#that nine year old was fucked the hell up!!!

[apollo-zero-one]

Man I can't believe I had the chance to go to a performing arts school up through middle school and I fuckin quit after 6 months just because I got bullied. BRO YOUR HOMEWORK WAS POETRY!! YOU HAD TO PRACTICE DANCING TO COTTON EYE JOE AS YOUR BIG UNIT TEST. GYM CLASS HAD A CIRCUS UNIT!! YOU HAD A WHOLE DAILY CLASS ON IMPROV!!! YOU FOOL!! YOU ABSOLUTE IMBICILE!! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN A YOUTUBER!!! YOU COULD HAVE BEEN ONE OF THOSE TWEENAGERS GETTING LOADED BY MAKING SHITTY YOUTUBE SHORTS IN 2008-14!! But noooOoooOOOoo little miss Noellie (who WANTED TO GO!! who worked SO HARD and sent in an application essay and did an INTERVIEW to get in!!) couldn't handle disruptive classmates or little scuffles and petty grudges and general Attitude of the other students and cried to mommy to put her back in public school. I am EATING MY HAIR over what Could Have Been. I COULD BE SOMEONE'S ANNOYING YOUTUBER!! I could be a DISGRACED DISNEY CHANNEL STAR!! I could be an America's Got Talent winner! A mild to moderately successful comedian! I could be making short films!! But no no no precious thin skinned baby me heard a few new cus words and watched a teacher get heckled and begged to give up The Dream in favor of?? Quiet math tests?? I am such a fucking quitter I quit everything the second it gets too hard I always take the out as soon as it's offered what's my fucking damage.....

#I had SO MUCH POTENTIAL and I SQUANDERED IT!! weak ass third grade PUSSY! Your life could have been SO SICK!! #or you could at least be addicted to cocain or something interesting like that!! Boring ass goody two shoes always just staying home doing #NOTHING bitch make a REAL FRIEND go to a God Damn PARTY live a little instead of just hiding in the closet eating saltine crackers for years #waiting for it to be quiet outside before you ever even toed the line #mentally ill self-isolating motherfucker #you could have shrugged it off you could have GROWN A PAIR and FOUGHT BACK but you just ran and cried for mommy #victim complex little bitch baby always whining and exaggerating and making shit up fucking LIAR I am you and I KNOW what you did and I know #you knew it wasn't the truth and you regretted it the moment it came out of uour mouth but once you'd said it you just swallowed it back and #doubled down incriminating or discrediting others with your lies. For why? Because you didn't like them? You could have ruined someone's #life you wouldn't have hesitated mayhe you did and don't even remember because you cant keep your mouth shut with your pants ablaze #manipulative little shit and to WHAT END? Pity? Sympathy? Attention? Entertainment?? What was even going on in your stupid ugly head? #This is a callout post for my third grade self that possessed demon ass evil nine year old. That kid drowned anthills in olive oil and #poisoned a wild animal once. That kid cut plants just to see if they oozed. That kid modified her whole ass personality on a dime for a boy #she had a crush on. INSTANTLY dropped a LIFELONG CULTURAL ALLEGIANCE (thats what football teams were like back then in our town) because he #said he had the opposite allegiance??? What the fuck? girl had NO integrity none zip zilch. #No empthy either that kid looked at everyone else on earth like they were friggin space aliens and she was the only one with Real feelings. #bitch literally thought like 'I have Feelings they just have Reactions' bitch what the fuckkkkk #that nine year old was fucked the hell up!!! #and for literally NO REASON!! No cause!! Just born fucking evil and weird. jesus fuck. #Evil ass bitch caused her autistic brother months of nightmares and then laughed about it and wrote poetry about how evil he was because he? #was a kid??? Normal sibling rivalry taken way way way too far defamatory ass statements #and this girl had NO CONSEQUENCES because she could lie and manipulate her way out of ANYTHING she had the baby eyes and the helpless charm #and played dumb soooo well . read people like some calculative evil AI scanning their faces for microexpressions and overanalyzing each word #choice like holy shit. its not That Deep. pretentious shit trying to play 5D chess on a checkers board. #Manipulating shit just to see what happens?? zero awareness?? no asking just skipping straight to testing for yourself?? #'What happens if I step on this' it fucking breaks 'what does that taste like?' it's not fucking yours to mess with 'if I hit this person #how will they respond?' they'll be upset use your goddamn judgement you are NINE not TWO do you even care a little about any other person?? #Are you just living in some other reality??? #callout post for the fucking demon child inside of me #im so goddamn problematic I'm so so so deeply mentally disturbed and broken for no reason

[fandomgremlinlover]

whoever made the aroace-flux flag, literally kys pls

cus wtf is this shit 👇

aint no fucking way everyone else gets pretty ass colors for their flags and then we get the worst fucking color palette in existence

#lgbtq community #lgbt pride #pride flags #aroace #aromantic #fuck this flag what the hell man #it looks like a nine year old puked up their first ever color palette onto it and called it a day #I hate this why the hell does it look like the knock off version of the gay flag

[honeyedlashton]

🍊💫🤍🫐

#makin sleepy Luke laugh #the way this video gave me DUST #but whatever #I’d been waiting for weeks for it to drop #they were tired #that was THEIR hell week #I get it #they did so much that day I know #fuck #signing CD’s checcck #swan said it looked like **** *** ******’ ** LMFAOO #but Ashton’s talkin about how Luke wrote unpredictable #he rlly said: it’s like having a drawing made by a nine year old when that kid has grown up to master the art of panting and doing portraits #and has created vastly more skilled works and someone says they prefer the drawing from when he was nine #tea #you slayed that Ashton #otp: i’m fond of you #ashton irwin #afi #luke hemmings #lrh #5sos #lashton

[fabulouslygaybean]

oh. okay sometimes i hate google memories, but it suggested me a video of my oldest niece when she was like four and got a toy chainsaw for christmas so she went around pretending to cut everybody's heads off and it's the cutest fucking thing

#her mom/my sister didn't really know why she decided to do that but we all thought it was funny #you go girl!! chop their heads off!!! #oh fuck i just thought about it. she's coming up on nine years old now. oh my god #she's gonna be NINE!!! what the hell!!! time passes too quickly!!!! #i sound like an old man but it literally feels like yesterday that i was holding her during the hospital visitation. holy fuck. #i haven't seen her or any of her siblings since the summer and i miss everyone :((

[yeyinde]

dangle on the leash | Simon "Ghost" Riley x F!Reader

The flimsy sarcophagus housing all his wants, his desires, cracks open when Price announces that his missus is pregnant. Ghost cocks his head in consideration. Intentionally knocking you up is amoral. Probably illegal. Somehow, even more dastardly when the reason for it is simply selfishness. Want. Greed. Hunger. But he's a rabid dog burning with the urge to bite. No one should really be surprised when he finally decides to sink his teeth into you. Unfortunately, that hail mary Price sent into the aether never reached you.

(your bird is too big for a cage— —but maybe a collar would do.)

this is a babytrapping fic lmao but please read the tags carefully. a companion piece to this (Price + babytrapping).

DEAD DOVE. SMUT. 18+

HARD WARNINGS—coercion. dependency. intentional alienation. unsafe, unprotected sex. this very much toes the line of noncon (that is still very dubcon even when consent is given) in many ways, notably: somnophilia, and condom/contraceptive tampering. intrusive, violent thoughts. mentions of violence. manipulation; slight gaslighting. implied kidnapping. references to past abuse (Ghost), brief mention of drugging/threats of drugging (ambiguous as to if it was ever followed through on or not, mostly just Ghost's internal monologue unfiltered). ADDITIONAL TAGS—smut. rough sex. unsafe sex. dom!Ghost. mean, obsessive, unhinged!Ghost. spit kink. dacryphilia.

he's feral, but he's yours. too bad for you, no one is really sure if that's a good thing or not.

One of the things Price often tells new recruits is to shove their old life into a box. 

“There's home,” he huffs, fingers twitching as if he's subconsciously flexing around the hilt of a lit cigar. “And then there's work. Whatever box you decide to put this, or your family, your personal life, into is your choice. But for fuck’s sake. Keep them separate.” 

Most of the new recruits are fresh off selection, shaded sickly chartreuse, and take his words as a literal gospel. Work, this; home, them. They don't start to unravel the second part of his gruff speech until much later. Until they can't wash the blood from their hands, and the scent of their mum’s eucalyptus hand soap is nauseating. Unfamiliar. When being in civvies feels like wearing skin that doesn't fit, and everyone around you is alien, foreign. They don't know. They'll never know. 

It's only when they find themselves gazing at the clock on the wall of their family home, counting down the minutes until their mandatory leave is over do they realise that home is the barracks. 

That's something Ghost has always understood. Maybe it was because his home life was already in ruins, tatters. Beer soaking into the knock-off Persian rug a cousin nicked from a flea market when he was nine. No fine china in the cupboards because it'll end up in shards on the floor. Plastic plates and forks and cups. Always. Howling in his head. Screaming from down the hall in his mum's room. His bedroom door creaking open at night. The anger, the curdling fear (shameful—be a man; punch him back, hit him before he hits you, you useless prick—), of not knowing whether or not it was his dad, high as hell and itching for a fight after busting their mum’s lip wide open, or Tommy sneaking into his bed at night because his is soaked in piss and he can’t sleep when they scream at each other like this.  

(Funny that, he always found; neither of them could ever sleep when it was silent, either.)

Blood on the linoleum. Trying to eat burnt toast and overcooked beans with a busted lip and a twinge in his jaw—

(Fractured, they'll say later, years later, during his mandatory medical checkup when he's first recruited. Healed all wrong. Son, didn't anyone take you to hospital?) 

He understands the separation between home and work—even if the former lost all relevancy nearly a decade ago. Back when he buried them all. Was buried himself—

What Ghost never really understood was the box. 

Shove it into a box. 

When he asks over cheap whisky somewhere in Siberia, Price tightens his fingers around his glass before bringing it up to his head. His index finger juts out. He knocks the tip of that bruised, scabbed knuckle against his temple. Once, thrice. Levels Simon with a pointed look he both can’t understand and somehow knows all too well. 

“Up here."

“Paid nearly fifty quid for that,” he grouses, shaking his head. “Think I've been ripped-off, Price.” 

Price scoffs, places the glass down with a hollow thud. “Don't be a fuckin’ muppet, Simon—” his real name makes his shoulders tense. Around the barracks, they know him only as the Ghost. “You put it away somewhere. Hide it. I don't fuckin’ know. But if it keeps you goin’, keeps you sane, and doesn't become a mess I gotta clean up, well—”

The implication is stark. Heavy. 

Price was always good at chiselling through layers of accumulated indifference to get to the madness within, but considering Ghost’s past and his mile-long rap sheet, the warning digging into his words like a dull blade isn't unwarranted. 

Old dogs, he'd called the pair of them when they first met. There was a sharp keenness in his eye when he lifted his hand, waved his cigar toward the tangled mess of scar tissue crisscrossing his face (made with a dull, rusted knife, one that gouged out deep pocks of skin, ugly fuck, looks like the badlands, don't he? like a postcard from the Grand Canyon, sweetheart. not so cute anymore, are ya, pretty boy—), and said, “well, you're fuckin’ rabid, ain't you? Better put a muzzle on that before it becomes a problem, mm.”

His problem, specifically. 

And Ghost gets it. Thinks Price might understand that particular brand of madness—despite growing up on literal opposite sides of the track, his Manchester to the others Liverpool; poverty and prestige—if only just. Because Price seems to be able to curb those baser impulses in a way Ghost hadn't yet mastered (and won't for quite some time yet). He's put together. Sort of. Respected. Normal.

The men in the barracks don't look at him and flinch. 

But he sees the way the man's eyes linger in the crowd, shrewd and careless, before falling on the pretty bartender in the back. The one with roses in her eyes and a smile full of dandelions. Soft, like butterscotch. It's here when they darken. When he reaches, almost angrily, for his whisky. Pats his chest with a heavy fist searching for his cigar. 

She's a sweet thing, he reckons. All pretty and trusting. Birds like her make his head itch—

“Don't even think about it, Simon,” Price grumbles, and it feels like territorial posturing, a challenge he almost raises to meet with his chin, if only to make Price fluster, but it's hollow. Empty. He denies himself, too. The prick. 

“How'd you do it?” He asks, and doesn't specify. Doesn't think he needs to. 

When Price swallows, it looks like a grimace. “Years of practice.” 

He considers the weight of it, his eyes straying back to the woman behind the bar. She's tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, wrist delicate like bone china, the kind they could never afford, and for a moment, the intrusive thoughts, the ones he gets sometimes about wanting to tear things to bloody pieces, rears—

It's stamped down in a swig of flat lager You stupid fuckin’ mutt, Price would say tomorrow morning, shaking his head. You always think with your prick? 

Simon cranks his head sharply to the side instead. The resounding crack seems to echo through the empty pub. 

Price just shakes his head. “Christ. No one ever house break you, yet?” 

“Yeah, they did,” he rasps, staring at the bartender who gazes back at him now. Skittish, unsure. Not so sweet after all. She looks away, cowed. Her hands tremble. He leans back, and hums. “And now I piss outside, like a good ‘ol boy.” “Ain't nothin’ good about you, Simon. Fuckin' Christ—”

And he's not wrong. 

The Ghost has a reputation of being a cold-hearted bastard. A Frankensteinian beast cobbled together with spare parts robbed from a jailhouse graveyard. Worst of the worst. An arm from a mass murder. The leg from a spree killer. Heart a patchwork mess of ichor and sulphur. Sutured together with barbed wire. 

It's all sort of macabre. Rather trite, too. 

The rumour mill in the barracks is insatiable.

But sometimes, he wakes up and he's still buried. Still dead. Dirt in his throat, lodged in his nose. He breathes in and feels pebbles scraping his lungs. Feels worms in his ears. Maggots in his head. 

They crawl through his grey matter. Leeches burrowing into his thoughts, sucking the good in him dry. 

Or, whatever's left of it, anyway. 

He thinks with his teeth because it's easier that way. Cold, calculative instinct. Just barely boxed into a neat package slapped on the desk of Price's higher-ups. 

A good man, they say, and turn him loose on the streets. One of the best we have, as he breaks jaws, and tears through jugulars. A force to be reckoned with. 

They hand him a gun, a rifle, when the bloodied footprints leading back to camp become too much of a hassle to clean. Shoot from a distance. He takes to it like the bulk of metal was made for his scarred hands. Scythe to a Reaper. 

It feels like bloodletting. Draining him of his anger, his fury, until a cold, gnarled indifference curls in the basin left behind. Icy, frigid. Down to the bone. 

Sometimes, he doesn't remember what it felt like to be warm, even buried under a thick balaclava and layers of military fatigues. 

Frankenstein’s monster. Patched together from the rotten remains of horrible men. 

And as he stares in the mirror at the patchwork ruins of his face, his body, he wonders if there's some truth to it, after all. He's pretty sure if someone cracked his skull open—again—they’d find rot. Tumulus. Infested with maggots and worms. Cobwebs behind his eyes. In his nose. His brain perfectly preserved: a zombified tombstone. And oh, how it hungers. 

Wants. 

But in a box it goes. One shaped like a coffin. Placed pretty in the back of his broken head. 

He stares in the mirror and thinks he sees something moving under his eye. Wriggling around. The temptation to claw it out rears, but the shredded tissue on his thighs reminds him of what happens when he listens to that insidious hiss in the back of his head (some amalgamation of his old man, and that bastard—) and goes searching for gold in bone marrow. 

He huffs. Fingers curling around the porcelain. His head is rotten. Putrefied. He can feel the decomposing sludge press against his temples. It grows teeth sharp like a razor blade and hacks away at jaundiced bone. Ghost lifts his hand, digs his fingers into his temple. Down boy—

(Simon doesn't even want to consider what his heart must look like, then.)

Cold-hearted, sure—

But he likes sweet things. 

The kind that will undoubtedly give him cavities. A spillover, perhaps, when candy bars were too expensive, and the only dessert he was given was a toffee by the neighbour when she wasn't moaning to his old man about all the shit he and Tommy got up to. 

(Bruises came afterwards, the colour of liquorice. Sour cherries.)

Unfortunately for him, sweet things don't like him much—a shame, really. Simon has always had a sweet tooth. 

His rough edges are too sharp for their liking, and Simon's—

Intense. Like a dog with a bone, he doesn't know when to let go. When to unhinge his jaw from the morsel between his teeth. He bites hard. Shakes his head. Tears into the things he wants until it's bloodied meat pinched in his incisors. 

And so, they keep their distance. Like they can smell the rot on him. The funeral dirt. The stench of an unearthed sarcophagi. 

Sometimes, though, the wiley ones will inch closer, looking to get messed up badly by a bad man, and it makes something inside his head howl when he turns them down. Following Price’s creed. Can't give in to the pretty ones, he'd said. Nothin’ but trouble. 

Trouble, like a pair of shackles. A noose. Trouble, like gentle, clean hands and fragile bones. Fine china. Fine powder. The marshmallow soft kind of trouble that will melt in the acid that leaks from his pores. Aqua regia. Attacking anything that gets close. 

(Breakable, is what Price means. Pretty chew toys that are beyond repair once he's finished with them.

He must think Ghost is some sort of psychopath—)

But still. He stays away. It's easier on base, in safe houses, too far out from the general public to have to worry about doe eyes and soft touches. He doesn't need it, anyway—

Then comes you. 

And the forfeiture of his self-control. 

You're trouble of a different kind. 

Trouble, like the end of a sledgehammer. Trouble, like the grill of a car. The barrel of a gun. 

In the shape of a battering ram, one strong enough to dislodge the madness in the back of his head. Where the corrosive acid should ruin you, eat you alive, it doesn't. Not with your tantalum skin. 

But oh, do you pack a punch—

At first, you think he's homeless. 

Some scruffed-up man sleeping on a park bench outside of your apartment. 

In another life, he might have been. He isn't a stranger to bad habits, and had the military not been his only choice in life for some semblance of good (laughable, considering what he does for a living), he could see the threads of his life leading him here. Drugs. Manchester is good for it, this he knows all too well. Especially the shithole neighbourhood he's from. 

He doesn't clue into this, though, until you glance at him, warily, and then shuffle into the cafè he’s holed outside of, the place where his current target gorges himself on steeped tea and crumpets. 

(Price's dry text sits, open, on his burner phone: and don't fuck this up—)

It feels a bit like an omen. Made worse when you meet his gaze through the glass, and—

Well. Shit. 

The impact is a collision. Hitting a pole at top speed. Metal bent around concrete. 

His teeth ache (so, so bad—).

You emerge from the small building a few minutes later—the faded eggshell with chocolate trim is nauseatingly sweet against your pastel yellow raincoat—holding a takeaway bag, and balancing a tray of coffees in your hand. 

He tenses. It's instinctual. There's nothing about you that's an immediate threat to his person—unless you plan on adding to his scars with the tip of your umbrella, the scalding coffee in your hand—but it's odd, isn’t it? No one approaches him. Not unless they have a reason to. 

And no one, in his experience, ever has a good one. 

“Hi,” you chirp, disarmingly sweet, as you come to stand in front of him. His jaw aches. Even sprawled across a bench, you're barely looking down at him. Sticky, cold fingers tap a strange rhythm down his spine. “I, um, hope this isn't weird, but I saw you sitting here, and—well. I got this—”

You wiggle the bag. He smells something greasy. A breakfast sandwich, he's sure.

It's an unusual assassination attempt. Price will be livid. 

“What for?” He rumbles, sitting up in the seat. The shift of his bulk seems to make you nervous. You take a step back, and he fights the urge to follow. To back you into a corner. No escape. 

You regain your footing, even if the smile on your face wobbles. Weakens under his flat stare. Some people can smell the rot on him. 

He wonders if you can, too. 

(Pity that. You're a pretty bird, ain't you?)

And the way you take him in lacks a distinct thrum of hesitation, fear that’s normally there. It occurs to him, then, that you see him as just another man. Just another person. 

(“deader than a doorknob, this one. such a goddamn waste, boss. he was a fun one, wasn’t he? should we burn ‘em?” 

nah. bury him out back—)

It's laughable, really. A joke. He has the urge to crack one—sick and awful enough to make that little smile on your face wilt. Wither away. Almost does, too, but it get tangled in his throat when he feels the weight of your stare on him. 

The easy sweep of your eyes is barely discrete, but it's clinical. Pitying. But the softened edges of that empathy dissolve as your pretty head adds up all the numbers on him, coming to a standstill. Your eyes linger on his wrist. The gold of his wristwatch peeks out beneath the black sleeve of his hoodie. An intricate web of complex timekeeping that only he's privy to. A little luxury he picked up in Italy when the cash he'd been given was getting too tiresome to carry around. 

Dead men, after all, don't need bank accounts. 

And then—

You fluster. “Sorry, I just thought—”

It clicks, then. The pity. The soft words. The goddamn coffee— 

His gums itch. He has the sudden urge to be mean about it. Pick you apart in this street until nothing but embarrassment and humiliation remains. 

“That I was homeless? ‘nd you brought me, what? A coffee? ‘ow sweet of you. Some breakfast, too. Well, aren't you a lovely girl?” 

You are embarrassed. It blisters across your expression. Has your hands trembling around the cardboard tray, spilling droplets of coffee down the side. Your head is bowed, cowed in shame. It reminds him of that bartender some years prior. Pulling away when the bad dog growls—

But there's a thin sheen of intrigue in your eyes, burrowing holes into the shoes in front of you; a tangled knot of want coiling in the heat of your embarrassment over this blunder. Over offending him. 

Well—

That's new. 

Some get off on it. On humiliation. Specifically, of the public variety. He didn't take you as the type. The way you twist, squirming in place, is odd, though. It doesn't fit as well as he originally thought. No. It's not the public shame, but—

Him. 

Ah. 

Sweet, sweet girl. 

(So naïve.)

He reckons he could get you to do just about anything to make it up to him. You would, too. You're soft enough to be submissive, to bow your head in contrition, but there's a flicker of defiance in the jut of your chin when you lift your head. 

This is a blunder and you're sweetly embarrassed, sure, but it isn't enough to break you. 

And now Simon just wants to ruin you. Teach you a lesson about bad, vile men—

(Something you'd welcome with open arms, wouldn't you?)

“Didn’t know Manchester was so charitable,” he rasps. His throat is dry. Parched. He reaches for the coffee—black, with extra creamer and sugar on the side, tucked neatly in a little bag; fuckin’ hell. Ain't you just adorable—and places it on the spot beside him. “I’ll be takin’ this. Will need it for later.” 

You look like you want to protest. Fight back. His hackles rise, ready for it—eager. Something anticipatory, dark, bleeds through the moulted mess of his head. Sickly. Terrible. He thinks about what you'd look like sprawled under him, shaking and begging for more, for him to stop—

Fuck. Birds usually make his head itch, but you make his fucking skin crawl. 

In the end, you just huff. Roll your eyes. He wants to chew them out of your head. Pop them between his teeth. He bet you'd taste divine. 

You walk away from him before he can. You don't look back once. 

Pity, he thinks. Someone's gonna snatch you clean off the streets like that—

Hours later, he sends Price a text message with the coordinates for where to pick up the package Ghost left. 

He considers it a blessing when the man sends him back, good job, now get a pint from me as a little reward. Can't say I don't treat my team well. 

A reward, huh? 

Well. With your stature in comparison to his own, Ghost easily can see you being considered a pint. 

So, he follows you home, and tallies this one as being on Price. 

It's easy. Too easy. He slips deftly behind you, tucked away from view, and masks his footsteps under the echo of yours until he's standing in the shadows outside of your house. This, too, feels like a blessing. It's a duplex. He waits for one of the lights to flicker on, and—

The window brightens. Room number two. 

He hums, and palms his pockets for the pack of smokes he nicked off the man. Needing something to take the edge off. To quell the urge to bite. 

It's even easier to engineer meetings. Random run-ins. All blamed on happenstance, chance. Of course. This towering mountain of a man with his thick manc twang—the sort of gallows humour that can only be found in the blue-collar streets of Salford from the nasty old men squatting on the corners—must have better things to do than stalk you. Surely. You're not special enough to be hunted, right? 

Still. You're a touch wary of him. Distrustful. You keep your distance—six inches for Jesus Christ, aren’t you a peach?—and try to skirt the line between neutrally polite to the strange man loitering outside of the shops you frequent (your schedule burned to his memory, naturally) and that fascinating skittish intrigue from before. All simmering heat. Blunt want. The kind wrapped up in silk threads. 

It's interesting to watch it play out when he steps closer and all those long-forgotten instincts in the back of your head flare up. The shaky step you take back. The inward frown of confusion when you're not sure why your body craves space, acting almost on its own. And then the sweet defiance that breaks over you. The intentional step closer. The feigned warmth in your tone as you talk to him.

It's easy to pocket the uglier aspects of his personality. The coldness. The indifference. The flat, droll insincerity that leaks into his tone. All of it shelved, locked away, and he's not sure if Price would be happy that he listened to what he said, followed his example, or furious that he's bastardising it to lure this pretty fish in.

)The latter, undoubtedly. But Simon gets a sick kick from it all.)

Especially when it brings you closer to him. Thaws you as you rationalise his reaction during the first meeting, gears spinning. Kicking up excuses. 

Anyone would be angry, offended. It's natural. He's alright now—

It makes you look at him differently as you forcefully fight the urge to flee. 

Silly bird. 

Wary eyes rake over his massive bulk. Brows furrow at the series of black medical masks he wears in public. Always. That, in addition to the heavy black of his wardrobe—black jacket, black hoodie, black leather gloves—sometimes makes you glance at him with a touch of worry. Fear. Probably wondering if you brought home a delinquent. 

But it changes when he rolls up his sleeves one day after you've been moaning about your broken beach cruiser (the, I don't know, chain—or something—keeps catching—), and crouches down to fix it. 

There's a hitch in your breath. A distinct swallow. A guilty tinge of something shy, deliciously so, shading your eyes ruby-red when you look down at him. 

And ah—

Sweet little treat snagged on the line. Ain't he a lucky lad? 

It's all the better when you do the work for him. Reeling yourself in, practically throwing yourself in his cooler when you ask about his tattoos, carefully—considerately—nudging the topic away from his ugly scars. 

He guts you clean as he tells you he's in the military. Top secret, pet. Don't ask because I'd hate to ‘ave to hurt a pretty face like yours—

You preen under it. Pet. Pretty. You don't even notice when he slides his knife over your scales, dices you up on his chopping board. 

You're the picture of sweetness when he unkinks the chain in your bike, and sets it straight. All happiness. Smiles. Appreciative glances. You flutter your pretty eyes at him as you say—

“Thank you—”

You're waiting for a name. His belly rumbles. He could eat, he thinks, and licks his teeth. 

“Simon. Simon Riley.” 

The risk-reward ratio is balanced when you breathe it out between plump lips, chasing the end of it with your tongue. He wants to eat it out of your mouth. Swallow it down. 

You touch his arm, hand warm, soft. “If there's anything I can do to pay you back—”

He takes you out for a kebab later on. Nudges you out of the way when you open your wallet to pay. Draft girl. Naïve, too, because he can feel the heat in your cheeks from where he stands, reaching over to snatch the bag from the man with a grunt. 

You must think him quite the gentleman. So trusting. 

Doesn't matter. He lets it take root. Especially when you shyly invite him back to yours to eat. 

He makes a feast of it, and fucks you on your mint green chaisse after he's finished. 

(Not on birth control, you say, and hand him a box of condoms, suddenly shy. It's unopened. He hums, and burns that to memory.) 

He keeps his distance—an easy feat when he's halfway around the world, and you're stuck in the gloom of Manchester. 

It's purposeful, of course. He made a promise to Price not to give him a reason to worry, but fuck—

You're proving hard to quit. He's never had anyone cuff him upside the head on his bullshit. Not anymore, anyway. Not as the Ghost. He likes the thrill of it, of this chase. 

You don't let him steamroll you when he's in a mood to fight. You punch back, hitting him right in the mess of his guts, and fuck. Fuck. He's a little bit obsessed with it. With you. This wily little fish that acts so shy when he's got three fingers buried in your cunt, but rides him after like you're starving for it. Clawing at his chest. Scratching his arms. It's raw. Primal. He wants to break you—this fiery little kitten that bites his fingers until they bleed, and then purrs in his lap as he drives a pickaxe through your head, shredding logic into pieces. Rummaging around until he nicks the optic nerve that lets you see red. 

You’re everywhere. In everything. In the back of his head, under the howling that hadn't stopped since you trailed your finger down the jagged topography of his bare chest, digging your nail into the crude x across his heart, and whispered, soft and sweet: you're all kinds of fucked up, aren't you? 

A bludgeon to his self-control—

He resists. Has to. Is mean about it, too. Doesn't tell you where he's going (it's need to know), or what he's doing (would ‘ave to bash your pretty ‘ead in if I told you), but keeps you strung on the line (keep thinkin’ about that pretty cunt of yours; can't wait to come ‘ome and ‘ave you sit on my ugly mug—). 

It's dangerous, this game of his. Thrilling for all the wrong reasons. 

But he’s a good mutt. Good—

Until the text. 

The one you send to him when you're out with friends. A picture. You're in a pub somewhere in Moss Side, a drink in hand. A gaggle of nobodies crowded around you. It makes sense, he supposes. There's that old idiom—you’ll trap more flies with honey—and he doesn't know anyone nearly as sweet as you. 

His sweet girl.

(you fuckin’ mutt—)

Ghost stares at you for a moment, teeth aching. The little ensemble—a crop top and jeans—is a vision, he reckons. But it's spoiled when he catches more eyes on you than pointed at the camera. Practically spilling out of your top, aren't you? 

He breathes heavily through his nose. Tastes guncotton in his throat. 

Ghost commits every face to memory, and then calls you. 

You're drunk. Too drunk to remember it tomorrow. Stuck in a pub on what's supposedly a bad part of town. Chatting away about going to your friend’s house. He gets the address, and something sour twits in his stomach. Shit council houses. 

“That safe?” He asks, leaning back in his chair. He's already chubbed up in his slacks at the slur in your voice. “And dressed like that? Didn't take you for a slag—”

It makes you sputter on the line. “I'm—I’m not—”

You're so quick to placate him. So hasty to make him happy. Please don't be angry with me, Simon. I'm just having some fun—

The claws and fangs are tucked away when you're drunk. He shoves the information in the cache, eyes burning. Head aching. He's feverish. Hot under the collar.

Odd considering he's dead—

“Sounds like you will be.”

“It's not like that—”

“‘ow would you know? Might meet a nice fellow. Might take him home.”

“I don’t—I wouldn't—”

The sniffle makes him throb. Fuck. “Yeah? Well, ain't none of my business, I reckon—”

“It is.”

“Oh? How's tha’?”

“I—I like you, Simon—” he can taste your embarrassment through the phone. He didn't even need to bring you flowers and you're already boxing him into monogamy, confessing to him. So sweet. So tender. If he were a better man, he might have told you to sober up. To talk about this tomorrow. 

Too bad for you, he isn't. And what’s worse is that he’s a loyal bastard, too. 

But that's later, and right now—

He's halfway across the world, and you're vulnerable. In the den of hungry mutts. 

It’s charr in his throat. Anger in his veins. “You like me? An’ you go out dressed like that?”

“There's nothing wrong with how I'm dressed—”

He sucks his teeth. “Dunno ‘bout tha’, pet. You look like you're achin’ to get fucked.”

You take a shuddering breath. “I just want you—”

“Yeah?” It's a growl. His cock spits prespend in his trousers. “Then be my good girl. Go home and wait for me.”

It's quiet on the line. He catches the hitch in your throat, the sharp exhale, like you can't really be sure if he's serious or not. He says nothing. Waits. 

Where there would have been a fight—fists and teeth and snarling words—you quieten in the silence. Docile. Submissive. It's in you, he knows. He saw the glimpses back when you first met, when he'd bent down and fixed the bike he broke. All it needs is a little—

“Jus’ worried about my sweet girl, is all.” 

And you relent. 

Corrosive oil spills out of the necrosed holes in his head. It curls over his thoughts, liquid sin. He takes himself in his hand, blood pulsing in his veins, white-hot, damning, and bares his teeth at the urge to come to you, to push you down on the floor, and mount you like a snarling beast—

“Good girl,” he growls when you tell him you'll call a taxi, that you'll go home and have some wine with your friend instead.

Friend. Friends. 

He'll have to do something about that. 

(The thing about deprivation is that it bleeds into a vicious sense of possession when it's finally obtained. Greed. His wants have wants, have wants—

A perfect ouroboros. One you feed into almost destructively.)

Because the thing is—

Simon wants to tie you to his bed. Keep you locked up in the safe house he has in Manchester. Chained, shackled. A prisoner with him as your iron guard. 

It isn't just fantasy, either. 

The flies that congregate around you are an annoying, incessant buzzing in his ears. Remora clinging to the biggest fish. 

But they're easy to scatter when he waves his hand. 

(Waves off. Threatens with bodily harm, with physical aggression—

Same thing.)

The sting in his knuckles and the blood on his shoes are worth it in the end when your tantalum skin cracks. An aggregate of beautiful lines, pretty in their fragility, their brokenness. He wedges his fingers between the splints, widening the chasm to pet at the sticky-soft centre hiding beneath all that rough rock. Sweet girl. Hard candy enclosing taffy-softness. 

His coos melt you to the consistency of mercury. Liquid silver pebbles along your lash line, spilling over in a dizzying display of raw vulnerability. 

It makes every predatory instinct inside of him bristle. Locking onto the sweet lines of crystalline sadness that run down your cheeks. It has his heart racing. Eager, anticipatory. The thrill of the chase, of running you down into the ground until you're fine powder under him. 

And it’s there, it's in his arms—the maw of a beast—where you seek comfort, lamenting the loss of your friends, your coworkers. No one wants to hang out with you anymore. They don't return your calls or answer your texts. 

What did I do? You sniffle, throat bared. Belly turned up. 

Flooded with tears. The lachrymal face that peers up at him makes his teeth ache. He rolls his head back, feels himself thicken in his pants. 

Simon loves it when you cry.

“Fuck ‘em,” he rasps, words sticking to his dry throat. “If they can't see what a catch you are, then they don't even deserve to breathe the same air as you.”

It makes you cry harder, makes you mumble into his chest about how lucky you are to have someone like him. Someone who cares. 

His breath hitches. Warm floods his veins, fever-hot. 

“Thank you, Simon—”

And then you, smooth silver and wickedly sweet, cradle him in your palms as if you could hold all the broken pieces of him together. 

He thinks it's cute. 

Doesn't really have the heart to tell you it's a lost cause.

“Anytime, pet.”

And you're perfect, too.

You take this mangy mutt into your house, and let it eat your food, sleep in your bed. You let him fuck you stupid, and listen so prettily when he convinces you to let him spoil you. Let him pay your rent, your bills. Let Simon dote on you the only way he knows how—mercilessly possessive, and a touch cruel, mean—but you roll over, showing your belly. Submissive and sweet. 

It's even better when you try to lash out at him with a collar in the shape of his teeth branding your neck, spitting and hissing like a feral cat who doesn't know yet that's claws have been clipped. Only to then curl up in his lap, purring as he strokes your fur, and carves out a place for himself in your life. 

He wants to sink his teeth into you, and you think he's a big dog. Undomesticated. One who comes and goes as he pleases. A stray. A mutt. 

It's said fondly. Full of love—

His mouth is full of cavities. His teeth ache. His gums bleed. 

(do you know he's rabid? that the faded name on his dog tags once read cujo—)

Everything about you makes that sludge flood behind his eyes, pounding rotten fists against his temple. take, take, take; mine, mine—

The howling doesn't stop. It tells him to press you into the mattress and fuck you stupid. Tie you to the bedposts and never let you go—

He throws fists in the dark, trying to hit the madness in his head. Ends up with bloody knuckles and laughter in his ears. 

(a voice of reason says, your bird is too big for a cage—)

He clings to it. 

You're warm beside him. Burning hot. He syphons it from your veins when you're asleep, pulling you close just to feel something on his skin other than dirt. Other than blood. 

It's easy to pretend he's fine with these little nips. Leaving teeth marks in your neck. Bloody rings snaking up your thighs. 

He wraps one hand around both of your wrists, holds them high above your head, and tells himself it's enough. Shackled by him, under him, as he takes you apart, pulling at your sense of independence like the gnarled fingers of winter bringing defoliation to summer's bloom, but even with this, all of it, he still aches. Still wants. Needs—

Stupid fuckin’ mutt. 

Then you bring his hands up to your throat, letting him wrap his bearish paws around your delicate neck, and he knows these little bites will never satiate the hunger in his guts. 

He wakes up the next morning feeling warm. Full. Edges softened, if only just, by the sticky sweetness of your breath ghosting over his chest. 

Simon curls his arm around you, holding tight.  He won't let go. Won't—

Hide it. Put it away. 

Ghost does neither of those things. He buries it, instead.  

But in doing so, you find cracks in the foundation. Ones that are just big enough for your willfulness to slip through. To hand him back the cash he gave with a scoff, and a, i work, too, you know? i don't need your money, Simon. that's not why i’m with you—

(All he hears is, I don't need you.)

And then you send him a text. I'm going out with friends from work tonight. We're going drinking. I'll talk to you tomorrow! 

In the zombified remains of his head, a new howling starts. The hisses tell him you're pulling away, running from him—

It's a big world out there. It'll eat you whole—

Like Tommy.

The thing about want is that sometimes it grows teeth, hands. Claws. Without a body of its own, it tends to mould itself after its maker because that's all it knows how to do: devour, consume. Yearn. 

He shouldn't be too surprised to find that this need of his has dug itself out of the grave he buried it in. 

(he did, too—)

The flimsy sarcophagus cracks open when Price announces that his missus is pregnant.

The howling in the back of his head stops abruptly. The pulsing ache in his temple abates. It's heavy, this weight. This absolute, utter emptiness—

No. It's not hollow. The chasm isn't drained, it's—

(In the silence, something growls. Feral. Possessed.)

—full. Perfect equilibrium. All of the patchwork parts of himself, the ones that don't quite fit, suddenly find synergy. 

Communion. 

Ghost cocks his head in consideration.

(your bird is too big for a cage—

—but maybe a collar would do.)

—after all, could you ever leave him with his name etched into your womb—

In leaving the key under the mat for him to come and go as he pleases, you've left yourself vulnerable. But—

Not anymore. 

He has a safehouse he'll take you to. You'll let him, too, because it'll be the best choice for you. The three of you.

He's never entertained any ideas of family, not when the closest approximation he has is drenched in gun oil and smells of smoke from artillery fire, but the howling in his head quietens at the idea of it. He can't shackle you to the bed—stupid fucking mutt—but he can tie you down all the same. Make you his. Wholly. Always. 

And the thing is—despite a pickaxe making figure-eights out of his grey matter; lead poisoning and rust giving him these sour, awful thoughts about locking you up in his house, leaving you a needy mess, dependent only on him—Simon supposes he knows right from wrong. 

Intentionally knocking you up is amoral. Probably illegal. Somehow, even more dastardly when the reason for it is simply selfishness. Want. Greed. Hunger. 

But in carving himself a place in your life, he failed to realise that the walls behind him closed in. No way out. And so, his only option is to go forward. To keep moving.

He'll be crucified for this, but that's fine. 

He doesn't intend for you to find out, anyway. It'll be an accident. He came home early, and found you drunk. Drank with you. Your drunken idiocy merged, creating a terrible, noxious cocktail of awful, bad choices. Permanent ones. Irreversible. 

(You're so sweet, so docile when you're drunk—)

It'll be easy to convince you. To play the part of a stoic man suddenly in turmoil. You'll offer to get rid of it, a suggestion that he'll flinch at—a cornered dog, a hand raising in the air. You'll whimper. Shake in his arms as you tentatively smooth over the wrinkles in his brow, murmuring out your options in a stilted breath.

You'll be a Riley before the end of your term. It's only proper, he'll mutter, stiff and uncomfortable, and you'll melt. Liquid tantalum in his palm. The fruits of his labour laid bare, seeping from the corners of his mouth. Tucked tight between his teeth. Mercury he can swallow down, keep in the bracket of his rotten ribs. Safekeeping from this world that just takes. Devours. 

But not if he eats you first. 

The mere notion alone serves as an anchor, locking him to the seafloor. The tumult in his head calmed at the promise of owning. Biting to claim. To have. Greedy for it. For you, and the strange sense of quiet your proximity brings him. The warmth, too. 

He's a rabid dog. This he knows—has known—for quite some time. Indisputable. It pools in his mouth. Liquid sin. Makes him ache for just a sip. Unquenchable, though, because he's wary of water. Hydrophobia, but only for how it washes his efforts away. Cleanses. 

The urge inside of him to bite, to infect, quietens when he gets closer to you. 

(a rabid mutt licking at the window you're on the opposite side of, dreaming of just a taste—)

A byproduct of that maddening virus in his veins, the one he must have picked up six feet in the ground. Bite, bitebite—

—and give you a collar in the shape of his teeth.

He finds you in bed. A bottle of wine on the end table beside you, courtesy of your friend. The one lingering remora he couldn't snap at—one who sends you messages about how you are being manipulated. Taken advantage of. Fuck that loser, the latest one says when he picks up your phone, scrolling through the dwindling conversations housed within. Just him now, and them. 

It preaches about empowerment. About how you shouldn't let a man pay your bills (textbook manipulation. he's putting you in a position of dependency. making you feel obligated to stay. it's all on Google, babes. like, fucking get a clue!!!!), or how it's moving so quickly (maybe you should come stay with me in Durham for a bit, hun. get away for a weekend. i worry about ya, is all). He hums, thumbing through the old chats. 

You told her to fuck off about the manipulation, but it came after a lot of, oh, yeah. well, he's just. you know. he's different, and you haven't declined the invitation. i’ll think about it, is what you write. 

It simmers under his skin. That independence he plans on stomping out under his heel. With his kin. 

(sick, sick sick, wrong—)

It's desperation, this. Clawing at the walls—the dirt—until his nails are torn off his fingers. Until his skin splits, peels. Broken under rock and rubble. That animalistic need for air. To breathe. Basic training tells him not to save the person drowning unless he's sure they won't kill him in their struggle to live. But what's he supposed to do when that person is his rotting body, sinking down to unfathomable depths? When all he has is you to cling to—

Damnation built by his own hands. 

You'll die together, he reckons, and tosses your phone on the hamper in the corner of the room. 

Ghost can't remember the last time someone made him feel anything at all other than impartiality. Indifference. Casual apathy. 

Price is the exception to this on the grounds of being consanguineous to him.

And you—

An outlier. 

One he intends on sinking as deep as he can with. Anchored, maybe, by this little plan that beats and pulses in the back of his head. That clogs his throat with a want so thick, he can already taste the brine from the ocean. Water in his nose. Down his esophagus—

Better than dirt, he supposes. And it spurns him forward.

You're malleable like this. Tensile. He bends you easily with just a touch until you're flat on your back, a pillow shoved beneath your tailbone, and stripped. The loose shirt you wear to sleep is hiked up under your neck. Panties are pulled off until your sweet, bare cunt is revealed to him. All pretty and soft, and his. Untouched, he notes, and gives an appreciative stroke over your clit with his thumb. 

It was something you were whining about the other day, panting in his ear as if he wasn't a continent away. Pleading with him on the phone to please, please let you come. 

Simon likes the way you cling to him when it's been a while since something has wrecked you as thoroughly as his cock. When your spoiled pussy was neglected for a few days, weeks, and starved for attention. You were so sweet to him then, cooing in his ear how good you've been, how much you want him and only him, need him. Begging so prettily for it. 

He's almost sad to spoil himself in your cunt when you can't weep for it. Can't bully him closer. Try to claw his eyes out. That delicious push-pull where you hiss at him for pulling away, but whine when he gets too close. 

Sad, but—

Not enough to stop himself. 

You're not wet enough for him to slide inside unprepared—his cock too big, something that makes his bones tremble—and he rectifies it by leaning down, letting saliva pool between his teeth and lips. He holds it there for a moment as he spreads your folds apart with his thumb and forefinger. 

And then he spits on your bare cunt. 

It hits your clit, the thick glob siding down your slit. He reaches between your thighs, pawing at you. Slides his fingers through the slick mess he made, teases around your tight rim. 

Simon usually likes to take his time with you. Lapping at your pussy for hours until you're a weeping, snot-nosed mess whining in the sheets. Spoiled rotten. Begging him to fuck you already, Simon, you can't take it anymore—

He's mean. Cruel. Edges you for hours until your legs shake, trembling around his ears. He never lets you reach that peak—doesn’t let you come until he's buried inside of you. 

Coming on his tongue, his fingers, is rarely a privilege you ever earn. Too much of a spitfire, a spiteful little kitten, to give in and do what he demands. So he keeps you on the precipice until he's ready to fuck you, ignoring your bribes, your bargains. Simon doesn't give in even when you beg, when you relent and tell him you'll finally be good. 

You never are. 

Spoiled, he always huffs. Down to the fuckin’ bone. 

Like now. Pulling away from him. Him, the only person in your life who stuck around. A little bullying (bones breaking, splintering under his fists; the wet, hot smear of blood on his hands, skulls smacking against the pavement—an’ if you tell anyone, he cracks his battered fists and it sounds like a snarl, a gunshot, your parents will be cryin’ over an empty grave—) shooed the gnats away. He took a more clandestine approach to others. Birds that kept circling you tight. Protective, shrill. They made his head ache, but—

(don't want to start nothin’, but i don't want to be alone wit’ ‘er. tried to kiss me, is all. ain't like that, pet—)

It was a test. And they all failed. All but him. 

Yet—

come to Durham. 

i’ll think about it. 

Ungrateful. It's his fault, though. Simon doted on you too much, cosseted by his affection, when he should have clipped your wings from the beginning. 

Ah, well—

Lesson learned. 

You're wet enough now. He pushes in two fingers, scissoring them apart. You'd be yowling at him, kicking up a fuss if you'd been awake. But you're not. It thrums through him. Thick, heady. He likes you like this—probably more than he should. The heat simmering in his veins bubbles. Pops. Sap on charring wood. It clogs his throat with his smoke until it burns, a dry forest fire. 

He needs you. Needs to be in you. He's tired of waiting. Impatience burrows into him like a maelstrom. 

Simon adjusts his hold on your leg, fingers curling behind your kneecap. Steadying himself. His fingers slip out of your cunt with a sloppy squelch that ghosts across his spine. Anticipatory. A touch anxious. He wants you. Wants you bad—

He takes himself in his hand, and slides the weeping tip over your slit. Taps it once, thrice on your clit. And then guides it to your centre. Your warmth bleeds into him. Eager, he shuffles forward. Feeds you his cock. Eyes drilling into the place where his head slips in, swallowed by your sloppy, wet hole. The glands make you stretch around him. Rim pulled taut. 

The sight alone must have been crafted by some Luciferian dream, dangled before him in the shade of nirvana. 

take a bite, it urges. and then take more—

Like this, passed out with your legs hitched over his shoulders, drooling into the pillow unawares, you're just a doll. 

Made for him, and—

“Fuckin’ hell—” He presses into you—cock splitting tight, warm heat—and tries not to lose himself to the sensation of being bare, raw, inside of you. 

—“A perfect fit.”

It's always been condoms. You're not on birth control. Ink blots in his eyes. He goes a little feral with it. Instincts unleashed. Unfettered. 

Simon bullies his fat cock into you until his hips tap the back of your thighs, buried as deep as he can go. It's molten heat cocooning him—a warm embrace. For the first time, ever, he thinks he understands the meaning of home. Sliding home, in particular. 

(Welcome home. Home. Home. He'll make a house out of your body. Sleep inside the brackets of your thighs, head pillowed on your chest—)

As good as you feel around him—slick, wet, and tight—and as much as he wants to saviour the sight of you, passed out on the pillow, cunt split by his cock, he has a goal, a mission, to see through. 

His hand falls, slick and tacky, to your lower belly. Palm pressing against the subtle bulge in your abdomen, the outline of his cock. You always whine and hiss that he's too big for you. That you can't take him to the root. 

Hurts, you complain, hand against your naval. Fingers knotting over the place that aches. 

He presses his fingers there instead, feeling himself under your skin. Changing your anatomy to make room for him to fit—

It lights him in fire. Spurns him on. He bucks into you, pace sloppy, clumsy. Selfish. He's unrelenting as he splits you apart, drilling the full length of himself into your supine body, supple flesh relaxed under him, practically melting into the sheets. 

The thread keeping his resolve, his self-control, sprung up tight begins to quiver. Each piston into you has delicate fingers drumming across the strings of a harpsichord. It reverberates through him, echoing in the stifling, suffocating, silence of the bedroom, overtaking it. Clouding it with the musk of his desire, his devotion to you, to this dream blooming in the prison of his mind. 

Everything narrows into a needlepoint. 

There's just your burning flesh beneath him, softer than it's ever been; pillowy. Welcoming. And the sounds of him fucking into you—lewd squelches, slick and wet; the sound of his cock finding home in the basin of your spread thighs; his heavy breaths, his groans and growls that seem to rattle the bed. The noise breaks, an incomplete requiem of sin in his head, and he loses himself in the lulling notes, dragged under in the bestial beat of taking what his—

A sudden noise shatters through the room. Beneath him, you stir, gasping wetly. The sound mangled in your throat. 

There's confusion in your sleepy, hazy gaze when you peer up at him, lashes clumping together. You moan, whimpering, as you struggle to latch on to the threads of cognisance that he's content to fuck out of you. Your hand lifts, falls to his wrist still pressed against your lower belly. The grip is lax, loose. You’re not pushing him away, but clinging to him. Centring yourself. 

It makes his blood thicken. Has him burning red-hot. 

“Wha’s a’matter, pet?” He taunts, grinding his cock into you hard enough to make your dazed eyes water. Your hand tightens around him, holding steady. “Don't like it? Not fuckin’ you hard enough?”

“Simon—”

His name tapers off into a keen when he angles hips, and starts pistoning into you with a mean, merciless fury. The desperate noises that spill, unhindered, from your slack mouth is the perfect accompaniment to the lewd sound of him fucking your sopping cunt; the piece he was missing when this started. His requiem, complete. 

It's a serrated blade to his self-control, already frayed and threadbare as it is. The pressure makes it snap.

“C'mon, sweet thing. Thought you wanted this?” 

There's a place in hell just for him. It's sealed when you blink your tired, sleepy eyes up at him, mind a slurry of lingering somnolence and the heady alcohol on your breath, and offer a shuddering whimper. Always so soft for him, so agreeable when you’re drunk. 

“So’ry, Simon—”

You can barely string words together. Poor, pitiful you—vulnerable under him. Breakable. Malleable. Anyone else could have tricked you into this same position when he was away. Got you beneath them like this, compliant and unawares, and took what belongs to him. 

(The only thing in this destitute existence he claims for himself—)

Not anymore. Not ever again. 

It's almost callous when he grinds into you. Hateful. Brutish. Furious. And dazed as you are, you barely even flinch at the snarls that spill, unfettered, from the back of his throat. The low groans of him making promises with devils unknown; constructing shackles from brass, iron. 

Entrenching his future in motion, cupped protectively between the parentheses your thighs make around his hips. It's almost a vicious sort of poetry, one laid bare in the odious ruins of that broken thing he calls a heart. Etched into his rotten pericardium. Necrosed devotion. He'll see it through—however noxious, and putrid, you might find the miasmal stench of it spun tight in his web. 

It's for your own good.

And as if you agree, you answer him in perfect euphony, moaning sweetly as you tilt your hips up for more. 

Ghost groans low in his throat, bestial and spinning rapidly out of his control. He feels everything spinning, slipping; the trudge to the finish line narrows into a pinprink. He needs something to cling to, to hold on to with broken hands—

The only purchase he finds is in your demise. 

His hand lifts, shaking yours loose. He reaches up, fingers dig into your chin, forcing your pouty mouth open. You blink at him, sluggish, but he catches the thin gossamer of awareness spooling thin cobwebs over darkened crevasses, covering the canyons in your eyes with cognisance. It makes him leer. 

“Stick your tongue out, pretty girl,” he rasps, words sticking together, muffled under the mask. Crushed aggregate stone under the weight of his own desire. “Tha’s it. Open up nice and wide—”

He lets spit gather again, pooling on his tongue. It's degrading, you always say. Gross. But you swallow it down like a good girl, anyway. Always. You come at him with fangs and claws, but somehow, you always merge in a perfectly dizzying polyphony. 

Ghost spits on your tongue. Lets it land right in the middle of fleshy pink. A sick, twisted pleasure thrums in his veins at the sight. 

There's checking the boxes of an established kink, and this. Horrifically proprietary. Ownership that ignites a fire in his marrow, setting him alight from the inside out. Turns bone into blackened char, cinder. He can almost taste it on his tongue. 

It's made worse, turned frenzied, when you—sweet, perfect, you—bracket it protectively in the curve of your tongue. Completely dazed, head filled with a heady slurry of somnolence and alcohol, but still aware enough to know, even if only through muscle memory, what you're meant to do when he spits in your mouth. 

If anything, you're more obedient like this. Little doll. Coddling it lovingly, this little piece of him that he gives you. 

And it might be the madness speaking—these fraying thoughts take on a vitriolic edge, corrosive aqua regia pooling in his throat—but Christ. He's been stabbed in the guts, repeatedly, and it somehow packed less of a punch than this. 

He wants, wants—

Family never crossed his mind, was never even on the table or something to be considered, but with you it brims. Blooms in rot. Roots in tenebrous. 

He has this insatiable urge to devour you whole so you'll always be with him. The waves of his desire are monstrous. The waters below are rapacious. A gaping maw eager to eat you up—

Pity it’s not an option. 

But he’ll make do. Buy a ring tomorrow. Something pretty that matches your eyes. The curve of your smile. Sanctioned ownership. A collar in gemstones and gold, glimmering and shining bright enough that should any light fade from your gaze, it’ll illuminate in the gloom; twilight made in sorrow. The prettiest blues—

Said eyes water. Ghost’s hold on your face relaxes when you give a muffled keen, cheeks bubbling up against the pressure. Tongue still stuck out even as he takes his pleasure from your supine flesh. Suspended in motion, stasis. Such a good girl for him—

He swallows. Tastes poison, rot, on his tongue. “Swallow.” 

You're a little sluggish, a little slow, but you follow his command all the same. He knows, then, that it could only ever be you. 

No one gets under his skin like this. No one makes him itch, want, crave, as much as you do—

You make a face, twisted up in some amalgamation of pleasure and confusion. It nudges the ruins of his chest and feels almost like a heartbeat when it pulses in his flesh. 

“Simon, Simon—”

His name is all you can say, and he's not sure if you're begging for mercy, or muttering it out into the scant air between your heaving breaths like an obsecration, an orison, but he eats it all the same. Bites down on your pleas, your cries, your prayers, and chews them up between fangled teeth. Takes them down into the swirling pits of his belly where they're eaten alive by what grows in the decay.

(belly full of dirt:

he heaves, and heaves, but nothing comes out even though he can taste humus in his throat, feel worms using his organs like a playground—)

“Somethin’ you want, pet?” He taunts, and shifts his hips back just enough to drag a few inches of his cock out of your drenched cunt. A tease—cruel and mean. He’d get lobbed upside the head for this had you been in your right mind. A tap to his temple, shaking the cobwebs loose. He would have bent down, and sunk broken teeth into your jugular. Merging violence with love until bloody knuckles feel like a kiss. “All you ‘ave to do is ask. Use your words, pretty thing—”

You whine, low and drawn out. A lazy whimper in the back of your throat. “Pl’se—”

You can barely speak. Tongue too thick. Sleep too heavy in your veins. Alcohol, too. A lesson, perhaps, for his willful little pet come the morning when you struggle to measure just how deep into his gullet you’ve let yourself fall. 

He can’t help rubbing salt into the shallow cuts, if only because he likes the way you pout. 

“C’mon, sweetheart. You can do better’n that.”

And damn him—damn you—you do. Your hand curls over his wrist, pulling it close to your mouth where you place a kiss against his palm. Tender. Chaste. Midnight blooms in your eyes, casts shadows under pale moonlight. His breath stutters in his chest when you lean your head back, letting his hand fall to your bared neck. 

Your heavy, lidded eyes gaze back at him, cutting through the shade of night that sews the air like satin. Etched in the file silk is threads of trust in stark white. The kind that bleeds for him; hungers. One that aches, always tender like a bruise. The throb of it echoes between mouldering ribs. Booms between his ears. 

Ghost doesn’t fall into pieces. Doesn’t shatter. No. Something in the splintered remains shifts. Settles. He wraps his fingers around the thick of your throat, thumb notched tight against your pulse, and he feels complete. Whole. Remade from the ruins. 

Your breath hitches. The sound is a gunshot in his ears. He squeezes down, a gentle press. Just enough to make the air spill out of your lungs, to let your eyes water. Lachrymose, eager. It does something to him when you cry. He feels tipped upside down, torn inside out. Left all askew, asunder. He wants to drown in the pebbling river growing against your lashline. Wants to drink it down until it quenches his neverending thirst. Wants, wants—

He feels his name spill from your lips. Brassy and broken, trembling against his palm. A plea—

More.

And he gives it to you. 

Simon hitches your ankle on his shoulder. Adjusts the grip he has on your throat. He settles over your body, blanketing you under his bulk. Stygian beast devouring the maiden whole. The thought amuses him even as it knocks the air from his lungs. 

He anchors himself into the mattress with his knees, steadying himself, curls his other hand around the iron ring of the headboard. All the while, you look up at him—glossy eyes burning coals in the dark, in the gloom. Wanting, hungry. Mouth held open as if you’re waiting for his scraps—

And then he bucks into you, the leverage giving his thrust a savage edge. 

The whines are snuffed out under his palm. Your eyes widen, tears now spilling down your temple, soaking the pillow below your head. 

He groans, head rolling back. “Fuckin’ hell—ain’t you a pretty sight?”

Tucked under him, throat swallowed by his palm. Split on his cock, slick and wet. The tears streaming down your face makes him feel wicked, foul; but the spit running down your slackened jaw quells any doubt. The hand on his wrist holds him tight, tighter still, to your flesh. 

You want this. His spoiled rotten bird.

So, he gives it to you.

Simon’s almost ruthless when he snaps his hips into yours, cooing viciously into your ear about how you feel, how you look, how you sound—so pretty wrapped around him, under him; his little doll—

“S’where you belong, pet—” guttural words spill, flintlike and savage, from his mangled throat. Reinforced with the hateful way he blugeons his cock into you. Times it perfectly with the firm squeezes against your jugular, never letting you catch your breath. Your eyes roll back, legs trembling. Shaking. But you don’t move, don’t struggle. The hand on his wrist is a shackle, and it makes him smirk, scars pulling up in a gnarled mess of mirth; ugly and mean. “Right where you belong. Ain’t tha’ right?”

He leans down, babbles nonsense into your temple. Promises you the heads of gods, the ichor they bleed. Swears he’ll build a shrine for you in Durham.

But for as mocking as these words he murmurs into your ear are, they’re tremulous. Raw. A current roars beneath; a steady stream, a plea, all full of need: stay, stay staystay—

(please)

He buries his nose into your hairline to stem the ravening ache in his guts, breathes in the heady scent of you—of sex, and wine, and sweat. Drags it into his lungs in harsh, angry gasps to stain his skin with the smell of you. Of him. 

It goes right to his head in a heavy rush until he’s dizzy, almost sick, with the swell of it flooding in. An animal, he thinks, drunk on merging pheromones that make him mindless. Unfettered. 

It’s as if he’s driven on instinct alone; his frenzied pace ebbs, grows sloppy. The air around him feels thick. Syrupy. Stifling. The balmy breath in his chest is nearly as unbearable as it is addicting. Sickeningly sweet. Still—

His chest expands, taking as much of the potent miasma into his lungs as he can, filling them up, up, until he feels the edges threaten to brust. It’s only then, when ink moults across his vision, that he lifts his head just enough to shove his mouth against yours, a broken snarl ripping free from his throat as he forces the infectious air into your mouth, down to your lungs. Polluting you with the same sickness. The same rot. 

Little hiccups tumble past your lips as you swallow it down, taking everything he gives you, and he catches them on his tongue. Plays with them between his teeth, basking in the salty tang of you—brine, loam; peatsalt. Ashes, guncotton. Molasses. He’s not sure if he wants to drown you in him, or crawl into the warm, wet cavern of your mouth that pulses around his tongue like a heartbeat. 

Both, maybe. Everything. All of it. 

Always—

But he’s chasing pleasure on fumes. Trying to run with broken legs. There’s nothing refined about this. About the way he cudgels the head of his cock into the places that make your mouth twist away from his greedy lips in a silent scream. His weight is crushing you, he’s sure, but you cling to him harder, holding him tighter. Almost afraid to let go. And fuck—the notion alone is a kick to the chest, harsh and heavy. He nearly gags on the litany of broken moans spiling out of his mouth, landing on your tongue. 

Driven mad, maybe (or pussy-drunk, and high off of his own poison); but in that madness, he discovers this:

Nirvana exists between your thighs. 

Home, too. 

(well—

not yet.)

Pleasure fissions down his spine. The paroxysm taking him deeper into the battle-worn depths of his demise until the walls narrow, closing in. Crushing. No escape. But—

He won’t climb out of his hole he dug. Not until he makes a bed from your flesh; shelter out of your bones. He wants to ingrain himself as deep within you as he can, arsenic subsumed down to your marrow. Poisoned with the fill of him, too sick to let go. 

(Bone nausea. 

A death sentence.)

It metastasises inside of him, filling the barren spaces up until it leaks from his pores. 

He wants it: this dream so tantalisingly close. 

Simon lifts his hand from your throat, and reaches out, grasps at it with a shaking paw—

All it takes is a few crass, careless swipes of his calloused thumb across your clit, cock angled toward that spot that makes you rake your broken nails down his back, yowling in his ear for more, there, please, Simon, please—

You clench like a vice around him. A pretty bow tied up at the base of his cock. He bows over you, grunts spilling from his chest as he sinks his teeth into your nape, splitting skin btween his teeth. The warm, ozonous tang of your blood flooding his tongue is euphoric, eclipsing his mind in a haze of pleasure that crackles and burns at the base of his spine, spitting smoke up his body and into his skull. 

The harsh whine you let out—all prey, all animal; wounded, stuck under his muzzle—has some part of him, basal and inborn, rearing up. Roaring in his ears, ripping talons across the jagged remains of his head. 

(mine, mine, mine—)

He answers your scream with a growl, one caught in the smoke clogging his throat. It sounds inhuman when its wrenched out of his mouth—more animal than man: the devastating howl of a forest on fire—but the feel of it vibrating between his teeth is connatural. Innate. It belongs between his incisors; fits like a puzzle piece in his broken muzzle. Unleashed now. Finally free from this ill-fitting cage he housed it, this goddamn box—

Cobbled together from palm ash and brimstone, ichor and salt. Sewed up with copper sutures in the shape of a man for a perfect fit. 

Every cell in his body screams that he was made for this. To be over you, in you. Maw filled with your blood. Pussy stuffed full of his cock. 

He might not have clawed out of the dirt for you, but this mossy, gnarled lump in his chest beats now only for you. Apodictic. Ironclad. His teeth in your jugular, your life pulsing wetly on his tongue. 

It’s his apotheosis. His end. 

His hips stutter. White noise in his head. It drowns out the shrill screams, the hisses. Everything is just—static. Pleasure of a silent kind, humming, buzzing, and molten. Ghost buries himself inside of you as deep as he can, until his cock is fit snug against the plug of your womb, and lays his claim by branding it with the potency of his name. 

Tidally locked, you’re dragged down the summit with him, tumbling to your demise. Too dazed, too wound tight in his arms, his embrace, to see the jagged rock at the bottom of the hungry chasm thirsting for your blood, you just cling to him. Refusing to let go. 

(silly girl—

His pretty little perigee.)

His body aches in ways that cruelly remind him of his age. Joints stiff, stomach quivering. His knuckles sting when he unfurls it from the headboard, skin pink and raw from the tight hold he had around the metal. 

It’s made worse when he heaves a harsh breath, and pulls away from you with a long, drawn out groan. He settles back on his haunches, eyes searing into the space between your thighs. Messy with his spend. It dribbles down your slit, your ass, pools on the sheets below. 

Your chest shudders, legs splayed out how he left you. He thinks, viciously, of gazelles, and wonders if the blood he feels drying on his mouth looks anything like the muddied mane of a lion after eating its fill. 

“Fuckin’ hell—”

He should clean you up, hide his crime, but he burns the image of you into his head (another tattoo over scar tissue), and drops to a heap beside you. The moment his back hits the mattress and all thoughts of moving are erased in silk, in smoke and clover. 

Chest heaving, slick with sweat, he feels the thrum of his victory in his veins. The high of the chase abates, and he nearly purrs with contentment. Hangs his pride on a pedestal, and doesn’t think about the absence of any guilt. Doesn’t even entertain the thought, not when victory dries between your thighs. When you roll over with a huff, reaching out for him. 

It's as if you're trying to bury yourself inside of him, crawl into the safety of his ribs. 

Ghost grunts, feels his sensitive, spent cock give a feeble twitch on his sticky thigh. The idea of you, blissfully unaware, seeking comfort from the man who writ your body with his virile spend, irrevocably changing your life and entwining it so deeply and so messily with his own that to severe either of you from each other is nearly impossible, floods him with satisfaction so deep, euphorically heady, that his chest seems to shudder. Resounding with some amalgamation of a purr, a grow, so utterly primal, that he sounds more beast than man. 

His roots run deep within you, now, and every misaligned piece of his patchwork body seems to sag and shiver in an almost perfect parallelism. Congruence ascertained with the cupping of you between its mismatched maw. Shackled in a baleen prison. Nestled, safe and sound, between white teeth. 

Ghost pulls you close, holding tight, and hums. As you drool on his shoulder, dripping with his spend, he knows he'll keep you there forever, until you're nothing but bones. 

There's a cloud of confusion hanging over you the next morning, a twinge of uncertainty gnarling across the gaps in your memory. The pieces of a puzzle that belong to a different set. He watches you scramble through them, filling in blanks. Oscillating so deliciously between wariness and discontent. 

“‘morning,” he greets, as if his spend hasn’t dried on your thigh last night. Tucked up nice and tight against your fertile, unprotected womb. As if he couldn't taste brimstone in the back of his throat when you wince as you walk, achy and battle-worn from the weight of his desire crushing you all night. 

“Morning,” it's a sticky rasp in your throat. He wonders if you taste him on your tongue. “When did you get in?”

“Las’ night.”

You nod, but it's absent. Flickering through the timeline of events that aren’t drenched in black, shaded over like a heavy bruise. Your expression is fractured. Raw. Pensive. Something untouchable, unchartable, and yet he reads you as plainly as the tea leaves at the bottom of his cup. 

You don’t remember. Don’t know what to make of this chasm, this fissure, that looms, icy and deep, before you. There’s no anger, though. You don’t demand recompense for what he stole, what he took. The lashings he deserves are tucked quietly between your teeth. Hidden under layers of normalcy to prevent yourself from seeing him as is: a beast. 

“Well, um. Some homecoming, huh?” You joke, but it's hollow. Flat. Fragile like fine glass. You're digging for more. Rooting around to connect these vague, absent dots that linger, lost in the vacancy of your memory. 

He almost purrs. 

He wants to chew you up. Spit you in the palm of his hand. Maybe tuck you in his breast pocket, nestled against the lump in his chest—the one those silly enough to dream might call a heart. Keep you there forever. Hidden in the barrel of his loaded gun. 

“Bit rowdy.” 

It’s horrifically vague, but you cling to the prevacation he proffers to you; a lifeline in the turbulent sea, letting it overwrite the absence, the itching in your skull that must be clanging on the walls, begging for you to run. 

“Sorry,” it's sheepish. He knows the ferality in which you sometimes come at him when he's buried deep inside you is something that makes you twinge with embarrassment. Little kitten clawing at the old dog trying to get it to play. Rolling over immediately when it growls. Docile, sickeningly sweet.

But even naive kittens know to watch out for the frothing, foaming maw. 

“Did you use a—?”

He dips his chin. “I might ‘ave.”

And you take it as gospel. As truth. Why would Simon have any reason to lie to you about this? 

Relief shudders over your shoulders. You relax, inching toward the seat across from him. Gazelle making a home for itself in the lion’s den. 

The spell of unease is broken, now, and you quickly fill the chasm with chatter about your day. Your plans. Asking him how he’s been. 

You shove at the warning signs until they’re hidden away, and ignore the bones of your brethren scattered around you. All because you trust him. 

He aches with the urge to crush it between his teeth. 

And he will one day soon, he’s sure, because it’s just as easy to enact his plan as it was to get you to open the door. 

It starts with him convincing you to drink with him after dinner. Jus’ a glass. Got this fancy bottle. Reckon we should ‘ave some. 

But—

Can’t drink forever—no matter what his dogshit dad thought. 

So, he pokes holes in the condoms you hide in the bedside table, a little wary now. A touch fretful about your contraceptives in a way that makes him preen. You have good instincts, but rarely do you listen to them. Your head must be filled with sirens, but it's futile, he supposes. He's already stuffed cotton into your ears. 

It only feeds into that gaping chasm that bellows up from the depths that this world is not good for you. That it will tear you into pieces, into shreds. You need him. Need the Ghost to protect you. 

Case in point:

You’re needy beneath him, panting and mewling into the sheets as he teases your clit with his thumb. So wet, it almost feels like hot oil on his skin. Syrupy thick. 

In your desperation, you cling to him, throat bared. Fragile fine china. Belly up. Vulnerable. 

You barely notice when he pulls off the condom, crumpling it up into a ball and shoving it in the pocket of his slacks.. Don’t even react when he shoves his bare, raw cock into you. 

You don't even notice. 

(or when he slurs in your ear about how badly he wants to knock you up—breed his pretty girl until she’s stuffed full of him, making life with what he offers. salvation in the form of creation. ain’ tha’ a thought? he huffs into your ear, humid mirth curling over your skin. a stain. and the way it unfetters you—tightening around him, gushing slick—he finds his answer, one reinforced in the rolling of your eyes as your common sense, independence, trickle out of your ears and down your slackened jaw—)

And when that fails, he just slips you a sleeping pill. There's always an easier way to the finish line, he finds. 

(stupid fuckin’ mutt—)

Nothing bleeds from the cracks he wrought, or slinks from the shadows cast by his machinations until weeks later. 

Life just goes back to what it once was—Simon coming and going, letting himself into your home with the door you leave unlocked. You go to work, and chatter aimlessly about this vision you have about a home in the countryside, near the ocean. Saving up—uselessly—for sheep and goats, and the sought-after Highland cows. Chickens and ducks first, you say, and barely notice when his gaze drops, drilling holes into your stomach. Watchful. Leering. 

He can almost scent the change on you. Nose pressed to your skin; bloodhound sniffing the ground. 

Ghost keeps time in the slow, susurrus drawl of your voice sifting through the cotton in his ears, waiting for those precious decibels to catch on, to tilt up at the end as your eyes skim the calendar he keeps scratching x’s across in red, almost delicate, innocent even though it's from his sanguinary hand. A countdown to something you haven’t yet caught on to. 

And it’s all so sweet. 

—the waiting game, the subtle changes, the desperate way you cling to normalcy—

Sweet, like the way you carve this life out for yourself, filled with stuffed animals full of idealism. So much so, that it's almost bitter. Acrid. He watches the light glow in your eyes as your plans take shape, moulding putty between your hands, and like a pit viper, he coils in on himself. Frenzied. Fearful—

But only just. 

The excitation has run its course. He’s drifting, languid, into his scheme. Content. The notion of you slipping from his fingers is a thought that rarely crosses his mind these days, especially when that house on the prairie grows from an occupant of one to two—

“And, you know… when you're not out saving the world—” your eye roll and air quotes make his lips twitch, tugging at the scar tissue, the acid burns, splashed across his mouth. An ugly fucking Pollock. “—maybe you can come visit.”

“Never fancied myself a rancher,” he drawls, just to watch you squirm. Brow furrowing into a deep ravine as you struggle to make your intentions known without actually giving them sound. Skirting around the issue of wanting him there, of planning a home with him. 

(Too much, maybe? Or too soon—? 

if only you knew—)

He finds it charming, really. 

Still—

“It's just a thought,” you mutter, downcast. He wants to choke on your misery. Your sadness. Drown himself in your anger. Float in your happiness. 

Fuckin' Christ—

All this playing daddy in his head has thrown him off his rocker. Made him soft. Sentimental. It's probably why he yields to you. Offers a lazy shrug and another smarmy twitch of his lips. 

“Sounds like a plan,” and the way you brighten is a dagger to his chest. 

And the thing is. It does. It sounds like a dream, a perfect vision. Just—

Maybe not in the way you'd want. 

He's been looking into places unmarred by human hands. Ghost towns, uncharted territories. His home here isn't perfect for it, not like the vast geography of Mexico. The uninhabited wilderness of Canada, places so remote that it's almost untethered to modern civilisation. Islands of forest, mountains, all on their own. 

Vast corners and crevasses where someone can disappear and never be found. 

But those won't work in tandem with his flighty lifestyle. While he plans on keeping you barefoot and pregnant (common sense in the back of his head screams that he's foul, vile, monstrous—), he will continue to work. Has to, really, to avoid suspicion. 

So—

Home it is. 

But he gets inspiration from the Highland cows you coo on about and purchases a plot of land in the Western Isles. Gives this whim of his—yours, really—a concrete foundation made of the abstract. The filament provided by his newly christened Sergeant—an overeager mutt that bleeds warning signs from his pores. 

(don’t get close, reactive dog. will bite—

the little mutt is a great pyrenees, ain’t he?)

But bless Johnny’s bleedin’ heart, he thought as the man prattled on about this cabin he owns. A place of solitude. Could fire a gun and no one would even peek out the curtains. Beautiful, the way all of Scotland is. The highlands, he breathes in that shade of catholic madness only the dutiful soldiers of god's right-handed wrath can be, is where he keeps his home. A place chiselled from stone, surrounded by wilderness that eats tourists alive. 

(he didn’t ask at the time why Johnny was so keen on finding these places scattered around Scotland, ones with little traffic and a nearly negligible amount of souls within the vicinity, but he finds its best not to get too close to mutts crossbred with wolves.)

But Simon is nothing if not devoted, and so. 

You’ll get your fantasy ranch in the middle of nowhere. Your highland cows, your billy goats, your chicken, sheep, and ducks. A baby in your arms, too. One that shows its hand the next morning, dashing all your carefully laid plans. These paths of independence of yours run parallel to his whims but never converge. There’s the potential in this for these fraying threads to split, and diverge. Separate. 

(But it’s all put to rest at the sound of you heaving in the adjoining washroom. His path eats yours until it’s overtaken. Consumed. 

The evasive, unfettered little bird trammelled, caught. Wing-clipped, and all his.) 

Any misgivings the part of his gyri not buried under the frothing mess of his polluted grey matter might have is vitiated by the unwavering certitude that, despite his own gains in this, it really is in your best interest. 

And maybe it's something that should have come earlier in your relationship—however threadbare that word is in conjunction with the unhinged desire blooming in the pit of his chest; madness masquerading as love or some obsessive, desperate facsimile of it. Maybe a proper man, a better one, might have dug down and fully laid out the reality of intertwining your life with the living dead. That the idea of danger, death, and revenge are all everpresent threats scratching at the walls of this sickeningly sweet fantasy you wrap around yourself. 

He’s a dangerous man. A creature of devastation—manmade, bent into, or congenital is yet to be unearthed—which, in itself, brings about a certain lifestyle. One with fewer people around, and always shrouded in secrecy. Friends, family—none of that matters when death curdles gnarled fingers around his jugular. 

You’ll get used to it. Eventually. The only other choice is to let you, his now flightless bird, go. Released back into the wild vulnerable and reeking of his stench. 

You’ll be devoured before daylight, ripped into pieces—only if they’re feeling generous, that is. 

Simon has his own twisted remora. Ones with claws and fangs and a hunger that runs deep. Insatiable. Any scraps that fall from his mouth are devoured before they can touch the sea floor. They’ll crush you in their maw and dangle your mangled body from the gaps between their teeth. 

You’re not made for the wild. Not anymore. You’re meant to be protected. You—this fragile, delicate thing. He’ll hold you close, keep you secure and safe in a mausoleum of your own making. 

This little glass jar domicile. 

A billet in the mountains. 

He’ll fill it with the finest things—silk linens, fine china; mahogany and teak, pink ivory; a bed of soft, downy feathers, sherpa, Egyptian cotton; (sticks and stones and grass and moss). Buy you whatever you need. Chickens and ducks. Sheep and goats. 

They’ll keep you company when he’s away. 

(and if that fails, he can always plan playdates for you with whatever dirty secret Johnny’s been keeping tucked away in the woods.)

He draws an x in the empty, white box of the calendar, the tip of his red marker gliding silkily across the glossy surface. Something unfurls in his guts. Blossoms in his bones. There’s an almost indescribable sense of satisfaction—primal and animalistic—that grows from the upturned dirt in his head. Life composted from rot. 

Ghost hums to himself when he turns, the sound nearly a purr—bestial as it is, suffocated under sulphur. It reverberates through his chest, trembling across the brackets of his ribs that expand with his deep, heavy inhale—breathing in the sight that greets him like a lover’s kiss

The kebab he ordered lays untouched on the table across from the television—some trashy reality show playing in the background while you tried to eat; a dating show, you’d said when he merely shrugged, having other things on his mind over what to watch while you ate. It all seems to be preserved in time. Frozen in on the exact moment when you’d sniffed the döner kebab he got for you—the same thing you order each time—and then promptly wrenched yourself back, gagging. The sandwich was flung back in the takeaway box before you slapped your hand over your mouth, rushing into the washroom. 

If his phone wasn’t in the other room, he might have taken a picture. A little memento to remember this moment. Framed it in iron and perched it on the desk they gave him back in Hereford, the one just down the hall from Price. 

(ah, speaking of—he’ll have to send that caustic bastard a fruit basket, or something, won’t he? maybe some pretty flowers for his lady.)

His reverie is shaken when the door to the washroom creaks open slowly, and you emerge through the gap with sweat on your brow, knots across your forehead, and a shaking hand resting over your churning stomach. 

Shame, he thinks. He really should have brought his phone—

You lean against the wall, taking in deep, shuddering breaths to steady yourself, confusion and worry knitting over you like a thundercloud. It tastes of ozone when he inhales. An approaching storm. In the blue gloom of the living room, illuminated only by the light flooding out from the washroom behind you and the static glow of the television, you look etiolated. A wilting flower. 

His budding rose. 

He coos. “You alright?”

You glance sideways at the kebab on the table, mouth pinching into a grimace as if to stem the nausea still rippling through you. You stare at it for a long moment, seemingly trying to make sense of the reality sitting in front of you on scratched, old pine; confusion runs laps over the dawn cresting in your eyes. This puzzle is too unfathomable for you to piece together; the keys and slots all askew. 

The air around him grows still. Silent. Anticipatory. A tiger crouched low in the tussock. A little fawn roaming too close. 

There’s a heaviness in your eyes when they flicker back to the wall where he stands, drilling holes into the x. Something implacable frissons over your threadbare expression, fracturing across sallow cheeks. 

The air is electric. It pulses across his bare flesh, irritating scar tissue, acid burns, and scorch marks. His skin prickles at its whisper. 

“Feelin’ sick, pet?” He ponders, playing pretend. He’s viciously, deeply amused at the desperate denial splashing across your cheeks. The thin shade of askance that unfurls like the leaves of a flytrap when you look at him. “Mus’t’a been the kebab. Bad meat, I reckon?”

You offer a weak nod in response, pinching your lips tight together. The matter seemingly concluded, brushed aside. Pocketed for later. 

And you say nothing else for the rest of the night—gaze unseeing, turned inward; pensive—but he purrs in contentment as if everything was alright, sprawled across the couch with his head pillowed against your churning stomach as if he could hear the whisper of another heartbeat from within. 

In the saturated blue light, he catches your eyes listing toward the calendar every so often. Wary. Nervous. He thinks you might say something, might ask, but you don’t. It’s caught on a stilted breath. A harsh swallow. 

All you do is bring your hand to his shorn head, and raze the stumps of your clipped claws against his scalp. It’s almost as if you’re trying to soothe the madness from within. Scratching that itch deep inside until it goes away. Gentle hands play pretend and dress up as a panacea. Affection to scrape the illness away. 

He thinks you should know better than that, even as he leans into it with a soft exhale, more relaxed than he'd ever been his entire life. Content. Unassailable in his conquest. 

Simon has always been more scar tissue than man, and no place is damaged more than the upturned tumulus inside his head. 

But oh. How you try—

His sweet, sweet girl. 

The look you give him the next evening is, in parts, brumous. 

A polynya of dread, worry, guilt, fear that frissons across the deep valleys in your eyes, shaded in plumes of darkness, filled in deliciously with the weight of your beleaguered uncertainty. It yawns out before him, this heavy gloom. 

So close he catch the embers in his hand. 

“Simon… We should—talk. I, uh—”

You hold up a little rectangle, dismay, misery, etched in the blue tinge spreading across your face. It seems to steal the words from your throat, turn them into ash. What else are you meant to say, he supposes, when you look out at the world now from the gape in his maw? 

But there’s a veil of wonderment that hides below the tidal wave; this precious, deadly, undercurrent that rents the air, splits his chest in two.

The happiness, however meagre, thin, it is right now (just a sunken boat on the seafloor), is there. Ripe for salvage, and he sees that it’s handled with care. Cupped between his palms, nurtured by his own conviction to do what’s right, an’—fuck, pet—know this ain’t what we planned, but—

but:

The howling quiets, turns to a low growl, and then a susurrus hum, when you shakily utter the words he was waiting for. 

“Yes, Simon—”

You shudder when his fist closes over your wrist, pulling you into his purring chest. Shaking like a prey animal in the jowls of a beast, bested and ensnared. It has a profound, almost predatory, sense of satisfaction curling over his bones. He knows this was the right choice, and is sure, in time, you'll come to realise that, too. You’re in the early stages, he knows. Prodromal. You need to be handled with care to curb the lacrimation, the hyperesthesia. 

And there’s no one better than him to guide you through the throes of it. To lead you to the unequivocal end. 

He leans down, and whispers in your crown—

“Good girl—”

—and the sound of his voice is gravel encased in sticky, sweet honey. Dark, smokey molasses. The very same cadence as a key sliding inside of a lock; metal grazing metal. Turning—

“If it’s a boy, we’ll name him Tommy.”

Click. 

(he gives you that ring he promised when he takes you to the mountains. you smile wide, and tell him it fits like a gyve.)

Simon stops shovelling his want under the cold dirt and starts burying it inside you instead. Makes a domicile from your flesh; a place where he can rest his aching head every night until the howling scraping down fractured bone stops— (paralytic)

#simon riley x reader #simon riley x you #ghost x reader #goddd this is foul #and was supposed to be up hours agooo but Nahanni closed at 5 today oops #cod #call of duty #simon ghost riley x reader #cod smut #simon riley smut #simon riley cod #ghost call of duty x reader #ghost cod x reader #in many ways this is a psa on the symptoms of rabies

[emmyrosee]

YALL BASED ON THIS VIDEO HERE IM SCREAMING-

-

It’s been hours since you’ve smiled at Rintaro.

Not since this morning when you left. He was home today, all day, left to watch your three year old, and be home to see your nine year old. You’d kissed the side of his nose, reminded him of some chores, and everything was fine for you to go out and do your own set of errands.

But to come home to a trash bag sitting outside of the door and not in the barrel that got emptied today?

Oh. Screw smiling.

There may have been a small argument that broke out once you told him, about how he assumed you’d take the trash out since you were leaving the house- of which you snapped that it’s not your responsibility to automatically take out the trash when you leave.

Your son, Akito, was only left to watch the chaos, setting up the console he and his father were about to play on.

“I forgot, okay!” He snaps, rolling his eyes. “I’ll take it out later, it’s fine!”

“It’s not fine!” You yell back. “The trash was already taken! It’s worthless at this point to do it!”

He looks like he’s about to say something back, but you see him bite his tongue. “Good choice,” you snarl. Leaving him and Akito, you make your way upstairs and into your bedroom where you get changed into something that doesn’t emit outside-world feeling. You take a quick shower, wash your face, and when you step out still angry, you’re quick to make a new game plan.

Once you’re done with your small dose of self care, you stomp into the kitchen for something to eat, hoping that it’ll help curb any further anger coming from you both.

Crackers and cheese, some little slices of fruit which you intend to pair with they jelly you got on your last visit to the city.

You grab the jar and with a deep, frustrated exhale, you grip the cover and try to twist.

When it doesn’t budge, you feel your eye twitch.

You try again, to no avail. You grab the nearest towel in an attempt to get a better grip. No dice.

You sigh, tossing the rag to the side before stalking your way into the living room, grimace etched on your face.

“Can you open this?” You ask, and just as Rintaro pauses the game and tosses his controller aside to reach for the jar, you slip right past him and pass it to Akito, who takes it in his hands to pop open the lid.

With a small grunt he manages to open the lid, passing you the jar with a small smile, “here, ma.”

“Thank you, handsome man,” you hum, blowing him a kiss and blowing a raspberry at Rintaro when you make your way back to the kitchen. There’s a pause of silence, a question you don’t quite catch from your son, and suddenly, you hear your husband jump up from the couch. You smirk. It doesn’t take long before feet quickly pound their way into the kitchen, and a disgruntled Rintaro stands, pouting, in the doorway.

“What. Was that about?”

You shrug softly, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t give me that crap,” he says, brows furrowed in frustration. “You’re seriously going to use my own creation against me?”

“Your creation?” You scoff in disbelief. “First off, I don’t remember you carrying our two children around for nine damn months. Second of all, our children are not creations. They’re children.”

“Point one,” he begins, quickly walking over to you. “You were hot as fuck carrying around our spawn. Secondly? Last time I checked, our baby machines only worked when together.”

“Feral!” You snap, giving him a grossed out look before turning towards the snacks you’d been making. “Get the hell out of my kitchen, I don’t want you here- HEY!”

Before you can think, Rintaro reaches past you and grabs the jar of jam, quickly raising his arm above his head to get it out of your reach. You would’ve tickled him for it, but the jam was from a small business three cities over. And the fuckhead knew that, and you hate him for it.

“You’re such a pain!” You growl, making a jump for it. You barely come close. Your fingers wrap around his shoulder in an attempt to yank his arm down, but he tightens it up completely to make it immobile. You’re rendered completely helpless to your husbands cruelty.

“Akito!” You call your son in hopes for assistance, snarling up at your husband. Instantly, socked feet slip along the floor, and at the sight of his figure in the doorframe, Rintaro bears his teeth.

“Don’t help your mother, she has to learn a lesson!” He snaps.

You growl back, “don’t listen to your father, you and your sister’s snacks depend on it!” Akito’s green, confused eyes flick back and forth between you both, and if you weren’t so stubborn, you’d think about how absolutely hilarious this is.

Rintaro, in all his 185 cm glory, holding a damned jar of jam above his head, so much so a sliver of his side pokes out from his shirt, and you, crossing your arms childishly after making extreme reaches for the jar.

It’s ridiculous, it’s childish, and it’s perfect for your marriage.

Akito gnaws his lip, “I mean… Ma is the boss, dad-“

“If you scram, I’ll double your allowance this week.”

“Bye mom!”

With the last bit of hope you have, you watch as he skates his way back into the living room, eye twitching in annoyance. “Kaiya wouldn’t betray me like that!”

“She’s three, mom!”

“She’d still help!”

Left to your own pity, you once again make a reach for the jar, only for him to reel his arm back a little bit more. “Give me a break, I have snacks to make,” you say, voice pitched in annoyance and defeat.

“Tell me you won’t go to our son for husband jobs.”

“Tell me you’ll take out the trash when I tell you to!”

“I thought you were throwing it out!”

“Why would you not check!”

“I didn’t think I had to!”

“Don’t worry, I’ll check on your waking daughter,” Akito calls annoyed from the living room, the only thing breaking up your argument.

With a deep, exhausted breath, Rintaro slowly lowers his arm, though still keeping a slight distance between you. “Cant we both say we’re wrong?”

“I’m never wrong,” you snip.

“I know, but for the sake of waking our three year old up, please just cave with me. Please, baby. I’m-“

He’s cut off by your quick lunge for the jar. He yanks it out of the way, and you’re left chasing it like a dog with a treat. You do, however, hear your husband laugh, but it’s not the laughter of victory from a few moments ago.

It’s laughter of adoration.

“I will leave you.”

“Gotta get the jar first.”

You, once again, for the nth time in a row, make a reach for it, but this time, Rintaro’s free arm quickly wraps around your waist to encase you in a hug, and he leans you back into the most ridiculous dip you’ve ever been apart of. You can’t begin to fight your own laughter that bubbles past your lips, fingers instinctively gripping his collar for stability.

Once your titters are finished ringing in the air, he straightens you both up, relaxing as you thunk your head against his chest. The jar gets put down on the counter, and he kisses the crown of your head sweetly as his arms tug you close.

“You’re annoying,” you purr.

He chuckles, “I know.” He closes his eyes and gently breathes in your scent, “and I’m sorry about the trash my love. Even if I thought you took it out, I really should’ve just. Checked.” Long fingers gently smooth up your neck to gently massage the nape, and he hums as you melt like putty against him.

“Now it’s gonna sit,” you pout. “In the trash outside. And it’s gonna smell. And we’re gonna be the house with smelly ass trash.”

“I know,” he repeats, trying not to laugh at your concerns. “I’ll take care of it princess- and worst case scenario, I’ll write letters apologizing to the neighbors for our rotten trash.”

You snort softly against his collarbone as you continue to nuzzle closer, “I’m sorry I went to Akito to open my jar,” you confess, angling your head up at him. He smirks and leans down to capture your lips in a kiss, his hands moving up to cup your cheeks lovingly.

“You wanna know a secret?” He asks against your lips.

You hum in intrigue.

“I’m pissed because I tightened them all when you were in the shower, so you’d have to talk to me.”

“SERIOUSLY?”

#the way I sprinted to write this smh #suna rintaro #suna rintaro fluff #suna rintaro x reader #suna rintaro x f!reader #suna rintaro x reader fluff #suna rintaro imagine #suna rintaro haikyuu #suna #suna fluff #suna x reader #suna x reader fluff #suna x f!reader #suna imagine #suna haikyuu #haikyuu #haikyuu fluff #haikyuu imagine #haikyuu x reader #haikyuu x female reader #haikyuu x f!reader #haikyuu x reader fluff #haikyuu x you #haikyuu x yn #haikyuu x y/n #dad!au #dad!suna #dad!haikyuu #dad!hq #dad!suna rintaro

[manjibunny]

FORBIDDEN FRUIT

SYNOPSIS: You swear you hate your soon-to-be stepmom, Shoko, but why do you want to fuck her so badly? C/W: stepcest, cheating (Shoko cheating on your dad), fem! reader, reader is being a brat (at first), brat taming, fingering, cunnilingus,face riding, mommy kink, public sex,spanking, alcohol, dacryphilia, sixty nine ZAYA SENT YOU A NEW MESSAGE: Guess who wrote some smutty headcanons to celebrate 69 followers? That's right, yours truly! I've had this idea marinating in my head for a while now, and finally I have a good reason to write my thoughts out! I wanna thank all of my beautiful followers for making this milestone possible, and my hot sexc moots for listening to my thirsts at three am when I can't fall asleep <333 You guys made it possible that I can finally post my unhinged thoughts on Tumblr hehe <3 special shoutout to @redskyvenus @avatarofstars and @gennysuga for being cuties <333

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who’s only ten years older than you, making her way too young for your old dad

♡ Stepmom! Shoko  who’s gotten together with your dad right after you’ve moved out for university

♡ Stepmom! Shoko  who got engaged to your dad about two years after she and your dad got together

♡ Stepmom! Shoko  who was baffled that you didn’t even know about her existence before your dad called you and told you about the engagement

“Hi dad”, you picked up the phone. You and your dad weren’t talking for the last few months as often as you were before. You chalked it up to him just being busy with his new position at the hospital he was working, and you being the studious girl that you were, you rarely had time to call him. You didn’t take it to heart.  “Hello princess, I gotta tell you something…” your dad said in a quiet voice. Immediately, you knew something was off. Hearing the nervousness in his voice, you told him to continue.  "Yeah? Of course, tell me” “Princess, I’m getting married” Now, THAT you took to heart. Nothing he said made it through to you. You knew he was talking to you, he was probably explaining, or begging for forgiveness. Heck, he might be talking about his soon-to-be wife, but nothing he said registered to you. The only thoughts  you had was about the costs of traveling back home and weighing the consequences of you missing a few days of university. At the end, you made up your mind: You will go home and you will give him a piece of your mind.  You didn’t tell your dad about your plans on paying him a visit. And why should you? He didn’t tell you about his engagement after all, so coming home unannounced felt a little bit like giving him a taste of his own medicine. Angrily, you pulled out the keys to your dad’s house, unlocking the door and entering the house. All hell broke loose when you walked in on your father and a young, brown-haired woman sitting a bit too closely to each other. Your poor father had to calm you down and explain the situation to the woman, Shoko Ierie, your future stepmom.  “Why didn’t you tell her about us?” She’d ask your dad, getting annoyed when she didn’t receive a good answer from him.

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who despite knowing she hasn't made the best impression on you, decided to at least try and be a good stepmom

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who tried really hard to make you like her

Shoko was at the end of her wits. She tried everything to make you like her. She tried making you your favorite food after asking your dad for the recipes the night of your little meltdown. The next day, when she was finally finished with the preparations and put your favorite dish in front of you on the table, you seemed to be less than impressed. You didn’t even touch the food, stating you’d rather get takeout than eat anything that was touched by her. Shoko would find out that you like manga and get you the titles that were recommended to her at the bookstore, only for you to reveal that you’ve already read these manga series years ago. Shoko overhears you talking to´your friend on the phone. With a soft voice that Shoko hadn’t heard from you yet, you reassured your friend that her mother wouldn’t hate her just because she got together with someone she didn’t approve of.  Shoko felt as if her moment to shine finally arrived. Determined to prove her worth as a good stepmom, the anxiety left her body. A newfound confidence spread across her body as she sat down next to you on the couch.  “Hey, I overheard that you were talking to your friend, I just wanted to-” offer some advice, is what Shoko wanted to say, but she never got there.  With an annoyed face, you stared her down.  “What the hell made you think that listening to a private conversation is ok?” you cut her off.  “Shouldn’t you be busy with my dad or something? Like, suck his dick or something?”Stunted, Shoko stood up and silently left the living room. She was aware that you didn’t like her, but did you have to be such a brat?

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who the more she pays attention to you, becomes more and more attracted to her soon-to-be stepdaughter and feels ashamed for that

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who decided that perhaps the best way to bond with you was to take you wedding dress shopping with her

“What?” “ To bond. I know you don’t like me a lot-” “And you’d be right” you snarkingly cut off Shoko.  “I know” Shoko remained calm “But you have to accept that me and your dad are getting married. Do you care so little about your dads happiness?” She tried to reason with you. Shoko already saw the conflicted look on your face coming. You stayed silent, thoughts crusading in your mind. She was right, you were acting selfish. You did want your father to stay away from Shoko as much as possible, especially since Shoko was way too young to even be dating your father. But maybe she makes him happy? You hated to admit it, but your father was happier than ever before. Seeing your knitted eyebrows and absent gaze, Shoko watched as your inner conflict unraveled inside your mind. She knew what she was doing, in fact, she planned for it. Trying to get you to like her made her observe you, trying to understand why you didn’t like her. While she guessed it must have been the age gap between her and your father, she noticed one thing: You were a daddy’s girl through and through. If you wouldn’t like her on your own accord, Shoko was ready to tug on your heartstrings. And unsurprisingly, it worked.  With a defeated sigh you gave in. “Fine, I’ll go to that bridal shop with you if that means to make dad happy”

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who looks absolutely gorgeous in every dress she tries on and tries to get your opinion on the dresses

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who noticed the way your eyes lingered a bit too long on her body but decided to stay quiet about it

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who took you back home after picking put the perfect dress and suggests you two have a glas of wine alone while your father was out

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who had a good time getting drunk with you,

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who knew that you had the hots for her and took the initiative and kissed you

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who quickly grew addictive to your lips and couldn't stop herself anymore

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who got you naked faster than the speed of light and spread your legs apart, eager to have a taste of your pussy

It happened so fast. One moment you were drinking wine with Shoko, the next you were laying naked underneath her. Drowning your growing need for your soon to be stepmom in the sweet alcohol was all you could do. You chugged the beverage like it was water, and with each drop that touched your tongue, the restraints you had seemed to grow weaker and weaker.  Instead of silencing your lust towards the woman you thought you hated, the alcohol in your system seemed to do the contrary.  Lust and alcohol are two dangerous things to mix, but drunk of the wine and drunk of Shoko’s lips, you were willing to deal with the consequences when you sobered up.  Intoxicated by the taste of your juices, Shoko couldn’t help but bury her face between your legs, lapping every drop of your essence as if she was tasting a rare wine. Her tongue grazed against your throbbing clit while she took in your flustered face. Mouth wide agape and teary eyed, you truly were a beautiful sight. Much better than her usual bratty behavior, Shoko thought happily as her tongue teased your sensitive bundle of nerves.  “Please” You moaned out desperately “I want more. Let me cum”“And you’ll get more if you’ll be good to me” Shoko replied. You’d get much more, more than anyone but Shoko could offer.

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who makes you cum more than anyone before her in one single night

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who became wet just by eating you out and hearing your sweet moans

Shoko knows how to eat pussy, you drunkenly thought as you laid on the couch, feeling limp and overstimulated from all the orgasms Shoko gave you. You swore you could fall asleep right there, but the sight of Shoko taking her clothes off seemed to wake you up. You had already guessed that she had a nice body after not so discreetly checking her out at the bridal shop, but seeing her in all of her glory topped any of your expectations. Her plump boobs and thick thighs had you craving to touch her. As if reading your mind, Shoko got on top of you and kissed you slowly and sensually. Her tongue trusted inside your mouth, giving you a taste of yourself. As she pulled away from your glossy lips, Shoko couldn’t deny herself from easing the almost painful throb between her legs.  “Will you be good for me?” She asked breathlessly. You nodded, unable to speak.  Shoko was satisfied with your answer, she had a feeling you would be obedient to her request. Without waiting too long, she repositioned herself. Shoko gently gripped your hair as she sat on your face, making sure to not put her whole weight on you.  “Stick out your tongue, pretty girl” Shoko mused.  You got a perfect glance at her sobbing cunt, her pretty pink clit throbbing in anticipation as you looked at her pussy absolutely mesmerized.  Shoko didn’t have to tell you twice. Greedily, you began licking her pussy, moaning as the taste of her juices hit your tongue.  Moaning, Shoko began slowly grinding against your face.  “You’re doing such a good job” she whimpered as she felt your tongue teasing her leaking hole. You groaned into her pussy as her clit pressed against your nose, still trying to tongue fuck your soon to be stepmom.  The coil in her stomach snapped, Shoko moaned out loudly as she came all over your face while you eagerly licked her clean, clearly enjoying the taste of her cum.

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who sobered up after cumming on your face and realized what you two have done, feeling a mixture of shame and satisfaction as she saw your fucked out face and her juices coating your pretty lips

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who apologizes to you the next morning and begs you not to tell your father

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who got frustrated with you when you told her she should leave your father if she's such a cheater

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who grew angrier and angrier as you continued to call her names and accused her of being a gold digger

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who in a fit of rage decides to put you back in your place, all sense of shame left her as soon as she reached her tipping point

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who makes you call her mommy as she spanks you to remind you of your place

It was almost comical how fast you complied to take off your clothes once Shoko used her authoritarian voice.  “Take off your clothes, right now” You knew you messed up big time when you saw Shokos glare, her eyes holding a dark glint that made you feel fearful of the consequences of not obeying her. Eyes landing on the floor, refusing to meet Shokos cold glare, you took off your clothes. You peeled your clothes off your body piece by piece, until you stood in front of Shoko with only your lacy underwear. Despite feeling fearful of what Shoko might do to you, a wave of excitement washed over your body as Shoko got closer to you. She forcefully grabbed your chin, making you look up from the ground into her icy gaze.  “Planning on going out?” Shoko mocked, hooking her index finger under the strap of your bra, before it snapped back against your skin. Being sensitive to pain, you lightly whimpered as you felt the stinging sensation on your shoulder, but you still tried to appear unbothered. Bad idea.  “Come on princess, you were so much more obedient last night. Do you really need my tongue shoved inside your pussy to stop acting like such a goddamn brat?”  You swallowed hard. This wasn’t the kind woman you met just a few days ago. The woman you saw in front didn’t resemble the sweet doctor you hated. This woman made you hot and bothered.   “Here’s what’s going to happen” Shoko leaned in, face dangerously close to yours. “I will sit down on that couch over there, and you will lay on my lap. Got that?” “W-why?” you stuttered out. Heart thumping against your ribcage, you both dreaded and anticipated the answer at the same time.  “So I can put you back in your place” You watched as Shoko made her way towards the couch, sitting on the soft cushion.  “What are you waiting for?” Shoko inquired “Don’t make me come and get you, brat” Brat. That word sent chills down your spine and pussy.  You laid on her lap, your ass propped up as you already knew what was coming your way. With a loud clap, her hand made impact with your buttcheek. Your eyes shot wide and a loud whine escaped your lips.  “Is this how I have to deal with you?” Shoko mocked condescendingly as her hand collided with your sensitive skin in a hard slap.  Teary eyed, you remained silent. You were far too ashamed to be in this position to talk with her. Another harsh slap followed.  “I spoke to you, brat. Mommy wants to hear an answer”  “No, mommy. I’ll be good from now on” You pleaded with her, tears rolling down your cheeks as Shokos spankings made you soaked wet.  “I don’t believe you. I gotta discipline you real good” She followed up with another slap. You knew for sure this wouldn’t be the last slap you’d feel, but you couldn’t complain as with every slap, your panties grew wetter and wetter.

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who gets off of your teary eyed apologies to never behave like a bad girl ever again, your cries of pleasure and pain seemingly appeasing her

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who doesn't need to do much after disciplining you you for you to not tell your dad

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who purrs into your ear "This is a secret between mommy and her pretty princess" the first few times she fingered you inside your bedroom

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who starts a secret relationship with you right after you stopped acting bratty towards her

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who asks your father to stop calling you his "princess" - for you are her little princess now

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who assures your dad that she and you get along just fine while

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who is such a good mommy to you, always sending you gifts when you've returned back to your uni town

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who has a secret folder inside her phone full of you wearing the cute lingerie sets she sent you

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who makes sure you visit her frquently, after all she's be damned if she can't taste your sweet pussy for an extended amount of time

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who keeps physical touch with your dad to a minimum, much rather fucking his cute daughter

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who proves to your dad that you and her are getting along by making you her maid of honor

♡ Stepmom! Shoko whose fingers are knuckle deep inside your pussy right before the wedding ceremony, not being able to resist after seeing you in the cute dress she picked out for you to wear to her wedding

“Keep your voice down, princess” Shoko cooed into your ear, lips lightly pressed to your ear as she fucked her fingers into you. It wasn’t the first time Shoko fingered you like this, body pressed against yours at a semi public place. But this was different.  “Mommy, please. He could walk on us any minute” you whimpered out. He being no other than your dearly beloved dad. You knew that what you were doing is bad and perhaps immoral. Who on their right mind is getting fingered by their soon to be stepmom inside of the bathroom right before said stepmom's wedding? You were, but you were far from being in your right mind. And how could you resist Shoko when her fingers stuffed your pussy so perfectly full? How could you resist when her soft lips against your neck made you weak to your knees? How could you resist when she’s the only one that can put you in your place, when she is the only one that knows how to tame a brat like you? Shoko’s fingers moved in and out deliciously, grazing every spot that had your toes curling and breath shorten. While she fucked her index and middle finger in and out of you, her thumb began grazing against your touch starved clit.  “Fuck!” You moaned out loudly, feeling the knot inside your stomach growing tighter and tighter.  “Mommy, please. Let me cum” You mewled as you felt her fingers thrusting slowly inside your cunt, edging you.  “This is what happens when you don’t obey, princess” Shoko lightly bit your earlobe. “Mommy will reward you if you stop being so fucking loud, ok baby?” She pulled her fingers out, lightly pinching your throbbing clit.  You clasped your mouth shut with your hand, barely being able to drown out a sinful moan. You bit your lower lip and nodded, signaling to Shoko that you were willing to comply.  “Good girl” With that, she plunged her fingers back inside your cunt, thrusting in and out with newfound fervor.  “You may cum” Shoko ordered you, and being her good little princess, the knot inside your stomach bursted, leaving you to see stars as tears from the overstimulation escaped your eyes.  Shoko chuckled as she saw your fucked out expression.  “Now come on, let me help you get ready for my wedding”

♡ Stepmom! Shoko who's so glad your father is knocked out drunk after the wedding, leaving her to properly fuck you

The wedding has officially ended with Shoko marrying your dad, making her your stepmom. Your dad, being way too drunk to consummate the wedding, not that Shoko would want him if she has her pretty stepdaughter do that for him. Your clothes dropped to the floor as soon as you and Shoko were alone inside your hotel room. She has been eying curing the wedding ceremony, admiring how the dress she picked up for you perfectly hugs your frame. Oh, how glad she was that she finally had access to your sweet, sweet pussy.  Shoko instructed you to lay down on your bed, legs spread apart as she laid herself on top of you. Instead of looking into your beautiful eyes, Shoko was facing your dripping cunt. Shoko let out an amused chuckle when she dipped a finger inside your pussy.  “So wet already?”  Shoko lighty pumped her finger in and out of your gushing pussy. While Shoko was amused by how wet you were, she knew that she was just as wet and ready to grind her aching clit all over your face. More importantly, she couldn’t restrain herself anymore, she had to have a taste of your cunt. Slowly, Shoko removed her finger and licked it clean, enjoying the flavor of your arousal.  Being mommy’s good girl, you patiently waited for Shoko’s command to eat her out. However, this seemed too hard of a task for you, especially since you were feeling needy yourself. Gripping into Shoko’s thighs, you felt like you were going crazy with Shoko just teasing your pussy and not shoving her tongue inside you.  “Mommy, I need you. Please, need you to make me cum. Wanna taste you too” You whined out.  “I’m feeling gracious today” Shoko stated before letting her tongue drag across your pussy, letting your juices fully coat her wet muscle. “You taste so much better than my wedding cake” Shoko groaned into your pussy, already feeling drunk off you. “You may have a taste of me as well”  That was all you needed to hear. Burying your face between her legs, you circled your tongue around Shokos clit, feeling it twitch and throb at your touch. You sucked on her clit while Shoko was lightly humping your face, needing more friction. You gasped as Shoko  thrusted her tongue inside your hole.  You already felt so close, and you could tell that Shoko was as well when she humped your face harder.  And when you two came, you wouldn’t stop. Bodies glued to one another, neither of you dared to stop pleasuring the other, wanting the euphoria to never end. But sooner or later, Shoko had to go back to her hotel room with your dad. As she kissed you one last time before leaving, you knew that despite everything, you wouldn’t feel sad. For Shoko might be legally married to your father, her heart, soul and body belonged to you, and only you.

#mdni! #tw: stepcest #tw: cheating #shoko ieiri #jjk shoko #jujutsu kaisen shoko #shoko x reader #shoko ieri x reader #Shoko Ieri x reader smut #shoko smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader smut #jujutsu kaisen x reader #jujutsu kaisen smut #jjk smut #jjk x reader #jjk x reader smut #jjk headcanons #jujutsu kaisen headcanons #mdni banner by @cafekitsune #heart dividers by @k2ils #jujutsu kaisen #jjk

[satorusugurugurl]

Brat tamer and daddy kink with geto, gojo and toji please 🙏🔥

Brat Tamer’s

Characters: Gojo Satoru, Geto Suguru, Toji Fushiguro, FAB!R

Word count: 4,982 (I got really into it)

Warning: unprotected sex, degrading, overstimulating, public sex, dirty talk!

A/N: I literally loved this, I got so excited. I stayed up late editing it when I need to be up in four and a half hours! Please enjoy!

Summary: JJK men and how they fuck the bratty attitude out of you! 🥵

Gojo Satoru:

Rage boiled in the pit of your stomach as your leg bounced. The foul mood you were in wasn't because you woke up early on a Saturday or due to you sleeping on the couch. No, your sour mood is sponsored by your boyfriend, Gojo Satoru.

The bastard had been the biggest twat tease the previous day. All Friday long, he sent you the most provocative, smutty, thirsty texts the world had ever seen. Sexting, who the hell even sexted anymore?

Gojo Satoru did.

SATORU: damn, I'm thirsty. 😩

YOU: Buy a drink then? 🤨

SATORU: but they don't have what I want. .🥲

YOU: How could the vending machine be out of Cola?

SATORU: I don't want soda. I want that dripping pussy in my face. I wanna lap my tongue up and down, swirl it around your clit, and fuck you with my tongue until you cum on my mouth. Then I'll do it again, this time flattening my tongue over your cunt, encouraging you to use me how you want. In whatever way, Y/N, 🥵 I need you to sit on my face. I promise you the second you get home; I'm going to live between your thighs for the night. 😏❤️🌶

The conversation progressively got hotter and hotter until you found yourself clenching your thighs together to stop the insistent throbbing. God, it was so erotic. You loved reading his nasty words and were disappointed when they abruptly stopped. Maybe he’d taken pity on you, giving you a break to enjoy your dinner with Shoko and Utahime.

You were stripping the second you got home, kicking your shoes off, tossing your keys in the bowl by the door. If you knew how to teleport like Gojo, you would have been in the bedroom instantly. Alas, you had to run for it, sliding inside, hoping to find a naked Satoru with a rose between his teeth. Instead, you saw him snoring, drooling all over his pillow.

He had teased you all day, ruined a perfectly good pair of panties, to end up passing out on you!?

Sure, he was the strongest Jujutsu Sorcerer of the modern age, and he needed to get all the rest he could. It didn’t help that he had been on a long mission two days beforehand. But he could have rested after he fulfilled his nasty promises. But no, the bastard fell asleep on you.

“Morning Sweetheart.” Gojo walked into the kitchen with a yawn, oblivious to your rage. “Man, I slept like a baby.” He glanced around, searching for you, as he scratched at his stomach.

“Aw,” he stiffened at the tone of your voice, “did my old man sleep well?” Gojo watched as you lifted your coffee cup to your mouth, taking a long sip and glaring daggers at him.

“The fuck did you just call me?”

“Old man.” You snapped before taking another sip.

Gojo scoffed, grabbing his mug from the cabinet and filling it with hot coffee, fixing it with five cubes of sugar and sweet vanilla creamer. “Why the hell are you calling me that for?” There was only a two-year difference between you two. So he assumed that you woke up in a bad mood or you were being a brat at eight in the morning.

“Oh, I'm so sorry!” Sarcasm laced your voice, “I assumed you turned into an old man last night. Seeing that you passed out at nine o'clock last night. After you were a twat tease all day! You know, promising to eat my pussy in Ultra 4K HD.”

Oooh, that's why you were so pissed off.

“First off, relax; I was so tired when I got home. I just intended to nap, but it turned into an eleven-hour nap. And, you know I'll make it up to you, princess.”

“No, you won't.”

Your blatant defiance had Satoru choking on his coffee. He sputtered and hacked into his elbow as tears flooded his eyes. The entire time he was fighting for his life, you watched with a smirk. Knowing you were the cause of that reaction.

“I'm sorry, I must have misheard you.” Gojo took a deep breath, clearing his throat. “It sounded a lot like you just told me no. As in, you don’t want me to eat your pussy.”

You crossed your arms over your chest, pressing your breasts together. “You heard correctly.”

“Ha,” Satoru shook his head, leaning forward as he rested both hands on the kitchen counter. “Good one brat. You and I both know you’re lying. Keep it up. See what happens.”

“What.” You said, tilting your head. Assuming you hadn't heard him, Satoru opened his mouth to repeat himself. “Ever.” You finish with a smirk.

Now, that was annoying. Satoru’s blood was boiling as he realized you woke up and chose violence because he didn’t eat you out last night. Annoying as it was, he’d be lying if he said your attitude had his cock twitching inside his pajamas. Two could play in this game. He'd give you one last chance to behave before he taught you a lesson you would never forget.

“You’re going to listen to me carefully, baby.” You whined as he grabbed your face in his right hand, squeezing your cheeks gently, forcing a pout to form. “You’re going to be a good girl, and stop being a brat.”

Releasing his grip on your face, Satoru grinned, pleased with the pout that remained despite not forcing It. Now that you had been properly scolded, he could enjoy his coffee without choking to death. But before he could sip the sugary goodness, your pot twisted into a sly grin.

“Make me.”

Satoru’s eyes darkened before gently placing his cup down. You swallowed hard, your mouth suddenly dry as he walked around the counter, grabbing you by the collar of your shirt. He dragged you across the floor, which was easy, thanks to his curse technique. He whistled a cheerful tune as he entered your bedroom.

Which is where you had been for the last hour.

“S-Satoru!” You cried out, eyes wide as your back arched off the bed.

Satoru pushed your trembling thighs further apart. His tongue gently flickered at your abused and throbbing clit as his fingers curled inside of you. His cerulean eyes never once broke contact with your face in the hour he's been nestled between your thighs. Satoru was a man on a mission. A specific mission that was going to involve you crying from overstimulation by the time he was through with you.

“Too much!” You squeaked as his lips sealed around your clit, sucking on it. “Satoru! Satoru, please!”

He ignored you, promptly sucking harder as his fingers fastened their pace, curling against the spongy spot inside you. With a strangled yelp, you threw your head back, trembling hands reaching for his soft, snowy locks. You yanked him back. Away from your pussy with all the strength you could muster.

Satoru could have easily swatted you away, but he decided to be nice, allowing you to pull him away from your dripping sex. God, he looked as feral as you felt. Eyes narrowed, mouth dripping with your slick, pale cheeks flushed red.

“Oh, sorry, did you say something?” His talented tongue darted out, cleaning your slick off his lips. “Sorry, I’m an ‘old man,’ so I didn't hear you.” His tongue went back to work, swirling slowly around your clit as if it were his favorite candy.

“Mnnngh!” you yelled, gripping his hair tighter, “Toru!” He still paid you no mind, focused solely on making you cum for the sixth, seventh, eighth time? You'd lost count after four. “Toru!” Your legs trembled under his relentless attack. Satoru hummed, knowing you were close. He sped his fingers up, tongue flicking madly over your clit.

“Fuck! Fuck! Ahh!” You cried out as you squirted all over his face. But the man didn't stop; he kept the same speed going. Determined to make you cry from immense pleasure.

It was getting too much to handle. Spots were forming in your vision as you convulsed under him. There might be only one way to stop this never-ending orgasm loop. One that would most likely result in you getting fucked into the mattress, but at least that way, he would leave your poor clit alone for the time being.

“D-Daddy,” you whimpered, “Daddy, please.”

Just like you knew he would, Satoru lifted his head like a puppy being called for dinner. The damn bastard had a shit-eating grin plastered over his cum drenched face. “Oh, you called baby girl?~” His head rested against your thigh while slowly keeping his fingers moving inside of you.

“Nngh, oh fuck, I’m sorry, Daddy, please, I need your cock.” You cried out in relief, relaxing as he sat up, leaning back on the heels of his feet. “Daddy~ daddy, please.”

You knew he couldn’t take much more of this of the endless foreplay himself. His cock was straining against his pajama pants, a small wet spot forming against the gray fabric. Indeed, he was done punishing you. It had been a long, amazing, but still exhausting hour.

“Please, what? Use your words, beautiful.”

“Please fuck me.”

Tilting his head, Gojo rubbed at his slick chin, pondering thought. “Fuck you? You want your sweet daddy to fuck you?”

His hands rubbed up and down your thighs, making you jerk slightly. “Yes! Please, Daddy, I'm so sorry.” Satoru hummed in satisfaction before leaning down and kissing you deeply. You moaned, and he used the opportunity to shove his tongue into your mouth. The taste of you flooded your mouth. He always kissed you like this before he fucked you.

Finally, the torture could stop.

He hooked his arms under your thighs, lifting your hips to rest over his own. But much to your horror, he pulled back, smirking as he lifted you high and higher until your legs were over his shoulders, and his lips trailed over your inner thighs with nips and hickeys.

“T-Toru! Wait, let's be reasonable!” A pitiful squeak escaped you as he dragged you to the edge of the bed. “I-I said I was sorry, Daddy!!” Terror plastered over your face as he dropped to his knees on the ground.

“Baby girl, I am being reasonable.” He pulled your hips closer to his mouth, his hot breath fanning over your cunt. “You were so hurt and distraught over me breaking my promise last night. So I have to make it up to you. I plan to fuck you all day.” Blue eyes glimmered, half-lidded, as he stuck his tongue out, dragging it slowly over your entrance. “With my tongue.”

Before you could utter another rushed, heartfelt apology, Satoru’s mouth sealed over you again, sucking you like you were his favorite treat. At this rate, he was going to suck the soul out of your body.

Geto Suguru:

“Sorry! Sorry!” You hummed out before stopping right in front of Suguru. You made it a point to bend over, your ass brushing against his crotch. “My shoe is untied!”

Suguru cleared his throat as you pretended to tie your non-existent shoelace. “No worries.” His throat was dry, and you looked over your shoulder to find him staring directly at your ass. This was going exactly as planned!

Last weekend Gojo had asked Suguru if he was a tit or ass man. Usually, your sweet boyfriend would say something along the lines that you as a whole, was his type. But between the shots of sake and the three beers he'd chugged, he eyes you carefully in thought. His dark gaze moved from your chest before he leaned back in his chair, trying to examine the ass you were sitting on. The whole scene had your friends whistling and clapping at the way he practically undressed you in front of them.

“Ya’ know, I was a tit guy in high school.” Suguru downed another shot before he draped his arm around you, pulling you firmly against his side. “But since Y/N and I started dating, I can confidently say that I am an ass man, Satoru.”

This discovery had your curiosity peaked. So there was only one logical thing for you to do. You needed to put his statement to the test. For science, of course. Nothing more than science.

Your first experiment was to see how he responded to you flashing him. When he had just gotten home from the gym, you welcomed him back by lifting your shirt showing him your breasts. In all of his sweaty glory, Suguru didn’t miss a beat. He dropped his gym bag, tossed you over his shoulder, and carried you to the bedroom, where he got his cool-down workout in.

That was the typical when he saw your boobs. Suguru loved your breasts. He loved to caress them, hold them, and bury his face in them after a long and stressful mission. In all of your previous relationships, no one enjoyed playing with your breasts as much attention as Suguru did. So to hear him say, with his own words, was a bit far-fetched.

Thus began your experiment to find out what he really was!

Throughout the day, you purposely dropped your pen, bent down to pick up your keys, and, of course, leaned over his desk in order to retrieve a paper that had mistakenly fallen into the ground. Each and every time you glanced back to look at him, to see an almost distant expression on his face as his eyes were glued to your ass.

His staring was hardly a reaction compared to you flashing him. Either he had been drunk when he answered Satoru, or you weren't putting in the effort needed to truly test him. He left you no choice but to step your antics up.

“Y/L/N-Sensei!” Itadori beamed as you carried a stack of papers into the classroom. “Do you need help with that?”

“No, I got it, Itadori!” You neatly placed the papers on the desk, grinning at Suguru, who was talking to Megumi about his stance in the earlier training. “I do need to borrow Geto, though. Sorry, guys.”

Hearing you call his name, your boyfriend turned, a soft smile gracing his gorgeous face. “Okay, class is dismissed for today. I'll see you all tomorrow.” The three first years left the opposite way that you led Suguru down.

“I needed to grab the box of paper talisman paper out of storage.” You opened the door to the storage closet. “But I can reach it.”

“So you're just using me for my height?” Suguru gasped dramatically. “Has our whole relationship been a lie, Y/N?”

With a giggle from you, Suguru stepped inside, reaching for the box on the highest shelf. Now was the perfect chance to see how he reacted to your ass. You stepped inside the closet with him. Your darling boyfriend is oblivious to your mischievous intentions.

“Oh!” Suguru turned to watch as you shut the door. He didn't get to ask what you were doing when he suddenly stiffened as you squeezed between him and the shelves. “I was wondering where they kept the extra pens!” You stood on your tiptoes, rubbing your ass on his crotch. Suguru hissed, and you could feel his cock twitch in his pants.

“Sorry! I just!” Standing on your tiptoes, you barely reached for the box of pens before dropping down. You repeated this action several times, practically dry-humping against him while attempting to maintain your innocence. “They're just so far away!”

When you reached your fingers again, grazing the box, Suguru’s hand clamped down on your wrist, squeezing it. His labored breathing hit the back of your neck as his cock throbbed hard against your ass. The air inside the closet was suddenly ten times hotter and stuffier than it had been seconds ago.

“I fuckin’ knew it.” Suguru snarled, his lips pressing against the back of your neck as her hands grabbed the hem of your pants. “You’ve been bending over in front of me all day on purpose. Are you seriously trying to test me?”

You were suddenly pushed against the shelves with one of his hands as the other yanked your pants and panties down, pooling them at your knees. “What are you talking about?” You attempt to come off as confused, but hearing the zip to his uniform being dragged down had you shivering.

“Oh, don't play dumb. You were testing to see if I was an ass man or not, weren't you?” He ends his question with a smack against your ass. “That's why you kept bending over, you know, like a brat.”

“Still don't know what you mean.” Your act is slipping up as you hear Suguru spit behind you. A second later, his hot, spit-slicked cock grinds perfectly over your ass. “Oh shit~”

Sugar kneads at your ass, thrusting his cock between your cheeks. “You can keep playing the innocent act, but we both know you're a terrible liar, Y/N.” He adjusts himself, allowing his cock to move further down, his tip teasing the entrance to your pussy.

“I am? Man, what gave me away?”

“Your shoes don't have laces.” With a sudden and sharp thrust, Suguru slams inside of you, his hand clamping down over your mouth, muffling your scream of pleasure. “Silly little brat, you wanted this as much as me, Your pussy is soaking wet for me, and I didn't even get a chance to touch your pretty cunt.”

You scream into his palm as he starts thrusting into you, the shelves shaking, dust flying around the two of you. As boxes and papers fall to the ground, Suguru picks up his pace. Your pussy is so tight and wet. It feels so good to be buried deep inside of you.

“Fuck~ fuck your pussy is the best,” Suguru whispers slowly in your ear, his dark hair falling over your shoulder as he leans fully against you. “This is like my own personal treat for being good and not fucking you in front of the entire school.”

His words, the tone of his gravely voice, and the mere force he was fucking you at. It had you hurdling to the edge so fast you felt like a teenager again. Your eyes rolled back into your head as you convulsed around his cock, cumming so hard you thought you might pass out. And Geto, he wasn't better off. You'd been rubbing up his cock off and on all day, the ultimate edging.

His teeth dug into your shoulder to silence his moans and whimpers as his cock throbbed inside of you, filling you with his seed. You breathed heavily against his palm, gasping for air as he dropped his hand from your mouth to your chin. He turned you to face him, kissing you ever so gently as he slowly pulled out of you.

“We need to go home.” With shaking hands, you tried to pull your clothes back up. “I’m going to fuck you for each time you ground that sweet ass against me today.” Suguru kindly decided to help you with your pants, pulling them up and fastening them secure. “Hope you're ready for a long night, Princess.” His hand slapped your ass as you both headed out of the closet. “Cause that ass is mine.”

In conclusion, you discovered the truth: Geto Suguru was, in fact, an ass man.

Toji Fushiguro:

“We’re having dinner with a potential client tonight. Make sure you wear something nice. Not like your usual t-shirts and shit.”

His words rang through your ears repeatedly as you eyed yourself in the bathroom mirror. You'd show him something nice. The asshole dared to tell you to wear something nice?! Mr. Sweatpants himself? What a dickhead!

After he took off for work, you made it your life's sole mission to get dolled up to a t. If he wanted to impress your potential client, you'd make their fucking jaws drop. You'd be so hot; they'd take the two of you on as clients just in the hopes of seeing you in all your fuckin’ glory!

“I assure you, my partner and I can immediately get the job done for you,” Toji said, sipping on the red wine his potential client so graciously bought.

“You both came highly recommended; I look for— my God.” the elderly man perked up. “What a stunning woman.”

Toji scoffed into his glass; he didn't care to look at other women. You were the only one he had eyes for. You were the only woman that mattered. He did, however, pay attention to the older man’s eyes. They were following whatever poor woman was walking about. Watching the man in his eighties undress them with their beady eyes was a sickening sight.

“Oh!” The man in front of Toji perked up, straightening his tie. “She's coming this way, Fushiguro.”

The sound of high- heels clicking against the tile didn't have Toji intrigued in the slightest. But the smell of your perfume and the sudden silence had him whirling around in his chair. “So sorry to keep you both waiting.” You stood there behind Toji’s chair.

Your makeup was done, and your Y/H/C hair was styled expertly. Toji had seen you dolled up countless times before. That wasn’t new. What was new was the super short red dress you were wearing. It clung to your curves, leaving hardly anything to the imagination. Your breasts bounced, threatening to pop out as you bowed at the elderly client. When you straightened your back, Toji felt the vein in his forehead throb as your dress, which went up to your mid-thigh, rode up slightly, showing off more of your smooth skin.

While you looked absolutely delicious, this was not what he had meant when he told you to dress nice.

“Please don't apologize, darling.” The soon-to-be-dead client motioned to the chair next to Toji. “Please sit. What would you like to drink?”

“Wine, please.” Toji gritted his teeth, eyes constantly darting from you to the client.

Throughout appetizers and drinks, you made sure to lean over, stretch, and emphasize your body in every way you could. In doing so, you caught the attention of passing patrons, the disgusting man in front of you, and your boyfriend, who was fuming with anger. Okay, yes, this was partially his fault. He put himself directly in this situation. Next time, he’ll know better than to tell you what to do.

When they brought out the main dishes, the elderly man licked his lips, holding a fork out to you, noodles expertly wrapped around it. “Have you ever tried the pesto pasta here? It's my absolute favorite. Give it a try, Y/N!~” Fighting back a grimace of disgust, you put on a smile. You leaned over the table, opening your mouth wide as you took the food directly off his fork.

While the act of being fed by a perverted old man was disgusting, the delicious flavor of chicken, pesto, and garlic made up for it. It was so decadent that you moaned as you swallowed the bite. Hearing a sound that was for his ears only made Toji stand up, his chair falling back from the speed of his actions. His face focused on you before he grabbed your wrist.

“Y/N! Pesto has pine nuts in it!” There was a tone of faux worry in his voice.

“Huh?” Cocking an eyebrow, you were about to tell him you knew that. When he scooped you up into his arms.

“You idiot! You're allergic to nuts!”

The clanking of silverware caught your attention, and your eyes peered back at the table. The pervert looks pale, terror painting his face. “I'm so sorry! Do I need to call an ambulance?”

“No! I have an Epi-pen in my car. I’m sorry, but we need to leave right now.”

“N-No! Please don’t; we can reschedule for another day.”

The old man watched as Toji hurriedly carried you out of the dining area of the restaurant, not once hearing the “Not a damn chance we’re doing this again.” From your very pissed-off boyfriend.

Toji suddenly turned and carried you down a hall before B-lining it into a family restroom. He plopped you down on the counter before locking the door behind him. His worried expression melted away, replaced with a darkened, more devious, rageful stare. The sheer power of his stare had you tugging your dress down in an attempt to cover your thighs. Something you had refused to do throughout the dinner.

“Oh no, you don't,” Toji’s large hand smacked yours away, “you’re the one that dressed like a slut, you might as well embrace the look.”

A shuddering breath escaped you as his fingers slipped under the skin-tight fabric, pushing it up to rest above your hips. The whole time his fingers grazed over your skin, you could see the anger in his eyes turning from a simmer to a boil in real-time. You were suddenly regretting your choices.

“Toji, we’re in a family restroom. Someone could hear us.”

“Oh? Suddenly, you're taking note of people noticing you? You didn't seem to mind when that dirtbag was eyefucking you all night. You left very little to his imagination.”

“Well, you told me to wear something nice, so I did.”

“The only place this slutty outfit is good for is in my bed.” He forced your thighs open wide, his fingers curling under the lacey hem of your panties.

His fingers were warm and oh so close to your throbbing sex. “Toji, they’ll hear us.” You scolded in a hushed tone, eyes darting towards the door leading out to a full restaurant of people.

Toji hummed and ripped the flimsy fabric of your underwear in half, causing you to gasp. “Then I guess you’ll be needing a gag.” Grabbing the back of your neck, Toji slammed his lips against yours in a searing kiss.

God, he tasted like rich wine as his tongue slid into your mouth. You followed his lead, massing your tongue against his as he worked at his belt and pants. He deepened the kiss before pulling you closer to the edge of the counter, the tip of his cock rubbing up and down your dripping sex, coating your slick all over his shaft.

“Toji~” You hummed happily as the tip of his cock popped into you. Your hum slowly grew into a whine that worked its way up the back of your throat.

“I don't think so.” Your boyfriend pushed further into you. Using his free hand, Toji squeezed your cheeks in his hand, forcing your mouth open. “You were just saying someone could hear us.” He shoved your ruined panties in your mouth. “So shut the fuck up slut.”

Tasting yourself, combined with his cock slowly thrusting into you, made you cry out around your panties. Your hands shot up, gripping his shoulders, your nails digging into his skin. The sting of pain urged Toji on as he slammed into you harder.

“I know I told you to dress nice, but I take that back.” His fingers dug into your thighs, pulling you closer, pushing his dick firmly against your cervix. “You flaunting your body like that tonight made me realize I don't want anyone lookin’ at ya’ like that” His thrusts turned harder and fast, his cock pressing into your cervix over and over again. “You only dress like that for me, Y/N; you’re my slut.”

Rolling your eyes back, you mumbled some unintelligible response back to him. Hearing the lack of words coming from you had Toji smirking against your neck as he nipped and sucked at your sensitive skin. Bite marks and hickey’s littered your skin, marking you as his. If you even dared to wear something so revealing again, anyone who would dare look at you would know you were taken.

Taken and thoroughly fucked.

Being marked, having Toji fuck you into place. God, it was too much, way too much for you to handle. Your pussy started throbbing, clamping around his cock, as drool seeped out of the corner of your mouth. Wincing at the sting from your nails, Toji released himself from your neck. Tilting his head to the side, he chuckled.

“Awww~ is my little slut going to cum?~” Nodding your head, Toji licked his lips. “You gonna cum all over Daddy’s fat cock slut?” Another nod, your hands gripping his shoulders for dear life. “Then what the fuck are ya waitin’ for?” Snarling next to your ear Toji fucked you as hard as he could.

That sent you over the edge. You screamed around your panties cumming all over his perfect fat cock. “That’s it, that's a good fucking girl~ cum on my fat cock.” He hissed through clenched teeth. “Cum on my cock, cum on my cock. That's it~! Gonna fill you up, take it, take it slut.” Toji’s head tilted back as he roared, pumping rope after rope of hot cum into you.

He remained like that, holding you on the counter, buried inside of you. Once his cock softened, Toji pulled out of you. You dug your panties out of your mouth. You were holding the spit-coated fabric in your hands. You looked between them and your boyfriend, who was stuffing his dick back into his pants.

“Who knew me dressing up like this would end with mind-blowing sex?”

“End?” Your panties were snatched out of your palm. “Baby girl, we're just getting started.” he wadded up the fabric before sliding his hand between your legs. “So I'm just gonna—” you gasped as he pushed your panties inside your pussy, “keep you plugged up until I get you home.”

#jjk smut #jjk men #jjk x reader #jjk x you #jjk reader insert #jjk suguru #jjk geto #reader x geto #suguru x reader #geto x reader #reader x satoru #satoru x reader #jjk satoru #gojo satoru #gojou satoru x reader #jujutsu satoru #satorugojo #satoru smut #gojou satoru x y/n #reader x gojo #gojo x reader #gojo saturo #jujutsu gojo #gojo smut #gojo x y/n #jjk toji #toji fushiguro #jujutsu toji #toji x reader #toji smut

[blitzgamev]

Happy four hundred and sixty-eight months in limbo ghostbur :D

#big old thirty-nine years now for the ghost #fun fact: thisll be going out at the time he died :d #and with fun fact i mean im so fucking sad #<- i most definitly dont care anymore but routine says i keep doing these tags #i wonder if thisll be the last 'year' before the end #isnt that wild to think of #ive been doing this for a year and a half #id like it to end after 40 #wether or not mans stays in hell i am ending this after the storys over tho lmao #also hey future me did the event happen? #dsmp #shut up blitz

[soobnny]

ten things yang jeongin says when he thinks you’re asleep — fluff, established relationship, a bit of angst

chan | lee know | changbin | hyunjin | han | felix | seungmin | JEONGIN

one. i was thinking about you earlier. nothing in particular, just—who you are. and it made me wish i’d known you sooner. everything about my life right now is infinitely better now that you’re in it.

two. i’d give anything to stop time every moment that i’m with you.

three. i found my old diary when i went home today. i know, yes, i was an angsty teenage boy with a diary. i quickly went through it just to see what i wrote. ah, if you saw it, you’d definitely laugh. but… one entry caught my eye. it was from a few years ago and it was at a point of my life when i thought nobody could ever love me. not even in a romantic sense, just generally and i was praying to anyone who would listen that i’d find someone who’d understand. i’m glad i held on and didn’t break because a year later, i met you. funny how things turn out, right? i don’t even know why i’m telling you this. i just, i guess i just wanted to thank you for coming into my life. you’re the kind of person i always hoped i’d find.

four. i know i’m not the best at understanding emotions, but i feel them very deeply with you. please give me time. i promise i’ll get to know my feelings better.

five. seungmin told me earlier how i don’t say ‘i love you’ a lot. he’s right, but it’s only because i don’t want my expressions of love to be light. that’s why i don’t say it often because i don’t want it to be thrown around like that. i want to say it in important moments. but i find that i want to tell you that every day. i think it’s because every moment with you is important to me. so, please don’t think my words are empty when i say them too much. i promise it’s never light when i tell you i love you. i mean it. i mean it so much that sometimes it scares me.

six. do you know the exact moment i knew i was in love with you? i can still remember it clearly. it wasn’t anything crazy, in fact it was just an ordinary day. you were over at my dorm and we had been laughing at this romcom that just came out, and then i felt it. i felt it when i had looked at you, how i wouldn't mind doing this forever. i hope i can love you for the rest of my life.

seven. i always think back fondly of college because of you. it would've been hell if it wasn't with you.

eight. i was thinking earlier, about how fleeting life really is. i don't—i don't even know what triggered me to think about it. how someone could be alive one minute and then gone the next. i don't like that... i don't like how abrupt endings always are. i don't want any moment with you to be the last, god, i can't even bear the thought of losing you. ah, fuck, i'm crying. fuck, sorry. i just, please don't leave me. please don't let it happen to you. i know you have no control over it, but please, please, please. please.

nine. cheer up, darling. i know things don't look too good right now, but what if things just get better from now on? i promise that your efforts at healing are adding up, so just hold onto me for now. you will always have me to hold on to.

ten. you are the best thing that's ever been mine.

#k-labels #stray kids x reader #jeongin x reader #i.n x reader #i.n. x reader #skz x reader #stray kids drabbles #stray kids blurbs #stray kids imagines #stray kids scenarios #kpop imagines #kpop scenarios #yang jeongin x reader #stray kids drabble #stray kids oneshot #stray kids fluff #jeongin fluff #i.n imagine #i.n fluff #i.n. scenarios #i.n. fluff #i.n. imagines #yang jeongin imagines #yang jeongin scenarios #yang jeongin drabbles #yang jeongin fluff

[robot-roadtrip-rants]

something that doesn't come up very often in the How Bad Is Emps discussion is that he's. he's really old. millennia old. there's no way his sense of time isn't flagrantly broken. i mean look at him! every time we get an immediate perspective on him the dude is making plans with thousand-year timeframes. all of his buddies (well, ex-buddies) are perpetuals. emps has more in common with the eldar or the necrons when it comes to sense of time than he does with literally any non-perpetual, and that includes the primarchs.

just think about it. the primarchs are, what, three centuries old at Ullanor? they're BABIES. ok, maybe they're not babies, they're clearly old enough for simple tasks like systematic genocide and aggressive expansion, but c'mon, they haven't even reached their first millennium. of course emps isn't going to burden them with adult concerns like the encroaching threat of Chaos, or the potential dangers as humans evolve into a psyker species, or the existential challenges imposed by their warp-entity-wearing-flesh natures. they're kids! let them be kids! their brains are still growing, probably.

so yeah, emps holds off on some big conversations. and yeah, he ducks out of the crusade to go work on the webway by himself, what's wrong with that? it's just a few decades! he's spent more than a thousand years uniting humanity, surely he deserves a little time to himself. from emps's perspective, he's just spending an afternoon building a treehouse in his workshop. the kids are old enough to know better than to stick forks into electrical outlets, they'll be okay for an evening. horus you're a responsible guy, you're in charge.

but then like five minutes later magnus fucking bursts through the wall like the kool aid man screaming bloody hell about horus and then the hole he made starts puking daemons everywhere and yeah emps loses his temper and yells but he was gone for FIVE MINUTES. and now there's daemons all over his workshop! magnus what the fuck! only magnus fled as soon as emps started yelling without explaining a damn thing. also the hole is still puking daemons. ok, ok, emps will stay in the workshop and try to fix the hole before everything is covered in daemons, but he still needs to figure out what the hell is going on. leman, you're an obedient kid, hell you're always boasting about it, surely YOU'LL listen. go get magnus--yeah, i know you don't get along, this isn't the time--go get magnus and bring him here so he can explain himself.

emps goes back to the hole and--leman did WHAT? magnus did WHAT? HOW DID THEY FUCK UP BASIC INSTRUCTIONS. hang on, what's this about an isstvan. horus is rebelling? fucking HORUS??? nine legions????? HALF THE ARMY????? wtf wtf wtf oh shit it's chaos isn't it. emps looked away for five minutes and chaos got its claws in his boys. it's been six years. that's like a bathroom break. how did the boys break everything in SIX YEARS???

#warhammer 40k #the emperor 40k #jokes aside i do think this played a role

[warriorcatsofficialfacts]

hi. okay. okay. shut up about the animation for a second i know you're all excited shhhhhh i don't care. i don't care

vicky says here. that the alibaba movie. had a script. presumably a Full script.

so yknow how fnaf was like. the development hell movie ever. like it was announced in 2015 (that's nine full years ago) but only came out last year. like. i was nine when it was announced and when it actually came out i was a legal adult.

yeah so. at one point. several years ago. there was a full entire script written for the fnaf movie. and the creative team said. no. no we're going to leave. we will make a whole different movie with a whole new script. goodbye

and so the good people at warner bros. said. fuck you we wrote a whole script we're getting a goddamn movie out of it.

and they sure fucking did

the banana splits movie is a parody of an old children's tv show made directly using the abandoned early script of the fnaf movie. and like. you can tell. if anyone was a fnaf fan back in 2015 (like me) you'll know that it was a common headcanon that foxy was actually just trying to help the player. this headcanon is directly in this script. they were going to make good guy foxy canon in the original script for the fnaf movie but that's beyond the point

vicky explicitly says. there was a full script

and from what i've been told while the warrior cats movie was primarily working with the chinese studio alibaba pictures there was apparently some involvement. with Warner Brothers. the distributors of the banana splits film

so what i'm saying. is that there is a non zero chance. that some time in the near future. a low budget fantasy movie about animals with a plot very similar to warrior cats will be released where all the names and shit have been changed but you can still Clearly Tell that this was The Warrior Cats Movie.

we may get a warrior cats banana splits movie. and i want that to happen so bad

#warrior cats #warrior cats animation #warrior cats movie

[railingsofsorrow]

summary: in which a phone call ruined your day.

... or not, because your boyfriend made sure to be there for you until you were okay again. pairing: s. reid x gn!reader

w.c: 2.1K

warnings/content: reader is reckless and puts themselves in danger (one time); angst; mentions of shutting people out; an argument happens but the fluff comes right after; case-related violence; reader is going through something but it isn't explained; mentions of past bad habits; be aware of spelling errors.

A/N: my finals aren't over but I forced myself to take a break for the night. thus, I'm posting this hurt/comfort blurb. hope you like it.

navi

masterpost

cm masterlist

would you like to enter my taglist?

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

“you're mad.”

the day started good. you even got breakfast at home, which is something it almost never works out. but a case only arrived at around nine, so you had time to eat something before leaving.

spencer made toast, crispy, just the way you liked it. you sipped on your orange juice as he took his coffee, hand resting above yours in the comfortable morning silence you liked to partake in.

the day started good.

until things went south really quick.

it all begun with a phone call. not a work call, you were pretty used to those and when hotch called you up to the briefing room, everybody was already filling out paperwork in the bureau.

your mood went sour in a matter of seconds. you think you were able to desguise it from most of the team, though. except for spencer and maybe emily, because emily noticed every eyelash that was out of place, she couldn't even help it.

the news you got caused you to retract back to old habits, shutting people out and drowning in work to avoid thinking about it. you were numb, doing everything on autopilot, but you didn't let it compromise your professionalism. never. that fucking phone call wouldn't make you a bad profiler for a second. you wouldn't let it.

being numb lead you to be impulsive. and you took advantage of that. you'd jump straight into action just to avoid dealing with your problems. just to forget.

“i'm not mad.”

your boyfriend's tone was clipped, short. almost cold, but it didn't got that far yet. it took a lot to make spencer reid mad. but when it happened, and you were the reason, you were always conflicted on whether to let him cool off for himself, give him space, or beg for forgiveness right after you screwed up.

this time, you decided on the former. you don't think it worked that well.

the unsub had a gun pointing at a seven year old child. he was cornered in every way possible. police cars were still arriving at the scene, although five FBI agents aimed at the man, ready to shoot in case he so much as twitched a finger on that trigger.

anxiety ran along the bystanders as they watched it all happen in their neighborhood. you hadn't plan that, in fact, all of you had planned something else entirely. the profile was solid as well as the location and the unsub's endgame.

but people are unpredictable. no matter how hard you've studied the human brain. in certain circumstances, they would be capable of anything. including threatening children's lives.

your boss advised everyone to stay back. that they had it covered. it was only a matter of talking him down, carefully and with confidence.

but the second you heard the sob of that seven-year-old boy, you stopped focusing on the command reaching your earpiece. bulletproof vest and gun set aside, you marched forward, no ounce of hesitation. you knew what you were doing.

“spencer.” you followed him into your bedroom, a tired sigh leaving your lips as you felt your legs wobble slightly. you were exhausted. the day was hell both physically and mentally and you just wanted to take a good shower and sleep for forty eight hours. you wanted to forget it ever happened. you wanted to forget that phone call.

he didn't spared you a glance as he grabbed a pair of clothes to get into the bathroom. there was it. that coldness you hated. it was finally here. “spencer, please. can we talk?” you begged. if there was one thing that suffocated you was sleeping while upset. and your boyfriend was an elite grudge holder. you just couldn't do that tonight.

“of course.” he leaned back from the door just before entering the bathroom. an impassive expression across his featured as he turned to you. you wanted to scream at him. “you've been avoiding me all day, but you want to talk now? of course.”

okay. you deserved that.

did you though? why couldn't he make your life a little easier?

“sorry I was rude to you,” you said, holding back the petty comment wanting to slip out of your tongue. sorry I'm going through something and you're being an idiot about it. “i didn't mean to. I shouldn't have treated you that way.”

spencer's tongue poked around his cheek and you braced yourself for what was about to happen. an argument. in the middle of the night — morning, it must have been past two am.

“i don't care that you were rude the entire day.” spencer clarified as if that would make things better. “i care that you threw yourself in front of a psychopath with a gun, without a bulletproof vest and only your hands to work as a shield.”

“you had my back.” you insisted, recalling the moment the whole team started to shout at both you and the unsub. they were behind you, you had good coverage. “someone needed to talk him down.”

he didn't seem to be on the verge of snapping anymore. his shoulders were slumped. he was tired too. he was exhausted. it has been a long day and you needed to rest. you needed to sleep. you needed to forget.

it had started as a good day.

“we were doing that.” spencer mumbled, softly. he eyed your bitten cuticules, the bandage in your arm and your far away gaze. spencer wasn't stupid. he noticed things. he noticed you. he knew something was wrong from the moment you excused yourself to take a phone call in the middle of the case briefing. you came back into the room a different person. contained. robotic. strictly professional. “why couldn't you wait?”

“it was a child. he was scared.” you snapped, flinching away from him. “he didn't have time to wait.”

spencer pressed his brows together, deciding to not mention the time you did have to do what you had to do. statistics wouldn't help now. “you could have gotten shot in the chest.”

“it barely grazed my arm.”

“that's not the point!”

“and what is?” you yelled back, turning to him, fuming. “there is no point. the boy was in danger. you decided to wait. I decided to act. he's alive. I'm barely hurt. the case is over.”

spencer faltered, seeking something in you that he wasn't able to find. his gaze travelled accross yours in a desperate attempt to make you realise how stupid that single sentence was. one mistake. one wrong move. and you could have been somewhere else instead of in your shared apartment.

a bodybag.

“who called you?” you blinked at him, taken aback by the question. you expected him to blame you further. you even expected him to ignore you for the rest of the night. you would not back down. “i know something happened. someone happened. you're not... you wouldn't do that if you were thinking.”

“so because I'm impulsive one time, you're questioning my judgement?”

“when your judgement makes me almost lose you, yes. I am.” he crossed his arms, licking his lips as he studied you. profiled you. you fucking hated him right now. you wanted to rip his brains out.

“there was an entire team aiming at the guy, spencer.” you scoffed, pressing a thumb against your forehead, a headache brewing. your will to argue has vanished. you just wanted to sleep.

“you were blocking our aim.”

“can you stop?”

“no.”

you no longer had control of your emotions as your sight begins to be blurred by tears. fuck, I can't do this.

the room became silent. as if hearing your inner turmoils, spencer paused. he thought it through, any possibility that might have caused your sudden mood change. your impulsiveness. he thought he had done something, but by your reaction it wasn't that. it wasn't him.

it all shifted after that phone call.

you didn't retract when he approached. you didn't reject his touch or pushed him away. but you remained frozen, locked up in your own cage.

“do you want to talk about it?”

it had started as a good day.

you stood up, brushing your strands behind your ears and swallowing up the feeling of something permanently lodged in your throat.

you didn't turn to watch his expression faltering in disappointment. you didn't had the guts to see it.

“no.” you said. “i'm fine. I'm going to take a shower. I'm tired.” you left to your shared bedroom without a goodnight, knowing it would be pointless since you'd be sleeping alone tonight.

sleeping was a strong word. you closed your eyes, pressing your eyelids so tight that you're seeing stars. tossing and turning for around one hour in an empty bed was enough to leave you upset. the weight of the day and the argument you had with your boyfriend taking a toll on you.

maybe you hadn't been fair to spencer. it's not like he did anything to force your sudden mood change; he had absolutely nothing to do with it, actually. he wasn't responsible for that phone call, he wasn't the person at the other line whose voice you didn't want to hear ever again. he was just the one at the receiving end of your irritability.

your boyfriend, he wasn't one to pry. to force you to speak of things that made you uncomfortable. things you weren't ready to discuss yet. he was the kind of person who would ask if everything was alright and he would make sure you knew you had a shoulder to cry on and a ear to vent if necessary.

spencer was caring and respectful. he knew you needed space just as he did at some moments. so much so that he wasn't sleeping on the couch because he was mad at you — though you had been rude for that to be case — but because being around him, or anyone for that matter, would only set you off.

his curled up frame on the couch, half covered by the blanket and half uncovered to the night air. curls splattered around the pillow he stole from your bedroom when you were still in the bathroom. you wanted to bury yourself into his arms and never leave him again. you wanted his warmth all over you.

standing on the entrance of the living room, you watched his eyelids move incessantly. it was what told you he wasn't in a deep sleep.

he was pretending to be sleeping and you knew he was aware of your watchful eyes.

“i'm sorry.”

you mumbled into the uncomfortable silence, scratching your arm beneath the bandage in nervousness. shifting into your feet, you contemplated approaching him, but remained in the spot.

he peaked at you as his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness of the room. he moved to a sitting position, outstretching a hand in your direction. an invitation.

“c'me here.”

you didn't need to be told twice.

“i'm sorry I was rude to you, I didn't mean it. you were just there and I—” he shushed your ramble with a kiss to your temple, arms squeezing you against him the way you craved in bed a few minutes ago. “i'm sorry, spencer. please don't be mad at me.” the last part you let out in a soft whisper but it only made him pull you closer as a form of comfort, to erase the pain you were feeling.

spencer cupped your cheeks so you would look at him “i'm not mad.” he promised, thumb grazing your face lovingly. “i just thought you needed space, but I promise I'm not mad, okay?”

you nodded with your lips trembling slightly. you were fairly certain that if you were to speak anything right now you'd burst into tears immediately.

you did manage to let out i don't want space, I want you. because it was all that you needed right now. always.

he kissed every teardrop that slipped out after that, bringing you closer to lay on his chest as he rested his back against the arm of the couch.

“i'm here, baby.” he whispered, fingers dancing across your arms. “always.”

you turned on his hold to be face to face with him, lifting one hand to touch the side of his face, caressing his jaw where you felt the growing stubble on his chin.

“thank you.” you said, smiling faintly when he pecked the tip of your nose.

he ended up covering the both of you with the spare blanket.

he breathed out as if pretty satisfacted with your current position, even though you both will most certainly be complaining of backache as soon as you wake up tomorrow. “i love you.” he let out, not minding about the pain in his joints in the morning. the only thing that mattered was you in his arms, safe and sound.

the day started good, until a phone call ruined it completely.

or not. because spencer was there and he kind of made things bearable. and if he could just make you feel better for a little while, that's what he would do.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

taglist: @lilyviolets

#reader insert #criminal minds fanfiction #spencer reid fanfic #spencer reid x reader #spencer reid fanfiction #spencer reid x gn!reader #spencer reid hurt/comfort

[thatdeadaquarius]

it's almost 4am i can't get this out of my head holy shit.

reader whose original body is a literal eldritch forest deity and speaks in hymns (bonus points: after we isekai into said og body, we mix slang into it).

the acolytes have to break their fucking necks just to talk to you eye-to-eye, and the only thing they can make out of what you say is something equal to tablets bajillion years old already.

or that reader is constantly cussing and the acolytes just nod along not understanding whatever this 15ft tall eldritch horror is saying.

-🫀

ELDRITCH HORROR READER. I LIVEEE, NONE OF U UNDERSTAND, THIS IS SO DEEPLY AHHHHHH

I LITERALLY JUST SHIMMY STIM IN MY SEAT WHEN I THINK ABT THIS TOO LONG LMAO

i LIVE AND BREATHE for when we look like eldritch horrors but are just people lmao

IF I HAVEN’T RUN U OFF, 🫀 MY HEART, MI CORAZON <3

U HAVE A BEAUTIFUL MIND DESPITE BEING A BLOODY HEART

☆

Sun: Gender Neutral Reader (they/them only), Eldritch!Reader

Planet: Misc. Genshin AUs

Orbit: some headcanons, tiny scenario

Stars: a little bit of Zhongli, Xiao, Ganyu, Ningguang, Keqing, and the adepti

Comets & Meteors: Content Warnings: Light Description of Body Modifications/Body Horror-esque, Light Description of Eldritch Horror Creature, Reader has a Non-Human Body,

& Trigger Warnings: Eldritch Monster, Light Body Horror, Non-Con Body Modifications (Wake up as a monster, described as positive).

FUCKING LOVE THIS GIF, AND THIS SONG AND ARTISTTT

hey so here’s a song to listen I was listening to while writing this, chose the instrumental bc it was less distracting!

👉👈 hope u like :)

you just come into Teyvat from either Enkanomiya, the straight up Abyss/Dark Realm or even Celestia/Light Realmunder that glowing mushrooms tree in the Chasm, or like, ooo even by the upside down Barbatos statue 👀

and its great bc ur like- “omg Teyvat ooooo, ahhhh”

meanwhile the animals/magical creatures/beings nearby like shakin in their boots

literally no matter what land type their in, water, air, etc. they’re all bowing (despite the hooves, the paws, the flippers, the wings,) hell, even the bugs?? Might be bowing???

and you were slow to wake up wherever you were, so it took you a second to really process-

plus it just felt so weirdly, natural?

Not like walking on 2 legs no, but more like, how swimming feels but without the act of doing it?

you realize you’re… hovering.

wow, guess you can do that now,

your pretty much crowned with every flower from the regions of Teyvat, and a few from other Realms like Celestia, Abyss, and Enkanomiya, etc.

you have extra limbs, you feel them shift like you’ve had them all your life, even tho you do smack urself a few times with them lmao (new hand-eye coordination is hard)

and you realize u can see elemental traces/elements of beings, even plants, all the time now?

It isn’t until you look into a pretty still pond that you see what you look like,

you’ve got more eyes

I mean u thought you’d just be one of the twins, or ur own person if somebody asked u what youd look like isekaied to Genshin Impact, not what looks like the elemental god of the fucking continent

but you don’t look bad! actually you think you look kinda neat!

You’ve got like this coat of many draping vines and plantlife, glowing coral poking out near the top that’s around your throat, and- is that- tiny waterfalls?? Running down your nature cape too??

the many gemstones and ore of this planet form your legs, strong and taller than even regular human guys back on Earth, you’re like what? Eight? Nine feet? (about 245cm, or 2.5 meters)

You’re head… it’s like a dragons skull?? You’ve got these black horns flowing out from the top too that fade to a golden glow, like a crown nearly, theyre draped with what looks like strings of primogems??

oh and your extra eyes are symmetrical that’s good!

tho it does seem like you got this handy hood included into your cape of much nature to flop onto your head

where your heart should be, there’s two bursting stars circling one another, one of pink, purples and light blues, the other of gold and blue, oh hey, the wishing stars for standard and character banners!

and if you like mushrooms, at least one of every kind in Teyvat’s countries/regions is looking cool on ur cape, and if you like bugs, the cool ones like the rhino beetles from inazuma are being cute little buddies on ur stuff too

and like in the gif, every step you take overfills with life, except it stays and doesn’t wither like above, and it also does that glow bit that some places in Sumeru do/Enkanomiya

You CANNOT be missed no matter where you walk, and your sort of constantly feeling like you’ve drank 3 energy + 5 espresso shots of coffee

but in a way that makes you sort of full? like full on life… and like you could be even bigger, and taller, if you willed it

♤

k but the adepti felt ur presence coming in hot from literal mountains away

Cloud Retainter, and Guizhong, had set up inventions long ago to sense the Original of Teyvat, just in case, because some signs of prophecy of your return had begun to show in their lands

Zhongli especially knew you were close to come after another major sign was met, the corruption after the Archon War, and the ravaging of the land by the fall of Khaenri’ah’s “metal beasts”

So when you finally walk your way into Jueyun Karst, the adepti are already waiting, Xiao, Ganyu, and Zhongli as well,

Luckily Ganyu, with Zhongli’s help or advice, convinced the adepti to share this meeting with the Qixing as well like Keqing, and the Tianquan herself

It was a momentous occasion after all, but you were just now feeling the need to maybe nap a little after nearly, what was it, 2 weeks worth of constant walking?

wow this new body had literal stamina for days

you arrived late into the night, around midnight, under a full moon, and they’re relieved all the signs are being met

◇

honestly the only reason you headed to Liyue was bc you knew it was the closest (the map of Teyvat was both familiar in the way it had been in game, but also on a deeper level, like walking around your house in the dark)

and u rlly wanted to be able to talk to somebody, bc u had no idea?? wtf you were??

honestly you thought the adepti/Zhongli would be a good bet bc they’d maybe tell u what creature u ended up as,

u did suspect maybe you’d ended up as some kind of god, but like?? none of the other gods looked like this???

and u see them all! up ahead in Jueyun Karst! Oh no! You really, really, really, hope they don’t think you’re a walking talking evil tree dragon thing-

…maybe you should wave?

◇

As you get closer,

Xiao’s back straigtens, Ganyu nervously looks at the ground, Keqing is trying to figure out where to look bc ur so tall, Ningguang has her hands respectfully folded in front of her and her facial muscles looks tensed for a fight almost, the adepti are shuffling nervously bc they’re not used to being the magically weaker/younger creatures in the area, and Zhongli-

Zhongli is no longer the mortal Zhongli.

Amber horns curl up from his head, long brunette hair with glowing gold tips flowing and loose, claws on display, as he stands in his finest and oldest lóng páo, black with gold detailing embroidered throughout, it details his deeds as Rex Lapis and Morax, the spears of his vanquishing gods across the front and back, he looks like a living painting

and although he looks as serene as if he’s about to sit down for some tea, the adepti can see the tremoring hands, the same he used to hide in his sleeves when he was genuinely intimidated by another god, usually the older ones he’d had to fight

but for the first time since the archon war, this was one he was going to welcome with open arms, and utmost respect, despite his position as archon forfeited

there’s a strange music in the air of the night as the animals and the bugs and creatures of the realm subtly make the beat, the god’s feet (of ore Rex Lapis hasn’t seen since he was a child, it was so rare to find) shake the earth of his land with each step, a deep quiet booming like a drum of war as they get closer

The God of All stops some distance away from them

…and the Huangdi of All, just waves. 💀👋

at Zhongli, the adepti, Xiao, the Tianquan, and the Qixing.

A long black limb with a rainbow shine like a crow’s wing raises, gives an ironically tiny wave of their clawed black hand,

and tilts their head, though a sort of greenery hood covering it

and speaks,

“ ˙˙˙ʎzɐɹɔ sı ʇıɥs sıɥʇ ¿ʍou ʇɥƃıɹ ɯɐ ı ʞɔnɟ ǝɥʇ ʇɐɥʍ ʍouʞ sʎnƃ noʎ op uɯɐp”

your voice is like singing, deep, high, like a choir trying to sing all at once to them

Xiao cringes a little in surprise, he was braced for your older speech just in case but it still caught him off guard, and unfortunatly, he gives a quick glance to Lord Rex Lapis,

he can’t understand any of that, and Ganyu and Keqing are in the same boat, but while the Yaksha’s only done passive studying in hopes of understanding you, the Lord of Geo had gone much further back in trying to make sure he could understand your words, should the day come, his library, even now living as a mortal, is extensive

the other adepti and Ningguang catch a few words, but it’s too,, simple really, to understand

the words have no context, they need more, but such is the ancients, they’re meanings simple and all-encompassing

Lord Rex Lapis bows deeply,

“We welcome you with open arms, our Huangdi. Please, feast your eyes upon the land with which I have wrought with mine own talons, for all is ever truly yours.”

the adepti announces for them all, voice giving away no nerves, Xiao can still understand him luckily, though he has greatly simplified himself for the sake of being understood by the ancient god of creation,

“ ˙˙˙ʞɔıʇs ɐ uo ʇsıɹɥɔ snsǝɾ ¡¿ılƃuoɥz noʎ uǝʌǝ ¿noʎ oʇ poƃ ɟo puıʞ ǝɯos ɯ,ı 'ǝʇnuıɯ uɯɐp ɐ ʇıɐʍ”

your voice is an energy through the air, and makes the trees nearby lean in to hear you better, the creeks and ponds of the area leave their beds a little to get closer, geo crystalflys emerge and begin to swirl around your natural body, perching on your horns, making it look even more like a crown

Xiao gulps.

Rex Lapis’ and Ningguang’s spines straighten further if they even can from the impeccable posture they were before, They share a quick glance…

…neither of them caught that one, only a few words, and Ganyu feels her shoulders drop as she gives up trying to hear you and understand as well,

you make a strange sound, a high humming, a deep confusion with some worry, the crystalflys buzz around you a little faster,

then point to yourself

...and make a peace sign. ✌️

it was going to be a long night.

☆

idk if this made any sense, and I sincerely hope that you at least liked what I wrote a little bit, sorry about the over description 😭 I just felt like it was very important but then I realized I hadn’t even talked about the language yet… anyway here u go LMAO

I hope it was alright, and I seriously love your idea, even if I didn’t take it in the direction you wanted/as cool as you meant!! :/

Thanks for the badass idea, i fucking love eldritch shit <3

☆

Safe Travels,

💀 ♒

♡my beloved♡

@karmawonders / @0rah-s / @randomnatics / @glxssynarvi / @nexylaza / @genshin-impacts-me / @wholesomey-artist / @thedevioussmirk

#this is a mess to sort on the masterlist #like language barrier au? #but also kinda blunt? #but also misc. bc ur an eldritch being?? #fuck it #its goin in 2 spots like some of the others that got confusing #genshin impact #genshin sagau #sagau #genshin imagines #genshin isekai #my asks #gender neutral reader #genshin impact sagau #genshin impact self aware #genshin impact sagau language barrier au #genshin sagau language barrier au #sagau language barrier au #sagau eldritch reader #eldritch reader #genshin impact x reader #sagau x reader

[sailorgundam308]

Karlach isn't a good girl

Listen, LISTEN. I love her, okay? Now that's out of the way. I see many people reducing her personality to the "big friendly labrador dog" thing. And while it's cute and all that, I disagree. Let me get into why I think Karlach isn't the goodie nice girl she puts a lot of effort to be. She has just returned to Faerun when we meet her in game, and she IS trying her bestest to start anew, to be the best version of herself now that she is free. But it doesn't mean she was always like that, or that her past has not changed her. I think it did - quite a lot, in fact.

Let's start with Gortash. She worked for this fucker. Granted, she might not have known he was such an evil bastard at the time, but she was his bodyguard. And by bodyguard, it is implied that she was his bully, his enforcer and debt collector - you know, the kind that breaks knees and kills people. When she meets an old friend in the city, that friend asks her if she is still in "the business of intimidation", and offers her to come see weapons. Even though Karlach, in her mind, might have been convincing herself that doing such a job was to help someone she respected, she still did it. And that is FINE. She was a young orphan, a tiefling in a place where tieflings are discriminated against harshly, poor and without much perspective. Of course a guy coming over offering her a well paid job that she excelled in would seem like winning a lottery. Still, she was a pretty shady violent person doing it. Now, the Hells. Avernus. She was sold to Zariel quite young still, and went through all sorts of torture and other perks enslavement gets you. For 10 years. She was scared shitless while there, especially in the beginning - she says so herself (to Halsin). All the carnage she inflicted was not (very) voluntary. She HAD to, or she would be the one getting killed. But she enjoyed it - or grew to. She likes violence, the adrenaline of it, the rush of excitement. The thrill of it, she says, is second only to sex.

Continuing on. Avernus, as well as the other layers of the Nine Hells, is not like the Material Plane. The place itself influences you. It means that being in Avernus for any time changes/corrupts/influences who you are. The longer you stay there, the deeper it gets. It did so to Zariel who was a literal angel. Avernus (and it's Archdevil's personality) insidiously get in your body and heart. It is just the way it goes, lore-wise, in DnD. If a fucking SOLAR wasn't immune to it, Karlach - young and lost - certainly wouldn't be either. Even more so because she was near Zariel all the time. I strongly believe Karlach was getting more and more exactly like Zariel - who herself is a fierce berserker warrior who charges head first into battle. Zariel is KNOWN to be this crazy strong, insane, fearless and (in her mind) righteous demon-smiting war machine. Sounds similar to a nice red tiefling we know, doesn't it? Now, did Zariel chose Karlach beause she was already like this, or did Karlach took after Zariel while she fought with her? Hard to tell. In any case, Karlach's 10 years in the Hells did change her. Needless to say, Avernus doesn't change you for the better. It doesn't mean that Karlach became "evil" - she is obviously far from it. But she is chaotic, violent and bloodthirsty. She is also selfish. There are several situations where this personality trait of her comes up.

It may sound kinda wild considering how she offers to help everyone and even sacrifice herself (since she's already dying anyway) - when we meet her. But that's the thing: she is being as selfless as she can now because she has been very selfish for a very long time (proof she has a conscience). Perhaps, she is terrified of what she was becoming and is trying to make amends, to revert whatever evil was growing in her.

She mentions herself that she did not help the tieflings of Elturel when their city was pulled down into Avernus. She did not get out of her way to help them. Instead, she thought that if "she was living that nightmare, they'd have to live it too". She would not put her neck on the line to help another - which, not so coincidentally, is typical behavior in the Hells (again, proof that Avernus was indeed getting to her). The Hag's Vicious Mockery targeted specifically at Karlach mentions how she is willing to "sell everyone's soul's if it means she can save hers". We do not know exactly what it refers to - soul coins, throwing others under the bus, ignoring people in need - but it reinforces the idea that Karlach was not the nicest person for at least 12+ years. Granted, the devils around her were much worse - but they are DEVILS in HELL. So.

Generally, in game we notice that her effort to survive and stay alive has pushed her selfishness to grow. But it still is selfishness. Another example is how she disapproves (together with Astarion), if you say to healer Nettie that you "swear to drink the Wyvern poison". She wouldn't drink it. She'd rather kill Nettie (that gets hostile).

Another hint at her grey-ish personality is when she talks to/about Wyll after he is punished by Mizora for not having killed Karlach. She mentions that she would NOT have done the same in his place. That he was better than her. Again, she would not put her skin on the line like that. She would and has turned a blind eye to situations and persons if it meant it would guarantee her survival or avoid injury. (Mind you, I 100% belive she would do this sacrifice if she was in love with someone, though.)

She will ask to, and will use Soul Coins even though she knows it's morally a sus choice to do so. If you play as her she will repeat to herself "I won't use them, they are people's souls - and I am GOOD." like she is trying to convince herself. Because she would fucking use them to smash some big fuckers in a blink - and feel awesome while doing it. Even as her, she keeps insisting "But... maybe I can use them... JUST when I really need them." Additionally, when she talks to the bugbear merchant in Moonrise Towers and he offers her soul coins, she doesn't really feel guilty for the stories of the souls in them. She even says at some point "they are already doomed, so why not use them anyway", justifying that she will only kill evil bastards with them. In any case, the morality of her choice is debatable. It makes clear that Karlach is not "lawful good" by any stretch.

Let me reiterate that just because I am saying all this about Karlach, doesn't mean I dislike her. I think she is abso-fucking-lutely the best character in the game. But I hate to see her personality "flattened" to nice happy go lucky gal. I think she has a grey-tinged personality - she has good and bad aspects to herself; she has character flaws too.

But I also think that she is trying her damn hardest to be the best she can be right then. The opposite of what she's been. Maybe it is because she has so little time left, that she needs to be the absolute best version of herself while she can. Perhaps she is trying to be what she would have been if her parents did not die - because they seemed like great loving parents. And I think Karlach didn't turn into a broken evil maniac because of them, the way they raised her while they were alive. But she lost her mom at 6, her father around 13-15. After that, it was struggling on the streets, Gortash and Zariel - betrayal, violence, carnage, war and loneliness. It is too naive to think a person would not change after all this, that Karlach would not carry more scars than those she shows on her body. To her credit, she turned much MUCH better than anyone would have. She WILL kill with a grin on her face, seek violence, blood and even revel in it - she learned to relish it and now it's part of who she is. She is selfish, she will look out for herself and has no qualms about killing or throwing people she doesn't care for under the bus (if she sees justification for it). BUT she knows what evil is, and doesn't let shit happen to people who don't deserve it. She will side with those who suffer prejudice and fight against what she sees as injustice - but even she has a limit to how far she'd go.

If you raid the Emerald Grove, she will leave the party. To me, this screams of her trying to right her past wrongs. She left the Elturians to their fate once before, so she MUST save them now that she has another chance - and that it won't cost her her life. I love her being 1/3 brutal killing machine (and fucking LOVING it), 1/3 ptsd, fear and overcompensating trauma under a smile, and 1/3 just trying her best, really, and being lovely for it. Phew. That was a long rant. I guess I just wanted to organize my thoughts about it a bit :V

#baldur's gate 3 #karlach #bg3 #bg3 spoilers #spoilers #opinion #karlach is not evil #but shes not a well of pure heartedness and good either

[elliesbelle]

nobody compares to you

chapter 14

pairing: ellie x reader

synopsis: you're in your junior year of college and at a party, you run into the girl who broke your heart: ellie williams. despite the time it took to reset your life, will you risk a broken heart again for her?

content warnings: modern college au, cursing, angst, dealer!ellie, some setting is in a hospital, mentions of catheters and needles, descriptions and talk of anaphylaxis, mentions of financial difficulties, mentions of alcohol, mentions of toxic parents, mentions of death and suicide, minors do not interact

word count: 7.9k

chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen

series masterlist

my masterlist

i have a ko-if if you like my work so much that you feel compelled to tip me ♡︎

the "nobody compares to you" spotify playlist

palestine will be free

The first thing you feel is something plastic poking the inside of your nose. It smelled of chilly, medicinal air conditioning. 

The next thing you feel is a massive, unpleasant weight on your chest. Then at the crown of your head. Then some weird pressure squeezing your calves every few seconds. Then an entirely full bladder. 

“I need to fucking pee.” You mutter, voice dry and raspy. 

“I think you can just go, dude.” A familiar voice replies. 

You fight against the crustiness of your eyes but immediately regret it. All you can see through the slits of your eyelids is a harsh, white light. 

“Am I… Am I fucking blind?” You whine. 

“I’m pretty sure that your eyeballs are still inside your head. So hopefully not.” You hear the voice chuckle. 

You fight against the unforgiving glare from above, forcing your eyes open. It takes a few moments to gain control of your body, but you’re eventually able to crane your neck towards where the voice had previously echoed from. 

“J-Jesse?” You croak. 

“Yeah. I’m here, bud.” Your raven-haired friend smiles. 

You spot him to your left, sitting in, what appears to be, an uncomfortable armchair. He wore a blue disposable mask over his nose and mouth, his hair looking unkempt and unshowered, and you notice how his clothes look wrinkled and slept in. 

“What happened? Are you alright? What’s going on?” You groggily inquire. 

“You’re the one all strapped to a hospital bed, but you’re asking me if I’m okay?” 

Jesse takes your hand and squeezes it appreciatively. He flashes you a soft, warm smile. 

“How are you feeling?” He asks. 

“I-I’m not sure…” You admit. “What… what the hell happened?” 

“Well,” Jesse starts slowly. “You went on a date with Anderson to Orchards yesterday. At the end of it, you were being a total dummy and made out with her after she ate a whole plate of shrimp.” 

“N-no, no,” You interrupt, scrunching your face up as you try to recall the previous day’s events. “She ate this whole soup thing for dinner. Some weird French dish with some weird-sounding name.” 

“Bouillabaisse,” Jesse clarifies. “It’s a fish soup. It doesn’t always have shellfish in it, but hers apparently did.” 

You groan. 

“Oh, I am such a dumbass.” 

“Please explain to me exactly how you were being a dumbass in this situation.” 

“You literally just said that I was a dummy!” 

“That was Jesse of the past. I’m a much more mature man now in my old age.” 

You attempt to smack his arm, but he’s saved by the many coils of IVs attached to you, pulling your hand back. 

As he playfully rebukes you for attempted physical abuse, another person enters the room. A kind-looking nurse walks in with a clipboard in hand. Wearing dark blue scrubs, a low ponytail, and a surgical mask, she greets you with a friendly wave. She approaches your bedside opposite Jesse, and her glasses-covered eyes indicate a friendly smile. 

“Hi there,” She nods. “My name is Yoojin. I’m your nurse today. I’m so sorry for not being here when you woke up. I had to step out for a few seconds, but your brother here assured me that you were in capable hands.” 

You turn to Jesse and mouth in amusement, “Brother?” 

He suppresses a laugh. 

“Later.” He whispers through his mask. 

You turn to Yoojin with a small grin. 

“No worries. I only just woke up now.” You assure. 

She gives you, what you assume, is another smile under her mask. 

“So how are you feeling?” 

Jesse remained by your side the entire time, only leaving briefly when he needed to use the bathroom or take a call. He sympathized with your gripes about being bedridden, making lighthearted jokes about your catheter, messing around with the IPC devices off your legs over and over until a nurse came in and kindly asked him to stop. 

The TV in your room wasn’t working, so he kept you entertained, cracking his usual dad jokes and telling some old stories of Jackson you hadn’t heard yet. You pretended not to notice that the anecdotes he’d recall always excluded an essential person in his childhood, and you tried your best not to remark on it. 

After a couple of hours, Dina finally came around to visit. She walks in as you’re berating Jesse for stealing a fruit cup you knew you weren’t going to eat. The sight of her immediately warms your heart. 

“Dina!” You exclaim. “Oh, I missed you.” 

Dina sets her bag down next to Jesse, lowers her face mask for a moment to give him a quick peck on the cheek, and pulls up a chair next to him. She takes your hand and beams at you graciously. You notice that her eyes are slightly glassy. 

“Oh, babe,” She sighs. “I missed you too. Sorry that I’m just getting here. Had to deal with a few things before I came over.” 

“Don’t apologize, D. I’m just glad to see you.” 

She squeezes your hand softly. 

“I’m so glad you’re awake,” She gulps. “You worried us so much.” 

“Sorry about that,” You grin sheepishly. “I was being a bit of a dummy.” 

Dina blinks for a moment before giving Jesse a smack on the back of his head at this. 

“Oy vey. You asshole.” She chides knowingly. 

“Hey! No need to abuse me! I’m delicate.” 

He caresses the spot where she hit him as you laugh heartily. 

The couple recounts the events of last night for you, explaining in detail as much as they know. You listen without interruption until they reach the topic of your EpiPen. 

“But how’d you guys get to my EpiPen so quickly? Did you pass by my apartment?” You ask them curiously. “I don’t mind if you guys did! It’s just not that close to the restaurant. Wouldn’t have made much sense to book it back to my apartment, honestly.” 

Dina and Jesse share a look you don’t understand. Your eyebrows furrow, confused by their hesitation. Eventually, Dina responds. 

“Uh, well…” She begins slowly. “Jesse actually happened to have a spare EpiPen at his place. Thank god, right?” 

“You did?” You turn your head towards Jesse. “I didn’t even know you had one, Jesse.” 

“Y-yeah,” Dina continues cautiously as you notice Jesse’s expression shift to a poker face. “He used to have an, uh, egg allergy growing up.” 

“What?” You ask incredulously. 

“Yup,” Jesse chimes in. “I grew out of it when I was in high school. But my mom still insists that I have an EpiPen on me. Just in case.” 

You continue to look completely discombobulated. You don’t fully buy their story, especially since neither were looking you directly in the face. But you’ve always trusted Dina as a sister and Jesse like a brother, so you half-heartedly accept the tale they’ve decided to present you with. 

“Oh, okay,” You say, slightly unconvinced. “Well, thank god for that, I guess. Is it okay that you used it on me, though? What if you suddenly need it again?” 

“No worries,” Jesse assures you. “I’ll call my mom and ask her to send me a new one.” 

His poker face improves, so you concede for now. 

The couple continue to recount the previous day’s events until they eventually catch up to the present. 

“Only family is technically allowed to visit you in the ICU,” Dina confesses at one point. “Jesse had to say he’s your brother to get past the nurses' station. The nurse manning the desk at the time could definitely tell we were lying, but she was really nice and allowed it anyway.” 

“Oh, gotcha,” You say. “Well, you’re basically my brother, anyway.” 

“You should feel so lucky to share the same genes as me.” He boasts, stealthily avoiding yet another smack from Dina. 

“What about you, D?” You ask, turning towards her. “What did you say you were? My sister?” 

“Nah, I didn’t wanna be siblings with Jesse, even just as pretend.” She grimaces. 

“Okay, yeah, didn’t think of that,” You realize, scrunching up your nose in total disgust at the thought. “Gross.” 

“Wouldn’t be able to get that image out of my head.” Dina shudders. “Anyway, I told them that I’m your life partner.” 

“My what?” You giggle. 

“Hey, it counts!” Dina defends. “Well, kind of. The nurse had to list me as your ‘spouse’ instead, which feels like a hate crime.” 

“Oh, shut up.” You laugh as Jesse chuckles. 

“What? You don’t wanna be married to me?” Dina asks in mocking shock and offense. 

“I am absolutely honoured to be married to you,” You assure her. “I’m just worried about poor Jesse. How in the world are we supposed to break it to him that we’ve actually been married for over ten years?” 

“Oh, please, Jesse’s known from the start that he’s always just been a side piece.” 

“Hey!” Jesse interjects in indignance. “I’m right here.” 

“Be quiet, side piece. The wife and I are speaking.” Dina waves him off. 

You burst out into laughter at Jesse’s playfully hurt expression. 

The three of you discuss what the doctors have told you, and you eventually bring up the conditions required of you to be discharged. 

“I know that the doctors and nurses saved my life and whatever. And of course, I’m very grateful. And I truly do not mean any disrespect,” You say. “But I want to get the fuck out of here, uhh, right fucking now.” 

Dina smiles and Jesse chuckles. 

“I know, babe.” Dina sympathizes. 

“You’ll be out sooner than you know, bud,” Jesse adds. “Don’t stress over it. We’ll get you out as soon as possible.” 

“Oh!” Dina suddenly pipes up and reaches into her bag. “I can’t believe I forgot. I brought your phone. I was able to grab your purse for you before the paramedics took you away. I turned it off and charged it at home, so it should have some juice.” 

She places your phone in your hand, and you flash her a grateful smile. 

“D, you need to be canonized for your good deeds, I swear. With a statue and everything.” 

“Oh, I know,” Dina smirks. “Brought your wallet too. Not sure if you wanna keep it here or bring it back to your apartment, though.” 

“I’ll ask them if I can keep it here with me.” 

A thought suddenly hits you. 

“I’ll… I’ll have to figure out how to pay for all this when I get out.” You sigh. 

“Oh, babe,” Dina says reassuringly. “Don’t worry about any of that right now. Just focus on resting, okay?” 

“Your insurance will hopefully take care of a huge chunk of it,” Jesse contemplates. “It’s through your dad, right?” 

“That’s what I’m worried about,” You say as your hands begin to fidget anxiously. “Something as big as this, they’ll probably contact my parents. I… I can’t let them know I’m in here. I know it’ll start shit and… I just know it won’t be good.” 

The couple give you identical, concerned looks. 

“D-do they know? Th-that I’m in here?” You ask timidly. 

“Not that we know,” Jesse replies. “Neither of them is on your emergency contact list. And you know that Dina and I would never speak to either of them. Unless it’s to tell them to shove a stick up their respective asses.” 

You and Dina giggle. 

“Speaking of which,” Dina adds. “You can ask your uncle. I called him yesterday while you were still out. I hope that’s alright.” 

“Oh, that was so thoughtful of you,” You say gratefully. “What did he say? I hope he didn’t worry too much.” 

“Honey, you almost died. Of course, he’s worried. He loves you.” She checks the time on her phone. “He should be arriving sometime later today, actually.” 

“Shit,” You groan. “He didn’t have to do that. He gets so busy with work during this time of the year. This must have been so inconvenient—” 

Jesse suddenly takes his thumb and middle finger and flicks you on the forehead. 

“What the fuck!” You exclaim in indignance, rubbing the spot you were hit, as Dina gives him another hard smack on the head. Jesse ignores you both. 

“You are more important than any goddamn job that exists in the world, in the whole motherfucking galaxy. Your uncle loves you, just as we do. So no more complaining about it, dumbass.” 

You give him a pouty look, but his words fill your heart. 

Your best friends stay the rest of the time until your uncle arrives around midday. Relief and affection overwhelm you when he enters the room. You squeeze him with the tightest embrace you can possibly give for someone essentially strapped to their hospital bed. You ignore the loud beeping resulting from the tangling of your many IV wires. 

After your friends help you unravel all the cords, they gather their things and get up from their chairs. 

“We’ll let you guys talk.” Jesse says, offering his seat to your uncle. 

“Oh, you don’t have to leave.” Your uncle graciously assures them. 

“It’s alright; have some family time,” Jesse insists kindly. “I’m pretty sure she can only have two visitors at a time, anyway.” 

The couple make their way towards the sliding glass door. 

“I cannot express how grateful I am for you two,” Your uncle says before they exit. “Thank you for saving her life. And thank you for keeping me in the loop.” 

“Please, no need to thank us, really.” Dina nods kindly. “She’s family. We would do absolutely anything for her.” 

“That means you’re both family to me too.” Your uncle concludes. “Thank you.” 

You hold back tears of vast emotion from three of the most important people in your life exchanging such caring sentiments. You’ve never felt luckier. 

“We’ll be in the waiting room,” Jesse promises. “Let us know if either of you needs anything, okay?” 

Jesse and Dina take their leave, and your uncle subsequently takes a seat next to you. 

“Oh, Uncle,” You start before he can speak. “I’m so, so sorry. You shouldn’t have flown all this way. I can’t believe I was so stupid to have—” 

“Hey, hey,” Your uncle interjects. “None of that. You have no reason to be sorry. You needed me, so I’m here. I’m not mad, and this is not your fault.” 

Tears form in the corners of your eyes. 

“I just feel like I’ve inconvenienced so many people. If I could have just paid attention…” You lament. “And now I’ve totally made you drop everything to be here. I know you’ve still got work—” 

“You are a thousand times more important than my job, sweetheart.” He shakes his head and squeezes your hand, echoing Jesse’s previous words. 

“But…” 

“You are my family. Nothing is more important than that.” 

You smile at his adamancy. 

“And especially since losing Rafael,” He continues. “I think of you as my own.” 

“I know, Uncle.” 

You squeeze his hand back in affection. 

“D-did…” You suddenly say. “Did you tell—” 

“No, your mother and father don’t know a thing about this.” He answers insightfully. 

“Thank god.” 

“Did you want me to tell them?” 

You grimace. Your uncle chuckles. 

“I figured as much.” He surmises. 

“I just don’t know how to keep this from them forever, though,” You continue. “They’ll see it through the insurance company. I…” 

“Don’t worry about that. I can talk to the nurses later today before I leave, see if I can pay it in full myself without needing to use your father’s insurance.” 

“Uncle, please. Please don’t do that. This is going to be so costly, and you’ve still got your mortgage and Raf’s leftover student debt—” 

“I just want you to focus on getting better, alright? I don’t want anything else on your plate right now.” 

“Uncle, promise me. Please. Please promise me. Do not spend a single cent on this. I want to do this on my own. I’ll figure it out. Please promise me.” 

He gives you nothing more than a smile in response. 

Your friends and uncle take turns rotating as your company for the rest of the day. They’d only leave your side when the doctors and nurses needed to conduct extensive tests to ensure that you were still stable. You were never on your own for more than a few seconds, your loved ones determined that you not feel alone. 

You’d turned your phone on almost immediately after Dina’d handed it to you. But as a small, gracious gesture of appreciation, you had set it aside to give your visitors your undivided attention for the rest of the day. 

It wasn’t until the evening, when your friends and uncle waved you goodbye as visiting hours ended, that you allowed yourself to finally glance at your notifications. 

Anxiously picking your phone up, the first thought you have is to call Abby. Jesse and Dina had mentioned she was with them in the waiting room the night before. But, like your friends, she was informed that she wasn’t permitted to see you in the ICU as she wasn’t family. Dina and Jesse sent her home with the promise to let her know as soon as possible when you finally woke up and that you were alright. 

You notice that she’d messaged you earlier in the day. But much too embarrassed to face her just yet, you decide instead to first call your old freshman roommate. 

Tara picks up after only two rings, almost as if she’d been waiting by the phone for your call. She greets you with a happy shriek of your full name, an amused giggle escaping your lips as a response to her sudden enthusiasm. 

“Thank fucking god!!! I’ve been waiting all fucking day to hear the sound of your voice!” 

“Umm, I have no idea what you’re talking about,” You reply, smirking. “This is actually Satan, here to leave a message. I’m calling to let you know that I will be collecting your mortal soul sometime during the next 24 hours.” 

“Oh nooooo,” Tara plays along. “What on earth have I done to warrant eternal damnation, Miss Satan?” 

“Not sure if you know, but homosexuality is actually a cardinal sin. And unfortunately, you seem to be a notorious, flaming homosexual. I know, I know; it’s quite disappointing. But alas, I do not make the rules.”  

“But Miss Satan, are you not a homosexual too?” 

“Well, that’s exactly how I know it’s a sin.” 

The two of you crackle at each other’s banter, and you make plans in your head to spend more time with Tara and the rest of the girls after you’re released from the hospital. 

You and Tara chat for a little while about the most mundane things, like her classes the day before and her plans for the weekend. She apologizes for not having more to say and for “being so boring,” but you’re genuinely happy to just hear her prattle off about anything. 

At some point, she hands her phone over to Astrid, who greets you with a similarly delighted shriek that her girlfriend had received you with prior. She gushes over you with love and concern, insisting that she and all the Wilson girls come to visit you as soon as you’re out and adjusted. 

“Tara just about broke down when I told her about it.” She reveals. “She was about to leave for her shift at Ruston’s when Dina called, and I’m pretty sure the whole dorm could hear her sobbing.” 

“What?! I did not!” You hear Tara shout from a short distance. 

“You had so much snot running down from your nose that I just about hosed your face down before you left!” Astrid yells back. 

“Stop telling her that! She doesn’t need to hear all that!!” 

You giggle at the couple’s repartee. 

“Anyway,” Astrid continues. “Kris, Sid, and I tried to come down for a visit, but they apparently only let family in. Jesse and Dina seemed to have monopolized the fake roles of being your family already.” 

“Yeah, sorry about that, Addy.” 

“Oh, don’t be sorry,” She brushes off. “I’m just glad that you haven’t been alone there. Those two really care about you, you know.” 

“Yeah, I know.” 

“Dina started to make a whole fuss when they wouldn’t let us past,” Astrid continues. “Threatened to sue the nurses, all the doctors, the entire hospital. The receptionist nurse didn’t even get a chance to kick her out ‘cause Jesse himself forced her to go leave and take a walk to calm down. I don’t think she came back until a couple of hours later.” 

“Yeah, that sounds like our Dina.” You snort. 

The two of you discuss what you’d like to do whenever you finally get released, Astrid swearing to get you out of your apartment nearly every day after your discharge. 

“I don’t think I have all the stamina for all that, babe.” You chuckle. 

“Then you better get yourself to the gym with Jesse, and build that stamina the fuck up! I want your sexy self at parties and clubs, living your best 20s life with us!” 

You chuckle warily at this, simultaneously pushing away the reminder of who Jesse’s daily workout partner is. 

After saying your goodbyes to Tara and Astrid, you make brief calls to the rest of the girls of the Wilson Crew. They all answer your calls with an assortment of jubilant greetings, each girl expressing their elation and gratefulness that you’re finally awake and safe. 

You send individual texts of love to Dina, Jesse, and your uncle, thanking them extensively for coming to your aid and expressing your excitement to see them again very soon. 

Having done your rounds of gratitude, you finally acknowledge that you can no longer ignore the unread texts of the blonde-braided woman you’d had your near-fatal dinner with. You open up your message thread with Abby to see that she’d sent you only three texts earlier in the day. 

You stare at her text. 

Oh. Huh. 

No part of you blamed Abby for the incident; in fact, you’d been feeling a tremendous amount of remorse for putting her through such a traumatizing and jarring ordeal. It had been plaguing you so much since you woke up that you were far too embarrassed to ask Jesse and Dina more about her. 

But something about her texts bothers you. There was very little warmth and familiarity in her messages. Her words didn’t seem that of the woman who had been walking you to your classes every day, who showed you off to her friends at the Bow and the Arrow, who treated you to a lavish restaurant on a fancy date. Who kissed you with so much passion on the sidewalk of that same restaurant the evening before. 

Is… Is she angry with me? 

You continue to stare at her strange messages for several more minutes, unable to process the situation you’re somehow in now. You can’t think of an appropriate response that would lead to something honest, so you decide to put your response off. 

A-at least until after they release me… At least until I get home… 

The doctors only began to discuss the possibility of your discharge early Sunday morning. Though it hadn’t even been a full two days since your admittance, it took everything in you not to practically beg them to let you go. You’d been insisting to anyone who’d listen that you were completely fine, that you’d walk right out yourself if you weren’t strapped to your bed with a million wires. 

It wasn’t until midday, as you were mercilessly beating Jesse’s Shy Guy as Pink Gold Peach in Mario Kart, that Yoojin walked into your room with good news. You don’t notice her at first, too busy taunting Jesse for landing in 7th place while you scored 1st. 

“You only won because I got Lakitu’d in the second lap! Fuckin’ Isabelle was sending red shells at me nonstop…” Jesse gripes. 

“Sucks. Sounds like a personal problem, man.” You shrug. 

“Alright, I want a rematch, but on the Egg course this time.” 

“You’re such a sore fucking loser!” 

“There’s a shortcut on Yoshi’s circuit close to where the finish line is, by the way,” Yoojin interjects, eyes smiling. “If you use a mushroom and drift to the hidden waterfall on the right, it’ll get you pretty far ahead.” 

You and Jesse look up, a bit sheepish at her witnessing your juvenile behaviour. The nurse looks completely unbothered by it, however, and she approaches your bed as you place your controller down. 

“Aww, come on, Yoojin,” You whine. “Don’t tell him that! I’m on a winning streak!” 

“Shh,” Jesse shushes you, attempting to cover your face with one hand. “Don’t listen to her, Yoojin. She’s delirious from all the drugs you’ve been pumping her with. I must know all your secrets, ‘cause I swear, this one is cheating.” 

“Maybe later,” Yoojin laughs as you flick Jesse’s forehead. “Because you might want to hear what your doctor just told me.” 

Your ears perk up at this. 

“I can go home?” 

“Your most recent labs just came back, and everything looks good.” Yoojin nods. “And your vitals have been stable for the last 24 hours. So unless you plan on wolfing down ten pounds of shrimp sometime before leaving, we can get started on getting you released sometime later today.” 

Your face breaks out in a huge smile, and you turn to grasp Jesse’s arm. 

“Dude! I can go home!” You exclaim. 

“Yes, I heard,” Jesse says. You can feel his smirk through his face mask. “Finally.” 

You turn back to Yoojin. 

“I can go right now?” You ask. 

“It’ll take a couple of hours to make sure everything’s set for your discharge,” Yoojin says, chuckling at your eagerness. “But just hang tight, and you’ll be out of here in no time.” 

“Why don’t you guys settle things here while I go tell your uncle?” Jesse offers. 

Your uncle had stepped out to get some lunch at the hospital’s food court not too long ago. He and Jesse had arrived on the dot when visiting hours began earlier in the day. Dina had accompanied them but left shortly after to take care of other obligations, promising to be right back the second she was done. 

“Oh, that’d be great,” You say. “Thanks, Jess.” 

“No worries, bud. I’ll be right back.” 

He gives you a pat on the head before leaving you alone with the nurse. 

“So before you leave, we’ll go over a few things to make sure you don’t suddenly relapse during the next few days,” Yoojin begins. “And we’ll make sure you go home with a couple of new, unexpired EpiPens, just in case.” 

You nod as she goes on to explain the plans for your discharge. You listen attentively, determined not to end up back in the hospital like this again. As Yoojin wraps up, you work yourself up to ask her a question that’s been at the tip of your tongue since the beginning of the conversation. 

“Hey, umm, before you go,” You mutter nervously. “I wanted to ask about how much all of this will cost me. I-I know it’ll be pricey and all, especially with two brand new EpiPens, so I just want to be prepared.” 

“That’s not really something I can help you with,” Yoojin replies apologetically. “That’s the jurisdiction of the hospital’s billing department. But I’m sure you can get it all settled with your insurance after you’ve been released. Depending on what you have, they should cover most of it.” 

You give her a tentative smile as you wring your blanket between your fingers. 

“A-alright then.” You sigh defeatedly. 

It takes about two hours for you to finally be released from all your restraints and another hour until you’re finally walking out of the hospital and into the sunny parking lot. Yoojin allowed you a quick embrace before you left, insisting that you promise to be much more careful from here on out. 

You lean against your uncle and Jesse for support as you exit the hospital’s automatic sliding doors, legs still a little shaky after being bedridden for so long. Dina pulls up next to you in her car and gets out to open the passenger door. 

“M’lady.” She says with a bow, gesturing to the seat. 

“Shut up, D.” You laugh, rolling your eyes. 

“You sure you’ve got everything?” Your uncle inquires. 

“I think so,” You reply. “Didn’t really bring anything with me.” 

“Alright, well, I’ll head to my hotel room first so I can take care of a few things. I’ll meet the three of you at your apartment sometime later today. Sound good?” 

You, Jesse, and Dina all nod in unison. Before he walks away, you wrap your arms around him in a tight hug. 

“Thank you so much, Uncle,” You murmur. “It means so much to me that you came.” 

“Anything for you, sweetheart. Anything at all.” 

He gives you a quick squeeze before releasing you, promising he won’t take very long before walking away towards his rental car. 

“So,” Dina chimes. “Wanna grab some gross, greasy non-hospital food on the way home?” 

 When you finally cross the threshold of your apartment, you’d already wolfed down the majority of your fries along with half a chocolate milkshake. You collapse onto your couch with a relieved sigh, your best friends falling next to you on either side. You lean your head onto Dina’s shoulder as you take her hand between both of yours. 

“I think I’m about to go into the world’s longest food coma.” You decree. 

“I’m right alongside you, dude.” Jesse agrees, having devoured one and a half burgers himself on the way. 

“No comas, please, or we’re gonna have to turn right back around and readmit you into that hospital.” Dina says. 

“Never again, please,” You beg. “If I have to hear the nonstop beeping of a heart monitor for one more second, I’m going into straight-up fight-or-flight mode.” 

Your friends chuckle. 

“Alright,” Jesse eventually says as he sits up straighter. “Now that you’ve been freed, what do you want to do first?” 

You hum as you ponder his question. 

“Get so blackout drunk that I totally forget this entire experience ever even happened in the first place?” You offer. 

“Right, well, perhaps we can do something that isn’t completely stupid and detrimental to your health. Especially after you were just in the hospital after almost dying.” Dina retorts. 

You boo her as Jesse chuckles. 

“Well,” You continue. “I guess I should tell the girls I’m finally out. I promised them I would. Or did you guys say anything to them already?” 

“Not yet,” Dina says. “They’ll probably want to hear it from you.” 

You groan. 

“You’re right. Ugh. I don’t think I can handle the sheer amount of screaming and excitement that’ll come with it, though. Kris sounded like she was going to smother me with so much love that I’d suffocate from it.” 

“You can always put it off, at least until tomorrow.” Jesse counters. 

“I guess so. You think they’ll be mad?” 

“Babe,” Dina says, squeezing your hands and rolling her eyes. “You almost died. I think they’ll survive a day.” 

“Alright, alright,” You giggle. “I probably should focus on getting work done before class tomorrow, anyway.” 

“Ma’am, I know you are not thinking of going to your classes right after you were just in the hospital all weekend.” Jesse scolds sternly. 

“I’m fine!” 

“Dear lord.” Jesse sighs, exasperated. 

“Like I said,” Dina repeats. “You almost died. School is not a priority right now. You need to be resting, not writing essays and doing homework.” 

“I don’t want to fall behind!” 

“Didn’t your doctor give you a school note before we left earlier? She said you can give it to your professors to excuse you from your classes this week.” 

“Yeah, but it’s not mandatory or anything. I’m fully recovered now, so it just seems totally unnecessary.” 

“Like hell it is!” Dina bellows before releasing your hands to stand up from the couch. You fall flat on your face onto her spot when her shoulder disappears from under your head, and you muffle irritated curses into the couch cushion. You look up to see she’s disappeared momentarily into your bedroom. 

“D… What are you doing?” 

Dina reemerges after a few seconds, your laptop in her hands. 

“Babe. What’d you get that for?” You ask suspiciously. 

“I’m emailing all of your professors myself to tell them that you will not be attending any of your classes this week. Especially since it seems that you want to be such a stubborn dumbass about it…” Dina says matter-of-factly, shoving your head away from her spot on the couch to sit beside you once more. 

“Never should have given you my password.” You grumble as Dina opens up your laptop and easily bypasses your lockscreen. 

“Alright, who are all your professors again?” She asks, opening up your browser to access your email. 

“I’m not telling you!” You reply stubbornly, crossing your arms. 

“Hmm… I know she’s got Olinick’s double class on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Mulligan at least on Mondays—” Jesse lists, counting your professors on one hand. 

“No, no, no, I don’t!” You turn towards him, shoving your hands in his face. 

“—I think Joslin from the English department too, but I can’t remember if that was last year or this year.” 

“Jesse!” 

By the time your uncle arrives at your apartment, you’d conceded to your best friends and allowed them to draft an excuse email to all of your professors. Dina opens the door for him after he knocks while you make final edits to your letters, and he settles into the ratty, secondhand armchair right next to the couch. 

Your uncle chuckles at the scene before him: you with a focused look on your face typing rapidly on your laptop, Jesse leaning back into the couch while gently patting the top of your head as he continued to make suggestions to your email, and DIna taking her seat right back next to you before kicking her feet onto your lap as you lift and place your laptop on top of her legs. It had been a while since your uncle had seen you so relaxed around other people, the last time being right before your freshman year of college. His fondness for your best friends quickly grows by the second. 

You look up from your work for a moment to smile warmly at your uncle, and he returns it with one of his own. 

“Hi, Uncle! Sorry, I’m just finishing up this email to my professors.” 

“No need to apologize, sweetheart. You telling them you won’t be attending any classes this week?” 

“Yup,” Jesse answers for you. “Took a lot of bullying on our part to convince her not to overwork herself with school right now.” 

“This dummy wanted to go back to classes right away as if nothing happened.” Dina rolls her eyes as she extracts a foot from underneath your laptop to kick you softly, earning her a stern “Hey, hey, hey!” from you. 

“Well, thank goodness she has you two to set her straight.” Your uncle chuckles. 

“Oh, she’s absolutely lost without us.” Jesse says, continuing to pat the top of your head. 

Your uncle smiles. He can tell that Jesse’s joking around, but he knows that the couple have both been selflessly keeping you alive for the past few years. 

“So how are you feeling?” Your uncle continues with concern etched on his face. 

“Not so bad,” You admit. “Just so glad to be among civilians once again.” 

You feel Jesse rub your upper back kindly. 

“I’m sure,” Your uncle smiles kindly. “How about we talk about what you’re going to do now that you’re out?” 

The four of you discuss what the next, post-hospital visit steps would be. They remind you of the check-up appointment you have later in the week, caution you once more about what foods you need to constantly be looking out for, and double-check that you have your new EpiPens handy and within constant reach. 

“I still have my current EpiPen in the bathroom,” You say. “It hasn’t lapsed yet. So maybe I can give you each of the ones they sent me home with, if that isn’t too much of an inconvenience to either of you guys?” 

You turn towards Dina then Jesse. 

“You sure?” Jesse asks. 

“Yeah, I mean, I obviously don’t want something like this to happen again. But if, by some hideous trick of fate, I end up in a repeat situation, it might be smart to just have one in multiple places. Just to cover my bases, I guess.” 

“I don’t mind at all,” Dina nods. “As long as you have easy access to one at all times.” 

“Yeah, that was my thinking too,” You agree. “Plus, I don’t want to have to use one of yours again, Jess.” 

“Mm, I guess.” Jesse hums. 

Your eyes meet his and you once again recognize his poker face. 

“That sounds like a good plan,” Your uncle agrees. “Let’s try not to rely on just luck next time around.” 

You give him an apologetic smile. 

The sun had been set for at least an hour when Dina and Jesse finally took their leave. Both offer to stay the night, in case you suddenly need either of them, but you assure them that you’ll survive one night alone just fine. You embrace each of them tightly, putting every ounce of gratitude you have into your hugs. 

You settle back onto the couch after you see them both out the door, and you turn towards your uncle still sitting in the armchair. 

“I know I’ve said this probably a hundred times the past day or so,” You begin. “But thank you for coming, Uncle.” 

“I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if I didn’t come,” He replies. “Neither would Raf if he was still around.” 

You both share a sad smile. 

“I miss him, Uncle…” You whisper suddenly. 

“I know. I do too.” 

You sigh before continuing. 

“I wish he was still here. I feel… I feel so incomplete without him around. Like this has all been an awful nightmare that I have yet to wake up from.” 

“I know just what you mean,” Your uncle laments. “But our lives still go on, sweetheart. I think it’d make him sad to see us grieving him for the rest of our lives.” 

“But… it just feels so wrong. It feels so wrong to stop grieving for him, to move on from him.” 

“It’s not exactly moving on from him,” Your uncle ponders. “It’s more like… We make a place for him in our hearts. It’s sort of like he becomes a part of us. He’ll always be in everything we do.” 

Your eyes well up as a childhood memory floods your thoughts. 

When you were eleven years old, you had your first anaphylactic experience. You and Rafael were hanging out at his house, your uncle at work all day. You were making a mess in the kitchen, developing concoctions with half the contents of the pantry. As you were dumping a bag of marshmallows into a blender full of graham crackers and banana slices, Rafael fished an old bag of chips out of one of the cabinets. 

The writing on the bag was all in a language you couldn’t understand, but the superheroes on the front seemed to be enjoying the crunchy snack. Raf was tearing the bag open before your greasy fingers started grabbing at its contents. 

It didn’t even take two minutes until Rafael realized something was wrong. You were annoyed and taken aback when he slapped the chips out of your hand. It wasn’t until he was hauling you to the garage and strapping you into the passenger seat that you began to feel dizzy. By the time Rafael had driven to the emergency room, your skin had broken out into hives and your throat felt completely swollen. The last thing that you remembered before blacking out was your faithful cousin scooping you up and sprinting to the emergency room’s entrance. 

You didn’t hear the end of it from your parents when you’d woken up from being unconscious after a couple of hours. Your mother spared no shame in relentlessly admonishing you, regardless of who was in the room, for your “stupidity.” The doctors and nurses offered you continuous looks of pity as they had to witness your many verbal lashings, though none stepped in to interfere. You were blamed for inconveniencing the family, for forgetting your EpiPen at home, for “forcing” Rafael to drive a car when he didn’t have his driver’s license yet, for obligating your parents to pay for your medical bills. 

From that day on, your fear of your parents’ wrath was far greater than the fear of possibly falling prey to your fatal allergy. 

All that gave you hope was your uncle and cousin coming to your defense. Unlike your parents, they showered you with care and love, especially Rafael who felt guilty and responsible for your admission. They nursed you back to health after you were released, Rafael promising you that he’d never let it happen to you again. 

 “Can I tell you something, Uncle?” You ask. “I didn’t even tell Jesse or Dina this. And I don’t think I ever could.”  

“You never even have to ask, sweetheart. You know you can tell me anything.” 

“I…” You gulp. “There was a point… while I was in the ICU that I was a little lucid for a few moments…” 

You wring your fingers together in uneasiness as you stare down at your lap, unable to meet your uncle’s eyes. 

“I… I didn’t know what was happening to me. I didn’t know I was going through anaphylaxis again. But I just knew… I felt that something was wrong with me.” 

Your uncle listens to you intently, his chin on his hands folded as if he were praying. 

“Something inside me… Somehow, I knew that I was dying,” You continue. “Or I knew that at that moment, I could die. I could keep going… or I could choose to let my body give out completely.” 

You finally meet your uncle’s gaze. 

“And I wanted to. I wanted to just… go,” You confess. “Not in a s-suicidal way. Not exactly, at least.” 

Your eyes fill with thick tears. 

“But… I wanted to be with him again. I knew that if I gave in, if I succumbed to whatever was killing me, I would see him again.” 

Your bottom lip shakes as you continue. 

“I miss him so f-fucking much, Uncle. I don’t know how to go on without him around. I’m so l-lost and confused, and all I want to do is talk to h-him about it. But I can’t. There’s n-nobody else in this world that I’ve ever felt as close to as him. Maybe except—” 

You break off before you can finish, shaking off the memory of ocean green eyes and a constellation of freckles. The look on your uncle’s face tells you that he already knows how your sentence was going to end, but he says nothing. 

“He told me he’d never let anything happen to me. He was always supposed to be here with me,” You sob. “I know that’s selfish. I know that his life didn’t revolve around me. But so much of mine did. I planned… I built my life to always include him. Now what the hell am I supposed to do?” 

Your uncle’s sad eyes watch as you roughly wipe your cheeks of the tears uncontrollably streaming down. 

“Sweetheart…” Your uncle begins as he stands up from the armchair to sit next to you on the couch. “You are not selfish. I know how much he meant to you. How much he still means to you.” 

He takes your hands between his. 

“I just…” You sniffle. “It’s been years. I thought I’d healed from it already. I thought I’d moved past all the pain.” 

“It’s not a continuous thing, dealing with your grief.” Your uncle smiles softly. “You’ll have moments, hard ones where it’ll all feel raw and fresh again. It doesn’t mean you’re weak or selfish. You just have your own way of handling your sadness.” 

You nod in acknowledgement of his words. 

“But I think we both owe it to Raf to live our lives, to be happy without him around,” He continues. “His gift to us was time. Time with him and great memories. Even if he’s no longer with us, we’ll continue to carry that gift with us wherever we go.” 

Your uncle smiles and you return it, though wistfully. 

“I’m very grateful that you trusted me to share this with me,” Your uncle begins. “But don’t be afraid to talk about this with your friends. Especially those two.” 

“Jesse and Dina?” 

He nods. 

“I see just how much they love you,” Your uncle says. “They seem like they would do absolutely anything for you. And I am so grateful that you have people like that in your life.” 

“Yeah, they… mean so much to me.” 

“I’m glad. So, please. If I’m not around, don’t be afraid to confide in those two. I’m sure if the roles were reversed, you’d do the same for them.” 

“I’d do absolutely anything for them.” 

“Exactly. So don’t be afraid to embrace the love in your life. You deserve that. And that’s exactly what Rafael would want for you.” 

You throw your arms around your uncle and sob into his shoulder. 

You and your uncle continue to talk for a while until you realize that it’s nearly midnight. Like your friends, he offers to stay the night in case you need him. But you know his flight home was only in a few short hours, so you insist that he go back to his hotel to get a bit of sleep before he needs to leave for the airport. 

It took everything in you not to beg him to stay, but you couldn’t bear troubling him further. And you longed to finally have some time to yourself, so you put on a brave face.  

After your many assurances that you would take care of yourself better, you walk him to your front door. When you open it up, you both notice a simple brown box with a thin bow placed on top of your doormat. You pick it up, noticing how light it feels in your hands. 

“What is this?” You mutter. 

“You got a package?” Your uncle asks, looking at the box. 

“No… I didn’t order anything.” 

“Strange. Maybe your friends Dina and Jesse left it for you.” He offers. 

“I… I guess,” You frown. “Although, I don’t really know why they wouldn’t just give it to me when they were here earlier.” 

“Hmm, that’s true,” He hums, squinting his eyes at it. “A secret admirer, perhaps?” 

“Ha ha, Uncle. Very funny.” 

You give him an amused grimace before untying the bow and removing the lid. You gasp as you recognize what it contains. 

“Oh…” 

You drop the box and embrace its previous contents. 

“My Barbie Bear…” 

author's notes:

thank y'all so much for you patience waiting for this new chapter to come out. i literally wrote like, half of this while in the psych ward, and that was all the way in decemeber sldkfjlsdk

tbh i meant this chapter to be a lot shorter than it turned out to be but lskdjfs more content for y'all ig!

reader's first words after waking up is inspired by me saying, "i need to poop so bad" when the doctors were busy working on me in the emergency room lmaoooo

silver lining of me being in the icu back in december is being able to describe it in detail in this chapter hehe. being in the icu suuuuucked but mostly cause it was boring and cold and i wasn't allowed to get up to pee!!!

the nurse yoojin is named after one of my nurses while i was in the hospital. i loveddddd her, she was such a sweetheart and it made me so happy whenever she was assigned to me. i was rewatching arcane while i was in the hospital, and she saw and asked me about it, and then we gabbed about the show and league of legends (cause she religiously plays the game but hasn't watched arcane yet), and i eventually convinced her to actually watch the show heeeheee

reader’s uncle saying he sees reader as his own is what uncle iroh says to zuko in atla, fun little easter egg heehee (you know me and my love for easter eggs)

reader greeting tara on the phone as satan was how i first greeted my best friend when i was finally able to call her through the public phone in the psych ward (hi rhi LOL)

pink gold peach is my main in mario kart lol

reader's professors mentioned are all named after old professors from my former college's theatre department (rip dennis, miss you always ❤️)

reader’s uncle telling her “we make a place for him in our hearts” in regards to rafael is what tara in buffy the vampire slayer says to dawn when their mom dies (can you tell i love btvs)

working on the next chapter asap, lmk what you think of this chapter in the meantime!

also i made an ao3, so if you wanna read on there too, check it out!

taglist: @lonelyfooryouonly, @keizzzn, @sawaagyapong, @peppesgirl, @iconsoft, @maybeidohaveadhd, @ellieswifee, valiantllamapersonpony-blog, @nil-eena, @echostinn, @uraesthete

softbunlvr, @amitycat, @thefishymissy, @yevheniiaaaa, @machetegirl109, @bertandfearnie, @ximtiredx, @efam, @digit4lslut, tayyyystan, @emothurman, livvy-2000, abigaillovestoread, @gold-dustwomxn

@liabadoobee, @yuckyfucky, @qtefolleunpez, @libr4sonsa, @robinismywifee, villainousbear, scarlettadore, @vianna99, @g0n3girls, @totheblood, @embermdk, @awyunh

@kenz-ee, @marvelwomen-simp, @eleactric, @simpforellie, @jade-posts-sometimes, anxiouso, @nyrastar, @lillysbigwilly, @hopeless-y, @elliesbabygirl, @alexpritch

@thestarsanctuary, @aethelwyneleigh27, cass00x, @mulan-but-gay, @carmellie, tfuuka, @ellielover69, @ewwitsbella, igoferalforelliewilliams, @kissesforells, @asteroidzzzn, @97cityy, @joliettes

p1llowthoughtss, aouiaa, lez-zuha, ineffablefics, peepshake, lil-elliesgf, wex--12, ccinnamongrl, siriusblackrunmeover17, whenlostinthedarkness, feelsoseencantdream, jamiesturniolo, mina-281, harrysslutsstuff, p4ison1vy, elliesexual, miksde

please note that i am no longer accepting requests to be added to the taglist, so if you would like to be notified when a new chapter comes out, please follow @ belleloves and turn notifications on!

#nobody compares to you series #ellie williams #dealer!ellie #ellie x reader #ellie x you #ellie x y/n #the last of us #tlou #the last of us part 2 #tlou2 #ellie fanfiction #belle speaks #belle writes #Spotify