusts have you travelling up the bed in minuscule movements, his thighs slapping hard against yours. “Fuck, I will, Daddy! Please, Daddy, I wanna make you feel good, I’ll do anything.”

“You're doin’ such a good job already, sweet thing,” he says, using his leverage on your hair and your waist to yank you upright, his chest pressed to your back, your ass now firmly sat in his lap. You moan long and low at the new angle, your back arching and your toes curling. 

Joel groans against your jaw, his mouth travelling along the line of it in sloppy kisses that indicate he's about as close as you are. “Yeah, baby. Fuckin’ drunk on my cock. Fucked you good and dumb, hmm? Fucked you so good you can't even think.”

You can only manage a low whine, the sound of it a fleeting puff of air from your lips, the oxygen in your lungs depleting and replaced with the smell of him. You try to bounce on his dick—you really do try—but you cannot remember how to work the muscles in your thighs. You cannot remember what you had for breakfast nor the colour of the skirt you wore today. You can only vaguely understand the shape of the man behind you, the name that belongs to him, the way you curve and fit into him. You’re falling, the technicolour world outside your window fading to the sound of soft, beating wings—that may be your heart, fluttering in your ears—as you seize, yielding to the pleasure. 

You will not recall the sounds you make when you come, grasping blindly at his thighs to keep yourself from falling over, your ears ringing. You feel his moustache scratching your jaw and his cock working you through your high, slowing his thrusts to help you land softly on solid ground. You may cry out his name, and you may call him something else entirely. But it's vibrant. It's radiant as the sunlight now dipping behind the distant buildings. It tastes just as sweet as the golden hour. 

Joel does not stop fucking you when your body goes limp in his arms. No, he resumes his brutal pace, using you like a fucking toy to get himself off. You happily take it, your head lolling back against his shoulder and your eyes drooping. 

“Nnh, fuck… I’m gonna… Jesus—oh, fuck—”

His hips press flush to your ass and he nuzzles his face into your throat, depositing kisses and love bites all over your skin as he pumps shallowly into you, his hot cum filling you up and leaking generously around the seal of your cunt. You gasp, your fingers threading through his already-tousled hair, keeping him glued to you as he flexes against your body and comes hard enough to double himself over. 

He collapses on top of you, forcing you to bend at the hip, little puffs of air escaping his mouth and seeping into you. You whine, your sore hips battered and bruised, your pussy deliciously abused as you pulse continuously around his dick. “Joel, please…”

He comes slowly back into his body, his lips trailing down your spine as he lifts himself upright. “Shit. ‘m sorry, baby girl. You feel okay?”

You hum happily, letting yourself pant into the mattress. “Feels so good.”

Joel pulls out, savouring the tight drag of his cock out of your pussy, hissing through his teeth and watching his thick cum dribble slowly out of your hole. “Such a fuckin’ pretty sight. My sweet girl, all used up.”

You drop your face into your forearm and giggle. Joel smooths his hand over your lower back. “What's so funny?”

“Just…” You sound a bit hysterical as you continue to laugh. “I’m going to be late on rent this month. I put a down payment on a car.”

Joel lowers himself next to you and gently pulls you into him, his moustache tickling your cheek. “Planning on gettin’ the hell outta dodge?” he says playfully, nipping your earlobe. 

Your eyes droop and you sink into him. “Think I’ll stay here for a while.”

“I know you will, baby,” he murmurs.

“Joel?”

“Hmm.”

“Thank you for the necklace.”

~

It’s night when you next wake, and Joel is next to you. 

For someone so stern and strong, he looks utterly serene in his sleep. His lips are slightly parted, half his face pressed into the pillow, his hair curling around his ears and his arm lazily draped over you. You gently sweep a lock of hair away from his face. 

Through the dark, the red light beams, and the arm around your waist tugs you closer.

THE END.

#kiwisbell's fics #pedro pascal #joel miller #the last of us #joel miller x female reader #joel miller fic #joel miller x reader #joel miller x f!reader #dark!joel x reader #dark!joel miller #joel miller smut #joel miller x you #tlou hbo

[vixstarria]

Intimacy

Hello friends, have some soft Act 2 Astarion.  

Astarion’s struggle with sex and intimacy. Connected with my other fics but is a standalone, per usual. 

Astarion x Reader, Astarion x Tav, soft Astarion 

Hurt/comfort, some fluff if you squint, love, angst, mutual pining, Act 2 spoilers, some fairly softcore smut 

Approximately 1,600 words. 

“I have no idea what we’re doing,” he told you. You’d replayed that conversation over and over countless times in your mind, since.  

You had no idea what you were doing either. Oh, navigating an ordinary relationship was simple enough, and you’d had your fair share of those – even if they’d all ended in disappointment at best, so far. Being with someone who’d just escaped 200 years of abuse, however... That was something new.  

“I don't think I want you to think of me in terms of sex.” 

Well that was a fuck-up. He was walking sex. ...Most likely due to sheer force of habit, so necessary for survival over all those years, but still.  

“I love you.” 

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck...  

You were in over your head too. Completely. Hopelessly. In love with this catastrophe of a man.  

What were you to do with him now?  

Wait for him to take the lead in every physical interaction? It wasn’t in your nature to be so passive. He knew this. And you were sure he would love to be treated like spurned glass all of a sudden.  

Continue as you were? Even though now all you could think about was whether a touch might bring up a repulsive memory? Assume that you could singlehandedly overwrite centuries of disgust and loathing, overnight? How presumptuous and overbearing that would have been. 

Communicate? Ask? Listen? Sure. Absolutely. You did. Or tried, anyway. You were about as good at talking about these things as he was. And you didn’t really trust him to be completely honest at this point. Whether with you or his own self.  

And so you explored. Slowly, cautiously and attentively.

 

The most innocent touches seemed to bring him an inordinate amount of joy. You weren’t surprised.  

Passing him a vial of poison for his weapons and letting your fingers brush and caress one another’s, briefly. Wordlessly running a stray hand along his waist and planting a quick kiss under his ear while you walked past him as he stood talking with someone. Lingering with your foreheads or noses touching lightly after a kiss.

 

He leaped at any opportunity to massage your sore muscles or help you apply a salve, and you let him. It seemed he wanted to take care of you, and was working out all the ways how.  

He still pleasured you in different ways, at times.  

“You don’t have to...” 

“I want to,” he said. 

He just chose to keep his own pants on, now. You weren’t sure about his motivations. Could it be guilt? Or a misguided sense of self-worth? Did he still think this is all he was good for? Or, maybe you were completely overthinking it, and he was still just desperately horny, even if taking a step back. He was more present than before though, you could tell that much. 

You considered his reactions to other forms of touch, careful not to make your observation obvious. 

He hated being scratched. The entire area of his back covered in scars was off-limits for anything but embraces. He enjoyed playful bites, both giving and receiving. And more than anything, he loved holding you close, feeling as much of your body at once as possible, basking in its warmth.  

In turn, you were more than happy to wrap yourself around him when you could. 

“Why do you even like this?” he asked, apprehensive about it at first. “You don’t need to pretend for my sake. I can’t give you any warmth.” 

“I can give you mine,” you said, simply. “Besides, you obviously don’t remember what it’s like to lie in a puddle of sweat with someone who runs hot. This is a nice change.” you added after a moment of contemplation.  

You meant what you said, but you were dying to drag him into a hot bath, just to know what it would feel like for him to be warmed through. Maybe you’d get the chance once you got to Baldur’s Gate.

 

There happened to be a private room available at Last Light Inn that night. The group unanimously agreed that you and Astarion would take it, while the rest of your companions bunked in the common. 

“For Shar’s sake, piss off, none of us want to see or hear you two,” were the exact words of their blessing, delivered by Shadowheart. Karlach sanctified it by throwing a (deftly dodged) half-eaten apple at Astarion’s head.  

“Especially not hear!”

 

“I know this may come as a shock, but I’m actually not too fond of beds,” he said. 

“New memories, Astarion,” you shook your head. “Beds are non-negotiable. I wasn’t too fond of rutting in the dirt either.” 

“I’ll never grow tired of how poetic you are,” he smiled, unceremoniously throwing his gear on the floor. “New memories, you say?” 

A while later, you were straddling Astarion’s hips as he sat shirtless on the edge of the bed. 

“You know, you never did tell me what you like,” you sighed, your fingers in his hair as he kissed your neck.   

“Oh, what does anyone like? It’s all the same in the end,” he said, running his hands along your thighs. 

“That’s not true,” you murmured in his ear. “I can show you some things that are pretty unique to you right now,” you said and ran the tip of your tongue along the lower inner edge of his ear, making him shudder and let out a small moan.  

“You little devil, when did you figure that out?” he breathed.  

“When I happened to brush your ear a while back, like this,” you giggled, repeating the hand movement on his other ear, making him catch his breath slightly again, “and you just about started purring.” 

He just chuckled in response. 

“So what other secrets are you hiding?” you purred, kissing around his ear. “I might just need to kiss and caress every inch of your body to find out.” 

"Sounds like a terrible chore,” he said, falling back onto the bed and pulling you with him. “You don’t want to do that.” 

“Shut up and let me cherish you.” 

You kissed down along one side his neck, slowly, taking your time, pausing to lightly lick or nibble on any spot that made him hitch his breath. He was putty in your hands by the time you reached his collarbone. 

“Just don’t go any lower,” he said breathlessly. 

You hummed your agreement. You couldn’t handle going any lower yourself – you were completely intoxicated with the scent of his skin and the sound of his sighs of pleasure, if you went any lower, you would keep going, and you didn’t think it was a day for that yet.  

You continued up the other side of his neck instead.  

You hesitated for a moment before your lips reached the bite marks left by Cazador, but Astarion made no indication that he didn’t want you to keep going, and so you continued. He let out a soft whimper as your lips brushed the scars. 

“No?” you pulled back slightly, your hot breath still on his skin. He was lying with his eyes shut, head thrown back, neck completely exposed to you. 

“Yes...” he whispered, hoarsely. “Very yes... Softly...” 

You continued, lingering with your lips on the scars, as his fingers dug into the flesh of your hips, snapping them against his own and grinding you against an unmistakable erection. 

“I want you to make those marks your own... Yours and no one else’s...” he rasped. 

This is probably a mistake, you thought, but you could barely help yourself as you moaned into his neck and ran your tongue over the scars, making him growl and grind you into himself harder. The friction, the knowledge that he wanted it too was driving you mad.  

“I’m going to come if you don’t stop that,” you begged. 

“Go ahead,” he groaned. 

“Not without you.” 

Something in the energy changed then, and you lifted yourself off him, sitting up. Astarion stayed on his back a moment longer, before exhaling and also raising himself into a sitting position. You were still on his lap, facing him.  

“Listen,” he took your face in both hands, looking into your eyes intensely. “I want you so fucking bad, it hurts. I want to tear your clothes off and ravage you until you’re speaking in tongues. I do.” His voice was hoarse. He paused, before continuing. “But even more than that, I want to remember this, remember you, and not have any of the dirt from my past mixed into it. It’s difficult enough to keep it at bay as it is.” His eyes teared up at that. “And right now, for now, this is the only way I know how to do that.”  

“I’m sorry.” Tears sprang from your eyes. 

“No, you sweet idiot, you haven’t done anything wrong. I love you.” He gathered you in his arms, kissing away your tears as his own started to roll down. He sighed. “Great, now no one is coming, and everyone is crying.” 

You both burst out laughing as soon as those words were out of his mouth.  

You held each other a while longer, him stroking your back, before you broke the silence. 

“So the bite scars are pretty erogenous then?” 

“Extremely. Use that knowledge at your own risk and peril, darling.” 

He lifted your chin for a kiss. 

“Shall we go piss everyone off for a while, maybe steal Lae’zel’s boots, then come back here for more ‘memories’?” he asked.  

“Sounds childish and dangerous. I’m in.” 

You needed to clear your head too.  

Maybe tomorrow would be the day one of you would get closer to knowing what it was you were doing, and tell the other. Until then, at least you were in it together. 

~~~~~ 

The “I love you” is not canon for Act 2, but it is my headcanon, damnit.  

Like what you just read? Huzzah, there’s more! - Series master list

Next in series - Communication

AO3

#astarion #baldur’s gate 3 #bg3 #astarion x reader #astarion x tav #bg3 fanfic #astarion fanfic #softcore smut #bg3 smut #astarion smut

[saturnsbabyboii]

🐸Astro Observations Since School is About to Start🐸

🐸 Taurus and Leo are indistinguishable from one another. They both love the finer things in life and value self care and a hedonistic style of living. Besides they both have that regal star quality (Think of Audrey Hepburn and Lucille Ball). The only difference is that Taurus takes the slow and steady route to attain such lifestyle and Leo prefers to take risks and a gamble. Anyways ✨OPULENCE✨

🐸 4th house Aquarius/9th house Cancer people might be out of place within their immediate families but find themselves at home among strangers or while traveling.

🐸 Lilith (h12, h13, or h21) Conjunct Chiron are strong indications of sexual exploitation (and possibly abuse). These natives could be taken advantage of by people in powerful positions. Even after displaying their truth, they would be faulted and persecuted while their abuser get celebrated. They could very will be victims turned villains.

🐸 An unaspected Juno suggest a lack of desire for marriage or committed relationships.

🐸 Pluto in the 1st house might have a distinctive scar or birth mark.

🐸 Although people dunk on harsh aspects, I personally view them favorably. These aspect are strong indications of perseverance, resilience, power, intelligence and grace. People with more Squares and/or Oppositions in their chart are capable and self aware, all the challenges they face early on bring them a better and higher understanding of the world, and not to mention, many rewards down the line.

🐸 With that being said, people with Ceres Opposite Moon might be particularly hard on themselves. Believing that they would be a burden and that they hold responsibility to keep it together for others, they don't ask for help nor do they accept it when it's offered. It's important for them to practice gratitude and self appreciation.

🐸 Vesta aspecting few personal planets suggests a person with a one track mind, or a very narrow view of their own life and purpose. However, someone with multiple aspects made between Vesta and personal planets suggests someone with turbulent and changing prospects.

🐸 Conversely, someone with no (or only one) aspects made to their Vesta might not care about the meaning of life or simply take an easy going point of view towards things.

🐸 Moon in a harsh aspect to a harmoniously aspected Venus and/or Mars are people that have all the qualities of a good partner but can't seem to commit or make up their mind regarding their relationships. This could also be an indication of being happier when single.

🐸 During the last Full Moon in Pisces, my sister that has a Pisces Moon ended up having surgery.

🐸 Placements in Water degrees (4°,8°,12°,16°,20°,24°,28°) suggest karma and karmic debt or relations in the theme of the placement.

🐸 The degree of Venus can also suggest when will you feel comfortable dating authentically. The higher the degree the later in life it'll be.

🐸 Continuing on the theme of degrees, take note of the following degrees in the chart (especially for natal, synastry and solar return). The degrees are

Creation/New beginnings: 0°,4°,21°

Critical: 13°,17°,26°

Destruction: 15°,22°,23°

Completion: 29°

🐸 Check asteroid Bakker (27425) to know more about the circumstances of when you lose your virginity. Bakker means virgin in Arabic. Regardless of your stance or idea regrading the concept of virginity, you might find insight into either your first sexual experience.

🐸 Asteroid Egeria (13) represents the knowledge we learn by giving service or sacrificing in return. The sign it's in represent the kind of information, the house and aspects represent the method, purpose and teacher of this knowledge. For example, I have a friend with Egeria in Aries in the 2nd house, in aspect to Jupiter and Uranus. She learned about money, finance, self esteem, and asset flow through a mentor (Jupiter) and the internet (Uranus). She in return had to manage her money flow and expenses realistically (Aries in the 2nd house).

🐸 Another friend of mine had the asteroid in Sagittarius in the 10th house, in aspect to the ascendant. She learned how her career, image and aspiration are tied to her appearance and approach to things through mirroring (Ascendant). She had to in return manage her authenticity and be careful of who and how she express her opinion publicly (Sagittarius in the 10th house).

🐸 It is no surprise that the most common Sun sign among Popes is Pisces followed by Sagittarius. Capricorn is the most common Moon sign. Aquarius is the most common Mercury. Gemini is the most common Saturn, and Pisces, Gemini and Leo share the same spot as the most common sign in Jupiter.

🐸 Saturn in the mutable houses (3rd, 6th, 9th, 12th) might inherit hereditary illnesses. The 3rd and the 9th suggests developmental setbacks, and issues in attachment and communication. The 6th house suggests physical effects while the 12th suggests mental. Even though the 6th house manifests into physical ailments, the 12th house implies hospitalization and chronic illness from a young age.

🐸 The placement of Pisces and Neptune in the houses along with the state of the 12th house and placement of it's ruler can tell many things about someones' dreams. For example, my friend has Pisces in the 2nd house, Neptune in the 1st house, Capricorn in the 12th and Saturn in the 3rd. (Pisces in the 2nd and Ruler of the 12th is in the 3rd house) She dreams a lot about school, even though she is 25, driving, walking around, buying things, talking to people, listening to music and walking around our city. (Capricorn in the 12th) Her nightmares usually have a state of humiliation and shame. She also finds herself in dream where she is feeling helpless. (Neptune in the 1st) She receives messages through a state of 'Deja Vu' and channels it through the prediction of things.

🐸 Moon Conjunct Chiron 🤝 Mommy issues

🐸 The first impression a rising sign leaves is due to the MC than the rising sign alone. The MC rules public image and reputation, as such it influences the way we're seen by people, regardless of whether we know them or not. For example, an Aquarius rising uniqueness and reputation is supported and diversified by its MC. Although in the whole sign system the MC is in Scorpio, using the Placidus system the MC can also fall in Libra and Sagittarius. This showcases how an Aquarius rising can be perceived as a humanitarian in reputation and ethereal in appearance (Libra MC), or as a provoking trailblazer with an edgy and dark appearance (Scorpio MC), or as an enthusiastic advocate with an alienlike appearance (Sagittarius MC).

🐸 North Node in Fire signs have that "main character" energy.

-Thank you for reading. Hope you it resonates and you enjoyed it.

#astrology #astro observations #astrology notes #astro notes #astrology observations #astrology houses #astrology aspects #asteroid astrology #asteroids astrology #astro placements #astro posts #astrology asteroids #astrology posts #astrology signs

[abbyromanoff]

I have a request if you're taking them, I may also request this to a few other blogs, so don't mind that, I absolutely love your work btw!!

I was hoping for Wanda and reader

wanda recently invited her gf R to live with her, but R has a habit she doesn't know about. The previous person R lived with always made R do the laundry, make all the food, do all the cleaning, and do everything, and R doesn't realize how messed up that is, R thinks their ''lower'' than whoever they live with, therefore they should do everything.

wanda is heartbroken to see R waiting on her like that, making her meals and cleaning up after her, and doing it happily too, and is upset that her love thinks so low of themselves.

que Wanda reassuring R they will split the work evenly, and R doesn't need to do everything

thank u in advance!

YOU DESERVE MORE THAN THAT

PAIRINGS: Wanda Maximoff x reader

WORD COUNT: 1401

WARNINGS: angst, fluff, past abusive relationships, sorry for anyone named Blake you’ll understand eventually, happy ending, that’s all :)

NO ONE IS PERMITTED TO STEAL, COPY, OR REBLOG MY WORK AS THEIR OWN!!

Your hands worked tirelessly with the cloth, the dish beginning to shine under the bright light coming from the ceiling. You were exhausted, but that didn’t mean you were allowed to stop just yet, not until all tasks were done for the day. It was only fair, after all, Wanda accepted you into her home when asking you to move in with her, so while she spent hours in the office you would be cleaning and tending to the house.

Your phone's alarm went off and you quickly headed towards the laundry room, grinning as the dryer's loud sounds came to a stop. You opened the door and placed the clothes into a laundry basket, carrying the heavy load into your shared room and placing it on your side of the bed, making a mental note to finish it once the dishes and dinner were done. It was her favorite meal that you made, your famous lasagna that always made her mouth water.

“Y/N? I’m home, baby!” You turned to greet the owner of the voice, smiling as you ran into her muscular arms and felt a kiss on your head.

“Mm, missed you s’ much, love.”

“‘Missed you too, Wands.” She leaned back, chuckling at the small red dot on your nose before wiping it away.

“Must be the pasta sauce.” Her eyes widened at this, a smirk growing on her face as she took a whiff of the air.

“Did you make lasagna?”

“You guessed it.” She rose up and down on her tiptoes, her arms wrapping around you once more as she swayed you back and forth quickly.

“Ugh, you are the best.” You helped her remove her coat but were stopped less than halfway through, causing you to furrow your brows.

“It’s okay, I got it.” She placed it on the coat rack and led you into the kitchen, huffing as she noticed there were still ten minutes left on the oven clock before her meal was ready.

“Ugh, I don’t think I can wait that long, I’m starving!” She exclaimed, and you could hear a small rumble coming from her stomach, proving her point.

“I’m sorry, I was a bit backed up. Uhm, did I not pack enough for your lunch?” She brushed you off, massaging her shoulders and letting her hair fall from the tight ponytail.

“Don’t apologize. And, you did, my coworker just forgot her lunch so I gave her some of mine.” You nodded, returning to the dishes that were left unattended. You continued to place them in the dishwasher, occasionally needing to scrape stains out of pots or pans.

“I can pack more for you next time if you’d like.” She found herself behind you, placing both hands on either side of your waist and humming as she rested her head on your shoulder, leaning in to leave a peck on your neck and sending shivers through your body.

“Don’t worry about it, your lunches are just enough. Besides, she never usually forgets her food, she was just in a hurry this morning, she said.” She took the cup from your hand once rolling up her sleeves, and you couldn’t help but lick your lips at the sight of her veiny hands and arms.

“I can do this for now, you just sit there and look pretty for me, yeah?” You hesitated to agree to her request, only giving in once she lightly took them from you while you were unable to speak your disagreement.

“No, really, it’s okay, you’ve been working hard all day, it’s only fair.” She didn’t listen, instead continuing the job you were supposed to be doing. That was your job, you had to do it.

“Uhm, I’ll go fold the laundry then.”

“Nonsense. C’mon, we both know you need a break. Why don’t you sit down and I’ll get dinner ready for you tonight, yeah? We can have a nice bath together later too, if you’d like.” A tear was threatening to escape, and while you were trying your hardest to hold it back, you couldn’t stop it. Wanda turned when she heard sniffling, seeing your gaze fallen to the floor while your hand came to your cheek and she guessed it was to wipe it dry.

“Honey? Hey, what’s wrong?” She dried her hands on the hand towel, her forehead crinkled together as she slowly stalked over to you who stood in the middle of the kitchen.

“Nothing. Nothing's wrong, these are happy tears.” This only caused her concern to grow, and the beeping of the oven became nonexistent in her mind, but not yours. You used it as your excuse to remove yourself from her hold, coughing to cover the waver in your voice as you used oven mittens to remove the large dish. You let it cool, grabbing the counter tightly in your hands before finally giving her the attention she wished for. She looked so defeated, so concerned, you felt horrible.

“Sorry, I- uh, I didn’t mean to worry you.” She stepped forward once again, this time cornering you between the furniture and herself so you wouldn’t escape. She grabbed both of your hands, kissing the backs of your palms before holding them in the air near her stomach and your chest. She used her thumb to run across your knuckles, and the soothing manner nearly caused further tears.

“What’s wrong, Y/N? Did I- did I do something?”

“No, of course not!” You quickly assured, but that heightened her confusion.

“It’s just, I don’t know, I don’t know how to handle this.”

“What do you have to handle? If you mean the cleaning and everything, I’ll- I’ll help, I promise-“

“No, I mean this- you! You’re so fucking good to me and I’m so scared I’m gonna lose that somehow, I don’t know.”

“I don’t understand.” The woman spoke, and you sighed as you recalled the previous endeavors you were forced to experience. She treated you horribly, and you didn’t deserve that, but Wanda didn’t exactly know this. Wanda only knew some of the horrors you chose to share.

“When I was with, uh, Blake, she- she would always be mad if I didn’t finish everything. I would come home from a double shift, and she’d be drunk on the couch, but she yelled at me for dinner, to finish the laundry, clean the dishes, sweep and mop- I had to do everything, Wanda. If I didn’t have the bed made for her I’d be forced to sleep on the couch, and if I didn’t make dinner I wasn’t allowed to eat for the night. She’d yell at me if I didn’t want to have sex, and then I wouldn’t be able to even apologize before I was being blamed and, once again, forced to sleep in the living room. Leaving her was the best choice I ever made, I just never thought I’d have someone so caring as you, I guess she made me believe I didn’t deserve that.” Wanda’s heart felt heavier the more your voice broke, and she never wanted to cry more. She hated hearing others' troubles, but yours felt as though they were hers.

“Baby…I don’t know what to say, I- I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize, and you know you don’t have to do all this, I’ve told you this before.”

“I know, I just fell into such a routine with her, I didn’t know how to stop. And I like doing it for you, you actually appreciate what I do.” You chuckled, but she didn’t return it. She brought you forward and blew out a deep breath, and you instantly returned her hug.

“I love you so much, sweetheart. Please don’t forget that.”

“You’re nothing like her, Wanda, and I really do love you. I’m sorry I freaked out.”

“You didn’t freak out, and I couldn’t blame you for that. You make me so happy, and I’m so grateful for everything you do for me. I want to change that for right now, okay? You’re going to sit down and I’m going to be setting the table tonight. We can have some ice cream on the couch, and I’ll give you a nice massage. Then we can have a bath and I’ll get to hold you all night in my arms, and I’ll never let you go. Does that sound alright?”

“That sounds perfect.”

#wanda maximoff x reader #wanda maximoff imagines #wanda maximoff imagine #wanda maximoff comfort #wanda maximoff fanfiction #wanda maximoff fic #wanda maximoff #wanda maximoff x y/n #wanda maximoff x reader angst #wanda maximoff x fem!reader #wanda maximoff x female reader #wanda maximoff x reader fluff #wanda maximoff x you #wanda maximoff x gender neutral reader #scarlet witch angst #scarlet witch x you #scarlet witch x reader #scarlet witch

[gatorbites-imagines]

Now imagine this...

What if... Reader were miles spouse right? (Male/gn)

And Prowler miles spouse (reader) died right.and when reader and miles met prowler miles, Would they. A. fight over reader. B. prowler would force reader to be with him and C. they share. (WHICH i highly doubt.)

And prowler is a bit of a yandere (if thtas alright)

What do you think? Can you make either a fanfic/headcanon/scenario? If you don't mind of course :))

-🥚anon

Miles Morales and Miles G x Black Cat Male Reader

Headcanons

Both Miles are aged up in this scenario, giving miles more time to be Spiderman. I hope I got the yandere part right hehe.

I just love Black Cat, so i had too. Let me know if you guys wanna hear about my Kraven Reader or Venom reader ideas ;3c i have so many ideas about the reader being based on spiderman villains.

You were earth 1610s Black Cat. You had grown up side by side with Miles, and as you grew up your body developed the meta-gene, causing you to gain the ability to affect probability fields to others. Aka, you are able to give people bad luck.

You didn’t quite like using your powers too much, and one of the few people who knew about it was Miles. You couldn’t help but use it on bad people though, like bullies or abusers.

You hadn’t always been Black Cat, but after your parents had a horrible divorce and you were abandoned with your mother with your father leaving with all the family’s money, you turned towards the world of crime.

The Morales family had of course offered to help your mother as she struggled, but she was too proud to accept it. Rio and Jeff ended up helping in ways she wouldn’t be able to turn down, like bringing you guys meals, or giving you Miles’s old clothes.

The new Spiderman hadn’t been around long before you became the Black Cat, and you two developed a relationship similar to Peter and Felecia. Lotsa flirting and chasing each other around the city with games and puzzles.

Of course, neither of you told each other your secret identities, wanting to keep the other safe.

Then one night when you were out stealing an expensive artifact, spiderman hung upside down from his webs and tsked at you, telling you to put the artifact back. Of course, with your relationship being so flirty, you tell him you’ll do it for a kiss.

And to both your surprise and miles’, he actually does it. he pulls his mask up enough to reveal his lips, and you two have a spiderman kiss right then and there.

Its only after you pulls away that you realize you recognize those lips, since you’ve always carried a flame for your best friend. One thing leads to another, and you put back the artifact and have spiderman chase you onto the roof where you take your mask off.

You both end up taking your masks off and revealing your identities to one another. It leads to a very long conversation why you both do what you do, and how it doesn’t change your relationship from what it was before.

That is until Miles ends up confessing that has always liked you a whole lot, both as Miles and Spiderman. When you shyly tell him you feel the same, he doesn’t believe it at first, until you kiss him again.

After that you two start dating, much to your parents joy, as they’ve always known you two had a thing for one another. Of course, Black Cat still steals, and Spiderman still tries to stop him, but if Black Cat starts only stealing from the corrupt, who’s gonna connect the dots?

Then everything with the multiverse happens, except you follow Miles through the portal, thanks to a gadget you’ve created that helps you become invisible and untrackable. You also have a grappling gun you use similar to webbing, so you can swing from the spider alliance.

When you reveal yourself to help Miles escape, a lot of the spider people are shocked, because they have their own Black Cat, that they have a relationship with of some sort. This allows you and Miles a headstart.

During the chase you use your meta powers on the people chasing you as well, making a lot of them trip or fumble, or be affected in other ways by bad luck.

When you end up on earth 42 neither of you realize it, too focused on saving Jeff to notice until its too late. You have a bad vibe, and stay hidden when Aaron arrives, following the two up onto the roof.

Miles G is able to see you even though you are invisible, thanks to the prowler gadgets, so both you and Miles are knocked out, and brought back to Aaron’s apartment since you’re both too distracted looking at the mural, which features both Jeff and you.

You were wearing your mask when you and Miles got caught, so when Miles G unmasks you back in Aaron’s apartment be drops it onto the floor almost immediately.

Miles G doesn’t know how to react to seeing your face again, Aaron has to get his attention because he’s just staring at you, maybe caressing your cheek so carefully with the clawed prowler gauntlets.

Miles G knows you aren’t his version of you, as you never had the chance to become Black Cat in this universe, having died too early to use your powers to start stealing. Your parents still divorced in this universe, but they used your death as the main reason.

Miles G grows a little obsessed with keeping you, as he doesn’t want to lose you again. Aaron just shakes his head as he watches his nephew dress you out of your Black Cat gear and into some of the clothes Miles G owns, because the you of earth 42 always wore his clothes.

Hed place you on the couch in the room, not wanting to lose sight of you, but also to maybe convince you that his doppelganger isn’t good enough, and you’ll want to stay with Miles G.

Miles would wake up first thanks to his accelerated healing, and the scene happens like in the movie where he tries to convince Aaron to free him, and he meets Miles G. That’s when Miles realizes you aren’t there and starts to panic, until Miles G turns the punching bag so Miles can see you unconscious on the couch.

It would lead to anger and fear in Miles, him cursing at Miles G and demanding him to let you go and asking what the hell he did to you. When he learns Miles G undressed you when you were unconscious Miles gets enraged.

You would have woken up by then, but played unconscious, trying to figure out what to do in this situation since all your gear was taken from you. But before you can really cook up a plan, Miles breaks free and the two start to fight.

When Aaron tries to step in, you jump up and kick him unconscious. Thanks to all the running and parkour you do, you have a very strong kick, which knocks the guy out cold immediately.

Using Aarons gun you shoot it at Miles G, since he’s the obvious threat in your eyes, and Miles G looks completely betrayed at you turning on him. He’s convinced himself you’re his and would choose him, so seeing you choose Miles breaks his heart and enrages him.

The fighting would continue, and at some point, Miles G would have you in his arms held against his chest, claws wrapped around your throat and ready to tear it out if Miles tries anything.

Everything is frozen as Miles G kisses at your neck and nibbles at your ear, muttering almost obsessively about you and how he’s missed you so much, how much he loves you, how empty he’s felt since you died.

You can’t help but pity him, because he seems so broken and sad without his version of you around. That doesn’t make you wanna stay though, as you guys need to go save Jeff and go back to your own dimension.

And though it makes your heart hurt to do, you use this to your advantage. Miles Gs guard crumbles when you turn and kiss him, his hands coming up to cradle your face almost desperately, like you’ll disappear if he doesn’t hold on for dear life.

You can feel the claws dig into your face and draw blood, but the distraction works perfectly, and Miles is able to knock him unconscious. Miles might hit him a little too hard, but he would excuse it on adrenaline later.

After you guys tie the two up and you get your Black Cat gear back on, Miles would push you up against the wall and kiss the breath right out of your lungs. Everything that’s happened has him feeling possessive and like he needs to overwrite the kiss you had with Miles G earlier.

Before you guys leave you fold up the clothes Miles G made you wear, and because you heart aches for him since he’s a version of Miles, you kiss the top of his head and maybe even leave a video message on his phone.

Miles isn’t too happy about it, but he also feels a litter flustered because you love him so much you feel for any version of him, even the crazy ones.

After that you two leave the apartment to try and find a way back to your own earth. You wonder if the video message will have any future consequences, but you are too set on saving Jeff that you don’t really think about it.

#male reader #across the spiderverse #spiderverse #miles morales #Miles G #Prowler Miles Morales #Marvel #Miles morales imagine #miles morales headcanon #miles morales x male reader #miles morales x reader #prowler miles morales x reader #prowler miles morales x male reader #miles g imagine #miles g headcanon #miles g x male reader #miles g x reader #prowler miles morales imagine #prowler miles morales headcanon #spiderverse x reader #spiderverse imagine #spiderverse headcanon #spiderverse x male reader #across the spiderverse imagine #across the spiderverse headcanon #across the spiderverse x male reader #across the spiderverse x reader #marvel imagine #marvel headcanon #marvel x male reader

[spacebarbarianweird]

Things We Deserve

Summary: Astarion re-lives one of the traumatic episodes of his life, and considers himself unworthy of love.

Pairing: Astarion x f!Tav

Tags: fluff, hurt/comfort, established relationship, f!tav, angst, fluff, hurt/comfort, mentions of past abuse

TW: a mild description of forced prostitution

Read on AO3

Masterlist

Headcanons

Thanks @satanicspinosaurus for your help! I live for your commentaries on ethical issues.

It is on the same corner of the street in the Lower City. Again.

A young elf is looking for a “client”. It's not difficult — he has soft white curls, a gentle smile, the body sculptured by some elven god. A glance, two, some nice words — and there is a night of passion ahead.

A half-orc, almost twice as big as the elf, grabs his chin and studies his face as if Astarion is an inanimate object. Then orders to lift up his shirt. The client looks at him with the same expression as if he were buying a horse. 

His hand gropes the elf’s crotch, causing him to moan. 

"Works for me", the half-orc grabs a handful of silver curls with his stiff fingers. "Never fucked an elf".

Astarion obeys. This is what he is. A mere street whore.

No, go away, you don't need to do that anymore. You are free, don't let him touch you!

Astarion knows what will come next. Two half-orcs, who despise and hate elves to their guts will really enjoy having one for themselves for the whole night. 

They’ll give him pain. Disgust. Burning touches. 

"Entertain us, elf", the half-orc groans pressing the Astarion’s face into the pillow. 

Here’s a joke: the elf wants to die. Sadly, he is already dead. And that's his life now. Forever. 

Beatings. Non-consensual sex. Or consensual? Is this what he wants? He never says “no”, after all.

I want you all to burn down, Astarion thinks spreading his legs. I want you to suffer as much as I do!

The half-orcs never give him a chance to drag them to the Cazador’s mansion. They won't die. They won't suffer. They use Astarion and then leave. A small sack of silver breaks when it is thrown on the floor.

And Astarion will have to deal with his sore body and numb mind. Forcing himself to get someone else inside the brothel, knowing too well that he is already doomed for torture because he hasn’t returned on time. Even if he delivers the most innocent and beautiful virgin to Cazador, he will be punished anyway.

Flayed with a razor. What? He is a vampire. He will regenerate. 

Astarion opens his eyes and finds himself on the floor. 

Where is he?

It's not a brothel. More like an Inn?

Reality slips back into his mind, replacing the awful visions of the past.

It wasn't real. Of course, it wasn't.

He doesn't have to sell his body anymore. He doesn’t have to sleep with people he doesn't like and want. He won't be beaten for saying “no”. He even has the luxury to say “no” to Tav, the only person whose body he enjoys. 

But two hundred years of memories are too vivid. Tortures. Humiliation. Misery. Forced prostitution. He had to do the most disgusting things on his master's whims, and Astarion is afraid nothing will ever wash it away. 

The flood of darkness flushes his brain again. Astarion rises up on his knees as if in a desperate prayer.

Why him?

Why did it happen to him?

His life was stolen. His personality, his future, his past. All was brutally taken away along with his beating heart.

Leaving only pain and disgust.

Tears burn his skin. The scars hurt as if they are still fresh and bleeding. 

He was stripped away of everything. Of freedom. Of dignity. Of his own self-respect.

The person he could have become. The future he could have embraced. 

Why?

Why?!

He digs his nail deep into his skin as if trying to peel it off. He is a vampire. It will regenerate.

Touches. The smell of unwashed bodies. Movements inside him. The fake pleasure. Pain. Always — pain. Either physical or mental, but often both. 

He clenches his fists and groans like a wounded animal.

"Astarion"

A gentle voice resonates with his broken thoughts. 

“Astarion, are you with me?”

He looks up and sees Tav. She sits in front of him. Concerned face. Worried eyes. She doesn’t move, doesn’t try to touch him. Like he's a person.

Like he's worth something.

Like he's broken and she needs to be careful.

"Oh, hello, darling", the mask is on again. "I am sorry. I've been carried away a bit. Tell me how was your day in the sunlight."

Tav sighs. “Astarion, I returned an hour ago. And you’ve been like that all this time.”

"Darling, you could just call me over”, Astarion smiles. 

"I have done it five times."

“Oh. Then … “

“Astarion, I know when your smile is sincere and when it’s not. Don’t force yourself.”

He stops and sits back.

“May I touch you?”, she asks.

He nods. The caress sends a shiver down his spine and Astarion flinches avoiding looking at Tav.

He remembers. Again, and again. Never-ending tortures disguised as pleasures. Things he would have never done voluntarily. The dirt on his skin. The poison on his tongue.

Astarion wants to hide. He wants to disappear. He wants to run away.

Tav crawls closer to him to hold him in her hands. 

He shivers.

“Hush, I am here. Tell me what is plaguing you.”

He almost orders himself to relax. Tav is here. Tav loves him. Tav doesn’t judge. Whatever he tells her, she won’t get angry. She won’t hurt him. She won’t punish him. Tav won’t use him for sex and pleasure. It will never happen no matter what he does. 

He can run away. He can say “no”. He can fight back.

"Just a memory of a certain night in the lower town. A night of... what I usually was supposed to do. I...” the words stuck in his throat. “I am tainting you, Tav. I am ruining you.”

"Stop", Tav puts her chin on his shoulder nuzzling his collarbone. 

"I am a terrible person, Tav. I truly am. It all happened to me and I sometimes think what a terrible person I used to be if I inflicted it all upon myself.”

Instead of answering, Tav holds him tighter as if not to not allow him to drown in dark waters. 

"Do you remember anything from your past life?"

"No"

"Then why do you think you were a bad person?”

“Because — … “

He doesn’t know the answer. A corrupt magistrate who would easily ruin people’s lives. An arrogant racist who hated everyone who didn’t belong to the pure fairy kin. 

But was it true?

“Listen, Astarion. I won’t pretend I know what you were like back then. I won’t lie by saying I know why it happened to you. But everything you “know” about your past life comes from Cazador. What if it was just another of his tortures? He wanted you to believe you were a bad person. He wanted you to think you were guilty. I know that type. It’s a special pleasure for them to torture good people. He — “

“Made me a street whore.”

He spits the last word. Yes, that is what he was all these years. He can mask it all with fancy words. Conquests, lovers, seduction. When it was just abuse.

Words spill out of him.

"Sometimes I wasn’t even supposed to drag anyone to the mansion. It was more like retrieving information by doing the only thing I knew how to do well. Sometimes it was an order to pleasure someone - as a reward for them. Sometimes it was just pointless. Just one more thing to break me even more.”

"You say like you did it of your own free will", she says.

"I-"

"You did it because you were like a puppet. Because it was impossible to say “no”. The moment you set yourself free, you stopped doing that."

"And the first thing I did was seduce you!”

She cups his face and kisses his forehead. It causes another flow of tears. 

“I have my own free will, too,” she says. “Do you think I would sleep with you if I didn’t want to? I am not the person who hooks up with men in brothels and I am not the person who would enjoy a sentient trophy to fuck. It’s not normal to find people on streets and treat them like objects.”

Tav cradles him in her arms. Astarion’s muscles are still tense. He can’t do anything about that. Maybe, if Tav leaves him for a moment, he will find a way to relax but the mere thought of staying alone scares him.

She kisses him. Saying all the sweet words she knows to soothe his worries.

"I have an idea," she finally says. “Could you lie on your stomach?"

“What for?”

Tav kisses his neck.

"Please?"

He is trying to lie on the floor but Tav stops him.

“On the bed.”

He hesitates but agrees. Astarion puts his hands under his cheek. His bare back is exposed and it causes him to clench his fists again.

“I will stop if you feel uncomfortable, love. Just tell me and I will stop”

He nods. Tav saddles him with her hips and presses hands on his ribs.

“Can I touch your scars?”

“Yes.”

Tav presses arms into his skin causing a pleasant pressure. The fingers massage his back but there is nothing sexual about it. It's not a premise, not a prelude. It will lead to nothing. He won’t have to pay back.

The hands massage his back, strongly and gently. 

"You have beautiful hands”, Tav murmurs. “They can do so many things —”

Yes, he thinks darkly, bringing pleasure mostly.

“They can sew, embroider. Pick up lockers. Steal pretty things. I like watching you doing tricks with coins. Can’t take my eyes off. Speaking of which… ”

Tav touches his curls.

“You have incredible eyes. Crimson red – “

The color of blood.

“The color of wine”, Tav proceeds. “You are always vigilant, like a cat on a hunt. You notice small details and see things I don’t.”

Tav moves a bit to be able to press a kiss on the crown of his head.

“You are so smart. You know so many things.” She gently touches his right ear. “I love your ears and how they peek out of your hair. They are so adorable especially when they twitch a bit, reacting to sounds or to your jaw movements.”

She keeps talking to him, massaging his back. The words of reassurance, of love, sound like a prayer. The touches and kisses cover his skin like a healing ointment.

Astarion feels protected. Loved. 

And then it’s just too much.

He bursts into tears. Desperate, painful. Tears rip his chest apart causing pain in the throat. 

Tav stops and gets off him allowing him to lay on his back.

“Astarion… Did I hurt you?”

He wants to say something but he can’t. He cries like a child abandoned in the streets. Cries like he did many years ago when the first tortures were inflicted upon him. When he realized no one would save him. That the Gods were silent and merciless. 

“Astarion…”

All the darkness he has in his heart is spilling through the tears. They wash away the pain and disgust like rain washes dirt in the Lower City. 

With effort he pulls Tav to him pressing her to his chest. She wraps her hands around him.

“Thank you”, he mutters through tears.

They sit like that for an eternity. Astarion listens to Tav’s heartbeat and breathing. He remembers her first reaction to his stories – anger. Pure, livid anger. Anger to people who did this to him. Not only Cazador but everyone who treated him like an object. And sorrow – she mourned his past along with him. 

She is his happiness. The happiness he has never considered worthy of. He has found it with her. And he will be forever grateful for her patience and care.

“Tav?”, he whispers but she doesn’t reply. He pulls away a bit and sees she is asleep.

Astarion chuckles and helps Tav to lie on the bed beside him. He tucks her into the blanket and makes sure she lies on the dry side of the pillow (not the section damp with his tears).

And then, he begins whispering words like a prayer.

Thank you. Thank you for existing.

--

Tag List

@tragedybunny @caitlincat-95 @tallymonster @astarionsbeloved @lumienyx @fayeriess @elora-the-slutty-songstress @veillsar @astarion-imagine-archive @micropoe10 @starlight-ipomoea @herstxrgirl @theearthsfinalconfession @ashrio20 @not-so-lost-after-all @vixstarria @wintersire @marcynomercy

#astarion #baldur's gate 3 #bg3 astarion #astarion bg3 #bg3 #astarion romance #baldurs gate astarion #astarion fics #astarion fanfiction #astarion x f!tav #astarion x female tav #baldur's gate tav #astarion angst #astarion fic #astarion ancunin #astarion fanfic #tav x astarion #astarion x tav #baldurs gate 3 #spacebarbarian fics

[daytaker]

The Gang React to You Saying You Hate Them

As a disclaimer, I'm going to say that these are reactions to you saying it and meaning it, not just being silly or dramatic. However, I'm also kind of assuming in most cases that this is NOT you saying "I am terminating our relationship entirely and this hate thing is a permanent situation."

The rest of the characters are below the cut.

Lucifer

"Very well. You're entitled to your opinion."

Depending on the situation, he might just shrug it off. It isn't like he hasn't dealt with his fair share of unfair whining from people who are upset with him. It would probably take a pretty emotionally charged situation for him to actually take you seriously.

In that case, he probably wouldn't quite know what would be best to do. He'd give you your space, but generally speaking, his demeanor wouldn't be significantly different. If things remain tense for more than a few days, he'll probably attempt to do the mature thing and sit down with you for a conversation to talk through your differences.

Mammon

"Pfft! No ya don't!"

Stage 1. Denial. You're so full of it. You couldn't possibly hate him, the Great Mammon, the first demon you ever made a pact with. You're just blowing off some steam. You'll get over it in a minute or two.

Stage 2. Anger. It's been a minute or two. You aren't backing down. Well, whatever! He isn't gonna sit around and let some whiny human talk shit about him! So he's going to maturely stomp to his room and maturely slam the door and maturely turn up some music obnoxiously loud.

Stage 3. Bargaining. Brooding has done whatever good it might have done, so he'll start to think of ways to change your mind about hating him. He's really an awesome guy, so it shouldn't be that hard. Obviously, the best way to let someone know you care is by spending money on them. So he'll go out on the town with a credit card and max it out on objects that are very pretty and shiny but really aren't your taste. (The fact that Mammon's taste is not the same as everyone else's taste mystifies him.)

Stage 4. Depression. The shopping trip having earned him nothing but abuse from Lucifer, he'll spend some time cooped up in his room and mope and sulk but definitely not cry, because how pathetic do you think he is? He ain't cryin' over one puny human!

Stage 5. Acceptance? Wait just a minute. You're so full of it. You couldn't possibly hate him, the Great Mammon, the first demon you ever made a pact with. He should stop sulking and go talk to you. Definitely not to beg you to forgive him or anything, but maybe if you squinted, it might look like that. Please don't hate him. Please?

Leviathan

"...I guess I should have known."

This is one of the choices that leads you straight to a bad ending. Ignoring him is one thing. Teasing him is another thing. Snapping at him when you're annoyed hurts, but he can justify it. But if you tell Levi you hate him, it will take a monumental amount of effort to undo that damage.

He'll probably assume you've always hated him, and that your friendliness was all an act. He won't be willing to take you at your word if you if you try and tell him that you didn't mean it, because how is he supposed to know that you aren't lying this time?

Satan

If he's (relatively) calm:

"You don't actually mean that. You sound like a child."

His reaction is a little bit like Lucifer's in this case; he'll leave you alone for awhile and not try to keep up the conversation. He won't really believe you actually hate him either. But he is a lot more insecure than Lucifer, so there's a part of him that nags at him... What if they actually hate you? He'll probably be irritable and difficult to approach when those thoughts are especially prevalent. Unfortunately, this is the sort of situation where Satan is immobilized by conflicting thoughts on what's going on, so it will probably be up to you to start a conversation and talk about whatever happened.

If he's very angry:

"Get out of here if you don't want to get hurt."

Whether that's a threat or a warning can be up to interpretation. I imagine that, as the Avatar of Wrath, there's a part of him that feeds on hate, so if Satan was a different sort of character, he'd say something like 'You fool! You're only increasing my power level!' But Satan being Satan, he'll spend some time in whatever room you've left him in and trash it before he calms down, feels extremely ashamed, sulks and/or broods for awhile at a complete loss for how to fix things without rolling over and looking completely pathetic, and, quite possibly, works himself up into another burst of rage from sheer frustration.

Ultimately, he'll probably be more comfortable talking things out through texts than in person (or starting the conversation with a text, then speaking face to face).

Asmodeus

"Hahaha... What...?"

He won't believe you for a second! Partly because, silly, of course you don't hate him, but also because his worldview does not allow for the possibility that someone he cares about might hate him. If he even considers the possibility that you might possibly, hypothetically mean it, he's in for an entire, earth-shattering identity crisis.

If you don't apologize pretty quickly or at least amend the statement to something he can accept, Asmo will head up to his room and hole up in there for awhile, obsessively tracking his social media accounts and pampering himself in the bathroom. You're lying, though. Look at this face! It's impossible to truly hate a face as beautiful as his.

Beelzebub

"Oh... Sorry..."

First he'll look like a deer in the headlights, and then he'll look like a kicked puppy. If he understands what led you to say this, he'll try and fix it, but if he doesn't, he will... (Select an answer below.)

A) Play video games with Levi. B) Go clubbing with Asmo. C) Eat. D) Learn to break dance.

If you guessed C) Eat, then you've been paying attention during your Obey Me! lessons.

And honestly. Honestly! Why would you say something like that? Maybe he's not your favorite brother, but we all know it's simply not possible to actually hate Beel. We all know you're full of it. So knock it off.

Belphie

"...Beel, did you hear something?"

Yep, Belphie is going to pull out all the pettiness he can scrounge up. He believes that the best defense is a good offense, and he's a pro. He'll act haughty and unbothered, ignoring you and looking entirely unbothered between sulking sessions under the covers.

Pettiness aside, you have, knowingly or otherwise, tapped into a source of deep anxiety in your relationship with Belphie. He has not forgotten the whole...incident that took place when you freed him from the attic. He knows that, reasonably, you probably should hate him, and it's amazing to him that you don't seem like you do.

Once tempers have cooled, it might be worthwhile to talk over what happened back then, just the two of you. It was pushed aside too quickly, and you both probably have things you wish you'd said.

Diavolo

"It seems I've upset you. Please know that I never meant to offend you."

He'll see that you're angry with him and give you your space, but he won't be as torn up about this as some of the others. Why? He simply won't believe you.

He has seen your soul, and it is not the soul of a hater.

Barbatos

"Oh?"

Yeah, get in line. Considering the amount of time travel shenanigans this guy has probably pulled, I have no doubt he has amassed more than his fair share of enemies. More than that, he already knows this is just you blowing off steam. Like Diavolo and Lucifer, this is just water off a duck's back.

Although, depending on how irritated he's feeling at the time of the incident, he may or may not wear a smirk as he gives his noncommittal response. Barbatos might be the man with the multiverse in the palm of his hand, but he is not above being petty. Watch your back for a few days.

Solomon

"Ah... It seems I've hit a nerve! I think I'll give you some time to cool down."

He'll back off and leave you to manage your anger in peace. Then he'll settle in to focus on some project or another that requires his undivided attention. He doesn't want to deal with all the unpleasantness that your words stirred up. Honestly, didn't he get past this sort of thing a few centuries ago? What's a little spat between friends? You don't actually hate him; not after all he's done for you. He can't possibly be feeling insecure...?

Nope, all he's feeling is itchy because of the toxic gas that's starting to pour out of his cauldron. He should open a window.

The Angels

I can't even do Simeon and Luke, because they'd both just be so confused and sad that I'm not sure where I'd go with it besides scolding you for being a bully. You don't just say "I hate you" to angels who are either extremely sweet and attractive or actual children.

#i don't know the new trio well enough to include them #obey me #obey me hcs #obey me headcanons #text post #hcs #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me levi #obey me satan #obey me asmo #obey me beel #obey me belphie #obey me diavolo #obey me barbatos #obey me solomon #obey me x reader #lucifer #mammon #levi #satan #it seems people liked the other 'the gang' posts so i'll go ahead and continue with that #what do you mean mammon and satan got way more attention than everyone else? no i don't have any biases i swear #the om gang react #the gang react #gang react #tgr #dthc

[just-some-random-girl]

See, this is what happens when people don't count important details in storytelling just because it's not being said outright, but rather shown through character expressions without dialogue. There were hints from the beginning that Stella was always meant to be a bad person and an obstacle to Stolas' feelings for Blitzø.

Don't believe me? Watch Loo Loo Land again with more open ears and eyes. Stella is shown throwing stuff at Stolas, including his sentient plants which he values highly and she was likely aware of that. That imp butler she threw at him means she not only abuses Stolas, but her own servants too, especially those of a particular lower class race.

Octavia's expressions here imply that this isn't an isolated incident either. That's the look of a girl who's heard this same type of arguing from her parents everyday. With how annoyed she looks, Stolas and Stella might as well have been fighting like this for years. It'd be more surprising if they didn't.

Octavia's lack of a reaction to her mom throwing a plant that almost hit her implies that this is far from the first time Stella has thrown things around the house. That is a concerning thing to get used to. Stella is also heard yelling about Stolas sleeping with an IMP, in THEIR bed. Notice the emphasis on "imp" and "our" bed. Even Stolas' only response to that is "I didn't have time to go to a motel!" It's pretty clear here that Stella is more concerned about about Stolas cheating on her with an imp specifically and ruining her reputation than the fact that he cheated at all.

If she was truly upset about the cheating itself, she would've said something more along the lines of "I can't believe you slept with someone else!" or something like that. Throwing their imp butler and him saying "You wanna fuck this one too?" and calling Stolas "pathetic, imp-sucking face" is all you need to know that Stella is making it more about WHO Stolas cheated on her with than the fact that he cheated. Keep in mind that this argument was going on right in front of Via, who didn't even say anything or try to stop it.

Octavia here says "You two done screaming for the day?" with little emotion, and Stolas' reply basically amounts to "Yup" without hesitation. More and more proof that his marriage with Stella was NEVER happy and never something that he wanted.

Later in the episode, Via does say that her parents used to love each other, even though we as the audience know it's not true. Stolas even tries to explain to her that he and Stella were never in love to begin with, but he didn't have the words. Because how exactly can you explain to your daughter that you and your wife were in an arranged marriage since you guys were kids for the sole purpose of producing a child, without offending her and making her think she was only born for one purpose? Or better yet, what reason is there to assume that she'd actually believe you?

People have looked at this picture on the wall and somehow came to the conclusion that Stolas and Stella used to be in a happy, loving relationship based on this picture alone, just because Stella is smiling in it. But if you look cloesly, you'll see that smile on Stella is barely there. She's very obviously faking it to keep up an image. She's forcing it so people won't get suspicious. This is the vision of Stella that Octavia remembers from her youth, which is exactly why she was naive enough to believe that her parents genuinely loved each other before Blitzø came along for a one night stand in hopes of getting the grimoire. Sure, she had seen them arguing and fighting with each other before that, but that's mainly because most if not all parents have gotten into nasty arguments at some point that their children were more likely than not to witness.

Stella is barely looking at Stolas there, clearly rolling her eyes and just wanting the picture to be overwith already. Stolas is genuinely happy there, but that's because his "little owlette" is there with him. He's not looking at Stella at all. Another picture in their house with just Stolas and Stella together has both of them frowning and looking at the camera, not each other. Octavia is the only thing to come out of Stolas' marriage that ever gave him any real happiness. She was the only reason he stayed at that house.

That scene where Stella ignores Octavia's cry for help when she's having a nightmare and tells Stolas to go check on her instead is more evidence that Stella had never been a nice person or a good mother. You could argue that she was just too tired to do anything about it, but look again. Stolas was just as tired as she was, yet he still went out of way to comfort his "little Starfire" when she was having a bad dream. Octavia may have called for both of her parents, but she said she had a bad dream about her father disappearing. Not her parents, just her father.

Also notice the drawings in Octavia's bedroom when she's a child. Look at how many of them are of her and Stolas together, but Stella is nowhere to be found in those drawings. That shows how close Via is to her father, especially when she was a little girl, but was never really close to her mother at all. Sure, those drawings are no longer in Via's room when she's a teen in the present, but remember that her and Stolas gradually got less close to each other as the years went by and their relationship got more flawed, to the point that Via questions if her dad even loves her anymore and literally listens to music about hating dads. But the fact remains that there were never any drawings of Stella in her daughter's room and there still isn't now is pretty telling that Stella was never a good mom, still isn't now and likely never will be.

Now look at The Harvest Moon Festival. If Loo Loo Land didn't convince you that Stella was a bitch, then this episode sure will. Stella's only scene in the episode is her screaming into a phone while she's talking to Striker about wanting Stolas dead. Right in front of him and Octavia. While Via is listening to music that's too loud for her to have even heard the screaming, Stolas heard it pretty clearly. But he had no reaction to his own wife screeching about hiring an assassin to kill him. Him being completely unphased by something like that is surely a sign that Stella had always hated his guts and he knew about it. He likely heard her shouting at the top of her lungs about wanting to murder him with her own bare hands. If he's not reacting to Stella talking to Striker on the phone about planning his death in front of him, he might as well have been hearing shit like that from her for years.

Not counting the pilot, those are the only two scenes with Stella in season 1. Both scenes depicted her in the same light. A loud, violent bitch in a loveless marriage. Therefore, her reveal in The Circus about always hating Stolas from the get go is not a retcon. Not that there was even much known about her character for there to be retconned in the first place, but her few scenes before that episode showed her doing and saying nothing BUT horrible things.

As for Stolitz, Blitzø is more than once implied to return Stolas' feelings for him. He just never said it out loud and is in denial about his own feelings. He's not even aware that Stolas' love for him is genuine because between their reuniting at the Not Divorce Party and their fumbled fake date at Ozzie's, Stolas has only ever talked to Blitzø with sexual innuendos. So Blitzø had no reason to assume that Stolas was legitimately in love him and didn't just want him for sexy times, because Stolas hadn't really been helping his case. Blitzø ranted to Fizzarolli about Stolas "acting" like he cared about him outside of sex.

Everytime Blitzø talks about Stolas treating him like his own personal fuck toy, he looks and sounds pretty upset about it. I doubt he'd care all that much about his relationship with Stolas being transactional fucking if he didn't like him back. Right after the fake date gone wrong at Ozzie's, Blitzø is looking at several pictures saved in his phone, one of them being a photo of him Stolas laying together in bed. Blitzø looks genuinely happy in that photo, he's even smiling. He DOES enjoy being around Stolas. After Loona comforts him, he can be heard whispering the names of all the people he cares about and is close to. Those people being Loona, Moxxie, Millie and.... Stolas.

In Seeing Stars, Blitzø blushes when seeing Stolas in his human form and you can see his pupils dialating for a few seconds before he changes for a few seconds. I don't know about you, but I don't blush at anyone i'm not in love with when they get a new look. Pupils dialating are also a commom indication that you're looking at something you love. Later in that episode, Blitzo nervously sweats when Stolas whispers into his ear with a seductive voice, smiles at Stolas specifically when he causes the whole audience to laugh, and holds his hand while they run out of the burning building. Blitzø did not need to hold Stolas' hand. He could've just said "Hey, let's get the fuck outta here," and Stolas wouldn't have hesitated. On top of that, they are still shown holding hands long after they escaped and only let go once they see their daughters.

Now, onto the most complicated scene involving the Stolitz relationship, during Blitzø's ball tripping hallucination where he sees Stolas on top of a staircase and is being pulled towards him with chains. Already not a good sign. But Blitzø was already climbing the staircase before the chains appeared. Even when he saw Stolas above him, he didn't run away. He briefly walked towards him before being dragged towards him. He's seen blushing once he reaches the top and Stolas caresses his face. Also notice how the art style in Blitzø's ball trip sequence was completely different from how the show normally looks, but the moment he saw Stolas the art style changed back to normal. Meaning that Blitzø feels the most like himself when he's around Stolas.

He just wants to be in a legit, healthy relationship with Stolas out of love, not the transactional fuck buddy situation he's in right now. He wishes that Stolas would stop calling him degrading nicknames like "impish little plaything" and is bothered by the power imbalance between the two of them.

"Show, don't tell" is an important writing tool that isn't respected these days. If a story isn't being anvilicious and spoonfeeding you information with heavy-handed exposition and infodumps left and right, then foreshadowing details get dismissed and ignored, with some people straight up saying they don't count because it's not being spelled out to them every 5 seconds. This is why some people still insist that Stella's villainy was retconned and that Blitzø has no interest in Stolas despite evidence to the contrary. They were paying more attention to their headcanons than what the show actually presented, and got mad when their headcanons were contradicted by canon.

#helluva boss #blitzø buckzo #stolas goetia #stella goetia #octavia goetia #stolitz #character analysis #show don't tell

[xeeroo08]

Astro Observations 《1》

Disclaimer : I am not a professional astrologer. This post is only for fun and it is solely based on my observations and experiences. So, please take it with a grain of salt.

♠️ Taurus Mars 🤝 Anger issues. It's either a disaster or unhealthy suppression. No in between.

♠️ Mars-Neptune placements have some wide imagination when it comes to steamy stuff. It be going on in their heads 24/7! Also they might get frequent wet dreams. Infact on a side note they are quite looking forward to it when they go to sleep.

♣️ Mars in 4th house went through a lot of family trauma in childhood. It could be anything like daily arguments, abusive household, domestic violence etc.

♠️ Sagittarius venus and their frequent crushes. If influenced by Scorpio could be secretive as hell.

♠️ Jupiter–Saturn negatively aspected could indicate a hard academic life in the beginning but once you work on it, you will succeed with flying colors. My friend has her jupiter squaring saturn and she was always at the bottom in her class. But once she decided to put her mind into it, she became one of the toppers in our school.

♣️ Venus at 0° has no idea where to began with love. They want it but are clueless about what they actually want.

♠️ Sagittarius people love freedom. Speaking from personal experience, you don't want to tie them down by any means. Like Sagittarius moon hates being emotionally tied down by some melodrama. Don't even think about manipulating them they will run away know right away. Sagittarius venus hates being controlled in a relationship.

♣️ Virgo sun might tease their partner now and then after their night together just to see their reaction. You better blush🔪

♣️ Someone mentioned in their post that having jupiter in 2nd house in solar return chart could indicate buying a lot of books. It's true! I had it last year in my chart and omg I bought so many books in one year! Also I never faced any shortage of money that year so later when I calculated the expense, I was surprised. It's also funny because whenever I felt like, okay I want this book, in the next few days I would have it in my hands by some means. I was obsessed with books. Let it be study material or novels. I still have many novels that I bought last year but haven't read yet. Lol no regrets tho, I love books 📚

♠️ Moon conjuct pluto 🤝 love-hate relationship with their mothers. It's like— I can't live without you. The next moment—but if I die it will be only because of you. And it goes both the ways. I have this and trust me it hurts on a subconscious level.

♣️ Asteroid Actor conjuct moon could mean that when you act, you act flawlessly. No one could tell if you are acting or not. Emotions are always on point. It comes very natural to these people. If underdeveloped, could make sly manipulators, like a wolf under sheep's skin.

♠️ Scorpio MC people always have a strict control over their public image. They are not said to be mysterious just like that. You might think you have them figured out but there is always something going on in their lives which is unknown to the public. And if they don't want you to know about it, you will never know either.

♣️ Pluto in 11th house/Sagittarius/Aquarius could mean that you might have a wide variety of friends all over the world, through online or even through mutuals. But for some of you these people just come along and go. Or maybe you are the one who gets distant for some reason. They still remain good friends though, it's just that the sudden closure is gone. Plus they don't reveal every single secret to their friends. They know later it won't matter.

♣️ Venus conjuct/ Sextile/trine Mercury gives a very pleasant voice. These people should try applying in music industry.

♠️ Asteroid Skip in natal chart could indicate what all things you missed or neglected in your life. For example, in 6th house you could have neglected your health a lot to the point later it backfired. Or in Capricorn it could indicate that you skipped working.

♣️ Jupiter–AC people are very sharp minded. Especially if it's conjuction. They know how to turn the situation in their favour. They are also very versatile in nature, which makes them very well liked by people. Basically the All rounder placement.

♠️ Asteroid Scientia positively aspecting Jupiter/Sun/moon could mean you work good in science fields. Whereas if it's negatively aspected you might face a little difficulty in dealing with science majors and need more effors to put in. I have jupiter square scientia and I know exactly what I am talking about.

♣️ Asteroid Academia in 11th house/Aquarius could indicate changing many schools, colleges throughout your life or living in a hostel.

♠️ Aries risings are the most restless beings alive. They can't sit still for two minutes to save their lives! These people are very competitive when it comes to athletics, as for academics, they are okay with being average. Two of the people that I know who have this rising sign won gold medals during their school lives in sports competitions.

♣️ Mars conjuct MC or Mars in 10th house people are very dedicated and driven when it comes to their profession. They pursue their career with full potential.

#astrology #asteroid scientia #jupiter squar saturn #astro observations #zodiac signs #moon-pluto #moon conjuct pluto #aries rising #scorpio mc #asteroid skip #asteroid academia #Mars-Neptune #sagittarius venus #taurus mars #solar return #Asteroid actor

[dustofthedailylife]

Dust !!! I can just imagine these boys, Venti, kaeya, ayato with someone shy. Like these shit eat that up(I'm not against them with other personalities) but they love when their s/o turns red and flustered.

Not much of a venti gal.

Ayato just has this proud look after he kissed his s/o to show that their in a relationship, one was to see the look on his s/o and the other was to ward suitors off

Meanwhile kaeya just has this smirk after using a pick up line on his s/o..

One word, nonnie!! Y E S! (Also I'm not too familiar with Venti since I usually don't write for him so bear with me here sjdhsjkd >.<); I also added a couple more characters I could imagine this with.

"I love it when you're flustered." ft. Kaeya, Ayato, Tighnari, Heizou, Childe, Alhaitham, Venti x (gn!) Reader [Fluff]

→ Masterlist || → Taglist

→ Kaeya teases you at every given opportunity. He drops the cheesiest and flirtiest lines with the widest smirk known to man, that make heat rise to your cheeks and make you want to bury your face in your hands. For one, he does so because he wants everyone to know you're his but also to see the absolutely adorable expression of yours when he flusters you. He is also not too shy to passionately kiss you in public either.

On the way home from the Tavern Kaeya pinned you against the next-best house wall and started peppering open-mouthed kisses from your lips over your jaw down to your collarbones. "Kaeya! We're in public, stop it!" you squealed. "Hmmm. No, I don't think I will... especially not when I notice what kind of effect I have on you."

→ Ayato is an absolute menace. As soon as he finds out you're putty in his hands whenever he makes any advances on you, he sees it as a personal challenge to provoke that reaction out of you as much as possible. How could he not when you always look so adorable? He whispers sweet nothings in your ear when you're out, or suddenly pulls you in to ravish your lips. If you look cute enough and if the mood strikes, he may even be so bold to do that out in public - after all everyone should know he is yours and you're his.

You felt your lover's arms wrap around your waist and a firm chest press against your back. He leans in to whisper all the terms of endearment in your ear that he is sure will get you flustered. "Ayato!" you reprimand. “You flirt in the most inconvenient situations, do you know that?”  “You know you love it.”

→ Tighnari is a master of sass and teasing. Just one look at his face is usually enough for you to tell if he is up to no good again. Whenever he has that signature smirk plastered across his lips, you know he has something on his mind again that you'd find yourself on the receiving end of.

With arms outstretched you fell into Tighnari's embrace and nuzzled against his chest. He gently tipped your chin up like he always did just before he was about to kiss you. So you slightly leaned in and closed your eyes in anticipation. Expecting his plush lips to unite with yours - but nothing happened. You hesitantly opened your eyes again only to see a devilish smirk on his face causing you to squirm in his embrace. "Why are you closing your eyes, are you tired, love?" "Nari! You're so mean!"

→ Heizou knows exactly the kind of effect he has on you and he absolutely abuses it whenever he can. Of course, always in a loving and never in a malicious manner. He just can't help thinking you're the cutest thing in the entire world when you squirm and get unbelievably flustered by his advances.

Heizou had been teasing you for the entire evening already and thanks to that, you had become so flustered you could barely even stand looking at him anymore. With the most prominent smirk on his lips, he leaned in to whisper something in your ear. But quick as you shoved him away again before he could utter a single word. "Oh shut up already!" "Make me."

→ Childe is someone whose love language is flirtatious teasing. Expect him to take every chance he gets to remind you of things that makes you avert your eyes and stumble over your words like there is no tomorrow. And if you plan to take a jab back at him - don't. You're only going to make things worse for yourself.

A sheer onslaught of teasing comments and pecks of his lips across your jawline and neck had turned you into a shy and flustered puddle. All you managed to get out were some incoherent giggles and the occasional whine for him to stop. "Ugh, you're so unbearable." you groan with a wide grin, eliciting the widest grin from the ginger himself. A teasing bite into your collarbone as well as the mischievous glint in his eyes let you know that whatever was about to come next would verbally knock you off your feet. And it did. "Oh? Is that so? That sure sounded different yesterday."

→ Alhaitham is generally not someone who'd immediately come to mind when you think about teasing. But he is a natural at it, thanks to his very blunt and straightforward demeanor. He can be an absolute tease and absolutely smug when you're his partner and as soon as he feels comfortable around you. Prepare to be met with hardcore sarcasm and playful teasing to rile you up or get you flustered. He never admitted it but he loves to know he can have that effect on you.

You looked across the room to where Alhaitham was sitting but instead of reading, he was just staring at you surreptitiously over the book that he was still holding in front of his face. Checking you out from head to toe, with an inkling of a smug smile painted across his lips. The realization that he had been staring at you and observing your every move starts to dawn on you and you had to turn away to hide your flustered face from him. "Archons, Haitham! How long have you been staring at me? I can't stand it when you do that!" you whine as you hide your face behind your hands. "Well if you can't stand it, you should get yourself a chair."

→ Venti knows how to push your buttons and he sure as hell exploits that every now and then. When he drags you to the Tavern with him he loves to pretend to become drunk and becomes extra clingy. The bard, who already has a ready tongue, would become even more outspoken. Lulling you with words of affection and physical touch until you melt in his arms and have to hide your abashed expression.

Venti stood up from his bar stool and summoned his lyre. He loudly cleared his throat as if he was preparing to proudly announce something - which he most certainly was about to do. You could see that mischievous glint in his eyes from a mile away. "Everyone, allow me to play a song for my wonderful second half over here. Because I think everyone needs to know how wonderful, beautiful, and patient they are. And especially cute when they're flustered, like right now." As the room fell silent, every gaze in the room darted to your form, which was slumped over the bar in a futile attempt to hide your face in shame.

Do not repost, copy, translate or edit - © dustofthedailylife || reblogs, comments, and asks about Genshin or my fics are always appreciated!

#genshin impact #astronetwrk #genshin fanfic #genshin x reader #kaeya x reader #ayato x reader #tighnari x reader #heizou x reader #childe x reader #alhaitham x reader #venti x reader #genshin drabbles #genshin headcanons #genshin scenarios #genshin fluff #🍁 dust mail #🍁 garden visitor: anon #🍁 dust reqs

[vidavalor]

I don't think Crowley's moment with Nina is an "oh" moment... Crowley has known forever. And he knows Aziraphale knows and feels the same, just not where they're at with it. If not, nothing he says in the "...and I would like to spend" scene makes any sense, nor would multiple other scenes. What Crowley realizes in that conversation with Nina is that Aziraphale (and, to a degree, Crowley himself) are fixating on Nina and Maggie to avoid talking about their own relationship.

He realizes it because, in that moment, *Nina admits that that's what she's doing with him*, which is what prompts Crowley's realization. She's stressed about her relationship with her abusive partner who is leaving her and she thinks the couple from the business across the street (Crowley and Aziraphale) are an adorable mess so she's been into their drama to distract from her own. It's when she said that that Crowley had his "oh" moment. He's not realizing that he and Aziraphale are in love. He already knows that. He's realizing he and Aziraphale are fixating on Nina and Maggie to avoid their own, less straightforward relationship.

Nina peppers Crowley with questions about their relationship and finds out in the process that these two who are obviously crazy about one another haven't really gotten together exactly, even as they are running around trying to get her and Maggie together. She admits basically that she's fixating on him and Aziraphale because "other people's love lives always seem more straightforward than our own" and Crowley realizes... oh. *That's* what this is about.

That's why Aziraphale's mind came up with this excuse to give his abusive partner (Heaven) and now he's obsessing over making it happen. He's projecting all of our stuff on Maggie and Nina. He wants us to talk and he doesn't know how to start it so he's coming up with scenarios for Maggie and Nina that involve us, too-- that are kinda really just about us. And I've been helping him because I don't know how to start this either and I just want him to be happy. I don't want go push this too far or go too fast and freak him out, so I've just been letting him drive it and now we are both trying to talk to one another through what we are doing about Maggie and Nina.

Oh sorry you thought we were together? Oh no I mean we are we've been married for millennia actually we just have only spent the last few years able to just be around one another with just a reduced fear of being murdered by heaven and hell so we actually are, at once, completely besotted with one another and also incapable of speaking in anything but our little code, which we honestly really can only speak as well as Aziraphale can speak French and oh you're looking at me now like ok well then how do you think you and he would know romance enough to help me and Maggie and ok yes seeing it now right yes ok fair point, great chat...

#crowley #aziraphale #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens 2 spoilers #ineffable husbands

[yanderestarangel]

⸺ 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐃𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐍𝐒 𝐂𝐀𝐋𝐋 𝐎𝐅 𝐃𝐔𝐓𝐘 𝐌𝐖2 - 𝐃𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐏𝐓 | "𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐖𝐎𝐔𝐋𝐃 𝐈𝐓 𝐁𝐄 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐓𝐎 𝐇𝐀𝐕𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐗 𝐀𝐅𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐑𝐆𝐔𝐌𝐄𝐍𝐓 𝐖𝐈𝐓𝐇 𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐌?"

A/N: Just one of the posts from my old blog, which I will repost here.

TW: obsessive behavior, degradation, abusive relationship, angst, smut, nsfw writing, sex without a condom, age gap, drunk sex, violent sex, afab reader, no pronouns used other than "you".

𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐣𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐨:

Fights with this man are hell. He would break down your entire house and you would actually get slapped in the face, he doesn't regret it one bit, most of the fights are for reasons that he simply gets out of his sick and obsessed head. You always expect these fights after leaving a restaurant the two of you went to for dinner, the man's face changed when he saw you being complimented by a random man, saying how beautiful you looked and how well you could model for his magazine, giving you a card. Dinner was ruined by this simple fact, your husband sat at the table practically ignoring everything, either you were talking while he was eating in silence, looking down or to the side, or he was just responding with irony to your statements, making you feel extremely bad, he knew that you would cry at any moment about his treatment right then and there, but you wouldn’t stop, he was so angry about everything.

The two of you would get home and the fight would soon start, with Alejandro talking about how much he fought to keep you and everything, saying that he was exhausted from having to put up with your "slutty way of operating" while he tried to be a good husband. He would see you silently crying but he wouldn't care and would tell you to stop victimizing yourself while holding your neck, forcing you to look at him, then tearing your favorite and expensive dress, putting his hands on your naked body in front of him. Sex with him would be you crying with sadness and pleasure, your mind was upset with all of Vargas' words, but you couldn't think as he fucked your pussy with all his might, telling you that you belonged to him and only him, while giving a slapped your ass and watched your tears come down, completely messing you up.

𝐒𝐨𝐚𝐩, 𝐉𝐨𝐡𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐚𝐯𝐢𝐬𝐡 :

Soap always tried to control himself, he hated fighting with you but this poor boy didn't know how to control his insecurities and unhealthy thoughts about you. For Mactavish, any sign that you seemed distant was already a reason to question and soon after (regardless of his response) it would generate an ugly fight between you. Sometimes it would be silly things like wearing shorter clothes to go out that would make him extremely nervous, people looking at your curves as you walked by, but even then he would just keep it to himself and speak delicately (but with a slight aggressive air) to you don't wear them on the street, well, you ignored them until the horrible day you decided to put on a shorter dress and take a lunch box to your husband at work, he'll freak out seeing you there and will simply take you home, well, first, he will start crying saying that he was betrayed by you and how much you want attention from men other than him, the two of you will fight for more than an hour, with.

Soap leaving the house and going to breathe a little, staying a few meters away, you in the back area of your house together, you would recover but he wouldn't, he would only enter the house again when you left or went up to the room while pouring as much drink down your throat.

Soon you would arrive seeing Soap crying, you would comfort him by saying sweet words first, but soon you would see your husband dominate you and rip off your dress, tearing it and saying that you were a whore, but a whore that only he could touch, while turning you with your back to the sofa and clumsily thrust it into your pussy while drunk saying the most obscene things about you, he would force him to cum inside you even if you don't want to as "proof" of his love for you, well and after that he would throw all the clothes that he considers short and too revealing outside, with the bonus of: putting a tracker on your cell phone.

𝐆𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐭, 𝐒𝐢𝐦𝐨𝐧 𝐑𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐲:

Will you really want to date this man? Like, seriously, honey, he's going to make your life a complete living hell ever since you agreed to have some kind of relationship with him. Ghost will start off light, telling you about how your college roommate smiles at you too much or how you're "leaving" him to hang out with your friends and how he wants attention because he loves you.

But it will get drastically worse as soon as Simon sees something that displeases him and makes you feel bad, he will manipulate you with a conversation where he pretends to be the victim and you the villain, like the time he picked you up from college and saw you and your colleague laughing and talking happily, the icing on the cake was ghost seeing you and this friend kissing each other on the cheek and saying goodbye, in his head that was equivalent to betrayal.

He waited for you to get in the car and ignore you the entire trip home, considering you live with him, he's just going to start shouting how much he does for you two and how ungrateful you are for being so offered.

It's true, Ghost paid everything for you and for you, even the college of your dreams, you he didn't care about anything but that was on purpose he wanted to have 100% control of your life, financially or otherwise, he would make sure that if you left him one day you couldn't maintain your basic standard of living because he would cut any and every type of chance in any type of area you wanted, but you couldn't even imagine that.

Simon raised his voice louder and louder, even throwing his cell phone at the wall and watching the device break into a thousand pieces, you just remained silent as you heard each insult, the last time you tried to defend yourself Ghost made you walk around naked for a whole day in addition to applying physical punishment, leaving you either in the unbearable cold without clothes or in extreme heat, and it always worked.

Or the worst sexual punishment.

Ghost just looked at you and left the house for a while with the car and you took the opportunity to cry and try to get some sleep, wondering where your relationship had come to.

When you woke up, you felt a strange sensation inside you, opening your eyes and seeing your boyfriend completely naked with just the skull balaclava that he always refused to take off during sex, the man's dick entered violently hitting your uterus, reaching each repeated movement is painful.

Ghost covered your mouth with one hand as he said that he had brutally beaten his "dear friend", you felt tears in your eyes as you heard every detail and then heard that it was all your fault.

Ghost sped up his thrusts more and more, now whispering how your pussy belonged to him and no one else and that he would kill anyone who tried to get close to you, soon letting out a rough moan and ending up inside you.

As if it were nothing the man threw a box with a new cell phone at you and left, you knew he was a monster, but no one can escape a ghost, he will chase you to the deepest reaches of hell. And that's what Ghost was, whether you like it or not.

#yanderestarangel #afab reader #ghost x reader #call of duty headcanons #cod mw2 #mw2 x reader #mw2 headcanons #soap mactavish #john soap mactavish #alejandro vargas #alejandro vargas x reader #ghost simon riley #ghost x you #simon riley x reader #alejandro vargas x you #soap mw2 #mw2 #mw2 x you #call of duty fandom #call of duty x y/n #cod x reader #call of duty hc #ghost x y/n #simon ghost riley #alejandro x reader #johnny mactavish x reader #yandere call of duty #yandere mw2 #gender neutral reader #dark concept

[halfagone]

Cassandra Cain and Communication

I've been noticing an interesting trend in DPxDC fanfics lately where people write Cass like she's psychic, or in simpler terms: she can read someone and in an instant know how to help them. And while I can definitely see the merits of this kind of approach, there are a lot of things to keep in mind.

I cannot stress enough how isolated Cass' childhood was. When it's said that David Cain trained her only in the language of killing, it is not an exaggeration. In many early renditions of her character, Cass cannot speak at all, and if she can, only in short, brief sentences. Cass goes the first seventeen years of her life not knowing how to read.

That is a canonical plot point too. We see Barbara teaching Cass to read in Batman Volume 1 #567:

Based on the context surrounding this scene, this is a regular occurrence between the pair. Cass has also sought out Stephanie before to read something for her (Batgirl Volume 1 #20). If you're curious about more analysis surrounding this particular subject, this post has some interesting points and shows the gradual shift in how DC handled her character.

But this is early into her time with the Batfamily. What about later on, when she's more assimilated to the Waynes and her fellow vigilantes?

Well, you don't even have to be a hardcore comic fan to see how she continues to struggle with expression and communication. In Wayne Family Adventures, episodes 32 and 33, we see how Cass' ability to read body language has also hurt her and her relationship with the people around her.

She doesn't mean to hurt Stephanie's feelings in these episodes, but the damage is real and it happened. Cass means well, ultimately, but she still doesn't know how or when to address these problems. She sees that Steph is hurting and wants to help; those are all admirable qualities! But in the end, she only pushes Stephanie further away, and is left feeling guilty and carrying self-loathing in the wake.

Here is also a reminder: Cass killed her first man at the age of 8 years old, and consequently ran away from her father when she realized killing was wrong. She did not know what he felt was fear. She did not know the definition of fear, nor the word for it. She just saw the expression on his face as he died, and realized that something was wrong, and ran away.

Cass doesn't arrive to Gotham until she's 17 years old, around the No Man's Land era, if I remember correctly. She is on the run for 9 years in this time, and sadly, she did not pick up many- if any- language or communication skills during this period. This isn't a fault on her character either, when she likely had to keep moving and didn't have time to connect with anyone like she did with Barbara, who could teach her how to speak and read.

But at the end of the day, it makes sense that Cass doesn't know how to socialize. Think of a real life example: some kids who grow up homeschooled struggle to make connections once they reach adulthood and start looking for a job. They've never had to make small talk, or address strangers face-to-face, so they don't know how to interact with people. Cass' situation is a more extreme version of this scenario, but with blood, brutal training, and child abuse involved.

At her core, Cass is a good person. And she will continue to be that good person. But she doesn't always have the answers. Nobody does! She'll continue to help people to the best of her abilities, but sometimes those abilities can be limited.

Cass is not a perfect person. When Bruce was lost in the timeline, and the remaining Batfamily members started to splinter and fall apart in the wake, Cass didn't remain in Gotham to help with the rising violence with Batman's absence. Instead, when her family needed her most, she went to Hong Kong, because she didn't want to be there without Bruce. She did briefly meet Tim in Paris, when she had saved him from the Daughters of Acheron, but she still doesn't accompany Tim, nor does she return to Gotham even after finding out the city is extremely understaffed.

Cass is well-meaning, but she is not faultless. We might not like to acknowledge the flaws of our favorite characters, but those flaws are a part of them! Just like how Bruce consistently fails to express himself is a part of his. Or how Dick tries to pretend that everything is fine so he doesn't have to address his own problems. Or how Jason can be inconsistent with his motivations and people get hurt as a result. Or how Tim keeps too many secrets and pushes people away, ruining multiple relationships in turn.

I could go on and on, but all these characters are more than just their flaws. The same thing with Cass.

So don't be afraid to show a Cass that doesn't know how to fix things. Don't be afraid to show a Cass that doesn't know what to do, but just tries her best. It's one of her most admirable qualities: always trying no matter what.

#dpxdc #cassandra cain #character analysis #with yours truly :D #look cass is my girl okay #i can and WILL talk nonstop about her

[demaparbat-hp]

the audacity you literally have to make a GENOCIDE SURVIVOR (whose entire culture was decimated by the fire nation) proudly work for the imperial fire nation army in some fuckass au? zutara shippers are never beating the colonial apologism allegations.

Woah, okay, I wasn't expecting this. I'm a firm believer that people should, first and foremost, treat each other on the basis of respect, so I'll do my best to explain this to you, clearly, and with the benefit of the doubt in mind, okay? I'm a nice person like that.

First of all, I'm working under the assumption that you haven't read these posts, and thus don't have all the information I've shared about the AU. I've been as clear about this subject as I can be, especially in my replies but, for the sake of fairness, I'll say it once again again:

I do not condone nor find it moraly correct to justify a victim of war joining the side of the ones responsible for her people's genocide.

I try to view this AU, and war in general, through a mature, realistic lense. Turning Katara into a victim with glorified Stockholm Syndrome isn't really my style. It's honestly insulting and deeply disturbing for me, as a creator, a woman of color born in a country that has a very, very long history of colonialism, and an empathetic human being, that anyone would believe me capable of thinking like that.

That being said, I know I really shouldn't, but would you like me to give you a step by step response?

(...) proudly work for the imperial fire nation army (...)

Okay, like I said before, I'm going to assume you saw only the artwork, didn't read either the tags or the two separate, in depth posts about the characterization and plot in this AU I made literally twenty four hours ago, and drew your own conclusions instead.

First of all: Katara doesn't proudly work for the Fire Nation army. That's her cover, as it is Zuko's. She joined Zuko and his crew, all traitors to the throne and good, honourable people, under the pretense of hunting the Avatar. Truly, they're destroying the Fire Nation military from within. And are, most definitely, not proud soldiers of the Fire Lord.

Katara hates the Fire Nation. But if joining a Fire Nation crew is what she needs to do to end the war, she will do it.

And, honestly, these are not excuses. But context is important, and it's not healthy to draw conclusions from the title instead of actually reading the book, if you know what I mean. It could get you in trouble some day.

And, please, I'm begging you—this has been talked about a lot, and I don't really like drama all that much, so I won't even rise to the accusations of condoning a non consented, colonialist and abuse apologist relationship.

That's just rude.

#dema answers #zutara #hunters au #I apologize if I ever insulted anyone with this AU that I've stitched together painfully and lovingly in long weeks of my time. #I probably came across as rude once or twice in this... #I try to be patient and understanding but sometimes you just have to swallow your moral superiority and go for the kill I guess #I hold no resentment towards Anon. I truly don't. #It's this whole situation that infuriates me #But it's okay #I've got experience dealing with stuff like this irl #So expect an artwork about this very same AU soon #I owe it to myself