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mediumgayitalian · 2 months

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“Oh, gods.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Oh, gods.”

Nico scowls, wrenching just eyes away from Will’s poorly-covered grin and shaking shoulders.

It’s not that bad. It isn’t.

Sure, the complete lack of lighting except Greek fire torches makes the cabin look like a little piece of the Underworld, right here on the surface. But that’s comforting. Honestly. Nico knows the Underworld. It’s — familiar.

And, yeah. It would, probably, be pertinent to have some furniture, or something. At least somewhere for him to store his clothes, because he has more than one set of those now, and maybe a shelf, or something. And, admittedly, the obsidian altar could take up a little less space than it currently does.

But it’s not that bad.

“Are those. Coffin shaped beds.”

The tone of Will’s voice is unlike he’s ever heard it. He turns back to face him, slowly, and finds him biting his fist, hard, every muscle of his body tense as live wire.

“I was twelve godsdamn years old,” Nico snaps. “Forgive me if interior design wasn’t my passion.”

Solace loses it.

In his defense, not that Nico is too worried about defending him, he does appear to try very hard to not lose it. When the first giggle slips out of his lips, he clamps his jaw shut tighter. When his whole body begins to shake with the force of repressing his laughter, he curls inward, as if making himself smaller might reduce the chance of a lapse in control.

But then he glances back inside and looks, really looks, at the dreary, stone walls, the lone skeletons standing guard, and the plush, teakwood black coffin bunk beds, and he collapses to the floor.

“I’m going to open a chasm beneath you,” Nico threatens. “You are going to fall and crack your spine into a million pieces on the bank of the Styx, rotting there with every other forgotten hope.”

“You are a Black Parade lyric personified,” Will wheezes.

Nico doesn’t know what that means, so he kicks him. Unfortunately, he only laughs harder.

“I mean it, Solace. It’s a long way down to the Underworld. You will spend the entire fall petrified with the knowledge that nothing can save you.”

For added effect, Nico makes the floor under the medic’s body shake, makes the tip of a skeleton hand peek out from the earth.

Ironically, this stops Will’s laughter, but not for the reason Nico was aiming for.

“Hey!” A bright blue flipflop-clad foot darts out and collides With Nico’s ankle, sending him sprawling. “I said no spooky magic for the next two months! Put that skeleton away!”

“Fuck off, Solace! It’s barely half a bone! You are so annoying!”

“That’s my specialty.” Will pushes himself upright. He waits until Nico sits up, too, so he can catch his eye before his face splits into a dazzling grin. Actual sparkles seem to flicker beside his face. “And you are ever so easy to annoy.”

Nico stares, unimpressed.

“Anyways.” Will coughs. “You can’t stay here, Neeks —”

“Don’t call me that.”

“— it’s straight-up too depressing.” He peers inside. “It’s also cold, and, like…borderline unliveable? So. As your doctor, I can’t allow it.”

“You’re a medic,” Nico says, raising an eyebrow, “first of all, not a doctor. Second of all, you can’t tell me what to do. Third of all — where am I supposed to sleep? The woods?”

“Hm. Good question.”

Will gets to his feet, brushing the dirt off his shorts and offering Nico a hand. After a second of hesitation, he takes it, allowing Will to haul him up.

“C’mon!”

Nico snatches his hand away, face burning. (Gods. Why does Will have to be so…touchy-feely? And why does it always do weird things to Nico’s stomach?) But it hardly takes a look over Will’s shoulder before Nico’s feet are following after him, without his permission.

“Where are we going?”

“Well, my dad’s kind of a hoe,” Will says matter-of-factly. Nico chokes. Will’s grin widens. “And our cabin was built with that in mind. I know we’ve got an extra bunk or two for ya. Hurry up!”

This…cannot be allowed. Nico doesn’t have a ton of Camp Half-Blood experience, or anything, but as far as he knows, Hermes is the only cabin that can really do that. He doesn’t want to incur the wrath of Apollo, or whatever, by staying in his cabin uninvited.

Well. Will’s inviting him, technically. And there’s a confidence to his offer, like maybe this isn’t the first time he’s done it.

“What if I don’t want to live in your stupid sunshine-y cabin,” Nico grumbles, trying to cover up his nerves. “Holding hands and singing about how much I love being alive isn’t really my cup of tea.”

Will snorts. “Oh, di Angelo,” he says dramatically, shaking his head, “you are in for a world of discovery. Welcome to the Cabin Apollo. Take your shoes off at the door and remember that Kayla bites.”

———

Living in the Apollo cabin is strange.

Four days in, and Nico is only just starting to get used to it. He’s not entirely unused to sharing space with people — he’s had two sisters — but the Apollo kids argue like they enjoy doing it. One minute, Will and Kayla will be screaming at each other at the top of their lungs about touching each other’s shit, then they’re teaming up to pull Gracie off Yan’s face for the exact same argument, only now they offer sage advice on respecting boundaries and compromising. It’s bizarre.

(Austin is pretty chill, actually. Nico has noticed him starting quite a few fights — it was he, in fact, who moved Will’s shit and then gracefully framed Kayla — but he has a very powerful eyebrow raise and a very powerful image as Unproblematic. He has quickly become Nico’s favourite.)

He’s only just barely beginning to understand how they work together, and the struggle comes in because everything is so chaotic. When Nico spent time with Hazel in New Rome, she was in the barracks. He never really had to worry about squabbling over counter space in the bathroom with her, because she had her own little toiletry caddie like everyone else, and bathrooms were public. With Bianca — well. There’s no one alive who knows this about her, but she was bossy. She was sweet and wonderful and self-sacrificing and brave and kind and the centre of Nico’s life, but by the gods, did she take her authority as a big sister seriously. She ordered Nico around all the time. He never had to worry much about when he would have the chance to use the bathroom they shared at the Lotus, or who got the T.V. remote, or who go to sit on the bus instead of standing, because he was not the one deciding. He could stick his tongue out and whine all he wanted, but she was boss. He knew that.

The Apollo kids are not like that.

As well as Nico can figure, it’s kind of a free-for-all. You want first shower? Either wake up the earliest — a strategy only Will every manages to employ with any success — or manage to jab an elbow in someone’s rib and sprint. You want whoever’s humming to shut the hell up so you can sleep? Make sure your threats are quick and believable, or just straight up start throwing shit until they finally stop. You want the coveted middle of the bench spot at breakfast? Well, tough shit on that one, actually. Nico has yet to make that one happen for himself.

He won’t admit it, but he has kind of learned to enjoy it. It’s annoying, and the Apollo siblings do indeed sing at all hours of the day (although the content usually skews more towards diss tracks and delighted insults, if not straight-up curses), and it is so godsdamn bright in there, seriously, is it a gimmick or what, but there’s something to be said about the fact that he’s so surrounded by people and chaos that he hasn’t even had the chance to feel lonely. Not even at night, panting to himself after a nasty nightmare, because all it takes is a particularly loud snore from Will one bunk down to remember where he is. To remember that he’s safe — by demigod standards, at least.

But, still.

He kind of misses his privacy.

“Will,” he whispers urgently, on his fifteenth day of rooming with the Apollo weirdos.

The medic hums noncommittally, attention very focused on the test tube in front of him. Nico has been fighting the urge to try and launch a piece of dust inside it for forty minutes, just to make him explode.

“I need to talk to you.”

“Sounds good, Nico.”

Nico narrows his eyes. “You’re ignoring me.”

“Uh-huh. Agreed.”

“I can say anything I want right now.”

“Sure. Maybe double check with Austin.”

“…I’m going to put a colony of ants in your pillowcase.”

“Good idea.”

“Then I’m going to douse your hair products in gasoline and set them aflame.”

“Baller.”

“After that I’m gonna read your super secret diary to the entirety of camp at singalong tonight.”

“You betcha.”

“And then I’m going to shadow travel to Russia.”

Will blinks, frowning. “Hey, no shadow-travelling. What’s this I hear about shadow-travelling?”

Nico rolls his eyes. “Nothing, stupid. You were just ignoring me.”

Will smiles guiltily. “Aw, I’m sorry, Neeks. Got focused on this. I’m finished in twenty, then I’m all yours?”

“…Don’t call me Neeks,” Nico grumbles, furious with himself for how quick he’s relented under wide blue puppy-dog eyes.

“Sorry, Neeks.”

Huffing at Will’s quiet laughter, Nico slides off the nurse’s station counter and wanders around the empty infirmary. Things have luckily finally cooled down in here, nearly three weeks after the end of the Giant War. Some of the exhaustion has faded from Will’s features now that he’s had time to sleep properly.

Not that Nico has noticed, or anything.

“Okay,” Will says a few minutes later, holding his hands up protectively in front of his geeky little setup. “I just gotta do this last step, so long as I calculated it right, it should be fine…” He squeezes a drop of something into the liquid bubbling over the burner, freezing immediately. One, two, three seconds pass and nothing happens, so Will relaxes, sighing in relief and turning to face Nico fully. “Okay, we’re good. What was it you wanted to —”

The text tube contents explode in his face, dousing him in slimey green goo.

Nico bursts out laughing.

“Great,” Will says darkly, swiping the stuff from his eyes. “The one day I don’t wear goggles. Great.”

Nico gasps, sides aching. “Oh my gods —”

“Feel free to help, di Angelo.”

“— you look like a cartoon! Your face!”

It takes Will twelve cloths and seven whole minutes to clean himself and the nurse’s station off of the goo. Nico cackles at him the whole time, and tastefully does not mention the many globs of goo that remain caked in his hair.

“Whenever you’re done.”

Will is very, very bad at being stern when he doesn’t really mean it. And he doesn’t really mean it now, because every time he tries to glare at Nico, his mouth twitches.

“I’m good,” Nico finally wheezes, forcing his face back to normal. “I’m good, I’m good.”

He very pointedly does not look at Will’s hair.

“Dick,” Will huffs, fondness bleeding into his tone. “What did you want?”

He must notice the change in tone at his asking, because he clears the bench fully, hoisting himself on top of it and patting the spot next to him. Nico hesitates for half a second, then crawls up, sitting criss cross applesauce, knees touching.

“I need to move back to my cabin,” he manages, finally.

Will’s face betrays no judgement or emotion. “Oh?”

“Yes.” He picks at a loose thread in his jeans. “I need — space.”

The thread loosens, allowing Nico to tug on it. A hole begins to unravel along the seam as he pulls and pulls and pulls. He stops himself before it gets too wide, tearing the thread off and winding it around his fingers.

“I can tell everyone to tone it down,” Will offers softly, eyebrows creased. “We’ll be more quiet, we’ll —”

Nico places a hand on his knee, cutting off his sentence. “It’s not about that, I promise. You guys have been great.”

A wounded look still pulls at Will’s strong features, as much as he visibly tries to pull his face back to something more supportive. “It’s not?”

“No, no. It’s just —” He frowns, trying to articulate the tangled mess of his thoughts. “I have my own cabin.”

“So?”

“And I can’t stay in yours forever.”

“I mean, you could.”

“Chiron’s been giving me looks, Will.”

“So what! I’ll — write you a doctor’s note, or something!”

Nico snorts. “A doctor’s note letting me sleep in your cabin?”

Will nods fervently, although he seems to acknowledge the ridiculousness of his suggestion, if the grin on his face is any indication. “Yes! For medical reasons, you know.” He mimes writing. “‘Patient’s cabin is dank and sad. To avoid bouts of misery, patient must sleep in the presence of the coolest and best and prettiest and most uplifting people in camp.’”

“Hm. Not sure Chiron’s gonna buy that last part. Not sure I buy that last part, actually.”

“Hey.”

Nico dodges Will’s shove, chuckling.

“Seriously, though, Will. This was never a long term solution, right?”

“I know. You’re cabin just — sucks so bad, man. No offense.”

“I take great offense to that, actually. My cabin is art.”

“Sure, Eddie Cullen.”

“I don’t know who that is, so that’s a horrible insult.”

“Travesty, honestly.”

Outside the open infirmary windows, Nico can hear distant, triumphant screaming, laughter, and the clang of metal. Today’s a good day. The weather’s balmier than usual, for late August, and some of the gloom that’s hung over everyone’s head for the bast few weeks seems to have lifted.

“You can’t go back to your cabin like it is,” Will says into the silence, startling Nico, “but —” he grins when Nico begins to protest, holding up his hand. “We can definitely change it up.”

He slides off the bench, botching his landing and almost sprawling on the floor. He holds a dramatic hand out to Nico when he rights himself. Nico ignores it, rolling his eyes and getting to his feet by himself.

“C’mon,” Will says, grabbing his hand anyway. Sparks shoot up Nico’s arm. “We need to go ask Chiron for the van keys and approximately five hundred dollars.”

———

Three hours is too fucking long to be in a vehicle. Especially when Will is driving, because all he does is play nonstop country music and let everybody cut in front of him.

“I’m driving us back,” Nico informs him as they (finally) get out of the stupid van, snatching the keys from his hands.

Will shrugs. “Sure.”

Nico had expected more of a fight, honestly. But he supposes neither of them are legally allowed to drive, age-wise, and besides, Nico technically has seventy years of driving experience on Will.

(…The Lotus had a racetrack.

Nico was very, very good at it.)

“What is this place, anyway?”

“This place,” Will says grandly, throwing an arm over his shoulders, “is essentially the mortal version of the Labyrinth, minus, you know, the soul-sucking terror.”

“Okay. All that’s telling me is that you have horrible ideas and we should leave immediately.”

Will rolls his eyes. “It’s a furniture store.”

“Well, then —” he punches Will’s shoulder, huffing when he only laughs. “Say that, then!”

“But then what would I do with all the drama in my heart?”

“Choke on it, hopefully!”

Ikea is weird.

Since Will did not tell him what the plan was, he didn’t draw up any plans. Luckily, Will has the dimensions of his cabin — although where he got them, Nico does not ask — so they spend an hour or so in the cafe drawing out a plan.

“You need more than two beds, Neeks.”

“Uh, no I don’t. Unless my father has something very important to announce to me, I need a bed for me, and a bed for Hazel.”

“What if I want to sleep over?”

“You can sleep on the porch.”

Mostly, they wander around the sets. Nico isn’t really sure what he wants his cabin to look like — he has to remind himself that yes, actually, he cares about the space he’ll be spending at least the next three years of his life in. It’s a startling reality, to have control over his own space. He must’ve had some say in his childhood bedroom, but he has no memory of it. He spent the most time in his and Bianca’s room at the Lotus, but that was already furnished when they got there, and besides, it only felt like they were there for less than a year. It always felt like a hotel room, never his room. Westminster was no different. His room in his father’s palace had already been designed, too. In fact he’d based his cabin on it.

What does Nico want his bedroom to look like, without someone else deciding for him?

“I’m not getting a fucking Lightning McQueen bed, Solace.”

“But it would be so sick! And look — it’s got little cubbies!”

“I’m going to ditch you, and shadow travel back to camp,” Nico threatens. “And I have the van keys, so you’ll be stuck here for real.”

“Hey, hey, hey.” Will looks at him sternly, hands on hips. “No shadow travelling for you, Death Breath. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t fade into nothing on my watch.”

“I’m joking,” Nico says, exasperated, but cannot deny the warmth that fills him up at Will’s concern.

In the end, he decides on a pretty normal bed. It’s bigger than Will’s bunk (“Or anyone else’s bed,” Will grumbles, “you lucky asshole.”), but not ridiculously designed. He picks a similar size for Hazel, only the frame is white, not black, and the bedspread that comes with it is a soft, coral pink that he knows she will like.

“Wanna see if they’ve got a Mythomagic bedspread for yours?” Will teases.

That would be the coolest thing ever in the entire world, Nico thinks, and is so embarrassed that he shoves Will, shrieking, into a giant basket of pillows for making him think it.

“Obviously I don’t want that.”

“You are such a turd! I’ll get you, di Angelo!”

He does not. Nico is way too sneaky for him, and after the fifth time Nico manages to give him the slip, he gives up, sulking in a display for a bedroom of a nine year old girl.

“Fitting,” Nico teases, gesturing to the princess wallpaper. “You drama queen.”

“Buzz off.”

Next, they look for furniture. It’s pretty easy — Nico doesn’t need much, and he’s not too concern with cut or style or anything. He quickly picks out two dressers, one to match Hazel’s bed frame, and one to match his, and then a couple bookshelves.

Four hours into their trip, Nico is exhausted. They have a three hour drive ahead of them, they’ve been out all day, and he wants to go home.

But Will stops him before they go get all the boxes for their furniture.

“This is still pretty bare bones,” he says quietly, then grins at his own accidental pun. Nico shoots him a venomous look, warning him against making it more obvious, and for once he actually listens. “You know, we’re still under budget. We’ve got around $200 left — we can get a motel, stay the night, then we don’t have to drive back right away. And tomorrow, maybe we can check out some other stores, look for smaller decorations and stuff. And if we don’t have to drive back tonight, we’ve maybe got another hour in here, if you wanted to get a couple more pieces.”

Nico opens his mouth to refuse — that’s way too much effort to spend on one person’s cabin, c’mon — then pauses, thinking about it.

Chiron hadn’t even thought about it before handing them the money. Will had barely gotten the words out before he’d started counting out the bills.

“I want you to make a home here,” the centaur had said, touching his hand. There was a pain in his kind eyes, stopping any protests. “I made a mistake, Nico, the first time you came here. In another life, you felt welcome enough to stay the whole time. Take what you need.”

What does he need? What does home look like, to him?

“There was a beanbag chair, in our room at the Lotus,” he says, pushing the words past the lump in his throat. “Me and Bianca used to fight over it.” His voice shakes. A tear gathers at the corner of his eye, and he blinks it back. “It wasn’t real fighting. When I called mercy she’d — scoop me up and throw me on it and squish in after me, and we’d sit together and play video games. Or read. She liked to read.”

Will squeezes his trembling hands. “We can get a beanbag chair.”

“And I — don’t like the blackout curtains. The dark makes me think of — the pit.”

“Okay. They sell lotsa lamps here, too. Might be nicer than the Greek fire.”

Nico nods. There’s — more, far more ideas, now, flooding his brain; Hazel crowding over him on a rug-covered floor, shrieking as he teases her about Frank; a desk tucked in the corner where Will sits, mouthing along to his textbooks as Nico sharpens his sword; Jason running his fingers along rows of books on a big, cluttered shelf; Reyna with her fist curled around her mouth, studying a chess board across from him, hair shining under the natural light from the window.

He can have that. He can have that.

Thankfully, all their stuff fits in the back of the van. Despite his insistence earlier, Nico hands Will the keys, and he drives around until he finds a shitty motel with a vacancy sign flashing out front. He pulls into the farthest corner of the parking lot, killing the engine, then waits.

“You okay?”

Nico shrugs. “I’m…not sure.”

“That’s okay,” Will assures, pressing a fleeting touch to his shoulder. Nico grabs his wrist before he moves away, tugging down his hand and linking their fingers together.

For once, it doesn’t make him feel all sparky. The warmth of Will’s hands is grounding, and so is the gentle squeeze, the smile he feels pointed in his direction.

“C’mon. Let’s check in and sleep, huh?”

Nico’s exhaustion compounds in the walk from the car to the lobby, so by the time Will is speaking quietly to the host, he’s half asleep, leaning on Will’s shoulder. He vaguely feels it when Will shifts his weight, sliding a hand around his waist to hold him better. He blinks and they’re standing in front of a door.

“Almost there, Death Boy,” he murmurs. “Hold on a sec.”

It takes him six separate tries to make the keycard work. He gets huffy when Nico snickers tiredly at him.

“Finally, yeesh.”

He guides Nico in, dropping the backpack he brought somewhere near the door. As soon as the bed is within Nico’s sights, he makes a beeline, barely remembering to shuck his shoes and jacket.

“Please do not sleep in your jeans.”

“Mmmfuck off,” Nico groans, already sliding under the covers. He’ll regret it in the morning, but whatever.

“Goober.” Callused hands brush through his hair, resting lightly on his forehead. “Goodnight, Nico.”

Nico’s out before he can even think to respond.

———

He wakes up, in the middle of the night, scream caught in his throat and heart pounding in his ears. The air smells like smoke and fear. The rushing of the Phlegethon is so loud it’s overpowering.

A loud snore knocks him back to reality.

Crawling desperately towards the source of the sound, he hangs over the bed, eyes adjusting rapidly to the dark to see a curled lump on the floor, head resting on his own hands. A quick glance behind him confirms the other half of the bed has been left untouched.

“Stupid,” he mumbles, tiny smile chasing away the last of his fear.

He tugs the blankets off the mattress, pulls off the two pillows, and joins his dumbass, selfless friend on the floor.

———

“Question,” Will asks, swallowing the last of their disgustingly delicious greasefest of a breakfast. “Were you alive when Walmart was invented?”

“I was alive before your great grandmother was.”

“No, I mean — were you out and kickin’. Have you strolled the endless aisles of corporate soullessness, basking in the wonder of American overconsumerism?”

“…You’re such a weird, particular person.”

Will looks delighted. “You’re a Walmart newbie!”

He pulls into the dead, cracked parking lot way too happily for this hour in the morning. Nico would even say he takes the nearest exit to get to the store gleefully. He is embarrassed for him.

Walmart is…underwhelming.

As stupid as it is, Will had hyped it up so much that Nico was almost a little excited. It just looked like any other basic superstore. Will, for whatever reason, seemed delighted by that fact.

“I do not like this store,” he explained when Nico asked, expression not matching his words, “it just means so very much to me that you are joining me in the misery of having experienced it.”

They spend more time than they mean to just dicking around. At one point they nearly get thrown out by management, because Will finds a pair of NERF guns that some child dug out of its packaging and no words need to be spoken. They gear up and scamper off, hunting each other through fluorescent-lights hell.

“Please just get your shit and leave,” says the very tired looking manager, and they have the good gall to at least appear embarrassed as they mumble, “Yes, ma’am.”

It doesn’t take long when they have their head on straight. They get some fairy lights, a couple cool posters, dorky little trinkets that Nico probably doesn’t need, per se, but what was he supposed to do, leave the little plastic crow skeleton behind?

Unlikely.

With his own money, Will buys several cans of paint and a CD. He explains neither of these purchases. The look on his face gets steadily more infuriating as they make their way through the line, and Nico really, truly considers leaving him behind.

The purchase of the CD becomes very obvious very quickly. Even though Nico is driving, and therefore Nico should get music control, Will pouts and pleads until Nico gives in and lets him play his stupid country album. He justifies his decision in his own brain by noticing the radiance of Will’s smile as he belts out the words, badly, at the top of his lungs. He then spends the rest of the drive back to camp convincing himself not to be embarrassed for having said thoughts.

They get back to camp about lunch time, and Will destroys any attempt for a subtle reentry by whistling the second they cross the property line.

“Austin! Kayla!” he hollers, making Nico jump. “Come help us unload!”

“We coulda done it ourselves,” Nico grumbles.

Will pats his head condescendingly. “It has been twenty-four long, long hours since I’ve bosses my siblings around, Neeks. I need this.”

It does go by quite a bit quicker with Austin and Kayla’s help. Lou Ellen, Cecil, Yan, and Gracie come to help, too, but Gracie’s too little to carry much more than a small desk lamp. Instead, they lay down the biggest box — Nico’s bed frame — and let her climb on top of it, carrying her like she’s a queen atop a throne back to Nico’s cabin. She has the time of her life, giggling to herself like a madwoman.

By the time everything’s unloaded, a couple hours have passed, and the Hades cabin looks like a clusterfuck.

“Maybe you stay in Apollo a couple more nights,” Will suggests.

“Might have to,” Nico agrees. Will looks inordinately pleased with himself.

All in all, it takes about two days to disassemble the old furniture, get rid of it, and start putting together the new stuff. Will helps for most of it, but he has a few shifts in the infirmary, so Nico ends up trying to do a fair bit on his own.

“May the wrath of Zeus come down upon this fucking piece of shit, no good, poorly designed garbage-looking idiotic mother fuc —”

“Maybe time for a break from furniture assembling?” suggests a voice, accompanied by a quick knock in the open door. Will leans on the doorframe, grinning, box propped up on his hip.

“Will, thank the gods,” Nico sighs, relieved. He angrily shakes a tool in his direction. “Allen wrenches are fucking useless. I’m three seconds away from throwing this through the window.”

“Definitely time for a switch, then.”

Will’s smile is wide and crinkles his eyes. He’s got dimples, too, Nico is now noticing, and then very rapidly un-noticing then because gods above that is a dangerous path.

“Did you and Rachel get into another prank war?” he asks, praying the flush on his cheeks goes away.

Will glances down at his paint-spattered clothes. “Nah, this is just my painting outfit. Why ruin more than one set of clothes, you know?” He sets down the box in the middle of the room, then heads for the half-built furniture sprawled all throughout the cabin, tugging it all towards the middle. Nico inches towards the box, curious, and finds it full of dozens of paint cans and brushes, including the ones he got at Walmart.

“I didn’t know you painted.”

He flashes another grin in Nico’s direction. This one has a little mischief to it, a little teasing. His stomach swoops.

“Gotta have at least one artistic talent or my dad would disown me. Help me tape down this tarp, will you?”

It takes them twenty minutes to prep the room, protecting the floor and the furniture. Once everything is ready, Will jogs over to the CD player he gave Nico a few days ago, flicking through the stack of CDs and choosing one at random. Soft opera music begins to float around the cabin.

“Okay,” he begins, clapping his hands, “first we need a base coat. Get the white paint and the rollers.”

It takes them the rest of the day, painting until dinner, then waiting past sunset for it to dry. Nico follows Will back to his cabin that night — he wouldn’t let him sleep around the paint fumes — and the two of them return the next morning, re-donning their paint-spattered clothes. Will braids his hair, this time, tucking the little pigtails behind a kerchief. It makes Nico smile every time he looks at him.

As much as he’s in painting clothes, Nico doesn’t really do much of the painting. He stays in the centre of the room, half assembling furniture, half watching Will bring his walls to life with more colours than he’s ever seen in one place.

Will doesn’t ask what Nico wants him to paint in his murals. Instead, Nico watches as the streets of Venice begin to unfold on one of the walls, bright and blue and exactly as he remembers, even though he knows for a fact Will has never been. The shining fruit of his stepmother’s garden is next, with a notable absence of the pomegranate tree, and then the hills of New Rome, the sunflower field in rural New York Nico used to visit, the Chinese mountainscape from the first big shadow travelling jump he ever made. Even the poplar forests of the Underworld, looking much kinder and livelier in Will’s rendition than in real life, with Mrs. O’Leary and Cerberus chasing each other through the flickering leaves. Beautiful, colourful, breathtaking scenes; Nico’s favourite places, Nico’s many homes.

“I get a lot of dreams,” Will admits, dragging a smear of rich purple near the ceiling. “You’re in a lot of them. These are the places you’re smiling, the most.”

“They’re beautiful, Will.” Nico’s throat is drier than any desert he’s ever been to. “Gods, they’re more beautiful here than they are in real life.”

“Liar,” Will teases, although his smile is shy.

Nico has never seen him smile like that. He’s seen a lot more of Will in these past few days, actually; his softness, his kindness, his love.

He has only knows Will for a little over a month, he thinks. But Will loves him. That much is obvious.

“Hey.”

“Hm?”

His eyes are still trained on his work. He is on his tiptoes on a step stool, one leg extended precariously, tongue peeking out of the corner of his mouth. The curve of his brush is careful, meticulous. Only the best for his friends, for Nico. That’s Will.

“Hey,” Nico says again, more urgently. He steps forward, wrapping his fingers around his wrist.

“Just a sec, Neeks, as soon as I’m done we can —”

Nico pulls until he loses his balance, falling into Nico’s arms. He stares into wide, blue blue eyes, for one second, two, then presses their lips together. Will’s squeak of surprise is swallowed by his mouth, hands sliding up his arms to cup his face, tilting his head to the side.

“Oh,” he sighs, eyelashes ticking Nico’s cheeks as they flutter close. “Oh.”

He melts into Nico’s hold. There’s a thunk and a crinkle as his paintbrush falls from his loose fingers, splattering onto the tarp, and paint-wet hands tangle into his hair. Nico finds he doesn’t mind.

“You love me,” he murmurs in between breaths, lips brushing Will’s with every word.

“Yes,” Will breathes. He kisses Nico again, and again. “A lot.”

“Good.” He’s not sure if it’s the paint fumes making him lightheaded, or the odd, slightly uncomfortable position, or the intoxicating, delirious feel of Will’s warm skin. He’s not sure if he cares. “Good.”

It’s not quite an I-love-you-too. The words won’t form on his tongue, so instead he tightens his hold, sending them that way, and presses closer, closer, closer.

Will smiles into the kiss.

He understands just fine.

#i could write an essay about how i think they’re dynamic would be immediately post three days in the infirmary #also i fit SO MANY of my personal headcanons in here hell yeah #pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #hoo #heroes of olympus #pjo hoo toa #nico di angelo #will solace #solangelo #nico/will #will/nico #gently falling in love #love #i’m tagging it bc. will loves so clearly in this one it kills me a little #fic #my writing #longpost

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seoafin · 2 months

Text

everything eats and is eaten

pairing: fushiguro toji x fem!reader warnings/tags: smut, extremely loose prior teacher x student relationship except toji was a bad teacher and nobody respected him that much, background stsg x reader (i guess), cucking (i guess) word count: ~5.7k title from ingydar by adrianne lenker

this is a fic that was commissioned by @stainedglassvariations if you enjoyed the fic please please please take a second to thank them for their generosity and kindness!

You’ll regret this, Toji thinks. Maybe tomorrow, or the next week. Maybe in the far future.

Or maybe you won’t. He never really knows with you.

It’s not like he knows you, really. Not like Ieiri, not like Gojo or Geto. He knows that you faced him with a blade and lost. He knows that you have lived a distinctly miserable life (he is intimately acquainted with misery). He knows that prying teeth is an easier job than getting you to talk about yourself (it is, admittedly, amusing, to see Gojo’s clenched jaw and Geto’s locked, displeased smile when you, once again, tell them that you don’t mind whatever movie they want to watch, as long as they want to, when you shoot down a question about your childhood that you’ve already marked as negligible) (he is half convinced, that everything the three closest to you know about you came from a particularly nosy foray into your personal file, stolen from Yaga’s office when Gojo’s intentions straddled the line between nosy and curiosity).

It’s better like this. He doesn’t need to know you for this.

Your chest heaves, perspiration gathering in places he shouldn’t observe too closely (the junction where your neck meets shoulder, your temple, your thighs). Your expression is somewhat placid as you stare blankly at the ceiling. Who knows what you’re thinking at this moment, as you come down from the shock of your very first orgasm.

A lesser man would be offended. You had been mostly quiet while he had licked and sucked until you came with a keening, choked noise that had his cock swelling in his pants. He had seen teeth digging into your bottom lip as you struggled not to let anything more escape, the inky depths of your eyes before you closed them.

He meets your gaze from where he rests, in between your legs, and lets his tongue run over his lips, wet from your slick. He has half a mind to spend the rest of the night eating you out, to let him show you just how much he can do with his tongue.

You blink, lips pressing together, as you look at him discerningly, as if you’re not sure what to do next. It shouldn’t turn him on as much as it does, and he’s once more reminded of the hardness pressing against the confines of his pants. Shit, it’s been a while hasn’t it?

Toji clears his throat to speak, before you can do something ridiculous like thank him for the orgasm.

“What are you into?”

You stare at him.

He figures now is as good a time as any to ask. It’s a conversation that probably should have come sooner, but you shrugged off your clothes before he could even say a word, and when his gaze had dropped to the mess of scar tissue at your side, you had stared at him blankly.

Then you put your hand on his clothed thigh in an invitation.

He’s never been that good of a man.

“What gets you all hot and bothered? Gets your rocks off?” His voice is husky. Have you ever touched yourself? He wants to ask. A finger idly runs down your inner thigh. You don’t seem to mind.

“I’ve never thought about it,” you say slowly, composure returning.

He quirks an eyebrow. He’s heard what the visiting Kyoto girls have to say about Gojo or Geto, or both. But you’re being truthful. He can feel the steady thrum of your pulse, the honesty telling.

He’s sure there are devout Christian nuns less repressed than you.

“Everyone has something,” Toji replies easily, eyes never leaving yours. He’s long learned one truth of the world: there are some kinky motherfuckers out there. “Handcuffs, bondage—” he grins, the curve of it a little too sharp, “—teacher-student roleplay?”

You refuse to give into his goading, despite the slight curl of your lips. A grimace. “You’ll make me sick,” you reply tonelessly, slightly rising on your elbows. “Take off your shirt already.” You pause. “Please.”

Toji snorts. It’s not a nice sound.

In a single, fluid movement, his shirt is off. Your gaze goes from his chest, his torso, the tent of his jeans. It settles on his chest.

Appreciation, he thinks. This is new.

“I’m not blind,” you say plainly, lips verging on a frown, as if you can read his disbelief. “You’re very attractive.”

He raises an eyebrow, stifling a chortle. “You know how to get a man going, alright.”

And then he lowers himself down, and kisses you.

You’re not used to it, he gathers, but you try anyway. You meet his lips the best you can, let his tongue run over yours, and try not to be overwhelmed despite the fact that this is most likely the most human contact you’ve ever had in your life.

(He’s read your file too.)

Your legs tighten around his waist, the breaths leaving your mouth are a bit more heavier. He’s rewarded when a hand sneaks down to your wet hole and slowly presses a finger into you, and fuck you’re tight, clamping down on his finger like you want him to stay. He’s careful not to imagine too long how tight you’ll feel around his cock when he’s fucking you into your mattress.

Your breath catches as your lips tear apart, teeth making a reappearance in your bottom lip. His thumb circles the swollen nub between your legs, as he adds a second. You moan, body growing pliant, and Toji thinks, right now, as you look up at him, eyes wide eyed and misty, lips swollen, you’d do anything for him.

Instead, he unclips your bra.

It doesn’t take long. You’re almost embarrassingly easy. You come as soon as he finds your lips once more, and sucks on your tongue in a manner reminiscent of how he had you coming all over his mouth. Combined with the curl of his fingers stretching out your walls, and you’re done for, shuddering with a small whimper. Toji likes his women loud, likes his fucking crude and messy, likes it when he can feel the indent of nails pressing into flesh, raking down his biceps, shoulders, chest.

Toji likes—

Your eyes go unclear. For a second you look out of it, until the cognizance returns.

He doesn’t know what to say. You wouldn’t be interested in the usual false platitudes. He settles on: “You’ve got nice tits.”

You stare at him through heavy lidded eyes once more. It’s almost unsettling, the lack of emotion on your face, despite the rise and fall of your chest as you struggle to regain your breath. He’s too old to care, too unbothered to give you anything but a grin in return.

He’s never been with a woman who looks at him the way you do. He doesn’t know what those two loverboys see in you. You’re not exactly what every teenage boy dreams of but he doubts it matters. He’s seen the way they look at you, no matter how odd in the head you seem. No matter how much he tries to forget. Once, he had looked at someone else that same exact way.

You’ve got nice tits and an even nicer, tight pussy. Right. You’re a virgin. He hasn’t taken a virgin since he was fully moonlighting as a gigolo, and even then he preferred not to. Clingy, prone to tears and romanticization. They always wanted him to stay the night, and when he obliged (for the free bed more than anything), it became a day, and then a week. And then it was the constant pleas for updates, the jealousy, as if he cared for anything but the yen they had to spend on him.

Rich widows. That’s where the real fun was.

Your cunt pulses around his fingers in the wake of your second orgasm. His dick is rock hard, too insistent in his pants to focus on anything else. He’s going to have you past tears by the time the night is over. You have no idea what you’ve given him permission to do to you.

Toji brings his fingers to his mouth, licks your wetness from his fingers. He’s not expecting you to ask him to eat your sweet little pussy out again, so he’ll force the words out of you. Make you say ‘please’ real sweetly.

An arm is thrown over your eyes. You’re not sleeping. More like recovering.

“Done for already?”

You look at him blearily. “There’s more?”

“I didn’t do all that prep just to not fuck you,” he replies dryly, easily freeing his cock from his pants. You go still, eyeing his dripping cock with trepidation. “Help a guy out.”

“Right,” you breathe out, like you’re doing him a favor. “Okay.”

In Toji’s opinion you’re already taking the appearance of his dick better than some other girls he’s had. He knows he’s big. Probably not a virgin’s first choice. Not a virgin like you, who’d be more than fine with some fingers, a toy if you’re feeling brave. A good time for the more experienced girls he’s taken, but you look a minute away from the guillotine. He swipes a condom from the nightstand, rips it open, and rolls it down his cock in one smooth movement. You watch him, almost curiously.

“First time seeing a condom?” He can’t resist the urge to poke the hornet’s nest. He’s always been somewhat of an instigator. Just like you.

You shrug. You’d probably never see one, if it were up to those two. Safe sex is never the first thing on a hormonal teenage boy’s mind. Especially when they’ve been blueballed to hell and back. “Pregnancy’s a bitch.”

You give him a look that clearly says: So is fatherhood, apparently.

He almost winces.

“I’m on birth control,” you reply. “You’re clean. Either way, I don’t really care.”

Of course you’re prepared. Gojo and Geto would have a field day with you. He nudges your thighs open, letting the long hard length of him slap against your stomach right above the thatch of hairs at the junction of your thighs. He likes an unwaxed woman.

You stare at it leerily. His dick twitches at the attention, precum spreading everywhere. He’s always liked his women a little mean. “It won’t fit.”

He laughs at that, deep and just as mean. “It’ll fit.”

His thumb roughly catches on your swollen clit, and he’s rewarded with a hitch of your breath, a reflexive roll of your hips at the pressure. The first sign of anxiety crosses your face, teeth biting at your lower lip.

He could reassure you with practiced words, but you wouldn’t appreciate any of it. He wonders what the Gojo brat would do. What words that ever-smiling Geto would reassuringly murmur in your ear if he was the one about to fuck you. They’d hold your hands at the very least. Those two prodigies, gifted at everything, given all they could ever want. Two boys, born to be at the pinnacle, in love with a girl about to be ruined by Zenin trash.

He likes the thought more than he should. Trash like him touching a girl he has no business descrating. Ruining her in ways they can only dream of. You’ll keep this part of him with you forever, despite your feelings towards him. Despite what’ll happen if they find out.

Let them, he thinks. The boy-god can do many things, but this, this is permanent.

Things would be different. If he were a man that loved you.

But that’s something neither he nor you wants. If anything, it’s the one thing he can respect.

Toji lines himself up at your entrance, and without further fanfare, begins to stretch you open.

He almost winces at how tight you are. A virgin through and through. Your eyes are wide, almost comically frozen. Your teeth tears into your lip, drawing blood.

You make a noise in your throat. It sounds like a whimper. It’s muted, like you don’t want to make too much noise. He’ll have to rectify that. He likes noise. But right now your cunt is struggling to fit him, caught between pushing him out and squeezing him in, and all he can think about is how it’s been forever since a pussy felt this good.

“Shit,” he mutters. You’re warm, wet, and tight. He almost wishes he were bare just to feel you even closer. Almost. He could ruin you. Mess you up so well you wouldn’t be able to do anything but take him. It makes him think he hasn’t changed one bit. He’s always liked ruining things. “Gotta go easy on me sweetheart,” you slightly relax as he plays with the swollen bundle of nerves between your legs, “we’ve got all night.”

You make a choked noise, tears springing at your eyes. Fingernails dig into his forearms, and a rush of heat envelopes him. He keeps a steady hand on your scarred side. You don’t notice.

He’s already marked you once. What’s a second time?

A full body shudder wracks you when he fully sheathes himself inside of you. Your eyes are unfocused, glossy, already a little empty headed, and he hasn’t even gotten to the good part yet.

“You…”

“All me,” he says. “How’re you feeling?”

A slight frown. “It feels…weird. I feel…” you slightly raise your hips as if to gauge him inside of you, walls pressing tight. The pressure makes his cock ache. A lesser man would’ve blown his load already. He’s got the patience of a saint to be this still while he’s inside your pussy. Your eyebrows furrow. “Full. This is supposed to feel good?”

“That’s the idea,” he replies, looking down at you, the way your chest heaves up and down, swaying. You do have nice tits, for what it matters. Gojo and Geto really are missing out.

Your arms come to close around your chest, blocking his nice view.

So you do get embarrassed. It’s almost cute.

“You can move,” you say pointedly, despite your voice being a whisper. “I’m okay.”

“Wasn’t waiting,” he lies. Well, your funeral.

His hands grip your thighs, spreading you wider, moving his hips in a way that has you becoming increasingly flustered. You make a protesting noise, but he’s watching the way his cock sinks into you as he tests you with a shallow roll of his hips.

He’ll have you bouncing on his cock next. Or squirming on his face. So many possibilities.

He begins to thrust in earnest. You cry out as he fucks you, one hand encircling your thigh, the other on your hip, bringing you down on him. The room swells with heat, and every single thrust is accompanied by the sound of his balls slapping into your cunt. You can’t help the noises now. You grow louder and louder with the growing mess forming on the sheets underneath you.

Your hips are struggling to match his thrusts, overwhelmed by the sheer intensity of every movement. He’s never known anybody so bad at taking cock. It’d almost be funny if his balls weren’t about to burst. He decides he’ll turn you over on your knees, mount you like a mutt next, as soon as you finish.

“I—” your bottom lip trembles, and Toji wants to bite it. Hard. You almost look like you’re in pain.“It’s—”

You don’t need to say a thing, Toji can feel you squeezing around him. He lifts your leg up, higher, hikes them up on his shoulders. A hand encircles your left ankle, brushing his lips over skin, right before his teeth sink into the fleshy part. You yelp.

“‘Atta girl,” he murmurs as you squirm underneath him, single minded rhythm keeping you pinned underneath him. “Gonna cum on my cock sweetheart?”

Without really thinking about it, he leans down and kisses you. He feels the weak push of your tongue against his. Toji licks the blood from your mouth, and swallows.

You’re gushing around his dick, crying out for anybody and nobody, as your body arches high with the force of it all, the violence of it. A milestone, he thinks. You barely have time to come down from the high before he’s flipping you.

On your knees, a choked squeal tears from your throat as he continues. Hands on your waist, there’s that heat in his abdomen, that tightness. He feels electric. You’re crying now, he can hear you, unsteady breathing peppered with short strangled sobs. Toji should know better. You’re a virgin. You’ve never taken cock before. You used to be his student despite the fact that it didn’t really mean anything. You knew what you were getting into. If anything, he’s going easy on you. This is nothing compared to what Gojo and Geto will do to you when they find out Toji’s cock was anywhere near your cunt.

They’ll tie you up, have their way with you while ingraining the dangers of fucking dangerous men that aren’t them into your body. No condom. Geto looks like he’d be into that kind of freaky shit and more behind that smile of his. Toji almost feels bad for you.

Might as well build up your stamina while you can. He’s practically doing you a favor.

He slightly lifts your hips, pushing into you at an angle that his cock pressing into you, in a spot that makes your toes curl.

“Oh,” you whimper into the pillow. “Again?”

A grin cracks his face despite himself. You always were a funny one. He wishes he could see your face.

Hips pistoning into you at a rhythm far too fast for you to keep up with, it’s not long until you’re trembling again, walls growing tight around him. But all he can think of is how warm and wet your pussy is, how long it’s been since he’s come in something other than his hand. A thought nudges at his head, about how you’re not some fuckin’ fleshlight to be used for his pleasure, he’s supposed to be making you feel good, but he’s too lost, reaching for his release with a vengeance that’ll have you sore for weeks.

Your arms are barely holding on. Toji takes your wrists behind your back, and you nearly fall face first into the bed with nothing but a hiccup. He doesn’t stop. Instead he drives into you at a punishing pace, using your arms to bring you back into him like a ragdoll. Your face barely hovers above the sheets.

“Look at you,” he whistles through his teeth, focused on the small of your back, the sheen of sweat covering your body, “milkin’ my cock like a champ.” Your thighs are wet, slick dropping onto the sheets with every thrust, and he can almost see the frothy white of the rings around his dick had he not been practicing safe sex.

He almost feels at home with the sound and scent of sex in the air. You cum again, and cry out, in alarm or panic, as your body tenses.

“Toji,” you say weakly. It almost sounds like you’re pleading. “Toji.”

It tips him over the edge. After a few more thrusts, he buries himself deep inside you, and his cock twitches with his release. White hot pleasure behind the darkness of his vision. He exhales roughly, shifting his hips to nudge himself deeper inside of your walls. If he had came inside, you would be dripping white. A shame. A good creampie always hits the spot.

He drops your wrists, and you topple on top of the bed, face first, uncaring of the way the pillow smothers you.

Ah, shit.

He’d think you were dead if you weren’t still twitching from the aftershocks of your orgasms. It’s not a bad sight. Your pussy is swollen and glistening, thighs trembling, and a part of him can’t help but think the sight would look better painted white.

“You alright?” He asks gruffly, reluctantly turning you over. You look disheveled, bruises marking your neck, chest, thighs. Ring of teeth marks around your ankle. Your bruised hips darken with every passing second, turning that scar that runs up your side a dark ugly color.

Now that you’ve been fucked to oblivion, trying to wrangle your thoughts back into something coherent, he can properly observe the mark he left on you years ago without your side eye. You had shrugged at it before, but Toji knows the significance of scars. There’s little that separates a scar from a brand.

Unconsciously, he rubs at the cut at his lips. It burns.

Trash, trash, trash a voice cloaked in venom spits out.

“I’m fine,” your voice is hoarse as you limply observe the ceiling. “I’m fine.” Your gaze slides to him. You tilt your head at him, but your eyes are curious. You know something’s wrong. “Toji?”

First name basis now, he supposes. No more Fushiguro-sensei this, Fushiguro-sensei that. He’ll probably miss it when he’s fisting his cock a week later.

He looks away, picking himself up to the bathroom to rid himself of his uncomfortably full condom.

“So tell me,” he says as he reclines on your bed, tossing you a towel dampened with warm water. You had been lying down, curled into a near fetal position, blankly gazing at the wall. You straighten as you accept it. “Honest. How was it?”

You think about it seriously. “Are you always that rough with virgins?”

Ouch.

“It’s fine.” A ghost of a smile touches your lips. Almost teasing. “I don’t mind rough.” He thinks you don’t quite remember what it means for someone to be gentle either. The thought makes him unsettled.

Your fingers flit to your wrist absently, brushing over where he had been gripping you. Something in his mouth turns bitter. He doesn’t remember what it means to be gentle, but maybe he should’ve tried.

“Thank you for your help,” you add unhelpfully. Unhelpful in the way that you sound sincere in a way that you shouldn’t be.

The two of you go silent. He’s usually somewhat of a decent conversationalist when push comes to shove. He’s also been with enough women to know that a good orgasm can make a woman everything from weepy to sleepy to talkative.

Like always, you throw everything he knows out the window.

“It was good. Better than I thought it’d be.” Very seriously, you tell him, “You’re very good at sex. Are you sure you don’t want me to pay you?”

He scoffs, despite the fact that there was once a time he would’ve taken advantage of your offer. His lips curl. “You callin’ me broke?”

“I think you could use the money,” you say without missing a beat, looking him square in the face.

He could always use some money, but no way in hell is he admitting that.

Toji narrows his eyes, swallowing his retort of occupying your mouth with something else than snarky replies. Then he briefly contemplates laying you flat out and making you squeal for that comment. It’s a pretty picture, but he decides against it. If he gets going now, there’s no knowing when he’ll finish.

“Are you going to spend the night?”

He imperceptibly freezes. He hadn’t thought that far into it. The original plan was to give you a couple of O’s and slink out after, but then you started talking. And for what it’s worth, he’s always somewhat enjoyed talking to you. You make an interesting conversation partner. When he can follow along, anyway. (Sometimes, he can’t). Hours have passed. The night is dark outside your windows. Shadows blanket your body. He thinks about it.

Your bed is pretty comfortable. Some expensive ass luxury mattress Gojo bought for you when he found out you were originally sleeping with a blanket on the floor, according to you. In your words (and defense), it was just until you bought a mattress. But then you had gotten rather complacent with the floor. Gojo, offended, had bought you a dog bed in some sort of crass gesture to convey his dismay. (Toji bets he had wanted to get a rise out of you). You took no offense to it, and left it in the corner. Geto intervened. A bed was bought.

A fine, expensive ass, luxury mattress that you would’ve never bought for yourself.

A sharp smile cuts across his face in dry amusement. To think, he’d be the one christening your bed.

Besides, he’ll be gone for a couple of months at the very least when Gojo and Geto find out what he’s done. Before they find out. Maybe it’ll be Okinawa for the year. Yaga is going to bitch a fit when he finds out Toji up and left again. The man’ll have to understand. Toji’s always played fast and loose with death, but you are something he should’ve left alone for his own good. He’s always wanted more than he’s deserved.

Trash, he thinks. He touched something he shouldn’t have. He put his filthy fingers all over you, and you enjoyed it.

They deity-fied the Gojo brat when he was younger. Put him in the finest silks like a doll and obeyed his every whim and pleasure. Gojo had seen him once, when the two of them were child and adult. There was something in his gaze, even back then, that peeved Toji, the beaten dog he used to be. It was a gaze that promised mutual destruction.

He sees it now, more or less. Geto’s done the impossible: civilized the godboy. Despite painting his own pretty picture of respect and deference, Toji knows Geto couldn’t care less about it all.

Once, the two of them would have disgusted him.

He’s never seen any man want anything as much as the two of them want you. They’ll have you, but Toji had you first.

Toji stretches, putting on airs by settling yourself into your bed as if it’s his own. He’ll leave if you want him to. If even the slightest indication of discomfort mars your face. “Gotta problem?”

The kids will be fine. Megumi’s always liked you more than the sperm donor who only came back because he had to. And it’s not like he’s leaving permanently. Probably, anyway.

“Not really,” you say, meaning it. “It’s just…” you glance at him, unsure. “I thought you’d leave. Sleeping together is…”

He raises an eyebrow. “I just emptied my balls in ya sweetheart, that’s about as intimate as it gets.”

You blink, as if you had forgotten just where his cock had been an hour prior. If anything, you know how to bruise a man’s ego. No wonder Gojo and Geto are desperate to get your full undivided attention before you flit off to some space in your head reserved for something purely nonsensical.

“Then…I suppose they wouldn’t…want to stay the night either…right?”

How you managed to twist his words like that is simply beyond him. He doesn’t think he could survive one miserable day with the mental gymnastics it takes for you to contextualize yourself as desirable. He doesn’t have the brains for it.

You look a little embarrassed, as if berating yourself for having even thought about it. It strikes him once again that the only reason you had even asked him to fuck you in the first place was because of some misplaced insecurity. And you were lonely. The lonely ones always seek comfort and you are the loneliest person he’s ever met.

Geto and Gojo thought you’d wait for them, even if they didn’t. It’s a mistake that will haunt them for the rest of your lives.

Now you look like a kicked dog, even more than you usually do.

“You could ask,” he says lamely. He doesn’t really know what else to say.

You look vaguely sick at that, for reasons he cannot, once again, fathom. You are a being of endless possibilities. So instead he decides to be amused.

You quickly change the topic. “Do you think I can make them happy?” Your voice is touched by an unusual smallness. You fidget with the sheets, not looking at him.

Toji thinks you could kick Gojo in the balls, and he’d be just as enamored with you, if not more. (He knows a masochist when he sees one.) As for Geto, he’s never seen anyone who could be so effortlessly charming one second, and utterly exasperating the next. (He’s seen the chilling tightlipped smiles given to interlopers who encroach on his time together with you.)

“Men are easy,” he says lazily, “especially when they’re thinking with their cocks. Keep your legs open and they’ll do the rest.”

Instead of shying away from his words, you look relieved. “I can do that.”

He snorts.

You fall silent once more, comforter pulled up to your neck.

“Sometimes,” you say quietly, forlornly, “I think Suguru and Satoru forget I’m not like them.”

He doesn’t know if you think he’s asleep. He doesn’t know if you expect a response. He doesn’t move, doesn’t make a noise. It’s the first time you’ve breathed their names into existence since the evening started.

It doesn’t matter, because after a few minutes you curl, making yourself smaller. Your breathing slows, and in the dark of the night you almost look like a corpse. It would terrify anyone who has held your hand, searching for a heartbeat in the pulse of your wrist.

He closes his eyes.

——

You wake up much earlier than you usually do. Morning has only begun to peek through your curtains. You stare at your ceiling for a couple of minutes, gauging every part of your body, from your shoulders to your toes. There’s a throbbing in your thighs and side, a persistent ache that flares even stronger when you try to move.

You aren’t quite sure what you expected. There’s a weight next to you. You look at the ceiling some more, before sliding your gaze next to you.

A lazy eye cracks open. The two of you stare at each other. You aren’t sure if you’re breathing, in the seconds it takes for you to blink. You had always thought the resemblance between him and Megumi was uncanny. Megumi has Toji’s eyes, both the shade of green and the slightly down tilted shape that lends severity to a glare.

Then he rises, without bothering to put on his clothes. You watch him retreat to the bathroom, and then hear the start of water. He comes back, towel low on his hips, water trailing down his neck.

“I’m going to take a shower,” you tell him. It’s the first words you’ve spoken to each other since last night. It might be an invitation, in the way the set of his eyes narrow. Just like that, things are back to normal.

Heat unfurls in your stomach.

You trudge to the bathroom and turn on the water. It doesn’t take long for the water to get hot, or for Toji to come. He fucks you over the counter, and when you step into the water, it’s a near boil. You leave the bathroom, legs still trembling.

You’re drying your hair with a towel when your phone rings.

Your phone is about to die, but it’s Satoru, and by extension, Suguru, calling, so you answer it anyway.

“Morning,” you say lightly, settling back on the bed, next to a reclining Toji. The two of you keep a respectable space between yourselves. Your thighs ache.

“I wasn’t expecting you to be up,” Suguru says through your phone. His voice is soft, so close to your ear, that you almost close your eyes.

“—SPEAKER!” Satoru’s voice. You wince, spell broken, as you are, presumably, put on speaker as Suguru sighs and mutters something about broken eardrums.

Rustling. Movement. And then a loud grunt. Your lips twitch into a grin. You can almost see them rolling around on the bed, fighting over the phone.

“How’s Hokkaido?” You ask.

“Cold,” comes Satoru’s voice.

“We’ll be back in the evening.” You can hear the smile in Suguru’s voice.

Satoru’s voice is fainter, evident of distance. He must have gotten up. “Bakery first!”

Suguru’s answering silence is an eye roll.

“Should we get dinner all together then?” You ask, eager. “Shoko’s finishing up early today.”

There's another silence. A pause. You blink, wondering if you’ve accidentally overstepped somehow. You quickly rescind your offer. “Unless you two already have plans. In that case—”

“No,” Suguru’s voice drops an octave. “I was thinking we could order in tonight.”

The implication in his sentence isn’t lost on you. Your face warms. “Oh,” you say, suddenly overcome by a restlessness. Next to you, Toji raises an eyebrow. You ignore him, forcing yourself to swallow, chest tightening. “Okay.” Then. “Tonight?”

You had been planning on asking Toji if he could teach you how to give a blowjob first, but you suppose that’s out of the question now.

“If that’s what you want,” Suguru murmurs.

The panic on your face must be alarming, because Toji snorts.

“Yeah,” you say quickly. “That’s fine. Tonight…works.”

“...Is someone there?”

You blink. “Yeah,” you reply, without really thinking about it. “Fushiguro-sensei.”

Toji’s head is cocked to the side, silent, in a way that tells you he must have overheard everything. It’s not as if you have anything to hide.

Suguru’s voice is measured. The tone he takes on when his face goes eerily blank, perfunctorily pleasant. Something in your chest tugs. “And what, is Toji doing there so early in the morning?”

It’s your turn to go silent. Maybe tonight isn’t the best night after all. You’re a bit tired, and sore all over. They won’t want you, not like this, and the fear or rejection is a sobering thought. You aren’t confident in yourself enough yet.

The phone is snatched out of your hands. Toji gives you a look, meeting your gaze. There’s a flicker of amusement in his eyes, and it gives you the vaguest sense of a ticking time bomb.

He speaks into the phone, eyes never once leaving yours. “What do you think?”

The phone clicks off as he tosses it to the floor.

He meets your confusion with an easy shrug of his shoulders. “Turns out you’ll be seeing them sooner than you thought.”

#you don't really need context to read this but ifkyk #fushiguro toji x reader #gojo satoru x reader #geto suguru x reader #jjk x reader

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pikahlua · 4 months

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Control your heart, but not like how you think

I've tried so many ways to write this idea out before. Hopefully I get it right this time.

There's a widely-accepted fandom interpretation going around a lot lately that I think needs to be challenged. Perhaps I won't be able to express it in its complete version because I don't subscribe to it, but I'll try my best to approximate it and hopefully most of you will know what I'm generally talking about.

It seems like a lot of people believe "control your heart" is a plot line that refers to Izuku's inability to contain his love for Katsuki, that "control your heart" is advice from a well-intentioned but ultimately incorrect adult who wants Izuku to suppress his feelings for Katsuki, and that Izuku is hiding his feelings but will eventually let go and embrace his love for Katsuki in an explosion of anger. Or something. Admittedly this interpretation varies a lot depending on who's talking about it, and I cannot hope to encompass every interpretation of it with one paragraph. But it always boils down to some version of "control your heart is about Izuku repressing his feelings for Katsuki."

Let's discuss.

Table of Contents I. Why I want to challenge this aka false dichotomies II. What Banjou said III. Katsuki's rage IV. Tomura doesn't control his heart V. The AFO connection

I. Why I want to challenge this aka false dichotomies

I want to challenge this interpretation of "control your heart," but my main goal here is not to shoot down BKDKs. I want this to be understood more than anything: the goal here is to help BakuDekus.

You see, fandom and shipping arguments--they're very susceptible to false dichotomies. I believe this is the source of a LOT of certain shipping interpretations that seem to go so far in one direction they fall off the rails.

I'll give you an example. I vividly remember how an anti-BKDK once went for chapter 1 in which Izuku rescues Katsuki. They started with the argument "Izuku didn't save Katsuki because he loves him, he would have saved anyone else in that situation."

This is a false dichotomy. "Izuku loves Katsuki" and "Izuku would have saved anyone else in that situation" are NOT mutually exclusive. It's very possible for both statements to be true (and I would argue they both ARE true). However, in the heat of an argument, it's very easy to accept the framing of these statements as mutually exclusive without stopping to think. You can try to argue against the premise. You can try to argue "no, Izuku saved Katsuki BECAUSE he loves Katsuki, and he wouldn't have done the same for anyone else," but you have to ignore or distort so many canon elements to get there. That makes it very easy for your opponent to point and laugh about how your interpretations are so wrong that they have to bend the story to make them work.

But there's another option: reject the framing. If you accept the framing, you're allowing the other person to dictate the discussion.

What does this look like? Let the evidence lead you to the conclusion and not the other way around. And that's a difficult thing to do. I would never say I'm perfect at it either. But if you are convinced Izuku loves Katsuki, then whatever evidence lies in canon shouldn't scare you. In some way, it doesn't MATTER what happens in canon--in that you're invested in their dynamic together and you'll ship them regardless, because there's ALWAYS an interpretation that will support the ship. But you can read the ship into whatever the canon provides. If someone says "Izuku would save anyone, so the reason he saves Katsuki is not because he loves him," one potential response would be "Izuku would save anyone, and also he saves Katsuki because he loves him." Don't let others control how you interpret the story with their words.

To take this back to "control your heart," there may or may not have been a shipping argument that spawned this--I have no idea. But there doesn't have to be. The point is to challenge the framing of the assumption, because there may still be another shipping interpretation if the original assumption doesn't hold up.

"Control your heart is bad advice that causes Izuku to repress his love for Katsuki and he will end up exploding" is one way to frame this.

But consider this new framing: "Control your heart is about Izuku using his anger/love as a source of strength so long as he doesn't let it control him--just like Katsuki does."

II. What Banjou said

The "control your heart" line comes from Banjou in chapter 213.

But I think people really gloss over the part that comes before:

This isn't about repression. Banjou says, "It's okay to get mad. That rage can be the source." Control here is not about repression at all.

This is about whether or not the rage controls Izuku instead. This is about Izuku going berserk and losing his senses. I've discussed the phrasing in Japanese before:

The phrase in Japanese is "kokoro wo sei suru" (心を制する). The word in question, kokoro, does not have a direct translation into English. It is often translated as "heart," "mind," or "spirit." The meaning of sei suru is "to control," "to command," "to get the better of."

The notion that "control your heart" means "don't let your rage get the better of you" is supported by chapter 367.

Tomura reveals that the reason he wanted to leave Izuku the "presents" of his comrades beaten and Katsuki dead was to anger him--which would cause Izuku to fight poorly. Mirio talking Izuku down after this further supports that "control your heart" is meant to be a good thing, something Izuku should do.

We also see a precursor to this in All Might vs AFO in Kamino (you know, the first one). AFO was determined for years to find something to "steal a bit" of his heart away--and he came up with using Nana Shimura's grandson.

Tomura himself stokes All Might's anger by attacking his students at the USJ.

But each time All Might gets angry, he keeps control and saves the day.

All Might is able to be effective despite his anger--or perhaps even because of it. Izuku needs to be able to do the same.

III. Katsuki's rage

In a weird way, the poster child for using anger as a source of strength is Katsuki Bakugou.

I say "in a weird way" because Katsuki's anger is often used as a front for something else. He hides behind anger. But at the same time, since he seems to be angry constantly, he surprises everyone with how much control he has over himself...

...to the point where Tomura even misjudges Katsuki's veil of anger at the sports festival to be resentment towards society.

And we know a big part of the dynamic between Izuku and Katsuki is about emulation.

We've just had a grand battle between Katsuki and AFO in which Katsuki achieved his strength by emulating Izuku--his battle analysis, his tolerance and willingness to endure pain, his use of his own pain as a weapon, etc.

So what if "control your heart" is the corollary to what Katsuki just went through? What if Izuku's "control your heart" is about him learning to use anger to win in the way Katsuki always does?

IV. Tomura doesn't control his heart

If Izuku does need to "control his heart" to be like Katsuki, this provides an opportunity for a moment in Izuku vs Tomura where Izuku can acknowledge Katsuki's role in Izuku's growth. This will depend on Tomura acting as a foil.

I start with the assumption "control your heart" means “if I want to save the people I love, I can’t let anger in the moment control me. I have to use my anger, which comes from my love, to reach the bigger goal.” In this case, Izuku has to control his heart long enough to get what he wants (to save Tomura), and he may have to go even further by applying this ability to someone else who doesn’t control their heart (Tomura).

I do think Tomura can represent a person who is not in control of his heart--which is why he lashes out and destroys everything. He gives in to his instincts to destroy. He loves destruction. And he represses the child inside him who has to explode out when someone like Mirio says he doesn't have any friends. If there's any character who represses his true desires, it has to be Tomura Shigaraki. He denies the idea that he's human, that he's saveable, that there's a crying child inside him--things Izuku asserts because he has seen the truth of them. So Izuku learning to control his heart may be what allows him to save Tomura, and if so, he can give some credit for that to Katsuki (and to All Might as well).

V. The AFO connection

I think one of the major details people discuss surrounding "control your heart" is this notion that Izuku lied about what triggered Black Whip in chapter 217.

"Any clue what set it off? Maybe something's triggering it." "I dunno..."

There's this assumption by the fandom that Izuku is lying because he should know that Black Whip going berserk was triggered by Izuku's anger at Monoma insulting Katsuki. Honestly, I think this is a misreading of the above scene. I don't blame anyone for the misreading because the scene is written in a confusing manner, but I think this page is talking about something else.

Katsuki isn't asking "What caused Black Whip to go berserk?" (answer: Izuku's emotions). He's asking "What caused Black Whip to become accessible?" In other words, why is One For All evolving in this way now? Why didn't All Might have access to these quirks when he had One For All? Why didn't you, Izuku, have access to these quirks until now?

To which all Izuku can say is, "they [the vestiges] just told me the time was right."

If you think about it, it doesn't make sense that Izuku's emotions triggered the "unlocking" of Black Whip and Izuku's sudden access to all these new quirks. If all that was necessary was for Izuku to have a surge of emotion and the desire to "catch" something to unlock Black Whip, he should have unlocked it back at summer camp when Compress kidnapped Katsuki or when Katsuki was about to disappear through Kurogiri's portal.

So in the above page, we're really meant to hone in on Katsuki's suggestion: "Yeah, something to do with All For One..."

There's evidence to support All For One is connected to One For All's evolution. In chapter 209, right before Izuku's team's match in the joint training exercise (where Black Whip first appears), we "randomly" get a cut to All For One in prison:

There are plenty of hints scattered about that this all has something to do with AFO. Remember, Izuku has a dream where Yoichi spoke to him the night before the Joint Training Arc begins--and the dream included a bit of AFO's backstory. It's very possible this was the true "unlocking." I would argue the best hint we have about what's happening with OFA is AFO's line of "I hear my little brother's voice!"

...because it sounds like the AFO-OFA resonance from chapter 369.

Putting all these pieces together, I would like to share with you my current theory about "control your heart." You don't have to subscribe to this idea, but this is where I personally am at right now.

I think the fact Black Whip went out of control in the Joint Training Arc reveals this evolution is about the resonance between OFA and AFO (the QUIRKS, not the people) that we’re seeing in the story right now. Katsuki’s role in this is that he’s the trigger for Izuku’s anger, which didn’t unlock the quirk factors but allowed them to go berserk in the moment. The idea of "control your heart" most likely means “anger is good, but don’t let your anger control you, you should be the one in control.” And Shigaraki understands this because he tries to provoke Izuku’s anger to defeat him. Izuku has to keep his own anger from interfering with his heart’s desire to save Shigaraki, and Katsuki is horrified that he’s a trigger for Izuku in this way (which is why he freaks out when Izuku attacks Tomura in the Paranormal Liberation War, and why he tells Izuku "stop trying to win this on your own" after he gets stabbed saving Izuku). This informs Katsuki's desire to "no longer stand in Izuku's way," because Izuku can only be triggered when Katsuki isn't strong enough to keep himself from being exploited. Izuku was triggered by Katsuki's death, but he managed to CONTROL his anger, not suppress it. He's still angry, he's just channeling it to achieve his goal of saving Tomura. And it's likely this point could come up in Izuku's attempt to save Tomura as Tomura is someone not in great control of his heart. And in the same way Izuku was an example for Katsuki to emulate so that he could use his pain and analysis as a weapon to defeat AFO, Izuku can use Katsuki's example to emulate "controlling his heart" aka controlling his rage to be his power in battle.

For your consideration.

#my hero academia manga spoilers #final arc spoilers #meta #theory #izuku midoriya #katsuki bakugou #bakudeku #tomura shigaraki

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phantasyhalation · 1 month

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i do, in fact, believe Touhou is both structurally complex and internally consistent. i also believe that the works have explored an array of themes. there is not much else like it out there. i enjoy it as weird doujin multimedia Literature.

i take offense when people suggest ZUN does not know what he is doing, or that the works lack consistency or intention. there are few other fandoms where so many are quick to dismiss the complexity and merit of the source material in favour of cherrypicked interpretations. i think Touhou-as-Literature can be interpreted in a broad range of ways, as most Literature can be — but that doesn't mean there's not a concrete foundation!

there is a very clear difference between the broad collective of critical readings of Middlemarch and my headcanon that Dorothea is a repressed lesbian: these operate on different levels, and one of them is self-admittedly much less substantial. if you aren't familiar with all the Substance of Touhou, i can't blame you — it takes, like, months to "catch up" on the official works at any sane pace, and they're very fragmented to the point where you have to make an active effort to line them all up in your mind. but you can do these things. ZUN does consider them, if that's important to you. to suggest that the "substance" of his work lacks the elements needed for people to enjoy it purely on the merit of Canon is to suggest it lacks quality or sophistication. this isn't actually the dig at Elitist Fans you think it is: it's an insult to ZUN and the series itself.

and to be clear, this doesn't mean i think you shouldn't dream up weird sex headcanons about Momoyo. that shit is hilarious — i do it too. but the existence of fans who enjoy more direct readings of the works and critiques built off those readings does not threaten you having a good time doing something else. if you step onto someone else's blog, you should expect them to respond to your readings of the work with their own.

#touhou #<- because why not!#latency.txt

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david-talks-sw · 1 year

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It's a shame that the multi-media franchise of star wars have twisted the original narrative of the Jedi. I really love the sequel trilogy, I love season 7 of TCW, and Dave Filoni is amazing storyteller. But over the years, it's gotten to the point where the Jedi are being criticized to such a degree that now some people believe the Jedi should've changed their entire belief system. It's great to criticize the Jedi. They are flawed and not perfect. But now because they are now being framed negatively over the past 2-3 years and so now, some justify their genocide, disrespect their belief system, and believe Anakin was a poor victim who got caught up in everything. Lucasfilm or any writer is to blame for this, but I think people need to look a little more deeper into the media literacy behind star wars, and consider the fact that a child is going to love the Jedi despite their flaws and will be sad when they see them get killed. Because star wars is made for children who can look up to the Jedi as role models.

All of this.

I frankly don't know what else to add, @thecenturyofmusic said it all.

I also think there's an argument to be made for shifting global values.

I don't know about how it was in the U.S. specifically, but I don't remember there being as much of an emphasis on mental health back in the early 2000s as there is today.

Back then, I remember many fans sorta getting the core story but hating it, which resulted in a lot of them just bashing the Prequels.

Nowadays, a spin has been put on the Prequels wherein Anakin is the poster boy for the mental illness, he's just a victim:

he grew up a slave which gave him severe PTSD,

then was ripped away from the arms of his mother by

an elite order of emotionless monks whose emotionally-repressing teachings are the perfect representation of toxic masculinity and force you to never get emotionally attached,

who berated and rejected him at every turn,

he also doesn't have a father figure except for the Chancellor, who grooms him and isolates him,

and instead of supporting him in his hour of need, the Jedi hurt Anakin psychologically to a degree where at some point he just loses it and kills them all, because as far as he's concerned they were evil to him.

And... yeah. It can be interpreted that way. It resonates more to people when seen that way.

But it wasn't meant to be seen that way.

If it was, then we'd have seen very different Prequels.

Watto would have physically abused Anakin left and right like he's DiCaprio in Django: Unchained, instead of joking around about humans with him.

Shmi would've been on the ground crying, holding Anakin's leg and screaming "please no give me back my babyyyy!!!"

Literally every shot of the Jedi emoting, screaming, chuckling, being worried would be absent and they'd all speak with a monotonous voice, including Yoda, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan.

If we were supposed to feel like Anakin is in the right and the Jedi are in the wrong then we'd be shown an Anakin who isn't petulant, arrogant and overly emotional. We'd see a normal person who gets berated by a group of unfeeling old men.

Anakin wouldn't call Obi-Wan his father twice (which is admittedly a nuanced situation because while Anakin may see Obi-Wan as a father, Obi-Wan sees Anakin as a little brother so hey).

We'd see Anakin explicitly state that he's afraid of his wife dying, maybe carrying her unconscious body to the temple steps begging for help only for someone to reject him at the door because "it goes against protocol" and that's when Palpatine swoops in.

Y'know, more explicit, emotion-eliciting stuff?

But we didn't see any of that. Because it wasn't about any of that. If it was, then it goes about delivering its message in the weakest way possible.

While nowadays, the popular take is that Anakin's downfall is the fault of everyone around him, the intended take was that Anakin's fall was his own fault. Anakin is a victim of his own flaws.

The Prequels weren't meant to show you what happens when you keep pushing a mentally unstable person, they were about cautioning children about not giving in to their own fear and greed.

"How does a good kid become a bad man?" He let his inner demons - fear, anger, greed - get the better of him.

And that's not necessarily a take most people agree with these days, but that takes us back to how much importance you actually give to GL's original vision.

#jedi order #anakin skywalker

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shyrosequartz · 9 months

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I think diamond swap AUs are a really fun exercise in character design, and just generally I've had one in mind for awhile 😭 so here's a "pink in white's place" design for what I call the "clown court AU"

Some info / thoughts below the cut!

While Homeworld under White is very sleek and sterile, I imagine Homeworld under Pink as somewhere very vibrant, bouncy, loud, sometimes to the point of being overwhelming

Organic life is taken from other worlds and placed upon the planet, but with no thought really given to the unique needs of different forms of organic life. Pinks healing powers keep flora fresh, but if you go outside the premises you may find many wilted if not decaying plants.

Admittedly it's a little hard to think of a story here that makes sense to Me without going against the themes of the actual show! I can imagine a situation where an overly indulgent life style is depicted as a negative thing, However I can see this being a slippery slope that leans into some harmful ways of thinking. Another idea I had was the theme of repression... But whereas White represses herself to be seen as perfect, I think Pink in this specific scenario would be repressed in a way where she forces herself (and other gems) to be happy happy happy all the time! Which also isn't healthy.

I wanted to give her a "nest" of Spinel in her hair, but I couldn't think of a way to draw it that would look good at this scale 😭

The carousel horses in her skirt are always moving. I also think of the base of a dress as a small theatre stage. Instead of moving her body, the base rotates when she needs to face someone.

I think of her a little like Drosselmeyer from Princess Tutu, whose main goal with his story was simply to see what new and exciting things would happen when he added random details to the writing.

Something about disregarding a child's need for privacy and the occasional peace and quiet ......

#hope art #pink diamond #pink diamond su #steven universe #clown court au

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oldworldghost · 6 months

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Okay so here’s an idea, and under the cut because it is horny.

So basically you, the reader, are married to Venigni and have been for a few years or so. It’s a serious and committed relationship on both ends, but when Pinocchio arrives at the hotel he gradually starts developing a sort of crush on you both. It starts out very innocently at first, a growing affection that’s very hard to tell is actually there because of how reserved and quiet Pinocchio is already. At most you might here the sped up whir of gears and springs. You and Venigni have little chance to pick up on it, but if you do it’s likely you both treat it as what it is, an innocent crush that’s likely to go away sooner rather than later. It’s cute and, at this point, harmless, a response to his growing humanity and personhood.

But that changes one night. It’s on one of Pinocchios’ many nightly wanders around the hotel that he passes Venigni and yours room to overhear the the two of you having sex, and out of nothing but pure curiosity he opens the door a tiny bit and peeks in, eyes widening as he actually sees what’s happening. What was curiosity turns into a desire that results in Pinocchio watching the entire time, a dull ache in his crotch that isn’t fully formed yet. He leaves as soon as you and Venigni are done, but his feelings have changed from an innocent crush something more sexual, something that only grows the more and more this happens. Because if absolutely will happen again, Pinocchio ends up going out of his way to pass your room and/or find Venigni and yourself in an intimate position. And he does feel bad admittedly, there’s a feeling of guilt for the bad habit - especially because you’re both, you know, married - but Pinocchio also feels like the habit, while creepy, is harmless because he’s not actually hurting either of you (copium).

Pinocchios’ feelings end up being that of built-up and repressed lust and it absolutely affects how he actually acts around you both. He stares, blushes whenever you two touch each other or him, stands closer, and he starts asking for more help with things. Mechanical or not, just any excuse to get either of you to touch him or talk to him. And it this point you and Venigni definitely figure out that there’s something going on (and honestly you’ve probably put together that he’s a peeping Tom too let’s be real) and somehow the situation gets to the boiling point where - whether though Pinocchio asking himself or you/Venigni offering - Pinocchio ends up in bed with you both. And of course he has no idea what he’s doing, so you both offer to teach him right? But that teaching is really just - and hear me out - Venigni instructing Pinocchio on how to fuck you before he himself joins in. And you’re both teasing the fuck out of him for how eager and desperate he is and-

#so. yeah.#I am going to stand behind the closeted perv Pinocchio agenda #that #is something that has never been said #this is not in depth but it is one thirty in the morning #dddne #I think?#lies of p #lies of p x reader #lies of p smut #pinocchio x reader #venigni x reader #so sorry for smut posting it will happen again

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profoundbondfanfic · 4 months

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Hey, I was wondering if you had any reverse fics, with Dean as an angel and Cas as the hunter ?

(also, you are doing God's work and I love your blog so so much ❤️❤️)

Hello there, thank you so much! And here are a few fics we've enjoyed:

Calming the Weather by seidenapfel [Explicit, 35k words]

Rescued from the Empty, Cas is fully human, and miserable. So, rather than acknowledge what happened in the dungeon, Dean searches for a way to change that. He finds it in a simple spell. The spell gives ordinary humans a limited dose of angelic powers. Too afraid it might harm Cas, Dean tests it on himself. But it backfires. Thanks to a piece of Grace bound to his soul, Dean wakes up fully powered, wings and all. With their roles reversed, it is up to Castiel to teach Dean how to wield angelic powers, and for Dean to share the peaks and lows of humanity with Castiel. Misconceptions come to light as they learn from each other. Meanwhile, a storm is brewing. In order to stop it, Dean not only has to get a hold on his emotions, but he must face a revelation about himself, one he had repressed all his life.

Castiel's Angel by Valinde (Valyria) [Explicit, 5k words]

The angel took a deep breath and looked down at his hands. He was fidgeting Cas noticed. Usually he was so bizarrely at ease in his human form, lounging around and tossing winks and smirks at anyone with a pulse. That more than anything had Cas straightening on his stool and wishing he was a little less tipsy. “Ineedyoutogroommywings,” Dean muttered in one long, almost unintelligible, string. He was blushing.

Grace the Gun by chevrolangels [Explicit, 169k words]

He’s got a shotgun in his hand and his mother’s broken rosary around his neck. His eye is cut open and dripping, and he’s got forty years of Hell fresh in his mind. Do not. Fuck with him. It's been four months since he died, when Castiel wakes up, six feet below the ground, alive. Alive without an explanation, with a mysterious itch under his skin and rumors of a whisper, a whisper of something so powerful, that demons themselves are running scared. Then he meets the thing that pulled him out—a spitfire angel named Dean, who turns out to be nothing to run from. With his sister Anna at his side, Gabriel at his back, and three angels in their corner, they're gonna take the fight to them. And they're gonna show God just exactly how they feel about his plan for fate and destiny.

Hunting for Faith by perunamuusa, riseofthefallenone [Explicit, 270k words]

It starts a few days earlier. Castiel first notices it in the middle of the night when the dreams of fire and screams have kept him awake. He’s kneeling before the altar, praying, when the glass in the windows start to shake, the very air vibrating around him. Castiel is on his feet and reaching for the gun tucked into the back of his pants as the shutters over the windows start to rattle.

My Roots Take Flight by KismetJeska [Mature, 125k words]

After forty years in Hell, Dean’s more than willing to accept the offer: become a guardian angel and earn his freedom. But his new ward seems destined to hunt alongside Sam, and there are secrets in Heaven that the angels don’t want found out. Dean’s going to have to choose between his duty and the people he loves- and to work out just where Castiel fits in.

Obey His Word by K_K_TiBal [Teen and Up, 33k words]

When Castiel was ten years old, he was cursed to always be obedient. Now he’s a hunter—not the best one at his job, admittedly, since he’s always forced to comply with the monsters that beg for their life. Everything changes on one such hunt, when an angel named Dean saves his life, and tells Castiel that he’s searching for his missing brother, Sam. His naive callousness about humans and give-em-Hell attitude is off-putting, but Dean ends up being exactly what Castiel didn’t know he needed. As he grows closer to Dean, he tries to keep the secret of the curse close to his chest—but the past always has a way of exposing the truth. Curses are hard—but trust is harder.

the rapture of distress by ozonecologne [Mature, 16k words]

Castiel swung his legs around the edge of the bed and leaned forward, setting the eggs aside. He briefly entertained the notion of patting Dean’s knee, so close to his own now, before deciding against it. Holding hands in your sleep is weird enough. "Whatever it is, I'm sure it isn't the end of the world," he consoled, wiping some grease from his mouth. Dean looked up then, and he remained guiltily silent. Castiel’s eyebrows shot up, up, up, along with his heart rate. His breakfast stuck like glue in his throat. "The end of the world?" Dean winced. "I'm working on it." A reverse!verse AU in which Castiel is a hunter and he’s visited by an angel.

To Hold In Your Hands by saltnhalo [Teen and Up, 6k words]

Castiel has never wanted an angel. He does just fine on his own, has for a long time—since he was old enough to hold a shotgun and make a salt circle. He’s proud of what he’s been able to achieve without angelic help, and the longer he can keep hunting solo, the better. But judging by the summons he’s just received to the Men of Letters’ bunker, his time is up. He can’t avoid his future angel partner any longer. (aka. five times that Dean saves Castiel's life, and five times that Castiel slowly learns angels aren't as bad as he'd thought)

#asks #reverse verse

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py6oto · 8 months

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working ... please wait

AHA!! you thought it was over. you thought i had moved on. you thought you were safe. you were not. it's still here and it will be lurking in the shadows for as long as i exist

unpixelated ver + extras under cut

boo

ive actually had these sprites done for a good while now. i just kept forgetting to post them. sorry!

look at them!! they're totally friendly please stick your hands through the bars of the enclosure

the way theyd function here is similar to tommy, too. theyre both extremely important in hlvrai as a whole, so id like them both to have an effect. bubby definitely something related to fire. coomer probably the powerleg effect from my previous lore dump post.

id like to mention these NPCs aren't the only representation they get in dream world, of course !! they play a very big role in gordons life right before these dreams, i imagine there's multiple creatures and objects across the worlds that represent more minuscule, careful details about them.

as much as gordon can like or dislike it, a trace of them is everywhere, in every door. even benrey, who he'd admittedly rather forget, is only slightly more difficult to find than anything else. theyre too important to be repressed.

im not sure if darnold and forzen would get their own black and white self (as i like to call it, because .. what else do i call it) since they were .. definitely there, and i love them, but they were both significantly minor appearances.

id say they do pretty memorable stuff though (one of them gives gordon a functioning minigun for an arm and one of them holds a dog hostage which i say is not something id forget personally) so they might not get full on sprites but simpler little guys. i dunno.

dream world concepts are super abstract and fun to play with, but it also makes things very tricky.

aneeways, im leaving this the way it is here because it's four and a half in the morning and if i try to think any longer im going to contract multiple heart diseases. bye!!

2023.08.27

#bright colors #eyestrain #?? i suppose #hlvrai #hlvrai fanart #hlvrai gordon #i think im only going to tag gordon for this one ..#yume nikki #hlvrai x yume nikki au #i STILL dont have a name for it LMAOO #its ok though this is normal #2 of my biggest aus went unnamed for an entire year bc i didnt wanna sit down and think of something #one year.#hlvrai coomer #hlvrai bubby #whoops i forgot theyre also here. disregard my “only gordon” tag

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stayteezdreams · 6 months

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Jumpscare

Plot: It turns out scaring Seungmin is a lot harder than you thought.

Pairing: Kim Seungmin x Gn!Reader

Request: “You’re not scared of me?” “Should I be?” Requested By: @tumbleboof

Warnings: Savage Seungmin. Mentions of fake blood/gore related makeup/costume. The photos make this look serious but it's not, just a quick fun one shot.

Words: 0.9k

You hummed as you looked over your work in the mirror, wondering if maybe you had over-done it a bit. Your sink was now covered in red dye that you prayed would wash off easily.

It was less than a week until Halloween and you still hadn't decided on what to wear. You were too indecisive.

Over the course of the last few days, you tried out various costume ideas and makeup styles to help you make up your mind.

This evening, you had applied a makeup look, that made your face appear as though it had been shredded. Fake blood and fake skin covered your face. You wore a single contact in one eye that made your eye appear damaged and bloody.

Your outfit was a mangled mess, covered in blood as well. Needless to say, it was very gory. And admittedly, maybe a bit much for the costume party you were trying to find a costume for.

Hearing your phone buzz, you read Seungmin's text telling you he was on his way to your place. You felt a pang of excitement at the idea of seeing your boyfriend, but it was quickly replaced with an idea that made you even more giddy.

As Seungmin marched up to your door, he checked his phone again to see you had still not replied. He frowned as he knocked on your door, jolting slightly when it opened at his touch.

He peered into the quiet apartment, before his eyes raked over the room. Seeing and hearing nothing, he walked in and called out for you, hearing no response.

Walking slowly into the house, he heard a soft shuffle come from the bedroom. A thought popped into his head as he repressed a smirk as he walked towards the room. He knew you too well. He braced himself as he pushed open the door.

You screamed as you jumped out from behind the door and Seungmin simply spun around and looked at you, his face blank, but a soft amused twinkle in his eyes.

You stared at him with disappointment. "Aw, really? Nothing?!" He blinked a few times and you groaned. "You're not scared of me?"

He tilted his head a bit. "Should I be?"

You groaned in bewilderment, "Well, yeah I mean-" you gestured to your makeup and outfit as Seungmin looked you over.

"Ohhh, you're wearing a costume. I didn't notice."

Your face dropped as he spoke bluntly. You turned to leave without a word and Seungmin finally broke, letting out a laugh as he followed you.

"I'm sorry, I was kidding!"

"I don't even know why I'm dating you." You said with a low tone as you repressed a grin as he wrapped his arms around you, trying to stop you from walking away from him.

"Because I'm great, and you love me." He said with an obvious grin.

You continued to try and walk, pulling him with you and he chuckled, "I'm sorry! Look, I think your makeup is really cool, I was just expecting it when I came in, you're just too obvious."

"I'm not forgiving you." You said simply and he chuckled, tightening his grip around you.

"I'm getting fake blood all over my clothes and you won't forgive me?"

"Sounds like a you problem."

He whined a bit, "I think you look really scary! Do you want me to leave and come in again?"

You rolled your eyes, as you failed to repress a laugh. "That would just be embarrassing!"

After some more teasing, and back and forth arguments about what to watch, you were now sitting on the couch as Hocus Pocus played on the TV.

Seungmin was grabbing a drink from the fridge and you took the opportunity to strike again. Well, attempt too.

As he closed the fridge, you yelled out, from where you had been hiding behind the door.

Seungmin just looked over at you and shook his head.

You groaned in defeat as you pouted, and he let out a soft laugh before pressing a kiss to your head.

"Why did you think that would work, look at you."

You looked down at yourself and frowned. You might still have the makeup on your face, but you had changed into your pajamas, not quite as menacing as before.

"Still could have worked." You mumbled and he shook his head with a grin.

"Cute." He mumbled with a soft grin. "Why haven't you taken that off yet anyways?"

You followed him back to the couch, "Because it took way too long to just leave on for an hour."

"You're gonna break out."

You thought about it for a moment before sighing. You doubted you were going to successfully scare Seungmin, so you might as well get ready for the evening.

Making your way to the bathroom, you prepared yourself for the long process. After a couple visits from Seungmin, who helped you peel off the fake skin with little to no gagging, you were finally free of the fake blood and skin.

After washing your face thoroughly, you put a white sheet mask on your face to cleanse your skin, just in case.

As you rounded the hallway corner, you almost ran into Seungmin, who let out a dramatic gasp and yelp as he staggered away from you.

He placed his hand on his chest as he eyed you, obviously playing up his reaction. "Gosh, you scared me!"

You stared at him with a blank expression. "Seriously?"

You saw him repress a smile as he let out another deep breath and shook his head, "That was really scary."

"I'm gonna kill you."

xx End xx

Just some simple crack/fun. I didn't have a very good idea for this, so I just wrote what came to mind. Hope you liked it!

General Taglist: @otsilliak, @brattybunfornct, @bahng-chrizz, @otakutrash669

Stray Kids Taglist: @laylasbunbunny, @skz1-4-3, @prettymiye0n, @thunderous-wolf

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kafus · 4 months

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ok i've decided i want to infodump about vee and nova a little after all! because uhh not only am i impatient because autism but i also. want to dip my toes into talking about this. just days ago i was still terrified but now i am Tentatively Brave... if i can talk about it here casually like this then i should be able to write a more formal summary later some other time

i've tagged this post appropriately (at least i think i have, feel free to suggest if i should add more) but also a heads up here too before i keep talking that while i'm not going into graphic detail on anything there are STRONG themes of organized sexual abuse of a child, sexual abuse of animals, and grooming! (there are no disturbing visuals in this post, just text)

IF YOU CAN'T READ THIS POST THAT'S OKAY I STILL LOVE U

takes a deep breath alright so the deal with these two. back all the way in 2021, i decided i wanted to make "vent ocs" as in i just wanted some concrete/consistent designs i could use in vent art drawings that weren't a direct reflection of what i envision myself to look like or whatever. i was going through a lot in 2021, in december 2020 i had just gotten my first big repressed memory back and my life was in a whirlwind of change and heavily increased PTSD and DID symptoms, so i was using art a lot as an outlet. in the end i settled on this drawing, based on the design taste i would have had as a young person (god the quality is so old now LOL i've improved a lot but anyway)

i was intending for these two to be just visual designs and nothing more than that but i got attached and actually ended up giving them a whole storyline and everything, which is something i admittedly hadn't done in a long time up to that point so that's cool.

the reason i preface explaining the premise of the storyline with this is because i think it's important to acknowledge that these two are intrinsically tied with my real life and the feelings i experience as a CSA/OA survivor. not because i think someone has to go through awful things to write or draw about them necessarily, but because i am passionate about expressing myself. it's important for me to be seen in some way, to be heard after years of silence. it is not safe for me mentally to share the exact details of my abuse online rn (and please don't ask for them!) but i also don't want these two to be removed from the message that i survived something and this is me making art about that in an abstracted and magical way with a fictional universe that brings me a lot of comfort. i hope this makes sense lol

oh and also with that in mind if you think for even a second any of this is a weird sex thing for me or some shit please stop reading this post and go do something else with your time. this is my trauma expression and i don't need to be compared to the people i was abused by when i was a literal toddler thank you!

AANYWAY so! premise! gonna be point blank with it! vee (not her original name but shh) is born as a normal 100% human girl, aka without the eevee ears and tail. she is groomed from a very young age (like, toddler age) and eventually abducted by her groomers which happen to be members of... well right now it's team rocket because i haven't spent the time to worldbuild a new villainous pokemon organization yet. roll with me here. she is taken to a remote facility out in the middle of fucking nowhere and is never returned to her previous life or family.

Why? well i'm glad you asked! the org is running a bunch of different experiments in this facility and one of them happens to be trying to enable humans reproducing with pokemon. this doubles as both a money thing and a power thing. they seek out a child as the victim of these horrible experiments because children are easily malleable. way easier to control a child than an adult who already has a firm identity/self.

vee is the child they chose. surgery is forcibly done on her to give her working eevee ears and tail, and also like, fuck with her body chemistry and stuff. she's biologically part eevee now. yes this is bullshit pokemon magic science LMAO but she is kept in this facility and chronically sexually abused for a few years by pairing her with various mons and trying to get eggs to happen.

the experiment isn't working though so they hypothesize that giving her a dedicated partner, especially of the same evolutionary line, would help, and they raise nova from birth as an eevee to take on that role. eventually the two of them are paired together. despite the acts they are forced to commit on each other and the abuse they endure, they actually become inseparable very quickly cause like. they don't have anyone else. and also they just genuinely care about each other. additionally at this point nova has evolved into an espeon and has telepathic powers, so him and vee can communicate linguistically with each other, so you know that helps

generally my current focus of this story is in the early years, when vee is 12 and younger, before they start realizing that shit is fucked up and they need to escape (up until that hypothetical point they have been successfully groomed into believing everything happening to them was not abuse/was normal). i have left out a metric fuckton of detail here just to get across the basic premise. i am constantly exploring vee's psyche, nova's psyche, it's like an in depth exploration of the mind of an abused child in horrific circumstances and god it's cathartic. i love these two so fucking much

btw i guess this art has more context now huh haha after i infodumped off the plot to my sister they looked at this art again and was like. OHHH THIS IS EVEN MORE OMINOUS AND HARD TO LOOK AT WITH CONTEXT. AND I WAS LIKE YEAH!!!! YOU SEE THE VISION!!! THE SYMBOLISM!! ETC!!!!

uh yeah if you read this far thank you and i just wanna say i've been building up the courage to talk about these two for GENUINELY two years, it has been over 2 full years since that initial drawing, and i am nervous and jittery posting this but i do not want to die without having shared my work with the world and i'm willing to take the risks to get my voice out there. so you reading it is very much appreciated ur like my first step into being more confident as a survivor lol

oh and fwiw despite these guys being so correlated with my trauma it's not offensive to make headcanons or ask me questions about them or compliment darker art of them however you want, in fact i love that shit!! please i've been holding these guys back for two years i have so much to say that hasn't been said. as much as i am nervous i am EXCITED

#sa tw #mind control tw #csa tw #oa tw #abuse tw #this post is a bit of a mess sorry!#this is why im sort of “drafting” my summary as a stream of consciousness infodump #i need to tackle having the confidence talking about this first #just get it out no matter how messy #and THEN i can clean it up and present it in an artistically pleasing way #kiki was here #kiki.txt #vee & nova

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happyandticklish · 9 months

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Exposure Therapy

Notes: Commission for an anonymous doner~ I haven’t had an opportunity to write for these dorks before, so I appreciate you giving me one! The fic itself is set several years in the future, so they’re both around sixteen in this for clarity’s sake. Hope you all enjoy! ^^

Summary: Stan’s crush on Kyle ends up having unforeseen side effects in the form of a sudden and rapid obsession with tickling his best friend.

He wasn’t quite sure when it had become a problem, only that it had and that he needed to cut it out soon before he ended a nearly decade long friendship over this new weird obsession of his.

Kyle was ticklish. Obviously, Stan had known about this before. It was difficult not to notice it, in fact, as Cartman had made it his goal to antagonize the other with it for years of their childhood after he had found out. Back then it had just been another facet of Kyle’s being, nothing to pay too much mind to. It was just a piece of knowledge in the back of his brain.

Kyle was ticklish.

Then, they had gotten older and things had changed and that simple friendship had changed into what was most likely a very one-sided, and very repressed, crush. Stan wasn’t sure that anyone ever meant to fall for their best friend, but he really hadn’t. He hadn’t really become aware that that was what was happening until the two were partnered up in gym one day and Kyle had casually lifted up his shirt to wipe some sweat off of his forehead. It was a small amount of skin, skin that he had seen a thousand times before, skin that should not have made his heart skip a beat. So, from then on, he had worked as hard as he could to shove down the weird butterfly conservatory that had set up tent inside his stomach and force himself to be Stan Marsh, normal boy and best friend of Kyle.

For nearly a year, with the exceptions of a few minor hiccups, things went great inside that department. Or they did, all the way until Stan jokingly poked Kyle in the side one day and he flinched. And smiled. And nearly laughed.

And suddenly, the butterflies were inconsolable.

He told himself it meant nothing. He told himself it meant nothing when a week later he ‘accidentally’ squeezed Kyle’s knee a little too hard when he stood up. He told himself it meant nothing when friendly jostling kept turning into squeezes and pokes that had Kyle giggling out frantic protests. He told himself it meant nothing when Kyle would smile and Stan’s fingers would flex on the bed in a helpless reflex.

He told himself it meant nothing when Kyle seemed to somehow get tickled almost every time the two of them met up.

He was still telling himself it meant nothing when he went over to Kyle’s house that afternoon to read comics instead of doing the homework they had told their parents about.

“Oh. You’re early.”

Kyle was at the door, hair messy from sleep and eyes squinted slightly like they always did when he first woke up. Stan glanced down at him—he loved that he had to look down now, even if it annoyed Kyle to no end—and offered an apologetic smile. “Sorry. Mom kicked me out for the day, so I figured I’d just head over here early. Are you just waking up? You do know it’s 1pm, right?”

“You should be glad I’m even awake right now. I refuse to be up early in the summer if there are not life-threatening consequences at stake.”

“I count as a life-threatening consequence?”

“Close enough.”

Kyle grinned and the sight was enough to make Stan squeeze the strap of his backpack. He pushed quickly into the house before Kyle could notice his effect on the other. “So, I stopped down at Main St. on the way over to grab some of the newer editions that just dropped. Admittedly, most of them are just reprints, but there’s a couple new titles.”

“What’s the point of getting the reprints if we already have them?”

“Well, the cover art is new, and I’ve heard there’s bonus epilogues at the ends of some of them.”

“Oh, well, if it’s bonus epilogues, I guess I see your point. I rescind my earlier doubt and furthermore will trust in the future excitement of this endeavor.”

Stan frowned. Kyle’s sarcastic attitude had been a staple of his character since he was a kid, but going through puberty had seemed to amplify it somehow. Which was fine if a bit annoying along with his ever-constant cynicism, but Stan could never help feeling slightly offended when it was directed towards himself.

Kyle must have noticed the expression on his face, because he softened a little and nudged past Stan with a smile. “Well, don’t just stand there, let’s look over them. Might as well after you spent so much money on them instead of saving for that car your mom’s always ranting about.”

The subject of the car had quickly become a new factor in Stan’s life, an addition he was less than thrilled about. It made him far too aware that he was sixteen and therefore two years away from college and therefore six years away from the rest of his life.

Stan rolled his eyes but followed the other, trying not to think about being alone in a room with his best friend—trying to keep his hands shoved deep in his pockets where they needed to stay for the afternoon.

Kyle’s room had evolved over the many years Stan had known him. Hungrily collected figurines and a variety of scattered textbooks became replaced by movie posters and memorabilia that in turn got replaced by band photos and useless knickknacks hidden precariously throughout the room. To call it clean would be lying, but it wasn’t messy in the typical high school boy way that Stan’s was. It was almost like there was too much of Kyle to fit into the small space and as such his room was bursting at the seams. Journals were laid open on desks, half-empty water bottles were shoved into various crevices, and amongst the Rubik’s Cubes and comics was a detailed runic sword in the corner from when he had first delved into LARP-ing.

Not to mention, Kyle’s presence lingered so heavily in the room that it was nearly overwhelming at times. Stan sat carefully down on the bed as they delved into the various comic books, reminding himself that friends don’t get weird about being in other friend’s rooms for a simple hangout. Kyle was still in his pajamas too and his movements were heavy from exhaustion as he flopped down on the bed next to Stan. He seemed perfectly relaxed. Stan desperately wished he could share in that sentiment.

For the first hour or so, things seemed fine. The reprints were as uninteresting as suspected, but Kyle made up for it by dramatically reading along to the sections they had practically memorized by that point. Stan made fun of him at first but after a while it was hard to resist joining in. The two switched out parts as they went, but Kyle grew impatient and kept skipping ahead and leaving Stan out entirely.

Which, of course, obviously had to be retaliated.

Kyle’s words stumbled into a yelp when a finger jabbed into his side, his smug grin scrambling into something more helpless. The way he was laying made it difficult to bring his arms down, so he settled on swatting uselessly at Stan’s arm with huffed protests.

“Stan, c-cut it out!”

“Stop interrupting me and I’ll consider it.”

Kyle managed to roll over on his side, curling away from Stan and effectively blocking the tickling for a moment. Stan’s hands were drawn back already in retreat, even though everything in him longed to tease the strip of skin that had been revealed after Kyle’s shirt had rucked up. Kyle grumbled, his elbow darting in to rub away the leftover sensation. “Why is it always tickling with you nowadays?”

It was an innocent enough question and perfectly reasonable at that. Still, Stan’s heart kicked into high gear at the mention of his newest obsession. He scoffed, ignoring the red quickly covering his face. “It’s not my fault you’re so ticklish, I wasn’t even trying to that time. Besides, what’s so bad about it anyway?”

An incredulous noise came from Kyle’s curled form. “Besides everything?”

“Kyle.”

“I don’t know. It’s annoying. And… weird. I just feel so helpless, y’know? I hate that I’m so susceptible to it, especially since you apparently grew out of it since we were ten.”

Stan had not, in fact, grown out of it, but he had gotten better at resisting it. Not that he decided to mention that now. He grabbed Kyle’s side gently and rolled him back over, making sure to keep his hand flat and entirely untickly despite the familiar impulse rearing its ugly head. Stan’s insistent eyes bored into Kyle’s reluctant ones until his look of annoyance became flush with a nervous awkwardness.

“What? What’s that look for?”

“What if you let me tickle you?”

The words seemed to fly out in a breathless rush as Stan said them, and the way Kyle’s eyebrows shot up at the inquiry made him want to shove them right back in his mouth. Instead, he pushed forward before Kyle could disown him as a friend forever. “You said you hate that it makes you feel helpless. What if I tickled you, gently, to show you that I’ll stop whenever you ask me to.”

Kyle’s eyes darted down to the hand on his hip and back up. “And why would I do that?”

Stan shrugged. “Exposure therapy? Resistance training? A way to pass the time?”

Seconds ticked by in agonizing silence as Stan felt the very foundations of their friendship crumble under him. Any second now, Kyle would realize that no normal best friend of over five years would ask their other best friend of over five years if they could tickle them which would of course lead to the realization that something else was at play here. Following that, Kyle would shove him off in disgust, demand that he leave his house, and force Stan to kick himself for months after for making such a stupid mistake.

And then…

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Okay. But only for five minutes.”

“Ten.”

“What? No way!”

“You can’t gain any benefits from exposure therapy in five minutes!”

Kyle sized up him up, but evidently decided that he didn’t know enough about the subject to counter the point. “Fine. But only ten, and you have to stop if I ask you to.”

Stan’s grin was blinding as he agreed. “Deal.”

Several beats of awkward rearrangement later, Kyle found himself splayed out on the bed with his arms stationed hesitantly over his head. At some point he had shifted and his shirt had ridden up, a situation Kyle had not yet rectified. Probably because it would be an inconvenience. Possibly because he wanted Stan to take advantage of that. Realistically because he hadn’t noticed.

The slip of skin held Stan’s attention as he settled in next to Kyle, trying to disguise his excitement as determination. “Alright, so the only rules are that you can’t physically stop me and that you have to at least try to withstand it. It’s cheating if you just give in right away.”

Kyle rolled his eyes but nodded. “Yeah, sure, fine. But if I do say to stop, you have to. And you have to be gentle with it—I’m pretty sure exposure therapy is supposed to be subtle. Not that this is even close to that considering I don’t have a goddamn tickling phobia, but I digress.”

“Are you sure?” Stan quirked a brow. “You know gentle can be worse sometimes, right? Especially considering how ticklish—”

“Gentle’s fine,” Kyle interrupted quickly. If Stan wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of red overtaking his features. “Just get on with it already, everyone knows that the anticipation’s the worst part.”

“Well, in that case, maybe we should—”

“Stan.”

“Fine, fine, let me set the timer.”

Stan messed around with Kyle’s alarm clock for a bit (superhero themed despite his teenage years, which should’ve been dorky but was somehow cute anyway), before assessing the situation at hand.

For as much as Kyle’s ticklishness had been cropping up in Stan’s life, each moment had been brief and rushed due to the scuffle that would arise from it. As such, Stan had never had a proper chance to explore the full depth of Kyle’s sensitivity—he wasn’t even sure where he should start. It was weirdly daunting to tickle someone with their permission and Stan hadn’t thoroughly prepared himself for the pressure it would bring. Where was a normal place to tickle? The sides? And what if he wasn’t ticklish there and they both just had to sit in the awkward silence that ensued?

“Well?” Kyle’s antsy voice cut through his thoughts. “Timer’s ticking, man. Look, if you’re trying to rile me up, I really don’t appreciate—”

“I know, I know, I’m just planning, alright?”

Nervously, Stan set his hands down on Kyle’s sides. He had jumped earlier at the poke, and in the past that general area had worked. Kyle inhaled slightly, shifting as he gripped his bedframe tighter. Good signs. He wiggled his fingers almost clinically over his shirt, more acting out the motions of tickling than doing it. A grin flitted over Kyle’s features, his eyes scrunching shut as he fought to resist the sensations, which seemed like a positive response. Feeling a tad more confident, Stan’s fingers spidered curiously up and around the area in haphazard loops.

He hadn’t told Kyle, but outside of the bullshit he had fed Kyle’s and his own odd cravings, he was hoping to use the experience to sus out where and how ticklish Kyle really was. Mostly for strategic reasons, but also to satiate a growing curiosity inside him. There was something so oddly thrilling about looking at someone, seeing a part of them, and knowing that a simple poke of the finger would make them crumple. Or maybe it was only thrilling with Kyle. Stan hadn’t quite worked out yet whether this was a tickling thing or a Kyle thing or both. For now, he was content to go along with his impulses, especially when given an opportunity as tempting as this.

The giggles had begun, a quiet, stuttered stream of them that Kyle kept attempting to hold back like they were a bad case of the hiccups. The muscles in his arms twitched as Stan kept tickling, begging him to let them block this.

“Tickle?” Stan teased, unable to help himself. Kyle’s eyes snapped open into a glare, but it was a weak one when combined with the flustered expression taking over the rest of his face. Stan held his gaze for a few, electrifying seconds before Kyle averted it. “It’s okay if it does, you know. Everyone’s ticklish. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about.”

“Y-Yes it ihis,” Kyle gritted out, forcing the words into something comprehensible between all his laughter. “It’s fucking m-mortifying.”

“I don’t find it mortifying.”

“You’re n-not the one being tihihickled—shit, can you fucking move?”

“Oh.” Stan glanced down at his hands, dancing freely over the same spot on Kyle’s sides—a spot that had him fidgeting and squirming like mad on the bed. “The sides, huh? Well, maybe we should stay here then, if this is such a bad spot. That way you’ll quicken your resistance training.”

Kyle let out an indignant strangled sound, fighting through another fit of giggles before he could respond. “It’s nohohot the wohohorst spot!”

“So somewhere else is then?”

“Noho!”

“Well, it can hardly be both, Kyle. So you better start suggesting places or I’ll have to choose for you. Like… what about here?” Stan teasingly crawled his hands up his sides and onto his ribs, allowing his nails to curl around their edges. “Better?”

Kyle did not respond due to the influx of laughter that had just taken him over, but based off the frantic, panicked thrashing the move had induced, Stan assumed it was a safe bet to make. Petty remarks had transformed into a series of nononono’s as Kyle shook his head in protest.

“So, this is your worst spot!”

“No—no, god, s-sHIT, fuhuhuck, c-cut it out!”

“Really?” Stan’s eyebrows shot up. “You seem pretty ticklish here, I don’t know.”

Kyle attempted a growl, but it merely collapsed into a pitched giggle a couple moments later. “S-sure, whahahatever man! J-Just lighten uhuhup!”

“I have lightened up man, I don’t think I can be gentler.”

“Well, it tihihickles!”

“Clearly,” Stan agreed, trying to ignore the way his heart skipped a beat at the other’s confirmation. “I mean, this is kind of sad to watch. This really shouldn’t tickle that much, I’m barely touching you.”

Kyle groaned, hiding his red face in the crook of his arm. “Oh my god, shuhuhut up!”

“No, seriously, watching you is making me feel nervous.” It wasn’t entirely just a tease either. Watching Kyle squirm, fingers tightening and loosening on the bed, feet kicking like mad and digging into the mattress, red crawling over his skin like a descending sunset as frantic giggles took him over—it was hard to observe without feeling a little squirmy yourself. It almost made Stan feel bad enough to stop. Almost. “Which is why it is definitely necessary for me to find your worst spot if this is how much you’re reacting from this alone.”

“Maybe I don’t h-hahahve a wohohorst spot!”

A lie, definitely. “Maybe. But you wouldn’t be so desperate right now if you didn’t. So, you can either tell me now, or I can find it.”

Kyle let out a sound that was somewhere between a whine and a groan that twisted something traitorously in Stan’s stomach. “Why i-is thihis relehevant?”

It wasn’t, really, but now that Stan basically had it confirmed that there was somewhere worse than this, somewhere that would truly drive him insane, he couldn’t just let things go there. “Resistance training, remember? And since you’re not offering up any ideas, I guess it’s on me to go exploring.”

And exploring he went. Nine minutes of exploring every ticklish spot he could find, nine minutes of Kyle still not stopping him in either an insane act of stubbornness or a subtle admittance of something, nine minutes of hearing Kyle let out every squeak, squeal, giggle, snort, and wheeze known to mankind before he finally found it. It wasn’t even on purpose either. A simple grab of the leg to readjust and Kyle’s arms were shooting down to shove him off, anticipatory giggles and protests already falling off of his lips.

The two locked eyes for a brief moment as Kyle sat up, staring down at Kyle’s knee and Stan’s hand that had clearly been knocked off.

“Oh—”

“No.”

“I see—”

“Stan, seriously, fuck off, it’s nothing.”

“So that’s it—”

“Stan, I will knee you so fucking hard, don’t you dare—”

“Fine, fine,” Stan held up his hands in defeat, unable to help his own amused grin at Kyle’s desperation. “I’ll let it go, even though you technically didn’t finish your full time. But only because you look like you’re actually going to kill me and I want to live through this afternoon.”

Kyle eyed him skeptically for a moment, assessing the truthfulness of the statement. His knees were protectively tucked under himself and Stan felt his fingers flex anxiously by his side.

"Alright," Kyle said, after a reluctant beat. "Thanks. I still think that whole thing was pointless, but I'm willing to admit that it was nice to have someone actually stop when asked."

"So, theoretically, you would be down to get tickled if I just listened to—"

"Don't push it."

And even though Kyle didn’t untense for the rest of that night, Stan kept true to his word. Primarily because of what he had said, but also because a knot had begun tying itself in Stan’s stomach throughout those nine minutes that had grown to such a size that Stan didn’t feel like he could try anything without either throwing up or admitting to something, neither of which were desirable options.

Because unfortunately, he had a feeling this was probably both a Kyle thing and a tickling thing. Which meant only one thing.

Stan was fucked.

#tickle fic #south park #kyle broflovski #commission #commissions #stan marsh #style #tickling #fanfiction

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